The Chalice (16 page)

      
'Because, my dear, hippies and gypsies are like dogs. Give one
a good kicking and it'll simply limp off into the undergrowth until it's
recovered.'
      
Diane shook her head in disbelief.
      
'So let's be realistic, shall we?'

      
He turned away. Never had liked to look at her for long.
Something she'd always remembered, the cursory inspection, as if she was
livestock off to market. Well, naturally he'd had more time for his son, that
was the way of things, that was the system.

      
'Good.' Making for the door. 'Good ...'
      
Diane was sure he'd been about to
say 'Good Man.'
      
He turned at the door. Lord
Reasonable. 'Look, Diane, you've been a damn trial to us all your life, but
you're not stupid. No money to speak of, no job. And I should imagine you've seen
enough of life with these scavengers, haven't you?'

      
She gripped the edge of' her shawl. He simply couldn't absorb
the idea of people wanting more from life than money and property and power and
influence. Especially when, in his case, one of these - money - was less
plentiful than it might be.

      
A corner of his mouth made a brief excursion towards a cheek -
the closest he ever came to smiling. He got rid of it quickly, as if it was a
nervous twitch.

      
'Jennifer's prepared your old room. If you want to see me in the
morning, I'll be here until eleven. Train you want leaves ...'

      
'I'm
not going
!'
Realising, to her horror, that she'd stamped her foot. 'How can you? My God,
it's unbelievable! I'm a grown woman, you send your man to ... to kidnap me.
And you expect me to meekly get out of town, get out of your hair... it...
Where's Archer?'

      
'This has nothing to do with Archer,' he snapped.

      
She knew that Rankin or Wayne would be loitering in the passage
to make sure she went up the right stairs. She knew the hidden alarms would be
activated to make sure she didn't leave in the night. She felt outraged,
humiliated, but, as usual, defeated, and said in a despicably small voice, 'You
haven't even asked me why I left Patrick.'

      
Lord Pennard paused, hand on the doorknob. He looked pained.

      
'Diane, had I wished to know that, I should have asked Patrick.
Goodnight to you.'

'You see. Verity, I ...'
Major Shepherd's voice was swamped in a torrent of coughing from which it
seemed he would not recover. Finally, he said, 'This must sound awful, but for
some years you have been our little canary.'

      
Cuddling her cup of camomile tea. Verity recoiled when she saw
it was streaked with blood.

      
'Miners,' the Major said. 'Miners used to take a canary in a cage
into the shafts, as a test for poisonous gases. If the canary…'

      
'I know,' Verity said tightly.

      
'Of course, I don't mean it
quite
like that. We knew nothing would happen to you. That little
woman, George used to say, is the strongest human being I've ever met. You know
what he meant, don't you?'

      
'He meant I was not sensitive. Not in that way.'

      
Verity wanted to protest. Just because she did not See, that
didn't mean she was without insight or intuition. The Spiritual had become her
life. And healing. All those years studying the Bach Flower Remedies. And
dispensing them here, in the ancient sanctity of Glastonbury.
   
Even if being here meant living at Meadwell.

      
'It's always been dark in this house. Major. And it's growing
darker. I mean quite literally. I don't know why that is.'

      
The Major sighed.

      
'But until tonight, I have never felt the nearness of...'
      
She could hardly bring herself to
utter the word. It was not a Glastonbury word. In the town's mystical circles, people
spoke of positives, negatives and mediators, never of...

      
'... evil. If this was the Abbot, then the Abbot was evil. Is
evil. I'm so sorry, Major Shepherd.'

      
There was a long pause. His wheeze was like the bellows one
used to use on a dying fire.

      
'Verity, listen to me. I know you're on your own. And that no
mere wage is recompense. That George warned us to expect problems. As the
Millennium approaches. Now listen …'

      
'If you're going to mention retirement. Major,' Verity said at
once, 'I couldn't think of
deserting.
'

      
She held on bleakly while Major Shepherd went into another
agony of coughing, '... am trying to get you some help. Stronger than me. Younger.
If you could just bear ... bear to hold on. If you can't, I'll understand.'

      
'I shall not desert my post,' Verity said, and felt so
cold.
'Even though ...

      
Even though the house hated her. It did. It threw darkness at
her. It turned everyone against her.

      
And
everything.

      
She'd heard the creak of the Abbot's chair and dared not move.
Everywhere had been utterly,
utterly
dark. Verity had scrabbled about in the darkness, found her way to the wall where
she knew the light switches were, moved her flattened palms from side to side
and in circles and still could not find them. The wall had felt as rough and
cold as it must have
been in the sixteenth century. The electric switches simply
were not there.

      
She'd panicked, naturally, pulling herself up just short of
hysteria when her hand alighted on a box of matches, the ones she'd used to
light the candle. But when she struck a match it was dead. All of them were.
Little sticks which would not light, only snapped.

      
'This thing,' Major Shepherd said soberly. 'It must remain at
Meadwell. Do you know what I'm saying?'

      
'I think so.' Did she?

      
When the lights had conic on, slowly and blearily, revealing
an empty chair, a sad salmon steak, a scattering of spent matches and all the
switches on the walls. Verity had accused herself of being a weak, stupid old
woman. She'd cleared the table, placed the Abbot's chair neatly against the wall.
In the kitchen, she'd scraped the salmon steak into the wastebin; giving it to
the cat, if the cat had still been here, would have seemed disrespectful.

      
Not that the creature would have deserved it. When Verity had
opened the door of the cupboard by the yawning fireplace, to return the
candlestick to its place for another year, she'd had a terrible shock. Out had
come a whizzing, spinning, slashing Stella, leaving smears of blood over Verity's
arms and hands before hurling herself out of the room and streaking out of the
house with a violent snap of the kitchen catflap.

      
The greasy, tobacco-coloured oak pillars supporting the
doorway had looked on, like the sour, sardonic, menacing old men who haunted
the street corners of her youth.

      
Putting down the telephone, Verity wept for many minutes,
tears mingling with the blood on her bony arms.

      
Everyone against her. Everything.

      
A little, old canary, and gases filling the house: who could
really say how noxious they were?

THIRTEEN

None of It Happened

He'd finished off all the
whisky in the flask. What could she say to that, after all that had happened?
He gave the flask a final glance - sorrowful or contemptuous, too dark for her to
tell - before stowing it away in an inside pocket of his overcoat.

      
'Erm ... before we over react, are you
quite
sure about this?'

      
This was the first time he'd spoken since they got into the
car. Juanita spun the wheel, letting out the clutch as gently as her mood
allowed, feeling the ageing Volvo lurch and slide back, the rear wheels whirring
uselessly in the mud.

      
Over-react? Jesus Christ, he was accusing
her
of over-reaction!

      
'Look, it was Diane. And it was a cream-coloured Range Rover.
Who else do we know who has cream Range Rovers? There was a gloved hand over
her mouth, did I tell you that? To stop her screaming.'

      
When she said that, Juanita tasted oil - someone trying to
stop her screaming Her throat was swollen and her bottom lip felt like a
slashed tyre.

      
'Look, would you mind giving me a push?' She hauled on the
handbrake, still not looking at him. 'Please?'

      
He got out without a word. By the time they were free of the
rut, he was creaking like an old bulldozer.

      
'Rankin. He'd have sent Rankin. Jesus, he sent the staff to
snatch his daughter, can you believe that?'

      
'This is not the night,' Jim Battle said, 'to ask me what I can
or can't believe.'

It was still hard to categorise
her emotions when they'd come down from the Tor. Anger? Shame? Embarrassment?

      
Appalled relief was close. The others came later, were still
coming, in waves, like a
never-again
hangover.

      
Neither of them had spoken on the way down from the Tor. Not
until they'd emerged from the gate into Wellhouse Lane and the Range Rover had
surged through their lamp beam, and there'd been a muffled scream and a glimpse
of struggling figures in the rear, wild eyes over a glove.

      
Back at Jim's, Juanita had opened up the Volvo and he'd gone
quietly into the house and emerged with the hip flask. Offering it to her
first.

      
She'd shaken her head. Felt unbearably tired. The walk to the
cottage had almost finished her. But she'd said, 'I'm going to get her.'

      
Jim had climbed silently into the Volvo.

      
'Like a buggering black comedy, eh?'

      
'You're not laughing,' Juanita said.

      
In a way, she was grateful for this: something to set her mind
racing in another direction, to put speed and distance between them and the
humiliation. She hurled the car out of Wellhouse Lane.

      
'Please.' He put a tentative hand on her arm. 'Slow down. You
know where they're going.' His voice was sounding dry and old and frail, a
voice that couldn't laugh, not a voice she'd heard before.

      
'Yes '

      
'You don't even know what you'll do when you get there.'

      
'I'll get out. You'll stay in the car. And this time
I'll
over-react.'

      
'Juanita. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

      
She released the accelerator with a thud, threw both arms
round the wheel and hugged the car into the kerb.

      
He didn't look at her, stared straight forward through the
windscreen at distant lights.

      
'I really thought I was going to die, you know.'

      
'
I
 
thought you were going to die!' She was not
going to burst into tears, she was bloody not.

      
'I'd accepted it. I mean, it does happen. In the States and
places. Crazy sects. Mass suicides. Inexplicable abominations. I can still
hardly believe I'm alive, that's the worst of it. I still think it could have
happened.'

      
'Yes.'

      
'He really might have done it. I'm not just saying this. I
think he ... I think he simply changed his mind. I think—'

      
'What
I
 
think,' Juanita said without emotion. 'And
this is the last I'm going to say about it. I think he actually thought the hat
would be a better joke.'

      
'The buggering ... hat.' Jim crumpled up then in the passenger
seat. She could sense his shoulders heaving, the shock finally coming down on
him, like a landslide: the white moon in the sickle as it descended. The moment
of singing silence. Before the gleeful chuckle.

      
I
can chop it off. Or you can give it to me.
As a sacrifice. As an offering to Gwyn ap Nudd.