The Chalice (72 page)

In the kitchen, she turned
on the cold tap with her wrists, put her head under the jet. The water hurt, so
cold it burned.

Matthew had left a glass of
water with a straw. A note to say there was a light salad (which she could
manage to eat) in the fridge (which she could manage to open).

      
Blinking, horrified, at the clock, she thought, Powys!

      
Nearly nine o'clock. Hours since he'd gone to Verity's. A long
time since Matthew had delivered the message that Powys was 'doing his best'.

      
Whatever that meant.

      
And no word from Diane. Time to call the police? Time to call
Pennard?

      
Christ's sake, stay
cool.

      
Sick joke.

      
She went down to the shop. No messages on the answering
machine. She rolled the phone from its rest, slipped out the Meadwell number
with the tip of a thumb. Bent over the receiver, heard the number ring and ring
and ring, no answer, no answer, oh no.

      
She staggered back upstairs to the living room. He'll be back.
He will be back. A little surprised at how much she needed him to be back.

      
Him. Not just somebody to be with her, to open things and
switch things on. Him. Joe Powys, burned-out earth-mysteries writer, another
jaded Grail-seeker.

      
She eased herself into the sofa, her arms spread along its spine.
Opposite her, Jim's depiction of the mystical roads converging on the Tor as beams
of dying sun, which lit the fields but not the Tor - a black silhouette, a hill
or shadow.

      
The picture's surface glistened and glowed tonight, as though
the paint was wet again, as though the ghost of Jim Battle was breathing on it.

      
She didn't like that thought. Made her want to look away, but
the colours burned out of the canvas, the sweat on her face felt as slick and rich
as linseed oil. There was a sour tang of turps. She blinked; water filmed her
eyes, colours smeared.

      
Then there was a small movement on the picture. Could be a fly
from the attic. Could be a spider. Crawling along one of the red sunbeams
Following the line exactly, towards the Tor.

      
Nothing there. It was the fever,

      
The room tilted; she saw the fly on the move again.

      
Except it wasn't a fly any more It was a small, black bus, swaying
and rattling down the black road from the Tor, a noxious Dinky toy stinking of
burning oil and diesel, smoke puffing around it, feeding the blossoming shadows
in the room.

      
A thin scream ribboned between Juanita's lips as the carpet
hardened under her feet like stone. Like tarmac.

      
She arose from the sofa, edged towards the door of the sitting
room.

      
Keeping her mouth tight shut, refusing to let the scream out.
Corrosive fumes stinging her nose and it wasn't just smoke and oil, there was a
harsh, acrid animal stench, a tomcat smell a hundred times more pungent, and
the bus was coming at her, spewing feral breath from the torn-scab radiator
between its heartless yellow headlights.

      
Juanita burst out of the room, tugging the door shut behind
her, shutting it all in there, and she carried on tugging and wrenching long
after the catch had clicked into place.

      
Becoming gradually aware - almost with a sense of awe - that
she was using her lurid, pink, patched-up Frankenstein hands. The right hand
gripping the door handle, the left hand around the right hand, all melded
together in a pulsing lump of crippled flesh.

      
Fused to the handle as Jim had been fused to his easels.
      
She felt no pain at all as she fell
to her knees on the landing, unable to breathe, lungs full of black smoke, head
full of burning and those other images she suppressed even in her dreams: the
explosion of the sunset window, Jim's blackened, dead grin, his boiling eyes
behind the twisted bars in her arms, her own hands torched in the night. Blue
fire from sizzling fat.

      
The ash tree. The dangling hat.

      
And
then
the pain.
As wild and brutal as crucifixion nails through both palms. And the breath
pumped out of her in hiccuping yelps as one hand came free and prised the other
from the handle, finger by finger.

Powys put it to Lord
Pennard that when Roger Ffitch came back from the Trenches, he was in a very
bad state, not so much physically as emotionally.

      
'Hell of a lot of chaps afflicted that way. Three weeks in
some petty little skirmish these days and they're sent for counselling. Gulf
War Syndrome. Falklands Fever. Any of 'em even imagine what it was like at the
Somme?'

      
'But he did find counselling, didn't he?' Powys said.
      
'Did he?'

      
'He was directed to a psychoanalyst. New word in those days.
Who he'd probably have rejected if she hadn't been blonde and twenty-nine years
old. With a certain glint in her eye. I'd guess.'

      
For the first time. Pennard looked fleetingly nervous. 'You're
not drinking,' he said. 'Not drinking with me'

      
Watching him now, Powys could imagine the problems Violet Mary
Firth must have had with his father.

      
'He would meet her at Meadwell - he didn't want his family to
know, that would've been a sign of weakness. Not his style.'

      
'Not the family style' Pennard almost smiled.

      
'Anyway, she does seem to have been able to help your old man
with his nervous problems. Putting a stop to his recurring nightmares of the
blood and the filth. Restoring his self-confidence. Getting rid of that
embarrassing, nervous tic. Making it so he could function again. He must have
been impressed. Although he wouldn't have shown it. Couldn't let women get
above themselves, could you?'

      
Pennard didn't look at him.

      
'But he really wanted her,' Powys said. 'My guess is he sensed
her power, something he'd never encountered before, and he wanted some of that,
too.'

      
Pennard snorted.

      
'But because she was a woman, he had to subdue her. If she was
into magic then he'd bloody well show her magic. The Holy Grail? He'd show her
a real grail.'

      
Pennard was looking at him now. This stuff was obviously new
to him. 'Pixhill wrote about this?' He spoke almost mildly.

      
Powys nodded. 'Your father took Violet to see the Dark
Chalice. And then, perhaps feeling that the power was at last his power, he
tried to make love to her.'

      
Pennard scowled.

      
'Did he rape her, or did she manage to fight him off?
 
I prefer to think she did. Big strong girl.
Maybe he was still weakened by the War. Asthma, wasn't it? Still, she was
furious - justifiably. This was the man she'd spent weeks helping out of his
crisis. Maybe she'd even fancied him a little. Whatever, she didn't anymore.'

      
He decided to pass over the next bit, how Violet's hurt and
her craving for revenge had manifested into an elemental force in the form of a
wolf. Stay close to established fact.

      
'Maybe a month later, Roger Ffitch comes crawling back to Violet.
His nightmares have returned, worse than ever. What were those nightmares, do
you know?'

      
Pennard grunted. 'Before my rime, all this. If it ever happened.
Which I doubt.'

      
'I don't think you do. I think it's making terrible sense to
you now.'

      
'Don't you threaten me, you little shit ...' Pennard half rose
from his chair, fists clenched.

      
'Wasn't a threat. Jesus, you bastards are so …'
      
'Just finish your fucking story.'
Pennard sat down again, and his hand shook as he poured himself more Scotch.

      
'All right. Your father sent a message to Violet. She refused,
understandably enough, to go back to Meadwell, so they met in The George and
Pilgrims. She, um ... well, she was shocked when she saw him. He'd lost over a
stone in just a few weeks. He was getting no sleep, couldn't keep a meal down.
His tic - that was back in a big way. And his asthma had worsened to the point
of being life-threatening. He was a hollow-eyed mess, your dad, and he
virtually threw himself at her feet, fighting for breath.'

      
'
Not
his style,'
Pennard snapped, meaning not
our
style.
      
Powys shrugged.

      
'As it happened, Violet hadn't been too good herself since exposure
to the Chalice. If you've ever read Pixhill's diary you'll know the kind of
dreams she was getting. Glastonbury not as a peaceful haven but as a volatile, unstable
place. And always potentially a battlefield. The Dark Chalice: could this be
the anti-Grail? Was there a parallel tradition?'

      
'Absolute non ... nonsense.' Pennard scowled at the break in
his voice and cleared his throat. 'Fucking bunkum.'

      
'So Violet made a deal with your old man. She would treat him
again, work with him. And he would let her dispose of the Chalice however she
saw fit. Which wasn't going to be easy, she knew that. At that age she really
didn't feel up to dealing with evil on this scale. My guess is she probably
consulted her own teacher, Theodore Moriarty - he ran a clinic specialising in
cases like Roger.'

      
'He went away,' Lord Pennard said suddenly. A look of
astonishment crossed his face. 'My mother told me this, many years later. He
went away for six months in 1920.'

      
'To a clinic?'

      
'This is ridiculous.' A wave of anger quite visibly went through
him, shone in his eyes as his arm swept over the desk, sent the whisky bottle
spinning across the room until it hit the gun cupboard.

      
'While he was away,' Powys said, 'being treated by …Dr
Moriarty? ... your mother co-operated fully with Violet. She gathered some
people, leading magicians of the day, powerful pagans and, I suspect. Christian
mystics. And they took the Dark Chalice and they hid it - just as Joseph of Arimathea
or the Fisher King was said to have done with the Holy Grail - in a well.'

      
Pennard sighed. Powys heard the whisky gurgling out of the
bottle into the industrial carpet below the gun cupboard.

      
'They did their best with the Meadwell. They blessed it in the
name of God. They did a powerful binding ritual. But it's a bit like burying
nuclear waste. It's not possible to destroy something like the Dark Chalice
which exists on more than one level. You can only contain it and hope for the
best. But it's a hell of a contaminant. I don't know where the well leads, but that's
a black spring now. You can see what it's done to the house.'

      
'I wouldn't know,' Pennard said. 'Not our house anymore.'

      
'That was part of the deal. Roger Ffitch agreed that when he
died, that house would be sold to Violet Firth. Who by this time had her own
home and teaching base in Glastonbury. Documents were drawn up. Your mother,
Lady Pennard, was party to it, of course. But Violet died first, in 1946, as
I'd guess she knew she would, after her unique contribution to the Allied
cause.'

      
'Met the woman once, you know. As a boy. Gave me a bag of
sweets.' Lord Pennard actually smiled. 'Bullseyes. Never allowed bullseyes.'

      
'Did you like her?'

      
'Did, matter of fact. Jolly. Like a scout mistress. Interfering
bitch.'

      
'The Fall of the House of Pennard?'

      
'Bunkum. Useless businessman, my father. Incompetent. All
there was to it. Never the same after the War. Cracked up. Spent most of his
last years in bloody church.'

      
'Whatever, all the wealth the family acquired with the chalice
began to drop away. So Pixhill says. He reckons you did everything in your
power to get Meadwell back.'

      
'Bloody disgrace. Under the table deal while I was away in
National Service, Bloody Pixhill. What damn right did fie have to take away our
property? Worth over a quarter of a million now, that house. Of course I tried
to get it back. Who was the bloody man?'