The Chalice (82 page)

      
Diane lay on it.

      
She'd lost a lot of weight. She had an unhealthy pallor,
obvious even down here. She inspected them curiously, her mouth tilted into a
smile you could only call complacent.
      
She showed no relief at their
arrival.

      
For the first time, Powys saw Ceridwen, a heavy, wild-haired
woman, an old hippy gone to seed. She was studying Juanita in the light of candles
held by others, men and women in ratty looking robes.

      
'You look well,' she said to Juanita, possibly surprised.

      
'That's because I'm one of your failures, Ceridwen,' Juanita
smiled pleasantly, the goddess shining in her - Ceridwen would see that.

      
'I don't have failures,' Ceridwen said coldly. 'Some things
merely take longer than others.'

      
'Well,' Juanita was brisk. 'We won't waste your time. We've
come to collect Diane.'

      
Smiles vanished, but Ceridwen seemed unfazed. 'So take her.
Why not? Diane, look who's here.'
      
Juanita said, 'Diane?'

      
Diane wore a black nightdress. It didn't look right on her. Or
maybe - Powys acknowledged a cold feeling in his gut - maybe it did.

      
'Diane?' Juanita said again, approaching tentatively.
      
Powys just hoping it wasn't too
late, praying the girl would see the light around her and rush to her.

      
Diane gave Juanita an uncharacteristically coquettish smile.

      
'Fuck off,' she said sweetly. Behind her, the big wooden doors
closed and a shutter clanged in Powys's head.

      
'OK.' Juanita turned abruptly away from the bed. Powys thought
she must be a good deal less cool than she looked.
      
Forehead furrowed, she faced
Ceridwen close up. 'What exactly have you done?'

      
'I've set her free,' Ceridwen said simply. 'Haven't I, Diane?'

      
'Yes, Nanny,' Diane said and giggled.

      
Powys said, 'She's told her about Archer.'

      
'Of course,' Ceridwen said to Juanita, goddess to goddess,
dark to light.

      
'And she's conjured DF's pet elemental?' Powys said. 'The wolf
from the North?'

      
'And sent it on its way!' Ceridwen's voice ringing. 'If you
only knew the beauty of it, Mr J.M. Powys.' But still looking at Juanita.

      
'You want to explain it to me?'
      
Ceridwen smiled at Juanita.

      
'I'll tell
you
,
then,' Powys said, realising, with a feeling of deep sickness, that he could.
         
'Goes back to 1919. When Roger Ffitch
had the opportunity to lure DF - even then potentially the strongest magician
in the whole of the Western Tradition - on to the dark path. By exposing her to
the Chalice.'

      
Ceridwen didn't react.

      
'And possibly his cock,' Powys said. 'Because Roger wasn't
subtle.'

      
If they were going to get Diane out of here, they'd have to play
for time. Sam's fires would bring people - any people would do.

      
'All she had to do.' Powys said, 'was release that black elemental
force against him. The Dark Chalice - him being a Ffitch - would have shielded
him. And both of them would have lived happily and Satanically ever after. They
might even have married. Right?'

      
Ceridwen turned at last to look at him.

      
'Unfortunately,' Powys said, 'it rebounded. As these things
often do.'

      
'Seldom do,' Ceridwen said.

      
'But then you would say that, wouldn't you?'

      
Making himself meet her brooding, dark brown gaze.

      
'Being a crazy old ratbag.' He smiled at her, his insides freezing
up at her expression. This woman was steeped in it.

      
'Anyway,' he said. 'She did produce it. But she immediately
saw what she'd done and eventually she gets it back. Which was tough, a lot tougher
than letting it go. But it made her a better person and stronger. Better
equipped, anyway, to deal with what she'd stumbled on.'

      
Ceridwen's steady gaze was a long tunnel, no light at the end.
No end, in fact.

      
'The Chalice,' Powys said. 'A receptacle for evil. Naturally,
she wanted to destroy it. The way she'd wanted to destroy Roger Ffitch. But the
very act of destruction was negative and it rebounded. Violet was very confused.'

      
'She could have had it all,' Ceridwen said.

      
'If that's your idea of having it all,' Powys said mildly. 'It
just shows how bloody shallow you bastards are. Anyway she went back to Dr
Moriarty for advice and maybe he put her on to a third party - not an occultist,
but certainly a visionary. Someone already obsessed with the concept of the Holy
Grail.'

      
He held on to Ceridwen's gaze, talking slowly, holding the
floor. Aware of Juanita moving closer to Diane.

      
'John Cowper Powys. A man with a lot of personal hang-ups. A
seriously flawed character. But a bit older than Violet. And smart. I can hear
DF and JCP talking long into the night, working out the implications of Grail
versus anti-Grail.'

      
'And realising,' Ceridwen said, 'as you obviously cannot grasp,
that they were dealing with a very ancient duality.'

      
'That everything has its negative? That without evil, how could
we comprehend good?'

      
'That without the sterility of what you naively call good,'
said Ceridwen, 'we cannot appreciate the beauty of what you call evil.'

      
'Bloody hell, Ruth,' Powys said admiringly, 'you'll be
converting me.'

      
'I wouldn't want you as a convert,' Ceridwen said. 'You're no
more use than your grandfather or whatever he was.'

      
'Probably not,' Powys conceded. 'But they did manage it,
didn't they? DF would have decided they needed to conduct a binding ritual. To put
the Chalice itself - if not the force behind it - into cold storage. And give
the Ffitches at least a chance of salvation. It would've been JCP who worked
out how to do it, how to put the arm on Roger - who, by now, was back into his
nightmares and vulnerable.
      
So they bound the Chalice. To the
general benefit of mankind. But no help to the Ffitches. Their fortunes hit the
skids. Since when ...' He shrugged, '... the Dark Chalice has become a
legendary prize for, um, certain species of spiritual pond-life.'

      
The tall guy with the pigtail stepped forward, holding his metal
candlestick like a sword. 'You don't have to take this.'
      
'Let him finish.'

      
'I'm nearly there anyway.' Thinking of Diane in the hospital
bed, Ceridwen, the nurse, an idea was forming. To liberate the Dark Chalice and
whatever it represents, you had to actually corrupt the spirit of DF. Which is
no small undertaking. It involved creating and developing a whole person. You
were there when Diane was born, weren't you?'

      
'Yes.' Ceridwen looked uncertain and then her face broke into
a beam, like the sun actually shining out of an arse, he thought. 'Yes. She
knows that. I was her midwife.'

      
He imagined Juanita's eyes opening wider at that. She was no
more than a couple of yards away from where Diane lay seemingly unaware of any
of them through the residual haze of whatever she'd been given to sedate her.

      
'I don't know what you planted in that baby,' he said. 'But you
obviously thought you had to kill her mother to keep it alive.'

      
'Archer killed their mother,' Ceridwen said sharply. 'It was
quite simple. He was a child, with a child's simplistic
views
.
She was coming between him and his dreams of restoring
the family's wealth and influence.'

      
'I bet he didn't do it on his own, though.'

      
'You're fantasising, Mr J.M. Powys. But that's your profession,
isn't it?'

      
'I bet you had a little tug on the old umbilical, didn't you,
Ruth?'

      
Her face told him it was inspired.
Thank you, God. Thank you, DF. Thank you, Uncle Jack.

      
Ceridwen recovered rapidly, Powys thinking how two-dimensional
these people were. 'It doesn't matter now,' she said. 'Diane's beast is loose. The
bind is broken. The Chalice is back in the world.'

      
The reservoir doors opened. Archer Ffitch stood there. He
showed no surprise. He'd been here before, of course he had. He must have seen
the Mini vanish in the direction of the barns and known where they were going.

      
'Sorry to intrude' Archer wore a dark suit, but he'd taken off
his tie. He was sweating. 'But all of a sudden, one begins to feel safer down
here. Tricky phase. Transition. All that. Difficult to settle. Until Oliver
gets the family trophy out of the well.'

      
Right, Powys thought. They would have to cancel out DF before
they dare uncover that well. The unbinding of the Chalice was a number of
strands entwining simultaneously, something finally pulling them tight, just as
Ceridwen must have sealed the fate of Lady Pennard by one wrench on the
umbilicus.

      
He looked at Diane's face, the eyes flickering vaguely behind the
twisted, narcotic glaze. It was unreal. It was insane. Diane had been brought
up from birth to develop a hatred for her brother, to have that hatred
fine-tuned to a pitch where it could be released as an entity in itself, dragging
down the entity's original, unwitting creator.

      
Juanita was standing only a yard away from Diane, but it was a
very long yard.

      
'Come down, Archer,' Ceridwen called out, almost gaily. 'We'll
look after you.' She turned to Powys. 'As we always have. Ever since his
schooldays. I was their matron, did you know that, at school? Archer and Oliver
Pixhill. Always inseparable.'

      
'Let me get this right,' Juanita said. 'This would be after you
were fired from the hospital in Oxfordshire for persecuting geriatrics?'

      
Ceridwen turned slowly and jabbed a blunt forefinger at her. 'I
know what you've been doing. I know you've been leeching on DF's residue'

      
'Or perhaps she's been feeding me,' Juanita said softly.

      
'I don't care if she's been feeding you.' Ceridwen snarled. 'She's
over now, Juanita. Or she's ours - she has that choice. Oblivion. Or the
shadier path.'

      
All this time Diane had been quite silent. Sitting up in her
bed like some soiled fairytale princess.

      
'Come on, Diane,' Juanita said.
      
'Yes. Go on. Do,' Ceridwen shrieked.
'Go with her, Diane. Take it out into the world.' And to Juanita, 'She'll destroy
you. She was always going to destroy you. And then she'll come back. She has
to.'

      
Powys was aware of a deepening of the atmosphere in the
concrete chamber, as though it had become a hall of mirrors and went on and on
until the Tor rose above it, a nightmare corruption of the Cavern Under the
Hill of Dreams. A picture began to form in his head of Diane in five or ten
years' time: no more the scatty but tolerable Lady Loony; instead, a fat and
blackened sly-eyed whore, a parasite in high society, vampish fallen sister of
the Conservative MP for Mendip South.
      
Fetch!

      
He heard it with bell-like clarity in his head. No one reacted.
The silence was dull, yet charged.

      
And then, limping down the middle of this endless chamber, he
saw -
Oh, no
- the familiar black and
white, amiably lopsided dowser's dog.

      
Arnold pattered to the bed where Diane sat up. There was a
ball in Arnold's mouth. A ball of pure, white light. Powys saw it and then he
didn't.

      
Diane shrank back into the metal bars of the headboard. Powys
watched, as though from far away, as though it was happening in a movie. Becoming
only gradually aware that no one else was looking at the dog or the bed or
Diane or him, but at the open doorway behind Archer.