Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'You got a bloody nerve, boy.'

'Yeah, well, we'll skip over the pleasantries, if you don't mind.' Sam pushed past him, through the hall and into a split-level lounge with a floor-to-ceiling rainbow stone fireplace and a cocktail bar with mirrors. He didn't have time to laugh. 'Things I need to know now, or, by God, I'll put you under so much shit it'll take more than a JCB…'

'You got nothin' on me, boy.' Griff glanced back at stairs. 'No!' Waving a dismissive hand.

'Bring her down,' Sam said. 'Let's have a party.' He didn't want the old man's latest scrubber cluttering the place up, but anything to cause more disruption… However, when the woman appeared in the doorway clutching a white robe to her scrawny throat, she wasn't what he was expecting.

It was Jenna. From The Cauldron. Ceridwen's pipe-cleaner.

It didn't make sense. What was she doing here with the old man? Why wasn't she with Ceridwen and the rest of the so-called Inner Circle?

And Diane.

'Where's Diane?' Sam said weakly. 'That's all I wanner know.'

Griff Daniel sneered and dropped into a kingsize easy chair. 'You stupid little sod. Never did know when you were playin' outer your league.'

'And what about you?'

'I know my level.'

'And her?'

Jenna stared at him, her lips like a thin zip.

'Why aren't you with Ceridwen?'

'She knows her level, too,' Golf said.

'I thought you were a lesbian.' Sam said. 'I thought that was what the Inner Circle was about.'

'The Inner Circle isn't what you think,'' Jenna said. 'And I'm not in it. And not all feminists are lesbians – that's something he would say.'

This was weird. Sam shook his head in non-comprehension. It was kind of sick.

'Don't think this is no more than a loose sexual arrangement,' Jenna said haughtily. 'He isn't going to be wearing an earring.'

'Go away, boy,' Griff Daniel said. 'We don't know nothin'. Somethin' I've learned these past few weeks. Local politics is my pond, look. Local politics is knowing which people to help when they d' want you, and when to keep out of it. Some things, 'tis better to know nothin'.'

Sam clenched his fists. . 'Shut the door on your way out,' Griff said.

But when Sam was on his way out he thought of something the old man did know.

Mist, still rising around the bed like smoke. In a perverse way, Diane found this comforting. It suited her mood, enclosed her dark thoughts.

In the midst of it, she thought for a moment that she could see a very pale light ball.

When she was very young she used to go all trembly and run downstairs, and Father snorted impatiently and nannies said, Nonsense, child, and felt for a temperature.

Nannies.

There was a certain sort of nanny – later known as a governess – which Father expressly sought out. Nannies one and two, both the same, the sort which was supposed to have yellowed and faded from the scene along with crinolines and parasols. The sort which, in the 1960s, still addressed their charges as 'child'. The sort which, as you grew older, you realised should never be consulted about occurrences such as lights around the Tor.

And then there was the Third Nanny.

Her memories of the Third Nanny remained vague and elusive. She remembered laughter; the Third Nanny was the only one of them that ever laughed. And one other thing; she would sit on the edge of the bed, but never left a dent in the mattress when she arose.

The pale lightball hovered. Part of her wanted to clutch at it and part of her wanted to push it away.

In the end that was what she did, for lightballs belonged to childhood, and she was grown up now.

She wondered what day it was. Was it Christmas yet? Always hated Christmas. All those fruity voiced oafs smelling of drink and cigars, and then going stiffly to church.

'Merry Christmas, m'Lord, Merry Christmas. Thank you, m'lord, very kind, very kind of you…' And Boxing Days echoing to the horrid peremptory, bloodlusting blast of the hunting horn. 'Time we had you riding, Diane? 'Doubt if we've got a horse fat enough and stupid enough. Father, ha ha…'

'Time to wake up, Diane.' Ceridwen was at her bedside.

'It's still dark.'

'It will soon be dawn.'

Ceridwen no longer wore the starched uniform of the nurse or the nanny, but a long purple robe.

'This is not a hospital, is it?'

'It has made you well, however,' Ceridwen said. 'You've learned what you needed to learn. Without this knowledge you could never be free.'

'I… I suppose that's true.'

She had dreamed of blood. The blood around her birth, she had remembered her mother's cooling arms. She knew who had murdered her mother. She was, at last, approaching an understanding of who she was.

'You once came to me to ask if you were an incarnation of Dion Fortune. You always knew that, didn't you?'

'I…'

Ceridwen went down on her knees at the bottom of the bed. 'I honour you, Diane Fortune.'

And then there was a rustling all around her, and other people in robes emerged from behind the pillars, bearing candles. Among them, faces she knew.

Rozzie and Mort and Viper and Hecate, the girl who had been so rude to her and had made the children paint the bus black.

They all dropped to their knees.

And then Gwyn appeared, tall and bearded in a shroud of mist, and he held up his sickle before throwing it to the ground at the bottom of the bed. And all the people in the room said in unison, 'We honour you, Diane Fortune.'

Verity awoke into shrilling darkness and clicked off her travel alarm.

She had slept for four hours, after making Wanda's supper and mugs of calming cocoa. Wanda, who had drunk too much, had been in one of her unpleasant, resentful moods at being obliged to rise before dawn to put on a public relations sideshow with a bloody Christian.

The luminous hands of the travel alarm told Verity it was five thirty. She arose at once, against the tug from her hip, into the tainted luxury of her suite at Wanda's.

Tainted by guilt. She arose into guilt. She had deserted her post. She had allowed Mr Powys to guide her away from the 'grave and mortal danger' foretold by Major Shepherd.

And left little Councillor Woolaston in its path.

Perhaps that part was over. Perhaps the intruders had been caught and detained by the police.

And perhaps something horrible had occurred.

Verity washed in cold water, for the heating had not yet come on. She heard the first spatter of sleet against the window.

She felt sick to her soul.

Lights Go Out

Woolly played patience at the kitchen table and didn't once win.

Life was like this. All you could do was keeping turning over the cards, never knowing how they were stacked.

Of course, this wasn't the case with everybody. Some people cheated, and some people actually knew how to shuffle the pack. Glastonbury had far more than the average number of people who thought they knew how to stack the deck, but Woolly had no illusions.

He dealt himself three more and turned over the stack, but nothing would fit.

He knew he'd done one good thing this past night, but couldn't figure how he'd done it. Maybe, just that once, he'd turned the right card. Maybe he'd found an opening in the house's black atmosphere. Whatever, something had let him take the wheel of the black bus, and he'd saved a life.

Woolly hoped it was a good life.

He was hoping this when the lights began to go out.

Powys put his hands on her shoulders and was horrified. There was a layer of frost on the muslin.

'I'm all right,' she said, 'leave me.'

'You're not.' He thought, what are we doing? What have I done? She's had pneumonia, she's been through hell. Just for odd moments he'd thought, this is it. Without quite knowing what he meant, or even what he hoped for.