Phil Rickman - The Chalice

He felt her stare.

'What?' he said.

'Nothing. I don't know Listen, maybe… Maybe it wasn't the right time.'

'What does that mean?'.

'I need to wash. I'll think about it.' She seemed unhurried suddenly.

'I'll take Arnold round the block, he said.

In the middle of the carpark, Arnold taking a leak against the church wall, Powys encountered Sam Daniel.

'Powys, where the hell you been?'

'Around.' What was he supposed to say? He couldn't explain any of it.

'It's chaos up there. Gonner be a lot of trouble, count on it. Woolly. He wouldn't listen. Half the bloody Green Party's moved in over the last couple of hours.'

'He told them about the road, didn't he?'

'And he was wrong. It's not a road. I seen my dad. He did the work, his lads, his JCBs.'

'What do you mean it's not a road?'

'You got a map?'

'I can find a map. Come up to the room, Sam.'

'You think this is important?'

'Could be,' Powys said. 'I mean anything could be important, couldn't it, at this stage. What time's dawn? Eight?'

'I never notice.'

They heard the angry warble of a police car.

'Bloody hell,' Sam said, 'word's finally got through to Street.'

Verity had walked all the way back to Meadwell, as quickly as she could manage with her dragging hip.

She pushed open the garden gate. Over her head, the yew trees clasped each other against the ice-barbed, pre-dawn wind. Councillor Woolaston's Renault car was parked under the wall. No other car, thank God, was there. All the lights in the house were out. Verity dug into the pocket of her winter coat for her keys.

She didn't need them. The door swung lazily open at a touch, as though the house was yawning with boredom.

Verity entered silently. And then, lest he thought she was the expected intruder, she called out,

'Mr Woolaston. Don't be alarmed. It's Verity Endicott!'

He didn't reply. It had been a long vigil; perhaps he had fallen asleep.

In the hall, all was normal: the dark tobacco pillars lunged like greasy old men and the water pipes bulged and croaked. Welcome home. Heh heh heh, the pipes seemed to belch. There was a sour and salty smell in the air. As if the house had broken wind in her face.

And she knew then, before she even noticed that the dining room door was ajar.

'Archer's orders, this was,' Sam said. 'Not the old man.'

Powys had found the Mendip Hill (West) Ordnance survey map downstairs among a rack of tourist guides. They had it spread over the bed.

'Here's the Tor, right? Here's Meadwell. And here's Bowermead Hall.'

'I should have noticed that.' Powys pencilled it in. 'They're in a straight line. You'd probably miss it because it runs so close to the St Michael Line. But it is a ley… see, it goes on… a mound here and through this farm called Southbarrow farm.'

'So they built Bowermead Hall on an old ley-line.'

Juanita had changed back into her sweater and skirt, combed her hair. 'Why would they do that?'

'OK,' Powys said. 'If, say, they thought Meadwell was too small and dismal to live in, maybe a little too close to the Tor for comfort, but they warned to retain the link. Maybe even strengthen it, by adding another point to the line. And this is where they chopped down the trees. Dug it out. They dug out the ley?'

'You get an immaculate view of the Tor' Sam said. 'Side of it I've never seen before. Like at Meadwell, but even more dramatic.'

'And that was where you saw…'

'Him. Pixhill. I think it upset him.'

Juanita was tracing the line with a forefinger. Possibly, Powys thought, for the sheer novelty of being able to do that. He noticed she was breathing faster.

'Sam, what's here?'

The tip of her finger quivering.

Sam peered at the map. 'Resr, what's that mean?'

'Reservoir,' Powys said.

'Oh my God.' Juanita closed and opened her eyes three times. She was looking at the bed next to where Powys sat.

'That's it.'

'What?'

'It's where she is. This reservoir.'

Sam stiffened. 'Drowned.'

'It's disused,' Juanita said. 'It's a big grey place with

…'

She closed her eyes again,'… three grey, concrete pillars.'

'What's up with her?' Sam was spooked. 'Where's she getting this from?'

Arnold stood up on all three legs and Powys, seeing his big ears go back and his hairy snout rise, dived to the floor and clapped a hand around it.

'He was gonner howl, wasn't he?'

Juanita smoothed the quilt next to where Powys had sat

'Never a dent,' she said.

Upon the long oak table, on which the Colonel's coffin had lain tor three days and nights, little Councillor Woolaston now lay dead.

Verity wept over his horribly disfigured corpse.

Be assured that I would not expect you to do anything beyond coming to the rescue of my good and staunch friend Verity Endicott, who is in grave and mortal danger, standing as she does directly in the path of (and, God help me, I do not exaggerate) an old and utterly merciless evil.

She backed away from the body, not through fear or revulsion at the way the head had been smashed – nose and teeth broken, the blood pooled in sunken checks – but to give vent to her feelings.

'How I hate you,' she told Meadwell.

And then thought of the well itself. It would be opened now.

She lay back and let her eyelids fall. The pillows were soft and cool. The back of her head felt heavy, like a bag of potatoes. She let her arms flop by her sides. The anger, still burning somewhere below her abdomen was at odds, though not uncomfortably so, with the supine state of her body. She was, surprisingly, reaching a state of relaxation. But then, she was getting rather good at that.

Diane smiled.

The earliest light had hardened the tower on Glastonbury Tor into a rigid finger which poked and gouged blood from the raw flesh of the winter sky.

It was not yet seven-thirty. A false dawn, Don Moulder thought, watching from his top field through binoculars.

Lights showed where the protesters were scattered like maggots all around the Tor, but Don reckoned the police wouldn't let them go up. For their own safety no doubt. He'd half expected there to be a counter-demonstration by the Glastonbury First people, but they were lying low. Sensibly. let the New Age hooligans dig their own grave would be their line.

He could see the handful of folk starting to wind their way up the Tor under a big lamp. Dame Wanda the beacon, in her black and white cape and her big hat. Pretty tame pagan, all the same. Too cold, no doubt, for the old Egyptian priestess get-up from Hello! magazine. Poor bloody Christian, too, that bishop, with his smarmy ways and his entourage and his minders.

Don focused the glasses on a very bright spotlight, setting up a small figure in a sheepskin coat, the collar up around short blonde hair. Tammy White, BBC Bristol. Don had relented and allowed Tammy and her cameraman to park in the bottom field. Tammy had parked her white Peugeot right side on to that bloody bus, God save her news-hungry little soul.

The sky was on the move again, darkening up again. Knew it was a false dawn.

Not seen weather like this in a good long while. First one thing then another, like the heavens couldn't make up their minds which way to turn.

'OK.' Powys was driving. 'How we going to do this? Do we go in through the Bowermead entrance or what? How d'you get in that night, Sam?'

'Parked on the road, scraped through a couple of hedges. But it took me bloody ages, Powys. We don't have that kind of time. I say we go in. State you left him last night, I don't reckon Rankin's gonner do much. Juanita?'

'Do it.'

Powys cut the headlights at the entrance to the drive. Sam did the gates Nobody came out to stop him, but when they reached the house there was a grey BMW parked on the forecourt.