Phil Rickman - The Chalice

… some miserable little sod scrabbling on its knees in blind circles, right under the church tower, surrounded by candle lanterns, it's stupid fingers dipping into the flames, but showing no pain. Just twitching and scuffling like a lost thing, helpless and pathetic.

They were lifting it up from behind, two people, an arm each and the drum was going dom, dom, dom, like one of them execution drums, dom, dom, dom, and he was looking straight down now, like looking down a chute, on to the very top of its head, where a swastika

…

Oh shit! Oh shit, man, it 's me That's me!

Being propped up like a scarecrow.

Rozzie was there too, watching, white-faced, but the bitch was avoiding touching him, and there was… it was Gwyn, but it wasn't. His face was long and black and pointed. His coat was off, his skin shone – he was naked – and so did his sickle raised, with the moon in it.

It was a hell of a shock at first, Mort and Steve holding the pathetic thing's head back, exposing its throat to the blade, but the next instant he'd realised this was only Headlice, a naive little tosser, so it didn't matter he was going to die. Anyway, it had begun ages ago, the death thing; the cut was like a formality.

Alan was above it all, directly above, exalted. Directly above the swastika, the sun symbol on Headlice's head, the head chakra, the opening he'd like projected out of – he could see the cord now, a thin strand of silver, like a wire.

All he could see of Headlice was a pair of hands waiting to receive the chalice, the Holy Grail, and then Alan dissolved into laughter because the Holy Grail was black and slimy and smelt of piss.

Verity lit a candle for the Abbot.

Its light might have created the illusion of a warm area at the heart of ancient Meadwell. It didn't. The light was as wan and waxy as a lone snowdrop in cold earth.

The silver candlestick and a dusty wine bottle, two crystal wine glasses and two pewter plates rested at the top of the oak dining table, which was as crude as an upturned barge.

On one was a salmon steak. They ate mainly fish, the monks, Colonel Pixhill had told her.

From the other plate, at the bottom of the table. Verity (who had never before sat alone here, who habitually ate in the kitchen listening to The Archers) was picking at a green salad, which, in this sparse light, looked grey.

She was perched like a sparrow on the oak settle under the window recess. At the top end of the table, behind the candlestick, was a high-backed oak chair with arms. The chair sat before the platter of salmon. There was a knife, but no fork.

The Colonel had said they did not use forks.

Oh, let this soon be over.

Verity chewed on a lettuce leaf which felt like crepe paper in the desert of her mouth. Among beams and pillars of oak, huge shadows shifted sluggishly, like black icebergs. The lump of fish islanded by juices on the Abbot's plate looked – although she squashed the thought at once – like some grisly organic remains on a surgeon's tray.

The curious thing was that Verity had searched through all the records, the Church histories, the local histories – and there had been many of them, as writer after writer sought to explain the holy glamour of Glastonbury – without ever finding documentary evidence that Abbot Richard Whiting had eaten such a meal, or indeed that his last, sombre night upon this earth had been spent at Meadwell.

Colonel Pixhill, you see, had always said it was so. After the Dinner, relaxing a little with a small Panatella, the Colonel would ruminate on the Abbot's fate.

Of course, quite apart from his differences with the church over, er, marital matters, Henry VIII was an extravagant blighter. Never had enough money. And there was, Glastonbury, wealthiest religious house in Britain outside Westminster. Had to get his hands on that wealth somehow. Greed – that's the orthodox version. That devil Thomas Cromwell, Henry's hatchet man, as it were… only a matter of time before he was ordered to focus his scheming brain on Avalon…

The Colonel would pour red wine, brought up that evening from the cellar. Tonight Verity also had a bottle ready. Such a terrible waste, she drank hardly at all and hated the cellar. She'd taken the biggest flashlight in the house, but its beam down there had been but a flimsy ribbon. A cobweb was still laced around the bottle of vintage claret she'd snatched from the nearest rack, ramming it under her arm to grope for the iron handrail to the cellar steps.

But, of course, it was more than money. Henry was capturing Jerusalem, do y'see? Jerusalem Builded Here, as Blake was to put it, on England's green and pleasant land. How could the king break from Rome, establish himself as the head of the Church, if he didn't smash the power of the place where… where those Feet walked in ancient times. And old Whiting would've realised this, of course he would, and suspected his own days were numbered, poor chap. But he stayed, and he waited. For a miracle. How could God possibly permit the very Cradle of Christianity to fall?

For Verity, the Colonel had illuminated the history of Glastonbury as no book ever had. She pictured the great Abbey soaring, in all its golden splendour, into a flawless blue heaven. Who, indeed, could have imagined it then as broken and derelict? Certainly not the Abbot.

At last, laying down her knife and fork – she could not eat with only a knife, like the Abbot – Verity composed herself and said, in a tiny, tremulous voice like the tink of china, the words enunciated for so many years by Colonel Pixhill.

'Have courage, have fortitude, My Lord Abbot. We are…'

She paused to correct herself, nervously fiddling with the lace handkerchief in the sleeve of the woollen pinafore dress she wore against the cold in here. For November, it was quite a warm night. Outside.

'I mean, I am…'

No! She had to believe that Major Shepherd was here at the table and so was Colonel Pixhill himself. Had to believe she was not alone.

'We are with you this night.'

The candle flame swayed to the left, as if a fresh draught had spurted into the room. Verity sat very still and did not See.

… no possible escape, of course. Royal Commissioners searching the old boy's chamber and coming up with writings critical of the king's divorce – as if anyone would commit such things to parchment. Plus a book about – Ha', that other famous cleric with the temerity to criticise his kind, Thomas Becket. And then they find a gold chalice hidden away and accuse Whiting of robbing his own abbey!

The first time she heard this, Verity had asked hesitantly, Might this not have been…? I mean, a precious chalice that he was so anxious to hide…?

The Grail, Verity? I hardly think so. If the cup from the last supper was indeed preserved, it was surely not precious in that sense. Certainly not made of gold. Wood or earthenware, more likely.

The Colonel had raised his glass, peered into the clouded wine, repeating,

We are with you, Lord Abbot. With you this night.

Drawing an obvious parallel with the Abbot's own last supper.

In October 1539 – Verity remembered all the dates as clearly as if she had been there – Thomas Cromwell, the King's agent, had ordered that Richard Whiting, a kind old man who was always mindful of the poor and the sick and known for his generosity, should be 'tried and executed'.

The 'trial' took place at Wells, where the Abbot and two monks said to be his 'accomplices' were swiftly sentenced to death and brought immediately back to Glastonbury. This was November 14.

The following day, the Abbot was brutally stretched and bound to a wooden hurdle, dragged through the streets by horses past helpless, horrified townsfolk, past the forlorn Abbey.