Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'This thing,' Major Shepherd said soberly. 'It must remain at Meadwell. Do you know what I'm saying?'

'I think so.' Did she?

When the lights had conic on, slowly and blearily, revealing an empty chair, a sad salmon steak, a scattering of spent matches and all the switches on the walls. Verity had accused herself of being a weak, stupid old woman. She'd cleared the table, placed the Abbot's chair neatly against the wall. In the kitchen, she'd scraped the salmon steak into the wastebin; giving it to the cat, if the cat had still been here, would have seemed disrespectful.

Not that the creature would have deserved it. When Verity had opened the door of the cupboard by the yawning fireplace, to return the candlestick to its place for another year, she'd had a terrible shock. Out had come a whizzing, spinning, slashing Stella, leaving smears of blood over Verity's arms and hands before hurling herself out of the room and streaking out of the house with a violent snap of the kitchen catflap.

The greasy, tobacco-coloured oak pillars supporting the doorway had looked on, like the sour, sardonic, menacing old men who haunted the street corners of her youth.

Putting down the telephone, Verity wept for many minutes, tears mingling with the blood on her bony arms.

Everyone against her. Everything.

A little, old canary, and gases filling the house: who could really say how noxious they were?

He'd finished off all the whisky in the flask. What could she say to that, after all that had happened? He gave the flask a final glance – sorrowful or contemptuous, too dark for her to tell – before stowing it away in an inside pocket of his overcoat.

'Erm… before we over react, are you quite sure about this?'

This was the first time he'd spoken since they got into the car. Juanita spun the wheel, letting out the clutch as gently as her mood allowed, feeling the ageing Volvo lurch and slide back, the rear wheels whirring uselessly in the mud.

Over-react? Jesus Christ, he was accusing her of over-reaction!

'Look, it was Diane. And it was a cream-coloured Range Rover. Who else do we know who has cream Range Rovers? There was a gloved hand over her mouth, did I tell you that? To stop her screaming.'

When she said that, Juanita tasted oil – someone trying to stop her screaming Her throat was swollen and her bottom lip felt like a slashed tyre.

'Look, would you mind giving me a push?' She hauled on the handbrake, still not looking at him. 'Please?'

He got out without a word. By the time they were free of the rut, he was creaking like an old bulldozer.

'Rankin. He'd have sent Rankin. Jesus, he sent the staff to snatch his daughter, can you believe that?'

'This is not the night,' Jim Battle said, 'to ask me what I can or can't believe.'

It was still hard to categorise her emotions when they'd come down from the Tor. Anger? Shame? Embarrassment?

Appalled relief was close. The others came later, were still coming, in waves, like a never-again hangover.

Neither of them had spoken on the way down from the Tor. Not until they'd emerged from the gate into Wellhouse Lane and the Range Rover had surged through their lamp beam, and there'd been a muffled scream and a glimpse of struggling figures in the rear, wild eyes over a glove.

Back at Jim's, Juanita had opened up the Volvo and he'd gone quietly into the house and emerged with the hip flask. Offering it to her first.

She'd shaken her head. Felt unbearably tired. The walk to the cottage had almost finished her. But she'd said, 'I'm going to get her.'

Jim had climbed silently into the Volvo.

'Like a buggering black comedy, eh?'

'You're not laughing,' Juanita said.

In a way, she was grateful for this: something to set her mind racing in another direction, to put speed and distance between them and the humiliation. She hurled the car out of Wellhouse Lane.

'Please.' He put a tentative hand on her arm. 'Slow down. You know where they're going.' His voice was sounding dry and old and frail, a voice that couldn't laugh, not a voice she'd heard before.

'Yes '

'You don't even know what you'll do when you get there.'

'I'll get out. You'll stay in the car. And this time I'll over-react.'

'Juanita. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

She released the accelerator with a thud, threw both arms round the wheel and hugged the car into the kerb.

He didn't look at her, stared straight forward through the windscreen at distant lights.

'I really thought I was going to die, you know.'

'I thought you were going to die!' She was not going to burst into tears, she was bloody not.

'I'd accepted it. I mean, it does happen. In the States and places. Crazy sects. Mass suicides. Inexplicable abominations. I can still hardly believe I'm alive, that's the worst of it. I still think it could have happened.'

'Yes.'

'He really might have done it. I'm not just saying this. I think he… I think he simply changed his mind. I think-'

'What I think,' Juanita said without emotion. 'And this is the last I'm going to say about it. I think he actually thought the hat would be a better joke.'

'The buggering… hat.' Jim crumpled up then in the passenger seat. She could sense his shoulders heaving, the shock finally coming down on him, like a landslide: the white moon in the sickle as it descended. The moment of singing silence. Before the gleeful chuckle.

I can chop it off. Or you can give it to me. As a sacrifice. As an offering to Gwyn ap Nudd.

And then, ultimate surrealism and humiliating degradation – the picture of Jim kneeling, getting his coughing over, wiping his face.

And then solemnly presenting the man who called himself Gwyn ap Nudd with his soft tweed hat – the last appalling image Juanita saw before they pulled the oily rag out of her mouth, put the lamp into her hand and prodded her on to the stony path.

Halfway down she was violently sick.

Then, moments before the blind rage, came that disgusting, craven sense of relief which almost amounted to being grateful to the bastards for sparing them their lives.

The only sound was the Volvo's engine ticking over; Juanita was always scared to switch off at such moments in case it wouldn't start again. Now she slipped into second gear as Jim said precisely what she'd been expecting him to say sooner or later.

'Swear to me, Juanita. Swear to me you'll never tell anybody about this.'

'They shouldn't get away with it, Jim.' She touched the lump in her cracked lower lip. 'They could be charged with assault. Robbery with menaces.'

'One tweed hat?'

Would he ever recover his self-respect, get over his humiliation? He hadn't backed down on the Tor, but God knows how it would look in the local papers if it ever came to court.

'OK,' Juanita said. 'If you don't mention it, I won't either.'

He didn't reply. She guessed he was thinking about what they'd done to her, convicting himself of cowardice, about to say, Bugger it, let's nail the bastards.

She got in first. 'It never happened, Jim. That's the finish.' She drove steadily out of town along Cinnamon Lane. To Bowermead.

Confrontation. It was all confrontation tonight. And menace.

Gerry Rankin was an ex marines officer, hard, shrewd and clothed for action in a Barbour and a leather cap.

'Then get him,' Juanita snapped.

'You really are wasting your time, Mrs Carey.'

The Hall hulked behind Rankin: a fortress, very few lights on. But then, the place was better in the dark. The appeal of Bowermead Hall – sixteenth century but brutally Victorianised – began and ended with its misleadingly lovely name.

Juanita said, 'Oh come on, do you really want the police here?'