Phil Rickman - The Chalice

Mr Powys, it must be said, was not the most popular man in this town at this time, due to the publication before the War of his extremely lengthy novel A Glastonbury Romance.

It is a powerfully volatile tome which had left me with very much mixed feelings. Although its central inspiration is the Holy Grail, the Glastonbury it portrays is far from a sacred haven. Indeed it emerges as a divided community full of 'misfits'. One leading character is an extremely aggressive entrepreneur and there is a young man whose spiritual leanings are challenged by a pretty extreme case of sexual frustration. There is also an unpleasant Welsh pervert of the masochistic type whose peccadilloes are said to have been derived from aspects of Mr Powys's own psychology. And so the thought of an encounter with this depraved and opinionated windbag would normally have completely taken the shine off the day. However…

Diane looked up from Pixhill's diary in alarm. Someone was banging on the shop door.

Don't open the door for anyone, Juanita had warned, cream Range Rover or otherwise. Did she really mean that? Juanita had been a little strange, not only more cynical but seemingly less secure. Rather disturbing; she'd always been such… well, such a lovely free spirit, really.

Diane rose hesitantly. It was true that Glastonbury was not as safe as it used to be. Apparently, there'd been a couple of muggings in the past year, while she was away, and a sexual assault, and as for burglaries…

She opened the door to the shop just a crack. Through the shop window she could see… Oh gosh. A sort of floating thing in white.

'Oh, Diana!' she heard. 'Don't be tedious. I know you're there.'

Oh no. It was that woman, the artist. Domini Something-Thing.

'Come on, do open the door. I need your help.'

Diane, sighing, went through into the darkened shop. Hadn't she told the woman she was busy tonight? Cautiously, she unlocked the door.

'Oh, Diana, really,' Domini said as though they were old friends. 'It's only me.'

She stepped lightly over the threshold. She was wearing a long, white dress, rather flimsy, a dress for a summer night but she didn't seem at all cold. Too animated. There was a gold coloured girdle loosely around her waist, a tore of brass around her neck. She looked… like a goddess.

'It's Diane,' Diane said. 'Not Diana. Look, I'm terribly sorry…'

'Oh,' said Domini. 'You should call yourself Diana, it's more resonant. Diana the huntress.'

'I've never been much of a huntress,' said Diane.

'No. I suppose you haven't.' Domini looked at her with a tilted smile. 'You must be quite strong, though. Hold these, would you?' She reached down behind her to the pavement and came up with a cardboard wine box. 'Be careful, it's rather heavy.'

'Wine?' Diane was bemused, her head still full of the Pixhill diaries.

'Lord, no. Follow me.'

Domini glided diagonally across High Street, paying no heed to a motorcyclist who roared through her path. Behaving as though she was made of air and light and the bike would have passed straight through her.

Diane lumbered behind, clutching the cardboard box to her chest. People had always treated her like a servant. Even servants; her father's staff were always making her fetch mops and garden tools and things.

'Stay precisely there.' Domini had stopped outside her shop. Holy Thorn Ceramics. The window was in darkness.

Domini went into the shop and returned with another cardboard wine box.

Diane stared around, blinking; this was like a silly dream. The buildings, the familiar mixture of old and older, glistened and glittered in a Christmas card sort of way, although the night was far too mild for frost. The street was curiously deserted.

'OK, you can put it down now.' Domini dumped her own box on the flagstones and danced back from it as though it was dirty or radioactive or something. A wobbling clatter of crockery echoed in the silence.

Domini dipped delicately into the box and extracted a white disc, holding it up towards a street light like a conjuror demonstrating to the audience.

It was a plate, gold-rimmed with a stained-glass-style painting in the middle, of a bearded man below a towerless Tor with a barefoot boy.

'That's rather charming.' Diane said.

'Think so, do you?' A white sleeve dropped to the shoulder as Domini's arm came back, and she tossed the plate into the night like a Frisbee.

'My God, what are you…?'

The plate spun in the air for about twenty yards, flashing in the streetlight, before smashing into coloured shards in the road. Domini let out a shrill whoop and shook her golden hair.

'Can you feel it, Diana? Can you feel the vibrations, the energy around us?'

She took out a second plate. The picture in the middle showed a table bearing a golden cup with a shimmering aureole around it. Domini's arm came back again.

'No!' Diane yelled. 'Please…'

Domini lowered her arm and looked at her 'You're right. I'll wait for a car. Or, better still, a heavy lorry.'

'Why are you doing this? Didn't they turn out well or something?'

Domini laughed, a drunk's laugh, but there was no aura of alcohol about her.

'Old stock, Diana. As of tonight. Obsolete. The shop's changing. Holy Thorn Ceramics – that was his idea, too. I know why now, I know the truth about the Thorn. Holy Mother, can't you feel it yet?'

'Yes.' And she could. The night was as sharp as one of the shards of pottery. Everything was hard and clear. There was no wind. The air seemed to fizz.

Domini spread out her arms like a bird feeling the currents. Diane didn't like it. She didn't like the feel of Glastonbury since she'd returned – the unseasonal mildness, summer blight in November, It was as if the weather had been tampered with, the conditions altered for some purpose.

'Look. Don't do this… Domini. You'll regret it tomorrow, I know you will.'

'Tomorrow? Darling, I spit on tomorrow. OK, look, if you don't want me to smash them, help me display them. Will you do that, Diana?'

Domini began to take plates out of the box, like a child unpacking toys. She laid each one face up on the pavement in a line, edging down the hill, dragging the cardboard box behind her.

'Well, what are you waiting for? Take the other box. Come on, Diana.'

'They'll get trodden on.'

'Maybe. But if you don't help me I'll tread on them all now.'

'This is mad.'

'Sanest thing I've ever done. Go on, the bending will do you good. You're too fat. What's the matter with you? Don't you walk anywhere? Don't you ever have sex?'

She's out of control. Oh gosh. Humour her. Then get away.

Diane carefully took a plate out of the box. It showed the bearded man looking up at Christ on the cross.

'Can you believe it?' Domini said. 'I actually painted this shit.'

'I don't understand.'

'Christianity's a brash, male religion which insults women. If we accept, as I assume we all do, that the so-called Holy Grail is simply an unsubtle Christianisation of the Celtic chalice, the sacred cauldron of our ancient wisdom… We do assume that, don't we, Diana?'

'Well…'

'In which case, tell me this.' Domini faced her, hands on hips. 'Where does the Bible mention the Grail? Even the Christian propagandists can't seem to agree whether it was some cup from the mythical Last Supper or whether it was the vessel which caught the blood dripping from the cross.'

'Or both.'

'Or neither. It's a myth. It's smoke. The so-called Grail Quest is a clear cut male-domination trip, an attempt by armed men to steal Woman's cauldron of wisdom and rape her in the process. Just like the raising of the Abbey, with its great phallic towers – no, listen! – by a male-oriented Roman religion on a spot which just happened to be the holy vagina of the supine Goddess.'