Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'Oh gosh.' Diane fluttered, embarrassed. 'Bit of a prob, there, actually. She won't see anyone. Well, you know, except me. She's in quite a bad way. I mean emotionally, too.'

'Yeh, I can imagine' Powys drove up High Street. The headlights of an oncoming car flash-lit a yellow poster in the window of an empty shop. It said, LET'S TAME THE TOR.

'She's feeling a lot of guilt about Jim's death. One way and another. I mean, she was sort of… sort of close to him. But I think not as close as he would've liked, if you see what I mean.'

'Oh. Right.'

'I mean, no one's saying he… you know…'

'Killed himself?'

'No one's saying that. He just seems to have got rather drunk and careless. People have been muttering about the Artistic Temperament. Meaning drink. But he actually wasn't like that. He was terribly balanced, really. Ever so stoical. Even after a few drinks.'

Diane went quiet for a while, a big girl squashed on to a tiny bucket scat in a car so small that she and Powys were almost touching.

'I do find it easy to talk to you,' she said at last. 'So I'm going to say it. I think…' She took a deep breath 'I think this was, you know… meant.'

They were leaving town. Powys saw, in his rear-view mirror, the sign that said:

GLASTONBURY

Ancient Isle of Avalon

He felt a tingle of unreality at the very base of his spine. This is a town ruled by legend, secretly governed by numinous rules.

Bollocks.

He glanced at Diane. She was looking directly at him. He could see her face very clearly. Its openness seemed to belie everything he'd read about her in the letter from Juanita Carey to Dan Frayne.

Lady Loony. Arnold was sitting placidly on her knee, her arms around him.

Let it go, said his Wiser Self. Don't react. Change the subject

Joe Powys sighed. His Wiser Self had quit years ago, disillusioned.

'Meant?' he said. 'How exactly do you mean, "meant"?'

Dan Frayne had said, 'I've rung the hospital and she won't speak to anyone. I've rung this Diane Ffitch, can't get a word of sense. Just goes on about this fucking Pixhill. Jesus, Joe, all I want is to know what's going on. Christ, forget the book if you like, go for a winter bloody break at Harvey-Calder's expense. Just help me.'

Powys had driven down a week ago under deep, grey skies, the famous Tor looking passive, disconnected. As though this crazy plan to have it fenced off had already diminished it.

He'd booked into The George and Pilgrims, into a dark room with an uncurtained four-poster bed and Gothic windows edged with richly coloured stained glass. From his window, if he leaned far enough out, he could see the bookshop, Carey and Frayne.

On the first day, Powys had walked Arnold round the streets, buying flimsy, small imprint books on the Grail, the Goddess, King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea.

On the second day, he'd led the dog halfway up the Tor and then carried him to the top, where mist over the levels obscured the views and a man with a red beard and two pigtails played a tuneless tin whistle into the wind battering the empty, hollowed-out church tower.

On the third day, he'd driven up through a housing estate to Wearyall Hill, where no signpost marked the path to the Holy Thorn. It proved to be a wind-thrashed little tree, absolutely alone on the hillside, protected only by a wire-netting tube. There were views to both the Tor, to the right, and the Abbey ruins behind the town centre. Of all the places he'd been in Glastonbury, this was somehow the most moving. He'd wished Fay had been here to share the moment and then, feeling as lonely and exposed as the Thorn, he had blinked away tears.

On the fourth day, he'd planned to visit the Abbey which was totally hidden from view until you went under a medieval gatehouse in Magdalene Street and paid your admission fee. He'd left it until last, maybe worried he'd be disappointed. This would be an unfortunate reaction to the holyest erthe in all England.

Finally he'd decided to save it, and gone into Carey and Frayne.

Waiting until there were no customers. Noting five paperback copies of The Old Golden Land. Watching Diane working on a laptop behind the counter. And then going over to request a copy of the little book he'd already read four times.

Diane had fumbled under the counter. The seaweed-green volume of Colonel Pixhill's diaries, as the letters had implied, was not exactly on display.

'I know your face,' Diane looking up to meet his eyes, as if the exchange of a Pixhill was a secret sign, like a masonic handshake. 'Don't I?'

'Shouldn't think so.'

But she'd surprised him, diving across the shop for a copy of The Old Golden Land. A bit unnerving because…

'Hang on, there's no author picture on the paperback.'

'No.' Diane had blushed. 'But there was on the hardback. It lived in my locker, you see, for an entire term.'

It was lunchtime. She'd closed the shop, taken him into a little room behind, made some tea. Kneeling down with a saucerful for Arnold, as if a three-legged dog was yet another sign. As he was to learn, Diane Ffitch was always spotting signs and symbols.

It emerged that she'd been packed off at sixteen to this absolutely frightful private school near Oswestry, all outdoor pursuits and lukewarm showers, feeling like a fish out of water on the cold Welsh Border, so far from the mystery and allure of Avalon, feeling so utterly miz the whole time. Until Juanita had thoughtfully sent her The Old Golden Land.

Inspired by the book, she'd found a Bronze Age burial mound on the edge of the school grounds, seen how it aligned with the village church and then a hill fort on the horizon… and realised that the Welsh Border was actually quite mysterious, not such a ghastly place after all.

Powys had told her about Dan Frayne's proposal, Diane never taking her eyes off him. After a while he'd begun to feel a little uncomfortable. 'I'm messing up your lunch hour.'

'I've not been having one actually. Takes up too much time. I tend to just sort of nibble things.'

Telling him about the magazine she was trying to put together, determined to have it all organised for when Juanita came out of hospital because she'd need something to take her mind off everything.

Well, Powys said, if there was anything he could do to help

… Thinking that working unobtrusively on a little local magazine would get him discreetly into the centre of things in Glastonbury, and if there was to be a book…

He felt her eyes somehow looking into him.

'We can use all the help we can get,' she said. 'In Avalon.'

The following day, again in her lunch hour, she'd taken him to see the guy at SAMPRINT, who'd struck Powys as being fairly cynical about The Avalonian venture but at least had never heard of The Old Golden Land. He'd made a big fuss of Arnold, asked how he'd lost his leg.

'A farmer shot him. Accused him of worrying sheep. But it was a fit-up.'

Sam the printer said, 'What did you do?'

'His shotgun kind of wound up in the river,' Powys said. 'It was a family heirloom.'

Sam had shrugged approvingly. Then Diane had asked Powys if he'd interview the new Bishop of Bath and Wells about his attempts to reconcile Christian and pagan elements. Again, Powys had begun to feel detached from reality. It was like a half-waking morning dream where you watched yourself being drawn into unfolding situations, too lazy to pull yourself out.

Even after reading the Pixhill diaries.

'All I know is it's itching like hell,' she said.

This nurse was small and bossy but not unsympathetic. She was called Karen.

'That's a good sign. Let's have a look.' She leaned across the bed, the only one in the side-ward. 'Hey, don't back off. It won't hurt.'

'Sorry. Oh, I do need to get out of here.'