Phil Rickman - The Chalice

So why did she feel desperate with anxiety?

The answering machine didn't do much to relieve it.

'Diane, it's Matthew Banks. That article of mine, for your dummy edition. We're going to have to scrap it. Something absolutely awful's happened. Please call me.'

'Should they have let you come home?'

Matthew Banks was a very tall, spare, fastidious-looking man in his fifties. Waiting for him to arrive, Juanita had told Powys how Banks had sold the family garden centre to finance his self-published books on plant-lore. A fanatic, she said, but he knew his stuff.

'I can treat you,' Banks said, 'I can make you something up to put on those hands. You needn't have had grafts. Potato peelings. Forms a kind of skin.'

'Never mind, Matthew, too late.' Juanita was impatient. 'This is J.M. Powys, by the way, the author and, er, descend- ant of J.C. Powys.'

'Ah.' Banks inspected Powys down his half-glasses. 'The Old Golden Land. You know, I…'

'And his dog, Arnold,' Juanita said. 'Let's not mess about. It opens at nine-thirty, doesn't it?'

Outside, the sleet was gathering force and every lamppost and signpost seemed to have one of those Glastonbury First stickers with the white slash across the Tor.

Banks tore one off as he passed. 'This should be stopped. You know we're going to turn tomorrow's Solstice Service into a sort of small-scale protest against this Tor lunacy. All the more urgent with Bowkett's blasted bill. If the Bishop is so keen on developing a sort of ecumenical attitude towards paganism, let him speak out against this.'

'You'd better make sure it is a small demo,' Juanita muttered through her scarf as they crossed into Magdalene Street. 'Or you'll be playing directly into their hands.'

She found herself glancing at every passing woman in the futile hope that one of them might turn out to be Diane

'It will be discreet and dignified.' Banks strode through the Abbey gates, his jaw jutting.

It was Powys's first visit to the Abbey. Pity, he was thinking, that it should be at a time like this. For a reason like this.

They reached the modern visitor centre, where Banks was nodded through by the attendant but Powys paid for himself and Juanita. There were showcases inside the centre, and relics of stone and pottery, books and leaflets on sale, glossy pictures of sunset silhouettes. The centre-piece was a scale model of the original abbey in all its soaring, honeyed splendour. There were also several information boards, the first one telling the story of Joseph of Arimathea, said to have settled here with eleven disciples in AD63.

And so – Juanita pale and muffled and following a three-legged dog – they entered the holyest erthe in all England: thirty-six acres of lawns and ruins. The reason for Glastonbury.

There was a tall wooden cross set in a vast lawn greying under a skim of sleet. The cross was modern but timelessly simple. Despite its size, it had humility; it said, We're not even trying to compete.

Powys saw the Abbey ruins stark beyond it. They'd always reached him, these ancient, spoiled places. More than palaces, more than cathedrals.

But there was no time to explore the ruins. Matthew Banks was striding, stork-like, towards a well-preserved grey chapel with a tiled roof and a tiny bell-tower.

On a small, walled lawn, with a path going by, stood a little tree. Arnold edged towards it.

'Perhaps not, Arnold,' Powys said.

Matthew Banks bit off a short, arid laugh. 'It really doesn't matter now.'

The Thorn. Another descendant of the staff of Joseph of Arimathea. This one was like the kind of tree a child draws, with its thin, grooved trunk and its clouded mesh of branches.

'I've seen the one on Wearyall Hill,' Powys said. 'Which is the actual?'

'They all are,' Banks said. 'Wearyall Hill was where the first one grew, but there's been a greater continuity of Holy Thorns here. This is the one most people see. For most visitors, this is the Holy Thorn. The one that flowers at Christmas. Should he flowering now '

The Thorn wasn't in flower yet, although Powys could see what looked like buds.

Juanita said, 'Are you sure about this, Matthew? I mean, I don't know much about these things, but it looks as if it might flower.'

'Of course I'm sure,' Matthew Banks said harshly 'It's dying.'

Juanita put out an inexperienced hand. The tree was like a curled-up hedgehog; you couldn't get inside it. She'd discovered, a little surprised, that she was crying quietly. It was only a tree, for God's sake. And whatever had happened here, it hardly compared with the arboreal massacre found by Sam Daniel.

'It was a bad summer,' Banks said. 'Phenomenally dry, into August. And then…'

'The Blight?'

'Which went on until the end of November. And then winter came in with a crunch. The strange part is, I examined the tree less than a week ago and it was thriving.

'I'd stand by that. It was ready to flower, as I say.'

'But if it wasn't lack of water?' Powys said.

'There is lack of water.' Banks bent, snapped off a twig easily between finger and thumb. 'Look. Feel it. Embrittled. Parched inside. This doesn't happen overnight.'

'No.' Cold on the outside, Juanita thought as Powys accepted the twig. Parched and arid inside. Like me.

Damn it, this wasn't the Holy Oak. It wasn't the Holy Giant Redwood. It wasn't even much of a myth: an old guy shoves his stick in the ground and it turns into the kind of arboreal runt that gardeners rip up and feed into the shredder. And yet that was why…

'There's a poetic truth about this little tree,' she said.

'Yes,' Powys said.

'You know what Pixhill said.'

'Oh please,' Banks snapped. 'Must we bring that man into this?'

'Pixhill had a dream, right?' Powys tossed the twig to the foot of the tree. 'Or claimed he had. Anyway, he goes all apocalyptic. Dreamt I saw the Dark Chalice in the sky again, and the Meadwell was spewing black water from Hades and…'

'Stop it!' Banks shouted. 'Merciful God, are things not bad enough? Must we talk like this?'

'Must we…?' Juanita stared at him in despair. 'Did it ever occur to you, Matthew, that not talking like this is what's allowed this situation to develop? You've all been so airy-fairy, peace and love, open up the healing forces of nature, that you haven't noticed it growing.'

Matthew Banks recoiled.

'Until it's everywhere.'

But he obviously didn't want to face anything apocalyptic. Not what Glastonbury mysticism was about.

'In Avalon of the Heart,' Powys said, 'Dion Fortune described the Thorn as our first Christmas tree. I like that.'

Juanita's eyes widened, 'I know what you're thinking. Do I?'

'I can't say that I do.' Banks was obviously feeling himself being pushed from centre-stage. 'What are you saying?'

'He's thinking about the other Christmas tree'

'Oh, this is stupid.' Banks backed away from them.

'I don't think it is, Matthew. There's a malaise in this town.'

Powys said, 'I dreamt I saw the Dark Chalice in the sky again, and the Meadwell was spewing black water from Hades and…'

'And I saw that Joseph's Holy Thorn', Juanita said, 'had withered in the earth and…'

'Stop it! Pixhill was a paranoid, sick old man.'

'… and the Feet which walked in ancient times,' Juanita was amazed she could remember this stuff, 'had walked again in the winter-hardened fields of Avalon. But this time…'

Banks walked away in anguish, his head bowed like a monk's.

'… this time,' Powys said, 'they left tiny left cloven prints. Jesus, Arnold…'

Juanita saw the dowser's dog whimpering and backing away from the murdered Thorn. Powys picked him up Looking, Juanita thought, more concerned at the dog's reaction than anything.