Phil Rickman - The Chalice

You are the one. As if she knew that I would come. But what would a woman like this want with an invalid soldier whose metaphysical experience was limited to the Cricketer and a fevered dream in a disabled tank? If the Watchers of Avalon needed advice on military tactics, there were surely better-informed sources than myself to tap.

'Ah. the Watchers,' she said when I let slip a reference. As I had tried to explain to Willett, I have a limited capacity for subterfuge. 'I won't embarrass you by asking how you knew about that. But yes, we use the idea of Gwyn's cavern as a focus, a gathering point. The energy here, as you obviously realise, is hugely powerful' DF and Willett, there was no contest as to who was more formidable. 'I was approached by one of our chaps', I confessed at our second meeting, 'to find out if you were having any effect on the Enemy.' 'So.' DF slapped her thigh. 'But how wonderful. They are taking us SERIOUSLY? A breakthrough indeed.'

'They do not like to dismiss the idea of a secret weapon,' I said. At that she grew serious. 'George, you must not let them think of us engaged in any kind of psychic warfare. Our role is one of protection. To ensure that no jackboot ever steps foot on this sacred soil. We are all too aware of the laws of karma to attempt to invoke forces of an offensive nature. No matter how justified we may feel, to launch a psychic attack is to walk the Left Hand Path. The first step along this path is an easy one. To go back requires ten times the strength.'

At this point she produced a copy of a book she had published some years earlier entitled Psychic Self Defence. 'Let this be your bible, George. You are a trained soldier in a just cause. But to invoke negative forces even for a positive purpose can get you into a lot of trouble. As I know from personal experience. And incidentally this experience has a bearing on my reason for bringing you here.' Bringing me here? But surely… I told her of my assumption that I had somehow 'tuned in' to a signal broadcast, as it were, by the Watchers. 'Oh no, George,' she said. 'The signal was for you. Or for someone who turned out to be you. For a vital and specific task, I have need of an individual who is clever but uncomplicated, strong but sensitive. I therefore placed what you might call an advertisement via the Inner Planes.'

Powys said, 'Colonel Pixhill came to Glastonbury after answering an advert DF placed on, urn, the Inner Planes. Did you ever discuss this with him?'

'By the time I arrived,' Verity said, 'Mrs Evans was several years dead. No, he did not discuss her.'

The Inner Planes, Powys thought. The psychic Internet.

He sighed.

'The War will end,' DF said, 'It may take some time yet, but the Allies will win and Hitler will never land here. Our own small part in the defence of Britain will never be acknowledged, nor widely known, but that is as it should be. 'No, George, the reason I sent for you relates to a danger which far precedes the rise of Nazism and will be with us when Hitler is long gone It may not become fully apparent again until the end of the century. And while I – and a certain gentleman – remain alive, it will certainty he contained. However, I suspect my own time here is limited…' I protested; she was in formidable health. She held up a hand. 'Death is a mere station between trains, George, There's a spirit in Avalon which is far more important than the transition of individuals. I don't want that to die. Not again.'

'The Abbot. Abbot Whiting, Verity. This was the first death. The first death of the spirit of Avalon.'

'November the fifteenth was a very solemn day for the Colonel. We have… a dinner. The Abbot's Dinner.'

Powys thought about what Woolly had said.

Tis all gonner be washed up again…last time this happened…1539, the dissolution of the monasteries, when the State fitted up the Abbot…Can you imagine what it was like here after that?

'When they hanged Whiting, stripped the Abbey, it took centuries to recover, and when the spirit came back it was in different form. A recognition of the pagan element. But a kind of coming together.'

'This was the original message of The Cauldron,' Verity said. 'A convergence of goddess worship and the Marian tradition. I suppose this was what encouraged many of us to go to the lectures.'

'That and a chance to see inside Dame Wanda's house, perhaps.'

Verity smiled.

Right at the end of Avalon of the Heart, Powys thought, DF describes herself as an 'impenitent heathen' but she's got a soft spot for the Catholic Church, expresses the hope that Glastonbury will one day become the English Lourdes. This was over ten years before she summoned Pixhill.

When the spotlight came on, it made the Mini look older and shabbier and the whole idea like a non-starter.

Too late to turn back now.

The man in the leather cap he presumed was Rankin looked deeply suspicious, especially when he saw the dog in the back of the car.

'It gets even worse, mate,' Powys said cheerfully. 'The only Department of Transport ID I've got is a driving licence.'

All you have to do is con them long enough to get into the Presence.

'Tell you what, let's forget it. I'll be back at the Ministry on Monday. I'll ring Lord Pennard from there. If you get any trouble before then you'll just have to ask the police to sort it out. We don't work weekends since the cutbacks. Oh, and if the Press ring just tell them no comment and hope for the best.'

Powys smiled blandly and got back in the Mini. 'Cheers, then.' He slammed the door.

Rankin opened it again. 'Look, hang on. You can understand

… I mean, turning up in an old car with a dog in the back.'

'Sure, sure, I probably look like the local poacher.'

'I know all the local poachers,' Rankin said.

'Of course you do. Sorry. No, as you can imagine, after Newbury and Batheaston and Twyford Down, we've learned that going around in a Ministry Rover wearing a pinstripe suit and carrying a briefcase is rather asking for trouble.'

Rankin nodded tentatively. He was a hard-looking bastard m his fifties. A man with one boss.

'At Newbury,' Powys said, 'colleague of mine had all four tyres slashed and the words Green Power scratched across his bonnet in letters about a foot long. No bloody joke, especially as we're now obliged to keep a staff car for three years or eighty thousand miles, whichever…'

'All right,' Rankin said. 'I'll call the house, tell my wife you're on your way. Mr…'

'Powys. '

Had to give his real name in case they checked his ID. But he pronounced it Poe-is. No basic reason why the name should put Rankin or Pennard on their guard, but you could never be sure.

He drove up the straight drive, bare trees gathering snow either side, Rankin watching the gate. The road surface was pitted, an indication that Pennard had no money to throw away.

The house was as he'd imagined it, possibly even grimmer. Jacobean or earlier but shabbily Victorianised. No finesse. Didn't even look like local stone. Not many lights – economy again.

'Any thoughts, Arnold?'

Since his ordeal at Meadwell, Arnold had been a little diffident. Lying on his rug, slightly cool with Powys, not even glancing at Rankin.

Should have warned me, Powys.

'OK. I didn't know about that place. I really didn't know.'

Know now, though.

He parked the car directly in front of the house, at the foot of a flight of six steps, already slippery with trodden snow. There was an unattractive double-glazed porch. A light came on behind it; inside the porch, a door of heavy new oak was already open. A weathered-looking woman stood there. Tweed skirt and jacket, hair tightly braided.

'Mrs Rankin?'

Housekeeper. A tight ship. There was a son as well, training to be the Huntsman, in charge of the hounds, according to Verity who knew these things.