Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'Follow me, please.'

Inside, it looked and felt like an old-fashioned office complex. Heavy panelled doors in walls of butcher's shop white. All the interior lights had low-wattage bulbs on show through clear shades.

'Lord Pennard will see you in the gun room.'

Not the old, mellow kind of gun-room with racks of Purdeys and the heads of victims on shields. There wasn't a single gun on show, only steel fronted cabinets. There was a practical-looking desk with a stack of copies of Horse and Hound and Shooting Times under a bright, white shaded metal lamp. A leather chair and a straight-backed leather sofa of the kind you round in solicitors' waiting rooms. An electric fire was on.

If the only woman's touch at Bowermead was applied by Mrs Rankin, all of this figured. She didn't invite Powys to sit down and he didn't. He was in; that was what mattered. Lord Pennard kept him waiting for ten minutes. Plenty of time for nervousness to develop. Well, nobody had said this was a good idea. There just wasn't another one. Juanita was ill, Diane was missing and Verity… little Verity was bearing up. Under the circumstances.

'Mr Powys.' He filled the doorway. He did not say Poe-is.

Juanita awoke feeling sodden and soiled. The duvet limp on her like a tarpaulin. She couldn't bear it any longer, needed to get out of the bed into the shower, blast away the half-dried sweat which coated her like soured cream cheese.

Matthew turned on the shower for her.

'How long was I asleep?'

'No more than an hour, I'm afraid. You were rather distressed, Juanita, I shall have to go soon. I have to see Wanda Carlisle. I'm taking her to the Tor before dawn. To meet the Bishop. Need to get to bed early. Got an alarm call arranged for five. Sorry.'

'You've done too much for me already.' The water was hurting Juanita, coming down on her like hot nails; her flayed thighs were stinging like a very bad nettle rash. She held her arms out in front of her like a sleepwalker, to prevent contact with her precious hands. Only the pain kept her this side of hysteria.

When she could take no more she stepped out and into a towelling robe with wide, loose sleeves. She couldn't dry herself.

Matthew turned off the shower. She sat in front of the biggest radiator, drying inside the robe, afraid to ask him.

'Did I… while I was asleep?' She was just so exhausted.

'Juanita.' He pulled over a dining chair. 'A lot of women consult me now. They want a herbal alternative to HRT. Perhaps they find it easier to talk to me because I'm gay. But I do think I help them. It's just…'

'Matthew, I had none of these symptoms. Not even yesterday. Can shock bring it on? Is there – I mean it's not even overnight – but is there such a thing as an overnight menopause?'

His lips tightened like the thin red line in Jim's painting. 'I think you should see a doctor. I have to say I've never encountered anything like this before. I'm sorry, Juanita, I'm out of my depth.'

Powys had declined Pennard's offer of a whisky. Could have done with the courage, but a clear head made more sense.

'Our information is that it could happen anytime,' he said. 'We just thought you ought to be warned.'

'Why? They won't get in.' Lord Pennard snapped out a bunch of keys. He was dressed as though ready to stop them himself, khaki shirt, moleskin trousers. His eyes were piercingly blue, his hair a kind of gunmetal grey. 'Almost a pity. Haven't had a siege here in centuries.'

He crossed to the metal-doored cupboard, fitted a key into it, turned it anticlockwise twice. Both doors fell open. A line of shotguns like black organ pipes. Pennard took one down.

'You shoot, Powys?'

Powys shook his head. 'Not much need for it in the, um, DTIB. Not yet, anyway.'

'Wish there was then, do you?' Pennard took down a box of cartridges.

'My head of department has been known to express a desire to blow a few, um, protesters away.'

Pennard broke the gun, dropped in a cartridge, then another.

'So, let me get this absolutely straight. You've come here to inform me that a bunch of these eco-guerilla chaps've caught a whisper that we've been pre-empting things on the new road. How did you get that information?'

'We've, um, infiltrated the movement. Can't say more than that. Have to protect our informants, Lord Pennard.'

'Quite.' Pennard snapped the gun shut with a ferocious click. Powys thought. If he's trying to intimidate me, he's… succeeding.

'Good of you to drop in and tell me, Powys. In your undercover attire, too. Suppose you need to mix with these scum, do you? Gather your intelligence?'

'Sometimes.'

The problem was he hadn't decided on an actual strategy, beyond getting in to see Pennard. Meeting the guy rather reduced the options. The handful of lords and dukes Powys encountered while exploring their grounds for ancient sites had been generally affable, so confident of their status they could be almost humble.

'And you're prepared to protect us, are you?' Pennard said, gun in his arms. 'If things get rough?'

'Well, we, um, we value your co-operation in this rather delicate situation.'

'Delicate, Powys? What's delicate about it?'

'Well, some people seem to think the road will damage not so much the natural ecology as the, um, spiritual ecology.'

If he wasn't careful he'd be talking like Pel Grainger.

'In what way?' Pennard, demanded.

'Well… these people consider this particular landscape to be sacred. More so than anywhere else in Britain.'

'Damned idiots, then, aren't they?'

'Depends on where you stand.'

'I stand on my own land. Powys. Where do you stand?'

'We civil servants,' Powys said, 'We generally stand where we're told to stand.'

Lord Pennard shouldered the twelve-bore. Sighted on the ceiling and then brought the barrel down until its two holes were aimed either side of the bridge of Powys's nose.

'Know what I think, Powys? I think you're a damned liar.'

Powys swallowed.

'To begin with,' Pennard said, 'I don't for one minute believe there's such an organisation as the Department of Transport Investigations Branch.'

He moved the gun barrel an inch or two to point at the leather bench sofa.

'Siddown.'

His eyes were diamond-hard. Powys sat.

'Let's have it, then.'

'All right' Powys looked away from the gun. 'I said I was with the Department of Transport because you wouldn't have seen me if I'd told you who I really was.'

'Which is?'

'Oh, I'm just a bloke who writes daft books. And I've been helping out with the magazine Diane's going to be editing '

'Where is my daughter?'

'I wondered if you might know.'

'I don't.'

'You ought to,' Powys said. 'Don't you think?'

Pennard was silent, the gun barrel steady.

'Um, do you really need that thing?'

Pennard lowered the twelve-bore, broke it. 'You're right.' He slipped out both cartridges. 'If the occasion arose, I could tear your head off with my bare hands.'

He hung the gun in the cupboard. Shut the doors and locked it.

Powys said, 'This thing you have about tearing people's heads off. Would that be hereditary by any chance?'

Lord Pennard went so stiff and so pale in the cold white lamplight that Powys thought for a moment that the occasion had arisen.

'You're either a brave man,' Pennard said, 'or an extremely desperate one.'

'And Verity, darling,' Wanda said on the telephone. 'You'll never guess what's happened.'

'No,' said Verity, 'I don't suppose I will.'

'Bloody woman always gets the flu at the wrong time. I mean, could you, would you…? For Solstice?'

Verity glanced at Councillor Woolaston who nodded.

'I suppose I am at rather a loose end.'

'Splendid. I'll have your room ready. Shall we say one hour?'