Phil Rickman - The Chalice

Matthew had left a glass of water with a straw. A note to say there was a light salad (which she could manage to eat) in the fridge (which she could manage to open).

Blinking, horrified, at the clock, she thought, Powys!

Nearly nine o'clock. Hours since he'd gone to Verity's. A long time since Matthew had delivered the message that Powys was 'doing his best'.

Whatever that meant.

And no word from Diane. Time to call the police? Time to call Pennard?

Christ's sake, stay cool.

Sick joke.

She went down to the shop. No messages on the answering machine. She rolled the phone from its rest, slipped out the Meadwell number with the tip of a thumb. Bent over the receiver, heard the number ring and ring and ring, no answer, no answer, oh no.

She staggered back upstairs to the living room. He'll be back. He will be back. A little surprised at how much she needed him to be back.

Him. Not just somebody to be with her, to open things and switch things on. Him. Joe Powys, burned-out earth-mysteries writer, another jaded Grail-seeker.

She eased herself into the sofa, her arms spread along its spine. Opposite her, Jim's depiction of the mystical roads converging on the Tor as beams of dying sun, which lit the fields but not the Tor – a black silhouette, a hill or shadow.

The picture's surface glistened and glowed tonight, as though the paint was wet again, as though the ghost of Jim Battle was breathing on it.

She didn't like that thought. Made her want to look away, but the colours burned out of the canvas, the sweat on her face felt as slick and rich as linseed oil. There was a sour tang of turps. She blinked; water filmed her eyes, colours smeared.

Then there was a small movement on the picture. Could be a fly from the attic. Could be a spider. Crawling along one of the red sunbeams Following the line exactly, towards the Tor.

Nothing there. It was the fever,

The room tilted; she saw the fly on the move again.

Except it wasn't a fly any more It was a small, black bus, swaying and rattling down the black road from the Tor, a noxious Dinky toy stinking of burning oil and diesel, smoke puffing around it, feeding the blossoming shadows in the room.

A thin scream ribboned between Juanita's lips as the carpet hardened under her feet like stone. Like tarmac.

She arose from the sofa, edged towards the door of the sitting room.

Keeping her mouth tight shut, refusing to let the scream out. Corrosive fumes stinging her nose and it wasn't just smoke and oil, there was a harsh, acrid animal stench, a tomcat smell a hundred times more pungent, and the bus was coming at her, spewing feral breath from the torn-scab radiator between its heartless yellow headlights.

Juanita burst out of the room, tugging the door shut behind her, shutting it all in there, and she carried on tugging and wrenching long after the catch had clicked into place.

Becoming gradually aware – almost with a sense of awe – that she was using her lurid, pink, patched-up Frankenstein hands. The right hand gripping the door handle, the left hand around the right hand, all melded together in a pulsing lump of crippled flesh.

Fused to the handle as Jim had been fused to his easels.

She felt no pain at all as she fell to her knees on the landing, unable to breathe, lungs full of black smoke, head full of burning and those other images she suppressed even in her dreams: the explosion of the sunset window, Jim's blackened, dead grin, his boiling eyes behind the twisted bars in her arms, her own hands torched in the night. Blue fire from sizzling fat.

The ash tree. The dangling hat.

And then the pain. As wild and brutal as crucifixion nails through both palms. And the breath pumped out of her in hiccuping yelps as one hand came free and prised the other from the handle, finger by finger.

Powys put it to Lord Pennard that when Roger Ffitch came back from the Trenches, he was in a very bad state, not so much physically as emotionally.

'Hell of a lot of chaps afflicted that way. Three weeks in some petty little skirmish these days and they're sent for counselling. Gulf War Syndrome. Falklands Fever. Any of 'em even imagine what it was like at the Somme?'

'But he did find counselling, didn't he?' Powys said.

'Did he?'

'He was directed to a psychoanalyst. New word in those days. Who he'd probably have rejected if she hadn't been blonde and twenty-nine years old. With a certain glint in her eye. I'd guess.'

For the first time. Pennard looked fleetingly nervous. 'You're not drinking,' he said. 'Not drinking with me'

Watching him now, Powys could imagine the problems Violet Mary Firth must have had with his father.

'He would meet her at Meadwell – he didn't want his family to know, that would've been a sign of weakness. Not his style.'

'Not the family style' Pennard almost smiled.

'Anyway, she does seem to have been able to help your old man with his nervous problems. Putting a stop to his recurring nightmares of the blood and the filth. Restoring his self-confidence. Getting rid of that embarrassing, nervous tic. Making it so he could function again. He must have been impressed. Although he wouldn't have shown it. Couldn't let women get above themselves, could you?'

Pennard didn't look at him.

'But he really wanted her,' Powys said. 'My guess is he sensed her power, something he'd never encountered before, and he wanted some of that, too.'

Pennard snorted.

'But because she was a woman, he had to subdue her. If she was into magic then he'd bloody well show her magic. The Holy Grail? He'd show her a real grail.'

Pennard was looking at him now. This stuff was obviously new to him. 'Pixhill wrote about this?' He spoke almost mildly.

Powys nodded. 'Your father took Violet to see the Dark Chalice. And then, perhaps feeling that the power was at last his power, he tried to make love to her.'

Pennard scowled.

'Did he rape her, or did she manage to fight him off? I prefer to think she did. Big strong girl. Maybe he was still weakened by the War. Asthma, wasn't it? Still, she was furious – justifiably. This was the man she'd spent weeks helping out of his crisis. Maybe she'd even fancied him a little. Whatever, she didn't anymore.'

He decided to pass over the next bit, how Violet's hurt and her craving for revenge had manifested into an elemental force in the form of a wolf. Stay close to established fact.

'Maybe a month later, Roger Ffitch comes crawling back to Violet. His nightmares have returned, worse than ever. What were those nightmares, do you know?'

Pennard grunted. 'Before my rime, all this. If it ever happened. Which I doubt.'

'I don't think you do. I think it's making terrible sense to you now.'

'Don't you threaten me, you little shit…' Pennard half rose from his chair, fists clenched.

'Wasn't a threat. Jesus, you bastards are so…'

'Just finish your fucking story.' Pennard sat down again, and his hand shook as he poured himself more Scotch.

'All right. Your father sent a message to Violet. She refused, understandably enough, to go back to Meadwell, so they met in The George and Pilgrims. She, um… well, she was shocked when she saw him. He'd lost over a stone in just a few weeks. He was getting no sleep, couldn't keep a meal down. His tic – that was back in a big way. And his asthma had worsened to the point of being life-threatening. He was a hollow-eyed mess, your dad, and he virtually threw himself at her feet, fighting for breath.'

' Not his style,' Pennard snapped, meaning not our style.

Powys shrugged.

'As it happened, Violet hadn't been too good herself since exposure to the Chalice. If you've ever read Pixhill's diary you'll know the kind of dreams she was getting. Glastonbury not as a peaceful haven but as a volatile, unstable place. And always potentially a battlefield. The Dark Chalice: could this be the anti-Grail? Was there a parallel tradition?'