The Chalice (49 page)

      
Or walked into a tree and then staggered back into his bus.
Driven it into the woods because he couldn't see where the hell he was going.
None of the travellers they'd spoken to had admitted knowing him, but then they
wouldn't, would they? As for the false number plates on the bus, well, it was hard
to find any of these hippy wrecks with genuine plates.
      
'Was it his own bus?'

      
'I don't know,' Diane said. 'I haven't seen it.'

      
It would be easy to tell. If, for instance, there were yellow stripes
under some of the black. She'd been thinking a lot about the bizarre episode
with the girl, Hecate, and the children with their spray cans. Somebody had
told them to spray the bus black. To make it less conspicuous, less identifiable?

      
'I think the travellers killed him,' she said.

      
There'd been bad magic on the Tor that night. Colonel Pixhill
would have understood, would have recognised what she'd seen in the sky. And
again in the fire.

Powys was waiting for Diane
in reception, a styrofoam cup in his hand. In a baggy sweater and jeans, he
still looked a lot like his picture on the back of
The Old Golden Land,
although he must have been ever so young when
that came out. At school, other girls had photos of Tom Cruise in their
lockers; she dreamed about dishy J. M. Powys, earth-mysteries writer. How could
she not trust him now?
      
'How is she?' Powys asked.

      
'A little overwrought, I think. I didn't tell her you were here.
You don't mind, do you?'
      
He shook his head.

      
'There's a lot she isn't telling me,' Diane said. 'She keeps talking
about coming home, but I think she needs to get as much as possible out of her
system before she comes home.'

      
'You're a bit of a psychologist then, Diane?'
      
'I've been to enough,' she said.

      
He tossed his cup into a bin. 'I, um, meant in the Dion Fortune
sense.'

      
'Oh,' she said. 'Yes. I know what you're asking. The answer's
no. I've never had what you might call a practical involvement with the occult.
Never even been to a séance. Tried to take up meditation once, but I was
hopeless. I ... things just sort of happen to me.'

      
When they were back in the car, because he was J.M. Powys, who
dismissed nothing, she told him about the lightballs. About the Tor. And about the
Third Nanny.

      
'You saw her?'

      
'I didn't exactly
see
her. I was ... aware of her. Sitting on the edge of the bed.'

      
'And, um, what made you think this was Dion Fortune?'
      
'You're not going to put this in
your book, are you?'
      
'Not if you don't want me to.'

And he wouldn't. Of course
he wouldn't. He liked to think he'd gone way past the stage where books
mattered more than people.

      
All the same, she proved difficult to pin down on this one. At
first, she told him, she used to think she was a reincarnation of DF. But the
basis for this seemed to be little more than a teenage crush on the novels and
those initials.

      
(Powys didn't imagine Dan Frayne had any illusions about
his
initials.)

      
She wasn't quite sure when she'd first made a connection between
DF and the Third Nanny, who, to Powys, sounded suspiciously like a fantasy
figure to help her cope with life under the authority of the real ones.

      
'What happened to your mother?'

      
'She died when I was born. That is, I was born in rather a
hurry after she fell down the stairs at Bowermead.'
      
'I'm sorry.'

      
'My father's rather held it against me ever since. I don't think
he's ever been able to look at me without feeling a certain resentment.'

      
Powys thought this, and being brought up by starchy nannies,
was enough to disarrange any kid's psychology.

      
Several miles further on, somewhere down the M5, she said, 'It
isn't a coincidence.'

      
'No?'

      
'We were called back. You for John Cowper Powys, me for Dion
Fortune'

      
'Dion Fortune didn't have much time for JCP,' Powys pointed
out. 'She even misspelt his name.'

      
'That was deliberate A sort of smokescreen. If she didn't know
him well enough to spell his name right, she could hardly be involved with him
in a secret operation.'

      
'What secret operation was this exactly?'

      
'I don't know. But I think we have to find out. Why else have we
been brought back?'

      
'I haven't exactly been brought back. I've never been here
before. Also ...'

      
'You're a Powys.'

      
'I've been commissioned to write a book, Diane. That's all.

      
But it isn't all, is it?
Is her Third Nanny on the edge of the bed any more crazy than having your
living room repeatedly rearranged by a kinetic copy of
A Glastonbury
Romance?

      
Diane said, 'Do you believe in evil?'

      
'Probably. I mean, yes.'

      
'In Glastonbury?'

      
'Good as anywhere. Or as bad.'

      
'Colonel Pixhill believed in it very strongly at the end.'

      
'That's one very depressing book,' said Powys.

      
'People hate it in Glastonbury.'

      
'I can imagine they would. Doesn't fit the ethos.'

      
Diane said, 'There's an American called Dr Pelham Grainger,
who lives locally and apparently maintains that we don't let enough darkness into
our lives. I've taken over thirty orders for his book in the past fortnight.'

      
'I think somebody mentioned him a week or two ago. Sounds like
a very sick man.'

      
She nodded and stroked Arnold and didn't say anything else
until they were well past the Isle of Avalon sign.

      
'I've seen the Dark Chalice.'

      
Her voice seemed to reverberate, which didn't happen in Minis.
Powys slowed down drastically, the lights of Glastonbury all around them now.
There was a sort of shelter in the centre of the car park, under which Diane
had left the van.
      
Powys turned the Mini so that the
headlights lit up the side of the van.

      
He was waiting. This could mean almost anything; the Dark
Chalice seemed to be Pixhill's all purpose metaphor for bad shit.

      
'Oh no,' said Diane.

      
Although it wasn't yet nine p.m., the car park seemed completely
deserted It was another bright, sharp night, the moon not long past full, the
tower of St John's sticking up like a candlestick on the edge of a table.
      
Diane said. 'Oh, please ...'
      
He followed her eyes.
      
'Oh.' He got out.

      
The back window of Diane's van had been smashed, so had the
driver's side window; glass all over the seat. Across the side panels, where
Diane had painted friendly pink spots there was uneven, black, spray paint
lettering, six inches high.

Diane stared at the van in
numbed silence. Powys squeezed her right hand with both of his. He saw the
black paint was glistening, still damp.

      
'It was in the fire,' Diane said tonelessly. 'When Jim died. That
was the second time, the first time was over the Tor. Like shadow hands holding
up a shadow cup. That was when I felt the evil. I've never felt anything like
it.'

      
'I'll call the police,' Powys said.

      
'No.'

      
'You can't just let them ...'

'The police are never going
to catch them. 'There's a garage I used to go to. I'll get them to take it away
first thing tomorrow.'

      
'Bastards.' Powys said. 'Have you any idea who might ... ?'

      
'It doesn't matter,' Diane cried. She turned away from the
van. 'It doesn't matter,' she whispered.

FOUR

Horrid Brown Fountain

Woolly said, 'Mind if I
move some of this stuff, Diane.' I need to spread the maps out.'

      
She put on all the shop lights; it was a dark morning. 'Gosh,
how many have you got?'

      
'Three. I need to put 'em all together. Think we're gonner
have to use the floor. This is heavy shit, Diane, man. This is, like,
end-of-the-world-scenario.'

      
Woolly squatted on the carpet and began to unfold an Ordnance
Survey map, sliding one edge under two legs of the display table for current
bestsellers. He'd phoned just after seven, to check if he could come round
before the shop opened. He needed to lay something on her. Couldn't believe
what he was seeing.

      
For once, Diane hadn't wanted to get up, not even for Woolly.
She'd been out long after midnight. Yes, OK, she'd lied to J. M. Powys. It did
matter about the van. It mattered terribly.

      
'I got the proof here, look, no hype,' Woolly said.
      
'Proof?'

      
'About the road. You all right, Diane?'
      
'Yes. Fine. Sorry. Go ahead.'

      
The maps were covered with little circles and ruler marks. All
Woolly's Ordnance maps were customised into ley-line plans, with prehistoric
sites - stones and burial mounds - and ancient churches, moats, beacon hills
and things neatly encircled in red ink. People like Woolly could prove all kinds
of wonderful things with maps and rulers and set-squares.

      
What you did was to find how many of the old sites fell into
straight lines and then draw them in. It never failed; you'd finish up with a
whole network of lines, some with four or five points, sometimes a whole
star-formation of lines radiating out from a single point, indicating a very powerful
ancient centre.

      
Glastonbury Tor, of course, was the classic example, perhaps the
most important power centre in the whole of Western Europe. Sure enough, there
it was on the second of Woolly's maps, with lines of force spraying out in all directions.

      
'Spent all night on this, Diane. Couldn't believe it myself at
first, where the road goes. Bit of a mind-blower, girl. Don't know how we
missed it, here of all places.'

      
Woolly was a very intelligent chap, but he'd done so many exotic
drugs in his time that he tended to approach life obliquely, from strange directions.
So that rather mundane things seemed, to him, quite astonishing.

      
Of course, there was the possibility that what Woolly saw was the
truth and everyone else was blinded by the familiarity of things. Diane liked
to think that, most of the time.
     

      
She made some tea. When she came back he had the three maps
pushed together, taking up more than half the shop. He was thumbing through one
of the paperback Dion Fortunes.

      
'Wish this lady was still around, Diane She'd get us organised
all right.'