The Chalice (70 page)

         
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.

EIGHT

Depth of Evil

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.

      
'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.