'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?'
'I'm not happy about this,' Verity said, replacing the receiver. The kitchen pipes gurgled with an ominous glee.
'You're better out of this,' Councillor Woolaston said.
'It's not my place to be out of it.'
'You've done your time. Verity. You've served him well. Better than he had any right to demand.'
'It never was in his nature to demand. But I was thinking more of you. You should not be here alone'
'I won't be alone,' he said, 'when they come to do the well.'
'Councillor Woolaston, I don't think you realise…'
The poor little man looked quite wretched, his eyes deep with sorrow, his beard almost white. She was sure his beard had not been white the last time she saw him.
'… the depth of… of evil… that is in this place. I know that sounds almost ridiculously melodramatic'
The end wall of the kitchen seemed particularly swollen tonight, like an abscess about to burst.
'Oh,' said Councillor Woolaston with a nonchalance which only betrayed how little he now valued his own life and sanity, 'I think I do. I think I've known it for a long time, Go on, Verity, man. Wanda don't get her gin and Horlicks she'll never be up in time tomorrow.'
'I'll get my overnight case.'
'Don't forget to switch off all the lights,' said the little councillor.
Verity felt very afraid for him.
NINE
Lord Pennard uncapped a new bottle of Famous Grouse.
'You'll have a drink.'
'No th-'
'Wasn't a question, Powys. You will have a drink.'
Powys shrugged. Pennard poured him an inch of Scotch in a thick tumbler and went to sit at his desk with the pile of hunting and shooting magazines.
'So that devious, milksop bastard Pixhill wrote it all down. If this is blackmail, Powys, I have to tell you we're not a good prospect, the Ffitches. Haven't been for years.'
'Not since the great days of the Dark Chalice?'
'Bunkum.' Pennard gazed into his Scotch as if pictures might form there. 'Spent half a lifetime telling m'self that, father was a great believer Always react against our parents, isn't that the way of it?'
'Like Archer's reacted against you?'
Outside, the snow had turned back to rain and sprayed the window, which was protected by metal security blinds.
'Powys.' Pennard rolled the name around his mouth with a slosh of whisky. 'You a descendant of the old hack?'
'Maybe.'
'Met him a time or two. Thought a good deal of himself. Talked and bloody talked. But that's the Welsh for you.'
'He wasn't Welsh.'
'Bugger should have been then.'
'That's what he thought too,' Powys said. 'Did he talk much about the Chalice?'
'Not going to let that go, are you? No, he didn't. Learned his lesson by then. Some chap in town, forget has name, convinced he'd been portrayed in that damned great book as the villain of the piece. Sued the piss out of Powys. Made bugger all from that book, in the end. Served him right.'
Powys smiled.
'Come along,' Pennard said. 'Get this over. Tell me what the bastard said.'
'You want the lot?'
'Got all night.'
I haven't, Powys thought, worrying about Juanita and Diane and Verity and everything that might need to be done before dawn.
'As far as I can gather,' he said, 'your family seems to trace its roots in Somerset back to the mid-eighteenth century. At least the first Viscount Pennard…'
'1765. Roger Ffitch. Like my father.'
'But the Ffitches had held land in the area for a long time before that. Over two hundred years in fact. Basically, since 1539 and the dissolution of the monasteries. When a certain Ffitch was rewarded for services rendered to the king.'
'Pure legend.'
'It's all legend. But legends are often more persistent than facts.'
'Only if you permit it,' said Pennard. 'Get to the point.'
'OK. Fact: Glastonbury Abbey was very rich and powerful and built out of the very cradle of Christianity, and Henry VIII had to crush it. Fact: Abbot Whiting was a hard man to nail because he was an unassuming kind of guy who tried to help the poor and was consequently very well liked. Sir Henry's hit man, Cromwell, had to find a way of fitting Whiting up. Fact in the end they found writings in Whiting's chambers criticising the king's latest divorce. Also a gold chalice. From the abbey. Which he was accused of stealing.
Lord Pennard appeared uninterested and drank some whisky.
'Pixhill seems to think this chalice was later awarded – along with a few hundred acres of land and a farmhouse known as Meadwell – to the man who agreed to plant it. A Benedictine monk at the Abbey called Edmund Ffitch. Spelt F F Y C H E. Who happily dumped his calling, moved into Meadwell… and founded a famous dynasty. Fact?'
Pennard grunted. 'Inasmuch as Meadwell was our first home.'
'The legend, of course, is that when Whiting was hanged and then beheaded on the Tor, Ffitch collected his blood in that same chalice In deliberate parody of Joseph of Arimathea catching Christ's blood, from that famous spear-wound on the cross, in what became the Holy Grail. Thereby founding another tradition.'
'As you say…' Pennard leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs, chin on his chest. 'Legend. Little- known one, too. So little-known it was probably invented by Pixhill to bolster his own fantasy of himself as a crusader. Sad little man.'
'You did have a family chalice, though, didn't you?'
'I wouldn't know.' He sounded very bored. Or trying to sound bored. 'Certainly not in my time.'
'And in your time…' Powys was beginning to despair of denting the armour. '… That is, since the War, the family hasn't exactly prospered, has it? Investments collapsing. Bad seasons in the vineyards. Land having to be sold. Couldn't help noticing as I came in that you're down to using sixty-watt bulbs where you need hundreds.'
'You're an idiot, Powys.'
'Perhaps the family has always associated its good fortune with possession of the Chalice. lose the Chalice, money starts to go down the toilet.'
'Powys, if your illustrious ancestor'd been able to make up stories as good as this he might even've profited from his scribblings. Drink up, man.'
He advanced on Powys with the bottle of Grouse.
'Of course there was a down side.' Powys looked up at him. 'Meadwell became somewhat… spiritually
