'Um, look… Maybe we're both in danger of over-reacting. Do you think?'
The high melodrama of it might normally have made him smile. Anywhere but here, in a room like an ancient vault, haunted by the leather-bound spirit of Uncle Jack of blessed memory.
The collected works seemed to shimmer on the shelves in triumph. Pre-ordained. In this hard, cold, uncompromising house, it all seemed horribly pre-ordained.
He thought about what Diane had said. About the three of them. George Pixhill, John Cowper Powys and Dion Fortune. The Avalonians.
Grey-green light from mean, leaded windows tinctured the silver lettering on the spines of Uncle Jack's books.
Verity and Powys sitting once more at the old, shadowed dining table, where the Colonel's body had lain in state. A brown teapot and cups on it now.
'He came here?' Powys said.
'Only once while I was here. A tall and immensely striking man with curly hair and a hooked nose. He sat… well, where you are sitting now. I was so much in awe, having read his work, that I could not speak to him, let alone ask for his signature on the books.'
A brown paper parcel lay on the table between them.
'Are you going to open it?' Verity asked.
'It isn't addressed to me.'
MRS J CAREY. VERY PRIVATE.
Very firmly written, fountain pen job.
'Do you know what's in here, Verity?'
'I'm perhaps as curious as you are, Mr… Joe.'
Powys felt on edge. The nervous part of him needed to be well out of Meadwell by nightfall. Something was building here, and it wasn't a new Jerusalem. Blake's dark, Satanic mills: in this house you could almost hear those mill wheels grinding.
The other side of Glastonbury. It had always been here.
As had Verity. And not being sensitive was not necessarily a defence. She'd survived, perhaps, because she hadn't yet been personally attacked. But now Grainger would go back and report to whoever had set him up – and Wanda – to come on to Verity, get inside Meadwell, and into the well itself for whatever reason.
This puzzled him, too. If they wanted to penetrate that well, why not come at night – Grainger's chosen medium – go through the field, as Powys had done, hack it open at their leisure?
'Can I use your phone?'
The telephone was in the kitchen, a lighter room because of its white walls, one of which bulged out unpleasantly, like a corpse under a sheet.
Powys called Carey and Frayne. He didn't get the answering machine, he got Matthew Banks.
'She's sleeping at last,' Banks said. 'I've made her comfortable. She shouldn't be disturbed. I shall stay with her as long as I can.'
He left as severe pause.
'Glastonbury as we know it, Mr Powys, may be about to collapse into a chaos unseen since the Dark Ages, but, as Juanita appears to be my patient now, I must put her interests first. I hope you understand that.'
'Yes,' Powys said. 'I'm glad. If she wakes up before I'm back, tell her everything's… tell her I'm doing my best.'
Whatever that meant.
He went back to open the brown paper parcel.
SIX
THE OLD VICARAGE COLN ST MARY GLOUCESTERSHIRE
My dear Mrs Carey, Your no doubt somewhat bewildered receipt of this parcel follows either my death or my discreet removal to some secluded nursing home where the wheelchairs are locked up at night to ensure the inmates do not escape! No, do mot mourn for me, my dear. Save all your grief. You may well need it.
Let me say, at the outset, that burdening you with this matter is something in the way of a last resort, the flailing gesture of an old, tired and sadly ineffectual man who has, for some years, been attempting to stay afloat in waters beyond his depth. I was hoping to, as they say, sort things out myself, with the help of others. This has clearly not been possible in the time left to me, especially as there now seem to be remarkably few 'others' I feel able to trust. Also the situation seems to have escalated at an alarming rate, as poor George implied it might as we approach the Millennium.
Be assured, however, that I would not expect you to do anything beyond coming to the rescue of my good and staunch friend, Verity Endicott, who is in grave and mortal danger, standing as she does directly in the path of (and, God help me, I do not exaggerate) an old and utterly merciless evil. Oh, Mrs Carey, how it pains me to have to use language of such Biblical intensity. Yet I beg of you not to dismiss it as nonsense as I, to my shame, have done in the past. As a highly intelligent and worldly woman, you must have wondered many times why, in seeking a strictly limited outlet for George Pixhill's Diary, we approached you. And, indeed, your shop was hardly picked at random from Yellow Pages.
The truth is that, despite your merits as a bookseller (and, indeed, your not inconsiderable personal charms) you were chosen primarily because of your long association with Diane Ffitch, a young woman who, I am obliged to say, may now also be in danger of a most extreme and everlasting nature. I do not know the girl, but I rather suspect it would be unwise to show her this material directly. Perhaps the facts could be broken to her in stages. I leave this to your personal assessment of Miss Ffitch's state of mind. As you can imagine, my association with Colonel George Pixhill (and how often I have cursed the poor man) has compelled me to delve, with a good deal of distaste, into arcane and occult matters better left, in my view, to moulder among the pages of ancient and disreputable books. Perhaps your professional knowledge of such volumes will render some of this more accessible to you than it has, over the years, been to me.
As I may have mentioned, the most important items here are the 'missing' sections of the Pixhill diaries which we were unable, for reasons which will become apparent, to publish. You have probably asked yourself many times: what was the point in publishing the diaries at all and in such a restricted fashion? Well, firstly, as I have tried to explain, George was most insistent that his knowledge of the Dark Chalice become not widely known but yet accessible to those might find it meaningful, at a time when the twothousand-year-old Glastonbury tradition would face a terrible challenge. (I believe that challenge is upon us-or, upon YOU.) Secondly, it is especially clear to me now that had we not published when we did the Pixhill diaries would NEVER have seen the light of day. I did not realise for a long time how close George was to the source of it and that some of the danger might emanate from within the Pixhill Trust itself. It can only have been a rare prescience on my part that persuaded me to publish the diaries when we did and to entrust them to an outside agency – that is, your good self.
How drastically things have changed in that short time. I had my health then and there was a sound nucleus of us old comrades at the heart of the Trust. As I write, I am the only founder member left alive. When you read this, there will be none of us left unclaimed by disease, senility or accidents of the kind which tend to befall the elderly. Had I been a wiser man, I might have sought protection.
Ah, but we are old soldiers, used to an enemy we can perceive. How could we have had any idea of the possible implications of helping out a friend?
I have no more to say. Let George Pixhill speak for himself. Thank you my dear. From wherever I am, I pray for you, for Verity and for Miss Ffitch. God bless you all. Timothy Shepherd.
Powys folded the letter.
In his head a big book fell from a shelf.
A tweed hat swung on a branch.
A steaming black bus roared through the night.
