Time’s Legacy

Now his spirit can leave unimpeded. Bon voyage, my dear.’ She waved at the window.

Abi waited for her in the kitchen. Then they went to the Chalice Well.

‘It seems the right place for both of us, today.’ Athena walked ahead of her up the cobbled path and through the gardens. The place was deserted.

Abi looked round in delight. ‘I had forgotten it was all so beautiful and serene.’

‘There is so much love here.’ Athena paused as they reached the well head itself. The ornate wooden lid decorated with the iron Vesica Piscis, the interlinked circles whose ancient symbolism brings together pagan and Christian, East and West, lay open, ferns growing out from under the iron grid which covered the dark, still water. One or two flowers floated on its surface and someone had left a ring of tealights on the well’s rim. The flames flickered slightly in the breeze. ‘People come here with their prayer and blessings,’ Athena said quietly. ‘It is the right place for both of us, today. Your Mora would have come here all the time. And Tim loved it here. It was here he told me he was leaving me. He thought it would soften the blow, saying it here.’

Abi bit her lip. ‘Athena -’

‘No. This is the place to lay the demons. You are right about that. I won’t have him destroying my relationship with one of the most sacred places in England. I never came back after that day.’ She sat down on the wall which bounded the flowerbeds. Behind her a small pink cyclamen, caught for a moment in a ray of sunlight echoed the delicate shade of the drooping flowers hanging from a fuchsia bush. ‘He spoiled it for me. What an irony. I don’t think he meant to. I think he really did feel it would make it easier.’ She paused as behind the neighbouring yew trees a young man, sitting down on a hidden bench, began to pluck a quiet, doleful tune from his guitar. ‘He knew how much I loved it here,’ she went on in a whisper. ‘That was part of the trouble. He felt I loved this town, the whole Avalon experience, more than him. He wanted to get back to reality.’

‘Reality is such a subjective thing,’ Abi said after a long pause. ‘What you and I think of as beauty and truth someone else considers a complete cop out.’

‘I think that someone else is probably right.’ Athena sighed.

Abi was staring down at the water in the well. It was dark and still. As she looked a leaf drifted down and settled beside the white daisies someone had left there, floating on the surface. It made a small ripple. She could see the blood-red traces of the iron chalybeate staining the wall of the well below the moss. This was the red spring, so sacred to the ancients, in the depths of which, so legend had it, after the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathaea on his return to Glastonbury hid the Chalice of the Last Supper. Above it the two yew trees lazily scattered crimson berries around their feet.

‘It’s the blood of the earth.’ The voice beside her was soft. She looked up. Mora was standing there, staring down into the water of the well. Except it wasn’t a well any more it was a spring, surrounded by trees, yew trees, perhaps the ancestors of the same yew trees under which they had been sitting moments before. Mora looked up and smiled at her. ‘This is the most sacred place.’

‘I know,’ Abi whispered. ‘I can feel it.’

‘He came here with me,’ Mora went on. ‘Yeshua. He understood.’

Abi felt her eyes filling with tears. ‘What happened up there in the hills? Did Flavius find you that day?’

Mora nodded. ‘Oh yes, he found us.’ She looked down into the water again. ‘Look deep into the crystal. It will tell you Yeshua’s story. He was such a special person. A man who would change everything – ’ Already she was fading, a shadow in the sunlight, no more.

‘Don’t go!’ Abi jumped to her feet. But where Mora had been standing there was nothing but the shadows of the trees. The well was once more enclosed by a stone rim with an iron-clad lid to close it out of sight.

Athena smiled at her. ‘Mora was here?’

Abi nodded. ‘Did you see her? She told me to look in the crystal. She knew about the crystal. She knew who – ’ She paused. ‘Who Yeshua was.’

Athena shook her head. ‘Did you bring it with you?’

‘No.’

‘Go and find it then. Go home now, Abi. I think I’ll stay here for a bit.’ It was a dismissal. She had not asked where Yeshua fitted into the story.

Kier switched off his phone and stared thoughtfully out of the car window. He was parked outside Morrisons and had been about to drive away when Professor Rutherford had phoned him. ‘Have you seen her? How is she?’ The professor sounded thoroughly irritable.

Kier sighed. Poor Abi. No wonder she had wanted to escape if that was her father’s usual demeanour. ‘I’ve seen her a couple of times,’ he said cautiously. ‘She is still adamant sadly that she doesn’t want to speak to me.’

‘What are these people like who she is staying with?’ Harry Rutherford asked after a moment’s thought. ‘I believe my wife knew them, but as far as I know she hadn’t seen them for a long time.’

‘They seem decent enough,’ Kier replied cautiously, ‘but obviously they are shielding her. They believe that I have somehow offended her, I am not very welcome in their house.’

There was another short silence. ‘Have you found the wretched stone yet?’

‘What stone?’ Kier flicked an imaginary speck of dust off his trouser leg. He was watching a woman manoeuvre a heavy trolley closer and closer to his car. In a moment he would have to get out to show her that he was there and would not appreciate his car being rammed by her wretched shopping. No, she had spotted him and yanked it back on course. He sighed with relief.

‘Didn’t I tell you about the stone?’ Rutherford sounded incredulous.

Kier shook his head. Good grief. She had got one, two, three six-packs of beer in that trolley. And now came the wine. No wonder it was so heavy. ‘Sorry, Harry, what were you saying about a stone?’

Ten minutes later Kier was still listening. The woman had long since driven away.

‘Yes, I can see why you would hesitate to tell anyone about it,’ he murmured. ‘It sounds like complete fantasy.’

He sat still for a long time after the call. Clearly Harry Rutherford was right. This explained everything. The change in her attitude, her obsession, sudden supernatural powers which were, he now realised, beyond her control. Nothing to do with her. He had to find this ridiculous stone and dispose of it. He was as certain as the professor that the legend Abi’s mother had attached to it was complete rubbish, but that made it no less potent. After all Laura Rutherford had believed it and now, so did Abi herself. It was the stone which had destroyed their relationship. It explained everything if it was after she had been given the thing that she started to turn against him.

He chewed his lip thoughtfully. She was not going to give it to him calmly, that was for sure. So, how in the world was he going to get hold of it?

He was staying at a small hotel in Wells. He loved Wells, the cathedral, the ancient city, the bishop’s palace. The whole place soothed his soul and, he glanced at his watch, if he set off now, he could be there in time for evensong. Resolutely he drove past the gate of Woodley Manor without even looking. Tomorrow, after a night of prayer and careful planning he would return and think of a way of retrieving this superstitious lump of rock. Then he would take it and throw it in the Bishop of Bath and Wells’s moat. It would be a fitting resting place for it. He shook his head with a wry smile. ‘I don’t believe I’ve agreed to do this. This is ridiculous. Mad! Insane!’

At the Rectory next morning Ben was scraping the last fragment of boiled egg from its shell, The Times folded open at the leader page on the table in front of him, when Janet came back into the kitchen after answering the phone in the hall. He glanced up.

‘Abi,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t put her off. She sounded distraught.’

He put down his egg spoon with a sigh. ‘Is she coming straight over?’

Janet nodded. ‘I’ve checked the fire in your study and I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.’

He glanced at her. This was a change of tune from last time. Kier had annoyed her so much she was prepared to accept Abi now without comment. Standing up he refolded The Times and handed it to her.

‘Shall I make the coffee now?’ Janet asked.

‘Please. Meanwhile, I’ll go and say a prayer before she comes.’

Ben stood at the window in his study staring out across the grass. The wind in the night had brought down a