He found her ladling pumpkin soup into bowls, the scent of cinnamon and spices combating the dankness in the café. Next door in the shop, Buddy was on the phone, the murmur of his voice an underlying accompaniment to the Gregorian chant playing over the sound system.
When Faith had served her customers, Nick leaned over the bar and whispered urgently, “Have you heard about Winnie?”
For the first time since he’d entered, Faith looked at him directly. Color drained from her already wan face. “Winnie?”
“She was on her bike last night, in Bulwarks Lane. Someone hit her. She’s in hospital, unconscious.”
“Wh-what?” Gripping the serving bar, Faith gave a dazed little shake of her head. “That’s not possible. She was here—Oh!” Her eyes widened. “We saw her, after. I could’ve sworn she said she was going to Jack’s, but she was pushing her bike up the lane.”
“We?”
“Garnet and I. On our way home. Winnie was turning into Lypatt Lane—”
“It must have happened right afterwards, then. You didn’t see anything—or anyone else, did you?”
“No,” whispered Faith. “But Garnet—Garnet went out again, in the van. Maybe she … when she came back … she was …”
“She was what?”
“I don’t know. Odd. She didn’t want to talk to me, or help me study. She went into her office and closed the door.”
Nick’s heart began to race. “Faith.” He leaned over the bar until his face was inches from hers. “Go home as soon as you can. Check the fender on the van. But don’t let Garnet see you do it.”
“What are you talking about? Why should I—” She stared at him, two bright spots of color flaming on her pale cheeks. “You don’t think Garnet had something to do with Winnie’s accident? You’re crazy, Nick! I won’t! I won’t even think such a thing!”
Several customers looked up from their meals at the sound of rising hysteria in her voice.
“It’s only taking logical precautions,” he whispered. “You must see that. What can it—”
“Get out, Nick!” she shouted at him. “I’m not listening to you, so just get the bloody hell out!”
Flushing under the fascinated stares of the café’s diners, Nick had no choice but to leave.
Garnet heard about Winnie from a customer, the vicar of the church on the edge of Salisbury Plain. The ecclesiastical community was a small one, and news traveled fast. She had finished installing her tiles, then driven back to Glastonbury and the sanctuary of her workshop, her mind working furiously all the while.
Winnie was lying in hospital, more likely to die than live, if the vicar’s information were correct.
In spite of the heat radiating from the wood-fired kiln Garnet was shivering with cold, and the midday sun falling in a bright block across the threshold of the barn door beckoned. Taking her stool, she moved it into the sun and sat gratefully.
The weight of regrets, past and present, lay heavily upon her. There were so many things she had meant to do, so many things she had hoped to accomplish; now suddenly she saw the years remaining to her dwindling to a pinpoint, then blinking futilely out—as had a child’s life, so many years ago.
But Faith—and Faith’s child—had given her an unlooked-for chance at redemption.
By her calculations, Faith would give birth on Samhain, the thirty-first of October, All Hallows’ Eve, the day when the veil between the worlds was at its thinnest. The Tor had drawn the girl from the beginning—that was why she had come to the café, and to Garnet. Such a birth in such a place would open a gateway, unleash ancient powers that could wreak havoc beyond imagining. Once, Garnet had thought she could use that force, control it, but cruel experience had taught her otherwise. The Old Ones had never been gentle gods, and they had never been concerned with human welfare.
The path was set, the signs unmistakable; Faith could no more turn from it than she could will herself to stop breathing.
Garnet knew that only she had the knowledge necessary to halt the gathering storm. And if last night she had failed in the task she had set herself, she must bear that burden as well.
But she would not fail again.
CHAPTER NINE
Glastonbury is the gateway to the unseen.… The long road from London spans the breadth of England and leads from one world to another.
—DION FORTUNE,
FROM GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART
“JACK!” FIONA ALLEN opened her door wide. “Is Winnie all right?”
“She’s still unconscious. But they let me see her for a bit, and the nurse says she’s doing well.”
Motioning him inside, she said, “Sit down, please, and let me get you something to drink.”
Jack sank into a chair and rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. “No, I’m fine, really.” He found himself grateful for a few moments’ respite, and Fiona Allen’s very ordinariness was a comfort.
The house, too, was welcoming, its interior a contrast from the unassuming stone facade and the proper cottage garden. Spare and open, the sitting room had polished oak floorboards and clean-lined furniture covered with batik prints. There were books, and a few strategically placed wooden carvings and masks, but not a painting anywhere in sight.
Perching on a rattan ottoman, Fiona said, “I’ve rung the hospital a dozen times, but they won’t tell me much. Resting comfortably is a terrible euphemism.”
“Head injuries are very unpredictable, apparently.” He tried to banish the image of Winnie, motionless in her hospital bed. “I wanted to see you, Fiona—see if there was anything you could tell me about last night. Do you have any idea what Winnie was doing in your lane?”
“It does seem odd, doesn’t it? She must have been coming to see me. There’s no one else along here.”
“If you hadn’t found her—” Jack stopped, embarrassed by the sudden sting of tears.
“But that’s odd too,” Fiona said thoughtfully. “I don’t usually go for walks that time of night. But I’d been painting and I needed the air.”
“Coincidence?”
“Probably. But—” Fiona gazed at him, then seemed to change the subject. “I want to show you something.” She stood and led the way towards the back of the house.
Baffled, Jack followed her through the open sitting area and into a corridor, where she opened a door and entered a glass-walled studio.
Beyond the glass the ground dropped away, so that the room seemed to hang in space, suspended over the Coombe with its white puffs of sheep in the green grass, like a child’s drawing of clouds in an emerald sky. Canvases were stacked neatly against the walls, but face-inwards, as was the canvas on the easel. “You don’t display your paintings?”
“I don’t need to see them,” Fiona said baldly. “But this one … this one was different.” She turned the canvas on the easel round.
Jack felt his mouth go dry. He’d seen the paintings in magazines, and occasionally in a gallery window in Glastonbury, but he hadn’t been prepared for the power and immediacy of such an intimate exposure. “They’re …”
“Don’t you dare use the F word,” said Fiona, when he hesitated.
“F word?”
“Fairies.” She scowled. “Like Tinkerbell. Victorian. Silly, fluffy things.”
Jack shook his head. “No. They … I was going to say they frighten me. They remind me of Blake’s visions. Beautiful. And terrible.”
“Exactly.” Fiona met his eyes. “But this one—Oddly enough, in the twenty-some-odd years I’ve lived here in Glastonbury, I’ve never painted the Abbey before. So why paint it now, on this particular night?”
The creatures, some winged, some not, with their severe asexual faces, thronged round the familiar silhouette of the ruined Great Church, hands extended in supplication. Behind them, the sky was a mottled bruise reflecting the setting sun, pierced by the dark shape of the Tor.