The Chalice

Powys put it to Lord Pennard that when Roger Ffitch came back from the Trenches, he was in a very bad state, not so much physically as emotionally.

'Hell of a lot of chaps afflicted that way. Three weeks in some petty little skirmish these days and they're sent for counselling. Gulf War Syndrome. Falklands Fever. Any of 'em even imagine what it was like at the Somme?'

'But he did find counselling, didn't he?' Powys said.

'Did he?'

'He was directed to a psychoanalyst. New word in those days. Who he'd probably have rejected if she hadn't been blonde and twenty-nine years old. With a certain glint in her eye. I'd guess.'

For the first time. Pennard looked fleetingly nervous. 'You're not drinking,' he said. 'Not drinking with me'

Watching him now, Powys could imagine the problems Violet Mary Firth must have had with his father.

'He would meet her at Meadwell – he didn't want his family to know, that would've been a sign of weakness. Not his style.'

'Not the family style' Pennard almost smiled.

'Anyway, she does seem to have been able to help your old man with his nervous problems. Putting a stop to his recurring nightmares of the blood and the filth. Restoring his self-confidence. Getting rid of that embarrassing, nervous tic. Making it so he could function again. He must have been impressed. Although he wouldn't have shown it. Couldn't let women get above themselves, could you?'

Pennard didn't look at him.

'But he really wanted her,' Powys said. 'My guess is he sensed her power, something he'd never encountered before, and he wanted some of that, too.'

Pennard snorted.

'But because she was a woman, he had to subdue her. If she was into magic then he'd bloody well show her magic. The Holy Grail? He'd show her a real grail.'

Pennard was looking at him now. This stuff was obviously new to him. 'Pixhill wrote about this?' He spoke almost mildly.

Powys nodded. 'Your father took Violet to see the Dark Chalice. And then, perhaps feeling that the power was at last his power, he tried to make love to her.'

Pennard scowled.

'Did he rape her, or did she manage to fight him off? I prefer to think she did. Big strong girl. Maybe he was still weakened by the War. Asthma, wasn't it? Still, she was furious – justifiably. This was the man she'd spent weeks helping out of his crisis. Maybe she'd even fancied him a little. Whatever, she didn't anymore.'

He decided to pass over the next bit, how Violet's hurt and her craving for revenge had manifested into an elemental force in the form of a wolf. Stay close to established fact.

'Maybe a month later, Roger Ffitch comes crawling back to Violet. His nightmares have returned, worse than ever. What were those nightmares, do you know?'

Pennard grunted. 'Before my rime, all this. If it ever happened. Which I doubt.'

'I don't think you do. I think it's making terrible sense to you now.'

'Don't you threaten me, you little shit…' Pennard half rose from his chair, fists clenched.

'Wasn't a threat. Jesus, you bastards are so…'

'Just finish your fucking story.' Pennard sat down again, and his hand shook as he poured himself more Scotch.

'All right. Your father sent a message to Violet. She refused, understandably enough, to go back to Meadwell, so they met in The George and Pilgrims. She, um… well, she was shocked when she saw him. He'd lost over a stone in just a few weeks. He was getting no sleep, couldn't keep a meal down. His tic – that was back in a big way. And his asthma had worsened to the point of being life-threatening. He was a hollow-eyed mess, your dad, and he virtually threw himself at her feet, fighting for breath.'

' Not his style,' Pennard snapped, meaning not our style.

Powys shrugged.

'As it happened, Violet hadn't been too good herself since exposure to the Chalice. If you've ever read Pixhill's diary you'll know the kind of dreams she was getting. Glastonbury not as a peaceful haven but as a volatile, unstable place. And always potentially a battlefield. The Dark Chalice: could this be the anti-Grail? Was there a parallel tradition?'

'Absolute non… nonsense.' Pennard scowled at the break in his voice and cleared his throat. 'Fucking bunkum.'

'So Violet made a deal with your old man. She would treat him again, work with him. And he would let her dispose of the Chalice however she saw fit. Which wasn't going to be easy, she knew that. At that age she really didn't feel up to dealing with evil on this scale. My guess is she probably consulted her own teacher, Theodore Moriarty – he ran a clinic specialising in cases like Roger.'

'He went away,' Lord Pennard said suddenly. A look of astonishment crossed his face. 'My mother told me this, many years later. He went away for six months in 1920.'

'To a clinic?'

'This is ridiculous.' A wave of anger quite visibly went through him, shone in his eyes as his arm swept over the desk, sent the whisky bottle spinning across the room until it hit the gun cupboard.

'While he was away,' Powys said, 'being treated by…Dr Moriarty?… your mother co-operated fully with Violet. She gathered some people, leading magicians of the day, powerful pagans and, I suspect. Christian mystics. And they took the Dark Chalice and they hid it – just as Joseph of Arimathea or the Fisher King was said to have done with the Holy Grail – in a well.'

Pennard sighed. Powys heard the whisky gurgling out of the bottle into the industrial carpet below the gun cupboard.

'They did their best with the Meadwell. They blessed it in the name of God. They did a powerful binding ritual. But it's a bit like burying nuclear waste. It's not possible to destroy something like the Dark Chalice which exists on more than one level. You can only contain it and hope for the best. But it's a hell of a contaminant. I don't know where the well leads, but that's a black spring now. You can see what it's done to the house.'

'I wouldn't know,' Pennard said. 'Not our house anymore.'

'That was part of the deal. Roger Ffitch agreed that when he died, that house would be sold to Violet Firth. Who by this time had her own home and teaching base in Glastonbury. Documents were drawn up. Your mother, Lady Pennard, was party to it, of course. But Violet died first, in 1946, as I'd guess she knew she would, after her unique contribution to the Allied cause.'

'Met the woman once, you know. As a boy. Gave me a bag of sweets.' Lord Pennard actually smiled. 'Bullseyes. Never allowed bullseyes.'

'Did you like her?'

'Did, matter of fact. Jolly. Like a scout mistress. Interfering bitch.'

'The Fall of the House of Pennard?'

'Bunkum. Useless businessman, my father. Incompetent. All there was to it. Never the same after the War. Cracked up. Spent most of his last years in bloody church.'

'Whatever, all the wealth the family acquired with the chalice began to drop away. So Pixhill says. He reckons you did everything in your power to get Meadwell back.'

'Bloody disgrace. Under the table deal while I was away in National Service, Bloody Pixhill. What damn right did fie have to take away our property? Worth over a quarter of a million now, that house. Of course I tried to get it back. Who was the bloody man?'

'Just someone Violet could trust. She needed a custodian for Meadwell. She was only fifty-six when she died. Leukaemia. She'd known it was coming. Maybe years before, you know what these people are like. I doubt if it worried her. Death was just a station between trains. That was what she told Pixhill.'

Just saying it, hearing himself, Powys felt aglow with the certainty of it all. Confirmation now in every response from Pennard, every change in expression, every involuntary gesture.

'What changed?'

Pennard didn't reply. He reached for the whisky before remembering the bottle wasn't there anymore.