Just like the baby Juanita had had aborted. Secretly. Danny's baby. Danny becoming terrifyingly un-Danny when he heard. Danny throwing every book in the shop to the floor. Pushing over the shelf-units, smashing up the window display and walking out and never returning, never setting foot on the holy Isle of Avalon again.
Juanita turned to face the road and Ceridwen's white, hazy pointing finger.
There was a moment of stillness. A moment of knowing it was not as it seemed. A smell of fumes, souring the apple-scented woodsmoke from the chimneys, bad energy forming a grounded cloud.
And then, with a sensation of pins and needles in both feet, the flush began.
The big one. The flush of flushes. She felt fire in her limbs, a fire that dried her blood and her juices. She felt her skin slacken, her breasts shrivelling into pockets of old leather, her mouth stretching into a scream which she knew would crack her face into a spiderweb of deep, blackening fissures.
'Hag,' Ceridwen said.
Juanita raised her hands like the claws they so much resembled and rushed out at her, shrieking hatred and despair.
But Ceridwen's image went out like another lightbulb and there was nothing in the middle of the road but Juanita.
And the big black bus. Bellowing and farting smoke. With its radiator hanging off.
She felt the buildings tremble and wrapped her arms around her sagging body. As if that would hold her together.
TWELVE
Sam threw open the Bowermead gates, ran back and jumped back in the Mini.
'Wayne hangs out with Darryl Davey.' he said. 'Of the Provisional Glastonbury First Brigade. If that yellow-toothed twat…'
'Sam, he was lying. He was winding you up. I'm not even going to mention it to Juanita, the state she's in already. It could, however, be a police matter. Whatever they did.'
'You think the police got a better chance of finding her than we do?'
'They could pull this Davey in.'
'I could pull him in. Go round the pubs till I find him.'
'And get filled in by his mates.' Powys drove out of the Bowermead turning towards the lights of Glastonbury.
'Time is it?'
'Gone ten. What did you get out of Pennard?'
'Too much whisky.'
'Didn't do you much harm when it came to dealing with Rankin. If we both went round the pubs…'
'I'd rather you went to Meadwell, keep Woolly company. Because that's where they'll show up. Sooner rather than later.'
'You think?'
'I know. Sam, who else is in The Cauldron apart from Ceridwen?'
'Depends what you mean by 'in''.' Sam had Arnold on his knee, clutching the dog to his chest. 'A whole lot of women go to the meetings.'
'I mean the so-called Inner Circle.'
'There's a woman called Jenna thinks she's well in. I dunno.'
'You see, we need to find out where the Inner Circle meets. That's where she'll be. I mean Diane.'
'Wanda Carlisle's, surely?'
'It's a front. Just like her. Nothing happens there. It's somewhere else.'
'I don't get this, Powys. Surely they're all going up the Tor with the Bishop for this Solstice dawn crap. They'll be at Wanda's.'
'I think you'll find they aren't all going up. Wanda's going alone with the Bishop. That's a measure of how important they think it is. She's about as half-arsed as he is. Two lightweights representing the great traditions of paganism and Christianity- on the most powerful, hallowed site in Britain. It doesn't make sense. And yet it's got to. It's bloody got to.'
Sam said, 'Woolly's coming out with all this stuff about the biggest blow against spirituality since 1539. I mean, what kind of blow was that really? The Roman Church was pretty bloody corrupt by the Reformation. The Popes were just more bent politicians in tall hats. Something had to give.'
'It was a blow to Glastonbury. If you try not to get spirituality confused with organised religion, you find you can keep a better perspective. What about Archer Ffitch? Where might he be? He got any kind of apartment in Glastonbury? A girlfriend?'
'You're joking. Archer Ffitch… No, he's got a place in London. Or maybe he shares somewhere with Oliver Pixhill. But nowhere in Glastonbury. Anyway, Diane wouldn't be with Archer. Diane's not been having good feelings about Archer.'
Powys glanced sharply at him. 'What's that mean?'
'She said – and I was a bit cynical about this at the time – that she sometimes feels her hate for Archer has a life its own.'
'Say that again. Try and remember exactly what she said.'
Sam tried. Powys listened, transfixed, gripping the steering wheel hard, and tried not to crash the car.
He drove into Chilkwell Street, indicated left for the town centre. He needed to talk to Juanita. And he needed a copy of Dion Fortune's Psychic Self-Defence. Fast.
'I just want Diane,' Sam said. 'That's all. If those scumbags…'
Halfway down High Street, Powys braked hard behind a stationary bus. A big, obviously decrepit black bus, stopped in the middle of the road.
'It's another accident,' Sam said. 'I don't believe this.'
Powys pulled out alongside the bus, switched on his headlights. A woman in a blue coat was lying in the road.
He came out of the car so fast he lost his balance – effects of the whisky, shouldn't even be driving – and pitched over in the road, hitting his head on the kerb and rolling over, buildings of brick and stone spinning overhead, lights coming on in windows over upside-down shop signs, pale amber streetlamps, a church tower with a dusting of weak stars around its crown of stone thorns.
The bus had huge, balding tyres. Bloody thing shouldn't even be on the road. A few people were gathering. He kept hearing the words 'not again' again and again and again.
He crawled towards the wheels, pulling himself up. Saw a guy bending over the body. The body wrapped in the blue coat. She said she always wore something blue. Lucky colour. Nothing would happen to you if you wore blue.
'… can't credit it.' The driver of the bus, presumably, the guy in an anorak with a Castrol sticker. 'I mean. I know this town. I know where Wellhouse Lane is. But I didn't turn into Wellhouse Lane, did I? I come down here. If I'd got it right, she wouldn't… But, like, anyway she just comes leaping out like… Christ, I never slammed on like that before, thought I was gonner have a heart attack.'
Powys stumbled to where she lay. She was very still. The coat had come loose. Her long neck shone light brown under the headlights, faintly freckled. Her eyes were full open. Big brown eyes. One arm flung out.
The hand ungloved, a livid pink.
'Powys.' Nothing moving but her lips 'You're crying.'
Woolly's guts turned over and he threw up in the sink. He could smell smoke and diesel and burnt rubber.
He turned on the taps. Let the water, hot and cold, splatter down on his face and neck for over a minute, until the old pipes were snorting and gurgling like a bad case of dysentery.
Woolly washed his hands, wiped them on his jeans. That was it. He went and put on all the lights in the kitchen. Just for a minute. Just to get rid of the image of Juanita's face in the headlights before he trod the brakes, screaming out loud, praying to God, forcing his whole being into his feet and those brakes.
A lesson.
Never close your eyes at Meadwell.
She sat on the bed in the lamplight.
The lamp in the stone and timber-framed bedroom had a Tiffany shade almost matching the stained glass in the apex of the Gothic windows. The bulb in the lamp flickered, perhaps it would go out soon.
'I don't like bulbs that do that.' Her arms were by her sides, held away from her body.
'I'll get them to change it,' Powys said.
They were in his ancient, mellow, timbered room at The George and Pilgrims. Juanita wouldn't go home, wouldn't go back to the shop. It's infected, she'd kept saying. She'd stood up shakily in the road. Unhurt. How can you be hurt by a phantom bus? Giggling hysterically. At least the driver was happy. Powys had handed his car keys to Sam: 'Meadwell, quickly.'