And then there was the Third Nanny.
Her memories of the Third Nanny remained vague and elusive. She remembered laughter; the Third Nanny was the only one of them that ever laughed. And one other thing; she would sit on the edge of the bed, but never left a dent in the mattress when she arose.
The pale lightball hovered. Part of her wanted to clutch at it and part of her wanted to push it away.
In the end that was what she did, for lightballs belonged to childhood, and she was grown up now.
She wondered what day it was. Was it Christmas yet? Always hated Christmas. All those fruity voiced oafs smelling of drink and cigars, and then going stiffly to church.
'Merry Christmas, m'Lord, Merry Christmas. Thank you, m'lord, very kind, very kind of you…' And Boxing Days echoing to the horrid peremptory, bloodlusting blast of the hunting horn. 'Time we had you riding, Diane? 'Doubt if we've got a horse fat enough and stupid enough. Father, ha ha…'
'Time to wake up, Diane.' Ceridwen was at her bedside.
'It's still dark.'
'It will soon be dawn.'
Ceridwen no longer wore the starched uniform of the nurse or the nanny, but a long purple robe.
'This is not a hospital, is it?'
'It has made you well, however,' Ceridwen said. 'You've learned what you needed to learn. Without this knowledge you could never be free.'
'I… I suppose that's true.'
She had dreamed of blood. The blood around her birth, she had remembered her mother's cooling arms. She knew who had murdered her mother. She was, at last, approaching an understanding of who she was.
'You once came to me to ask if you were an incarnation of Dion Fortune. You always knew that, didn't you?'
'I…'
Ceridwen went down on her knees at the bottom of the bed. 'I honour you, Diane Fortune.'
And then there was a rustling all around her, and other people in robes emerged from behind the pillars, bearing candles. Among them, faces she knew.
Rozzie and Mort and Viper and Hecate, the girl who had been so rude to her and had made the children paint the bus black.
They all dropped to their knees.
And then Gwyn appeared, tall and bearded in a shroud of mist, and he held up his sickle before throwing it to the ground at the bottom of the bed. And all the people in the room said in unison, 'We honour you, Diane Fortune.'
Verity awoke into shrilling darkness and clicked off her travel alarm.
She had slept for four hours, after making Wanda's supper and mugs of calming cocoa. Wanda, who had drunk too much, had been in one of her unpleasant, resentful moods at being obliged to rise before dawn to put on a public relations sideshow with a bloody Christian.
The luminous hands of the travel alarm told Verity it was five thirty. She arose at once, against the tug from her hip, into the tainted luxury of her suite at Wanda's.
Tainted by guilt. She arose into guilt. She had deserted her post. She had allowed Mr Powys to guide her away from the 'grave and mortal danger' foretold by Major Shepherd.
And left little Councillor Woolaston in its path.
Perhaps that part was over. Perhaps the intruders had been caught and detained by the police.
And perhaps something horrible had occurred.
Verity washed in cold water, for the heating had not yet come on. She heard the first spatter of sleet against the window.
She felt sick to her soul.
FIFTEEN
Lights Go Out
Woolly played patience at the kitchen table and didn't once win.
Life was like this. All you could do was keeping turning over the cards, never knowing how they were stacked.
Of course, this wasn't the case with everybody. Some people cheated, and some people actually knew how to shuffle the pack. Glastonbury had far more than the average number of people who thought they knew how to stack the deck, but Woolly had no illusions.
He dealt himself three more and turned over the stack, but nothing would fit.
He knew he'd done one good thing this past night, but couldn't figure how he'd done it. Maybe, just that once, he'd turned the right card. Maybe he'd found an opening in the house's black atmosphere. Whatever, something had let him take the wheel of the black bus, and he'd saved a life.
Woolly hoped it was a good life.
He was hoping this when the lights began to go out.
Powys put his hands on her shoulders and was horrified. There was a layer of frost on the muslin.
'I'm all right,' she said, 'leave me.'
'You're not.' He thought, what are we doing? What have I done? She's had pneumonia, she's been through hell. Just for odd moments he'd thought, this is it. Without quite knowing what he meant, or even what he hoped for.
It had been a really crazy thing to do. Madness. He opened the suitcase and took out her cloak and put it around her shoulders. Very gently, he brought her to her feet. Her face was very close, but he couldn't see it very well. The moon had gone, the mist had arisen, there was a thin and icy wind.
'I c-could see her.' A tremor in Juanita's voice. 'She was in a grey place and she was lying down. I g-got a feeling of terrible confusion. I tried to tell her I was there. Sure she knew at one point. But then she turned away.'
She buried her head in his chest and he held her under the arms of the Abbey as the sleet came, deceptively gentle at first.
'I felt a light go out,' Juanita said.
As they came back over the wall, Juanita shivering inside the cloak, Powys heard the rumble of traffic, the criss-cross of headlights on the stone.
Two vans came out of High Street; he turned and saw them enter Wellhouse Lane. An ancient, clattering Rover followed. And then – oh God – a bus.
A couple of dozen people were walking up High Street. They wore big boots and carried backpacks and rucksacks.
'What's happening?'
'You don't know?' a young woman said. 'Demo, mate.'
'Where are you from?'
A bloke said, 'Bristol Eco-guerrillas. BEG. Except we don't. Be people here from all over the country by morning. You know they started the road?'
A woman spotted Juanita in her cloak. 'You one of the pagans? It's getting, like, a bit confused. Groups everywhere been waiting for the call on the road, you know?'
Someone leaned out of the back of a truck. 'Happy solstice, sister!'
'Let's get out of here,' Juanita whispered. Powys wasn't aware until they were heading through the already crowded central car park to the back entrance of The George and Pilgrims that she had taken his hand.
In hers.
Shortly before seven, Matthew Banks and his friend, the secondhand bookseller, called for Wanda in Matthew's Discovery. Wanda was petulant and bothered about her clothes, settling at last for the capacious black and white cape and a black, wide-brimmed hat which Verity knew would be blown away by the wind on top of the Tor.
'You'll have to carry my bag, darling,' she snapped at Verity. 'I can't manage everything. The bloody, bloody bishop. Why couldn't he have simply waited until the Summer Solstice?'
'I'm not coming.' Verity handed Matthew the flask of coffee she'd made for Wanda and a half bottle of Glenmorangie.
'Don't be ridiculous. Get in the car.'
'I'm needed at Meadwell.'
'That damned house needs nobody. Except possibly a demolition crew. Now get in, Verity.'
'I'm sorry, Wanda. I should never have come here. I know you couldn't refuse. I know how much you owe Ceridwen.'
'What on earth are you talking about?'
'They made you invite me to stay, didn't they?'
'What utter non-'