Headlights on full-beam, Juanita drove the Volvo off left into secretive, tree-hung Wellhouse Lane, official gateway to the Tor.
Impressionable. That was Diane. Curiously innocent, perhaps deluded. That's all. But if he found she was with the New Age travellers, her father would… what? Have her committed? Juanita was convinced he'd tried something like that once. Jim was right. Lord Pennard was not a terribly nice man.
It was very dark. Juanita drove carefully up the narrowing road, scene of many a near-collision, and took a narrow right, scraping the hedge.
Where the Tor should be visible, there was a night mist like a wall. The lane swooped steeply into a tunnel of trees, and at the end of it Juanita swung sharp left into a mud-packed track until the car could go no farther.
The great ash tree leapt up indignantly, as if rudely awoken by the Volvo's headlights.
She got out. 'Jim?'
A little chillier than of late, and it'd be quite cold on the Tor. Pulling on her coat, Juanita very nearly screamed when hand patted her shoulder.
'My, my.' Jim grinned like a Hallowe'en pumpkin behind his lamp. 'We are being traditional tonight.'
'Say what you like about the Afghan.' Juanita pushed her hair inside the sheepskin. 'But it's damned warm. Help me reverse?'
Jim, also, was dressed for action. In his hat and scarf and overcoat he looked like something from The Wind in the Willows, Mole or Ratty. With Toad's physique, however and probably just as hopeless. But without Jim Battle there'd be nobody quite sane enough to turn to in this kind of crisis.
'Leave the car here, Juanita. Better off walking. Take us about twenty minutes. The old feet can virtually find their own way after all this time.'
'You sound a good deal more cheerful than you did on the phone.'
That's because I haven't been out with you at night for a good while.' She felt his smile.
'Yes. Well. Unfortunately, we won't have time for a candlelit dinner.'
'I've got a bar of chocolate.'
'We'll have it to celebrate, afterwards. How are we going to handle this, Jim?'
'Bloody hell, I thought you were supposed to be in charge. Suppose there's some sort of orgy going on up there? Wouldn't be the first time.'
'In which case, Diane'll be somewhere on the edge looking terribly embarrassed and a bit lost.'
'People do change, Juanita. Erm… before we go any further…'
'That's a myth. People don't really change at all. Sorry, Jim.'
'I was going to say, on the question of heroics…'
Juanita squeezed a bulky, overcoated arm. 'I'm not suggesting you barge into the middle of a bunch of naked squirming travellers and sling her over your shoulder.'
'No, I…'
'I mean, I know you'd do it. If I asked you.'
'Actually, I was thinking more about you. What I'm getting at is, the Tor's a funny place.'
'Tell me about it.'
'Sometimes you can get carried away. You know what I mean?'
'No.' Juanita rammed her fists into the pockets of the afghan. 'Not any more. Carried away is what I don't get.'
NINE
It was like being on a strange planet.
Like they'd climbed up the night itself and emerged on to some other sphere, and the moon and the stars were so much nearer and so bright it was like they were swimming in and out of your head.
All this without drugs.
'Magic,' Headlice breathed, understanding at last why Mort had been handing out this strict no booze, no dope stuff.
The pilgrims, all standing up now, had gathered around the tower, which rose out of this small space on the summit of the Tor, over an ocean of lights far, far below.
The tower. So close. Like a silent rocket ship in the centre, and they were like joined to it and it was part of them. Literally. If he stretched out his legs his bare feet would touch the stone.
His feet should have been dead cold up here, in November, but this was a very special year, the summer heat clinging to Avalon, and the Tor was where the real heat was stored, all the sacred earth-energy. This was like the spiritual power station of Britain and tonight Headlice was gonna get charged up like a battery.
All the pilgrims were in a circle, holding hands. Headlice's left hand had found the clammy fingers of this raggy-haired older woman called Steve. His right hand had been grabbed, unfortunately, by Mort. Mort was holding the finger he'd bent, which still hurt, the bastard.
But – hey! – it was suddenly immaculately weird.
The mist had come up behind them, surrounding them like this chilly, fuzzy hedge, forming yet another circle. So they were kind of locked into the pattern of the old maze which had been around the Tor in prehistoric times.
And there was one more inner space: the tower was roofless, like a chimney; you could stand inside – the flags underfoot dead slippery on account of all the zillions of pilgrims over the centuries – and you could gaze up the stone shaft into the night. And the night could come down it.
Gwyn was in there now, in the centre of everything, catching the night.
He hadn't seen Gwyn arrive. The man was just suddenly among them, in a long coat, no telling what he was wearing underneath.
Gwyn the Shaman, who walked with the spirits. Headlice didn't know who Gwyn was or where he came from. There were stories about how Gwyn had been in Tibet with the Masters, or been initiated into the Wiccan coven at the age of ten then studied for the priesthood just to get both sides. All this might be total bullshit, but if you knew for a fact that Gwyn was, say, an ex-garage mechanic from Wolverhampton or just some toerag who'd found a copy of King of the Witches in the prison library, it'd like seriously detract, wouldn't it?
Gwyn had lit a candle, in a glass lantern because of the breeze, and he stood behind it in the arched doorway which led into the tower's bare interior and then out through an identical arch on the other side. His beard was gilded by the candlelight. Bran had set up this slow heartbeat on his hand-drum. Then more lanterns were lit until there was a semicircle of them around the archway, sending Gwyn's priestly shadow racing up the stone.
Shaman. Mort swore he'd once seen Gwyn conjure a fire out of dry grass from six feet away. 'Magic, eh?' Headlice said to Steve, and Steve glanced at him and smiled and said nothing.
The throb of Bran's drum made the air vibrate, like the night sky itself was one big stretched skin.
Then Headlice felt a tug, and they were moving. Round and round the tower. The only sounds the drumming and the slithering of their feet on the grass, and he felt like a cog in an ancient, sacred mechanism and was totally blissed out.
At first.
'The problem is,' Juanita said, 'I don't know where I stand any more. Whose side I'm on.'
Watching the Tor by night.
From less than half a mile away, it looked mysteriously pretty, with the lights, above a band of mist, making a faint frill around the base of the St Michael tower. They'd stopped on the edge of a small wood, unsure about this now that they were so close.
Jim's lamp had found a tree stump, and Juanita sat on it and talked.
'When Danny and I arrived it was very exciting, in an innocent way. We used to come here and watch for flying saucers. There'd been that big flap over at Warminster. Close Encounters. And books by John Michell and then J. M. Powys, and this all-pervading sense of… optimism, I suppose. Simple and naive as that.'