Oh, let this soon be over.
Verity chewed on a lettuce leaf which felt like crepe paper in the desert of her mouth. Among beams and pillars of oak, huge shadows shifted sluggishly, like black icebergs. The lump of fish islanded by juices on the Abbot's plate looked – although she squashed the thought at once – like some grisly organic remains on a surgeon's tray.
The curious thing was that Verity had searched through all the records, the Church histories, the local histories – and there had been many of them, as writer after writer sought to explain the holy glamour of Glastonbury – without ever finding documentary evidence that Abbot Richard Whiting had eaten such a meal, or indeed that his last, sombre night upon this earth had been spent at Meadwell.
Colonel Pixhill, you see, had always said it was so. After the Dinner, relaxing a little with a small Panatella, the Colonel would ruminate on the Abbot's fate.
Of course, quite apart from his differences with the church over, er, marital matters, Henry VIII was an extravagant blighter. Never had enough money. And there was, Glastonbury, wealthiest religious house in Britain outside Westminster. Had to get his hands on that wealth somehow. Greed – that's the orthodox version. That devil Thomas Cromwell, Henry's hatchet man, as it were… only a matter of time before he was ordered to focus his scheming brain on Avalon…
The Colonel would pour red wine, brought up that evening from the cellar. Tonight Verity also had a bottle ready. Such a terrible waste, she drank hardly at all and hated the cellar. She'd taken the biggest flashlight in the house, but its beam down there had been but a flimsy ribbon. A cobweb was still laced around the bottle of vintage claret she'd snatched from the nearest rack, ramming it under her arm to grope for the iron handrail to the cellar steps.
But, of course, it was more than money. Henry was capturing Jerusalem, do y'see? Jerusalem Builded Here, as Blake was to put it, on England's green and pleasant land. How could the king break from Rome, establish himself as the head of the Church, if he didn't smash the power of the place where… where those Feet walked in ancient times. And old Whiting would've realised this, of course he would, and suspected his own days were numbered, poor chap. But he stayed, and he waited. For a miracle. How could God possibly permit the very Cradle of Christianity to fall?
For Verity, the Colonel had illuminated the history of Glastonbury as no book ever had. She pictured the great Abbey soaring, in all its golden splendour, into a flawless blue heaven. Who, indeed, could have imagined it then as broken and derelict? Certainly not the Abbot.
At last, laying down her knife and fork – she could not eat with only a knife, like the Abbot – Verity composed herself and said, in a tiny, tremulous voice like the tink of china, the words enunciated for so many years by Colonel Pixhill.
'Have courage, have fortitude, My Lord Abbot. We are…'
She paused to correct herself, nervously fiddling with the lace handkerchief in the sleeve of the woollen pinafore dress she wore against the cold in here. For November, it was quite a warm night. Outside.
'I mean, I am…'
No! She had to believe that Major Shepherd was here at the table and so was Colonel Pixhill himself. Had to believe she was not alone.
'We are with you this night.'
The candle flame swayed to the left, as if a fresh draught had spurted into the room. Verity sat very still and did not See.
… no possible escape, of course. Royal Commissioners searching the old boy's chamber and coming up with writings critical of the king's divorce – as if anyone would commit such things to parchment. Plus a book about – Ha', that other famous cleric with the temerity to criticise his kind, Thomas Becket. And then they find a gold chalice hidden away and accuse Whiting of robbing his own abbey!
The first time she heard this, Verity had asked hesitantly, Might this not have been…? I mean, a precious chalice that he was so anxious to hide…?
The Grail, Verity? I hardly think so. If the cup from the last supper was indeed preserved, it was surely not precious in that sense. Certainly not made of gold. Wood or earthenware, more likely.
The Colonel had raised his glass, peered into the clouded wine, repeating,
We are with you, Lord Abbot. With you this night.
Drawing an obvious parallel with the Abbot's own last supper.
In October 1539 – Verity remembered all the dates as clearly as if she had been there – Thomas Cromwell, the King's agent, had ordered that Richard Whiting, a kind old man who was always mindful of the poor and the sick and known for his generosity, should be 'tried and executed'.
The 'trial' took place at Wells, where the Abbot and two monks said to be his 'accomplices' were swiftly sentenced to death and brought immediately back to Glastonbury. This was November 14.
The following day, the Abbot was brutally stretched and bound to a wooden hurdle, dragged through the streets by horses past helpless, horrified townsfolk, past the forlorn Abbey.
And so to the Tor.
Verity now rose among the shadows, poured wine into the Abbot's crystal glass and a little drop to moisten her own parched lips. It tasted bitter and salty, like blood.
There was a hazy- necklace of light around the St Michael tower, just where it sprang free of the watery mist that rose from the Levels and gathered on the sides of the Tor.
Clutching her shawl around her, Diane stepped off the bus platform. Somewhere, a sheep bleated, a rare sound at night outside the lambing season.
It was OK; this was ordinary light. Perhaps a circle of candles. It wouldn't be visible at all from the edges of the town. So they were all up there, doing whatever they'd come to do. Gwyn the Shaman presiding. With his ceremonial sickle.
That had been a pretty scary moment. All alone, and raising his sickle to the moon.
Another reason to get out of here. This was not the convoy she'd joined.
She moved silently across the grass, careful not to bump into any vehicles, always a risk when there was so much of you.
She'd moved her van closer to the field gate, knowing she'd probably be leaving before the others, knowing Juanita would let her stay at the flat for a couple of weeks while she sorted herself out.
Mort's hearse loomed in from of her. Love is the law, love over death. She'd seen another, unpleasant side of Mort tonight. Another side of all of them. She stopped. There was the glow of a cigarette.
The thin moonlight showed her the hateful Hecate, sitting on the bonnet of the hearse. Her van was on the other side of the hearse. She couldn't possibly reach it unseen.
Well, gosh, what did that matter? She could leave if she wanted to. Don't be pathetic!
But she was pathetic. She imagined getting into the van, trying to start the engine which always took absolutely ages to fire. And Hecate standing there watching her, this large, strong and horribly precocious child smoking a joint. Opening the van door, which she could do because its lock was broken, and dragging her out, the younger children hearing the noise and coming to join in, black gnomes swarming over her.
Shivering, Diane crept back to the bus. She'd wait until Hecate had gone – for a pee or something – and then creep past the vehicles to the gate and go on foot to Wellhouse Lane and the town. Knock on Juanita's door, beg for sanctuary.
She sat in the front of the bus, in the driver's seat. A night breeze awoke and made the bus rattle; more sheep began to bleat. Diane felt like a solitary spectator on the perimeter of an enormous stadium, the landscape primed as if for some great seasonal festival, Samhain, Beltane or whatever they called midsummer night.
November 14? A day, surely, of no particular import in the Celtic calendar. Not even a full moon. November 14…
And then, in the sky over the Tor, she saw a light.
Not a torch, not a lamp, not a fire.