The Chalice

'Gotta get the hell out, Mol '

The plastic bottle went slippery in her fingers. 'What happened?'

They were alone. Hecate had disappeared, probably not wanting to be around when Headlice found out what they'd done to his bus.

Diane had lit the Tilley lamp when the Tor went dark again. She'd been afraid to leave the bus. She didn't know what she'd seen, but it had left an atmosphere tainted with a brooding evil she'd never felt before. Not here. Not anywhere. The blackness at its heart had seeped into the unnatural spread of light until it was a night sky again. But it was a different kind of night, as black and opaque as soot, with no moon any more.

'Shit.' Headlice glared down at his hands. 'Look at that. Shakin' like a fuckin' leaf. Bad shit, Mol.'

'Listen,' Diane said. 'All I know is that sometimes you can't trust your… what your mind's telling you. It does awfully odd things to you. Up there, I mean. On the Tor. Tell me what happened.'

'You're talkin' dead posh.'

'I am posh. Frightfully posh, actually, For what it's worth.'

'I wanted you to be there. I wanted…' He shrugged. 'Nobody got laid, anyroad. There was a… like… holy water and chanting and stuff in Latin. I don't remember. Don't fuckin' remember

…'

The kettle began to whistle on the iron stove. Headlice pushed it angrily away. 'I told you, we got no time! Gotta get this thing going, piss off.'

'Headlice, you have to tell me. What did they do?'

Headlice picked up the kettle and emptied the hot water into the stove's firebox, causing an explosion of hissing steam.

'Water. Holy water. Acid, mushrooms, some shit. Did me head in. I'm not down yet. Not… There was ' He stopped, as if he wasn't sure what he remembered. 'This old man. And like a black chalice.'

Diane went very cold inside. Arms. Huge smoky arms in the sky, hands cupped like a communicant's to receive…

Headlice sprang to his feet. 'Get the bus goin' before the bastards come back. You an' me, Mol. I'm trusting you, don't shaft me.' The Tilley lamp spread its gassy, wobbly light over his face, mud and blood on it like warpaint.

'Tuum Montem… Summat like that. That were part of it. He'd lift his arms – like that.'

'Lift his arms…?'

'Monum Sanctum?'

' Monum sanctum tuum,' Diane said. 'Your holy hill. It's from the Mass. They have conducted me and brought me unto thy holy hill?

She sighed. They sent me to a convent. Once.'

'Gonna write about this, Mol? Gonna write it up for the papers?' He sneered and poured cold water from the plastic bottle into the stove.

'Headlice, oh my God, listen. Gwyn. Had you ever met Gwyn before?'

He shook his head, slammed the metal stove door.

'What about Mort?' Oh gosh, these people, she knew there was something wrong with them.

'Yeah. Mort was the guy got me into this. He was in a pub, back home. Salford. I told you before.'

Headlice was moving around the bus, throwing things on the luggage racks. She remembered him saying he'd been unemployed, living with his parents, devouring earth- mysteries books, dreaming of ley lines. And Mort had introduced him to a man with an old bus for sale and Headlice had sold his motorbike to pay for it. How he'd met Rozzie was a mystery.

'Look,' she said. 'When Gwyn joined us at Bury St Edmunds – you remember? When Gwyn joined, the whole mood of the convoy seemed to change. Some people left.'

'Con and Daisy.'

'What?'

'At Bury. Con and Daisy, Irish travellers. Con says to me, he says, You wanna fuck off, man, this guy's heavy shit. I mean, come on man, heavy shit's what I've come for. And he just shakes his head. That's it, Mol, we're off'

He took out his ignition keys for the bus, threw them up in the air, caught them.

'Me an' you then, Mol. Back on the St Michael Line. And no more stopping at churches, goin' in backwards. No more shit.'

'What did you say…?'

But Headlice had leapt down from the platform to get into the cab. He was probably right; they had to get out of here. She'd go with him, as far as the town and then…

She heard Headlice yell, 'Who the f…?'

And then he screeched in pain and there was a bump.

'Headlice!'

Diane snatched up the Tilley lamp and stumbled down the deck to the platform. She leaned out from the top step, holding out the lamp by its wire handle.

'Headlice?'

She couldn't see anything at first, but she heard retching and moaning. A dark figure moved unhurriedly aside.

Headlice was writhing on the grass, clutching his stomach, his head flung back. She saw a heavy-booted foot crunch into his face, under his nose. Bright blood fountained up. Headlice started to snuffle.

The lamp was wrenched from her hand.

Juanita kicked backwards with the heel of her boot and someone went, Aaah. Then she was punched hard in mouth, tasted salt-blood.

The naked man raised his hand and the blade of the sickle was white gold in the candlelight.

Juanita screamed through swelling lips.

'Oh, come on.' Jim Still trying to bluster through this. 'Don't be so damned stupid.'

Only about half a dozen so-called pilgrims remained, two of them gaunt, unsmiling women.

'Do you know me?' The voice, still a whisper but raised high like the blade, had a horrid triumphant ring.

'Thankfully no,' Jim snapped. 'Now tell your lackey to get his bloody hands off that woman.'

'I am Gwyn ap Nudd. Do you know me now?'

Juanita spat blood.

'Bring him here.'

Jim, spluttering, was pulled from the wall by the warrior-looking man with the tight plait, and the priest pointed with his sickle to a patch of grass beside the concrete path. One of the other male pilgrims – he had a black cap and two large earrings like a pirate – went down theatrically on one knee, and when they flung Jim down, his head was bent back across the shelf of the man's other thigh.

His hat fell off; they pulled his hair to hold his head back. Most of the candles had been extinguished. Jim had to stare up at the moon. They had removed his scarf, exposing his neck. He'll catch cold, Juanita thought ludicrously.

'The date', said Gwyn ap Nudd, the goat priest, 'is November the fourteenth.'

Not a goat-priest… a dog-priest. Hound, Gwyn ap Nudd, lord of the Celtic Hades which could be entered through the Tor, Gwyn 's hall. Gwyn was the leader of the wild hunt. It was a dog-mask.

As if this mattered.

Jim retched. Someone balanced one of the remaining candle lanterns, on his heaving, overcoated chest.

'On this day in the year 1539, the last Abbot of Glastonbury. Richard Whiting, was convicted of petty theft and treason, then brought up here, to the church above the hall of Gwyn ap Nudd, fairy- lord of death. And then, side by side with two of his monastic underlings, he was… hanged.'

'Let him go,' Juanita pleaded. 'Can't you see he's choking? He's an old man, for Christ's sake.'

'Whiting was also an old man,' the priest whispered. 'A rich and powerful old man. His public execution, on the spot where we stand, signified the fall of one of the wealthiest monastic establishments in the land. His God couldn't save him.

The lips smiled. 'He was worshipping the wrong god.'

The sickle was raised until the moon once more was in the blade.

'And so his death was a sacrifice. To me.'

Juanita expelled all her breath in a long scream, kicked out and kicked nothing, and then her head was wrenched back by the hair and some disgusting rag was shoved between her teeth and halfway down her throat until she gagged.

Out of the darkness, quite close, a drum started up.

Behind the man who presumptuously called himself Gwyn ap Nudd. the mist had cleared and Juanita could see the lights of Glastonbury, so bloody, bloody close. Where were the police? Where were the courting couples? Where were the night-joggers?