The full horror of the plan, the awesome scale of it made him go cold. He'd never liked the idea, but he'd figured he could live with it Not quite the stab to the heart it was to Woolly and those guys.
But suddenly he wanted to cry aloud. This was England, Ancient England. He could hear the traffic already, he could smell exhaust and diesel fumes. See the articulated lorries and holiday coaches and the flash gits in their Porsches, all the men like Archer Ffitch, all the women like Charlotte.
The hounds began to howl in their kennels. Heard him, maybe. So what? He was going to let this out, what they'd done – illegally, no doubt – and it would damage Pennard and Archer a whole lot more than just sabbing their hunt,
The howling went on. It dawned on Sam that this was no ordinary howling. He began to feel uncomfortable. Exposed. He moved away along the trench, walking quickly along the ruts, dodging the remains of bonfires, the hounds going at it all the time like the Wild Hunt of bloody Gwyn ap Nudd. It was creepy, like moving through an open wound, like he was stumbling into a bleak and ravaged future. Up on the banks, exposed, bare saplings were writhing and rattling.
Unexpectedly, he saw Glastonbury Tor again. It was a shock; it was so close, and sheer like a castle, the road aimed straight at it. It couldn't be, of course, because the published plan showed the route giving the Tor quite a wide berth; it just looked like it the way this section was aligned, like it would cut directly through the middle of the hill, under the tower.
The howling stopped. There was a great stillness. An icy stillness. Sam had that feeling of being watched. Of someone rearing up behind him.
He spun round irritably, and all the breath went out of him.
There was a man standing, staring silently up at Glastonbury Tor. An elderly, straight backed man in an overcoat.
He held a pipe in his mouth. Sam smelled the tobacco, just briefly. The old man's face was pale and hazy and fibrous, like soiled cotton-wool; there was a ridged scar under one eye.
Least it wasn't Pennard. Sam tried to laugh with relief, tried to speak to the old guy, but he couldn't find the breath.
The man turned very slowly to face him. Sam saw that he wore very long, dark trousers. So long that they covered up the shoes. In fact he couldn't see where the trousers ended.
This was because the old man was hovering about six inches above the rutted track. His rigid arm was pointing at the Tor. His jaw fell open, revealing no teeth, only a black void, and his eyes were like white gas.
The old man's scream was silent.
Unlike Sam's.
NINE
It must have been halfway down Benedict Street, where Woolly lived and worked, that Diane got a bad feeling. It said, Go back.
She stopped and frowned. She seemed to spend most of her life responding to feelings, waiting for signals and beacons on the horizon. Never seemed to think for herself. Never seemed to reason
So she walked on. This had, after all, been one of her favourite places in all the world. Ever such a little shop, in a tiny square, at the end of a short alley off Benedict Street, and all it said over the door was: WOOLLY'S.
As a child of about eleven or twelve, she used to persuade Rankin to bring her into town to visit a friend. He didn't, of course, know who the friend was.
She'd spend hours watching Woolly in his workshop in the back. He was with a lady called Maria then. The business hadn't been going long, and they were mostly working on specialist jobs, recreating medieval string instruments for folk groups. Woolly was a fan of people like The Incredible String Band and Amazing Blondel who Diane was a bit too young to remember, but on their record sleeves they wore colourful, medieval patchwork clothes and Woolly said they came from a gentler time and she believed that. It always sounded like a different dimension. Like Middle Earth, everybody wearing floppy clothes and laughing a lot, light as butterflies.
Diane paused, sure she'd heard a footfall behind her. But there was nobody. It was unusually quiet, as though the tragedy had made people want to lock their front doors and cling to their families.
It must be wonderful to have a family you cling to.
She stopped.
A shadow had flitted around a corner about a hundred yards away and vanished into the alley leading to Woolly's square. And another one, another shadow. She saw them through a vague mist. So much mist on the street these nights.
Diane slipped into the doorway of a dry cleaner's about seventy yards away from Woolly's alley. Just as there came one of those sounds that instinctively made you cringe: the shattering of glass.
And then,
'Woolaston!' Echoing from the square. 'We've come for you, Woolaston! Get yourself out here, you murdering little fucker!'
A rolling, local accent. Young. Diane dragged in a long, trembling breath, held herself close to the shop door.
More breaking glass, but a blunter sound this time. She pictured a boot hacking out the shards left at the edges of the window.
Woolly's shop had just the one window, about the size of a living-room window in a small terraced house. It screened a little museum display of reproduction antique instruments, usually a narrow, eighteenth-century Spanish guitar and a tiny mandolin with lots of mother of-pearl. And, unless he'd sold it at last, one of Woolly's own inventions with a long neck and a terracotta sound box the size of a football.
There was cackling male laughter, then a different voice, mock-official.
'Councillor Woolaston?'
Silence. Oh gosh, don't let him be in. But where would he be? Where could he go tonight and not have to endure the stares and the righteous abuse?
'Councillor Woolaston, sir!' Louder, rougher. A roar. 'You better get into your best suit and your dinky little bobcap. You've just been invited to a special meeting of the beating-the-shit-out-of-mangy-little-hippies sub-committee'
'And are you?' Juanita said.
'I doubt it. I doubt he was capable by then.'
The self-service restaurant had a Christmas tree and all the counter staff wore little Santa hats. It was quite crowded and Juanita was feeling jittery, holding her hands in front of her like pieces of cracked porcelain.
She sat down at a window table, as far away from other people as possible. She needed to find out very quickly whether J.M. Powys was someone she could trust.
'So, if you aren't his son…?'
'Then it's probably in some way down to me. Some aspect of me comes down in the night, rearranges the shelves, untidies the room. Something in me that hates being a has-been recluse and would like to be a great and famous writer like his namesake. Something that wrecks the little refuge to force me to get my act together.'
'And dispatches you to Glastonbury?'
'That was Dan Frayne. And coincidence.'
'That's not very convincing, Mr Powys. I'm slightly horrified to hear myself say it, but this is one of those cases where the paranormal explanation seems the more logical.
She watched him unwrap a straw and put it into his coffee.
'That's the slippery slope, Mrs Carey. Some things we are not meant to make sense of.'
'That's the coward's philosophy,' Juanita said. 'OK, it's been my philosophy too. Otherwise, Glastonbury buggers you up. Pixhill's parting message; ignore it at your peril, Glastonbury Buggers You Up.'
'And how did it bugger him up?' Powys asked. 'In the end.'
'He went out one cold morning in November and had a fatal coronary halfway up the Tor. They brought him back and hid him out on the dining table at Meadwell. Where he lay for three days, guarded by little Verity, his housekeeper. That, er… that room, according to legend, was where the last abbot of Glastonbury had his final meal. Before they strung him up. On the Tor. On November 15. Which was, of course…'