'Walked. Ran. Ran, mostly. Left the van back on the Pilton road. Wasn't going back that way. Oh Christ, Juanita, the reason we had the row, me and Diane, was over what you believed in and what you couldn't handle.'
'I'm surprised it took you so long. Working together so closely and her being of a mystical persuasion, while you…'
'Juanita…' Sam pushed the hair away from his eyes and his hands stayed clutched to either side of his head. 'So help me, I think I've seen a ghost.'
'Help yourself, J.M.' Woolly pushed a bottle of Bell's across the workbench, untied his pathetic pony-tail. 'You won't mind if I don't.'
Powys poured less than half an inch of Scotch into a tumbler. He wasn't in a drinking mood either.
The little room was like the picture you had of the workshop of the man who made Pinocchio. Curved planes and fancy chisels and lots of tools you wouldn't know which end to pick them up with. And rich, woody smells.
'I'm out of here tomorrow,' Woolly said. 'Best thing. People don't want to see me around. Even my friends, they'll just be uncomfortable.'
'Where'll you go?'
'Dunno yet. Here I am one day, an old hippy in the place where all old hippies would want to come to die. Next day, boom. Outcast.'
Woolly lit a roll up, like the Bishop of Bath and Wells.
'Sheesh,' he said vacantly.
'Look,' Powys said. 'I don't really know this place. I just came because someone wanted me to write a book about the New Age culture.'
'Decline of.' Woolly said. 'It's gonner be all washed up again. You know the last time this happened? 1539. The dissolution of the monasteries When the State fitted up the Abbot here. Topped him.'
Woolly picked up a wooden guitar bridge with little holes for the strings to go through and began to sand it down with a small piece of glass-paper.
'I seen it coming a long way off, man. Just never thought it was gonner happen so fast. I knew there was gonner be a showdown and I knew I'd be at the centre of it. What I guessed was it'd be the road that brought it all to a climax. Big protest on the site, us occupying the trees they were gonner bring down, digging tunnels, forming human chains. Then this business with the Tor comes up. Need a human chain round that too. I had this feeling that was what I'd been born for. My destiny. To form human chains around a holy hill.'
Powys formed pictures of Woolly as this little Hereward the Wake figure rallying the New Age troops. Woolly on the TV news. Woolly in Sunday newspaper profiles.
'Stupid,' Woolly said. 'What I'd been born for was to help kill an innocent child at precisely the right time. Thereby making a key contribution to the Second Fall of Glastonbury'. Apocalyptic, J.M.'
He put down the wooden bridge.
Powys said, 'I don't understand.'
'OK.' Woolly started rolling the glass-paper between his hands. 'Let's start at the beginning. This is the most important spiritual power-centre in the country. Maybe in the Western World. This is where they brought the most powerful mystical artefact the world has ever known, because it brings together Christianity and the old religions. The Chalice, right. Let's not call it the Holy Grail, let's just call it the Chalice. Whether it dispenses wine, water or just pure spirit, it's a symbol of harmony, right?'
'I'll go along with that.'
'Good. The Tor itself is like an upturned chalice, pouring spiritual energy into the earth and it flows out in all directions spreading harmony… at least, the possibility of harmony. And the strongest of those currents, cutting straight across Britain…'
'The St Michael Line. It doesn't stand up to too much scrutiny, Woolly. A lot of those St Michael churches miss the line by a mile.'
'Aw, shit, man, I walked that line. From St Michael's Mount to Bury Abbey. I know it exists.' Woolly touched the little scroll of glass paper to his head. 'In here.'
Powys smiled. He had no quarrel with that. Not tonight.
'St Michael's the hard-man angel,' Woolly said. 'Defender of the spirit. Plays it straight. Literally. That line coming down across the countryside like a big sword. There's also the possibility of another current weaving in and out of the line. A feminine current this dowser guy found. The St Mary current. All very harmonious.'
'And then' – the thought came out of nowhere – 'somebody puts a new road through it.'
Woolly rose to his feet, picked up the wooden bridge, threw it into the air and caught it in triumph.
'It's about covert secularisation, J.M. The State's always done it, because government – even the Vatican when they ran things – is anti-spirit. The State is about, like, rules and money. Spiritual values, they get in the way. But, shit, there ain't time to go into the politics of all that. You just got look at the effects of this conflict on the ground – on the landscape.'
'When the Normans conquered England,' Powys said, 'and they wanted to establish a physical power base, they built their castles…'
'On ancient sacred burial mounds. You got it, J.M. Course, when Christianity came they built their churches on mounds and inside stone circles, too, but that's OK, 'cause it's still spiritual. But the number of Norman military strongholds built on pagan mounds is staggering. And it goes on. Where do the Army do their training – bloody Salisbury Plain. So all the countryside around Stonehenge is churned up by flaming tanks and splattered with Nissen huts and stuff. Then they ban free festivals at Stonehenge and that screws it for the genuine pagans and Druids who can't find sanctuary there anymore.'
'Leaving Glastonbury Tor.'
'Leaving the Tor. Where Archer Ffitch and Griff Daniel and the G-l crew propose to have 'restricted access'. They strangle the power-centre, pump the St Michael Line full of diesel fumes, negative emotions, road-rage, fatal crashes…'
The mention of fatal crashes seemed to drain the energy out of Woolly, as rapidly as if he'd been shot. He sat down.
'Is this paranoia, J.M.? I can show you the maps, how that road will be visible, to some extent, from every significant church, every ancient sacred site from Burrowbridge Mump to Solsbury Hill, where it meets up with that other evil little bypass. You won't be able to stand on any holy hill or in any St Michael churchyard without hearing the roar of transcontinental juggernauts. It's horrifying, like I say, the worst thing to happen to this town since 1539.'
There was a thump inside Powys's head, as it all landed on him like a big, thick book from a very high shelf.
Sam brought the book up from the shop. 'This the one?'
Juanita nodded. 'Pop it down on the table. You'll have to flip through the pages for me.'
It was one of those Glastonbury-in-old-photos books. Not really Carey and Frayne subject-matter, with its sepia line-ups of long-dead councillors and women in big hats.
'Stop,' Juanita said. 'No, sorry, carry on. Skip this section. Hold it… there.'
Sam swallowed. Juanita extended, with some pain, a discoloured, lumpy forefinger.
Sam looked up from the book.
'Oh, Jesus God,' he said. 'He's younger, but-'
'But that's him?'
Sam nodded. His face looked as blurred and lost and scared and overwhelmed as one of the small boys in knee-length shorts on the very edge of the photograph.
The caption underneath said:
October 1954: Children from St Benedicts C of E Primary School receive their prizes from the vice-chairman of the school governors, Col George Pixhill.
Part Five
… and though the well is dark with blood, the Tor is bright with fire..
ONE
She awoke to the voice of Ceridwen.