But she had her duty. She polished and polished, until the candlestick shone in the dark air like the moon.
The Abbot was used to fine things.
It would be four hundred and fifty six years since he was hanged on the Tor.
SIX
'It knows we're coming.' Headlice was aglow with the excitement of being a pagan at what he said was the greatest Pagan temple in Britain. 'Look at it… it knows, man.'
The Tor was temporarily free of cloud but losing definition in the darkening sky. You could no longer make out the ridges which ringed the hill and were supposed to be the remains of a prehistoric ritual maze.
It did look ever so mysterious now, with not a house in sight and no other visible hills. Diane, too, felt herself wanting to go up. But on her own. She didn't care to be part of a so-called pagan ritual. They'd come a long way for this; things could get rather, well, orgiastic.
Once, she'd said to Headlice,. Why did you want to be a Pagan? What does it mean to you? Headlice had mumbled something about his childhood near Manchester, being made to go to church and all the hypocritical bastards in their Sunday suits and the women in their stupid hats. How he'd grown up despising Christianity as a meaningless social ritual. Headlice said the difference with the old gods was that they had balls.
'But what will we actually do, when we get there?'
Headlice shrugged. 'All down to Gwyn.'
Everything seemed to be down to Gwyn. Gwyn the Shaman. She hadn't seen him since their arrival. He had his own van. Very dirty on the outside, but newer than the rest. He kept himself apart from the others. Even the travellers, it seemed, had their aristocracy, and Gwyn was the adept, the man with the Knowledge. Since he'd joined the convoy in East Anglia the mood had been somehow less frivolous. Some people had even left.
'Aw,' Headlice said at last, 'most likely we'll just light a fire. Take our clothes off, you know? Under the shining goddess of the moon. Let the energy flow through us and, like, see what develops.'
Oh gosh. Don't like the sound of that!
'Er…' She hesitated. '… you know you're not allowed to do that? I mean, light fires. It's National Trust property.'
Not a very Molly thing to say.
Headlice stared at her and started to laugh. That means it belongs to the people, you daft bat.'
A naked toddler sprang up giggling from the grass, bottom smeared with her own faeces. Diane tried not to notice. She looked away, across Moulder's field with its new covering of beaten-up vehicles painted with wild spray-colours. It was supposed to have all the spontaneity of a medieval country fayre, but it looked sad and dingy, like a derelict urban scrapyard.
Headlice said, 'Be fuckin' great.'
The tower poked the streaky sky, a stubby cigar waiting to be lit.
'Won't be no bother about fires, Mol. Who's gonna try and stop us?'
Another kind of unease was forming around her like a thermal glow. To Headlice, paganism, with its loose talk of 'old gods' and 'old ways', was just a sort of alternative social ritual. But Glastonbury Tor was not the place for play acting.
She saw Don Moulder leaning over his gate, watching them. He was waiting for his money.
'And keep it to yourself, Mr Moulder. About me, I mean.'
'I won't say another word. Miss Diane.'
Don Moulder's currant eyes were pressed into a face like a slab of red Cheddar.
Don was a sort of born-again Christian with Jesus stickers on the back window of his tractor. It meant he never quite lied. So he'd probably told someone already.
Three hundred and fifty pounds changed hands. This left less than two hundred in the pocket sewn inside Diane's Oxfam moonskirt.
The travellers didn't know she was paying for the land; it would have been against their code. They thought Don Moulder was Molly's uncle. He raised an eyebrow at that.
And then said, 'Hippies.' Dumping the word like a trailer-load of slurry. 'Gonner be pretty bloody popular, ain't I, lettin' the hippies on my land. What I'm sayin' is, I'm not sure three hundred covers it, all the goodwill I'm losin', look.'
Don Moulder held all the cards; it cost her an extra fifty.
When she'd first encountered them, the travellers had been camping up on the moor – illegally, but there weren't enough of them to quality for instant arrest under the Act.
The news editor, an awful inverted snob who thought that overfed, upper-crust Diane needed exposure to the lower strata of society, had sent her to do a story on them, hoping, no doubt, that they would refuse to talk to her and she'd come back with her tail between her legs and he could smirk.
Determined that this would not happen, Diane had toned down her accent, adding a little Somerset burr which she thought at the time was rather good, actually. She'd even passed their very obvious test: accepting a mug of tea made from brown water scooped from a ditch.
This certainly broke the ice with Headlice; he'd begun to tell her things, despite Rozzie's attempts to shut him up.
You print what you like, luv, we're not stoppin' here anyroad.
Where are you going next then?
Leave it, Headlice, she's only trying to…
Home, luv. Our spiritual home. It's a pilgrimage. Along the pagan way.
Shut it, shithead.
To the sacred Isle of Avalon. Know where that is?
Diane had gone weak. It was another sign, like a magic carpet unrolling at her feet, and the carpet went diagonally through the spine of England all the way back to Glastonbury. She'd felt almost sick with a combination of longing and dread.
Still holding the tin mug between her hands to stop the shaking she'd heard herself say,
May I come with you?
She didn't even remember deciding to say it; the question just popped out, as strange and spontaneous as a light over the Tor.
I could, you know, write about it for the paper – what it's really like, what you're trying to do, all the hassle you get and the abuse. Would that be possible?
And she'd told them her name was Molly Fortune and she came from Somerset, and her accent went even fuzzier.
In a complete daze over the following two days, she had drawn all she had out of the bank, paid?825 for the bus and spent half an hour spraying pink blobs on the side.
Absolute madness. Her father would have paled into one of his thin rages. In her father's Somerset, New Age travellers were the worst kind of vermin, the kind you weren't allowed shoot.
For wealthy, handsome Patrick (fortuitously away at the time on an editors' conference) embarrassment would be the worst of it. Embarrassment tinged, perhaps, with a certain relief. He was very good-looking, slim, two years younger than she. But he had affection for her; he would have been faithful. Perhaps.
Diane had sealed up her beautiful antique diamond ring in a registered envelope and posted it to Patrick, with a letter full of babbling incoherence. Sorry. I just can't. I'm so sorry, Patrick. It's out of my hands. I'll write properly soon. Please don't hate me.
It had been just a week before the widely publicised engagement party at the biggest hotel in Harrogate.
The worst of it for Diane was that, in spite of everything – in spite of Patrick's being virtually the Chosen Suitor – she could have loved him. Probably. But something so far inside that she couldn't reach it loved Glastonbury more.
'So we start going up now, and we wait quietly.'
Mort had with him his new floozie, a slinky little redhead with a muted Germanic accent who seemed to be called Viper. She was wearing a loose, white shift and Mort's hand was up one of the sleeves, carelessly cupping a breast.