'Does it work on dogs?' Powys held open the car door. It was snowing freely now.
'Why not?' said Verity simply. She leaned into the car from the other side. Arnold lay on the back seat, a tartan travelling rug half over him. Powys patted him and then, as if to give Arnold the chance to bite him, nuzzled his face into the furry neck.
Arnold licked him apologetically. It was different out here.
'Do you know what this is?' Powys asked her.
'I think I do.' Verity squeezed the rubber bulb on the end of the glass dropper, her wizened face tight with determination. They had bathed quite a deep cut beneath the dog's ear, where he'd caught it on a nail protruding from the door. They'd felt around his skull, finding no obvious damage. But his breathing was disturbingly erratic.
'It's simply the house,' Verity said, like she was shedding a great weight. 'All animals hate it here. A few weeks ago I had to take a very placid little cat to the Cats' Protection League to be re-homed. She went berserk. Attacked me.'
They sat in the front. The snow accumulated on the recumbent wipers. Powys was not anxious to go back in the house.
'How do you stand it?'
'I'm a very dense person. I do not See. And lately there's been Dr Grainger to… help me.'
'Help you to cope with the dark?'
'I thought he was harmless. I was very lonely, you see. And my friend Wanda Carlisle is very persuasive.'
'Between them they persuaded you that this tenebral therapy nonsense was going to help you cope with what the house was throwing at you?'
'That's exactly it. Foolish, wasn't I? And yet when Oliver Pixhill came and made it clear he wanted me out, Grainger was very kind.'
'This is Colonel Pixhill's son?'
She nodded. 'I thought they didn't know each other. Dr Grainger appeared to be on my side. I thought he was harmless, you see.'
'He might be harmless. His theories might be complete bollocks. But bonding with the dark, while unlikely to cause problems in most places, could be… Well, in a place like this it could be close to suicidal.'
'I've been very stupid. Loneliness, I suppose.' Verity looked out at the snow. 'Do you know why you're here, Mr Powys?'
'Joe. I'm here to collect a parcel for Juanita Carey.'
She turned and examined his face.
'It's funny,' she said. 'You don't look at all like him.'
'Hawthorn. Hops. A little rosemary. Some other things,' Matthew Banks said.
'What's it for?' Juanita felt utterly limp. She'd drunk the herbal mixture and about three pints of water, most of which she'd surely sweated away.
It began in her feet, a prickly heat, like warm goose-pimples, crept up her legs like unwelcome, flaccid hands… and then her whole body, instant sauna, breasts and face burning up.
At least the duvet lay quite comfortably, for the first time, on her flayed thighs, to which Matthew had applied some ointment; it had stung like hell at first, but that was preferable to the other thing which came and came again, a hot tide four or five times in an hour and left her flung against the headboard like a rag doll.
'What's happened to me? Did I just do too much too soon, or what?'
'Forgive me,' Matthew said. 'But when did you last have your period?'
No. No, no no.
'Missed one. Maybe two. Shock, they said. It's normal.'
The last transition for a woman…
'What are you suggesting?' She panicked, hitched herself up on her elbows, 'Listen, Christ, it doesn't happen like this, it can't be, I mean, it doesn't happen from nothing like overnight? It doesn't come at you time and again. Not… nothing and then… Jesus Christ, Matthew…?'
'No.' He straightened the duvet. 'No. It shouldn't happen like that.'
They were all there. All the main ones, anyway; Weymouth Sands, Maiden Castle, Wolf Solent, Porius, Morwyn, Owen Glendower, A Glastonbury Romance – well, naturally. And the Autobiography.
Hardbacks, too, several in leather. She had them arranged in what might once have been a bread oven in the jagged inglenook.
Powys shrank back. He'd never seen all the books together before. like a reception committee.
Took you long enough, boy.
'What?' Almost a yelp. His senses swimming, or maybe drowning.
'I said I'd be most honoured', Verity repeated, 'if you would sign them for me. Later, perhaps?'
'I'm sorry?' He was imagining all the books spinning out of the black hole, whizzing around his head, blown by unearthly laughter.
'I doubted him. Poor Major Shepherd assured me that someone would come. He said I would know.'
'Um, look… Maybe we're both in danger of over-reacting. Do you think?'
The high melodrama of it might normally have made him smile. Anywhere but here, in a room like an ancient vault, haunted by the leather-bound spirit of Uncle Jack of blessed memory.
The collected works seemed to shimmer on the shelves in triumph. Pre-ordained. In this hard, cold, uncompromising house, it all seemed horribly pre-ordained.
He thought about what Diane had said. About the three of them. George Pixhill, John Cowper Powys and Dion Fortune. The Avalonians.
Grey-green light from mean, leaded windows tinctured the silver lettering on the spines of Uncle Jack's books.
Verity and Powys sitting once more at the old, shadowed dining table, where the Colonel's body had lain in state. A brown teapot and cups on it now.
'He came here?' Powys said.
'Only once while I was here. A tall and immensely striking man with curly hair and a hooked nose. He sat… well, where you are sitting now. I was so much in awe, having read his work, that I could not speak to him, let alone ask for his signature on the books.'
A brown paper parcel lay on the table between them.
'Are you going to open it?' Verity asked.
'It isn't addressed to me.'
MRS J CAREY. VERY PRIVATE.
Very firmly written, fountain pen job.
'Do you know what's in here, Verity?'
'I'm perhaps as curious as you are, Mr… Joe.'
Powys felt on edge. The nervous part of him needed to be well out of Meadwell by nightfall. Something was building here, and it wasn't a new Jerusalem. Blake's dark, Satanic mills: in this house you could almost hear those mill wheels grinding.
The other side of Glastonbury. It had always been here.
As had Verity. And not being sensitive was not necessarily a defence. She'd survived, perhaps, because she hadn't yet been personally attacked. But now Grainger would go back and report to whoever had set him up – and Wanda – to come on to Verity, get inside Meadwell, and into the well itself for whatever reason.
This puzzled him, too. If they wanted to penetrate that well, why not come at night – Grainger's chosen medium – go through the field, as Powys had done, hack it open at their leisure?
'Can I use your phone?'
The telephone was in the kitchen, a lighter room because of its white walls, one of which bulged out unpleasantly, like a corpse under a sheet.
Powys called Carey and Frayne. He didn't get the answering machine, he got Matthew Banks.
'She's sleeping at last,' Banks said. 'I've made her comfortable. She shouldn't be disturbed. I shall stay with her as long as I can.'
He left as severe pause.
'Glastonbury as we know it, Mr Powys, may be about to collapse into a chaos unseen since the Dark Ages, but, as Juanita appears to be my patient now, I must put her interests first. I hope you understand that.'
'Yes,' Powys said. 'I'm glad. If she wakes up before I'm back, tell her everything's… tell her I'm doing my best.'
Whatever that meant.
He went back to open the brown paper parcel.
SIX
THE OLD VICARAGE COLN ST MARY GLOUCESTERSHIRE
My dear Mrs Carey, Your no doubt somewhat bewildered receipt of this parcel follows either my death or my discreet removal to some secluded nursing home where the wheelchairs are locked up at night to ensure the inmates do not escape! No, do mot mourn for me, my dear. Save all your grief. You may well need it.