The Chalice

'Wish there was then, do you?' Pennard took down a box of cartridges.

'My head of department has been known to express a desire to blow a few, um, protesters away.'

Pennard broke the gun, dropped in a cartridge, then another.

'So, let me get this absolutely straight. You've come here to inform me that a bunch of these eco-guerilla chaps've caught a whisper that we've been pre-empting things on the new road. How did you get that information?'

'We've, um, infiltrated the movement. Can't say more than that. Have to protect our informants, Lord Pennard.'

'Quite.' Pennard snapped the gun shut with a ferocious click. Powys thought. If he's trying to intimidate me, he's… succeeding.

'Good of you to drop in and tell me, Powys. In your undercover attire, too. Suppose you need to mix with these scum, do you? Gather your intelligence?'

'Sometimes.'

The problem was he hadn't decided on an actual strategy, beyond getting in to see Pennard. Meeting the guy rather reduced the options. The handful of lords and dukes Powys encountered while exploring their grounds for ancient sites had been generally affable, so confident of their status they could be almost humble.

'And you're prepared to protect us, are you?' Pennard said, gun in his arms. 'If things get rough?'

'Well, we, um, we value your co-operation in this rather delicate situation.'

'Delicate, Powys? What's delicate about it?'

'Well, some people seem to think the road will damage not so much the natural ecology as the, um, spiritual ecology.'

If he wasn't careful he'd be talking like Pel Grainger.

'In what way?' Pennard, demanded.

'Well… these people consider this particular landscape to be sacred. More so than anywhere else in Britain.'

'Damned idiots, then, aren't they?'

'Depends on where you stand.'

'I stand on my own land. Powys. Where do you stand?'

'We civil servants,' Powys said, 'We generally stand where we're told to stand.'

Lord Pennard shouldered the twelve-bore. Sighted on the ceiling and then brought the barrel down until its two holes were aimed either side of the bridge of Powys's nose.

'Know what I think, Powys? I think you're a damned liar.'

Powys swallowed.

'To begin with,' Pennard said, 'I don't for one minute believe there's such an organisation as the Department of Transport Investigations Branch.'

He moved the gun barrel an inch or two to point at the leather bench sofa.

'Siddown.'

His eyes were diamond-hard. Powys sat.

'Let's have it, then.'

'All right' Powys looked away from the gun. 'I said I was with the Department of Transport because you wouldn't have seen me if I'd told you who I really was.'

'Which is?'

'Oh, I'm just a bloke who writes daft books. And I've been helping out with the magazine Diane's going to be editing '

'Where is my daughter?'

'I wondered if you might know.'

'I don't.'

'You ought to,' Powys said. 'Don't you think?'

Pennard was silent, the gun barrel steady.

'Um, do you really need that thing?'

Pennard lowered the twelve-bore, broke it. 'You're right.' He slipped out both cartridges. 'If the occasion arose, I could tear your head off with my bare hands.'

He hung the gun in the cupboard. Shut the doors and locked it.

Powys said, 'This thing you have about tearing people's heads off. Would that be hereditary by any chance?'

Lord Pennard went so stiff and so pale in the cold white lamplight that Powys thought for a moment that the occasion had arisen.

'You're either a brave man,' Pennard said, 'or an extremely desperate one.'

'And Verity, darling,' Wanda said on the telephone. 'You'll never guess what's happened.'

'No,' said Verity, 'I don't suppose I will.'

'Bloody woman always gets the flu at the wrong time. I mean, could you, would you…? For Solstice?'

Verity glanced at Councillor Woolaston who nodded.

'I suppose I am at rather a loose end.'

'Splendid. I'll have your room ready. Shall we say one hour?'

'I'm not happy about this,' Verity said, replacing the receiver. The kitchen pipes gurgled with an ominous glee.

'You're better out of this,' Councillor Woolaston said.

'It's not my place to be out of it.'

'You've done your time. Verity. You've served him well. Better than he had any right to demand.'

'It never was in his nature to demand. But I was thinking more of you. You should not be here alone'

'I won't be alone,' he said, 'when they come to do the well.'

'Councillor Woolaston, I don't think you realise…'

The poor little man looked quite wretched, his eyes deep with sorrow, his beard almost white. She was sure his beard had not been white the last time she saw him.

'… the depth of… of evil… that is in this place. I know that sounds almost ridiculously melodramatic'

The end wall of the kitchen seemed particularly swollen tonight, like an abscess about to burst.

'Oh,' said Councillor Woolaston with a nonchalance which only betrayed how little he now valued his own life and sanity, 'I think I do. I think I've known it for a long time, Go on, Verity, man. Wanda don't get her gin and Horlicks she'll never be up in time tomorrow.'

'I'll get my overnight case.'

'Don't forget to switch off all the lights,' said the little councillor.

Verity felt very afraid for him.

NINE

Contaminant

Lord Pennard uncapped a new bottle of Famous Grouse.

'You'll have a drink.'

'No th-'

'Wasn't a question, Powys. You will have a drink.'

Powys shrugged. Pennard poured him an inch of Scotch in a thick tumbler and went to sit at his desk with the pile of hunting and shooting magazines.

'So that devious, milksop bastard Pixhill wrote it all down. If this is blackmail, Powys, I have to tell you we're not a good prospect, the Ffitches. Haven't been for years.'

'Not since the great days of the Dark Chalice?'

'Bunkum.' Pennard gazed into his Scotch as if pictures might form there. 'Spent half a lifetime telling m'self that, father was a great believer Always react against our parents, isn't that the way of it?'

'Like Archer's reacted against you?'

Outside, the snow had turned back to rain and sprayed the window, which was protected by metal security blinds.

'Powys.' Pennard rolled the name around his mouth with a slosh of whisky. 'You a descendant of the old hack?'

'Maybe.'

'Met him a time or two. Thought a good deal of himself. Talked and bloody talked. But that's the Welsh for you.'

'He wasn't Welsh.'

'Bugger should have been then.'

'That's what he thought too,' Powys said. 'Did he talk much about the Chalice?'

'Not going to let that go, are you? No, he didn't. Learned his lesson by then. Some chap in town, forget has name, convinced he'd been portrayed in that damned great book as the villain of the piece. Sued the piss out of Powys. Made bugger all from that book, in the end. Served him right.'

Powys smiled.

'Come along,' Pennard said. 'Get this over. Tell me what the bastard said.'

'You want the lot?'

'Got all night.'

I haven't, Powys thought, worrying about Juanita and Diane and Verity and everything that might need to be done before dawn.

'As far as I can gather,' he said, 'your family seems to trace its roots in Somerset back to the mid-eighteenth century. At least the first Viscount Pennard…'

'1765. Roger Ffitch. Like my father.'

'But the Ffitches had held land in the area for a long time before that. Over two hundred years in fact. Basically, since 1539 and the dissolution of the monasteries. When a certain Ffitch was rewarded for services rendered to the king.'