Read Online The Chalice by Phil Rickman - Free Book Online

composed
of layers of clay and blue limestone, capped by a mass of hard,
erosion-resistant sandstone.
     
           'How do they know that, anyway?' It was almost too dark to
make out the print. 'How do they know it's a natural formation?'
       'What's it matter?' Rozzie said.
       Because it could've been built here, you daft bat. By the ancient
shamans. Like the pyramids. According to the lines of force and the position of
the heavens.'
     
    The Tor is and has been to
many people a place of magic, the focus of legend and superstition. One local
story is that there is a hollow space inside; another, perhaps very ancient,
that the hill has a secret entrance to the Underworld.
     
           Headlice felt sick to his gut to see it spelled out like this,
baby talk, for every ice-lolly sucking day-tripper. He wanted to rip down the board,
smash the collecting box, hack up the concrete path. Then the Tor would be a
secret place again. A place for pilgrims. He turned away, needing to put this
tourist shit behind him.
           'Come on.' Pulling at Rozzie.
           'Get your mits off. Wanna read this last bit.'
     
    The Tor was the scene of
the hanging, drawing and quartering of Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury,
when Henry VIII dissolved the Abbey in 1539.
     
           'Heavy,' Rozzie said.
           'Yeah. Shit.' Headlice dropped the match as it burned down to
his fingers. 'I didn't know about that.'
           He looked up to where night had fused the hill and the tower
into a single dark lump.
           'Still.' He walked off along the shining path. 'Maybe the old
git had it coming.'
     
    Alone for the first time
since she'd joined the convoy, Diane sat in Headlice's bus, a woollen shawl
around her shoulders, and unwrapped a peppermint flavoured carob bar.
           She was sitting on one of the original vinyl-covered bus seats
still bolted to the floor. The bus windows were purpled by a November night as
soft and luminous as June.
           So this was it. Breathing space over. She was back.
           What
happens now?
           Part of her wanted to take her van and leave quietly. Drive to
Juanita's. She'd really missed Juanita, the older sister she'd never had. She
really ought to explain. But what on earth could she say? Juanita might run a
New Age bookshop, but she could be rather disparaging about people's visions. .
           I was dreaming every
night about the Tor. Vivid colours .
       Common homesickness. You'll get
over it.
           Kept seeing things sort
of metamorphose into the Tor. Salt and vinegar shakers in cafes. Plastic
bottles of toilet cleaner. And flashing images of it when I closed my eyes.
           Hyper-active imagination. Next.
           Stopping at traffic
lights behind lorries owned by Glastonbury firms. Or houses called Avalon.
       Oh, really...
           And sometimes I'd wake
up in the middle of the night sensing her near me, in the room.
       Oh God, not...
       The
third Nanny.
       You're nuts, Diane.
           She began to rock backwards and forwards, holding herself
tight in the shawl . Oh God, Oh God, what
am I doing here?
           Two weeks ago, Patrick had shown her pictures of his family's
villa in Chianti country. Wonderful place for a honeymoon. Lovely place, decent
man. Oh God.
           A shadow passed the window. Then another. She sat very still
for a moment. They'd all gone, she'd watched them. Mort and Viper the last to
go. She heard a giggle and a hiss.
           Kids. There were three or four children in a converted ambulance
at the other end of the field, in the care of a sullen teenager called Hecate,
a large girl who claimed to be sixteen but was probably younger.
           There'd been quite a few babies in the convoy when it first
set off, but by the time they reached the beginning of the St Michael Line at
Bury