The Chalice Read Online Free PDF

exactly. As she put it, she
kind of hitched a lift. They were making their way here, and she ...'
       Juanita reached for her cigarettes.
           '... Oh dear. She said it was calling her back.'
       Jim groaned. 'Not again. Dare I ask
what, specifically , was calling her
back?'
           'The Tor.' Juanita lit a cigarette. 'What else?'
           Jim was remembering that time the girl had gone missing and
they'd found her just before dawn under the Thorn on Wearyall Hill, in her nightie
and bare feet. What was she then, fifteen? He sank the last of the Laphroaig.
He was too old for this sort of caper.
           'Lady Loony,' he said. 'Do people still call her that?'

FOUR
    A Fine Shiver
     
    The ancient odour had drifted
in as soon as Diane wound down the van window, and it was just so ... Well, she
could have wept. How could she have forgotten the scent?
           The van had jolted between the rotting gateposts into Don
Moulder's bottom field. It had bounced over grass still ever so parched from a long,
dry summer and spiky from the harvest. Diane had turned off the engine, sat
back in the lumpy seat, closed her eyes and let it reach her through the open
window; the faraway fragrance of Holy Avalon.
           Actually, she hadn't wound down the window, as such. Just pulled out the folded Rizlas packet which held
the glass in place and let it judder to its favourite halfway position. It was rather
an old van, a Ford something or other
- used to be white all over but she'd painted big, silly pink spots on it so it
wouldn't stand out from the rest of the convoy.
           The smell made her happy and sad. It was heavy with memories
and was actually a blend of several scents, the first of them autumn, a brisk,
mustardy tang. And then woodsmoke - there always seemed to be woodsmoke in
rural Somerset, much of it applewood which was rich and mellow and sweetened
the air until you could almost taste it.
           And over that came the most elusive ingredient: the musk of
mystery, a scent which summoned visions. Of the Abbey in the evening, when the
saddened stones grew in grace and sang to the sunset. Of wind-whipped Wearyall Hill
with the night gathering in the startled tangle of the Holy Thorn. Of the balmy
serenity of the Chalice Well garden. And of the great enigma of the West:
Glastonbury Tor.
           Diane opened her eyes and looked up at the huge green breast
with its stone nipple.
           She wasn't the only one. All around, people had been dropping
out of vans and buses, an ambulance, a stock wagon. Gazing up at the holy hill,
no more than half a mile away. Journey's end for the pagan pilgrims. And for
Diane Ffitch, who called herself Molly Fortune because she was embarrassed by
her background, confused about her reason for returning and rather afraid,
actually.
     
    Dusk was nibbling the fringes
of Don Moulder's bottom field when the last few vehicles crawled in. They
travelled in smaller groups nowadays, because of the law. An old Post
Office van with a white pentacle on the bonnet was followed by Mort's famous
souped-up hearse, where he liked to make love, on the long coffin-shelf. Love is the law , Mort said, Love over death.
           Headlice and Rozzie arrived next in the former Bolton
Corporation single decker bus repainted in black and yellow stripes, like a
giant bee.
           'Listen, I've definitely been here before!' Headlice jumped
down, grinning eerily through teeth like a broken picket fence. He was about
nineteen or twenty; they were so awfully young ,
most of these people. At that age, Diane thought, you could go around saying
you were a confirmed pagan, never giving a thought to what it really meant.
           'I mean, you know, not in this life, obviously,' Headlice said,
'In a past life, yeah?' Looking up
expectantly, as though he thought mystic rays might sweep him away and carry
him blissfully to the top of the holy hill.