‘Would you like me to say a prayer?’ Abi asked cautiously. She gave a half-smile and shook her head. ‘It’s what I do. Sorry. Perhaps not.’
‘Say one in there if you want.’ Athena indicated a door across the narrow passageway opposite the kitchen. ‘I’ll stay here if you don’t mind. Abi, the goddess thing. I don’t think I ever really believed it. I tried to. I enjoyed all their rituals and stuff to start with, or most of them,’ she said, grinning. ‘But then I started to have problems with it all. For instance, I could never bring myself to sit on the egg-stone! Did you see it, the Tor Bur behind the abbots’ kitchen in the abbey grounds? Someone has left it there at the foot of the wall and so many legends have built up round it. There is a depression in it which could look as though it was made to hold your crystal! Don’t even ask what they use it for. It would really upset your vicarly susceptibilities. I had swallowed the whole “this is the authentic religion of the British Isles, it is as ancient as time itself” thing for a while, but it wasn’t. I began to feel a shallowness. It was all made up. Part of the feminist movement. It had no substance. They wanted it to be real so badly, and who knows, perhaps I’m wrong and it is, but it just didn’t do it for me.’
Abi didn’t know what to say. She slipped off her stool. The main room of the flat was large with full-length windows leading onto a narrow wooden balcony which overlooked the courtyard below. On it a cluster of ceramic pots held a riot of flowers. The curtains and drapes were all shades of the same green-blue as the mugs and plates in the kitchen. She looked round. There was an old sofa, spread with a sequined shawl, piled high with cushions, a couple of soft armchairs, a low table, loaded with magazines and books and a huge chunky candle, an ancient TV and a modern sound system, and against the wall the small keyboard instrument, its lid open, music on the music rest. Abi went and stood looking down at it. Mozart. She reached out a finger and stroked one of the keys. The sound was so quiet she barely heard it.
‘He’s gone, hasn’t he.’ The voice behind her made her jump.
She glanced round and nodded. ‘I think so. Perhaps he just came to say goodbye.’
‘I wonder?’ Athena’s voice was bitter. ‘More likely, “Now I can really fuck you up, Athena! I’ll come and haunt you for the rest of your days. That will be fun!”’ She threw herself down on the sofa.
Abi perched on a chair opposite her. ‘It sounds as though you two had a lot of unfinished business.’
‘You could say so.’
‘You’re a wise woman, Athena. You know what to do. Let it go. Let him go.’
‘Do you think I don’t want to?’
‘I think you didn’t want to.’
‘And now I do?’
‘Now you can.’
Athena leaned back, studying her face. ‘I suspect you were a bloody good vicar.’
Abi gave a rueful smile, shaking her head. ‘Obviously not good enough. But this I think I do understand. Whatever unfinished business there was between you is over now. It’s up to you to forgive him and send him on his way with your blessing. It will free you both. Then you can move on.’
‘The usual, sadly rather trite piece of advice. Next comes, “Get on with the rest of your life”. Counsellors’ psychobabble.’
‘It’s a bit of psychobabble that works.’ Abi shrugged. ‘If you nurture your hurt it will stay with you. Spoil your life. That would be your fault, not his. You’re worth more than that, Athena. You are a strong woman. You can do it.’
‘Why did you come here this morning, Abi? To ask me what to do about your vanishing ghosts? It seems to me you know all the answers yourself.’ Athena gave a quiet chuckle. ‘OK. Give me a few minutes to get dressed and we’ll go out. Leave Tim to tinkle away here if he wants to.’ She went over and threw open the windows. ‘There. Now his spirit can leave unimpeded. Bon voyage, my dear.’ She waved at the window.
Abi waited for her in the kitchen. Then they went to the Chalice Well.
‘It seems the right place for both of us, today.’ Athena walked ahead of her up the cobbled path and through the gardens. The place was deserted.
Abi looked round in delight. ‘I had forgotten it was all so beautiful and serene.’
‘There is so much love here.’ Athena paused as they reached the well head itself. The ornate wooden lid decorated with the iron Vesica Piscis, the interlinked circles whose ancient symbolism brings together pagan and Christian, East and West, lay open, ferns growing out from under the iron grid which covered the dark, still water. One or two flowers floated on its surface and someone had left a ring of tealights on the well’s rim. The flames flickered slightly in the breeze. ‘People come here with their prayer and blessings,’ Athena said quietly. ‘It is the right place for both of us, today. Your Mora would have come here all the time. And Tim loved it here. It was here he told me he was leaving me. He thought it would soften the blow, saying it here.’
Abi bit her lip. ‘Athena –’
‘No. This is the place to lay the demons. You are right about that. I won’t have him destroying my relationship with one of the most sacred places in England. I never came back after that day.’ She sat down on the wall which bounded the flowerbeds. Behind her a small pink cyclamen, caught for a moment in a ray of sunlight echoed the delicate shade of the drooping flowers hanging from a fuchsia bush. ‘He spoiled it for me. What an irony. I don’t think he meant to. I think he really did feel it would make it easier.’ She paused as behind the neighbouring yew trees a young man, sitting down on a hidden bench, began to pluck a quiet, doleful tune from his guitar. ‘He knew how much I loved it here,’ she went on in a whisper. ‘That was part of the trouble. He felt I loved this town, the whole Avalon experience, more than him. He wanted to get back to reality.’
‘Reality is such a subjective thing,’ Abi said after a long pause. ‘What you and I think of as beauty and truth someone else considers a complete cop out.’
‘I think that someone else is probably right.’ Athena sighed.
Abi was staring down at the water in the well. It was dark and still. As she looked a leaf drifted down and settled beside the white daisies someone had left there, floating on the surface. It made a small ripple. She could see the blood-red traces of the iron chalybeate staining the wall of the well below the moss. This was the red spring, so sacred to the ancients, in the depths of which, so legend had it, after the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathaea on his return to Glastonbury hid the Chalice of the Last Supper. Above it the two yew trees lazily scattered crimson berries around their feet.
‘It’s the blood of the earth.’ The voice beside her was soft. She looked up. Mora was standing there, staring down into the water of the well. Except it wasn’t a well any more it was a spring, surrounded by trees, yew trees, perhaps the ancestors of the same yew trees under which they had been sitting moments before. Mora looked up and smiled at her. ‘This is the most sacred place.’
‘I know,’ Abi whispered. ‘I can feel it.’
‘He came here with me,’ Mora went on. ‘Yeshua. He understood.’
Abi felt her eyes filling with tears. ‘What happened up there in the hills? Did Flavius find you that day?’
Mora nodded. ‘Oh yes, he found us.’ She looked down into the water again. ‘Look deep into the crystal. It will tell you Yeshua’s story. He was such a special person. A man who would change everything – ’ Already she was fading, a shadow in the sunlight, no more.
‘Don’t go!’ Abi jumped to her feet. But where Mora had been standing there was nothing but the shadows of the trees. The well was once more enclosed by a stone rim with an iron-clad lid to close it out of sight.
Athena smiled at her. ‘Mora was here?’
Abi nodded. ‘Did you see her? She told me to look in the crystal. She knew about the crystal. She knew who – ’ She paused. ‘Who Yeshua was.’
Athena shook her head. ‘Did you bring it with you?’
‘No.’
‘Go and find it then. Go home no
w, Abi. I think I’ll stay here for a bit.’ It was a dismissal. She had not asked where Yeshua fitted into the story.
Kier switched off his phone and stared thoughtfully out of the car window. He was parked outside Morrisons and had been about to drive away when Professor Rutherford had phoned him. ‘Have you seen her? How is she?’ The professor sounded thoroughly irritable.
Kier sighed. Poor Abi. No wonder she had wanted to escape if that was her father’s usual demeanour. ‘I’ve seen her a couple of times,’ he said cautiously. ‘She is still adamant sadly that she doesn’t want to speak to me.’
‘What are these people like who she is staying with?’ Harry Rutherford asked after a moment’s thought. ‘I believe my wife knew them, but as far as I know she hadn’t seen them for a long time.’
‘They seem decent enough,’ Kier replied cautiously, ‘but obviously they are shielding her. They believe that I have somehow offended her, I am not very welcome in their house.’
There was another short silence. ‘Have you found the wretched stone yet?’
‘What stone?’ Kier flicked an imaginary speck of dust off his trouser leg. He was watching a woman manoeuvre a heavy trolley closer and closer to his car. In a moment he would have to get out to show her that he was there and would not appreciate his car being rammed by her wretched shopping. No, she had spotted him and yanked it back on course. He sighed with relief.
‘Didn’t I tell you about the stone?’ Rutherford sounded incredulous.
Kier shook his head. Good grief. She had got one, two, three six-packs of beer in that trolley. And now came the wine. No wonder it was so heavy. ‘Sorry, Harry, what were you saying about a stone?’
Ten minutes later Kier was still listening. The woman had long since driven away.
‘Yes, I can see why you would hesitate to tell anyone about it,’ he murmured. ‘It sounds like complete fantasy.’
He sat still for a long time after the call. Clearly Harry Rutherford was right. This explained everything. The change in her attitude, her obsession, sudden supernatural powers which were, he now realised, beyond her control. Nothing to do with her. He had to find this ridiculous stone and dispose of it. He was as certain as the professor that the legend Abi’s mother had attached to it was complete rubbish, but that made it no less potent. After all Laura Rutherford had believed it and now, so did Abi herself. It was the stone which had destroyed their relationship. It explained everything if it was after she had been given the thing that she started to turn against him.
He chewed his lip thoughtfully. She was not going to give it to him calmly, that was for sure. So, how in the world was he going to get hold of it?
He was staying at a small hotel in Wells. He loved Wells, the cathedral, the ancient city, the bishop’s palace. The whole place soothed his soul and, he glanced at his watch, if he set off now, he could be there in time for evensong. Resolutely he drove past the gate of Woodley Manor without even looking. Tomorrow, after a night of prayer and careful planning he would return and think of a way of retrieving this superstitious lump of rock. Then he would take it and throw it in the Bishop of Bath and Wells’s moat. It would be a fitting resting place for it. He shook his head with a wry smile. ‘I don’t believe I’ve agreed to do this. This is ridiculous. Mad! Insane!’
At the Rectory next morning Ben was scraping the last fragment of boiled egg from its shell, The Times folded open at the leader page on the table in front of him, when Janet came back into the kitchen after answering the phone in the hall. He glanced up.
‘Abi,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t put her off. She sounded distraught.’
He put down his egg spoon with a sigh. ‘Is she coming straight over?’
Janet nodded. ‘I’ve checked the fire in your study and I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.’
He glanced at her. This was a change of tune from last time. Kier had annoyed her so much she was prepared to accept Abi now without comment. Standing up he refolded The Times and handed it to her.
‘Shall I make the coffee now?’ Janet asked.
‘Please. Meanwhile, I’ll go and say a prayer before she comes.’
Ben stood at the window in his study staring out across the grass. The wind in the night had brought down a lot more leaves. Under the maple tree at the edge of the lawn a fresh carpet of gold lay in an exact circle on the grass beneath its branches which were almost bare now. With a sigh he closed his eyes and tried to marshal his thoughts.
Abi waited until Janet had set the tray of coffee down on the side table and left the room before she turned to Ben. ‘I’ve lost her.’
‘Lost who?’ Ben was expecting to talk about Kier.
‘Mora. I can’t contact her. I’ve lost the thread of the story. She appeared to me at the Chalice Well yesterday, just briefly, and she said I should look in the crystal, but the crystal is useless. It isn’t working. I can’t do it any more.’ She paced up and down the room a couple of times. ‘And now Mora has gone. I tried all night.’
Surreptitiously Ben studied her face. She looked drawn and utterly exhausted. ‘And you got no sleep at all,’ he said quietly.
Abi nodded. ‘There is something I haven’t told you.’ She sat down on the edge of the chair.
Ben walked over to the tray and began to pour the coffee. He said nothing for a few moments, waiting for her to go on. When he turned back to her with the cup in his hand she was staring down at the floor.
He put the cup down on the table beside her. ‘What is it you haven’t told me, Abi?’ he said at last.
‘I’ve seen Jesus.’ She looked up at him and he saw defiance in her expression. And fear. Was she expecting him to laugh? To ridicule her? To have her sectioned, or to send to the bishop’s office to have her made a saint?
He turned away and took the chair opposite her. ‘Supposing you tell me exactly what happened.’
‘He was here, at the druid school. Studying. The story, the legend is true. He came here, to England. He spent time here. With Mora.’ She was twisting her hands together nervously as she told him the whole story. ‘Obviously he wasn’t called Jesus. They all call him Yeshua, but that is all right, isn’t it? Some people say that was his real name. Obviously we know Flavius couldn’t have killed him because he went back to the Holy Land to begin his teaching there but what happened when he tried to get near him? Did Flavius kill Mora? Did Romanus help him? What happened in that hut? I have to know.’ There was a hint of something like desperation in her voice.
Ben stared thoughtfully into the fire. ‘It seems strange that suddenly your visions should have been stopped. Did that coincide with Kier’s arrival?’
It was not the response she had expected. Why hadn’t he pounced on her revelation?
She frowned. ‘No. Yes. I don’t know! Why?’
‘I wondered if his presence down here, his belief that this is a demonic visitation, had acted as an inhibitor to your,’ he hesitated, trying to find the right word, ‘your experiences. Your imaginative faculty might have shut down and your rational good sense reawakened.’
She leaped to her feet. ‘My imaginative – you think I’ve imagined all this?’
‘Some of it, possibly. Abi, you know you might have. The ghosts, well Cal has substantiated your reports of those, but this other story – the detail – we have to keep an open mind. Having said that, whatever is happening here was, at least at first, a viable experience for you. It was tied up with experiences of otherworldly beings that others have seen. At the same time it is possible that you have been drawn in to the whole Glastonbury thing, my dear. I don’t want to belittle what you have seen, or think you have seen, but you know as well as I do that the idea that an historical Jesus came to England is complete rubbish. It is not possible. Why on earth would he have wanted to come here, to the ends of the Earth, to study with a bunch of pagan savages who were immersed in human sacrifice?’
She shook her head in despair. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong. You’ve got them wrong. T
here was no human sacrifice. They were learned men and women, the druids. They were wise, cultured, respected across the world. Jesus went to Egypt to study first, everyone knows that, then he went east, to India and Tibet.’ She ignored Ben’s slowly shaking head. ‘Then he came west. He needed to absorb and understand the learning of the Gentiles as well as that of the Jews. He had come to save the whole world. He needed to understand the scale of what he was undertaking. Everyone thinks he was just focused on the local scene. The small area round Galilee, but he wasn’t. He had visited other countries. He knew about other places, races, beliefs.’
Ben clasped his hands together and studied his knuckles for a few moments. Then he looked up. ‘I’m sorry, Abi. I have no right to denigrate what you are saying. It only shows how rigid are my own beliefs. Maybe you are right.’ He paused again. ‘But I don’t know where to go from here. I know you are praying for guidance as to what the right thing is that you should do, and I will do the same. It’s just that it is an area I know so little about.’
He reached for his cup. Abi was watching him in something like despair. ‘You haven’t asked me what he looked like,’ she said at last.
Ben shook his head. ‘You said you thought he was in his mid-twenties.’
‘Did I?’ She shrugged. ‘He was amazing. Strong, yet gentle. But he was confused. He had a temper. He was a healer, but he was impatient as well. So human. Attractive.’
Ben smiled. ‘Just as I – and perhaps you – would have imagined him to be.’
She nodded. ‘So, I can’t win. You are not going to believe me.’
‘I want to, Abi,’ he said. ‘You have no idea how much I want to.’ He took a thoughtful sip from his cup. ‘There is someone who could help us, perhaps. Someone who could look at this more objectively; who might understand the technicalities of what is happening to you. My brother, Justin.’