The Wounded Thorn

by Fay Sampson

  ‘Which brings us back to where we started. If he feels that strongly about it, would he blow up the well itself? It might have made more sense to plant the bomb here at the shop. Strike at the commercialization of it.’

  ‘God! I hope not!’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. But you get my point.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware that Mel too had started at the suggestion. The fine-boned face behind the make-up looked pale.

  Does she know something that she’s hiding, Hilary wondered, or suspect it?

  ‘Hilary, look!’

  Hilary had been aware for some time that Veronica had been fidgeting at her elbow, wanting to say something, but she had resolutely pursued her questioning. Now she had gathered all she could, though she had an uneasy sense that, in one respect at least, the mystery was deepening. She turned at last to meet her friend’s eager face.

  ‘It’s her. Joan. She’s got herself on TV too.’

  Hilary peered through the open doors that led to the gardens. One of the TV crews had set up its camera to show a background of the Vesica Pool, with the tumbling waterfall and a bank of spring flowers behind it. Posed in front of it was the female interviewer with a microphone, talking to the would-be journalist Joan Townsend.

  ‘She looks happier this morning, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Which is more than can be said for me. It was not my intention to get my face plastered all over the gutter press.’

  ‘It was only page five, Hilary. And quite a small photo.’

  ‘Big enough.’

  She waited until the interview was over. Joan Townsend seemed reluctant to leave the TV crew, but they folded up their equipment and moved off.

  Hilary took a deep breath. Then she strode past a couple entering the shop, out into the gardens.

  For a moment, Joan Townsend looked puzzled as Hilary marched towards her. Then enlightenment took over her sallow face.

  ‘It’s you! Did you see it? I made it into one of the biggies. Exclusive! I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to see you about, young lady. Did you have to drag me into it? Hilary Masters, sixty-one.’

  But Joan’s attention had already slipped from her. She was looking over her shoulder at the departing camera crew. She broke into a run after them.

  ‘What the …?’

  ‘I think you’ve just made a really bad mistake,’ said Veronica, behind her, with quiet enjoyment.

  Before Hilary understood what she meant, the TV crew had turned and were hurrying back in Joan’s wake.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  Hilary tried to push her way past Veronica and back into the gift shop, but her friend cornered her.

  ‘Just a few minutes. Look, Joan’s in her element. A column in the tabloids, and now she’s fixed a story for the BBC. Give her a break.’

  Hilary found a fluffy-headed microphone confronting her. The cameraman was crouching, to get a good angle on her in front of a bed of bright pink valerian, beside the water tumbling into the pool. Joan Townsend was sparkling with achievement.

  Oh well, Hilary thought. In for a penny, in for a pound. She managed a strained smile for the camera.

  The interviewer turned to face the camera too. ‘Yesterday, one of Glastonbury’s most precious sites was threatened by a terrorist bomb. Thankfully, it did not go off. For that we have to thank the keen eyes and quick thinking of visitor Hilary Masters.’

  She swung round to face Hilary. The microphone was thrust towards her. ‘Now, Hilary, tell us. What brought you to Glastonbury and the Chalice Well yesterday?’

  Hilary stared at the microphone in disbelief. How could she tell the entire nation that she was worried sick about David working in Gaza, that Veronica had lost her much-loved husband, that it had seemed a good idea to take their minds off this by revisiting the holy places of Glastonbury?

  ‘The same as most people,’ she shortly.

  ‘And that would be?’

  ‘Ancient sacred history, of course. And I’d never got around to seeing the Chalice Well.’

  A young man spoke over the presenter’s shoulder. ‘Hey, Gillian, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we all move on to the well and do a retake there?’

  ‘Last time I saw it, it was cordoned off with police tape,’ Hilary objected. ‘It probably still is.’

  ‘All the better. Adds to the drama.’

  With a furious look at Veronica, Hilary found herself being shepherded up the path she had taken yesterday.

  She had been right about the police tape. They were halted some distance from the wellhead. There was no police activity at the Chalice Well now, but another lone policeman stood guard.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘No entry.’

  Hilary looked past him. She could make out the lid of the well, open as it had been yesterday. It was an eerie thought that it might have been mangled wreckage today. Its very normality seemed unreal.

  The producer’s face fell. He said to his cameraman, ‘Get a long lens on the wellhead, will you? And get that police tape in shot. We’ll have to take the interview from here.’

  Gillian, the presenter, began again. ‘Now, Hilary, tell us what brought you to the Chalice Well …’

  SEVEN

  ‘Serves you right,’ Veronica said over a salad lunch. ‘You didn’t buy a ticket to go into the grounds. You should have stayed in the shop. If you’d just let Joan enjoy her moment in the sun, it wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘There’s no need to rub it in. I could kick myself. My friends won’t have read that rag this morning, but they will watch the BBC news.’

  ‘Hilary, dear. It’s not a crime to stop someone blowing up the Chalice Well. You don’t have to be ashamed of it.’

  ‘Hmm!’

  ‘Look what they did to the Glastonbury Thorn. That was terrible. It could have been the same at the well.’ She paused, as a thought struck her. ‘You don’t think it was the same person, do you?’

  ‘How should I know? The Thorn was four years ago. If it was the same maniac, they’ve been sitting on their hands for quite some time. Well, apart from coming back to cut off all the new shoots. All the same, there’s a big difference between a chainsaw and a homemade bomb.’

  ‘You can find out all sorts of things on the internet nowadays. Including bomb-making. And a chainsaw wouldn’t have been much use at the well. They could have attacked that rather nice cover, but not the spring itself.’

  ‘I’m not sure even a bomb could do that. The spring comes from deep underground. The water would still have had to flow out somewhere.’

  ‘It’s more symbolic, isn’t it? Shattering something that is precious to people.’

  ‘I hate to think that religion is at the bottom of it. Somebody on one side or the other, Christian or pagan, who wanted to deny it to the opposition.’

  ‘There are always fanatics. It’s not the way most religious people think.’

  ‘Or somebody with a grudge against Britain in general. Going for the things in our heritage that mean a lot to all of us.’

  ‘If it is the same person, then it looks like someone local to Glastonbury.’

  ‘Or, on the other hand, the two may have nothing to do with each other. Or perhaps the bomber got the idea from the Thorn vandal.’

  ‘Very true.’ Veronica laid down her knife and fork. ‘You said you wanted to go to the abbey after lunch. Are you still up for it?’

  ‘Why not? Of all the sacred places in Glastonbury, the abbey is at the heart of it.’

  Sunshine lit the level grass around the abbey ruins. Tall shafts of columns soared into the summer sky, where once the transept had divided the nave of the great church from the magnificent choir. Hilary felt dizzy looking up at it.

  She lowered her eyes. Far down the length of the demolished nave she could see the more complete remains of the Galilee porch and the Lady Chapel beyond. Stones set in the grass outside marked where the cloisters had once offered shady
walks to the monks.

  Veronica was dutifully following the guidebook, moving from site to site. Hilary stood in the sunshine letting the ripples of remembered history wash over her. The book she had bought this morning told her that there had been a wattle-and-daub church here, dating back, supposedly, to the second century, in the time of the Romans. She found the subsequent unbroken line of Christianity here in the south-west staggering. St Bridget of Ireland was said to have come here. By the time the Saxons reached Glastonbury, they too had been converted to Christianity. The Anglo-Saxon king Ine had built a stone church here, at the western end of this nave. The great abbot Dunstan, in the tenth century, had built one of the earliest cloistered monasteries in England. A shiver ran down her spine as she thought of all the centuries of veneration before the Normans had raised their soaring abbey church.

  She was startled out of her reverie by a procession of miniature monks in black Benedictine habits, hands folded in prayer. Some walked in careful solemnity. Others had eyes dancing with mischief under their hoods.

  Hilary gave the thumbs-up sign as a passing boy threw her a grin.

  She watched Veronica come back and stop near the front of the grassy nave, not far from her. Hilary knew what the notice said. She raised her voice.

  ‘Tomb of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, supposedly. Their bones were found in the cemetery outside in 1190. Moved into a magnificent tomb in the nave by Edward the First in 1278. If the Welsh are giving you aggro, it’s a good idea for the king to flaunt his Celtic credentials.’

  Veronica paused and looked up. ‘Terribly romantic, though, don’t you think? Finding a deep grave in the cemetery with a hollowed-out log for a coffin and the bones of a gigantic man inside, with those of a lovely lady.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can tell she was beautiful from the bones.’

  ‘And a lead cross saying Here lies Arthur, the famous king, in the island of Avalon.’

  ‘If you can believe it. Mind you, they say the lettering on the cross is older than the twelfth century when it was found. It would have taken a very cunning monk to mock that up in those days. Still, there’s no getting away from it – genuine or not, the find was huge for the pilgrimage business. And they’d just had an appalling fire.’

  ‘Don’t be such a cynic.’

  ‘I’m not. In my opinion, they really did find something significant. Shall we take a look?’

  They walked together down the length of the nave, towards the site of the ancient cemetery outside the Lady Chapel.

  They were almost there when a flash of blue caught Hilary’s eyes through the stone arches of the Galilee porch. Someone else was there in the space between the Lady Chapel and the great nave. Hardly surprising on a fine summer afternoon. Hilary took a few steps forward and halted, frozen in something like shock.

  She could not be certain it was the same woman, but it was the same height, the same small build, as far as she could tell, shrouded in that burka, the same shade of deep sky blue.

  ‘It’s her, isn’t it?’ Veronica whispered.

  Hilary shook herself. How ridiculous to be startled by seeing the woman again here at the abbey. If she was in Glastonbury, and interested enough in sacred sites to be making notes at the Chalice Well, why shouldn’t she be here too? In fact, what could be more likely? She scolded herself for the base instinct which had made her stop dead as if she had seen something sinister.

  ‘You don’t think she’s going to plant a bomb here too?’ Veronica hissed.

  ‘Veronica!’

  ‘Sorry. But it brought it all back so vividly. Yesterday. Seeing her at the well. And then … Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I think it’s upset me more than I realized.’

  Hilary laid a hand briefly on her arm. ‘I know what you mean. Half the time it seems unreal, what happened. It’s all a whirl of police questioning, journalists, cameras. You think, this can’t be happening to me. And then you remember. That horrible moment when I saw it behind the lid of the well. Then I know that it was real. Potentially deadly. And it happened to us.’

  She brushed her face, as though swatting away the too-vivid memory. She took a determined step forward, on to the stone paving of the Galilee.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, with forced brightness. ‘I see we meet again.’

  The woman turned. Hilary had forgotten about the unexpectedly blue eyes. They were surprised and curious. Then they narrowed.

  ‘Yes, I was at the Chalice Well yesterday. Is that what you’re getting at? The mystery bomber strikes again.’ The Birmingham accent came across strongly.

  ‘Well, no! We did see you there. But it’s not a crime to go sightseeing in Glastonbury.’

  ‘Isn’t it? You wouldn’t think so if you choose to dress like I do. I could see what everyone was thinking when we were banged up in that gift shop, waiting for the police to interview us. “Ooh, look. She’s a Muslim. Must be the bomber.” Never mind the police themselves. I bet they didn’t take you apart the way they did me.’

  ‘Well, no, actually. I spotted the bomb. That hardly makes me the prime suspect. Still, I take your point. Middle-class white Anglo-Saxon woman, turned sixty.’

  ‘And Christian. As it happens I’m white too.’

  ‘A convert?’

  ‘Yes, praise be to Allah.’ She paused, then forged on. ‘Is that why you came charging in here to speak to me? You want to know what I’m doing here? Have I got another bomb hidden under all this?’ A small hand emerged and twitched at her burka. ‘If you must know, I’m Amina Haddad. I changed my name when I converted, but I’m still myself. I’m doing an MA in the survival of folk tradition in the south-west. King Arthur, sacred wells, you name it. I grew up with the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table, see? Just like you did. Doesn’t mean I have to leave all that behind me when I put on the burka.’ The eyes flashed.

  Hilary held up a hand. ‘No. I understand that. I’m sorry. And truly, I didn’t believe …’ Honesty stopped her. ‘Well, to tell the truth, we went over everyone we met at the Chalice Well yesterday afternoon, asking ourselves if one of them could have been the bomber. You were on the list, naturally. But no more than anyone else.’

  ‘We tried to remember if anyone was carrying a black knapsack,’ Veronica added. ‘And of course …’

  ‘You think I put this on to hide it? I wear it all the time!’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. We realize. Honestly. And we can think of far more suspicious people there yesterday.’

  ‘Like that Guizer.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Veronica asked.

  ‘Guizer. Someone who dresses up in disguise and pretends to be something they’re not. Unlike me, who’s dressed like this to show what I am. You’ll see a Guizer prancing round the edges of a Morris dance, all rags and black-faced. Or the Teazer on May Day at Padstow, cavorting in front of the Obby Oss.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Rupert Honeydew,’ Hilary broke in. ‘You think he’s our suspect?’

  ‘He’s not what he pretends to be, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘A Guizer never is. Trust me. I doubt the Avon and Somerset police know as much about Guizers as they need to.’

  Hilary and Veronica looked at each other. It had not seriously occurred to Hilary that Rupert Honeydew, for all his eccentricity, might be a suspect.

  ‘But what would he have to gain by blowing up the well?’

  The slim shoulders under the burka shrugged. ‘Search me. Plaster it across the media? The Chalice Well. I mean, how many people in Britain have heard of it? Perhaps he wants to make it into something really big – supposing all that stuff about the Goddess and the sacred waters isn’t just a fake.’

  ‘We rather fancied George Marsden ourselves,’ Veronica said. ‘Oh, maybe you didn’t meet him. Rather military type. Loud voice. And sounding off at full volume about Christian sites being befouled by pagans.’

  Amina shook her head. ‘And Muslims, no doubt. I’m sorry. I missed that on
e.’

  ‘He legged it before the police arrived,’ Hilary told her.

  ‘They’ll find him, though, won’t they?’

  ‘I’m sure they will.’

  ‘Well, good luck to them. But they’ll need to be sharper than I think they are to ditch their stereotypes and get behind the mask of the Guizer.’

  She turned away. The notebook from yesterday was in her hand again.

  Hilary looked at Veronica and raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s me put in my place,’ she murmured.

  ‘Do you think she’s right?’ Veronica asked softly as they walked away. ‘I mean, Rupert Honeydew was the last person I would have suspected of harming the well.’

  ‘It certainly hadn’t occurred to me … Unless she’s trying to shift suspicion somewhere else.’

  ‘Hilary! You said we shouldn’t suspect her.’

  ‘Right now, I’m suspecting everybody.’ She peered down from the walkway that replaced the floor of the Lady Chapel into the crypt chapel beneath. For a moment she stood deep in thought. Then she straightened up with a laugh.

  ‘Right! Let’s put that behind us. Who’s for that splendid Abbot’s kitchen?’

  EIGHT

  Hilary resolutely tried to push the encounter with Amina behind her. She had an obscure sense that she had behaved badly. She should not have pretended that it had been a chance encounter, when she had gone out of her way to speak to the young woman. The MA student had seen through her attempt at light conversation. She was astute enough to know that Hilary was as keen to question why she had been at the Chalice Well as any detective would have been.

  Hilary winced. She did not like the sensation of being found to be at fault.

  She marched rather faster than necessary towards the striking building with its octagonal roof rising to a spire.

  The interior had been laid out to resemble its original function as a medieval abbot’s kitchen. Four huge fireplaces occupied the corners, for roasting, baking, boiling and washing up. Boars and capons were skewered on spits over one. Cauldrons hung above another. The tables were spread with fake food and authentic-looking cooking ware. On a side table, a notice invited visitors to try their hands at working dough.