"Welcome to the Isle of Avalon."
Faye guessed what I was thinking.
"Does look like it, doesn't it?" she murmured. "Though at this time of year the countryside usually looks more like the Waste Land."
"Do we have a Fisher King?"
She looked out of the window.
"Not any more."
A storm was brewing when we came into Glastonbury. There had been a glimmer of sunshine but now the sun was smothered by the build-up of clouds. The streets took on an unreal appearance, bathed in yellowish light. The wind dropped. The town seemed to be holding its breath. Then, as we parked the vehicle and went our separate ways, the air stirred slightly and rain spilled from the swollen clouds.
Faye and I had arranged to meet in an hour in a nearby pub. I hurried down to the abbey, dodging puddles. Gutters overflowing, sheets of rain falling, bouncing high. Everything shiny, glistening, fluid brown. It was like a scene from an old gangster movie, listening for the hit car to round the bend and scythe the street with machine-gun fire. Instead, a bus drove by and fanned water from beneath its tires across the pavement, drenching me.
The rain stopped almost as quickly as it had started. Shaking water off my overcoat, I walked up past the abbey shop and bought a ticket to see the impressive ruins. I expected to be alone in the grounds-the sky was lowering and there was a sharp wind blowing-but there were maybe twenty people scattered around the site.
By accident I fell into step with a tall Japanese man in a long brown overcoat. We smiled at each other. We parted when I stopped in front of a rectangular sign stuck in the earth and he went on toward the circular abbot's kitchen some two hundred yards away.
I was on the south side of the Lady Chapel. The sign read: "Site of the ancient graveyard where in 1191 the monks dug to find the tombs of Arthur and Guinevere."
I was pondering it when I became aware of someone standing close by. I turned. A tall, old man with a bony face and a shock of white hair was staring at me. He was wearing an old tweed suit and carrying a gnarled stick-I was immediately reminded of an Old Testament prophet. I stepped back as he raised his stick and jabbed it at the sky.
"The king will come on a white horse," he shouted, fixing me with a wild, bloodshot eye. "He will have a bow in his hand and a crown shall be given to him by God so that he shall have power to compel the whole world! He will have a great sword in his hand and will strike many down."
I nodded appreciatively.
"Thanks for sharing that," I said, keeping an eye on his stick as I tried to step round him. He lowered the stick but blocked my way. His eyes boring into me, he spoke, quietly but fiercely:
"He will reign for a thousand years and the heavens will be opened up to his people. He will come in a garment white as snow, with white hair, and his throne will be as fire, and a thousand times a thousand and ten times a hundred thousand shall serve him, for he shall execute justice."
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. Glastonbury is full of religious nutters of various persuasions. Half the sun worshippers who'd gone down to Cornwall for the 1999 eclipse had only made it back as far as here. I smiled cheerily at the old man and strode purposefully past him.
He called after me in a perfectly normal, very cultured voice: "Couldn't spare the price of a pint, I suppose?"
He was standing slightly pigeon-toed, clutching his stick with both hands, a sheepish look on his face. I fumbled in my pocket and pressed a couple of quid into his open hand.
His fingers were twisted with arthritis.
"Thank you kindly," he said with a nod.
I nodded back, turned, and walked away. He started to follow me. I increased my pace and went down to the abbot's kitchen. I went inside in the hope of shaking him off.
I was half expecting to see the Japanese man but the circular building-full of refectory tables and a mock-up of the old kitchen-was deserted. I lurked there for a couple of minutes then sneaked a look outside. There was no sign of the religious nut.
I walked back over to the ruins of the north transept. There was a bigger sign here headed: "Site of King Arthur's Tomb." It recounted how the bodies of Arthur and his wife were "said to be found" in 1191 and how, as Rex had said, they had been put in the marble tomb and survived there until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539.
I wandered round the site for another half hour. There was something at once awesome and desolate about the jagged, incomplete walls of the huge abbey. And in the background, wherever I walked, I could see the old church tower pointing at the sky on the summit of the Tor, dominating the northern skyline.
Faye was already seated in the pub when I arrived. I'd been delayed looking in the windows of the various New Age shops that had blossomed in the town center.
She didn't seem in the mood to talk. My heart sank at the thought that I'd blown it with my crass questions. We sat side by side, sipping our drinks. I glanced at the side of her face. I was very conscious of her: the light down on her cheek, the curve of her cheekbone, the fullness of her lips. For her part, she was totally oblivious of me.
I was listening to her slightly unsteady breathing. I'm into breathing. Yes, I know, so is every living thing. But I mean that the yoga I'm interested in explores the power of different sorts of breathing. I hung out with some free divers once and saw how deep they could go on one lungful of air, doling it out very slowly because they'd lowered their heart rate by breath control and didn't need to use as much.
My guriji in Mysore knew swamis who could bury themselves alive for a weekend or survive in cold temperatures in a pair of cotton pajamas, thanks to the power of their breath. Why they should want to was, of course, another question.
Just at that moment, I wasn't thinking about those feats of endurance. I was thinking about a less lofty breathing trick. It's been proven-don't ask me to get technical with the proof which, frankly, will go straight over your head, just trust me on this-that you can seduce a person by matching your breath exactly to theirs. It's true. Breathe exactly in their rhythm and seduction is one hundred percent guaranteed. Well okay, ninety-nine percent.
"Why are you puffing like that?" Faye said, looking at me anxiously.
"Because you were," I said absently. "That's to say, it's special yoga breathing. I've taken up yoga since we last met. In a big way."
"I know, Bridget was saying. Is it really true you inhale a washing line up your nose and pull it out of your bum, then pull on either end to floss your entire inner body?"
"Not entirely, no. I tried to explain to Bridget about a purification rite I need to do over the next couple of days, but you know her attention span. I think she's rather twisted what I said."
"You always did have some strange habits," she said.
I thought back, trying to imagine anything I used to do that could possibly match this distortion of a perfectly healthy and sensible yoga practice.
"Oh-that," I said, blushing. "That was just a phase."
"Yes-that," she said, pushing me lightly on the arm. She looked solemn. "I'm pleased that you were able to come down. It's-it's-"
"You don't need to say it," I said huskily. "I feel the
I leaned across and tilted her head toward me to go for a lip synch. Instead I got poked in the eye with a sticky-out bit on her large, dangly earring as she turned her head abruptly away.
"It's, er, great to see you," I said heartily.
She looked flustered.
"You, too," she said. "Though I was going to say it's enormously helpful."
"Oh sure, that, too," I said quickly, nodding a lot. "It's strange being together after all these years," I burbled. "Almost like old times."
She smiled faintly.
"Almost," she said.
"Faye, you know I still care for you an awful lot. I wondered-"
"It's too soon, Nick. Jonathan ..." Her voice trailed off.
"I can wait," I said.
After all, I thought, I've waited fifteen bloody years.
&nb
sp; To be honest, I didn't know what I felt about Faye. I was thinking I wanted her in my life big time, but I didn't know how much of that was finishing off unfinished business. I was resentful that while she'd kept me in a state of frustration for two years she'd then gone off and married Askwith. Given the state of the adipose deceased-before he was deceased-my pride was hurt. I know I hadn't my yoga-honed body back in those days-I'd looked a cross between a stick insect and a runner bean-but hey, in Woody's words, thin is fun.
As we left the pub Faye caught sight of something and her expression changed. I followed her look to a New Age shop across the road. Standing in the doorway was a tall, incredibly thin man in a shabby, tight-fitting, black overcoat that came almost to his ankles. He had a black homburg perched exactly in the center of his head and a long, straggly beard. He must have been in his late twenties. He was watching Faye without expression.
"Nick, let's go," Faye called, hurrying toward the car. I got in the four-wheel drive beside her. She moved off very quickly, her eyes focused dead ahead. When I looked the man was no longer outside the shop.
"Who was the undertaker?" I said.
"You don't need to worry about him," she said airily.
I laughed.
"I wasn't worrying, I just wondered." I frowned. "Are there things worrying you?"
"Global warming, the collapse of the world economy and the rise of hoodlum states in Eastern Europe for starters. Whether I've got enough petrol to get you to Wynn House for another."
I waited a moment.
"So who is he?" I said.
She gave me a small smile.
"A knight of the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail."
"Aren't they the blokes who chased Indiana Jones all over Venice when he was looking for his dad?"
"That was fiction, Nick. These people, however unreal, actually do exist. They've heard rumors about our find and they're hanging around in case it's the Grail."
? "They?"
"There are about thirty of them. That man seems to be
their leader. The rest all look like accountants. But there's something freaky about them."
"So word has got round about your discovery?"
"We think Lucy told some people, yes. This kind of thing attracts a lot of interest. You know, since the millennium, half the country is barking anywayso many drifters now."
"I know. I saw an encampment near Avebury as I drove down. A mix of followers of the messiah, people there for the crop circles, and a gang so stoned they're still heading back from the Cornish eclipse."
Faye pulled up at a zebra crossing to let a group of people cross. Among them was my religious nut. He looked in through the windscreen of the car. I shrank down in my seat. When I looked, Faye had shrunk down, too.
"You're trying to avoid him, too?" I said, when we had started off again.
"Who?" she said.
"The religious nut with the stick."
"You met him?" she said, flashing a look at me.
"We had a chat."
"What about?" she asked with what sounded like forced casualness.
"How He was coming back soon. Why? What does he talk to you about?"
She gave a little laugh.
"Oh, the same."
When we got back to Wynn House I checked out the Arthurian books in the library. Rex and Genevra had a pretty good collection. I took a pile over to the sofa and settled down for a couple of hours. Around three Genevra came in. She was wearing tight-fitting jeans and a baggy jumper and her face looked scrubbed and healthy.
"How's it hanging, Nicholas?" she said, bouncing down beside me and leaning over to see what I was reading. I inhaled her perfume and watched her as she read the book I had in my lap.
There was something intensely sexual about Genevra. She didn't flaunt it but there was a physicality about her that made you-okay, me-want to take hold of her whenever she came close. Maybe she sensed what I was thinking because she suddenly moved away from me. Smiling crookedly she reached and touched the tip of my nose with her finger.
"So are you going to write about all this?"
"You bet."
"And what do you think about our find? The real thing?"
"Well, I gotta tell you, Genevra, this abbey's monks were notorious for being a bunch of fraudsters who'd do almost anything to get the tourist buck."
"They had tourists back then?" Genevra said.
"Sure-they called them pilgrims. Pilgrims could even get package holidays. You could book a passage to the Holy Land and your payment included sea-crossing then guides and accommodation at the other end."
"Hmm. Buckhalter will be pleased to know we're working in an honorable tradition."
"Who said it was honorable?"
She laughed, her scar twisting her top lip and tilting her grin. She saw me looking and put her hand up to her mouth, blushing a little. I reached over and moved it gently away.
"What happened?" I asked, nodding at the scar.
"Car accident." She dropped her eyes. We both looked at her hand still held in mine. She raised her eyes. It was my turn to blush. We started to lean toward each other ... just then the door opened. Genevra hastily withdrew her hand and we both turned to see who was in the doorway.
"Madrid, good to see you're hard at work," Buck Buckhalter said. "Genevra, you, me, and Rex got to have a get-together."
He smiled thinly. "If you'll excuse us, mister."
"I'd like to see the sarcophagus again," I said. Buckhalter shrugged.
"Go ahead. Genevra?"
I retraced our steps of the previous evening. I'd been reading a contemporary account of the discovery of Arthur's grave written by Gerald of Wales, who seemed to have been an eyewitness back in 1191. According to him, the body of King Arthur was found deep down in the earth. The coffin was a hollow oak. The tomb was split into two parts. Most of it was allotted to the bones of the man, while the remaining third toward the foot contained the bones of the woman. There was a piece of the woman's yellow hair in the tomb but a monk grabbed for it and it turned to dust.
There were two other distinctive features about the man's body. One was that he was a much bigger man than was usual in those days. His shin bone reached a good three inches above the knee of the tallest man. The eye-socket of the skull was also a good palm in width. The second was that there were ten wounds on the skull. All were scarred over except for one, larger than the others, which had made a big hole and was obviously the death blow.
I looked down into the sarcophagus. I could see the long shin bone. And I could see a hole in the skull and other marks across the top of it. I gazed down at the jumble of bones laid loosely side by side, trying to puzzle out which bone was what. I have no idea how many bones there are in the human body but there were more here than I would have imagined.
"I'm Nanny," a disembodied voice said and I jumped three feet in the air. I looked round to see a tall, middle-aged woman, dressed in a long black dress, her grey hair pulled back in a tight bun. She had thin lips that pursed into the narrowest of smiles.
"Guilty conscience?" she inquired with a slight tilt of her head.
"Always," I said. "But you also startled me. I didn't hear you come
"That's because I was already here," she said. "I like to spend a little time in the crypt every day."
I looked round at the coffins laid out in rows, the shadows falling oddly because of the low electric lighting, the spiders' webs hanging everywhere.
"I can understand that," I said-which must constitute my most untruthful contribution to the long history of male untruths. And I wasn't even trying to get her into bed. I looked at her long white face and the word "vampire" sprang unbidden into what passes for my brain.
I smiled cheerily. "Well," I said, rather too loudly, "I must be going. I'm expected, of course."
"I'm Nanny," she repeated.
"Of course you are," I said. "I'm pretty slow off the mark myself."
Yes. I know. That was a stupid thing to sa
y, too, but she'd made me very nervous. For a moment I assumed "nanny" was some local dialect word for two coffins short of a funeral. Then I twigged.
"Oh, the nanny," I said, again too enthusiastically. "I'm the journalist. Nick, I mean. Pleased to meet you. Do you have a name other than the nanny?"
"I am not the nanny, I am Nanny."
Hmm. Maybe I was right the first time.
"Don't you have any other names?" I said cautiously.
"What a curious child you are," she said, scrutinizing me openly. "Nannies in good houses," she emphasized the good, "are only ever known as Nanny."
"Yes," I said excitedly. "I know. They wear black and live to a very old age in the servants' quarters in the attic though how they're supposed to get up the stairs I don't know."
She reached out her hand.
"Let's go back into the house, shall we?"
I agreed. I wanted to nod that agreement but it was difficult, given that she was leading me back out of the crypt by my left ear, gripped as it was-rather tightly too between her thumb and forefinger.
The next morning Genevra was horrified when she saw me. Not because of any lasting damage Nanny had done to my ear-that was only Nanny's idea of a joke. Ha ha. No, Genevra was horrified because she found me sitting crosslegged on the Persian rug in my room with three feet of surgical gauze spilling out of my mouth.
"Hnngh," was the best I'd managed when she'd knocked on the door. She took it as an invitation to enter. When she saw the gauze hanging out of my mouth, she rushed over and started to pound on my back.
"My God, Nick! Are you okay?"
"Hnngh, hnngh!"
I shook my head wildly and tried to roll away from her, an action hampered by my having me feet folded up on the tops of my thighs in the full lotus position. I put my hands up to push her away.
"But you're choking!" she said.
And, thanks to her, I was, since what she didn't know-how could she?-was that the three feet of gauze she could see was attached to a further six feet that lay coiled in my stomach.
Who's a pervert? This practice is called Dhauti and it's one of my yoga kriyas-hygiene duties to you. Figuring I had a couple of hours on my own I'd taken a long piece of gauze, around three inches wide, and soaked it in warns milk. I'd then swallowed it, slowly and carefully. The first couple of times I'd tried this I'd retched a bit. But by relaxing my throat I could now easily keep it down.
The Once and Future Con (Nick Madrid) Page 7
