Beneath the Tor

by Nina Milton

  “The Glastonbury one?”

  “Each sign has a different energy and takes you to a different place … you can be drawn in.” He took his time sliding the recorder into a phallic-shaped bag that hung from his waist. “On the zodiac, the Chalice Well Gardens is the beak of the phoenix. The phoenix is Aquarius, the archer.” I’d never heard him speak like that before. It sounded like he’d remembered this from a book. “And—okay, yeah—you can be seduced by the Age of Aquarius. But y’know what? You Brits gobsmack me.”

  I blinked at his change of tack. “Sorry?”

  “The lot of you are yobbos. Defaming the sacredness of Avalon.” I felt my mouth slacken. Anag’s “out-of-bodies” had sent him a little crazier than usual. “Guys here are pretty keen to have a lend of someone else’s sheila.”

  “What?”

  “I saw them with my own mud pies. In the field above the Chalice Well.”

  “The cress field.”

  “In the grass like a couple of teenies. Ask me, there’s something crook about having a cheeky root in a revered place like that.”

  I didn’t respond, but I couldn’t help see Shell’s unshod foot creeping up Ricky’s trouser leg under the pub table. Two people making love in the cress field.

  “I went over that fence, yelling at them. Was right into my power, Sabbie. Told my truth. She called me a dipstick. Laughed at my chosen name. That was unforgivable, Sabbie!”

  I felt my cheeks warm. Woody Choke, owner of a porn shop. I wondered if he’d had to leave Melbourne fast. Was he hiding out in Glastonbury, using his search for enlightenment as a cover?

  “It’s important to me,” said Anag, watching my face carefully. “Anagarika Dharmapala is my hero. He was from Sri Lanka but he studied under Madame Blavatsky. He took a vow of celibacy and cared for the Temples of his country. I’ve read every one of his diaries—full of wisdom.”

  “So you came out here, to Gog and Magog.”

  “What? No, I just happened on the trees.” He looked up into the dying branches. “You’re not indiscreet, like I am. I am indiscreet, I confess. Had to snitch.”

  “Snitch?”

  “Seemed right at the time. Now, not so sure. Messed it up. I know that. But it felt wrong. Couples cheating. They should think themselves blessed.”

  He’d witnessed things in the Chalice Well Gardens, at the beak of the phoenix of Aquarius, that seemed to have broken him. I wondered if there was an underlying jealousy behind all this.

  “What’s the matter, Anag, really?”

  He picked a bit of twig off his robe. “He was as mad as a cut snake about it.”

  I gave up trying to process what Anag was saying. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift back to town.”

  He hitched his robe above the knees of his jeans and climbed the fence. Head down, hands clasped, he looked more like a monk than perhaps he realized as we walked the driveway. “We’ve all been invited to Alys’s funeral,” I said eventually. “That’s what Brice came to say. It’s in London, this Friday.”

  Anag paused, but only for a second. “No good for me. I’ll be at the workshop I’m taking. I’ll be walking the Tor Labyrinth!”

  We came out from the lane. I dug in my pocket for my car keys. Anag stop in his tracks. “Uh oh. That’s a pig’s bum.”

  On the opposite side of the road a khaki-coloured vehicle had pulled in—Stef’s jeep—with Freaky in the passenger seat. He rolled down his window and called through it.

  “All’s well that ends well, Sabbie! We’re off to get my van.”

  I crossed the road and came up to the open window. “That’s great news. Thanks, Stefan.”

  “Best thank Esme. It was her idea.”

  “We’re going to put the caravan inside the Dutch barn,” said Freaky. “We’ve measured up already; it’ll fit easy.”

  “It won’t be visible from the air, that way,” said Stefan. “Which was the problem, you understand.”

  “We think it’ll be snug when the winter comes,” said Freaky. I noticed that he’d invited himself back into the family, using the familiar we. “And as I’m closer to the house, Stef’s going to run a cable.”

  “He’ll be kitted out with electric light and power.”

  “You’ll be able to paint your drums and rattles in the evenings,” I pointed out. “You could even have a radio.”

  “He could have a laptop, whatever, so long as he pays his share of the bill.”

  “The generosity of my friends overwhelms me. First Sabbie takes me in like a stray dog—”

  “I don’t think you’re a dog, Freaky.”

  “Then Shell’s friend gets me roadworthy again. And now, Stef … you’ve reforged our old solidarity. I am humbled.”

  Stefan coughed into his fist. As he raised his eyes, he focused on the road ahead. “What the fuck’s he still doing here?”

  I glanced round. Anag was racing along, his robe flapping at his heels. Stefan pressed his horn. The sound was loud, rude. It made me jump and it made Anag pick up his skirts and break into a sprint.

  “You!” Stefan was out of the jeep in seconds, chasing Anag as he fled into a field. “You!”

  At first, it all appeared comical, Stef waving his arms in fury and Anag checking behind him and tripping on the hem of his habit, tumbling in the tussocky grass. Freaky and I pursued them, but Stef was fired up; halfway across the field he floored his quarry with a rugby tackle. Anag hit the ground so hard he seemed stunned. Stefan straddled him, rolled him over, pulled him up by the collar of his habit, and fisted him in the mouth.

  Freaky proved himself fast for an undernourished man of older years. He reached Stefan and yanked him away from Anag, holding him tight by both arms. I arrived moments later. It seemed we were constantly destined to watch Stefan’s headstrong urges.

  “What are you thinking, Stef?” I screamed. “What is going on?”

  “Calm down,” said Freaky. “Calm down and explain yourselves.”

  “Don’t bother on my account.” Anag flailed around on in the uneven grass inside his robe until he’d got himself upright. He smoothed the folds of the habit and checked his recorder bag for breakages. A drip of blood splattered onto the back of his hand. He put his hands to his face. They came away stained scarlet. To be fair, it was not much more than a trickle from a cut lip, but he looked at the smears in horror. His voice broke with the emotion of it. “You are all bastards!”

  He turned and hobbled away. We watched him reach the far boundary hedge and walk alongside it, faced with the choice of finding a way through or returning, tail between legs. He must have found a gap, because he disappeared from our view.

  “What was that about?” demanded Freaky.

  Stefan shrugged. “What a complete dunce neck. Good riddance to bad rubbish. D’you want your van towed or not?”

  “I do, mate.” Freaky laid his arm over Stefan’s shoulder and they crossed the field together.

  I caught a glimpse of Anag in the distance, jogging between the trees, reduced to a miniature monk. A mile or so further on, the Tor rose from the flat land.

  While I had been persuading people not to step foot in the Chalice Well Gardens, Anagarika had already been inside, wandering the paths, playing his flute. Surely he could not have anything to do with Brice’s emails. And yet, as he’d stood beside the ancient oaks, I’d seen something in his eyes—something secret and powerful.

  I shook my head and went back to my car. It didn’t feel right. Anag was a pathetic figure, moving through the world in search of a truth he couldn’t find because his search map was wrong. He was throwing huge amounts of cash at it too, without discrimination or common sense.

  I’ve been in the otherworld today, for sure. I saw things I couldn’t believe.

  He was an innocent, and I was persuaded that he had nothing at all to do with Morgan le Fay.r />
  nineteen

  morgan le fay

  “Explain,” says Morgan le Fay. “Why is it your intention to study the magical arts?”

  She’s testing, testing. Every question is a trick. I love you. Wrong answer. I will do anything for you. Wrong again.

  “I want to learn how to change.”

  “Ah … transformation. Well. We’ll make a magician of you yet.”

  A spasm moves across the front of the acolyte’s head, as if Morgan has placed electrodes on each of his temples and flicked a switch on some pocket-sized transformer.

  Transformer; transformation. He’s unable to work out the truth of her words. Does she mean it will take a transformation to make him a magician? Or that knowing change is the deepest magic already gives him an edge?

  “Wearyall Hill,” says Morgan le Fay, unnecessarily. “Where Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff. The Holy Thorn has grown here since that day. Twice yearly it flowers, once in May and once in at Christmastide.”

  “A miracle.”

  “Dead now, of course. Desecrated. Growing here, son and daughter, for two thousand years, then cut to its trunk.”

  “Toxic idiots!” The bitter feeling is like bile in the throat, like scissors on the skin. That the land is in such a desperate state. The migraine quickens, a deep core of ice in his forehead with ice chips spreading outwards. Fingers freezing on this hot summer’s day. He stumbles slightly, already more breathless than Morgan as they climb even though Wearyall Hill is nowhere as steep as the Tor.

  The dead thorn tree is smothered by clouties; ribbons draped over it with veneration, some faded and ragged, some satiny-bright. They make the poor stump look alive as they move in the light breeze.

  “Crazy. Pointless! Who cut down the Holy Thorn?”

  “Don’t you know who performed this defilement?” She leans in, flirts a little, drops her voice.

  “Was it the foolish knight?”

  “Fool yourself! It was the Black Knight.”

  The acolyte squirrels the fact away until he can get to his books and learn about the Black Knight. “Morgan, you could raise one finger and speak the word, and not ever again would any person destroy a beautiful, hallowed tree.”

  She laughs at him, delighted at the compliment, and removes an earring, a long strand of white crystal, slipping its silver back inside the knot of a ribbon on the dead tree.

  “Let’s walk.”

  It’s wonderful, walking the length of Wearyall with her. The cat tugs them along the path and Morgan talks, staring out towards the River Brue, explaining how it was once part of that sea that extended over the Somerset Moors. When she’s a mellow mood, the acolyte can sometimes get her to reminisce about her Georgian-Cornish parentage, how her father was a cultural attaché to the British Diplomatic Mission in Tbilisi and her mother one of the catering staff that doubled as a spy. When the diplomat’s post was peremptorily terminated and he needed to disappear, he brought his small child home to his native Cornwall, setting himself up as a watercolour artist in St. Ives.

  “When did you first know?” he asks. “That you were Morgan le Fay?”

  “When I was but eleven.”

  Her father had taken her to Tintagel, and there, on the island of legends off the Cornish coast, she had her first visions showing her the lives that she had lived before this life.

  “Imagine a blinding flash of light,” she explains. “The world moves into black and white around its edges and at the centre is the most beautiful, stately, supreme being you might ever encounter.”

  “The first Morgan le Fay? Your ancestor?”

  Morgan’s mood sours. “We need to get in.” She points in the direction of the Tor, rising from the valley on the other side of the town. “What are you doing to get us in?”

  “I’ve put everything in order of the zodiac,” he says, before his mind closes down in panic. “Twelve perspectives of the land.”

  “And?” She puts her face to his. “Nothing! Nothing!” His throat is dry with panting. Stomach cramped, waiting for her screech. “The Green Knight barely faltered in his step. The Red Knight refuses to die. And the wasteland is upon us!”

  “I get it. I do get it! The land is wasted. Ravaged, overused, dried out, and dying of neglect. A sacred tree cut down—forests denuded

  —fossil fuels ransacked!”

  “Why can you not do this simple thing?!”

  She does not tolerate impertinence. He’ll never be able to ask Morgan le Fay the obvious thing … if you were there when the Hollow Hill was first closed upon the Sleeping King, why don’t you know where the entrance is?

  Millennia have passed. Fifteen hundred years, to be exact. Things change. Morgan may be twelfth descended from a goddess, she may be a sorcerer of high esteem, but she is, actually, human. Flesh. Blood. Beating heart. Weaknesses show through. She can be petulant, impatient. Incandescent with rage. At times, reckless, blinkered.

  The acolyte takes a breath. Steadies himself. “Even your deep magic has not triumphed. I’ve searched all over. Every entrance is sealed against us. I need help.” Morgan towers over the acolyte, fuming, but she is silent and that empowers speech. “There is someone.”

  “Someone!”

  “Someone who can help.” Agreeable. Patient. Someone who strives. “Someone who can offer assistance.”

  “And where, pray, do you intend to look for such assistance?”

  “Bridgwater,” says the acolyte.

  Selkie lets out a wide meow. They both look at the cat. It lashes its tail.

  “If we take a visit, acolyte, you will promise one thing.”

  Careful, now, he thinks. Careful what you promise Morgan.

  She doesn’t wait for the promise, because she doesn’t need it. It’s not a promise; it’s a condition.

  “A slaying. The Black Knight. A chivalric slaying.”

  twenty

  grandma dare

  Meeting trouble halfway had been my problem since I was old enough to know where halfway was. It was going to be the same when I met my grandmother, I just knew it, even though the Lady of the River had encouraged me for my own good.

  As I left Bridgwater for Zotheroy on Saturday morning, little flappy insects were invading my stomach. Being dropped without warning into a family fold was disconcerting. I was used to my own status quo. I was not a family person. Anyway, I had a family, thanks very much—Gloria and Philip, Dennon and Charlene. I didn’t want another, especially one with gargoyles on their house.

  Twenty minutes later, I was crunching over the expansive sweep of driveway that led to the Hatchings, deciding which door I should use. The house was vast and centuries old, set in acres of garden with some woodland behind. It was built from stone, but there were newer parts knitted onto the original, some in red brick and some rendered and painted. The last time I’d been here, it had taken me all of five minutes to walk around the side of the house to the kitchen entrance with the takeaway order. I didn’t want to start off as Lady Dare’s servant, so went up to the front door and pulled on a cold iron knob. Deep inside the house, a bell jangled.

  It was Lettice who answered. She was in Saturday jeans, her hair held back with a band. She leapt at me, wrapping her arms around me. “Sabbie! I’m so relieved. I wasn’t sure you’d bother.”

  “I keep my promises.” I was in the hallway, but this hall wasn’t the narrow corridor people like me had to manage with. It was a huge room with high ceilings and walls mounted with—I checked I wasn’t imagining it—the heads of stuffed animals. Mostly antlered deer and foxes but I saw a leopard’s head as well. Between the mounted beasts were portraits in elaborate frames. Some were old, I could tell by the clothes the people were wearing. I stopped in my tracks. “Are these your … ancestors, Lettice?”

  She made a face. “Gross, huh? They’re yours too!”

&
nbsp; “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  She bounced on the spot. “I can’t wait for you to meet Grandma!”

  I didn’t even want to think about it. “How are you, anyway?”

  “I’m very happy now the hols have started.”

  “That’s early, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. We break up for almost twelve weeks at Millfields.”

  “Ah. Lettice.”

  Mrs. Peers Mitchell framed a doorway I hadn’t spotted before, it being painted the same colour as the wall. I eyed her without smiling. I did not want this woman to think for one moment that I liked her, or that I was pleased to be in her mother’s house.

  “Why don’t you saddle up Abacus and take him for a canter?”

  Lettice looked at her mother, her body primed for an argument. “I’d like to stay here, please, Ma.”

  “I think not. Off you go.”

  My cousin shot me a look of solidarity then thumped along a corridor that lead towards the back of the rambling interior. I was left with my nemesis.

  “Perhaps you’d come with me.”

  Mrs. Mitchell didn’t wait to see if I was going to follow. By the time I’d skidded thought the camouflaged door into a smaller room, she was disappearing from it into shadow, her ash blond French pleat lighting the way like a beacon.

  I crossed the small room and stood on the next threshold. Now I was in a private, personalized part of the house, a sort of sitting room. It felt smaller than it was, thanks to the navy flock wallpaper and the fact that the woodwork was varnished a deep brown. It was dimly lit, despite the bright day outside, because velvet curtains fell half across the window, tied back at their waists by fat lengths of cord. The carpet was spongey under my feet and of a pale, intricate design. Carpets that couldn’t be bought for a song from Ikea were outside my radar, but I thought this might be Turkish or Chinese. It reached across the floor, leaving a margin of polished wood around its edges.

  My grandmother sat in a winged chair plumped with all manner of cushions. Her feet were raised onto an upholstered footstool; black house shoes with a small heel peeked from under her lap rug. I had somehow imagined she would be boney, delicate as a bird. She was instead matronly. A vast bosom—all I could think to call it—was covered by a tailored outfit straight from a high-end but rather out-of-date fashion establishment. Her hair, which she still possessed in all its glory, resembled a swirl of marshmallow. She was in full makeup—powdered cheeks, coral lips … I even detected a flash of eyebrow pencil.