The Magus of Hay(125)

‘Seymour, just unload it.’

Dead phone.





56

Vision and need


MERRILY’S ONE-PIECE protective suit was too hot and far too big. She kept stumbling over its floppy folds.

Claudia Cornwell had stopped at the barn doors, was looking back towards the bungalow.

‘In case either of you doesn’t know, this was the site of a large farmhouse called Bryn-y-castell – Castle Hill. Reference to the castle mound. The house was left derelict then pulled down, I suppose about fifty or sixty years ago. Some of the stone went into the bungalow and also these outbuildings. But an important part of the old house remains. Important for us, anyway.’

The doors weren’t even locked. Bliss had a torch, which showed there was nothing here to steal. It had a layer of bales of straw, obviously old, more of them in the loft. But none of the expected smells of new hay and old manure.

‘You can see this place got no more than a cursory going-over from the search team,’ Bliss said. ‘But then, why should it? How many barns have cellars?’

A few bales had been thrown out of the loft to expose the corners. But nobody had bothered with the floor.

‘The barn was simply built over the entrance to the main cellars of the demolished house,’ Claudia said. ‘Root cellar for apples, wine cellar.’

Bliss said, ‘How many times you been here, Claudia?’

‘Here… many times. Down there… once. Yesterday. So my DNA’s going to be everywhere, isn’t it?’



Merrily said, ‘So the cellars conceal…’

‘The temple, yes. The temple was constructed over about a year. After what happened on the Bluff, Peter wasn’t going to take chances any more. Only he and his innermost circle ever came here. A sealed chamber. There was only a handful of them and most of them were over seventy. It’s a measure of how important he thought this was.’ Her voice faded, as though talk was only delaying the inevitable. ‘Could I…?’

Merrily took a step back. Claudia had pulled a bale to one side, pointed at three or four others.

‘The trapdoor’s under those. There’s a blue plastic sheet we need to take up. Peter showed me how to get in if there was an emergency. I was the nearest, at Talgarth. He knew I wouldn’t just go down there.’

‘But you did yesterday?’ Merrily said.

‘He was dead. The future was uncertain. As I say, most of his… people… are old. I was the youngest and still outside the core. I came back and wandered around. Shed a few tears, wondered how it could possibly go on without him, even if Athena White could gather a few more suitably qualified people together. I wondered, like you’re probably wondering now, if we hadn’t all just succumbed to his… his vision… and his need.’

There was the trapdoor, plain oak, sunk into the flags, an iron ring sunk into the oak. Bliss slipped his white-gloved hand under the ring.

‘There are electric lights,’ Claudia said. ‘On the wall on your right when you get to the bottom of the steps. Small narrow ante-room and a plain white door. Here’s the key.’

A plain Yale key. She gave it to Bliss. He stood looking down, the big numbers on his baseball sweater just visible through the plastic. He’d tied a white mask over his mouth and nose.

He said, ‘You want to go first, Claudia?’

‘I think it should be you.’

‘Yeh.’

Bliss pulled on the ring. The trapdoor came up easily, with a low, hydraulic whine, Bliss’s torch downlighting a rough pine stairway, with a rail. He went down about three steps, looked back, pulled down the mask.

‘Just tell me briefly,’ Bliss said. ‘What will I see? What’s the layout?’

‘A ceiling of midnight blue.’ Claudia’s voice was firm, as if she was reciting poetry. ‘A black and white floor, like a chessboard. Circles, one inside the other. A triangle. An altar. The coat of arms of Hay above it. On the altar, a chalice of water from the confluence of the Dulas Brook and the River Wye. And a chair. A stiff-backed chair with arms, like a throne. Inside the circle where it would be protected.’

‘And that’s where the dummy would’ve been.’

‘Where the King sat. His crown askew. Baggy trousers tied at the waist with red and yellow binder twine. All the energy channelled through him, and he never knew. Never even thought of it. God…’

Merrily said, ‘Why did you go down there? When you were here on your own?

‘Because… because I’d walked all around and couldn’t sense Peter anywhere, I just… He’d gone, you see, and suddenly I couldn’t stand that. The man who’d had more impact on my life than anyone at Oxford, any head-of-chambers. I wanted to be with him, one more time. To get some guidance.’