Time's Legacy (22 page)

Joseph of Arimathaea was, it was surmised, a rich merchant, trading in tin, copper, lead and silver. He was, possibly, probably, Jesus’ uncle, being the younger brother of Jesus’ father. Or mother. (Mind you a lot of the books said great-uncle). Anyway, some sort of kinsman. He was supposed to have brought Jesus with him as a boy on one, or several of his trading voyages west and so the young Jesus had visited Cornwall, and Somerset and possibly other bits of the British Isles as well and he had later come back to Glastonbury to study. It was peaceful and it was sacred, the perfect place to meditate and pray as a preparation for what was to come; the presence here of a druid sanctuary of especial holiness and the fact that druidism was a peaceful religion with a belief in the Trinity had been another draw. She scanned the pages of Dobson, intrigued. The three aspects of the Godhead, represented by three golden rays of light were Beli the Creator of the past, Taran, the god of the present, and Yesu, the coming saviour of the future. A title which Dobson put in capitals. ‘The more druidism is studied,’ he went on, ‘the more apparent is its relationship to the revealed religion of the Mosaic law.’ She put down the booklet and stared out of the window. She thought the whole point of druidism, the bit that most people knew, was that as it was an oral culture, so secret in its time that no-one knew anything much about it, beyond the sour complaints of Roman historians like Julius Caesar. But then Julius Caesar was sour about anyone who opposed his plans to conquer the world!

It was wonderful stuff. Intriguing. Mysterious. Irresistible. Abi leafed through some of the books again. All made more or less the same claims, with some asserting that Jesus’ mother, Mary, also came when he was a boy and again later, after his death. That was when Joseph returned with the vials or cruets of Jesus’ blood and sweat, collected at the cross, and with the Chalice from the Last Supper, which many identified with the Holy Grail and his staff, which implanted in Wearyall Hill became the famous Holy Thorn. Here, in Glastonbury, it was claimed, was the first dedication anywhere in Europe of a church to the Virgin Mary. All the books had scraps of credible history, all had stuff which was to her mind, rubbish. Most made the point that the true Glastonbury of history and the Glastonbury of legend were two different places, two different parallel worlds, co-existing to this very day.

She closed the books and stacked them neatly in front of her on the desk, staring again into the garden. In her previous life she had been, briefly, an investigative journalist and she could feel it again, now. The excitement, the curiosity, the enthusiasm when an idea began to run. How did her story, the story of her vision, fit into this legend? Could she be seeing history as it happened? And Yeshua. Could he possibly be Jesus?

Next morning she parked once more in the abbey car park, this time heading through a narrow passageway towards the entrance to the abbey itself. Her enthusiasm had taken a dive overnight. She woke up early with the firm conviction that she was undoubtedly mad and she thanked God she hadn’t mentioned her idiotic theory to Cal or Mat. She glanced up. Behind the high wall she could see the top of the ruined arches of the medieval building, but the entrance to the museum was modern. She paid her money and made her way in to the exhibition where for the time being she appeared to be the only visitor. Coming here was almost certainly going to confirm the impossibility of her ideas.

They were playing a CD of plainsong. She smiled. The gentle voices of the monks were soothing, wafting gently between the exhibits; just what she needed. A plaque near the entrance stated:
The Somerset Tradition
and described the whole story, pretty much as she had read it the night before, but of course as a quaint curiosity, not fact. Obviously. Further into the exhibition a glass case was labelled, ‘An Ancient Church Built By No Human Skills…’ So, it was all here. Slowly she made her way round the glass cases staring at the history of the abbey which had been, so famously and horrifically, destroyed by Henry VIII in 1539 after the abbot was hanged on the top of the Tor on trumped up charges of concealing the abbey’s treasure from the king’s representatives. It was all fascinating, but it was the earliest history she had come to see: the actual origins as far as they were known, of this holy place described by St Patrick as ‘this holiest earth’.

The site of Glastonbury Abbey was a huge thirty-six acres, according to the ground plan they had given her at the ticket office, of beautifully tended grounds, with what remained of the once great abbey standing stark and fragmented, the ruined walls neatly strengthened, situated towards the northern edge of the site.

Letting herself out of the museum, she headed towards the Lady Chapel, unusually at the west end of the abbey instead of the east, and built, it was claimed, on the site of the little mud and wattle church, the
Vetusta Ecclesia,
built with Jesus’ own hands.

But why, her cynical other self, the self who had gone to theological college, put in, would Jesus have built a church here at all when he hadn’t yet invented Christianity? If he invented Christianity, which he didn’t. Not really. That was Paul. Wasn’t it? The historical Jesus was an observant, probably a strict, Jew. Maybe an Essene, that intriguing ascetic sect who had hidden the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves at Qumran. He was certainly a rabbi. A scholar. He wasn’t, couldn’t have been a student here!

With a rueful smile at the contradictions spinning in her brain, she headed towards the walkway which ran at the original floor level of the Lady Chapel, above the now gaping crypt and she stood staring at two signs in front of her describing the building of this chapel after the original abbey had been burned down in the twelfth century. After reading them she turned back to the entrance and made her way to the flight of steps which led down to the floor of the crypt which in the sixteenth century had been turned into a chapel dedicated to St Joseph. The gallery was now behind and above her as slowly she walked forward between the towering, ruined walls towards the apse where a roofed-in area covered a plain altar. A few yards away from it she stopped. She closed her eyes. Could she feel anything special on this most holy of spots? It was hard to say.

Behind her she heard voices. Three people were standing on the walkway. They too had stopped to read the inscriptions there. She could feel their eyes on her back. It was hard to concentrate, to feel any sense of the sacred. It was all so neat, so – the word to describe it wouldn’t come. Antiseptic, perhaps. Regulated. Controlled. Where was a sense of the sacred sanctuary of the druids – the place dedicated in even earlier times, so some of the books said, to the mother goddess, hence the later dedication to the Blessed Virgin. Or had it been dedicated to his mother by the young Jesus himself; and where did Gwyn ap Nudd fit in? And who was he? She found herself shaking her head, still too cynical, too hog tied by history, too bound by her own orthodoxy to make any sense of this at all.

She waited. Because of this especial holiness St Bridget, St David and St Patrick had all come here. As a place of pilgrimage it had been called ‘the Second Rome’. Domesday Book itself confirmed the gift of twelve hides of land, given by the Celtic king Arviragus to Joseph to build his church. And yet she could feel nothing.

Turning she retraced her way to the steps and almost ran from the chapel, heading out across the grass which marked the position of the old cloisters. In the distance she could see the black silhouette of the Tor behind the trees. Nothing. No feeling of sanctity. She had felt it at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. At Dryburgh in Scotland. Why not here? Here of all places she should sense it. She felt a wave of something like panic. She was being excluded from something precious. All around her, as the day warmed up and the sun appeared, lighting up the gold and russet of the leaves on the trees around her, were people immersed in the feelings which she should be feeling.

She sat down on a bench, her hands in her pockets, her shoulders hunched. She had come here to pray. No prayers came. She had come here to feel the ancient sacredness of the land. No feelings came.

A shadow fell across her and she looked up. A figure was standing on the path close to her, a woman’s figure.

Abi!

It was a whisper, no more.

Abi!

‘Mora?’ Abi leaped to her feet.

She had gone. There was no-one on the path at all.

‘Mora?’ Abi turned slowly around, straining her eyes into the sunshine. ‘Where are you?’

Nothing.

Kier drew his car up onto the gravel outside Woodley Manor and sat staring through the windscreen at the oak front door with its elegant, square Georgian porch and frame of scarlet Virginia Creeper. A road atlas lay open on the seat beside him. For several seconds he remained motionless. The house seemed deserted. There was no sign of any cars around; no people that he could see. He sighed. This was a lovely place. No wonder the bishop had chosen it as a retreat for Abi, where she could recover her sense of balance and her faith. Even here in the car he could feel the peace reaching out to him. Groping for the door handle he pushed it open and climbed out. When he rang the doorbell there was no answer. From somewhere deep inside the house he heard dogs barking but no-one came to the door. Maybe he should have phoned. But he had wanted to surprise her and have the chance to convince her that he wanted nothing but her happiness and wellbeing. He wandered round to the side of the house and found a courtyard area with a range of ancient outbuildings, and what looked like a couple of garages. Still no cars. So be it. He would have to come back later. He reached into the car for the map. He had been given the address of Ben Cavendish, her spiritual advisor. Perhaps he should go and see him first.

This time Athena took Abi to a different coffee shop. This one was opposite the Tribunal. As they sat on the comfortable green sofa, teapot and cups on a small tray in front of them, Abi was conscious of the other woman studying her face. She smiled uncomfortably. ‘I meant it when I said I needed to buy a book on crystals. I need to know more about them.’

‘So you couldn’t work it out on your own?’

Abi shook her head. ‘I can use it in that it has switched something on. I see these visions. I see –’ She hesitated. ‘Mora. She’s called Mora. My druid priestess. She is trying to speak to me. Just now I went to walk round the abbey and she was there. She came and stood right beside me. She cast a shadow…’ Again she stopped and shrugged. She reached out for her cup. ‘She shouldn’t cast a shadow if she’s a ghost. Surely that much we know about ghosts.’

‘And you spoke to her?’

Abi nodded. ‘Well, perhaps I was less than conversational. She gave me a fright! But I called out her name.’

‘And did she react?’

Abi shook her head. ‘She had already gone. Disappeared.’

Athena picked up her own cup and sipped thoughtfully. ‘So you need to know how to speak to her?’

Abi nodded.

‘It seems to me, it is nothing to do with the crystal. It is your own doubt and fear which are getting in the way.’ Athena set down the cup. ‘Is it possible the thought of making contact with another world like this is something you cannot bring yourself to believe in? You have set your own credibility limit.’ She leaned back into the sofa, sitting sideways so she could watch Abi’s face. ‘Or do I mean credulity?’ She shook her head. ‘You know what I mean.’

Abi smiled. ‘I do, and I would say that is undoubtedly one of my problems. The trouble is trying to reconcile what is actually happening here and what I believe is possible.’ She still hadn’t mentioned the priest bit. It was too big a deal. Bound to be. ‘So, how can I reset my parameters?’

Athena laughed. ‘My dear, I think that is for you to do. All I can suggest is that you give yourself a good talking to and logically confront what is going on. Look at what is real – have you been to the Tribunal tourist centre across the road, for instance? Upstairs there is a wonderful little museum. They even have an Iron Age canoe over there. That is the reality behind what you are seeing. Study it. Let yourself feel. Does anything come. Does it make a difference, looking at all this as archaeology rather than myth? Then see how you feel about what has happened with your ghosts and decide whether, logically, you can readjust your belief systems.’

Abi shook her head. ‘I fear that is easier said than done.’

‘I doubt it. If you were too disbelieving you would have dismissed all this as rubbish the first time it happened and shut down. I’ve seen people do that here. Glastonbury makes things happen for people. There is something in the air!’ she sighed. ‘They come, all excited and eager and waiting for some wonderful spiritual experience, then when – and if – it happens they go into free fall. It’s so sad.’

‘I sense there are no half measures here. One is either a Believer or a non-Believer in the Glastonbury experience.’ Abi was watching a group of women who had walked in. They went straight to the counter, helping themselves to trays. ‘You can tell by the way they dress,’ she added absent-mindedly.

Athena snorted with laughter. ‘So you have me down as a goddess worshipper, which in your case is not a compliment, right?’

‘OK. Sorry. Yes, I suppose I did. It’s your skirts. But I love them. I wish I had the courage to wear them myself. They are pretty and floaty and glamorous and they look very comfortable.’

‘And they hide the bulges, dear,’ Athena added dryly. She stood up. ‘I have to get back to the shop; it’s Bella’s half-day. We’ll talk about this some more, but in the meantime, go to the museum, then do some parameter stretching exercises.’ She smiled. ‘I would think just living round here for a bit would do the job; expanding your open-mindedness.’

Abi watched her make her way towards the door, greeting two people as she left, chatting to them briefly, then moving on. She seemed to know everyone. Abi sighed wistfully. She was an outsider here, an impostor, pretending to be someone she wasn’t, but no longer the person she was. She reached for her teacup and sipped from it thoughtfully.