Ellis gave him a cold look. 'It would seem to me, Robin, that a dragon legend and a circle of churches dedicated to St Michael is incontrovertible evidence of something requiring perpetual restraint.'

'I'm not getting this.'

'A circle of churches.' Ellis spread his hands. 'A holy wall to contain the dragon. But the dragon will always want to escape. Periodically, the dragon rears... and snaps... and is forced back again and again and keeps coming back...' Ellis clawing the air, a harsh light in his eyes, 'until something yields.'

Now he was looking over at the ruins again, like an army officer sizing up the field of battle. This was one serious fucking fruitcake.

'And the evil is now inside... The legend says and you'll find references to this in most of the books written about this area that if just one of those churches should fall, the dragon will escape.'

Then he looked directly at Robin.

Robin said, 'But... this is a legend, Nick.'

'The circle of St Michael churches is not a legend.'

'You think this place is evil?'

'It's decommissioned. It no longer has the protection of St Michael. In this particular situation, I would suggest that's a sign that it requires... attention.'

'Attention?'

Robin put on a crazy laugh, but his heart wasn't in it. And Betty didn't laugh at all.

'What does he want?'

'He...' Robin shook his head. 'Oh, boy. He was warning me. That fruitcake was giving me notice.'

'Of what? What does he want?'

'He wants to hold a service here. He believes this church was abandoned because the dragon got in. Because the frigging dragon lies coiled here. And that God has chosen him, Ellis, given him the muscle, in the shape of the biggest congregations ever known in this area, given him the power to drive the dragon out.'

Betty went very still.

'All he wants, Bets... all he wants... is to come along with a few friends and hold some kind of a service.'

'What kind of a service?'

'You imagine that? All these farmers in their best suits and the matrons in their Sunday hats and Nick in his white surplice and stuff all standing around in a church with no roof singing goddamn "Bread of Heaven"? In a site that they stole from the Old Religion about eight hundred years ago and then fucking sold off? Jeez, I was so mad! This is our church now. On our farm. And we like dragons!'

Betty was silent. The whole room was silent. The rain had stopped, the breeze had died. Even the Rayburn had temporarily conquered its snoring.

Robin howled like a dog. 'What's happening here? Why do we have to wind up in a parish with a priest who's been exposed to the insane Bible-freaks who stalk the more primitive parts of my beloved homeland? And is therefore no longer content with vicarage tea parties and the organ fund.'

'So what did you say to him?'

'Bastard had me over a barrel. I say a flat "no", the cat's clean out the bag. So, what I said... to my shame, I said, Nick, I could not think of letting you hold a service in there. Look at all that mud! Look at those pools of water! Just give us some time like we've only been here days give us some time to get it cleaned up. How sad was that?'

Just like Ellis, she didn't seem to have been listening. 'Robin, what kind of service?'

'He said it would be no big deal not realizing that any kind of damn service here now, was gonna be a big deal far as we're concerned. And if it's no big deal, why do it? Guy doesn't even like churches.'

'What kind of service?' Betty was at the edge of her chair and her eyes were hard.

'I don't know.' Robin was a little scared, and that made him angry. 'A short Eucharist? Did he say that? What is that precisely? I'm not too familiar with this Christian sh-'

'It's a Mass.'

'Huh?'

'An Anglican Mass. And do you know why a Mass is generally performed in a building other than a functioning church?'

He didn't fully. He could only guess.

'To cleanse it,' Betty said. 'The Eucharist is Christian disinfectant. To cleanse, to purify to get rid of bacteria.'

'OK, let me get this...' Robin pulled his hands down his face, in praying mode. 'This is the E-word, right?'

Betty nodded.

An exorcism.

9.

Visitor THE ANSWERING MACHINE sounded quite irritable.

'Mrs Watkins. Tania Beauman, Livenight. I've left messages for you all over the place. The programme goes out Friday night, so I really have to know whether it's yes or no. I'll be here until seven. Please call me... Thank you.'

'Sorry.' Merrily came back into the kitchen, hung up her funeral cloak. 'I can't think with that thing bleeping.'

Barbara Buckingham was sitting at the refectory table, unwinding her heavy silk scarf while her eyes compiled a photo-inventory of the room.

'You're in demand, Mrs Watkins.' The slight roll on the 'r' and the barely perceptible lengthening of the 'a' showed her roots were sunk into mid-border clay. But this would be way back, many southern English summers since.

Walking through black and white timber-framed Ledwardine, across the cobbled square to the sixteenth-century vicarage, the dull day dying around them, the lights in the windows blunting the bite of evening, she'd said, 'How quaint and cosy it is here. I'd forgotten. And so close.'

Close to what? Merrily had made a point of not asking.

'Tea?' She still felt slightly ashamed of the kitchen must get round to emulsioning it in the spring. 'Or coffee?'

Barbara would have tea. She took off her gloves.

Like her late sister, she was good-looking, but in a sleek and sharp way, with a turned-up nose which once would have been cute but now seemed haughty. The sister's a retired teacher and there's no arguing with her, Eileen Cullen had said.

'I didn't expect you to be so young, Mrs Watkins.'

'Going on thirty-seven?'

'Young for what you're doing. Young to be the diocesan exorcist.'

'Diocesan deliverance consultant.'

'You must have a progressive bishop.'

'Not any more.' Merrily filled the kettle.

Mrs Buckingham dropped a short laugh. 'Of course. That man who couldn't take the pressure and walked out. Hunt? Hunter? I try to keep up with Church affairs. I was headmistress of a Church school for many years.'

'In this area? The border?'

'God no. Got out of there before I was twenty. Couldn't stand the cold.'

Merrily put the kettle on the stove. 'We can get bad winters here,' she agreed.

'Ah... not simply the climate. My father was a farmer in Radnor Forest. I remember my whole childhood as a kind of perpetual February.'

'Frugal?' Merrily tossed tea bags into the pot.

Mrs Buckingham exhaled bitter laughter. 'In our house, those two tea bags would have to be used at least six times. The fat in the chip pan was only renewed for Christmas.' Her face grew pinched at the memories.

'You were poor?'

'Not particularly. We had in excess of 130 acres. Marginal land, mind always appallingly overgrazed. Waste nothing. Make every square yard earn its keep. Have you heard of hydatid disease?'

'Vaguely.'

'Causes cysts to grow on internal organs, sometimes the size of pomegranates. Originates from a tapeworm absorbed by dogs allowed to feed on infected dead sheep. Or, on our farm, required to eat dead sheep. Human beings can pick it up the tapeworm eggs simply through stroking the sheepdog. When I was sixteen I had to go into hospital to have a hydatid cyst removed from my liver.'

'How awful.'

'That was when I decided to get out. I doubt my father even noticed I was gone. Had another mouth to feed by then. A girl again, unfortunately.'

'Menna?'

'She would be... ten months old when I left. It was a long time before I began to feel guilty about abandoning her fifteen years or more. And by then it was too late. They'd probably forgotten I'd ever existed. I expect he was even grateful I'd gone another opportunity to try for a son, at no extra cost. A farmer with no son is felt to be lacking in something.'

'Any luck?'

'My mother miscarried, apparently,' Mrs Buckingham said brusquely. 'There was a hysterectomy.' She shrugged. 'I never saw them again.'

'Where did you go?'

'Found a job in Hereford, in a furniture shop. The people there were very good to me. They gave me a room above the shop, next to the storeroom. Rather frightening at night. All those empty chairs: I would imagine people sitting there, silently, waiting for me when I came back from night classes. Character-building, though, I suppose. I got two A levels and a grant for teacher-training college.'

It all sounded faintly Dickensian to Merrily, though it could have been no earlier than the 1970s.

'So you never went back?' The phone was ringing.

'After college, I went to work in Hampshire, near Portsmouth. Then a husband, kids grown up now. No, I never went back, until quite recently. A neighbour's daughter Judith kept me informed, through occasional letters. She was another farmer's daughter, from a rather less primitive farm. Please get that phone call, if you want.'

Merrily nodded, went through to the office.

'As it happens' closing the scullery door 'she's here now.'

'Listen, I'm sorry,' Eileen Cullen said. 'I couldn't think what else to tell her. Showed up last night, still unhappy about the sister's death and getting no co-operation from the doctor. I didn't have much time to bother with her either. I just thought somebody ought to persuade her to forget about Mr Weal, and go home, get on with her life. And I thought she'd take it better coming from a person of the cloth such as your wee self.'

'Forgive me, but that doesn't sound like you.'

'No. Well...'

'So she didn't say anything about holding a special service in church then?'

'Merrily, the problem is I'm on the ward in one minute.'

'Bloody hell, Eileen-'

'Aw, Jesus, all the woman wants is her sister laid to rest in a decent, holy fashion. She's one of your fellow Christians. Tell her you'll say a few prayers for the poor soul, and leave it at that.'

There was an unexpected undercurrent here.

'What happened with Mr Weal after I left the other night?'

'Well, he came out. Eventually.'

'Eventually?'

'He came out when she did. And he chose to accompany her down to the mortuary.'

'Is that normal?'

'Well, of course it isn't fockin' normal. We're not talking about a normal feller here! It was a special concession. Merrily, I really have to go. If the sister's tardy, how can you expect the nurses-'

'Eileen!'

'That's all I can tell you. Just persuade her to go home. She'll do no good for herself.'

'What's that supposed to-'

Cullen hung up.

It was dark outside now, and the thorns were ticking against the scullery window.