James Bull-Davies looked around the empty, dusty hall. Sniffed once, like a pointer on a heath. He'd obviously waited until Gomer Parry had gone. Damn. She'd as good as told him to leave it for a while; he was either dense or simply didn't believe his family was obliged to bow to the wishes of anyone in Ledwardine.

'Interesting sermon of yours, yesterday, Mrs Watkins. Wrote that after the meeting, I suppose.'

'Didn't write it at all,' Merrily said brusquely. 'Came off the top of my head, more or less. Sometimes you have to busk it.'

'Really. Don't recall Hayden "busking".'

'Perhaps he was just better at it than me,' she said sweetly. 'Er, I think I can cobble together a mug of tea, if you have the time. Can't do any better than that at the moment.'

He looked down at her with suspicion. Perhaps wondering if she'd heard about him being rolling drunk in the square on Saturday night, offering to lay his concubine on the cobbles. She walked through to the kitchen, which had fitted units now but still some of the old formicaed shelves and white tiles. She wrinkled her nose. Not yet her kind of kitchen.

James Bull-Davies shuffled awkwardly in the middle of the flagged floor. She was clearly not his kind of vicar. He didn't know what to do with her. He wasn't even happy looking at her, preferred the ceiling.

'Used to be two rooms, this, as I recall. When I was a boy. That section over there used to be a pantry or buttery or something.'

'Did you come here often?' Someone had left a tiny kettle for the Aga; Merrily filled it over the open sink, with all the pipework visible underneath. 'I mean recently.'

'Only when there was business to deal with. Parish business.'

Don't offend anyone called Bull-Davies, Ted had said. The church would be rubble but for them. Strange how things changed; from what she'd heard, Upper Hall was closer to rubble these days. Not a great deal left from the old days. His divorce, presumably, had not helped. Were there children, or was that another source of pressure, the inheritance factor?

Perhaps, after the parish business had been dealt with, he'd have discussed some of his problems with Alf. As his priest, his padre. The way a man like James would never be able to do with a woman because women were mothers or aunts or sisters or you fucked them.

Merrily set the kettle on the stove. Perhaps she was wrong. 'Sorry, there's nowhere to sit. We'll have to lean on the Aga.'

It occurred to her that this was the first time they'd been alone together, the squire and the parsoness he didn't want in his village. She hoped Jane would stay out.

James Bull-Davies propped himself stiffly against one end of the big stove's chromium bar, leaving a good two feet between them. A woman in a cassock? Perverse, surely.

Or did it secretly turn him on, like, say, the matron at his public school? Merrily suspected she would never know.

'That sermon ...' She squeezed the warm bar. 'I suppose I was just stalling for time.'

'Message seemed to be that you were going to lay the whole vexed issue before the Almighty, let him sort it out.'

'If you want to look at it that way, yes, I suppose that's what I'm going to do. In the end.'

'Way I look at it,' he said, 'it has bugger-all to do with God. Question of honour. And responsibility.'

'Meaning your honour, my responsibility?'

Merrily looked sideways at him, but he wouldn't meet her eyes, stared across the kitchen, his full lips in a kind of pout. A surprisingly powerful shaft of evening sunlight brutally exposed his bald patch and put a shine on his tightly shaven jaw he'd shaved again, before coming here?

'Why did you walk out the other night, Mr Davies? I'd've thought you'd have wanted to stay and confront the enemy.'

He lowered his gaze to the stained flags. 'Perhaps I couldn't trust myself not to smash his smug face in.'

'Oh, I think you could. Disciplined, military chap like you.'

He exhaled a short laugh.

'I mean, I can see your point,' Merrily said. 'If he's got to make a statement about the treatment of gay people, why use a real character who might not, in fact, have been-'

'It's personal. It's political'

'Yes. Obviously.'

'Oh, I don't mean poo/politics. Though obviously that's the other chip on his shoulder. Coffey fell in love, if you like, with the village, the area. Wanted the keeper's lodge, bottom of my drive. Wasn't for sale, but it was empty had to dispense with the keeper's services year or two ago, matter of cash flow. But that's the nearest dwelling to Upper Hall and I wasn't letting it go for peanuts. Made him pay. Made him pay.'

'And he resents that, does he?'

'Look ...' Bull-Davies levered himself from the stove. 'He wanted the lodge. I wasn't touting. Never told him he wouldn't have to spend a substantial amount of money on the place.'

'Oh.'

'Didn't need that much to make it perfectly habitable. Of course, to turn it into the kind of perfumed brothel he wanted I mean, the water supply was perfectly fine nobody has to have a ... a whirlpool bath.'

Merrily tried not to smile. His father would probably have said the same about hot water. 'So it's a personal vendetta because of what you've cost him. That's what you're saying?'

'I think it's a probability you should consider.'

'That he's written a whole play to get back at you?'

'Hardly a whole play ... Vicar.'

'I'm a bit lost here,' Merrily said. 'I don't even know for sure why this would hurt you so much. I know your family's well-embedded in the village, but, I mean, was one of your ancestors seriously involved in the persecution of Williams?'

Bull-Davies didn't answer. He looked down at the flagstones and bit his upper lip with his lower teeth, which made him look momentarily feral, and it was at that moment that dear little Jane decided to stroll airily in.

'Mum, I ...' As if she hadn't been listening outside the door. As if she'd had no idea there was a visitor. 'Oh, hello.'

Bull-Davies looked at the kid and nodded. Merrily said, thinking fast, 'Jane, if we're going to spend the evening here, we need to eat. Why don't you get some money out of my bag and pop over to the chip shop?'

'They won't be open.'

'Yes,' Merrily said grimly. 'They will.'

Jane's eyes had the mutinous look of one who'd been stitched up; she shrugged. 'OK, then. Can I have a pickled egg?'

'Get two.'

When the front door slammed, with a vaultlike echo, Merrily turned and faced the Squire. 'I think we have enough time before she gets back for you to tell me what all this is really about.'

The wooden clock in the fish-and-chip shop window indicated that it wouldn't be open for another quarter of an hour, so she'd lied again. Mum lied all the time. Like vicars had some kind of special dispensation.

The chip shop was on the corner of Old Barn Lane and the Hereford road. On the edge of the village and therefore outside the main conservation area, which probably explained why it was allowed to exist. It was still a dull-looking joint, denied the brilliantly greasy illuminated signs you found on chippies in Liverpool. Jane turned away and strolled back towards the village centre, wondering if there'd be time to nip into the Black Swan and ditch the uniform.

Circumstances dictated otherwise. As she emerged into Church Street, Colette Cassidy was walking down from the square.

Colette seemed to be studying the texture of the cobbles, and neither of them acknowledged the other until they were about to collide.

'Hi,' Jane said, kind of throwaway.

'How's it going?' Colette wore jeans and a black scoop-necked top under a studded leather jacket. But no make-up, no nose-stud. She carried a small brown-paper bag.

'OK,' Jane said. 'I suppose.'

'Get much hassle?'

'Bit. You?'

'They do the motions. Uh ...' Colette proffered the bag. 'I got you this.'

'Oh.' She took the bag, surprised. It felt like a CD.

'You were asking about Lol Robinson. That's his last album, reissued. Well, his band, from way back. One of the guys at school bought one after she read in some magazine how this guy out of Radiohead likes them. When I saw what it was called, I thought you'd ... Anyway, it was the last copy.'

'Oh. Wow.' This was unexpectedly touching. 'That's amazing. I mean ... thanks.'

'It was only mid-price,' Colette said. 'Don't take it out of the bag, or people'll think we're really sad. Listen, I'm having this kind of a birthday party. My sixteenth. Friday after next. Just guys from school and one or two marginally cool people. And Dr Samedi this DJ, who's like really cool. Dr Samedi's Mojomix? Heavy voodoo, Taney.'

'Sounds excellent,' Jane said. 'Where's it going to be?'

'They're letting me have the restaurant. Big gesture. They've promised to go out and stay out.'

'Are they mad?'

'Well, Barry the manager'll be in charge, but he's relatively OK. Also, it's got to be invitation only, no riffraff, no lowlife.' Colette smiled cynically.

'Cool,' Jane said. 'If I tell Mum it's at the Country Kitchen, no problem.'

'Good,' Colette said. 'Listen. I mean, thanks for not grassing me up about what happened. Like, it was pretty shitty of me, all that Edgar Powell stuff. I was feeling moderately pissed off by then, with those tossers and everything. So, like, thanks.'

'No problem.'

'So you gonna tell me?'

'Huh?'

'What happened. Weird scenes, Janey. I thought you'd gone.'

'Gone where?'

'Like dead. Then suddenly opening your eyes, rambling about these kind of little lights. And then you've like, gone again. Coma-stuff.'

Jane felt strange. She looked behind Colette and along Old Barn Street. There was a couple of women with a pram heading down from the Market Cross, no one else in sight. She felt strange, like she wasn't here at all.

Colette's eyes flashed. 'Oh, come on, Janey. Don't tell me you don't remember. Don't shit me.'

'I don't.'

'What did Devenish say then?'

'She just brought me back. She was just like ... cool about it. I don't even know how she came to be there.'

'Lol phoned her. Any crisis, he calls Lucy. She's like his therapist, poor little sod. He was really shit scared. Wouldn't go in that big, old orchard in the dark without Lucy to protect him. Well, he wouldn't go in with me. I think he's even scared of me. You imagine that?'

Jane didn't say anything. Colette was trying to recapture ground, saying Lol was scared of her. She decided not to tell Colette about what she'd heard under Lol's window. Maybe the person to tell was Miss Devenish. Really needed to see the old girl, like soon.

'I don't know why the fuck I bothered,' Colette said bitterly.

On the way back to the chip shop, Jane took the CD out of its paper bag. When she saw what it was called, she gasped.

'People don't understand. Think we're simply stuff-shirted shits. Hunting, shooting and fishing, lording it over the peasants.'

James Bull-Davies stood up straight and still very much the army officer.

'We merely serve,' he said. 'We serve our country. We serve the countryside. Wasn't for us, the traditional landowners, place just wouldn't look the same, wouldn't have the same atmosphere, the same beauty, the same harmony. We're the stewards. The custodians. We don't have power. We have responsibility.'

It sounded very noble. It didn't, however, sound like the man who liked to call his mistress a slinky whore while she called him My Lord. Unless, of course, that was all down to Alison and her feminine wiles, bringing out the feudalist in him.

'I'm an army man. Understand the army. Well-oiled machine. Puts human relations, dealing with people, into some form of order. You know who you are, what you are. Most chaps like me, when they come out, go on calling themselves Colonel, as though they still have some sort of authority, as though the commoners should salute. Look in the local phone book: Colonel this, Colonel that. Pointless. Meaningless affectation. No time for it. I'm Mr Bull-Davies, now. James, to chaps I wish I'd had in the army, knock off some of the damn pretentions.'

Like Terrence Cassidy, presumably. Merrily smiled to herself.

'I've no illusions.' James paced the kitchen. 'Wasn't expecting it to happen when it did, wasn't expecting the old man to keel over for another twenty years. But no getting out of it. When the time comes, you have to shoulder the responsibility and that's that. No arguments. And you become someone else. In the army you're what you are. No complications. Here no getting away from it you're what your family is. What your family was. You have a responsibility not only to the living the living people, the living countryside but also to the dead. You see where I'm heading, Mrs Watkins?'

Merrily stirred the tea in the pot. 'Army-strength?'

'Not too strong. Civilian now. Do you know what Cassidy said to me? Came to see me yesterday. Dithering. "But, James," he said, "this was a long time ago." You credit that? Man's an arsehole. Shows the state of Britain that the rural economy's now increasingly reliant on specimens like this bloody caterers.'

His eyes met Merrily's for the first time. They were pale blue and showed a surprising insecurity.

'I'm sorry if I speak crudely. You're ... Well. Never minced words with Hayden.'

'My last parish was in a rundown part of Liverpool,' Merrily said. 'The only soldiers were squaddies back from Iraq. They tended to be the more refined parishioners.'

James barked a laugh.

'I do understand,' Merrily said, 'that three centuries, in the history of a rural family like yours, is not so very long.'

'I said to him' James's lower lip jutted and curled 'Cassidy, I said, you've been here about two minutes. In the past three centuries, your family what anyone can trace of it has probably lived in a couple of dozen different houses in God knows how many different towns. However many generations it goes back, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, this is my family. In my village. How could I possibly condone some fatuous little pageant' he spat out the word like a pip 'which seeks to demean and ridicule my heritage? Yes, the local magistrate was Thomas Bull. Yes, he was one of the party who confronted Wil Williams. Yes, he was there when they found the body. And yes, he believed the evidence. Yes, he was convinced Williams was in league with the devil and should die for it. He was a man of his time. Homosexuality doesn't come into it, and I won't have his memory soiled by some sordid little queer in the name of so-called art and a few dozen visiting trendies paying London prices for fancy fodder at Cassidy's Country bloody Kitchen.'

He came up to Merrily. The stove was hot against her bottom, but she didn't move.

'Went along with the wassailing fiasco last winter because that was at least an attempt at reinstating a tradition. But this festival's in danger of going the wrong way and dragging my village along with it. Realize there's going to be some change. Even if I disagree with it. Recognize that your presence here's part of that change.'

'And naturally you're opposed to the ordination of women.'