'You're saying I should keep my mouth shut,' Merrily said. 'Or I'll have the diocesan chauvinists twittering to the bishop told you what happens when you let hysterical women take over. That sort of thing.'

'I think you should give it a few more weeks. It isn't ... harmful in any way, is it?'

She thought of Sean peering and groping through the mist of blood. The dream-Sean. That definitely was a dream. Wasn't it? The phone felt slippery in her hand.

'And I wouldn't have thought,' David said, 'that after all the emotional traumas you've come through, you would find these minor paranormal fluctuations at all frightening.'

'No.' She paused to bring her voice down. 'Oh no.'

'You say you don't know how to handle it, as if there's a secret technique we didn't bother to tell you about. There isn't, I'm afraid. Sorry, love, but you have to search your own faith, your own belief system. Look, call me again in a week or two, if it's still worrying you.'

But he was telling her not to. He was telling her that, as far as the Church was concerned, she was on her own.

21.

Tears SHE HAULED HER headache off to the church. Was it because she didn't like being alone in the vicarage? Because the even older church, with its tombs and the fractured skulls grinning up at you from stone flags, was actually homelier?

Frightened? Frightened of a paranormal fluctuation? Frightened for her daughter's emotional condition, her own mental state? The Priest-in-Charge? God's handmaiden? Good God, no. Perish the thought.

Her head felt like a foundry; she'd never ring David Campbell or anyone else at that bloody college again.

She gripped the cold ring-handle of the door into the porch. Pausing there, as she tended to these days. If Dermot Child was slowly undressing her for the benefit of the bellringers she didn't want to be a captive audience. She opened the church door just a crack. Through it echoed a torn and stricken howl.

'... you!'

She stopped, head pulsing.

'... you, Liza Howells ... the night you came to me with your bruises, your torn lip, mouth smashed and teeth gone ... that night your husband beat you for your dalliance with Joseph Pritchard ...'

Her first thought was that this was something to do with the pageant the Women's Institute was organizing for the festival, a parade of Ledwardine society through the ages.

'OK.' Footsteps. 'Leave it there a minute.'

But this voice she'd heard before. Martin Creighton, the theatre director.

'So, OK, if we had this Liza sitting somewhere in the middle, and she's wearing ... what?'

'A fairly simple black dress.' Mira Wickham, the designer. 'Nothing obvious until she's on her feet. It's important that the members of the audience sitting all around her don't realize she isn't one of them until she starts to react.'

Merrily walked in, stood by the Norman font.

'In fact, you know, I think what would be really good,' Mira said, 'is if Liza and one or two of the others have been chatting to people in character before the lights go down. A merging of present-day villagers with their ancestors. So that it seems to several people that they know Liza and the others as individuals. And this communicates itself. We get a blur. A timeslip.'

'Spooky,' Creighton said. 'But that only works if you have real locals in the audience every night.'

'So we offer free seats to regular churchgoers. Let the vicar sort that out.'

'You might find it just a bit more complicated than that,' Merrily said, and there was silence.

Stefan Alder spotted her from the pulpit. 'Oh ... Hi!' He bounded down, loped along the aisle, grabbed her hand. 'You're ... Merrily Watkins, right?'

'Mr Alder.'

Creighton and Wickham came to stand either side of him. They looked uncomfortable.

'Look,' Creighton said. 'I hope you don't think we're being presumptuous. Obviously, we've got to plan as if the thing is going to happen here, but if you say no ...' He wiped the air, both hands flat. 'That's it. We'll understand.'

'And where would you go then?'

'Oh.' Stefan Alder flicked back his ash-blond fringe. 'I'm sure the bishop would fix Richard up with something. Although, personally, if we couldn't do it here I'd be inclined to knock it on the head. You see-'

Creighton was glaring at him.

'-no, really, Martin, I want to be up-front about this whole thing. It was my idea after all. I ... Look, are you doing anything absolutely vital, Merrily? I mean, can we talk about this? The two of us?'

Really succulent totty, Jane had described him once, being provocative. Maybe this was what she saw when she thought of Wil Williams. It was understandable. In a cream-coloured sweat-top and light blue jeans, he looked as fresh and innocent as Richard Coffey seemed seasoned and corrupt. He looked like the singer with one of those boy bands Jane claimed she'd grown out of.

Down past the last of the graves, where the church bordered the orchard on one side and the vicarage garden on the other, there was an apple tree in the hedge.

'It could have been this one,' Stefan said. 'Well, I mean, obviously not this particular tree, but its ancestor. I was talking to your Mr Parry, and he said this particular spot could well have been orchard in Wil's time. You notice how all the graves at this end are relatively modern, showing where they had to extend the churchyard.'

It was true. There was even a grave of black marble, put in before the conservationists got them banned.

'Couldn't be this particular tree, though, could it?' Merrily said. 'According to the legend, no actual apples would ever grow over the place where he lay.'

Whereas the tree in the hedge was heavily talcumed with blossom.

'They would say that, though, wouldn't they? All these stories are supposed to have an eerie postscript.' Stefan plucked off a sprig. 'I remember the first time I came here I'd read an account of it and I'd thought, you know, Poor sod. There was no emotional involvement at that stage, not until I actually came here. I just thought what a bloody shame. I mean, even if he was a witch ... damaging an apple crop? Really!'

'Perhaps, if it had gone to court, it would've been thrown out. That was happening, increasingly. It's my understanding that, by 1670, people were getting a bit wise to all these witchcraft accusations. You had a neighbour you couldn't get on with, you'd just accuse him of making your prize bull impotent or something.'

'You're right. There had to be more. They wanted him dead, otherwise what was the point?'

'They wanted him dead because he was gay?'

'Thomas Bull wanted him dead. And James Bull-Davies knows that.'

His eyes, the colour of his jeans, were shining with a very innocent kind of fervour. He looked on the edge of tears. He looked too frail and vulnerable to be living with someone as coldly manipulative as Richard Coffey. But that was none of her business.

They walked to the churchyard wall yes, this part was newer, some of the stone wasn't even local and stood leaning against it, looking back at the church whose stones, if they could speak, would be able to answer all their questions.

'Let's look at it objectively,' Merrily said. 'You're saying, I think, that because Bull was a puritan he'd be absolutely shattered to discover his parish priest was homosexual. Now I can't quite remember what percentage of today's Anglican ministers are gay, but it's a substantial one, and if they all got fired a few hundred churches would have to close overnight. Now, how different was it then, in a country area where people's attitude to all matters sexual would have been ... well ... tolerant. Down-to-earth, shall we say?'

'Look, I don't know ...' He fingered his fringe. 'I don't know where you stand. As a woman.'

'For what it's worth,' Merrily said, 'I think gays have always been drawn to the priesthood because it's something they do rather well. It being a job that often calls for feminine qualities. I suppose, as we weren't allowed in for so long, gay men have helped to hold it all together. They've given the Church a breadth of compassion without which it might not even have survived. That make any sense?'

Stefan Alder stepped back, striking an unselfconsciously camp pose, with one hand on a hip. She was sure she'd seen him before, not just in the village. Must have been on television, maybe a victim in The Bill or a casualty in Casualty.

'That's beautiful' He smiled radiantly and handed her the sprig of apple blossom. 'That's a really beautiful thing to say, you know? I feel I can trust you now, I really do.'

'Oh, well ... It was just Richard seemed to think I was prejudiced in some way. And I'm not. That's all'

'Look,' he said. 'Look, I want to explain to you ... At first I mean, he's committed to it, it's his project but at first, Richard was only doing this for me. He wasn't especially struck by the story, or the village. We were having a few days' break and Richard was half-looking for a holiday cottage, and we spent a night at the Black Swan. After dinner, he was tired, and he had a headache, so he went up to bed and I sat in the lounge with some coffee, idly reading some local guidebooks. It seemed odd, coming across a mention of Ledwardine Church and looking up and seeing the steeple through the lounge window. And then I saw a brief mention of Wil ... I mean, I'd read the story but I hadn't remembered the name of the village and it was such a shock realizing I was sitting just a short walk away from where he ... died. The next thing I knew, I was just sort of ... here.'

He looked very ethereal against the apple trees which themselves, with their heavy blossom, were like the ghosts of trees. It was a cloudy morning, a fine spring drizzle beginning.

'It's incredible in autumn, isn't it?' Stefan said. 'The air around Hereford is so full of apple scent. It seems in the evening as if the whole county's heavy and drunk on it. And even though this orchard was looking rather sad and neglected, I felt the way it was, back then. Huge and bountiful. The absolute core of the county. The very centre of what Traherne called the Orb.'

Merrily remembered, with an unsettling feeling, what Gomer Parry had said about the Apple Tree Man. So gnarled and barren-looking in the ice, now full of thrusting buds.

'I just knew that Wil, even if he'd had the power, would never destroy an orchard,' Stefan said. 'Not the biggest orchard in Hereford. It would be like poisoning the country. More than that, it ... I mean, he was a friend of Traherne. Nature was an aspect of God. It would have been blasphemy. He wasn't a witch at all. I suddenly felt very, very close to him. He was in the air, in the scent, the whole apple-aura of this place. And then ...'

He was close to whispering. Merrily was still holding the sprig of blossom he'd given her. She was aware of being set up, dropped into a little cameo scene, but the snowy numinescence had settled on her senses; she was softened.

'I could suddenly see him. I could see that poor, persecuted boy hanging here. All alone. All alone among the apple trees. It was spring then, like today. I could see the blossom which had fallen on his hair like stars ...'

There were big, theatrical tears in his eyes now, but it didn't seem like a performance; she didn't feel, somehow, that he was that good an actor. Did he really think he'd seen Wil hanging here or was he describing an exercise in imagination? Perhaps it didn't matter.

'Merrily, it was the most spiritual moment of my life. I just knew I'd been brought here. Just me. But why me? Who was I? Was I him? Had I been him in a previous life? No.' He shook his head. 'You don't fall in love with yourself, do you? Not like that.'

God. She didn't know how she felt about this at all.

'I just knew in that moment what Wil was. Why I had to be here. To be near to him. To convey the truth about him. That it could be the most important thing I would ever do. I couldn't sleep, I was tortured. I awoke early, walked all around the village there was nothing for sale. Not a single For Sale sign. And then I saw the lodge, empty and derelict-looking and I just knew that whatever it cost ...'

He stopped speaking, looking for some reaction.

Merrily said, 'Did Richard know why you were so anxious to live here?'

'Oh yes,' Stefan said. 'If you've seen some of Richard's plays you'll know he's fascinated by obsession. I suppose, at that time, I'd become sort of ... his. Obsession. So he bought the lodge.'

At a price. Merrily could hear James Bull-Davies. Made him pay. Made him pay.

'I have to play him,' Stefan Alder said very quietly. 'I have to feel him inside me in the purest sense. I mean, I have to be Wil. I have to be Wil here. You do understand that, don't you, Merrily?'

After they parted, Merrily walked around the churchyard for some time, alone.

Decision time?

Well, he was a nice guy, an honest guy. But he was in love with a dead man, with a ghost, and there'd been a certain madness in those tear-glazed eyes.

Coffey? He was in love with Stefan. He'd bought a house in the village because of it. But he hated the vendor, Bull-Davies; he had a score to settle there and he would use Stefan's desire.

Coffey and Bull-Davies were both, in their separate ways, powerful and influential men. Stefan Alder was neither and so was vulnerable. But he was also the catalyst.

Merrily sighed and thought back to her famous Wil Williams sermon.

Collect all the information you can get, listen to all the arguments.

Yes, done that.

Seek out independent people who might have an opinion or a point of view you hadn't thought about.

Nobody here is entirely independent. Not Lucy Devenish, nor Alison Kinnersley. They each have their own hidden agenda.

So why not put it all on Him? That's what He's there for. Go into a quiet place ...

'Yes. I'm here.'

In a cushion of soft, white petals.

Put that question. Tell Him it's urgent. Tell Him you'd like an answer as quickly as possible.

'I wouldn't mind an answer now, actually. If that's all right with You.'

She looked up to where the church steeple was fingering Heaven. Focusing on the gilded weathercock on top of the steeple as if it could point her in the right direction.

Perhaps only the weathercock had changed since Williams's day. The steeples and towers were still the tallest structures in the countryside. The churches were powerful places.

Merrily bit her lip. Was this the answer? Freedom of expression was one thing, multiple obsession and the taint of necrophilia something else?

You let obsession into a church at your peril?

When she went back into the building, the theatricals had gone, replaced by Uncle Ted, Caroline Cassidy and her restaurant manager, Barry Bloom. They were setting up tables in the space behind the pews.

'I really don't know about this,' Ted was saying. 'It is a church.'

'Oh, but the very name of the cider, Ted!' Caroline sang. 'And if as many people as you say turn up, they'll get about half a paper cupful each. Ah, Merrily! Merrily will decide.'

'Thanks a lot,' Merrily said without thinking. 'What is it this time?'

Ted and Caroline both stared at her. Oh God.

'Sorry. I'm a bit on edge. Big night.'

'Coffee, Vicar?' Barry Bloom said. He was squat, wide-shouldered, frizz-haired. Ex-SAS, it was rumoured, like, for some reason, quite a few people in the catering business around Hereford. Barry already had a coffee machine set up next to the font.

'Oh, thanks. Caffeine. Wonderful' She hadn't had any breakfast, wasn't likely to get any lunch. She was dying for a smoke, but maybe not. 'So, what's the problem?'

'Well, as you know,' Caroline said, 'the Ledwardine festival officially opens on Saturday.'

'Does it? God.' Wrapping her hands around the hot, polystyrene coffee cup. This meant she'd be expected to announce her decision about the play.