James looked sullen again.

'We'll come to that,' Merrily said. 'I'm just trying to show that if Hannah Snell could pass herself off as a front-line fighting man for over five years, then it would certainly be possible for a young woman to get through college and become ordained and serve as a priest. Especially if she had the support of people of the order of Susannah Hopton and Thomas Traherne.'

Merrily switched off the microphone, leaned over the pulpit.

'Look, we know hardly anything about the real Wil Williams and I doubt we're ever going to. We presume she went to Oxford as a man perhaps there are records, I don't know. We can only speculate. About many things. Like why the estimable Thomas Traherne, who so loved Hereford and delighted in the countryside, should have gone so readily to London. Perhaps he too was in love and knew better than anyone why it was doomed.'

'That's an enchanting thought,' said Mrs Goddard, the crippled horsewoman. 'He never married, you know. He died at thirty-seven.'

Bull-Davies snorted. Merrily wondered whether Lol Robinson, who was also thirty-seven, knew that Traherne had died at precisely that age. She was suddenly worried about Lol. And Jane. She would have to end this soon.

'What must it've been like for her, though?' Effie Prosser said. 'A woman alone in that big vicarage, pretending to be a man.'

Merrily thought for a moment before responding.

'I know exactly what it was like.'

'You're really a man, are you, Mrs Watkins?'

'Mr Davies,' said Mrs Goddard, 'I'm getting rather tired of the sound of your voice. Please go on, Mrs Watkins.'

'Well, she wouldn't have been alone,' Merrily said. 'That's the first point. Ministers in those days, I gather, were rather more up-market than they are today. So there would have been servants. Certainly other people in that house from whom she would have had to hide the truth. Can you imagine the problems that would cause? She'd have no privacy in her own house. Except ...'

Merrily no longer wanted to be in the pulpit. She wanted to be a woman, not just a minister. She came down and sat on the chancel steps, as Stefan, as Wil, had done.

'... except in the attic. I ... feel ... that the attic was the only place where she felt free to be a woman. Even her bedchamber on the first floor would have been cleaned and tidied by a maid. So it would have to be a masculine room. When I'm on that floor, particularly, I sometimes sense a ... constriction. Perhaps I imagine that. Perhaps it's psychological'

'Or perhaps you are psychic,' said Mrs Goddard brightly.

Merrily tried to look dubious.

'I feel she went through quite a lot of pain, both emotional and physical, flattening her chest, deepening her voice, never daring to show herself in public without the bindings or corsets or whatever she wore. Unlike Traherne, she couldn't go out in the countryside with any sense of freedom. She couldn't even go into her beloved orchard and just be herself, without the risk of being seen.'

The images were coming to her as she spoke. She felt she was quivering with vision.

'So she made a place for herself. A dark, secret place, where she could perhaps keep women's clothes. Parade at night in the flimsiest, most frivolous of dresses. And weep. Silently, of course. Always silently. In the attic of the vicarage.'

I saw her. Oh my God, I saw her.

'I ... It's funny ...' She looked up. 'My daughter, Jane, was drawn to the attic from the moment she entered the house. I was thinking what a miserable, draughty-looking house it was, and Jane was dashing upstairs and claiming the attic for herself.'

She thought of the Mondrian walls which had become orchard walls. Had whoever became Wil Williams lain up there and closed her eyes and dreamed of walking out as a woman, smelling apple scents? Seeing those little golden lights among the branches and floating, like Jane on cheap cider? Had the presence the spirit of the orchard manifested there?

It was getting on for midnight. Gomer sat down at the base of the tree, where the moon couldn't find his glasses.

'All right,' he said, 'I'll tell you why I don't like the Powells.'

Lol was getting restive. He didn't know what to do but he wanted to be doing it. Could Gomer make it brief?

'En't a long story.'

Went back mainly to that day fifteen or so years ago, when Rod hired Gomer Parry Plant Hire to dig some drainage ditches. The hot day, when he'd had some of Edgar's excellent cider, made from the Pharisees Reds. Except the cider wasn't served up by Edgar or Rod, who were both at a cattle sale that day.

'Jennifer, it was. Jennifer Powell. Jennifer Adair, who used to work in the kitchen at the Black Swan.'

'Lloyd's mother?'

'And Rod's missus, and a hell of a nice girl. 'Er'd've been about thirty at the time and Lloyd was ten and Rod was forty and a bit more. They likes 'em younger, the Powells and they don't marry till late.'

Cut a long story short, it was clear Jennifer Powell had been crying and if you knew her mother-in-law, Meggie Powell, it didn't take long to work out she was the reason.

Tough wasn't the word for Meggie Powell.

'Built like a Hereford bull, face to match,' said Gomer. 'Bit less feminine, mabbe. When the 1959 flu epidemic took off half the fellers worked at the slaughterhouse there used to be, bottom of Ole Barn Lane, Meggie filled in for a fortnight. That kind o' woman, you know? Good wife to Edgar, mind, all senses of the word. Good mother to Garrod, likewise. By which I means ... likewise.'

'Aw, shit,' said Lol.

'Ar, sixty-seventh woman Edgar slept with, sure t'be. First one for Rod.'

'You're kidding.'

'It was normal enough then, boy, some families. Normal sex education, like. Well, not normal, but not uncommon. Teach 'em young. Teach 'em how it all works. Self-sufficiency, see. Look after your own, don't make a mess, but if you do, make sure you clears up after yourself. And, above all, keep it quiet.'

What rural life was all about in the old days. Feller beat up his wife in the city all the neighbours knew about it. Same thing happened in the country ... well, all the neighbours knew about it too, but they kept quiet. Anybody got really out of hand, they got dealt with. One way or another.

The Powell women were chosen with care, Gomer said. There were traditions they had to observe. Had to be a special sort of woman, which was not always the prettiest ... Well, look at Meggie. By the time a Powell married, usually at thirty-five-plus, he'd sown his wild oats over a wide area and was ready to settle down and pass on his knowledge to the next generation. By Powell standards, however, Rod chose unwisely. Jennifer Adair was too prissy, too genteel and on the day, fifteen years ago, when Rod and his old man were at the cattle sale and Jennifer Powell learned, in a heart to heart with Meggie, what was going to be expected of her in relation to Lloyd in a couple of years' time, Jennifer fled the premises and wound up weeping into the upholstery of Gomer's Jeep.

'What it come down to, 'er knowed Rod must've put it about, though he never said much and she never asked, like. But one thing she couldn't cope with was the thought of spendin' the rest of her life sleeping next a feller slept with Meggie.'

'What happened?'

'I seen her point and give her a lift to Hereford Station and a hundred quid and she en't been back to this day, and not a word, Lol, boy, 'cause if Rod ever finds out I'm a dead man, and that en't a figure of speech, like. Behind that wooden mask, Garrod Powell's the bitterest bastard you'll ever meet. Never married again after Jennifer walked out, never a girlfriend not seemly, like, not proper. Plus, he's doubly suspicious of all women, he don't like women. But you puts that together with a sex drive could light up half the county, you got a few big question marks, innit?'

'This common knowledge, Gomer?'

'Were never exactly common knowledge, except to the few of us working over a wide area of farms and such. And nowadays, when half the folk in Ledwardine was living other side of the country three year ago, ole Rod's a councillor and a gentleman and Lloyd's the decentest, politest boy you'd want your daughter to fetch back for Sunday tea.'

'I'm confused.' Lol massaged the back of his neck where the ponytail used to lie. He was thinking about Patricia Young. 'I don't know whether we're looking at the Bulls or the Powells.'

'There you hit it, boy. People's always looked at the Bulls in the big house. Looks at the Bulls, don't see the Powells. But them two families been linked up for years, centuries. Lives are entirely separate, o' course. Bulls is walkin' out with nice ladies, doin' the hunt-ball circuit and what have you. The Powells is huntin' on another level. When mammy done her bit, see, the old man'd take over their education. Take the boy into town bit further away, Ledbury, Abergavenny mabbe, show him how to hunt and not get hunted. Powells liked to marry late, like I said, so there'd be plenty of huntin' for a good few years. But there's huntin' ... and there's baitin'.'

'What the difference?'

'Baitin's where you brings 'em back,' Gomer said grimly.

52.

The Loft IT WAS THE part she'd been worrying about. Merrily walked up the two steps to the chancel to whisper to Alison in the choir stalls.

'I know,' Alison said. 'I know what you're asking, and now I'm not so sure. I mean, for Christ's sake, look at him.'

James sat with his head bent, as if in prayer, revealing a bald patch like a tonsure.

'Sooner or later, somebody's going to have to explain what's in the Journal,' Merrily said, 'and it isn't going to be James, is it?'

'And if I don't do it, you'll tell him who I am, what I'm doing here, right?'

'No,' Merrily said. 'I'm never going to tell him. It's not my place.'

Emotions crowded Alison's starkly beautiful face. Merrily tried to see a resemblance there to James and couldn't.

'You see, it's changed some things,' Alison said. 'Fundamental things. I haven't taken in half this stuff tonight, I've just sat there going over and over it.'

'Look,' Merrily said. 'Whatever's in there, both you and James know exactly what it is, while everybody else is going to speculate for generations. It needs to come out. We're exorcizing this village tonight; you must have sensed that.'

'I don't trust what I sense,' Alison said. 'Not any more.'

As Alison walked from the choir stalls to the chancel steps, James Bull-Davies came out into the aisle.

'Alison. No. No.'

Alison walked down the steps. Merrily moved back against the pulpit.

'It's getting bloody late and I'm tired,' James said. 'I'm tired of defending my family against a load of pure fantasy. And I'm tired of you, Mrs Watkins. I'm tired of your smugness, your high-handedness, and I'm tired of your bloody voice.'

'Mr Davies, sit down this instant!' Mrs Goddard shook off her daughter's hand and rose painfully from her pew. 'I want to hear what Mrs Watkins and this young woman have to say and I want you to hear it too. You're emerging as even more of an obnoxious man than we thought and a liar to boot. Don't show yourself to be a coward as well. Sit down!'

He didn't sit down, but he didn't leave. He went to stand at the back, near the vestry curtain. DC Ken Thomas was watching him.

Alison stood just forward from the rood screen with its wooden apples. Her voice was muted but distinct.

'What we learn from the Journal is that Wil Williams was buried on the wrong side of the ditch. He ... she ... did not commit suicide.'

'Yes,' said Mrs Goddard, as if she'd known all along.

'Thomas Bull says nothing about having a physical infatuation with the minister, but he does say he came to believe he was bewitched. The implication is by Wil'

'He doesn't say that!' Bull-Davies shouted in pain from the back of the church.

'Of course not,' Merrily said. 'But he wouldn't, would he? I think we can assume he was tortured in all kinds of ways. He was frightened of his own feelings, which were foreign to everything he'd always understood about himself. And perhaps he was worried about it coming out. I'm not qualified to comment on the level of anti-gay prejudice in the seventeenth century or whether Tom Bull was particularly homophobic. But he must have been pretty scared.'

Alison said, 'What seems likely and this is very strongly implied, Jamie, whatever you say is that Tom, having built up this spurious witchcraft case against Wil, then became extremely paranoid about what might come out in court.'

Merrily came to stand next to Alison, to give her some support. 'She wasn't even hanged, was she?'

'Oh, she was hanged, Merrily. She was hanged after death. They took the body out to the orchard and put a rope around its neck and hung it from the tallest apple tree.'

'No!' James howled.

'She was probably strangled,' Alison said.

Merrily said, 'Tom Bull admits that she was murdered?'

'Tom Bull agrees that Wil Williams was murdered. The extreme remorse he shows only really makes sense when you start to think of Wil as a woman.'

'He was not a bad man,' James said. 'Not the brutal archvil-lain you're making out. He overreacted.'

'Ha,' said Mrs Goddard.

'James,' Merrily said, 'for God's sake ... there's a lot of things you could clear up. You took those papers out of the tomb, so obviously the family knew they were there. I don't understand why, if the Bulls and Bull-Davieses were so embarrassed by all this, that journal wasn't simply destroyed years ago.'

'Because you're not damn well supposed to understand. It's no one's business but ours.'

'Oh, you pompous prick!' Alison threw up her arms. 'Can't you ever see the virtues of opening out, hanging out the dirty washing? You're so curled up and tight inside it's a wonder you can breathe. Come on, James. For Christ's sake, come out here.'

'You don't understand, you can't understand ...'

'But we need to,' Merrily said. 'Because we know that poor Wil Williams was only the start.'

Alison put out an elegant hand. 'James ...'

For close to half a minute, James Bull-Davies remained motionless.

Then, slowly, he pushed himself from the back wall and moved into the central aisle.

Alison didn't move.

Jim Prosser started to clap.

As James walked towards the chancel, other villagers joined in the applause, and Mrs Goddard banged her stick on the stones. When James Bull-Davies was halfway to the front, someone squeezed out of a pew, and he and James glanced at each other once. James carried on walking. The other figure moved silently towards the south porch, where Ken Thomas blocked his way.

'I think it's better nobody leaves just yet, if you don't mind, sir ... Oh, sorry, Rod.'

'Bit late this, Ken, for a farmer.'

'Sorry, Rod,' said Ken, moving aside at once.

Lloyd had gone out again to wait for his father. Periodically she would hear him tramp past the door or the beep-beep of his fingers on the phone as he tried to reach his father's mobile.

Jane seethed. The idea of this brutal, humourless tosser sizing her up as a future bride blew through her fear. She would refuse to think what he might do to her. She'd think instead of what she might do to him.

She got to her feet, her jeans feeling disgustingly damp from the straw, and crept silently around the cider house. Perhaps there was a wooden paddle or something they used to push the apples around in the mill. She imagined herself waiting behind the door with it raised and smashing it down on him when he next came in. It always worked in films.