The Wine of Angels

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 archvillain 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.’