Phil Rickman: The Wine of Angels

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.’

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.

But then, in films, there was always something handy. The only stave in the cider house was the one used to turn the screw mechanism on the press and this proved to be metal and bolted firmly into place, and the bolts were so rusty even a wrench wouldn’t dislodge them.

She kicked about in the hay, in case there was something underneath. Only flagstones.

Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

She flung herself at a wall, scratching at the bricks on the off chance one was loose and could be prised out and she could throw it at him.

Hopeless. Was she even strong enough to hurl a brick with any force? She still tried, going from wall to wall, even looking up at the roof to see if there was a loose slate (which she could send skimming at his throat, oh, sure ...) arriving finally at the hayloft over the mill. She’d forgotten all about that.

Worth a try. She might be able to hide up there and drop something on his head. Height was always an advantage, wasn’t it?

There was no ladder (which, anyway, she would have broken up for a hefty stick) but only a couple of feet separated the loft from the top of the stone millwheel.

No problem, probably. Jane tested the thick wooden axle stuck through a hole in the middle of the stone. It was all so crude, in a Stone Age kind of way, but the wood wasn’t rotten and she was able to get a foot on it to hoist herself to the top of the wheel.

She had an awful vision of the wheel suddenly rolling away, leaving her dangling from the rafters, but it was as solid as a rock, which she supposed it actually was, and she hauled herself up, quite easily in the end, into the loft, where she rolled over and flopped on her stomach between a couple of black bin liners. (She could wait behind the door with one and throw it over his head, then duck behind him to freedom; oh Jesus, this was getting ridiculous.) It seemed much brighter up here; the fluorescent tube was only about three feet away; and she felt exposed and pushed herself back from the edge until she felt her feet slot into the narrow area where the rafters met the sloping slates.

Now she was up here, the total seriousness of the situation clouded around her. Her bowels felt suddenly weak and she threw her arms over one of the bin sacks to stifle a sob. Oh, Mum, please be looking for me. Please, please, plea—.

The evil little smell from the bin sack had entered her nose like a thin needle.

Not a smell she knew, but one she had a horrid feeling she ought to.

Before she realized what she was doing, she’d drawn the plastic back.

Over the damp hair and the soft, white skin, purpled by the light. The open, bulging eyes and the big, squashy lips, and the tongue out like a dog’s.

The diamond nose-stud winking in the clinical light.

‘I’M A BLOODY madman, en’t I?’ Gomer said. ‘Even look like a bloody madman, so people tell me. I got a wife en’t gonner speak to me for a month as a result of what I already done tonight this far. So what do we do, boy? What we gonner do about this?’

‘The cider house?’

‘The cider house where the Bulls took their women until they give it to the Powells. Soon as Tess Roberts told that story tonight, it bothered me. Had to go out, have a ciggy. Whatever they’re doin’ in that cider house it en’t makin’ cider.’