‘All right.’ Huw sat down on the bottom tier of what appeared to be a half-demolished cairn. ‘I’ll be frank. Have to say I were a bit surprised when I heard he’d offered the job to a young lass.’

Merrily stayed on her feet. ‘Not that young.’

‘You look frighteningly young to me. You must look like a little child after Canon T.H.B. Dobbs.’ Huw pronounced the name in deliberate block capitals.

‘Mr Dobbs,’ Merrily said, ‘yes. You know him, then?’

‘Not well. Nobody knows the old bugger well.’

‘I’ve never actually met him – with him being in and out of hospital for over a year.’

‘There’s a treat to look forward to,’ Huw said.

‘I’ve heard he’s a… traditionalist.’

‘Oh aye, he’s that, all right. No bad thing, mind.’

‘I can understand that.’ Merrily finally sat down next to him.

‘Aye,’ Huw said. ‘But does your new bishop?’

It was coming, the point of their expedition. The pale moon was limp above a black flank of Pen-y-fan.

‘Bit of a new broom, Michael Henry Hunter,’ Huw said, as a rabbit crossed the track, ‘so I’m told. Bit of a trendy. Bit flash.’

‘So he appoints a female diocesan exorcist,’ Merrily said, ‘because that’s a cool, new-broom thing to do.’

‘You said it.’

‘Only, he hasn’t appointed me. Not yet. Canon Dobbs is still officially in harness. I haven’t been appointed to anything.’

‘Oh, really?’ Huw tossed a pebble into the darkness.

‘So are you going to tell him?’

‘Tell him?’

‘That he shouldn’t.’

‘Not my job to tell a bishop what he can and can’t do.’

‘I suppose you want me to tell him: that I can’t take it on.’

‘Aye.’ Huw gazed down at the road. ‘I’d be happy with that.’

Shit, Merrily thought.

She’d met the Bishop just once before he’d become the Bishop. It was, fatefully, at a conference at her old college in Birmingham, to review the progress of women priests in the Midlands. He was young, not much older than Merrily, and she’d assumed he was chatting her up.