‘Yes,’ Canon Thorby said, although Miss Mayfield had not spoken, ‘it is very unusual. The tower is very much older than the church and was built for purposes of defence. Thor’s Tower. The church is late Norman, and there are no signs of any earlier building, which suggests that Christianity reached us rather late. These two large yews are said to have been here before the Norman Conquest. We have no proof, of course, but they look old enough, don’t they?’

They were two enormous dark trees, with their lower, sagging branches supported by iron props.

The porch of the church was on the north side, and as they stepped into its cool shadow Canon Thorby said:

‘You mustn’t expect anything very grand, you know. The finest churches in this area are in the villages which profited from the wool trade. The difficulties of transport forbade Walwyk to do that. Conversely, my forefathers had at least the good sense to avoid Victorian additions. You see it, more or less, in the original state. And here it is.’

He threw open the door.

It was plain that he was very proud of his church, and she did her best to make her comments sound enthusiastic and intelligent; the truth was that she had, upon entering, been immediately conscious of a feeling of oppression. The small round-headed windows admitted little light; the immensely thick pillars were too heavy for the size of the building they upheld. It was, like everything else she had seen in Walwyk, meticulously well kept.

Of the east window, over the altar where tall white tulips stood stiffly, she could say, truly: ‘I don’t think I have ever seen such beautiful colours in stained glass.’

The window, like the others, was small, and whoever had planned to fill the aperture with coloured glass had wisely refrained from the attempt to compress even one human figure into the limited space; instead, he had represented Noah’s dove, carrying the olive branch above the waste of blue waters. The dove’s plumage shaded from a delicate silver grey to a dusky purple; its bill was a soft yellow, its feet, pressed backwards, close to its breast, rose pink. The sky about it was a pure azure blue, and below it the waves, in even symmetrical curves like those in a child’s drawing of the sea, varied from greenish turquoise to indigo.

‘You know why?’ asked Canon Thorby, in reply to her comment. ‘That is one of the few medieval windows which Cromwell’s men did not knock out with their pikes. And it must be at least six hundred years old. We know that by the ruby glass in the border. That was always in short supply and finally gave out altogether in the last quarter of the thirteenth century.’