“I was thinking that very thing. I mean, a few paltry broken ribs, a punctured lung, a skull fracture, concussion, and it’s not even as if the whole house fell down on you. Now look at you, all you can manage after these piffling injuries is a brisk walk up a steep slope.”

“Ha—no, really. I’ve been falling down too. And Frobisher’s found out, you see. Very sagacious man, Ronald Frobisher. Very shrewd. Ellen, I’m not the man you think I am.”

Her mouth falls open. “James, how preposterous!”

“No, I mean it. I’m a fraud.”

“That’s a very strong word.”

“What else would you call a vicar who doesn’t believe in God?”

She comes to a halt, moves in front of me, her eyes narrowed against the breeze that is blustering in my ears, scrambling my wits. I cling on to pieces of myself but it’s a losing battle. The many men I’ve been, the pilot, the prisoner, the priest, are thinning down to transparency, tearing off, whipping away in the wind. I don’t know what’s left.

“I haven’t forgotten what you told me at your party,” she says. “When I said I was getting pagan in my old age. About women seeing things. I realized then that you were a good vicar. You always have been.”

“How can you know?”

“I know you,” she replies, unperturbed.

“Ha. I wish I did . . .”

She takes my arm again and we walk on. Oh, that we could travel the hills and valleys together. Oh, that I didn’t have a spear in my side, stabbing all the way to my heart.

“Archdeacon Frobisher’s hatched a plan,” I tell her. “After my sick leave, I’m supposed to take a sabbatical. I expect he’ll find spiritual counsel for me. Possibly a retreat. We haven’t discussed the details, but I can imagine it.” Polished staircases, reading rooms, reflective conversations. Bright faces at communal breakfasts.

“But you don’t want to.”

“I can’t think of anything more excruciating or pointless.”

“So you want to stop looking for God now.”

“Mm. Tired of it.”

We’ve reached the fence. Beyond us, the sheep field, and Penny striding in the distance.

“Which is why,” Ellen says, “you might be gone by February.”

I think back to that evening with Bridie at Redwood House when I brought her the scarf. I held the silk in my hands and felt her again, my girl in the grain. Even if I had asked Bridie no further questions I wouldn’t have been spared the truth. At that same moment Tom had been reading his way toward Philip Moore.