All this was felt to be light relief. The men and the serious housewives now looked to Sir Hugh for more important matter to be unpacked. Sir Hugh lifted another earthenware pot from a pannier, unrolling it from its hemp-sack covering, and pulled a coil of fine cord from its neck, handed it casually to Joan, and then peered into the jar. He enjoyed the close attention that all the villagers gave him.

‘More dried flies?’ asked Milly, but she was ignored again.

‘Iron nails,’ he said, clinking them in the jar. ‘That’s all for your keeping, Peter. Take the lot now, but bring me back the jar in the morning.’ Then to the villagers in general he added, ‘If I’d let Peter have his way, we’d have brought back nothing but nails.’ Though Peter protested he took the jar and smiled.

Another large pot was produced, its top covered with a circle of fine leather tied down with a thong. Sir Hugh opened it and put his hand inside.

‘Salt,’ he said, and a sigh of relief went up. ‘Tom, you and Rob go and get two or three dry tubs, big ones but quite dry. We’ll empty the salt into them at once and divide it up in the morning. I don’t want to have salt spoiling the inside of these pots a moment longer than necessary. Did anyone tell the Rockwells we were back? They’ll have to have some salt.’

Sir Hugh stood up and stretched and patted Heart-of-Oak’s neck. He started speaking in a low voice to Rollo, but Marion was near enough to overhear – ‘and I’m glad I took Peter Carpenter … Yes, I know you told me to take him, but he was really very helpful. I doubt if my brother-in-law would have parted with so much stuff if it had not been for Peter speaking up. He spoke well – so everyone there could understand how it was with us … ’ Marion breathed easily with pleasure. Peter had not overheard it – he was talking to Simon and Betsy – but she would tell him later and she anticipated this telling with delight.

Tom and Rob appeared from the yard with some new large buckets and barrels, and pot after pot was taken from the panniers and the white crystals emptied into them. The villagers watched every movement of Tom and Rob’s hands, and gave grunts of satisfaction at the sight of so much salt pouring from jars to buckets. The empty jars were picked up one by one by Milly and arranged in a row along the kneading table under the shelter. Joan collected the sacks that the jars were wrapped in, shook each of them upside down and carefully folded them and piled them up by Dame Margaret’s seat. In the last pannier was a bundle of iron rods, the raw material for bolts, for hinges, for hooks, for harness bits, for hammering out into knives and sickles, for shaping into arrowheads, for blades for spades, for saws, for chisels. It was not interesting to look at, but it was as a breath of life to the villagers. Then, last, so they thought, there were three fat, round, iron cooking pots, with rings at the brims to hang them by and with three short feet each to stand them among hot embers.