They sat on the log under the eaves in the August dusk and ate the goose meat paste on slices of bread with relish and amazement. Alice dozed and Marion carried her indoors and put her into the cradle. On her way out, she scooped up a lot of blackberries in her two hands and they all three ate mouthfuls of the sweet fruit.

Nearly all the time, Peter was talking. He spoke of the huge size of the Hall at Rutherford, of the special chamber built on at the back of the dais where Sir William, M’Dame’s brother, and his wife slept and sometimes took meals, of the large brew house and dairy attached, the numerous cows, of the stone bridge wide enough to take a haycart – ‘But why doesn’t it fall down, Father?’ Peterkin kept asking.

‘There are keystones. When it’s light tomorrow I’ll show you, with marks on the floor, how it’s made with arches of stones. They have the same in their church. It is all stone, up to the roof, and there’s St Christopher standing in the water like Chris Foxcap said, and Wat and his two boys – they are carpenters there, I saw what huge saws they have – they were making a big cart for two oxen. Great wheels, they showed me, all oak. Last a few hundred years they said – till the end of the world … ’

Peterkin dozed off and was stirred by Peter shaking his arm.

‘You sleepy already? Did you have a lot of that new ale Joan was handing out?’ Peterkin protested he was not sleepy but admitted Joan had given him a swig.

‘And you and one of the other Fletcher boys went round to the brew house and helped yourselves to more from the jugs standing there?’ Peter was more amused than cross. ‘And then you filled up the jugs from the water butt so no one would see?’ Peterkin protested, but feebly. ‘Oh, go along with you,’ said Peter, ‘I know how boys carry on. You go round to the midden now and pee and then to bed. I don’t want you to fall asleep here, you’re too big to carry now.’

‘And don’t wake Alice,’ Marion added.

Though Peterkin again protested, he went, and soon they heard the rustle of the straw as he lay down on the bed.

‘Why didn’t the Rutherford people bring us the salt in June like always?’ asked Marion, getting the question in in a gap in the monologue.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Peter, glad to have been reminded of an interesting bit of his story. ‘It seems that the usual train of packhorses, about twenty, I think, coming up from the sea to Rutherford over the Weald … ’

The Weald, thought Marion. How strange, how far away that sounded. She was faintly aware of confusing ‘weald’ with ‘world’.