‘And at some point on the journey they had to cross a ford and – of course, this is all hearsay – the water was deeper than they thought. Two horses stumbled and fell in deeper water and pulled some others after them – all of them with panniers of salt and stuff, so of course all the salt got wet and just melted away into the river. In the end only about five horses arrived at Rutherford with any dry usable salt at all, so they hadn’t enough for themselves, let alone any to spare for us. They said the merchants took the horses away again, back to the shore, and they only returned with more salt in the middle of harvest. They wanted double quantity of wool for double journeys but the Rutherford people said they’d give wool for salt not for journeys made with no salt at the end. Don’t know what was settled between them, but I do know Sir William only let us take what salt we did against a promise that we’d return his two panniers this autumn with more wool in them. It was bad luck those horses falling and wasting all that salt but is wasn’t our fault, and I don’t see we should be called on to give them extra wool for less salt.’

Marion agreed with him out loud, but had a secret sympathy with the strangers who had made two journeys and had lost so much salt on the way.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said, but neither felt like moving.

‘Supposing,’ said Marion, ‘them at Rutherford had had no salt themselves, and you and Sir Hugh’d come back empty-handed, what’d we all have done?’

‘There’d have been no meat preserved for winter when what’s in the tubs was eaten – and that’s not much, Ed-me-boy said. That would’ve been that.’

‘There’s geese, of course,’ said Marion.

‘Not much to eat on a goose, enough for four or five people only. There’s the fat, of course. There’d be some old sheep too, usually is.’

‘And a bullock,’ said Marion. ‘Once killed there’s hearty meals for the whole village for a day or two, but you have to finish it up quickly while it is still good.’

‘We could get extra deer, not just the Michaelmas and the Christmas ones. I know the law only allows us those two, but Rollo might get Father John to change the law.’

‘Does Father John make the laws? About deer?’ Marion was amazed. ‘I thought he only did Church laws.’

‘A priest’s always about when they make laws,’ said Peter, rather uncertainly. ‘After all, God wouldn’t want us all to go without meat with all them deer running about in the woods.’

‘Wouldn’t He? He made all the corn go mouldy when Father was a boy – so he often told us.’

‘Don’t really know,’ Peter admitted. ‘It’s certainly law about us having two deer from the forest each year, but whether it’s God’s law or priest’s law or Sir Hugh’s I don’t know. I’d get a deer, if I could, if we were hungry, same as I’d get a pigeon, only I’d try to keep quiet about it.’ He sounded unconcerned. Marion wondered whether the forest deer were God’s, to be doled out to hungry people as He decreed – but pigeons were wild and fed on one’s peas and belonged to no one … just as foxes and crows were wild … only they were no good to eat.