I wonder and wonder about such things, thought Marion. Peter doesn’t. He just thinks whatever is simplest to think, even if it’s something he can’t ever know. Then he never bothers his head about it again.

‘Come,’ he said, rousing himself, ‘bed. I’ll tell you more in the morning.’

They went round to the midden together, then felt their way into the cottage to bed. Neither Alice nor Peterkin stirred and it seemed almost at once that Peter’s breathing became slower and heavier and Marion knew that he too slept. She lay awake a long time, open-eyed. Through the open upper half of the door she could see the changing pallor of the sky as clouds thinned and thickened as they drifted over the half-moon. Peter gave a sudden sniff and she was aware that he had woken. His hands felt for her, pulling up her dress, and she was glad to take him. The straw on the bed was at its oldest, last year’s straw, now no more than lifeless shreds with no resilience in them. The boards under this dusty covering felt very hard below Marion’s back as she accepted Peter’s heaving weight. She was glad that in spite of his recent absence in the unknown world of Rutherford, he still smelt the same.

Then she suddenly remembered she had forgotten to tell him what Sir Hugh had said to Rollo about him. It would have to wait for the morning for Peter was already asleep again.

SEPTEMBER

Where autumns shadows idly muse

And tinge the trees with many hues

Amid whose scenes I’m feign to dwell

And sing of what I love so well

But hollow winds and tumbling floods

And humming showers and moaning woods

All startle into sudden strife

After many dark hours of dull wakefulness, Marion had, before dawn, fallen into a deep sleep and was dreaming a muddled dream of Dame Margaret questioning her about new wooden buckets, and Tom chipping in with well-intentioned but pointless remarks about how all the prepared staves had been used at Rollo’s orders for making steps for a new ladder. All ordinary, and plausible, but not true. She was awakened from the dream (she was by then wondering if Peter had been consulted about the ladder) by Alice crawling over her and patting her face. Alice could easily climb on to the bed now by herself.

Having woken her mother, Alice now sat, upright and tubby, on the straw and observed, ‘Father’s gone to Rockwell.’ Peter had been working for the last three days at the main house at Rockwell, fitting new horizontal planks all round the lower part of the walls. The previous autumn a big beech tree had been felled close by and the main trunk had been sawn into long thick planks with enormous physical effort by Peter and his boys and two of the Rockwell lads. These planks had lain one above the other, separated by short blocks of wood, for drying out ever since. The time had now come for cutting and fitting them to the walls and Peter would be using some of his cherished Rutherford nails in this work.