‘Hilda’s arranged all this,’ Dame Margaret said. ‘She knows a lot. She’s put the bunches in order, so she and I know what’s where – oh dear, that one looks mouldy. This damp stone wall doesn’t help. I’ll have to show it to her – but here, this is comfrey. Take some leaves and stew them in hot water. Have you got a fire yet Down the Common? – Good, and drink it as hot as you can, and put a bit of honey in if you have some.’ Marion thanked her and put the leaves in her pocket. She glanced again at the wall of dried medicinal plants, in far greater variety and more precisely arranged than they had been when Dame Margaret alone had been responsible. Perhaps the village as a whole would benefit from Hilda’s presence at the Hall.

‘And please, M’Dame,’ she said, ‘I need more fleece for spinning. My little girl unwound and wasted some of what I had spun.’

Dame Margaret frowned and tutted, but went to a large chest against the wall. Marion had to help her lift its thick heavy lid, revealing piles of soft inside wool from many sheep.

‘It’s all washed and sorted out,’ M’Dame said. ‘Take a good bundle. It’s short staple wool for loose-spinning for a weft. I’ve got some of the old women on the long staple making warps, they always spin very tight and strong, those old women. You ought to wear boots with a cold like that. Still, wet boots are not much comfort – don’t keep your feet warm. Difficult to keep anything dry in this weather. Try the comfrey when you get home.’

Some nine foot of horizontal ladder came in at the door, then Ed-me-boy, carrying it with the back nine feet balanced behind him.

‘Ah, Ed-me-boy,’ said Dame Margaret, ‘get the ladder up there, against the beam – that’s right – now go up and look at the ropes on all the sides of bacon. I don’t want another accident. There will be more to hang up there when the next hogs are killed.’ Dame Margaret’s attention was on her next job and she barely noticed Marion’s departure with a fat bundle of wool under her arm.

On her way home, as she came along the path on the Common, she looked down at the stream to where Peterkin and Paulo Hunter were cutting the willows. There were two willows, both leaning over the water – thick, old trunks with great heads of sprouting withies, trees that had been pollarded every autumn for decades for basket-making. She could see Paulo, a lanky twelve-year-old, on top of the half-shorn larger tree, and Peterkin crouching and cutting away but surrounded still with a maze of withies on the smaller. She could see, as they cut, that lots were falling into the water, which, after the recent rain, was flowing much more swiftly than before.