With a huge effort she managed to whisper back, ‘Warmer here,’ and drifted back into her uneasy sleep.

I must remember to ask him what to do with the other two bundles of withies, she thought as she woke stiff-necked and miserable in the dark silent night. She crawled over the small intervening space between log and bed, and hitching herself as close to sleeping Peter as she could, she pulled up the damp blanket and tried to sleep again.

NOVEMBER

The village sleeps in mist from morn till noon

And if the sun wades thro tis wi a face

Beamless and pale and round as if the moon

When done the journey of its nightly race

Had found him sleeping and supplyd his place

Marion woke with a rare and delicious sensation of having slept long and deeply and to have woken, not by children’s cries, or by Peter requiring breakfast, but because her need of sleep had been appeased. The bed was marvellously comfortable. The straw was all new, dry, thick and fresh from the harvest, each hollow stalk resilient, so that she almost lay on air. She had also just received, in her due turn, a large new blanket from Joan’s weaving shed and Marion had carefully sewn it all round on to her old blanket and put in between them all the feathers, hens’, cockerels’ and pigeons’, that she had been collecting for the last two years. (The wing and tail feathers, too stiff to be used for bedding, she had tied in bundles to sticks to make domestic brooms.) The resulting bed quilt was much thicker and warmer than the one they had had before. With it and with her loose-woven shift, Marion had spent warm nights even when frost was in the air.

She was in better health. Her cold had quite gone; so had Alice’s. Supper the evening before had been lavish: a cockerel stewed up with leeks and beans – a rich, hot, juicy meal. Warmth, comfort and good food had all induced this restoring sleep.

As she lay awake, with satisfaction she went over in her mind the stocks of food which she now had in the cottage. The pig had been killed and quartered. Marion’s quarter this year was a shoulder and half one side of the back. Lisa had the other shoulder and half-back, Molly had a ham and some back, and the Plowrights (though it was probably a waste of good meat) had the other ham and some back. After the careful division, all four families had feasted on the less preservable bits, the head, the feet, the liver, and Molly had made sausages from the blood and all the remaining scraps. The skin had been stretched out against the wall of Molly’s house where the wind and sun would dry it, and then she would rub it with sheep fat and beeswax till it was supple and waterproof. It should be enough to make a pair of boots for an adult and, with care, a little pair for a child too. They had not yet discussed who were the most worthy recipients of boots. Marion knew a possible argument was impending.