Seeing no one in the open baking shed, Marion went straight into the Hall. Dame Margaret was there with a group of girls to whom she was allocating work.

‘All right, Nellie,’ she was saying, ‘if you’ve promised your mother you’d better go, but another time tell her to ask me first. And you, Sal Fletcher, go down the yard and help Milly with the new bacon.’

‘Oh I can’t, M’Dame,’ said Sal with a triumphant giggle. ‘I’m bleeding.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Dame Margaret, ‘you always pretend to be bleeding at bacon time.’

‘Really, I am, M’Dame.’ Sal looked round to see if Ed-me-boy was watching, stepped into a more prominent patch of light and lifted her skirt to reveal a smear of blood down the inside of her thigh.

Dame Margaret clicked her tongue with annoyance and said crossly, ‘All right, Sal, go to the weaving shed and sort out wools with Joan – or whatever she tells you to do.’ Sal was about to think up a protest when Dame Margaret hustled her off.

Tom, with a fat log under each arm, approached Marion from the gloom and greeted her. He jerked his head towards departing Sal.

‘Little cheat,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t believe she’s bleeding. Comes too pat. Rob was killing cockerels this morning, and it’s my belief she just smeared some of that blood on her legs.’

Sir Hugh came into the Hall at that moment, his long split gown hitched up, indicating that he had just dismounted from his horse. Rollo followed him.

‘Tom,’ Sir Hugh said, ‘help me off with my boots, and bring me my other pair.’ He briefly acknowledged Marion’s presence as Tom put down the logs and obeyed. Marion wondered at the delightful luxury of having two pairs of boots, of being able to take off the wet, muddy, smelly pair, sit by a fire and put on a warm, dry and probably soft pair. How she would love a new pair herself – but she had business with Rollo and turned to him.

‘I’ve brought the big goat cheese, sir,’ she said, ‘like you said I should last week.’ He looked at her with his dark eyes peering through his thick over-hanging eyebrows, with, as usual, no expression on his long face.

‘Come to the wall,’ was all he said.

Against the wall, near the dais, hung a number of sticks, one for each household. Rollo knew exactly whose was whose. Notches of various widths were cut in them representing the receipt of bushels of corn, pigs, poultry, eggs, cheese, days of labour and so on, that by a tradition too old for anyone to query, the villagers were obliged to give to the Hall.

Rollo took the cheese from her, pressed his thumb on it here and there, tested its weight in his hands and said gruffly, ‘Take it while I make the mark.’ She watched him take up the knife that hung from his belt and cut a neat notch in her stick just below the notch he had made a month ago when she had brought the previous cheese. He took it back from her.