‘We are all going into the Hall now,’ she said. ‘Did you finish the stool for M’Dame?’

‘Yes, Paulo took it round, then he was just finishing that, and the silly boy upset all the nails on the ground.’

‘I found them, sir.’ That Paulo called Peter ‘sir’ was a mark of his contrition. Still kneeling he held up the two nails to Peter.

‘Yes, that’s them, all right, put them in the bowl with the others, then put the tools away, all of them, and on the proper hooks, before you come over to the feast. Come, Marion.’

It was amazingly, marvellously hot in the Hall. In these wintry days the shutters to the windows were rarely opened and today they had been closed most of the time. Only the dim December daylight from the great open door, some tiny candle flames on the high table and a glow from the fire in the centre lit the hall. The fire was at present two huge incandescent but flameless logs, kept in that state by Rob with the long-handled bellows. On the iron struts over the fire, large pieces of a calf were roasting, and every now and then Rob dropped the bellows, picked up a five-foot ladle and poured some fat, from the long earthenware trough on the hearthstone, over the meat.

Sir Hugh had described how at Rutherford they had roasted a calf whole, but Tom had resisted this. Such a big fire was too dangerous and, anyway, the outside got burnt and the inside remained raw and tough, he had said to Sir Hugh, and M’Dame had supported this view. So the calf had been cut up into joints which were roasted separately. Every now and then a flame from a drop of fat shot up from the fire, briefly illuminating the scene.

The Hall was already full of people, or so it seemed, for they were crowded round the fire. All the trestle tables had been put out along each side of the Hall, and one across it, just below the dais. This did not allow much space except round the fire, and its fierce heat did not permit anyone to stand close to it. On the dais the high table was in place and Magda stood by it with the two little Shepherd girls. Before them were two large wooden bowls of red apples. Magda was teaching the children to spit on the apples and rub them on the hems of their dresses so that they shone with reflections from the candle flames. Magda was not using her own dress for this polishing as she was wearing a loose over-dress made of the wonderful deep red cloth that Sir Hugh had brought from Rutherford in August. The little candle flames shone on the red apples and made the rich red of Magda’s dress glow and lit the bouncing orange curls of the children as they solemnly spat and rubbed. In all the darkness of the Hall this warm red scene took Marion’s attention with its strangeness. In her long experience everything indoors, whether her own cottage or the Hall or any shed, was brown or grey or black or speckled mixtures of all three. She liked looking at these various reds and the little shaking flames. The good smell of the roasting veal pervaded the air and associated itself in her mind with the rich colours.