The great door of the Hall opened again, letting in a blast of icy air and some dim December dusk and a hoarse male crowing sound. Marion, shading her vision from the firelight, saw her father slumped in a wheelbarrow, his flour-white boot soles sticking up, being wheeled in by Roger, with Simon and the rest of the family following. He at any rate was in a jovial mood.

‘Not going to miss the feast, not me,’ he announced to the Hall at large. ‘Get me up, boys – here, here, go easy.’

‘Take him under his knees, Gib, not feet,’ Simon ordered. ‘There you are, Old Man. Ah, Marion, got a seat ready for Father? Oh, Tom’s put out the real chair – there’s a treat for you, Father,’ and with much reassuring chat, the old man was lifted into a chair with a woven willow back, similar to those on the dais on which Sir Hugh and his family sat. The chair was eased up to the end of one of the tables near the dais, and Marion, with Alice on her knee, sat down on the bench beside him. She could see him smiling with pleasure and achievement, but she also noticed in the flickering candle light the bluish veins standing out on his temples and the transparency of the surrounding skin.

Dame Margaret, who had not been seen before, arrived through the gloom with a wide basket of small loaves between her extended arms.

‘Grandpa Miller! So you got here after all?’ she said.

‘That’s what I got grandsons for, M’Dame,’ he said, still laughing. ‘They brought me all the way in the wheelbarrow. They took the wheelbarrow over the sluice plank – didn’t like that – but I had to get up to top of the mill first. They put me in a sack and pulled me all the way up like I was a sack of corn! And the boys kept shouting, “Don’t laugh so, Grandpa – or you’ll have the rope off the pulley!”’ He chortled with excitement over this adventure. ‘Got something good for me to eat, M’Dame, after coming all this way?’

‘He came easy,’ said Gib, appearing in the gloom and rubbing his long red hands. ‘It’s me and Roger need that something good. I thought my hands had got frozen to the wheelbarrow.’

‘No touching yet,’ said Dame Margaret, jerking the basket away from their hands. ‘Here, Grandpa, here’s a treat for you.’ She balanced the edge of the basket on the back of his chair and picked a small flat loaf from it, the top of which was spread with baked honey and hazelnuts. ‘You eat this now and we’ll all have ours after the meat.’

Magda bounced up, all inquisitive. Oh, Mother, you shouldn’t. Every-one will want theirs too now. You know, Grandpa Miller, Mother’s saved the liver. It’s been stewing by the fire. It’s for you and some for Sarah, and Molly’s to take some to her mother and aunt. They’ve not got grandsons – ’