‘And all the time through his sickness she said to the men, look at your wheat and if there’s this dark stuff, cut and burn, and they did. They cut and cut and carried it all to the waste corner by the nut tree – ’

‘Nut tree’s long since gone,’ called out the know-all’s voice.

‘– and burnt it there so as there’d be no danger of the burning spreading to the standing barley. Barley was all right, the Devil’s blight never touched barley, but there was no wheat left, nowhere, and she said burn the stubble as it stands and they did – as much as you can burn green stubble. Oh, it was sad faces all round then, so much work gone to waste, and the little brats looking on and asking why, and all of us wondering … wondering … ’ His voice faded to a mumble as his memories overtook his narrative.

‘Tell about the lady,’ Simon prompted.

The old miller raised his head again. ‘She stood there,’ he pointed to where Sir Hugh sat, ‘day or two after the burial – it was a day, pouring rain, sky so sodden and dark, not a breath of wind, not a chink in the clouds – you know how you get it in June sometimes. Though it was noon it was dark in the Hall, shutters hardly open,’ he gestured up at them, ‘the rain dropping in both sides – and she had all the men called to her and I go too though only a boy not ten years old, and she talked, oh she talked, clear and sensible, and no one could fault what she said, woman though she was. We’re in bad trouble, she said, all of us, there’ll be no wheat this coming autumn, not a grain, and that means no bread all the winter, and nothing save our barley, if we harvest that, and our peas and beans, and we’ve no seed corn for sowing next year unless we can get some from Rutherford. Nick Carter – you don’t remember him, sir, long ago dead – says maybe they have the Devil’s blight there too and she says maybe they have. We’ve only got our barley and she says anyone as still got peas and beans it is not too late to sow them now and might get a crop before winter. Better go a bit hungry now and live next year, she said. It seems most people still had some peas and beans, so she says everyone must bring her all their stores, flour, corn, peas, beans and if anyone hid any she’d have him, or more likely her, whipped. She says we’ll all mostly live if we work together and if we don’t we’ll certainly all die, she says – for even if one family finds enough to eat this coming year and everyone else in the village is dead, how’s that family going to live all by itself? And the men all realize she talks sense and she says barley’s what we’ll have to eat and food is more important than drink and God sends us water for drinking and there was to be no barley made into ale. She called it wasting the good grain which we all needed. Well, there was much groaning and grumbling at that, but as it turned out she was right and in the end every barley grain was precious, but it was miserable all the men said to come in after all day ploughing and me shouting at the rooks behind a plough all day and in an easty wind and we have a drink of cold water like you was a horse ‘stead of a pot of good warming ale to give a bit of heart to your body. And old Mam … what was her name? down by the marsh, dead long ago – she’d hidden some barley in her wood pile and she was making a little cask of ale, quietish. But Tom – that’s your father, Tom, he was a lad my age or a bit older – caught her at it and tells me and I say you make out you’ve seen nothing, but the lady’s promised a honey cake to any tattlers of this sort. So Tom tells and gets his barley cake, mighty small it was too, but with honey, and he gives me a bit – and she sends down to the marsh and they catch her at it and she was beaten by the big oak with a withy and the cask taken away and when the ale was ready the men all got a little sup of it, all round next Sunday after Mass – not Mam Beattie – ah yes, that was her name, Beattie – ’ and he relapsed into a chuckle.