‘Why didn’t you go down to Rutherford and get some corn?’ a young male voice called from the dark.

‘Rutherford?’ repeated the old man scornfully. ‘D’you think we didn’t? Three or four men went down with horses and panniers and the Rutherford men chased them away with sticks, and said all their wheat had the Devil’s blight too and they’d not a grain to spare. It was a cruel thing to hear and they came back down at heart to give the rest of us that news, and by summer we were all so weak – I’d see men, young men, going up the Green here holding on to the garden fences to keep themselves up and stopping every four or five steps, heads hanging. As for getting the barley harvest in that August, I just don’t know how it was done – and the threshing. It was a good barley harvest from all the fields, but not enough to make up for the lost wheat. So it was stingy allowances for all again that next year and barley makes a poor sort of bread by itself. That year there was more than usual deer in the forest and we’d had our Michaelmas stag as usual and come St Nicholas’ Day the lady says to the men, go out and get another deer as we need every scrap of food. Old Holy hears of it, dogs barking excited like, and he comes bustling round.’ Here the old man’s high voice took on an even higher tone. ‘No, no, he says, it’s not lawful. Law says one stag at Michaelmas and one at the ’Piphany feast and no taking them at other times. And she says would God have sent us this great flock of deer up by Hall field if it wasn’t a sign of his caring for us? After all, we’ve prayed enough about being in need. And he nattered on about it not being lawful and what would a woman know about law and she says, well, Father, she says, you be careful you don’t let a morsel of hot venison pass your lips, and she just nodded to the men who had their dogs on their leads all ready and keen as anything to go and got us a good stag very easy before noon and in frosty weather and it was skinned and cut up and roasted and all come to a good feast like it was Michaelmas again. Old Holy was there and I served him – oo-hoo, he ate hearty, I can say – and I kept saying have another bit, Father, and dangling a juicy slice before his nose, and Tom, my friend, with a big bowl and a spoon says another spoonful of rich gravy, Father? And as he laps it up Tom says now you’ll roast in Hell, won’t you? ’Tisn’t lawful, you know – and everyone roars with laughter. The meat had given them strength. Oh, we were happy and jolly that evening. Eat, drink – though it was only water – and be merry we says and Old Holy looked pretty sheepish but he ate away all the same, and the lady, she’d had the liver saved and cut up small and sent to all the women as was new delivered of their babies and couldn’t come to the feast. So we all had a good feast and no evil came of it to any, and the fine skin was cured and she put it up by the bed there,’ he pointed to the dark behind Sir Hugh, ‘to keep cold air out.’