Marion had listened to this all last Sunday, and any pity she had felt for the Plowrights now focused on Peter. She saw he had exhausted himself for them, struggling to dig in the cold wet rooty earth to plant the new post, and they had offered him nothing in return. That they had nothing to offer she was sure, but some token bartering was the custom in the village. She doubted if the Plowrights’ lives were any more secure for all the help that had been given them, and then there was the mystery of the vanished child. Perhaps there was no mystery, perhaps everyone had miscounted and there had never been another child, but the idea left uneasiness in Marion’s mind. Even if one wretched little life had been rubbed out by the Plowrights’ careless indolence how could she – she who had seen two of her children, her well cared for children, die, and three of her helpless tiny babies’ lives so quickly ended – how could she feel any real outrage over the disappearance of some anonymous little Plowright?

This particular day, she told herself as she lay huddled on the bed, was Sunday, and she decided again she could not face the walk across the slushy Common to go to Mass. Peter would go by himself. Everyone would understand. This thought made her remember how, many years ago, when the Rutherford men had arrived in the village with the pots and sacks of salt, they had slept the night in the Hall and expressed surprise next morning that no Mass was to be celebrated in the church.

‘We have mass on Sunday mornings, always,’ Sir Hugh, then a newly married man, had said.

‘But this is Sunday,’ the Rutherford men insisted.

‘No, it is Saturday,’ said Sir Hugh, and Father John arrived and confirmed this.

‘Well,’ said the Rutherford men, ‘it’s Sunday in the rest of the world. You must have miscounted sometime.’ So the message got about and work stopped in the fields and Father John said Mass that evening and the next day was Monday however anyone felt. But the incident impressed the villagers with an uneasy doubt about the truths that Father John so often announced, and some maintained it was a purposeful error to get one more day’s work out of them.

‘There,’ said Milly, ‘I knew it wasn’t proper Saturday. I always said we’d had two Thursdays afore sheep-shearing!’

‘She never said nothing of the sort, sir,’ Tom muttered to Sir Hugh.

Still, today, everyone agreed was Sunday, and Mass would be said as usual in the church, but the old and infirm from Rockwell, from the Mill and from Down the Common would not be expected to attend. Later that morning Peter returned home from church, bringing with him Lisa and Martin who had braved the walk. Peter had picked up his measuring stick and replaced it behind his ear (he always removed it for Mass for it signified work), and he and Martin had gone to Martin’s cottage to put up another shelf, and Lisa came in and she and Marion sat on the log by the fire and put their feet on the hearthstone, although Marion knew it was not good for her chilblains. It was nice to have a bit of company.