‘Want bread an’ milk,’ she announced cheerfully.

‘She’s better,’ said Peter, curtly.

‘No, it’s bed time,’ said weary Marion. ‘Straight into the cradle with you.’ Alice protested with a wail. ‘You be quiet,’ said Marion, slapping her. She put her firmly in the cradle and covered her up tight with the sheepskin, then sat down on the log again. Peterkin had shut the door, both top and bottom halves and so the only light in the cottage came from the fire. It was too dark to spin, too dark to make spigots, too dark to do anything but sit by the fire as close as possible and try to keep warm.

‘Might as well go to bed,’ said Peter, as he did almost every night. ‘Come, boy, out for a last pee.’

When they returned Marion had banked up the fire and was already lying down on the bed. Peter felt about as he gingerly climbed over her.

‘Did you rehook up the door?’ she asked.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

She knew they were both rather ill-tempered. She knew she was better from her illness, and was hungry having had almost nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. A night, as she knew well, was always extra long when one was hungry. This night was bitterly cold too. An hour later, still lying awake in the dark and with her feet like blocks of ice, she felt the cold creeping up her legs to the knees, and envied and marvelled at the ease with which Peter and her children fell asleep. For her, the dark hours dragged on.

APRIL

On the warm bed thy plain supplys

The young lambs find repose

And mid thy green hills basking lies

Like spots of lingering snows

It was one of the many false starts of spring, and though Marion knew cold, frost and snow might well come back to them before a more certain spring, just for today there seemed to be an easing of winter. The evenings were longer, the birds sang, and a faint sweet smell blew from the Common.

The previous day Peter had at last completed the plough he had been making to Rollo’s orders and had adjusted it again and again to Rollo’s pernickety standards, and today, as a sort of unofficial holiday, he was at home attending to the garden. Peterkin was with him, to Marion’s pleasure, for she knew it sealed a relationship between father and son which she valued as part of Peterkin’s training to be an adult. For the past weeks Peterkin had been out before dawn in all weathers, up in the new-sown fields, throwing stones and shouting at the rooks, and had returned home an exhausted wisp of a child, red-faced, red-fingered, red-eared and with a croaking voice.