‘Baby’s alive, M’Dame,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not bleeding, it was its mother’s blood running down on to its head.’

Jill heaved herself round to look at her baby and burst out into another wail against her wicked, cruel husband. Dame Margaret ordered Milly to heat up a bowl of ale at the side of the fire and to fetch some of the dried herbs hanging on the wall. In due course the herbs were sprinkled into the ale, Jill had drunk it off and had been put to lie down on the straw on one of the benches with a cold damp cloth over her face. She lay quiet.

Dame Margaret came back to Marion, still sitting with the baby on her knee. She turned it over again. There was fresh blood on its neck, and blood was oozing from one of its ears. Dame Margaret and Marion looked at each other and each saw despair in the other’s eyes. Marion felt again for the baby’s heartbeat, now slower and fainter. Dame Margaret took the baby back. ‘It can’t last long,’ they whispered together.

Rollo and Tom appeared at the door, and Rollo said, ‘We’ve got Dobbin outside, dragged him here, dead drunk still. We’ve tied his feet to the oak tree.’

‘Leave him,’ Dame Margaret said. ‘It’s no use beating him when he’s too stupefied to know why.’

There was more shouting outside and Dame Margaret, still holding the baby, Marion, Rollo and Tom went out to enquire. Annie, the old widow, Dobbin’s mother, was struggling to approach her drunken son and Ed-me-boy was preventing her.

Dame Margaret, with all her habitual authority, strode over the grass to the oak, commanding, ‘Leave him, Widow Annie.’

Ed-me-boy stepped back and Annie pulled herself up from kneeling. Her eyes were red and her mouth shook and she could not speak.

‘Leave him. He has beaten Jill, knocked a tooth out, Heaven knows what he has done to this baby. Where are the other children?’

‘At their cottage, M’Dame.’

‘Have you seen them today?’ Dame Margaret was at her most curt and severe.

‘N-no.’

‘Go back to their cottage,’ ordered Dame Margaret. ‘Find the children – all of them – take them into your cottage, warm them, feed them, tell them their mother will come home soon. Now. Do you understand?’

Annie started a mumbling prevarication, but Dame Margaret insisted. ‘Go – now. Find the children and look after them in your cottage. Now. Go,’ and she pointed across the Green to the path down Mill field.

Sir Hugh appeared from the orchard. Annie raised her eyes to him. He was after all the ultimate authority. Marion looked at his long tired face, full of weary sadness.

‘Oh, go,’ he said. ‘Do what M’Dame tells you. Go.’ So Annie hobbled off and the little crowd broke up. Sir Hugh, Rollo and Dame Margaret with the baby went back into the Hall, Tom jerked his head at Ed-me-boy to follow them, then looked at Marion with a query in his face.