The villagers always said she talked a bit strange and so did Edith and the boy, Fletcher, but these last two soon learnt to talk like ordinary people, but Osyth sounded strange even to the end of her life.

Osyth brought with her, in her arms, an osier cage full of young chickens and they grew up into fat brown hens and two splendid cocks, bigger than the little white hens we’d always had until then, and still do. She could spin the finest thread and she taught the girls weaving such as they’d never done before, and for all she was so slender and pale she was strong and healthy and before long she gave the old Dame her first grandson, a strong pink baby with gold fluff all over its head! Well, the old Dame died soon after but she died happy, for Will looked after the Manor well and the crops increased.

Over the years they had many children of which five boys and three girls grew up and many of those had this golden hair like their mother and were tall big men, and Edith too, later, married a free man in the village and had several children as well, and most of them married in the village and that is why even to this day every now and then some children are born with golden curly hair.

The atmosphere of the story and the memory of her mother’s voice faded and Marion realized suddenly the passage of time and her aching back against the wattle wall. Peter had appeared round the corner of the cottage with Alice in his arms.

‘I found her down by Molly’s,’ he said, half accusingly. ‘You shouldn’t let her go by herself. That old dog of Marge’s is none too safe with children.’

Marion accepted both the rebuke and Alice and bestirred herself, bellowed the fire, put more quern-ground beans into the pot on it, and listened to Peter talking of Chris Foxcap’s activities, stories and skills as he rehung the bag of straightened nails under the shelf. No one in the village was quite untouched by the arrival of the stranger.

Later that night, after Peterkin had come home and they had had their warm bean soup and the lovely bread made yesterday, they went down the garden to inspect the peas and what the slugs had done to them.

‘Scrape some soot down,’ Peter had said, ‘and put some round each plant – it usually helps.’

They went to bed, and as usual Peter had quickly fallen asleep, even before the blackbird in the ash above the cottage had finished his performance of dusk-song. Marion lay awake long, still with a feeling of unease and lassitude that again made her wonder if she were pregnant. Long after the birds were silent, total darkness crept into the cottage and Marion slept.

She woke suddenly, with a feeling that she had only briefly been asleep. Peter snored slowly by her. Both the children were silent. A sudden twinge in her abdomen, as though small red-hot pincers, a little version of Chris Foxcap’s, were pulling at her guts, had awakened her.