Just by the oak tree where Marion and Hilda were standing, Dick came to the final verse of his song, finishing opposite Sir Hugh and Dame Margaret. He took the pipe from his mouth and with a broad gesture said, ‘Your sheep, sir.’

Everyone laughed. They saw Dick, kinglike in his size, confidence and golden hair, the obvious hero of the day, acting the part of the servant that he really was, to the shy diffident Sir Hugh. It tickled their fancy – and their laughter, though Sir Hugh joined in it, made him feel even shyer.

Dick was the villagers’ hero. He had been Shepherd for some ten years and during that time the flock had much increased. The sheep were healthy, the lambs rarely died. Everyone recognized his instinct for nurturing them. Sheep were vital to the village. Though they all belonged to Sir Hugh, they provided the village with its only saleable riches, the only means by which those few materials that could not be produced in the village might be exchanged for wool: salt, iron, hemp and pottery. So the villagers rejoiced in the increase of sheep, half connecting such joy with the anticipated satisfaction of a plentiful supply of those four alien materials so vital to their lives.

Dick and Sir Hugh started walking slowly round the compound, Dick pointing out particular sheep with the end of his crook. He found it strange that Sir Hugh could not recognize one sheep from another. He spoke of them in a quiet authoritative tone to Sir Hugh, the knowledgeable manager speaking with polite tolerance to the more ignorant owner. Ned and Jo, with self-conscious smiles, stood ready to open or shut the entrance to the compound. Janty and True lay down, paws crossed, eyes alert and watching, their panting mouths almost smiling too. Magda approached Janty, and Dick, the circumambulation nearly completed, raised his voice and bellowed at his master’s daughter, ‘Leave my dog alone.’

‘I was only going to fix his flowers,’ said Magda. ‘They were slipping.’ She was rather awed by the way a mere shepherd had bawled at her in her father’s presence as if she were only a village slut, but seeing Janty’s raised lip and long eyetooth, she retired quickly, making a face at Dick. Her father made no attempt to defend her.

The official inspection over, the crowd began to move around to inspect the sheep themselves, to talk with Ned and Jo and mix with each other. Marion went on with her second batch of scones. Ed-me-boy brought a wide willow-woven tray and she arranged them on it, took the hen’s tail feather from behind her ear, dipped it in the cream and brushed it over the raw scones.

She was so occupied when Ellen bounced up. She was Marion’s niece, the daughter of her brother, Simon the miller, and Betsy. She was a wholesome-looking pink girl with light ginger hair straggling from under her cap, and a cheerful expression. She had a sprig of intense blue-purple vetch stuck into a thread-hole of her bodice, which she had laced up with what she knew Father John considered ‘lewd tightness’.