‘There, there,’ said Marion, taking Alice and jiggling her a little. ‘There, there, you’re better now. Look your belt’s untied, you tripped over that.’ She set Alice down, retied the leather strip round her stomach and then hitched up the dress in it. The dress was much longer than Alice, but Marion would not have dreamt of cutting it shorter, knowing how soon Alice would grow to fit it.

Marion picked her up and went to a seat under the oak where Hilda was, and sat down to rest. Alice, to her relief, dozed off in her arms. Meg and Mary sat quietly on the ground at Hilda’s feet. She also sat in silence, her eyes following Dick as he moved about in the compound with Ned, pointing with his crook at various sheep, instructing him. Then he went to the mounting stone where he had left his hone, and started carefully to sharpen his shears.

One of the gates of the compound had been placed close to the mounting block, and Jo, standing inside the compound, let out the sheep one by one as Dick called. Out bounced a sheep, nervous, alert. Dick grabbed it and pulled it towards him, it struggled and bleated, but as he propped it up on its tail, leaning its back against his legs, it suddenly relaxed and he slid the shears into its wool and down its unprotesting sides. Dick’s fingers squeezed the shears rhythmically, his hand moved up and down caressingly, smoothly, and the thick curtains of wool, so white inside, so grey outside, fell in folds on the grass. While he turned the sheep, pivoting it on its buttocks, it remained in a trancelike state, its thin forelegs crossed as in supplication before it. The wool off, he returned it to its feet, the spell he had had over it broke, and, thin in its ridged white underwear, it jerked off with more bleating to be caught by Ned and guided to another part of the compound.

Dick pushed away the fleece with his foot as if this harvest of his year’s work were nothing, and called for the next sheep. When some six or seven fleeces were heaped up round the mounting block he called for them to be removed. Tom, pulling a large willow basket towards the fleeces, instructed Loppy Lambert.

‘Here, Loppy. You pick up this wool and put it in the basket like this.’ Tom demonstrated, and Loppy made his curious throaty noises and started slowly to fill the basket with wool.

After a time Rollo, lounging nearby, glanced at the sun’s place in the sky and signalled to Tom.

‘Ready for the ale now.’

‘Right, sir,’ said Tom, and with Ed-me-boy went down to the brew house, soon emerging with a barrel on a low wheelbarrow which Ed-me-boy was pushing while Tom steadied it. They brought it to Sir Hugh.

‘Up to the church, Ed,’ Sir Hugh said, ‘and sound the bell.’

As the tang-tang-tang rang out, the villagers broke off their chattering and moved towards the oak, the children running ahead. Dame Margaret was at the long trestle tables handing out richly buttered scones with shiny golden tops, one each for the children, who were then sent away. Then she gave thick slices of fresh bread, still warm with the butter softly soaking into the crumb to each woman, and an extra piece to each woman who had old or decrepit folk at home.