‘Roger’s coming slowly with the Old Man in a wheelbarrow,’ Simon announced. ‘We three lifted him in, father says every bump shakes up his joints.’

Marion asked how her father was.

‘Not bad, I s’pose,’ Betsy replied. ‘He complains a lot, his feet and legs, knees specially, are very swollen and he says his hands hurt. They are pretty twisted. He often says things three times, forgets in between, but he eats well and sleeps well.’

The Rockwell families joined them then and there was much greeting and talking. The Rockwells, young or old, always walked erect, even in the harshest weather when the other villagers were silent, enduring and cowed. They still had energy to spare, still were masters of their own lives. Perhaps that was where the difference lay, Marion mused: they were their own masters, and their fields were their own. The yoke of slavery, even so light a yoke as Simon Miller or Dick Shepherd bore, was, for all their irreplaceable skills, still a yoke. The Hall ultimately owned them. None of the members of the Rockwell families, not even the women, looked as if he or she knew servitude. Marion was glad that Simon’s eldest girl, Lisa, had married Martin Rockwell and, looking at Stephen Rockwell, she hoped again that he would marry Ellen. Surely, she thought, Ellen is the best girl of his age in the village.

Wat the Tall of Rockwell was speaking to Simon.

‘Your father here? Oh, coming in a wheelbarrow, is he? Ha, couldn’t make Old Lambert come in a wheelbarrow – come in a cart or on a donkey perhaps – no, he can’t ride any more. He doesn’t like travelling at all. He’ll just sit in the sun and if we bring him back some good buttered bread, he’ll be content.’

Meanwhile, Dick was shearing steadily, and the two shepherd boys were kept busy bringing him sheep and guiding away the shorn ones. Hilda came to Dick with some fresh buttery bread and a new pot of ale. He released his last shorn sheep, sat down on the grass with her and they shared the bread and ale. Marion too sat down on the patchy grass, rough with ancient acorn cups, under the oak with Peter beside her leaning against the trunk, and they ate their lovely bread and Marion fed small bits of it to Alice. The green glazed pot came their way from Milly’s hand and they drank copiously. Peterkin was somewhere on the Green, running about with the other boys in the hot sun, all energetic with full stomachs.

The Hodge family was near and Marion called out to Cecily, ‘Where’s your Hoddy? I’ve seen all the rest of you.’

‘Oh he’s about,’ Cecily answered. ‘I’m not speaking to him. Polly Fletcher caught him throwing stones at her goslings on the Green this morning, and walloped him and brought him round to me, and I walloped him again.’

‘Well, he’s got to learn,’ said Marion, the standard phrase.