She was rather startled when, near the end of the path, she came upon Dick seated on a fallen ash trunk with his head bowed on his left arm and his right arm cradled in it. He had not heard her coming.

‘Dick! Are you bad? Thought you were going to the orchard?’

He raised an embarrassed face. ‘Must have dozed off,’ he said. He smiled, but she saw how gingerly he moved his right hand and how slowly he straightened the arm. ‘Perhaps I’m not used to this work – this sort of work. Sheep are quieter.’

He stood up and they walked the rest of the way to the Green in silence. Then he went round the Hall to the Orchard and she saw him no more that day. He must have gone straight home from the orchard for he was not on the Green when Peter and the rest of the scythers joined Marion. The women, who had gone home earlier to their cottages, came out with baskets of bread and small buckets of milk, and Rollo, obviously reluctant, came from the Hall and ordered Tom to bring a big pitcher of ale. The supper was eaten as the golden sky shone on their sunburnt, silently munching faces, and only a glimmer of dusky light was left by the time Marion and Peter had walked the last quarter-mile back to their cottage, with Peterkin limping behind them, silent with exhaustion. The top half of the door was open, but it was too dark to see anything. She felt for the cradle, slid her hand in and found Alice’s warm body. Hilda had fed her and put her in the cradle faithfully. Alice was deeply asleep.

After such physical exertion Marion had slept well. It had grown cold in the early hours and she had pulled up the feather quilt over her and heaved nearer to Peter’s warmth. At the first still hint of grey dawn she rose and peered out of the top half of the door. It was patchy cloud as before, cool, no wind, dry. They would go on haymaking.

It was later, when Peter and Peterkin had departed for the fields, and Marion had prepared and was packing the bread into a basket, that Hilda looked in over the half-door.

‘Dick’s suffering with his hand,’ she said. ‘He says it’s nothing, but he was groaning in the night with it.’

‘Have you put anything on it?’

‘Yes, the soaked herbs Dame Margaret gave me when Meg stepped on a rusty nail. It healed up quickly then. I’ve bandaged his hand, but it hurt him awfully. At first he wouldn’t let me touch it.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Gone to the fields as usual. Are you ready? I’m going as soon as the girls are ready.’

‘We are ready,’ said little voices from below the half-door. So they all went up to the fields and tossed the hay and looked at the clouds and felt anxiety in the thundery air. Dick was working away. Marion saw him some distance down a line of hay, and though he was raking, she noticed he held his rake in one hand while the other rested in the opening of his tunic. When they stopped and relaxed under the oak tree, Marion noticed he ate very little, and when one of his little girls bounced down beside his prone body and pulled his right arm he gave a screech of pain that startled them all, and the child, blank-faced, hid behind her mother.