Outside Sir Hugh said he must get back at once to see Tom about the grave. Dame Margaret wanted to linger and talk over the affair with Marion, but Marion did not want her in her cottage, knowing that the old feather quilt was lying about and there might be questions about where so many feathers had come from, even though they had been accumulated over many years. But tiresome Dame Margaret hung about until at last Marion asked her to come and sit down on the log seat under the eaves and said she would get her a bit of breakfast. She stepped quickly into the cottage, picked up the damp, hardly wakened Alice from the cradle and dumped her on Dame Margaret’s lap, thinking, that will keep her quiet for a minute. She whisked the big feather quilt and the cradle’s quilt under the bed-straw, caught Peter’s eye and they both smiled their only smile of the day, and then made a bowl of bread and milk for Dame Margaret. When it was eaten and Marion had finished relaying Hilda’s description of the death, Peter walked to the village with Dame Margaret and was persuaded by her to assist Tom in digging the grave.

Peter told Marion later how the villagers, sleepy but horrified by the news, had been standing about on the Green when he got there and had been angrily ordered up to the hayfields by Sir Hugh. Anxiety made this normally morose man very ill-tempered. He also ordered Rollo, who avoided manual work whenever he could, to go to the hayfield too.

‘We’ve lost at least one pair of hands there,’ he said, ‘and the dry weather won’t last much longer.’

Sir Hugh then went with Tom and Peter to select a site for the grave. He ignored Tom’s advice and chose a place much too near a yew tree, and all day they struggled with the summer-dry earth and the iron-hard roots of the yew. By sunset they had only just made the grave deep enough and had broken a spade in the process.

Marion had gone over to Hilda’s cottage again, saw her and Father John still sitting in silence. She had asked if she could do anything for them but was told no, so she went home, collected the three girls and half a loaf and went off to help in the hayfield. Sometime later, on returning, she had asked Hilda if Father John had comforted her at all.

‘Comfort?’ she asked in a faint voice. ‘How could he?’

‘Did he speak of Dick’s soul in heaven? Nothing?’

‘N-no – nothing. He yawned sometimes, and searched for fleas in his cloak. Just sat. I didn’t want him to say things to me.’ Hilda was quite calm, very pale, her eyes only on the distance. She did not weep, she barely spoke, she seemed to have forgotten her children who were still in Marion’s care.