‘You again,’ he said blankly. ‘I thought you didn’t want my fine hunter.’ He hawked and spat over the side of the wagon. ‘D’you want to buy that pretty little pony of ours? He’d look nicely in your show. Or the hunter’s still for sale.’

The fine hunter was still lying down and looked less and less likely to get up. Da did not see it, he was watching Robert Gower’s face.

‘I’m interested in the pony if you can get it broken by the end of the week,’ Robert Gower said. ‘I’ve been watching your lass train it. I doubt she can do it.’

Da spat again. ‘She’s an idle whelp,’ he said dismissively. ‘Her and her good-for-nothing sister. No kin of mine, and I’m saddled with them.’ He raised his voice. ‘And my wife’s a whore and a thief!’ he said louder. ‘And she’s foisted another damned girl brat on me.’

Robert Gower nodded. His white shirt billowed at the sleeves in the clean morning air. ‘Too many mouths to feed,’ he said sympathetically. ‘No man can keep a family of five and make the profits a man needs.’

Da sat down heavily on the step of the wagon. ‘And that’s the truth,’ he said. ‘Two useless girls, one useless whore, and one useless baby.’

‘Why not send them out to work?’ Robert suggested. ‘Girls can always make a living somehow.’

‘Soon as I can,’ Da promised. ‘I’ve never been fixed anywhere long enough to get them jobs, and I swore to their dead ma that I wouldn’t throw them out of her wagon. But soon as I can get them fixed…out they go.’

‘I’d take the littl’un,’ Robert Gower offered nonchalantly. ‘What’s she called? Merry something? She can work with my horses. She’s useless with anything bigger than a pony so she’d be little help to me. But I’d take her off your hands for you.’

Da’s bare cracked feet appeared at the wheels at our heads as we crouched beneath the wagon. He slid off the step and went towards the shining topboots of Robert Gower. ‘You’d take Meridon?’ he said incredulously. ‘Take her to work for you?’

‘I might,’ Gower said. ‘If the terms were right with the pony.’

There was a silence. ‘No,’ Da said, his voice suddenly soft. ‘I couldn’t spare her. I promised her ma, you see. I couldn’t just let her go unless I knew she was going to a good place with ready wages.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Robert Gower said and I saw his shiny black boots walk away. They went for three strides before Da’s dirty feet pattered after.