‘Look at this.’ He held up a coin. ‘A shilling now to look after my horse and another when I return.’

The lad jogged back. ‘All right, then.’ He examined the coin. ‘Got nowt else to do except gawp wi’ the rest of ’em.’

He took the reins from Gunson and led the horse over to a felled tree trunk and sat down on it. Gunson felt the lad’s eyes on his back as he struggled through the mess of stones and branches and mud. The edge of a piece of sandstone, pale as bone in the black mud, caught his eye and he bent and used both hands to pull it free. The stone was rounded, the size of a loaf of bread, and could have come from any building or bridge in the path of the flood. He could not say why he was certain this was a relic from the valve house.

Bile rose in his throat and he dropped the stone back into the mud and walked on, moving closer to bank of the river that ran through the middle of the hamlet of Lower Bradfield.

Two men stood in the flooded garden of a half-demolished cottage, their arms hanging by their sides. Gunson felt their eyes on him as he passed. A tangled stew of detritus, wood, rocks, roof tiles and bricks were piled high on the flank of the river, like a hastily constructed defence of a child’s play. A ragged gap revealed the Loxley itself, a shallow brook once more, innocently burbling, tickling the sides of a grey boulder that almost spanned its width.

‘That thing weren’t there yesterday. Must weigh sixty ton.’

Gunson turned to see who had spoken. There was a man by his side, as square and solid as a brick. He pointed to the jagged remnants of a low stone wall nearby.

‘And that’s what’s left o’ my mill.’ The man laughed mirthlessly. ‘It were a waste of effort lugging the wheat up two floors. Blasted thing took the whole buildin’, the wheel, all the stock, the pig in its sty, slaughter bench, bacon.’ He paused for breath. ‘Got the cows up the hillside though, an’ saved the wife an’ kids. The mother-in-law, an’ all, for all her bleatin’.’

The miller peered at Gunson. ‘I know thee… but I can’t place thee.’ He shook his head. ‘Me mind’s addled.’

Gunson was deep in thought. How many people, like this man, had known enough to flee in time and save themselves from destruction?

‘You had a warning?’

‘Of sorts. It were young Stephenson Fountain stopped off and said there were a crack in the dam. Jon Ibbotson, the landlord at the Barrel, sent a couple of men up and they reported back that they thought it would burst for sure.’

‘They said it would?’ Who were these men, and how had they known so much more about it than Gunson himself? ‘How could they be sure?’

The miller shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I thought I should take precautions, though. I were right to, an’ all. I’ve lost everythin’ except my family.’