The cabinet maker told the young couple his terms.

‘Then we’ll be married on St Catherine’s Day,’ said Demetrius.

‘The saint of old maids,’ said Edith.

‘Can you wait that long?’ the cabinet maker said to Demetrius. ‘Wouldn’t you like a younger girl? More available? From another village, perhaps?’

‘No,’ said Demetrius.

‘Someone more like you?’

‘In what way, like me?’

‘A gypsy,’ said the cabinet maker.

‘I’ve not an ounce of gypsy blood in me,’ said Demetrius, laughing. ‘More’s the pity.’

The cabinet maker, intending the suggestion as an insult, hadn’t expected such a response. The humour of his future son-in-law irritated him and he scurried away as might a cockroach, congratulating himself that he hadn’t disclosed the last part of the butcher’s request. He would tell Edith tomorrow when the shepherd was seeing to his lambs.

‘I doubt you’ll find that funny, gypsy,’ he muttered and lifted the bottle to his lips.

The thought that he’d outwitted the shepherd pleased the cabinet maker. What could the shepherd do when he found out Edith was promised to another man? Nothing. Like the rest of us, he thought, he’ll be under the butcher’s boot.

That night, when they were alone, Edith gave Demetrius her gold coin. He didn’t know the custom of the region and she told him it was a token of her love and represented a bond between them that couldn’t be broken. He put his arms about her and held her close, and promised on his life it never would be.

‘On our wedding day,’ she said to him, ‘we will put this coin under our mattress and there it will stay to be handed down to our daughter when it’s her turn to choose a husband.’

He kissed her. ‘When I come back at harvest time, I’ll bring you a ring.’

‘And I’ll give you the red shirt that I’ll sew for you to be married in.’

Chapter Three

Her Mother’s Bible

‘This is foolish,’ Edith said to her father when he told her what the butcher wanted. ‘I’m to be married to Demetrius. I will never marry the butcher. How much do you owe him?’

‘Nothing to do with you,’ said the cabinet maker. ‘That’s my business. But if it’s not done today the butcher will forbid the elders from letting your wedding go ahead.’

‘I want to speak to Demetrius first,’ Edith said. ‘Surely it can wait until tomorrow.’

‘No, it can’t,’ said the cabinet maker. ‘There will be no marriage unless you swear.’

Edith looked at his purple blushed face, the wine-red veins that inked his puffy features. How could this man be her father? They had nothing in common other than they lived under the same roof – and a leaky roof at that. She tried to think of one loving memory she had of him and couldn’t.