Tom looked at his phone; there was no signal. He showed it to Kit, but Kit simply shuddered and turned away.

‘What are we doing?’ They had reached the western edge of the weedy field nearest the farmhouse.

‘We mend a fence.’

A deer had broken through the wire fencing, making a large hole.

Kit set to it, whilst Tom fumbled everything that Kit asked him to do. The silver-haired boy seemed to regard Tom as an irritant rather than a helper, and soon Tom gave up and just watched him instead.

‘An you be so clumsy,’ muttered Kit.

He pushed his silver hair away from his face. The wire fence was now fixed, and he leaned on a pole, regarding Tom thoughtfully.

‘You’ve not been bid work a day in your life.’

Tom bridled a little. But he did not take the bait. ‘There aren’t many wire fences at school.’

Kit sighed. ‘Walk wi’ me. Now we’re walkin’ the bounds. Master says you maun do it wi’ me once a day, being a Swinton.’

‘OK.’ Tom found himself falling into step with Kit. ‘You call him “Master”?’

He saw in Kit’s stance a kind of defiance. But was it to Tom, or was it to James Swinton, Esquire?

From where they stood, the farmhouse looked tiny and exposed. He blinked, and a strange thing happened. The air around the house shimmered and shifted, and he saw for a moment what seemed like an entirely different house, filling out with towers and crenellations; but it was only there for less than a heartbeat, and then it was gone.

‘Did you … ?’ But Kit was already several feet away. He blinked again, and the farmhouse was as it had been when he arrived, rambling and tumbledown, a chimney smoking.

What had he seen? It must have been a trick of the sun and the shadows.

A faint thumping sound was coming from somewhere, and when Tom looked at him with an enquiring expression, Kit simply said, ‘Bird scarers,’ and walked onwards.

The farmlands were not large, comprising a few scrubby fields. Even Tom could tell that no crops had grown in them for a long time. No sheep grazed and no other horse poked its head over a fence, looking for an apple or a friendly hand. Sometimes a hare would flash across the field, and Kit would stiffen and look after it, as though he wanted to shoot it for the pot. Tom was pleased to see a hedgehog, snuffling along; it paused and regarded them with interest, before curling up into a ball.

They continued to walk the bounds. Every so often Kit would bring out the chain with the glass on the end of it, stop and hold it up to his eye. Once Tom tried to grab it, but Kit held it out of his reach, and Tom didn’t press the point, though he was curious as to what he was doing.