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after three or four days and nights of weather like this?
    He clearly saw that I was weakening. ‘Poor Mrs Kemp, God rest her soul,’ he continued. ‘About her funeral—’
    ‘What about it, Simon?’
    He sighed again. ‘It’ll be right hard, burying her, that is. The ground’s so wet the grave’ll likely flood. She can’t lie whereshe is any longer, poor lady. What are your wishes?’
    I knew my place. ‘What do you usually do in circumstances like this?’
    ‘Line the grave with planks so the sides don’t fall in. Takes a lot longer, that’s your problem.’ He looked expressively at the sky.
    ‘Then you must start straight away. Secure a couple of stout men to help you, Simon, so that no time is lost.’ I wondered why he had needed to raise the problem, one he must have dealt with times without number. But his confidence had gone into the grave he’d dug for his wife. ‘Now, remember, Simon, there must be braziers in the church on Saturday night.’
    ‘What about other nights too? Those old pictures Dr Hansard’s so taken with – they’ll be peeling off the wall if we’re not careful.’
    I nodded. Perhaps as Hansard always insisted, we had a duty not just to our own generations but to others in the future. ‘Could you undertake to keep them lit all the time?’
    ‘I may have to if the brook bursts its banks, as they say ’tis like to do. Because that’d take out all Marsh Bottom, and where would the poor folk live then but here?’
    ‘You know Lady Chase is expecting to accommodate people rendered homeless in her barns and even the Hall?’
    ‘No one would want the Marsh Bottom type in their byre, let alone their barn. And as for the Hall, I reckon his lordship’s death must have turned her head. Isn’t natural, folk like that living same as decent gentry. Old vicar, he always used to say people should be put in the workhouse, but they say the ground floor’s under three inches of water already.’
    ‘The church it is, then,’ I said mildly, worrying all the same about the fabric of a building, the heart of my first cure ofsouls, I loved dearly. ‘And most important, Simon! – whoever asks for alms, none shall be turned away. Lady Chase will provide whatever I cannot.’
    ‘As long as she’s the Duchess,’ he hissed, ‘not the Dowager Duchess. That there Sir Marcus won’t be so free with his brass. You mark my words. He’ll be too busy spending it on himself.’
    ‘Come, man – where is your Christian charity?’
    He hawked and spat. ‘Christian is as Christian does. You can tell a man like that. Just by looking at him. And,’ he conceded, ‘by talking to his servants. Anyway, braziers I suppose you shall have. I’ll get on to it now…’
     
    Lady Chase’s open-handedness to the village was matched only by the anxiety of her steward, Furnival, who could not have been more careful if it had been his own money he was trying to save. In her personal life, too, her ladyship was generous, overcoming her reluctance to pass her time with Sir Marcus, and regularly joining his family for dinner – though mercifully without the freezing preamble in the hall. I too was frequently invited, and was delighted if my parish duties permitted me to accept.
    Lady Bramhall would play the harp, and Lady Dorothea sometimes sang to my all too inadequate accompaniment. Much as I would have loved to prove her wrong, Lady Dorothea was accurate in her estimation of her talent. She knew much about the works she sang, and was a mine of biographical information about their composers. Nor was there any doubt that she loved her music. Her voice, however, was very uneven: her head and chest notes alike were sound, but there was very little in between. If only shehad had the benefit of the sort of master who had taught my sisters.
    ‘But you, Mr Campion,’ she was pleased to say, ‘are a wonderful accompanist, knowing when to play pianissimo to support my voice and when to play fortissimo to drown my