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themselves well served,’ Robert said. ‘Thieves deserve no less.’
    ‘But it won’t fill your coffers if they can’t pay,’ Jan protested. ‘You can’t get water from a river that’s run dry.’
    ‘They can pay. When they’re stealing the cargoes I’m giving them money to deliver, they’re earning twice over. You’re too easily gulled, lad – isn’t that right, Thomas? They know you’re coming and spirit halftheir stock and belongings away to make themselves seem poor, then fetch it back when you’ve gone. It’s a game they’ve been playing for years.’
    The same mulish expression darkened the faces of father and son. If only they were not so alike, they would lock horns less often. Robert would win, he always did, but Jan was right: it was the cottagers who would suffer.

October
    If the October moon appears with the points of her crescent up, the month will be dry, if down, wet.

Chapter 4
    A woman was carrying a little boy who was eating an apple. They met a neighbour on the road, who took a bite from the apple and returned it to the child. Until that hour, the boy had been strong and healthy. From that moment he began to waste away, and shortly after, he died.
Greetwell
    Master Robert thinks he has troubles and so he has, for when you own much, you fear much too. Andno man who’s spent a lifetime building his wealth fleece by fleece, bale by bale relishes the prospect of having it all snatched away before he can pass it to his sons. But such fears are not confined to the wealthy. The poor also dread losing what little they have and some have troubles enough to fill the nine lives of a cat, but without so much as a whisker of a cat’s good luck.
    Gunter wasone such man, who scratched out a living in Lincoln, or rather in a piss-poor village nearby, known as Greetwell, though Gunter, who’d never known better, counted the place home.
    The sun hung low in the sky, as he hefted the heavy peats from his punt. He pushed them up onto the riverbank so that his daughter, Royse, and her brother, Hankin, could carry them to the lean-to shelter beside the cottageand stack them ready to burn through the long winter months. As usual, Royse was trying to outdo her brother, and they were piling them under the reed thatch with such haste that Gunter warned them to take more care. ‘Get a good steddle laid first, else the whole stack’ll tumble down.’
    But he might as well have been talking to the wind. Royse, just coming up to fourteen, was a headstrong, wirylittle lass. The first signs of womanhood were pushing out the front of her kirtle, but she still behaved more like a boy than a woman, never walking when she could run, never sitting still if she could climb. Hankin, a good year or so younger, was already taller than his sister, shooting up like a sapling and just as skinny. Ever since he’d managed to pull himself to his little feet and toddleafter her, he’d been determined to prove himself tougher than her, but she’d never made it easy for him.
    Gunter blew on his numbed hands to warm them. It was a raw day, the wind sharp and wet, the ground sodden after all the rain. He’d be glad when the frosts came. The damp ate deep into the bones. Great pools still covered the fields where the river had flooded. It had at last receded, but itwould take longer to drain from the land. They’d waded through stinking river water inside the cottage for nigh on a week before it had gone, but they were used to that. It happened most years, and Gunter could read the river like the back of his hand. He knew when to shift kegs and barrels up to the hay loft, so little was lost.
    With the last of the peats safe on the bank, he hauled himselfout of the punt and picked his way down the muddy track, eager for something warm to fill his belly.
    He was a short, stocky man, and the muscles of his arms and legs were thick and corded from years of punting. Despite the cold he wore only a sleeveless tunic of stained brown