The farmer was short, stocky and round-shouldered. He used a wooden bucket to tip the mixture into the trough. The pig was on it immediately, grunting contentedly and dipping his nose to smell his food before gobbling it up. The animal was kept in a ramshackle pen with a small, low hut to protect it from bad weather. When winter came, it would be slaughtered and used to feed the family. A drumming sound made the farmer turn and he saw horsemen being conjured out of the gloom. They were French soldiers. Most of them sat tall in the saddle but one of them was hunched up as he nursed his broken wrist. Another man was slumped lifelessly across his mount. Towed along behind the cavalcade was a riderless horse.

Removing his hat, the farmer adopted a deferential tone.

‘Good day to you, good sirs,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘We’re looking for a fugitive,’ explained the sergeant. ‘He’s a man in a brown coat and has something of my build.’

‘We’ve seen nobody like that, sir.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘The only person to go past all day was a carter.’

‘Be warned,’ said the sergeant, pointing a finger. ‘If we discover that you’re hiding the villain, you’ll die alongside him. He killed one of my men and wounded another. We want him.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. He’s not here.’

‘He must be. He abandoned a horse a mile or so away, hoping that we’d keep chasing it all evening but we soon caught up with it. He couldn’t have got far. I think he came this way.’

‘You’re welcome to search.’

‘We don’t need your permission to do that,’ snarled the sergeant. ‘Right,’ he went on, nodding to some of the men, ‘look everywhere. Turn the place upside down.’

‘Do as you wish,’ said the farmer, spreading his arms in a gesture of welcome. ‘We’ve nothing to hide.’ As the men dismounted, he walked over to the sergeant. ‘Is there anything I can get you while you wait, sir — a cup of wine, perhaps?’