Petty would not have taken the hint; Petty would have come out swinging. And there would have been a fight, and someone would have done something stupid, that is to say even more stupid than what Petty would have done. And then the Baron would find out and people might lose their livelihood, which would mean they would have to leave the Chalk and go for perhaps as much as ten miles to find work and a new life among strangers.

Tiffany’s father was a man of keen instinct and he gently opened the barn door a few minutes later when the music was dying down. She knew it was a bit embarrassing for him; he was a well-respected man, but somehow, now, his daughter was more important than he was. A witch did not take orders from anybody, and she knew that he got teased about it by the other men.

She smiled and he sat down on the hay next to her while the wild music found nothing to beat, stone or hang. Mr Aching didn’t waste words at the best of times. He looked around and his gaze fell on the little bundle, hastily wrapped in straw and sacking, that Tiffany had put where the girl would not see it. ‘So it’s true, she was with child, then?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

Tiffany’s father appeared to look at nothing at all. ‘Best if they don’t find him,’ he said after a decent interval.

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany.

‘Some of the lads were talking about stringing him up. We would have stopped them, of course, but it would have been a bad business, with people taking sides. It’s like poison in a village.’

‘Yes.’

They sat in silence for a while. Then her father looked down at the sleeping girl. ‘What have you done for her?’ he asked.

‘Everything I can,’ said Tiffany.

‘And you did that taking-away-pain thingy you do?’