On this side of the Audley estate, fields were under cultivation, silent in their winter drab, stitched together by sparse Hedgerows, dotted with bleak copses. Few people moved on the face of this wintry landscape, as they followed the track down towards Audley: but, suddenly, approaching a fork in the road, a dozen or so ragged peasants burst from the trees on either side.

Startled, Thomas' beast reared up and threw him to the ground with bone-crushing force. The breath was driven from his lungs, and he lay stunned, panting to force air into his deflated chest.

His ears rang to the sounds of screeching animals, and rough shouts. Seeing Ufford fall, the soldiers went for their swords, but de Clavering's experienced sergeant gestured them to hold back. He had realised Thomas' fall was accidental: the rabble seemed unarmed, apart from the ugly looking staves one or two carried. He would wait to see what these louts wanted.

"Clavering! Clavering!" they shouted, and the sergeant's hackles rose again: these people knew whom they were confronting.

"Get away from here!" he threatened, sounding much braver than he felt. There were a dozen to his three; four if you counted the young fool gasping on the floor like a landed trout. The cart driver was of little use, goggling at the scene slack-mouthed.

Eve and Hawise could not believe the peasants' behaviour. On Clavering estates, they kept a respectful distance from their masters.

Annabelle, who knew a couple of the men by sight, was more disturbed than frightened. What could have driven them to such anger and defiance? Courageously, she stood up in the cart, and faced the apparent leader of the mob.

"You there," she called, "calm yourselves. Can't you see the horses are frightened? They may bolt!"

This coolness shook the angry dozen, and her reference to the animals, which they knew so well, and dealt with every day, seemed to strike home. With the wind out of their sails, temporarily, the shouting subsided to fierce muttering. Two and a half centuries of conditioning were hard to overcome, and the peasants' almost inbred respect for the 'foreign' nobility battled against their rage.