Location:The Millford Road — the Halbrook Holding; The Stone Barn; The Yard
Date/Time:TC1858.03.11
Onion and woodsmoke, and under them the dried meat, gone in last and softening in the pot. Maude Quarry smelled it before she was properly awake.
Hob had got the pot on the barn's hearth-stone before light. Nobody had told him there was a hearth-stone; he'd found it, a broad slab set into the floor by the east wall where somebody long ago had kept a brazier, and he'd scraped it clean and built a fire on it no bigger than two hands, and now the whole barn smelled of food. Maude lay on her blanket with her eyes shut and breathed it in. It was the first hot thing anybody at Halbrook had cooked in a week. Bett's people had been living on bread and cold meat since the night the floor went in. Nobody had wanted to cross the yard to the house to cook, and nobody had said that was the reason.
