Drained by reedy ditches between the road and the broad fields and pastures, the land here was rich both for crops and grazing, Joliffe thought as he, Ellis, Gil, and Piers walked along. There was the hopeful green of young growth across the ploughed fields, but that was a promise of harvest-to-come that had proved false these past two years of wet summers and harsh winters, and there were not so many cows or even sheep at graze as there might have been. That had been true everywhere the players had traveled so far this year. When the haying failed in a rain-drenched summer, fewer cows could be over-wintered and that meant fewer calves come the spring and that meant fewer cows in years to come. And if too little was left from a ruined harvest to feed a family through the winter, then what should have been saved to plant the next year’s fields too often went to ease present hunger, lessening even further the next year’s hope. And because when all this happened, the hunger was everywhere, there was nowhere to go to escape it, nothing to do but stay and see it through until the fat years came again.
