I took Oddleg, the strong, placid horse that had brought me from London. The pall of grey cloud had thickened, and the air was uncomfortably heavy. We took the Portsmouth road south; Hobbey had told us that in that direction trees were being cut on both Hugh's estate and his.To the right one of the communal village fields sloped gently away, its strips of different crops a riot of colour. Villagers working there glanced up, some staring at us. As we rode on the woodland to our left gave way to the cleared area, stretching back a good half-mile to where the forest remained untouched, a line of unbroken green. Thin young trees were thrusting up from the undergrowth, mostly pollarded so that the trunks would divide into two trees.We stopped. 'This area was felled some time ago,' Barak observed.'They felled everything, not just the mature trees. It will be decades before the forest returns here. That is Hugh's land. How much the timber fetches depends on the type of tree. Prime oak, or elm or ash?' I shook my head.
