Others are uprooted. But the most pernicious of all must be harrowed from the soils of history. From Revolution There is nothing good to be said for sleeping in a barn. A pile of hay looks soft enough from a distance, but up close there is always a brittle point to poke into your skin. Julia had fallen asleep directly. But unfamiliar sounds kept me awake. At first it had been the scurrying of small creatures. Rats or mice, I supposed. They only went quiet when an owl flew in to perch on a high beam. I know it was an owl because of its screech, which repeated every few minutes thereafter. The stable master’s wife fussed over us as she served breakfast, apologising that the cottage was so small and that there were no spare beds. I gathered that it was not uncommon for travellers to stay. But they had never had ‘real ladies’ sleeping in the barn before. Sleep was too strong a word for it. Breakfast was thickly cut bacon, coarse bread and sweet tea.
