That was about ten harvests ago, during the second or third year of our master’s marriage and his freehold over us. He’s never thought it fit to put the pillory to use since then. It’s been our village cross. We’ve little else. The plot of land that was set aside for a church has nothing on it other than our too many graves, a pile of well-intended but as yet unlaid stones and, somewhere underneath the bracken, sore-hocks and willow herb, a flat foundation block. So far no one has made the time to dig a building trench, select a single flint for our church’s walls or mix a pint of mortar. We do not dare to say we count ourselves beyond the Kingdom of God. But certainly we do not press too closely to His bosom; rather, we are at His fingertips. He touches us, but only just. We work cheek to jowl with breeds that cluck and snort and moo, but never with the Father who created us and them. I’ve yet to sense Him standing at our shoulders, sickle in His hand. I’ve yet to feel Him lightening the plow. No, we dare to think and even say among ourselves, there’d be no barley if we left it to the Lord, not a single blade of it. Well, actually, there’d be no field, except a field of by-blows and weeds; the nettles and tares, the thorns and brambles He preferred when He abandoned Eden. You never find Him planting crops for us. You never find us planting weeds. But still we have to battle with His darnel and His fumiter, we have to suffer from His fleas and gnats and pests. He makes us pay the penalty of Adam. Sometimes we’re thankful that the nearest steeple is a lengthy day away (and so’s the nearest alehouse, come to that!). We can’t afford a living for a priest. We’d prove too small and mean a flock for him. Our umbrage would eclipse our awe. So we continue not irreligiously but independently, choosing not to remind ourselves too frequently that there’s a Heaven and a Hell and that much of what we count as everyday is indeed a sin.

We do, though, have our wooden cross, our neglected pillory, standing at the unbuilt gateway of our unbuilt church. It’s slightly taller than a normal man, oak built. The two hinged boards which form its wings and provide two stations for its prisoners are wider and a little longer than its upright. That makes our cross more muscular and far reaching than the usual, narrower crucifix. The orifices which in a crueler place would more regularly provide a fitting for the necks and wrists of miscreants have lately been a useful space for us to hang prayer rosaries or love chains made from flowers. It’s here that Master Kent conducts our marriages and baptisms, where he delivers eulogies to those who have departed — my wife and his were celebrated on this spot — and comforts the bereaved. It’s here we gather to consecrate our seed corn and give our harvest thanks and bless the plow.

So earlier this evening it was for me an unhappy and infernal sight to see the two men and their hanging heads and hands, secured to the village cross and left to sag for seven days. Up till that moment I’d witnessed only their smoke and heard about these newcomers, their defiance and their bows, through the vaunting, colorful reports of my brave neighbors, mostly John Carr and Emma Carr and the widow Gosse, with whom, in all honesty, I have of late established an occasional attachment. From her nettling description, I was expecting rougher men. All I could see from a cautious distance, passing by on my way toward the smell of veal and bacon, were the inoffensive tops of two hastily shaven and humiliated heads, as newly reaped as our great field, one ghostly gray, the other already darkening with tar-black stubble. The elder was the shorter man. He was on tiptoes and in evident discomfort. If he stood flat, he would be throttled by the wooden vice that bolted him in place. I decided then to find a flattish log for him to stand on when later I returned that way.

Master Kent is standing now, and drawing expectant smiles from us. These feasting times are when, fueled by ale, he likes to recall for his soil-bound guests the life he led before his happy coming here. His are embroidered tales of a strange and dangerous world: imps and oceans; palaces and wars. They always leave my neighbors glad they’ll not be part of it. But tonight his mood is clearly not a teasing one. Instead, he has invited Mr. Quill to join him at the makeshift dining board and both of them have clapped us quiet. Is this a moment we should fear? “Here is my good acquaintance, Philip Earle,” he says, taking hold of Mr. Quill’s elbow and pushing him forward for us to greet and inspect. “You will have met him yesterday, and you will see him hereabouts for one more week. He has come to us in my employ to make a map of all our common ground and land. We will prepare some raw pauper’s vellum for his task from that veal skin which is hanging now above my head. He will take note of everything and then draw up petitions for the courts. What follows is — with your willing, kind consents — an organization to all of our advantages. Too many seasons have been hard for us …” As this point Mr. Earle (as we will never think of him) unrolls one of the working charts he has prepared and asks us to come up to see our world “as it is viewed by kites and swifts, and stars.” We press forward, shuffling against one another to fit within the lantern light. “These are more complete than yesterday,” says Mr. Quill, but once again we only see his geometrics and his squares. His mapping has reduced us to a web of lines. There is no life in them. Now he shows a second chart with other spaces. “This is your hereafter,” he says.

“Yes, our tomorrows will be shaped like this,” adds Master Kent. That “Yes” is more uncertain than it ought to be. He pauses, smiles. “I will be exact …” he promises. But not, it seems, for the moment.

Say it, say it now, say the word, I urge him silently. I don’t have to be a swift or kite to know about the world and how it’s changing — changing shape, as Master Kent suggests — and to hear the far-off bleating of incoming animals that are neither cows nor pigs nor goats, that are not brethren. I know at once; I’ve feared this “Yes” ever since the mistress died. The organization to all of our advantages that the master has in mind — against his usual character and sympathies, against his promises — involves the closing and engrossment of our fields with walls and hedges, ditches, gates. He means to throw a halter round our lives. He means the clearing of our common land. He means the cutting down of trees. He means this village, far from everywhere, which has always been a place for horn, corn and trotter and little else, is destined to become a provisioner of wool. The word that he and no one dares to whisper let alone cry out is sheep. Instead Master Kent presents a little nervously a dream he’s had. He hopes that if he can describe these changes as having been fetched to him by a dream, then we will understand him more and fear him less, for dreams are common currency even among commoners. Surely, we are dreamers too.

In this dream, all his “friends and neighbors”—meaning us — no longer need to labor long and hard throughout the year and with no certainty that what we sow will ever come to grain. We have good years; we have bad, he reminds us. We share contentments, but we also share the suffering. The sun is not reliable. And nor is rain. A squalling wind can flatten all our crops. Mildew reduces it to mush. Our cattle might be ravaged by the murrain fever. Our harvest can be taken off by crows. (“And doves,” a small voice says. My own.) But wool is more predictable. A fleece of wool does not require the sun. Indeed, a fleece of wool will grow and thicken in the dark. A fleece is not affected by the wind or by the changing seasons, he says, warming to the task — for it is a task, a labor of persuasion. And, as far as he’s aware, crows do not have a taste for wool, despite — he smiles, to alert us to his coming jest — their appetite for flocking.