No, Master Kent has had a dream which makes us rich and leisurely. Every day becomes a day of rest for us. We walk about our fenced-in fields with crooks. We sit on tussocks and we merely watch. We are not plowing; we are shepherding. We are not reaping; we are shearing. We are not freezing to the bone on damp and heavy winter days picking stones out of the soil, wringing the necks of furrow weeds, or tugging out twine roots and couch until our backs are stiffer than a yoke. No, we are sitting at our fires at home and weaving fortunes for ourselves from yarn. Our only industry is shooting shuttles to and fro as if it were a game, child’s play. Our only toil is easy toil — a gentle firming at the heddles, attending to the warp and weft with just our fingertips, untying snags and loosening. Instead of oxen there’ll be looms. Instead of praying for the stems of crops to stay straight and tall against the odds, against the efforts of the elements, and for their ears of corn to thicken and to ripen, we will be closing the sheds on broadcloth, fustian, worsted and twill. “A stirring prospect, isn’t it?” he says. Somewhere too far away to name, in places we can never see, a man is putting on a coat that we have shepherded and then made up with our own hands, a woman pulls a scarf across her head and smells our hearths and country odors in its weave. We start off with the oily wool on the back of our own livestock, our Golden Hoofs, and end up with garments on the backs of noble folk. It is a dream that, surely, none of us find vile. And still he has not said it: Sheep. Am I the only one to recognize what the dream is trying to disguise? The sheaf is giving way to sheep.

Master Kent has timed his revelation well. The veal is his. The ale is his too. We are no longer hungry. We’re certainly not sober. We’re in his debt this evening and know him well enough to want to trust his word, at least for now. His plans might be five years away. Or ten. Tonight’s what matters, and tonight he’s satisfied us with his feast. He only has to raise a hand to wave away anxieties and allow the drinking to continue. We have become like animals in our individual ways, precisely as the brewer’s ballad says: goat drunk and lecherous; dog drunk and barking mad; bull drunk and looking for a brawl; pig drunk and obdurate. But mostly we are as drunk as post-horses — their thirsts are never satisfied — and so, for this evening at least, beyond anxiety.

We are, though, in the mood for music and for dancing. Young Thomas Rogers is our only piper, and our nightingale. He needs no persuading to pick up his instrument. At any chance, he fills his lungs, and empties them for us. He first drums up an uncourtly reaping rhythm with his foot and then commences with his holes and fingertips. We’ve heard his efforts many times before. When Thomas sits at night and practices, we can’t escape his failings and his strains no matter how hard we try to sleep. But then we cherish him. Without him we would never dance. So we egg him on tonight. What we do not expect is this second voice that’s joining him, that’s joining in with greater mastery behind our backs. It’s Mr. Quill, Mr. Earle. We’ll have to call him Mr. Fiddle now. He pushes forward with his ungainly walk, leading with his shoulder, not his chest. He finds a place to sit at Thomas Rogers’s side, lays the instrument across his knees and applies his bow to the strings. He first echoes, then ornaments, then commandeers what the piper tries to play.

Thomas Rogers does not look as pleased as Mr. Quill at the warmth of our applause. The piper loses confidence and face. But the fiddle’s voice — at least, when our visitor has settled himself on his backstool — asks both for our laughter and our tears at once. His tune is both glad to be unhappy and sad to be so gay. Quite soon the children come away from playing loggats, throw their last sticks at the staff, and take to the barn floor to slide around on the loose straw to the music. Now the few remaining wild-heads of the village — the Derby twins, of course, but other stewards of misrule as well — start the dancing, taking their younger sisters and their nieces by the hands and swirling them. It is the married couples next. And finally our handful of unmarried girls step up, with great solemnity at first, but soon their cheeks are red with effort and not blushes. One of them, the one whose piety and prettiness is judged most spirited, will be our Lady of the Harvest. She’ll be our Gleaning Queen. We will choose her when the music has concluded, if that moment ever comes, if we allow it to. Tomorrow she will be the first to step into the vanquished barley field, to walk across the stub, to bend and find and save a grain against the colder times ahead.

Mr. Quill the fiddler is shaping us again, making us as congruous and geometrical with his melodies as he has done with his charts and ink. His dance is circular, then it is square; it’s forth-and-twenty, swing and stump; it’s reels and sets and thundering. The revelers are being asked to go beyond their normal selves, to be more liquid, actually. I am tempted to join in myself, though I’m a widower. But I dare not chance my smarting fingertips and palms amid such taking hold and hand gripping. I stand and watch with Master Kent, that other recent widower, swaying at my side. The women skirmish with the men, stamping feet and swirling kerchiefs. The mopsies and the lads are far too close. They’re holding wrists. They’re touching waists. It’s possible, in such a ducking light and with such happy havoc in command, that kisses are exchanged, and promises. We are a heathen company, more devoted to the customs and the Holy days than to the Holiness itself. We find more pleasure in the song and dance of God than in the piety. Thank heavens that we do not have a priest to witness it.

We should have guessed the spitting woman would arrive just at the moment we were merriest. This is for me first sight of her. She’s standing at the gate of the barn, beyond the reach of our lights and keeping so still that she also seems beyond the reach of pipe and fiddle. But there is no doubting who she is, unless we have a ghostly visitor, one of our wives or daughters resurrected from her grave, left thin by death. She’s tinier than I expected, imposing in a smaller way than usual. But there’s the heavy velvet shawl I’ve heard about, and there’s the tufted, rudely shaven head. She looks as drenched as a pond-ducked witch or scold. “It’s Mistress Beldam,” Master Kent mutters to me, giving her a name I know will stick. Beldam, the sorceress. Belle Dame, the beautiful. The dancers have not seen her, though. It’s only when our fiddler sets aside his bow, drops his tune and rises from his stool to look across my neighbors’ heads toward our stubbled visitor that everybody stops and turns. She’s hardly visible. She’s little more than dark on dark, a body shape. We cannot see her eyes or face as yet, or make out the bloody scar across her naked head. She does not speak — perhaps we have imagined her; she is a specter summoned up by ale and dance. The mood has changed. It’s heavier. We were liquid; now we’re stones. The night is closing on a broken note.

We know we ought to make amends for shearing her. That’s why she’s standing there, awaiting us. She’s asking us to witness what we’ve done. I have a sense that some men in the throng might any moment offer her their hand, some women too, and lead her to our circles and our squares to swirl with us. For a moment, the temper of the barn is not that she has shamed our evening but that we’ve found our Gleaning Queen. We only need to bring her to the light and crown her there and then, and all is well. Another dream. In this, her hair is long and black again; her men are walking free, uncollared and uncuffed; our wooden cross is restored to holiness and draped in rosaries; and, no, we weren’t surprised by twists of smoke at dawn today; and there are doves. Yes, there are doves. They’re circling, white consciences on wing. At first the sight of them is heart-lifting. But still they’re circling. They cannot find a place to feed. This is their hereafter. They’re searching for the gleaning fields, but there are none.