There was a flat, open area, big enough for a dancing floor but without any post or even much sign of dancing. And there were no tents; instead on the far side there were two oblong walls, side by side and three paces apart, built of squared blocks of grey stone, dull against the white of the snow. Each wall had an opening in the middle like a cave mouth, big enough to walk into, and covered with a hide curtain just like a tent door. There were other square openings in the walls, but they didn’t come down to ground level. The right hand wall was tatty and dirty, and there were baaing noises coming from it, like the baaing of the animals we killed on the hill.

“Ho-a Mother!” called out our second captor. “Look what we found in Fennicle Bowl!”

A woman, about my mother’s age I guessed, heavy built but not fat, stepped out through the left hand hide door. “Na na na!” she exclaimed. “Savages!” As she spoke, a couple of children slid out alongside, holding tight to her, and then ran back inside. “Oh, look at you two!” she went on. “You’ll catch your death, staying out on the hill all day in this! Put the savages with the other animals and come inside! The dinner’s ready.”

“Hey no, wife!” exclaimed the first captor. “They’ve already killed some of our sheep. We can chance them not in the byre.”

The woman sniffed. “Leave them out here then, till the morning.”

“They’ll die.” Our second captor prodded Stack with a forefinger. “Keep your hands up!”

“I thought savages feel not the cold.”

“These do, wife. They’re shivering already.”

“Oh all right. Bring them into the house. But be careful with them; never can you tell with savages, so my old mother used to say.”

They pushed us through the door with our own spearbutts. Inside we saw that the wall went on round a space, just as tent hides do, but squareish instead of round. The floor was hard stamped earth, strewn with rushes and herbs. Blocks of stone had been set one on another at one end, where a fire was burning, so that they made a sort of tube for the smoke, up through the roof of split tree-trunks, moss and turfs. We clustered together just inside the door, but our two captors walked past us, kicking off the leather covers they wore on their feet. They flung their cloaks onto a wooden frame in one corner, and warmed themselves at the fire.

They looked back at us.

“Throw your cloaks and packs on the maden with ours and come and let us see you,” ordered the older man. “Not too close – about there will do. And kneel.” So we did.

Oh it was so good to feel a warm fire! It took me several moments to think of anything else – and especially, to notice the sound of giggling.

“You can see his bum!”

“And his bellybutton!”

“She’s got no clothes on at all!”

“Just got a strap round her waist!”

“That must be her dress and it’s shrunk in the cold!”

And so on.

I looked round. Our captors were an oldish man and a much younger lad, maybe a year or so older than Stack and Hawk; obviously father and son. There were nearly a dozen other kids, all younger than the lad, and a cradle in one corner by the fire which looked to be in use. And all of them, from the father to the toddler, were covered neck to knees in cloth.

Now I know what the woman said, but it’s not true; we aren’t savages. We’ve seen cloth before; the Travelling Folk often bring it, and our Chief’s – no, the Longwall Chief’s First Wife has a complete dress made of cloth, which she wears on special occasions. The idea of weaving isn’t strange, either; leather thongs woven into hammocks, traps and hurdles woven from hazel twigs, and lots of others. But why wear clothes in camp? OK, we do wear some things: being a shaman I wear a few straps I can stick feathers and suchlike in for effect, and the Singer has some hand puppets and masks, and the Chief and the First Wife obviously dress to show their rank at special events, and most of the women like to strap on some dry moss during their periods; but cloth? There’s no point.

“There you are, I told you so!” The woman bustled in from another door. “Not even clothed like human beings! They’re just naked savages – just animals!”

Kneeling down in the middle of the floor with the others I tried to pretend I didn’t mind, that it was our captors who were stupid. It didn’t work.

The giggling and the pointing were interrupted by a meal; we got nothing, obviously. We just crouched down, glad to be warm, and wished we weren’t so hungry.

Why didn’t we make a dash for it, while they were eating? Surely if we timed it right, we could even have grabbed our cloaks and packs? I don’t know; I honestly don’t know. But I couldn’t even bring myself to suggest it. It just didn’t happen.