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family had scarcely taken their places when there was a fresh disturbance at the main door. It was again thrown open, this time to admit the astonishing figure of Sir George’s older sister, the eighty-five-year-old Drusilla Marvell.
    She wore the high, double-horned headdress fashionable many years earlier but no longer, or very rarely, seen. Her cloak, which was held up by a diminutive page boy, was made of rich purple velvet – probably prohibited by the sumptuary laws to all but royalty – and lavishly trimmed with sable. Her face was thin and deeply lined with a sharp beak of a nose and dark, glittering eyes that darted from side to side as her steward, wearing the same red and gold livery as the page boy, forced a passage for her through the interested crowd of worshippers. She leant heavily on an ebony stick.
    But it was the quantity of jewels adorning her skinny person that commanded attention. Rubies, sapphires and emeralds sparkled in the candlelight and turned her into a veritable rainbow of colour. Every arthritic finger and both thumbs displayed a magnificent ring of heavily chased gold supporting a gemstone the size of a walnut. Diamonds hung in clusters from her earlobes and encircled her neck and wrists, while the front of her silk gauze gown – most unsuitable for both her age and the winter weather – shimmered with silver medallions. If she had had a herald walking before her crying, ‘This is a woman of very great wealth and importance,’ her message could not have been more plainly delivered.
    Her steward having conducted her to the head of the congregation, she ostentatiously ignored her brother and his family, taking up a position immediately opposite where she could look right through them as though they didn’t exist. Whispered details of this highly entertaining comedy were passed from front to back of the assembly and resulted in so much inattention that the priest was forced to reprimand us in no uncertain terms and to remind us that it was Our Lord’s Nativity, one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar.
    Sir George, it was reported later, had turned scarlet with mortification and rage, and even, after the service, attempted to remonstrate with his sister. This had been a mistake, giving the lady a chance to show yet more disdain by informing him, through her steward, that she had no wish to bandy words with him.
    â€˜Well, I did enjoy that,’ I remarked as we walked home to Small Street, taking Margaret Walker with us for her Christmas dinner. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
    â€˜I wish I could believe you meant the service,’ Adela reproached me, shifting Luke from one arm to the other.
    But Margaret only laughed and agreed with me that it had been worth walking the extra distance to St Mary’s for such a piece of unlooked-for entertainment.
    â€˜Of course, Drusilla Marvell will never forgive her brother,’ she added with a chuckle. ‘If she disliked him before – and I may say that they never got on – she hates him now.’
    â€˜Why?’ I asked.
    My former mother-in-law laughed. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she promised.
    She was as good as her word, but the excellence of the meal, and doing it justice, delayed the story for some while.
    We started with plum porridge followed by the capon, roasted on a spit over the fire earlier that morning, between the Shepherds’ Mass and the Mass of the Divine Word, and kept hot in a box of warm hay. It was, admittedly, a very small bird, but Adela made it stretch amongst seven of us without making it too apparent that her portion was smaller than that of anyone else except Adam. Our son, who has always had an extremely sweet tooth, was far more interested in what was to follow, namely frumenty – he loved the spices and honey mixed with the wheat – and a plate of ‘Yule dolls’. He picked out all the currant