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What's in the News

Imagine if you could send a modern newspaper back through time, and land it close to a labourer's home . . .

EVENING DELIVERY


Duncan plodded slowly and tiredly back home. His feet hurt, his back ached, and his arms were strained, after ten hours behind a plough.

Mind you, he seldom complained. The crops were good this year, and the stored corn was lasting well from the year before. His wife was due to have her third baby, and there was the promise of an early Spring. He prodded the ox with the goad and whistled a tune he had picked up at the local tavern. His feet were wearing holes in his leather shoes, and his tunic was grubby, but he was happy.

Life was hard, for a peasant in 1450.

Not far from where he walked ravens were circling the tower of a ruined castle, which protruded above the trees. Duncan stopped and watched them for a while.

"There be rain coming," he said, rubbing his stubbly chin with a calloused hand, "I be sure 'o that. Them ravens is going too close to their homes."

He looked at the sky as he walked on, casting his weather-beaten eyes this way and that. There wasn't much sky to be seen. The path he trod was a natural break, a space between huge trees, in a large forest of oaks, so the only blue and grey available was directly overhead, or through the chinks in the leaves.

"It don't auger good for tomorrer," he said gloomily.

He came over the crest of a small hill and began to descend into a gully, where the water trickled through the soil, and the darkness of wet foliage gave off a dank and musty smell.

The black ox dropped its head and wrapped its long tongue round some grass. It ripped off a clump and walked on, making a sucking sound with its feet in the mud. Duncan came along behind, not needing to touch the ox at this part of the journey. It was a cold, creepy place, this gully.

The trees thinned out, until there was only the one or two, then the paddock ran clear of them, down to a small house beside a stream. White smoke drifted lazily from the lone, white chimney, and Duncan began to feel hungry.

On the ground, about half way to his house, he saw a white thing on the ground. It looked like a piece of


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