“Bring ye siller? Bring ye gilt?” said Granny Aching.
“No silver. No gold,” said the Baron.
“Good. A law that is brake by siller or gilt is no worthwhile law. And so, my lord?”
“I plead, Granny Aching.”
“Ye try to break the law with a word?”
“That’s right, Granny Aching.”
Granny Aching, the story went, stared at the sunset for a while and then said: “Then be down at the little old stone barn at dawn tomorrow, and we’ll see if an old dog can learn new tricks. There will be a reckoning. Good night to ye.”
Most of the village was hanging around the old stone barn the next morning. Granny arrived with one of the smaller farm wagons. It held a ewe with her newborn lamb. She put them in the barn.
Some of the men turned up with the dog. It was nervous and snappy, having spent the night chained up in a shed, and kept trying to bite the men who were holding it by two leather straps. It was hairy. It had fangs.
The Baron rode up with the bailiff. Granny Aching nodded at them and opened the barn door.
“You’re putting the dog into the barn with a sheep, Mrs. Aching?” said the bailiff. “Do you want it to choke to death on lamb?”
This didn’t get much of a laugh. No one liked the bailiff much.
“We shall see,” said Granny. The men dragged the dog to the doorway, threw it inside the barn, and slammed the door quickly. People rushed to the little windows.
There was the bleating of the lamb, a growl from the dog, and then a baa from the lamb’s mother. But this wasn’t the normal baa of a sheep. It had an edge to it.
Something hit the door and it bounced on its hinges. Inside, the dog yelped.
Granny Aching picked up Tiffany and held her to a window.
The shaken dog was trying to get to its feet, but it didn’t manage it before the ewe charged again, seventy pounds of enraged sheep slamming into it like a battering ram.
Granny lowered Tiffany again and lit her pipe. She puffed it peacefully as the building behind her shook and the dog yelped and whimpered.
After a couple of minutes she nodded at the men. They opened the door.
The dog came out limping on three legs, but it hadn’t managed to get more than a few feet before the ewe shot out behind it and butted it so hard that it rolled over.
It lay still. Perhaps it had learned what would happen if it tried to get up again.
Granny Aching had nodded to the men, who picked the sheep up and dragged it back into the barn.
The Baron had been watching with his mouth open.
“He killed a wild boar last year!” he said. “What did you do to him?”
“He’ll mend,” said Granny Aching, carefully ignoring the question. “’Tis mostly his pride that’s hurt. But he won’t look at a sheep again, you have my thumb on that.” And she licked her right thumb and held it out.
After a moment’s hesitation, the Baron licked his thumb, reached down, and pressed it against hers. Everyone knew what it meant. On the Chalk, a thumb bargain was unbreakable.
“For you, at a word, the law was brake,” said Granny Aching. “Will ye mind that, ye who sit in judgment? Will ye remember this day? Ye’ll have cause to.”
The Baron nodded to her.
“That’ll do,” said Granny Aching, and their thumbs parted.
Next day the Baron technically did give Granny Aching gold, but it was only the gold-colored foil on an ounce of Jolly Sailor, the cheap and horrible pipe tobacco that was the only one Granny Aching would ever smoke. She was always in a bad mood if the peddlers were late and she’d run out. You’d couldn’t bribe Granny Aching for all the gold in the world, but you could definitely attract her attention with an ounce of Jolly Sailor.