After playing their games down by the river, Fernan, Alvar, Albornoz and their friends who lived in the town returned home. These boys had homes that were warm, dry and comfortable, and tables laid daily with wholesome meals. The youngsters who did not climb the stone steps with them went in the opposite direction, upstream, to smallholdings and fields farmed by their tenant parents whose grace-and-favour cottages depended on the grain, produce and livestock sold on behalf of and taxed by their landlord, the Bishop of Cuenca.
Recent times had not dealt these people a fair hand — war and political and social unrest had afflicted the province of Castile. Epidemics and famine were commonplace, and crop failure a constant worry. Wattle and daub walls rendered their places too hot in summer, b
