Sparrows

Part 1

The high summer sun comes dappled through trailing willow boughs. Lush green bracken, pink loose-strife, yellow bladder-wort, all the joyous colour giving lie to wretchedness of my life, at least for this moment.

I am Hadwise Rachael's-dotter, wife to Hew the smith.
I sit with my feet in a flow of clear water, close my eyes, breathe in, hold the air in my lungs. The light headed feeling I get from the childish trick thrusts the real world away for a few precious moments.
I loose the breath, throw back my head, open my eyes.
How I long to be a child again, to run unconcerned to my father's knee and be petted.
Oh, to be that child still...

The air is cool under the long overhanging branches. I am closed in, shaded from the world. Even the sounds of the birds are softened. The babble and splash of the stream has tempted me. 'Tis good to sit for a while, I could stay here forever in peace. No more listening to the self-pitying complaints of my husband. No more waiting for the sound of iron hooves on the dry dirt road. No more hearing my child whimper as life fades from him.
A sigh escapes me as I close my eyes again. If only I could make for freedom as easy as my breath.

I'm not sure how far we have walked. Each day it gets a little further, less safe. Hew grumbles about the time it takes. But if left to him there would be no nettles for the potage, nor twigs for the fire to cook it on. My small vegetable patch is poor, forests fruits sparse, our bellies yawn wide and empty. I am not sure which soldiers stole the last harvest, those of the Empress or the King. Not that it matters much, 'tis still gone.

My mouth hurts; I can taste the metal of my blood. If I suck hard...it
still bleeds. Oh, well...

Last winter the brook iced over, the milk cow died of cold in her stall, our pig in her pen. Old Jacko fell drunk and froze where he lay at the door of his cot. Never been the like, all acknowledged it so. The priest said it was Gods judgment on the people for not supporting Good King Stephen. But these are villains, cottars, poor folk like us who only just endure in the good times. We live season to season, what do we know, or care, of kings? All we do know is life is hard, and soldiers make it harder. They steal, destroy, rape. It matters not one whit who they fight for.

God bless our lords who play at politic and rob us blind, steal even the men from the fields, just to fight their endless, pointless wars.
The village is almost empty now. Those that were able took to the road, only the old and sick have stayed. Oh, and us, we stayed, but no one needs a blacksmith here anymore. Without work and three mouths to fill, as well as his own, Hew's moods are black, he takes this fortune hard, and blames me.

If I wriggle my tongue I can move a tooth, he has loosened it.

There was a time when I never spoke, never sang, he bade me keep silent. My voice bothers him; I am a disappointment I suppose. My sickening babe has seen only two summers, his poor undernourished body falls to every ailment. Tom, my stepson, is a sturdier child, a good boy of eight years; he follows me as if I were indeed his real mother. I love him, but despair what life he and his half brother may have.
Hew finds even the wasting of our child reason to berate me. The fault lay with me. Had he had not taken me to wife, he and Tom could have...well he never said what he could have done. Likely he does not know. But Hew is a simple man, not given much to thinking...so he hits me instead. He struck me about the face this morning, he was in an ill humour. I had defied him and sang softly as I nursed. 

Aye, it was foolish of me, but I am a woman grown, I cannot always be silent, to sing is all I have left of the girl I was. So I did not stay to listen to the list of sins I had committed, I know them by heart. My wilfulness since the birth of our son, my wanton behaviour and whorish practices...
Huh! I came to him a shy girl of twelve summers, reared in a convent. 'Till my father's death I was meant for a nun. But my stepmother refused to pay my dower to the church. She found me a fitting husband instead. Hew, the smith. Where was I to learn whorish practices but from him?
All had thought it a good match. Hew was the honest, God fearing widowed blacksmith, with a son of one year, a goodly catch for an orphaned bastard girl.

It was not!

Seven years I have been wife to Hew, in seven years I have born but one son, my poor little rabbit. I have never quickened more. No more babes filled me. Another crime to lie at the door of my lewdness. To be fair he did not touch me till my fourteenth birthday, but then he fell upon me as a man starved. Most of what he showed me to do was against the teachings of the church...a woman should not take the position of a man in the act of union. A woman must not be taken on a holy day, not in the light of day, not like the beasts in the field...The list is endless, and he is persistent in them all. And I, who knew so little, profited not at all from the sinful acts. Once...I think I felt...a something, but then it was gone. Gone with a grunt, a groan, and a careless touch.

Now I collect nettles for soup, our only food for a sennight gone.

I am Hadwise Rachael's-dotter, wife of Hew the smith atte-Brooke.
These are all my sins.