Mercedes Lackey - The Gates of Sleep

As for the underthings—well, she considered that a form of comfort for the heart, if not the body. She knew how much better it could make a girl feel, even if she was wearing second-hand garments, to have brand new underthings with an embroidered forget—me—knot border to make them special. Many a village girl had gone into service with a set or two of Marina’s gifts proudly folded in her little clothing-box, knowing that she would have something none of the other maids she would serve with would have—unless, of course, they were from Killatree as well. And many a poor (but proud) village bride had gone to a laborer-husband with a carefully hoarded set of those dainty things in her dower-chest, or worn beneath her Sunday dress (if she had one) to serve as the “something new” on her wedding-day.

Small things, perhaps, but they were new. Not secondhand, not worn threadbare, not out of the attic or torn, stained, or ill-made. For no few of the parish poor, this was the only time in their lives they ever got anything new.

So, on Boxing Day, Marina and Margherita drove down to the village with the pony-cart full of bundles of stockings and gloves, scarves and shawls, useful things and toys, heading down to the Parson, who would see that their gifts were distributed to those who needed them for another year. This year, Uncle Thomas had added something to his carvings; Hired John’s son had expressed an interest in learning carpentry, and the uncles had put him to making stools and boot-jacks. If the legs were a trifle uneven, that was quickly remedied; and those of his efforts that he didn’t care to keep—and how many people could actually use twenty stools and boot-jacks?—went into the cart as well.

Marina wore the “secret” present from her mother and father—a magnificent beaver cape, warm and soft, like nothing she’d ever had for winter before. She needed it; the temperature had plummeted just before Christmas, and it had snowed. Christmas Eve had resembled a storybook illustration, with snow lying thickly on the ground and along the limbs of the evergreens. The snow remained, softening the landscape, but making life even harder for the poor, if that was possible.

Marina yawned behind her glove, while Margherita drove. She had a faint headache as well as feeling fatigue-fogged and a little dull, but she was determined not to let it spoil the day for her. The cold air did wake her up a little, but it hadn’t eased the headache as she had hoped.

Well, Uncle Sebastian’s gone for the day. When we get home again, perhaps I’ll try taking a nap, since he won’t need me to pose.

For the past several nights, she hadn’t slept at all well. At first she’d put it down to pre-Christmas nerves; now she wasn’t certain what it was. She was certainly tired enough when it came time to go to bed, and she fell asleep without any trouble at all. But she just couldn’t stay asleep; she half-woke a dozen times a night.

It was nothing even as concrete as that dream she’d had of waking in the middle of the night—just a sense that something was awry, or something was about to go wrong, and that she should be able to decipher what was wrong and set it right if only she knew how. She would fall asleep perfectly content, and the feeling would ooze through her dreams all night, making them anything but restful.

It will all stop when Elizabeth comes back, she told herself, stifling yet another yawn. And I will not let this ruin the day. And then her aunt turned to look at her, she managed to smile with real pleasure.

The parson was supposed to be the one distributing all of the largesse of Boxing Day, but over the years the poor children of the village and the farm-cottages had come to learn just who it was that made those marvelous toys and came to see to their own distribution of Blackbird Cottage’s contribution to the Boxing Day spoils.

Life had never been easy for the poor, but it seemed to Marina that in these latter days, it had become nearly impossible. Certainly in all of the volumes of history and social commentary she’d read over the years (and in certain liberal-minded newspapers that occasionally made their way into the house) the authors had said things that agreed with her assessment. The poor these days were poorer; their conditions harder, their diet worse, their options fewer, their hours of work longer for less return.

It had probably begun in the days of the Corn Laws and the Enclosure Act—every village used to have its common, and anyone who lived there had a right to graze a sheep, a goat, a cow, or even geese there. Villagers used to have the right to run a pig or two in the local gentry’s forest, fattening on whatever it could forage. They had rights to gather fallen wood for their fires, fallen nuts for their larders, glean grain left behind after harvest. With that, and with their cottage gardens, common laborers on the gentry’s farms could have enough extra—meat from fowl or beast, eggs, perhaps milk and butter and cheese, and the garden vegetables—so that meager wages could be stretched to make a decent living. But one by one, the commons were enclosed, leaving cottagers with nothing to feed their geese and hens, their sheep or single cow. Then the swine were chased from the now-fenced forests in favor of deer and rabbits that the lord of the manor valued more than the well-being of humans. With the forests fenced and guarded by gamekeepers, you couldn’t gather fallen sticks or nuts without being accused of poaching, and the penalty for poaching was prison. Mechanical reapers replaced men with scythes and rakes who cared about leaving a bit behind for a widow or old man. And wages stayed the same… but somehow, the cottage rent crept upwards though the cottages themselves weren’t usually improved. And heaven help you if the breadwinner took sick or was hurt too badly to work—as happened far too often among farm laborers. Rights to live in a farm cottage were only good so long as someone in the family actually worked on the farm. If the husband died or became disabled and you didn’t have an unmarried son old enough to take his father’s place, you lost your home as well as your income. Then what were your options? Parishes used to have a few cottages for those who’d been thrown on the charity of the parish, but more and more those were replaced with workhouses where families were broken up and forced to live in male and female dormitories, and both sexes were put to backbreaking work to “repay” the parish for their hard beds and scanty food.

Things were not much better if, say, the breadwinner worked on the railway as a laborer. The wages were higher, but the work was more dangerous—and yes, there were railway workers’ cottages, but if your man lost his job or was too sick or hurt to keep it—like the farm laborer, you lost your home as well as your income.

As for other sorts of laborers, well, they didn’t even have cottage-rights.

There was no factory nearby, but Marina had read plenty about them—those “dark, satanic mills” vilified by William Blake, where men, women, and children worked twelve hour shifts in dangerous conditions for a pittance. Entire families had to labor just to earn enough for rent, food, and a little clothing. Yet more and more country folk were having to turn to factory and mill-work in the cities just to survive. The owners of great estates were finding it more profitable to turn their tenant-farmers out and farm their own property with the help of the new machines—there were more hands to work the land than there were jobs to give them.

Or so Marina surmised from what she had read; she only had experience of country folk and country poverty, which was certainly harsh enough. There wasn’t anything to spare in the budget of a cottager for toys for the kiddies. Small wonder there was a crowd waiting at the parsonage, and a cheer went up at the sight of their pony-cart.