Transcript
I’m here for our Manor work day. My husband’s needed on our own strip today, so I came instead. Whoever can be spared, that’s who goes. Today it’s me. I’ll be pulling weeds most likely, or binding sheaves if they’ve got any ready.
We’re free folk, our family. That means we can leave if we choose, though where we’d go I don’t know. The land here’s sound and the Templars don’t push hard. A bit apart maybe. There’s no lord’s family, no lady of the house, just the brothers and their business. Strange household, that way. But they’re fair enough.
I weave at home. Wool from our own sheep mostly, bit traded from neighbours. Spin it, weave it, make what we need — clothing, blankets, what we need. Some of it goes to Osbert’s mill to be fulled, comes back thicker. Warmer for winter.
The fleeces the Templars send away, the export wool — that’s different. Same sheep, but it goes on the packhorses, down to the river, onto boats. Don’t know where it ends up. “Flanders”, they say – somewhere they make finer cloth than I do.
At harvest, the whole manor turns out for the boon work. You get women from all eight villages in the same field. Only time that happens. Rest of the year it’s just your own village, your own neighbours. You forget how big the manor is till then.
My youngest is home with a neighbour. Loaf’s cooling on the board. I’ll be back with ‘em before dark.
Language
- Demesne (‘di-main’) – the manor work villagers had to do.
Jon Eland 