Transcript
I were born on this estate, worked the fields when I was younger. The preceptor before saw I had a mind for counting and raised me up. Now I manage it all — the labour, the tallies, making sure what’s owed is delivered and what’s needed gets done.
There’s maybe fourteen or fifteen of us allus here at the preceptory — men who live here year-round, do the skilled work. Then the villages send their workers for a manor day or two a week depending on what they owe. I decide who comes when, what work needs doing. At harvest we call in the boon works — whole households turn out, maybe a hundred people for a few days. It’s the only way to get it in before it spoils.
Brother Hugues needs me. I speak his French well enough to get by, and he trusts what I judge right. The decisions are his, I make them happen. That works well enough. The manor is this place and eight villages — grain, wool, stock, mills. Most of it I carry in my head. Which fields flood, which families are reliable, which animals are getting old. Nobody’s written it down.
The fleeces go to Hirst – near Selby first, then down to Hull for the sea ships. I’ve been to see them – sea is strange. They end up in Flanders or sometimes wi’ the Normans. That’s where the cloth buyers are. The estate reaches farther than most people here will ever walk.
I’ve been training Martin up. Nothing set, just taking him round with me, showing him how the tallies work, where the boundaries are. The estate’s memory can’t stay in one man’s head forever. Better he learns it now.
I see Dunstan’s along the path – old man, been here longer than most of us. Worth hearing what he’s got to say.
Language
- Tallies – measures of crops (or other items) harvested, traded or received as taxes
Jon Eland 