Boring History for Sleep | Entire Life of a Medieval Peasant (From Birth to Death)

Hey there. Tonight we're going back not to kings or knights, but to the other side of history. The side without glory or comfort or a warm bed. This is the full life of a medieval peasant. From the moment you're born into straw and smoke to the day you're buried in the frozen ground, forgotten by history, but not by those who live beside you. You'll grow up hungry, work until your bones ache, and face frost, famine, fevers, and a church that never stops watching. But along the way, there's also laughter, stubborn hope, and small moments of

peace. If this kind of quiet history helps you rest, feel free to like the video and subscribe, but only if it actually brings you comfort. and let me know in the comments where you're listening from and what time it is right now. It's oddly soothing to see who's out there falling asleep to the same story. So, dim the lights. Turn on a fan for that soft background hum. Settle in and let's begin at the very start of a peasant's life. They tell me I came into this world on a cold morning in late November. Though

calendars didn't mean much in the village, unless it was planting season or a saints feast. My mother gave birth to me on a pile of straw near the half, while my eldest sister threw more dung onto the fire, and my father muttered something about it being another mouth. It was my third sister that cut the cord with a knife we usually used for cheese. And then they wrapped me in rags that had once belonged to a cousin who died young, like most cousins did. It wasn't a dramatic affair, just another baby in a hut already

echoing with the coughs and snuffles of too many children in too little space. You don't get a name right away. That was superstition mostly. A good portion of us never made it past the first few weeks, so it was bad luck to grow attached too soon. Half the village had buried a baby at some point, and the churchyard was dotted with tiny unmarked graves, soft earth for short lives. So they waited a while, watched me closely, and only after I had survived my first bout of fever was I baptized by Father Oswin in a cold

font that smelled faintly of mildew and sheep's wool. I don't remember it, obviously, but I do remember him years later. Crooked nose, holy breath, and a stare that could curdle milk. They called me Thomas after an uncle who'd been kicked by a mule and died half an hour later. Names came from saints or corpses, sometimes both. My first bed was a wooden cradle stuffed with hay and lined with old cloths. It sat by the fire if we had one going, or near the half's ashes if we didn't. Our house, if you can call it that,

was made of timber and wle and dorb with a thatched roof that leaked every time it rained harder than a drizzle, which in England was most days. The floor was earth, real earth. It got swept occasionally, mostly with a bundled switch of twigs, and only when we'd stepped in something that shouldn't have been in the house to begin with. Chickens wandered in and out like they owned the place, and there was a pig who liked to sleep near my cradle for warmth. She smelled better than most of my siblings. We had no chimney, just a

hole in the roof and a hope that the smoke would go up instead of sideways. It didn't. Everything, clothes, hair, skin, rire of smoke, the kind of scent that burrows into your bones and never quite leaves. As a babe, I was lucky to have milk. Some weren't. Wet nurses were a luxury, and most mothers fed their own if they had enough to give. My mother did her best despite the five other squalling mouths and the winter ration of pottage that barely warmed a spoon. Weaning meant mashed peas, softened barley, and the occasional bit of bread

soaked in broth. Teeth came early. Illness came earlier. I had four siblings older than me, two younger, and one I never met. He died in the night sometime around Candelmus, wrapped in a blanket and still warm when they found him. We didn't speak of it. We didn't need to. Everyone understood. By the time I could walk, I had chores. You don't get a childhood in the way modern folk imagine it. No toys, no school, no idle hours spent wandering about your feelings. My early years were spent chasing chickens, fetching water from the stream, which may

or may not have had a dead squirrel floating in it, and being smacked with a wooden spoon if I got underfoot. We shared everything, beds, shoes, illnesses. My sister and I wore the same tunic in alternating weeks. It never quite dried between uses. Lice were normal. Fleas expected. worms. Only worth mentioning if they made you cough one up. As I got older, perhaps six or seven, my responsibilities grew. That's about the age when you're considered halfway useful. I'd help muck out stalls, scare off crows, and carry baskets of turnips so heavy I could barely see

over them. Okay. My hands grew calloused before I ever held a quill. Not that I ever did. Some children in towns or in the manners were apprenticed or sent to monasteries. Not me. My fate was the fields. Just like my father and his father and his father before him back when England was mostly forest and people still thought Vikings might show up on a Tuesday. There was a rhythm to peasant life. Seasons dictated everything. In the spring you sowed. In the summer you tended. In the autumn you harvested. In the winter you tried not to

die. Simple. But even as a child you noticed things. The way the village held its breath during childbirth. The way people crossed themselves twice when smoke rose too thin from a neighbor's chimney. The way old men looked at the horizon like they expected something bad to walk over it. And often something did. We played, of course, children always do. Games with sticks and stones, foot races, mock battles with straw swords. We laughed, scraped our knees, and fought like dogs over the last apple on the tree. But even then, there was work waiting. Always work. Sometimes

when Father Oswin wasn't looking, we'd sneak into the chapel just to feel the cool stone under our hands and see the candles lit. It felt otherworldly, a place where mud didn't stick and whispers echoed like prayers. I didn't understand Latin, but I understood silence and how rare it was. There was a boy named Will who lived two houses down. He'd lost three brothers to a fever and used to say that if you saw three crows in the field before breakfast, someone would die before sundown. We all believed him. Superstition wasn't a pastime. It was a

survival mechanism. Saints protected our animals, relics cured our boils, and dreams were warnings, especially the ones with fire in them. My education was oral stories, prayers, curses. I learned what crops to plant when. How to spot a snake in tall grass. And that stepping on the church threshold with your left foot meant a week of bad luck. These were the lessons that mattered. Latin could wait. But even amid the muck and hardship, there were moments, bright ones, when the barley grew high and the wind smelled like sun. When someone brewed strong ale and laughter carried

through the village like music. When the whole community gathered for a feast, no matter how small, and someone pulled out a fiddle or told a story so good even the pigs stopped snorting to listen. That was childhood. A mixture of hardship, hunger, noise, and fleeting joys. We were never clean, rarely full, and often cold. But we were alive. And in those years, that alone felt like a kind of victory. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the smoke from the hearth, feel the straw poking through my bedding, and hear my mother's voice humming

the same tune she did every evening. Something soft and wordless, like a lullabi made out of endurance. They say the first years shape a man. If that's true, then I was shaped by mud, ash, and the sound of my name being called for chores, and by the quiet understanding that nothing in life, not warmth, not food, not love, came without work. But it survived, which for a medieval peasant child is more than many could say. They say a child's first memory sticks with them forever. Mine is of a splinter. Not a big one, mind you.

Just a nasty little sliver of wood I got from falling on the threshing floor while chasing a chicken. I wailed, of course. Not because it hurt that much, but because I was five, tired, and already covered in half a morning's worth of mud. My mother yanked it out with her teeth and handed me a crust of bread too hard for a dog. That was comfort in our house. removal of wood followed by carbohydrates. In medieval England, childhood was less a protected phase and more a short muddy ramp up to full exhaustion. You weren't coddled. You

were taught not through books or lessons, but by watching, copying, and occasionally getting swatted with a ladle if you did something particularly dim. I don't remember a time without work. By the time I could form sentences, I could carry water. A small bucket sloshing down my legs. By 5, I was feeding chickens. By six, shoeing crows off the barley. By 7, I was sent with the other boys to learn the fine art of not standing where the oxen are trying to walk. We called it learning. Today, you'd call it survival training. Most of our day

revolved around the needs of the house and field. Morning started early before the sun. If it was harvest season, we'd be woken not by roosters, but by my father's boots slamming the door shut behind him as he headed out. Our breakfast was cold pottage or leftover bread if the rats hadn't gotten to it first. No one asked how you slept. No one cared. The day didn't wait for dreams. We didn't have toys, at least not ones you'd buy or make on purpose. A good stick could become a sword, a javelin, or a horse, depending on

how you swung it. Stones were game pieces, tools, or missiles. We played when we could, but always with one ear tuned to an adult calling our name, or worse, calling our full name. That meant trouble. There were no schools for us. Education, if you were lucky enough to stumble into it, came from a priest who had time between funerals, or a village elder who'd tell you which mushrooms wouldn't kill you. The most I ever learned to write was the first letter of my name scratched into the dirt with a twig. And even that was seen

as a bit fancy. What I did learn and quickly was everything needed to stay alive and mostly out of trouble. How to walk behind a plow without tripping. How to lift with your knees. How to spot a weasel in the chicken pen. How to keep quiet when Father Oswin started talking about sin and hellfire. And how to pretend you weren't the one who stole the last apple off the cart. Religion found you early. You didn't understand it. Not really. But you understood fear. You feared hell. You feared the devil. You feared Agnes, the woman two

houses down, who looked at you funny and might have cursed your sister's goat. God, you feared too, but he was a bit harder to picture. The priest painted him with fire and guilt and long silences. We nodded along, eyes wide, fingers crossed. Around age seven, things shifted. That's when you stopped being seen as a small creature and started being seen as a small adult. Your chores got more serious. You were expected to help in the field. Really help, not just fetch things. If you were a girl, you helped with the washing, the spinning, the endless

cooking. If you were a boy, you joined your father or brothers with the animals and tools. If you were unlucky, you did both. My father said a boy's hands should be blistered by eight. Mine were. By then, I'd already dropped a bucket on my toe, lost two fingernails to a millstone, and once got kicked into a puddle by a cow who didn't care for my face. Welcome to childhood. We were always outside in the rain, in the frost, in the thick summer heat. No such thing as too cold or too hot when the barley needed

tending or the sheep had gone wandering into someone else's pasture. I knew every dip and stone of the path to the well, every splinter in the stable gate, every wormhole in the wood near the fire. We lived close to the earth, not by choice, but because it was literally our floor, our walls, our food, and half our illnesses. Sickness came often. Rashes, fevers, boils, you name it. Most weren't named, actually. You just got the sweats or the shakes or that coughing thing, and you either got better or didn't. The village had a midwife who also

knew herbs. She helped when she could. But if the ailment was serious, your best hope was prayer or luck or both. Death wasn't abstract. I saw a friend of mine, Simon, go from laughing over a beetle to shivering in a blanket to being buried behind the chapel all in three days. No one explained why. They just said, "God took him and we moved on." Because you had to. Still, there was fun in strange places. We played in the stream. We pelted each other with snow and straw. We raced barefoot through the fields, yelping when we

stepped on thorns or startled a frog. We stole turnips, then ran from the tanner, who claimed they were his. We'd huddle around the fire at night and listen to stories from the old men. Tales of beasts, saints, and wars we didn't understand but loved hearing anyway. There was a rhythm to it all. You rose, worked, ate, scratched, slept, and dreamed. Sometimes of nothing more than a better pair of shoes or a day when your tunic didn't itch. And you knew even then what your future would be. You'd grow taller, not taller than the Lord's son,

of course, but enough to lift heavier things. You'd marry probably a girl from the same village with the same dirt under her nails. You'd have children who'd do as you did, and you'd die within a mile of where you were born. Not that anyone said this outright, but it was in the way people looked at you, in the way they measured your height by the door frame and nodded as if to say, "A few more years and he'll be useful." Childhood was less about wonder and more about waiting. Waiting to be old enough to matter.

On feast days, though, oh, those were special. Saints Days or weddings brought out food, music, even a bit of dancing. I once had a honeyed oat cake I still think about. And one year they roasted a whole pig. It was like a miracle. Meat that wasn't dried or boiled or questionable. We ran wild that night, bellies full, hearts light. And for a brief while it felt like the village belonged to us, the children, as if just for one night, the future was something to look forward to. But dawn always came, and with it the chores,

the weight of wood on your back, the sour smell of the sheep pen, the clanging of the pale against the well wall. Back to the cycle, back to the growing. By the time I was 10, I could drive a cart, gut a fish, spin a rope, and fix a broken fence. I knew when the rains would come by the scent of the wind, and I could guess the mood of my father by the way he shut the door. I was, for all intents and purposes, nearly grown. At 12, you're no longer a child. In the

eyes of the village, the church, and your own aching bones, you're a working man, a small one, sure, but one expected to pull your weight. And so childhood ends not with a celebration, not with a speech, just with a new job, a longer list of things to do, and the quiet realization that from here on out, the only difference between you and your father is how much your back hurts. But I survived those years. I didn't freeze, didn't starve, didn't fall into the well or get crushed by the oxen. I made it to the part

where people stopped calling me boy and started asking me to carry heavier things. And if that's not success in medieval England, I don't know what is. By 13, I'd stopped asking questions and started growing blisters instead. That's about the time a boy in our village stops being a boy. There's no ceremony for it. No candle lit moment where someone hands you a sword or a speech. One day you're helping in the fields, the next you're in the fields all day, every day, sunrise to sown, stomach rumbling, back bent, eyes stinging from the wind, and the

smoke of last night's fire still clinging to your tunic. My voice had started cracking like the rafters in our cottage after a rainstorm, and the older men noticed. They began talking to me less like a child and more like a very disappointing colleague. You missed a row, Thomas. That plow line's crooked, Thomas. Stop walking like your legs are made of porridge, Thomas. Encouraging stuff. Still, there was pride in it. I had a tool of my own, a sythe duller than it should have been, but mine. I was trusted to feed the animals, turn the soil,

even fetch deliveries from the mana storehouse, assuming the steward wasn't in one of his moods. I earned my bread now, quite literally, and I ate it with the dignity of someone who'd bled for it. Work came in seasons, just like weather and fevers. Spring was plowing and sewing, your boots caked in wet earth, hands roar from gripping the handles. Summer meant long days under a wide hot sky, your neck blistered, eyes squinting against the glare, swatting flies with every other breath. Harvest season was its own madness. No sleep, no rest, just reaping until your arms

felt like someone else's. And winter. Winter was when you wondered if your toes still counted as part of you. Our food didn't get better now that I was older. If anything, I noticed how often we went without. Dinner might be a ladle of barley stew, chewy with leftover bones. Supper, if we had one, was cold. Bread hardened on the half. Once I cracked a tooth, trying to bite through it. We laughed. Then we cried a little because we realized it was the last loaf. Water fetched by my younger brother now still came from the stream

or the communal well, depending on which was less cursed that week. It always tasted a bit like moss and worry. We drank it anyway when there was no beer. The older I got, the more I noticed the things grown men didn't speak of but understood. How they'd glance at the sky and frown. How they'd listen to the hens clucking like it meant something and it did. A change in weather, a spirit nearby, or just bad luck blowing in from the next village over. Bad luck came often. Sometimes it came in the form of a fever.

Sometimes in the form of a cartwheel snapping at the worst possible moment. Once it was a collapsed roof in the night. Two of our neighbors gone by morning. I helped pull the bodies from the rubble. They didn't look peaceful. They looked surprised. Like even in a world where death was common, they hadn't expected that. Around this time, I started noticing girls. Noticed how they carried water with one hand and tucked their hair with the other. How they laughed even when their shoes were soaked and their fingers were chapped from scrubbing linens. How their eyes darted

when the steward passed by. There was a girl named Ellsworth. Lived near the mill. Always smelled faintly of flower. She once gave me an extra slice of apple when she thought I looked pale. I don't know if she fancied me or just pied me. Either way, I remembered that apple for weeks, but courtship wasn't candle light and poetry. It was side glances while shoveling manure. Maybe a shared song during harvest. If you were lucky, you'd sit beside her at a feast. And if things went well, you'd ask her father or the village reev for permission

to wed. Love was optional. Land was essential. I wasn't ready for marriage yet. I didn't even own a second tunic. But I was expected to contribute not just to my family, but to the manor. Every able-bodied peasant owed labor to the Lord. It wasn't up for debate. That meant working the domain, the Lord's personal land, a few days a week, unpaid. You showed up, did your time, and tried not to collapse until after you'd finished stacking his hay. I remember one summer hauling stones for a new wall around the manor's herb garden. My back achd

for a week. I don't even like herbs. I'd also learned by now how to keep quiet around authority. You didn't question the Reev. You didn't question the Stewart. And you certainly didn't question the Lord, even if you thought his velvet hat made him look like a goose in disguise. Religion played a larger role. Now I was old enough to understand the sermons or pretend to. We knelt during mass, mumbled along with the Latin we didn't understand, crossed ourselves, and hoped it would be enough. I confessed to sins I wasn't sure counted. Coveting bread, speaking ill

of the hayfork, once kicking a chicken because it startled me. Father Oswin said I should pray harder. I tried, but sometimes I fell asleep mid prayer, exhausted from work and the cold and the low burning knowledge that nothing was guaranteed. Not food, not health, not tomorrow. The memorial court became familiar too. Once every few weeks, villagers would gather and the lord or his appointed judge would settle disputes. Boundary lines, livestock squables, accusations of theft. Once a man was fined for taking firewood from the wrong grove. Another was whipped for hunting rabbits that technically belonged to

the lord. I watched. I learned. I kept my head down. Sometimes I dreamed of leaving the village, of running off to a town, finding work as a tanner or miller or even a guard. But those were stories you told yourself when the rain kept you awake or when you were ankled deep in manure and wondering if this this was all life had to offer. But then I'd look around and see my brothers, my mother by the half, my father snoring in the corner, and the pig asleep in her usual spot. And I'd remember this was

life. And it wasn't all bad. We had music sometimes, a fiddle, a pipe, a voice raised in song during a rare evening when the work was done early and the ale hadn't run dry. We had stories passed down by candle light. We had the steady rhythm of the seasons, the first shoots of spring, the golden sheav, the deep hush of winter snow. And slowly I found I wasn't the smallest boy anymore. There were others now, younger than me, looking up, watching how I tied the rope or sharpened the blade, asking questions I once asked. I

wasn't yet a man, but I was no longer a child. My shoulders had filled out. My hands had stopped bleeding from the scythe, and my back only achd when it rained. One morning, my father handed me a set of tools without a word. Just nodded. That was it. my confirmation, my promotion, my induction into the long line of peasants who'd done the same work in the same fields under the same sun for generations. And I took them because that's what you did. You carried on. Thomas had seen enough of courtship before he ever experienced it

himself. Not the kind with flowers and whispered promises. Those were for stories told by traveling minstrels, not for boys who spent their mornings kneedeep in pig muck, and their evening scraping dried oats off the cooking pot. Courtship in our village, and by our I mean the 30 or so souls who shared the same patch of frostbitten soil, was a matter of timing, bodies, and barley. You didn't fall in love. you grew into usefulness. By the time I reached 15, I was tall enough to reach the thatch and thin enough to be useful without needing much

food. That made me marriageable. Not because I had anything to offer romantically. I didn't even have my own pair of boots yet, but because I could haul water, swing a sythe, and had enough teeth to chew through a turnip without making too much noise, that was about as dreamy as a man could get. My parents started talking about Ellen the same year I stopped sleeping in the corner of the main room and started sleeping in the loft. She was a year younger, known for her spinning, and had wide shoulders from churning butter since she could

stand. We'd said maybe six words to each other in our lives, five of which were, "Move, I need the ladle." But our families both needed what the other could provide. Hands, grain, and a quiet partnership that wouldn't cause trouble. betroal wasn't a grand affair. It was more like agreeing on a trade. My father spoke to hers while I stood nearby, pretending to adjust my cloak. They discussed grain yields, shared labor, and the fact that neither of us had any better prospects. Then a handshake, a nod, and it was decided. Thomas and Ellen would marry come

spring. Spring came late that year. Mud stayed longer than usual, and two oxmen died in the next village over. But when the church bells rang on St. Walpa's feast day, we stood before the priest in our second best tunics, shivering more from nerves than cold. The whole ceremony took five minutes. Latin we couldn't understand. vows we'd practiced the night before and a kiss that was more a bump of noses than anything passionate. But we were married. The wedding feast was barley bread, hard cheese, and thin stew served in cracked bowls. Someone passed around a jug

of ale strong enough to make old men weep. A few folks danced until their shoes came off. It wasn't lavish, but it was more food than usual. and nobody went home sober or hungry, which in our part of England counted as a miracle. We moved into the rear corner of my family's cottage, separated by a curtain made from an old flower sack. Privacy was a suggestion. Our first bed was straw and sackcloth over a frame of uneven planks. I say bed, more like a place where our bones rested between work days. Still, it was ours.

That meant something. Marriage wasn't a change so much as an expansion. You kept working, only now you had someone to share the blisters with. Ellen and I quickly fell into rhythm. I rose first to fetch water. She tended the morning porridge. I patched the fence. She wo the wool. Her tasks never ended. Neither did mine, but we got good at avoiding each other's tired spells, at picking up slack without asking. Romantic, number, but stable, predictable. That was more useful than poetry. Ellen had strong opinions, though she rarely voiced them. But she was smart, sharper than

me in most ways. She kept track of stores, remembered debts, and knew when to nod during church, even if she'd fallen asleep standing up. She could spot a wormy apple from across the field, and once shamed a traveling peddler into giving us proper change just by staring at him. I respected her long before I realized I liked her. Children were expected. That's what marriage was for, after all. adding labor to the household. It took a while. Our first winter was rough, cold enough to freeze the wash bucket midscrub. Food ran thin. Then in the spring,

Ellen fell ill. She recovered slowly, her hands trembling for weeks. We didn't speak about babies that season, but by the next year, she was with child. Pregnancy didn't come with cushions and cravings. It came with nausea, work, and prayers. She worked up until the week of the birth. No doctor, just old Mab, the village midwife, who smelled of time and sweat, and had delivered nearly every soul within shouting distance. Labor lasted from sunset to near dawn. I sat outside the whole time, carving pointless lines into the frozen earth with a stick. When I heard the

cry, two cries, I didn't believe it. Twins, a boy and a girl. The boy we named Will. The girl Alice. Will died 6 days later. No illness, no sign. Just didn't wake up. We buried him near the boundary oak with a cross made from the last dry branch of the season. Loss was constant, but that didn't make it easier. Life moved on. It had to. The seasons didn't stop because we grieved. Ellen barely wept. She just folded Will's swaddling cloth and tucked it under the bed. Alice lived, grew, walked early, spoke late. Her laugh sounded

like spring water over stone. Clear, brief, surprising. We lived for that sound. As husband and wife, we had a simple understanding. We did not speak of dreams. Not allowed. Dreams were for the Lord's children, the ones who learned Latin and ate meat twice a week. Our world had no room for once, only for tasks. The field needed tending. The wall needed mending. The pig needed salting. And we did it all year after year without fuss. But sometimes when the fire burned low and Alice slept in the crook of Ellen's arm, I thought about building a

second room, about teaching my daughter to read, about having a day, just one, without worry. Then the wind would howl through the thatch, and I'd remember who I was. Thomas, son of William, husband of Ellen, father of one, maybe more if luck held. A man with cracked hands, a weak roof, and a woman who warmed the stew without being asked. That was enough. The years following our marriage were not marked by great changes, but by small repeated ones, a new tool, a second pig, a patch of land the steward let us borrow. Each improvement came

with a cost. More labor, more obligation, more eyes on us. But they also stitched a new shape to our life. Our roles in the village became clearer, too. I was no longer just young Thomas. I became Thomas who fixed the wellroppe. Thomas who loaned barley seed. Thomas whose daughter didn't die last winter. These small noticings shared over ale or during idle talk near the bake house mattered more than I admitted. Respect in a village doesn't come from speeches. It comes from surviving while being useful. Ellen, for her part, was respected by women and feared slightly

by men. Not because she was harsh, but because she remembered everything. She became a sort of informal registar of marriages, debts, um, and feuds. No one could recall whose turn it was to borrow the cart. Ask Ellen. Couldn't remember if Martr's son was born before the plague or after. Ellen would know. By our fifth year, we had another child, a son this time named Hugh after my grandfather. Ellen delivered him with old Mab again, though the midwife's hand was slower now, her eyes more sunken. I paid her with eggs and a new bundle of rushes

for her floor. Hugh was hearty, loud, and always hungry. That last trait never changed. Marriage changed me in ways I hadn't expected. It made me think ahead. Not far, never more than the next harvest, but farther than I used to. I began to notice roofs that might leak come autumn, boots that wouldn't last the winter. I barted more carefully, saved bits of tallow, kept kindling dry even when I was too tired to care. These weren't grand ambitions. They were survival skills sharpened by the weight of others relying on you. Historically, peasants like me weren't expected

to have inner lives. But the truth is, we did. We just didn't have time to dwell on them. The rhythm of life as a fullgrown peasant is less a schedule and more a relentless loop. There's no concept of adulthood as we'd understand it today. Just a gradual thickening of calluses and responsibility. One morning you wake up and realize that no one tells you what to do anymore because they assume you're already doing it. That's how you know you've made it. The year is not measured by holidays or birthdays. It's carved into your body by the

seasons. Spring stretches your back with plowing. Summer cracks your hands with reaping. Autumn stains your knees with muck from gathering. And winter, that's when your bones remind you of every bad harvest and every splintered fence you ever repaired. There's always something to do and rarely anything to show for it. You dig, sew, mend, fetch, chop, patch, and then start over. The tools are basic. a wooden plow, a rusting sickle, a hoe that's more patched than iron. And when they break, which they do frequently, you either fix them with what little you have, or borrow from

someone who will expect repayment in kind, or worse, in favors. My work, like most men's in our village, is dictated by the land and the Lord. I hold a few strips of earth in the open fields. Not mine technically, but mine to tend. In exchange, I owe the steward labor days, a few dozen in theory, closer to a hundred in practice. These are spent repairing roads, harvesting the lord's grain before my own, and helping construct things I'll never use. Last year it was a granary. year before a new gate house this year. Rumor says we're

building a dove coat for birds. We're not allowed to eat. On top of that, there's the tithe. One tenth of everything I grow, raise, or make goes to the church. In theory, it's for God. In practice, it means that if I produce 10 bundles of barley, only nine come home. If no one else recalculates the share first, the priest says this keeps us humble. I say it keeps him wellfed. The rest of my day is spent trying not to fall behind. If a fence breaks, I fix it. If a pig falls ill, I call in

the neighbor who once treated his cousin's pig with an onion and a prayer. If the thatch leaks, Ellen and I climb the roof and patch it with whatever we've got. straw, moss. On one occasion, the hide of a goat that had outlived its usefulness. It didn't help the smell. Our food depends on our labor and luck. A good season means full bowls. A bad one means thin broth and tighter belts. Most meals are pottage again. Grains, weeds, the occasional onion. Meat is rare, eggs are seasonal, and milk depends on whether the cow feels like cooperating

that week. Ellen makes the best out of it, but even she can't turn turnips into miracles. Bart keeps us afloat. A few spare eggs might buy a length of thread. A day helping thresh someone else's field might get me an extra portion of smoked fish. There's a quiet economy in every favor. Everyone owes someone something and everyone remembers. What passes for rest is mostly a change in task. We mend tools while watching the children. We gossip while gathering firewood. We pray not out of leisure but because it's the one task that doesn't require moving. Sometimes

I catch myself thinking, "Is this it? Is this all there is?" And then Alice runs in from the yard, laughing with a wooden doll Ellen carved from an old chairle leg. Hugh tugs at my tunic, asking if he can help sharpen the sickle. I nod because yes, this is it. And some days it's enough. In the memorial world, community is everything. No one survives alone. The smith needs grain. The weaver needs meat. The priest needs wine, which he won't admit, but drinks plenty of, and all of us need each other come harvest. If one family

falls ill, others step in, not out of charity, but because next time it might be you. And of course, there are days of rest. Sunday mass, saint days, the occasional feast where bread is slightly less hard and ale flows for free. We sit on logs, share stories, and pretend our backs don't ache. Those are the days we laugh. Not because life is easy, but because laughter costs nothing, and sometimes that's all we've got. Historians today might write of subsistence farming and feudal obligations. What they don't capture is how much of it feels like bailing water

out of a leaking boat with your bare hands. Day after day, season after season, still you get up the next morning, you shoulder your tool, you nod to your neighbor, and you do it all over again. Because the land doesn't wait, and neither does life. The hardest part isn't the labor. It's the sameness. Every sunrise brings the same tasks in a slightly different order. The plow still sticks in the same patch of clay. The barn roof still sags. The oxen still pull with the enthusiasm of half dead furniture. And through it all, the same ache

settles into your joints. Not sharp, not screaming, just present. Like a dull companion you didn't invite, but who never leaves. There's a strange kind of pride in knowing your place in this order. I know when the frost will come by, how the wind smells at dawn. I know how deep to plant barley just by running my fingers through the dirt. It isn't education not like the monks have but it's knowledge hard one felt in the bones. Our fields follow the open field system just like every village from here to York. There are no fences just

long narrow strips shared among dozens of families. Each family gets a few strips scattered across the three great fields. So no one hogs the best land. fair in theory, but try dragging a plow from one strip to the next when they're half a mile apart. It's not efficient. It's exercised by divine design. Once a year, the Reeve, that's the Lord's man, walks the field with his tally sticks and lists who owes what. If your yield is good, you owe grain. If it's bad, you still owe grain. The math is more spiritual than logical. And if

you argue, you'd best enjoy digging ditches. You'll be assigned plenty. Taxes and tithes aren't the only thing pulling at your grain sack. Come autumn, the traveling merchants show up with cloth, salt, and promises. They trade high and buy low. I've sold five chickens for a spool of thread before. A bad deal, but the kids needed clothes, and chickens are replaceable. children less. So the village has no inn, no market square, no place to rest except the church steps or the dirt path itself. But it's a village all the same. We have elders who remember the

fire of 89 when half the homes burned. We have newlyweds trying to carve a plot out of nettles. We have a man who claims he once saw a saint in the clouds. Most just nod and keep walking. Everyone sees strange things when they work alone too long. You learn to rely on people without trusting them fully. Borrow a scythe, return it sharper than before. Lend a hand and someone will lend you one when your cart breaks. But if you owe too much or complain too loudly, word gets around. And in a place like this, your

reputation works harder than you do. The village women form the other half of the economy. Ellen spends her days spinning wool when she's not patching cloaks or boiling nettles into soup. The children gather firewood, though half the time they come back with pine cones and bruises. Even the elderly, those who've made it to the grand age of 50, still tend gardens or mend nets. No one is idle. Not really. If you are, people wonder what's wrong with you. And yet there's an odd beauty in the grind. The way mist curls over the fields in early

spring, the soft thump of grain hitting the bottom of a storage bin. The moment after sundown when the last ember in the hearth glows just long enough to show Ellen's face, tired but smiling. That's not nothing. When feast days come, the world briefly softens. Bread is baked in communal ovens. Ae is passed around. Even the Lord smiles, mostly because he's drinking better wine than we are. Children play with hoops. Old songs are sung. And for one moment, the difference between us and the manor feels a little less wide. It doesn't last, but we hold on

to it. So yes, the work never ends. The ache never leaves, and the barley never grows as thick as you hoped. But somehow through some stubborn thread of hope, you get up each morning, strap on your boots, or what's left of them, and walk into the field again. Because this is your life, and it's worth living, if only because it's yours. You don't plan for children here. They arrive like frost. Sometimes early, sometimes late, and always without much warning. One moment it's just you and Ellen by the half. The next there's a squalling bundle wrapped

in old linen and the whole room feels smaller, noisier, warmer, and far more terrifying. Ellen gives birth in the same straw stuffed bed where we sleep, mend clothes, and sometimes argue over whether we have enough grain to last the week. There's no doctor, just a midwife old enough to remember delivering half the village and two neighbor women boiling water and whispering prayers that don't sound entirely Christian. I wait outside pretending to fix a broken latch because there's nothing else I can do. Men are meant to stay out of the way until they're needed to dig

the grave. Most births go well enough, though few go cleanly. There's blood always, sometimes more than seems survivable. Babies arrive how they please, feet first, sideways, screaming or silent, and there's no certainty. Ellen's first was a stillbirth. We buried him under the hawthornne tree. No name, just a handful of dirt and a wooden cross I carved myself. When one survives, it feels like a small miracle. The priest baptizes the child within days, not just for salvation, but because statistically there's no time to wait. Roughly one in four children don't make it past their first year.

Sometimes it's fever, sometimes choking, sometimes they just stop breathing. And no one knows why. The priest calls it God's will. The midwife mutters about ill winds. Me? I just hold Ellen's hand tighter. Once they're alive and screaming, life doesn't get much easier. Babies don't come with nappies. Cloth is scarce and expensive. So, they're swaddled tight in strips of linen and left near the hearth where it's warmest. Ellen nurses them as best she can, though she's tired. always. We sometimes feed them pottage thinned with ale if the milk runs dry. It's not ideal, but then again,

nothing in a peasants's life ever is. There's no such thing as a nursery. The baby sleeps in our bed between us, wrapped in the same blanket that smells of soot and sheep. If we had a cradle, it was burned two winters ago when we ran out of firewood. I carved a new one from pine, but it caks like it's telling secrets. Every time it rocks, I pray it doesn't splinter under the weight of hope. Names are chosen fast, not out of sentiment, but practicality. You name the child something common, something that can be shouted across

a field. William, Alice, Hugh, Joan. Something easy to carve into a plank. You don't want to get attached to a name that might be gone before spring. Some parents wait weeks to see if the child survives. Others reuse names like a coat passed down between siblings. Children don't get childhoods here. By the time they can walk, they're put to work, gathering kindling, watching chickens, running errands. By age seven, they're expected to tend geese or weed the garden. By 10, they can plow. Ellen teaches them to spin and sew. I show them how to tie knots,

sharpen blades, and read the sky. We don't punish them harshly, not because we're kind, but because life does that for us. One winter barefoot is less than enough. A spoiled meal means hunger. A fall into the pond means days of fever. The world disciplines children more effectively than we ever could. We just try to keep them alive long enough to learn. Stories help. Not the noble kind with dragons and brave knights. Ours are older, stranger. Tales of woods that whisper, saints that walk through snow, beasts that punish the greedy. We don't tell them to entertain.

We tell them so the children remember what to fear. Religion, of course, runs through it all. We teach them to cross themselves, to fear sin, to fast on Fridays, to kneel even when their knees are raw. Not because we fully understand the scriptures, but because the church is always watching. And one wrong word in front of the priest can mean penance or worse, gossip. And gossip spreads faster than fire. We light candles for St. Margaret, if the baby's coughing, we keep dried herbs near the trad for headaches. Rue to ward off evil. Chamomile to calm

a colicky child. Though chamomile is scarce and usually reserved for those who can afford indulgence, which we can't. Still, Ellen insists, and I don't argue, sometimes faith is all we have. In some ways, raising children is the only legacy we have. We own no land. We write no books. When we die, it's up to them to remember our names. So, we pass on what little we know. How to dig a furrow straight, how to soothe a burn, how to spot the good kind of mold growing on bread. These lessons, small as they are, might outlast

us. Still, every cough in the night feels like a threat. Every fever is a challenge. There's no medicine to speak of, just boiled herbs and whispered prayers. If the child survives, you give thanks. If not, you dig another grave and try again. There's no real privacy. Not in a hut where everyone shares the same air and breathes the same smoke. When one child wakes coughing, everyone does. When one child cries with hunger, the sound sits in your ears for hours. Ellen sings lullabibies in low whispers. Old ones her mother taught her, most of them about

saints and spirits and stolen bread. We hang rowan branches above the tour, not just for decoration, but to keep sickness out. At least that's what the midwife says. I don't believe in such things, but I don't take them down either. You stop gambling with luck when you've buried two sons before their first birthday. Feast days give them something to look forward to. The village might roast a pig. The priest tells tales of miracles. The children run barefoot through the frost and come back red-faced and laughing. On St. Martin's day, they get little bits of sweetened

dough. It's not much, but they remember. Even in the dead of winter, children play with bones, with sticks, with scraps. They make dolls from bundled straw, swords from firewood. I once saw my eldest son march through the snow wearing a broken pot as a helmet, commanding an army of chickens. There was no audience, no applause, just play. That's how they survive, I think. They don't know how hard life is. Not yet. And when they grow older, they ask about the world beyond the woods, beyond the mana. They ask if kings eat bread like us, if

priests sleep in beds, if there are places where snow never falls and soup doesn't taste of roots and regrets. I never lie to them. But I don't always tell the truth either. There are some things a father says just to keep a child's hope alive. The winters are hardest on the little ones. Their fingers stay red and cracked. Their lips go blue at night, even with the fire burning. We wrap them in everything we own. Sometimes we tuck hot stones into cloth and place them near their feet, praying it buys us another hour of sleep

without shivers. I've watched Ellen scoop our youngest from his blankets just to hold him tighter, afraid he might slip away if she doesn't. The midwife says it's normal to lose a child. Normal? I hate that word. It shouldn't be normal. But I say nothing. I just nod. And the next morning, I go chop more wood because there's no time to mourn properly when there's a household to heat and mouths to feed. One year the river froze over so thick that boys skated on it using flattened bones tied to their feet with string. They slipped and

fell and bruised themselves half to death. But they laughed so hard you'd think they'd never known suffering. That's the kind of memory I hold on to. Laughter on ice. A moment when winter wasn't just about survival. And yet not every family is as lucky. Our neighbors lost three children to fever in one month. The father stopped speaking for a year. The mother never smiled again. She just tended the goats and stared through people like they were ghosts. You learn quickly that grief is a quiet neighbor. Always nearby, never loud, always watching. Still, there's pride in

raising children who survive, even more in seeing them help. Our eldest, now 11, can mend a fence. He checks the snares. He counts the chickens better than I do. I watch him sometimes from the doorway, moving with purpose, jaw set like mine. And for a moment, I believe maybe, just maybe, he'll have a better life than I did. But I don't say that out loud. That kind of hope feels fragile like thin ice. Better to keep it close where the frost can't get it. The pain starts in your knees. That's where it always begins. You

tell yourself it's the damp. Then your shoulders ache. Your back fros. And your hands curl in on themselves like old roots. You're not even 40, but your body thinks you've lived twice as long. My name's Thomas, and I've worked the field since I was tall enough to hold a rake. Now, when I grip a tool, my knuckles crack like firewood. The ache isn't sharp. It's just there, like the cold or the smoke or the weight of the thatch on our roof. You get used to it sort of. Illness is part of life. Not the kind

that knocks you down once in a while. The kind that settles in and stays. One winter, Ellen coughed so hard I thought she'd bring the rafters down. We boiled onion in ale and made her drink it by the spoonful. A local woman said to rub goose fat on her chest and hang garlic from the ceiling. We did both. She lived, so maybe it worked. Or maybe she just refused to die while the stew still needed seasoning. There's no doctor in the village. Closest thing is old Ren, who's either a healer or a witch, depending on

who you ask, and whether the fever broke. She knows every herb in the woods. What makes your bowels move? What makes a wound close faster? What might kill a man slowly if he's been unkind to his wife? She says fever few for headaches, yarrow for bleeding, nettle for strength. I trust her more than the priest when it comes to sickness. Most remedies involve boiling something that smells worse than the illness itself. Then you drink it, sweat through your shirt, and pray. If that fails, they bleed you. A shallow cut on the arm sometimes leeches. The

idea is to let the sickness out with the blood. Personally, I think it lets the strength out faster. The church has cures, too. Holy water, relics, and enough prayers to drown a small chapel. Once when our boy came down with a rash, the priest said it was punishment for my sins. gave me a candle and told me to light it every night until the child got better. He recovered in three days. The priest claimed a miracle. I think it was the willow bark tea. Ellen forced down his throat. We don't bathe often, not because we

like being filthy, but because bathing is risky. They say it opens your pores and lets disease in. So, we sponge off with a damp cloth and hope no one gets too close. Lice are everywhere. Fleas, too. Ellen combs our daughter's hair with a heated blade of wood, trying to kill what lives beneath the curls. It works mostly. Wounds fester easily. I once stepped on a nail while fixing the shed roof. The foot swelled like a pig's bladder. Old Ren smeared it with honey and wrapped it in dock leaves. She said honey draws out the bad

humors. Maybe it does. The swelling went down eventually. I limped for months, but I kept the foot which feels like a win. When something worse comes, real sickness, the kind that spreads like fire and smells like death, we panic, lock the doors, burn herbs in the hearth. Some say plague rides on the breath of sinners. Others say it comes from the east in the belly of rats. We don't argue. We just try to stay alive. During one outbreak, we lost eight in the village. They were buried before the dirt had even thawed. The humors, that's

the theory anyway. Blood, flem, yellow bile, and black bile. Balance them and you stay healthy. upset them and you're doomed. I never understood it. But people who do say if your bile's off, you'll get boils. If your blood's too hot, you get nose bleeds. Everything has a reason, just none that help you feel better. Children are hardest to watch suffer. They don't understand why the world hurts. Our youngest once screamed for two days straight, swollen with something we couldn't name. Ren gave us a charm made of Rowan and Fred. Ellen tied it around his neck,

sobbing into the cloth. He lived, but we still keep the charm. The church forbids some cures. Says they're pagan. But when your daughter's lips turn blue and she won't wake, you don't worry about theology. You boil the roots. You whisper the words. You call on saints and spirits alike. Most of us will die from something small. A cut that rots. A fever that lingers. A toothache that turns to abscess. I've seen a man scream from a mer until he passed out cold. They pulled it with pliers and a prayer. He didn't wake up. No one

talks about it. Sometimes I wonder what it's like elsewhere. Do the nobles get sick like us? Do they have herbs? Or do they just close their heavy doors and let the poor die first? I've never seen a noble sneeze. Maybe they have better humors. Despite it all, life goes on. We get up, we cough, we limp. We press cloth to the bleeding and keep moving because the sheep need hering. The grain needs grinding. The world doesn't stop for your sickness. Not until you do. The older I get, the more I think pain is a kind

of background music. Always playing, never noticed until it stops. My legs seize up during the frost. My wrists fro after chopping wood. No one calls it illness. It's just being alive. In our village, no one talks much about pain. It's not considered polite. If you complain too loudly, someone might assume you're cursed or worse, malingering. So, we grunt, we groan, we mutter just the weather. And we keep digging trenches with hands that barely close anymore. Women have it worse. Ellen once worked through a fever so severe she hallucinated bees crawling under her skin. Still she

finished spinning the yarn, baked the bread, fed the chickens. She collapsed only after the last chore was done. Ren called it hard winter sickness. I call it exhaustion, dressed in disease. Some villagers believe in charms, knots of thread hung over doors, feathers tied with nettle stalks, carved bits of wood soaked in salt water. Are they foolish? Maybe. But I've seen people healed after the charms went up. And I've seen people die after the priest said they'd be fine. So, who's to say? Even dreams change when you're ill. I once dreamed I was walking through a

warm forest barefoot with no pain in my hips. Just walking. That's it. That was the dream. I woke up and cried because it wasn't real. Ellen didn't ask why, she just held my hand. On feast days, we give thanks for what hasn't killed us. Sometimes we even laugh about it. Old Harold, who lost a finger to rot and now makes rude gestures with his stump. Or young May, who swears by drinking warm vinegar to cure headaches. Doesn't work. But the face she makes is worth the show. Death never arrives with a trumpet. It's a slow

cough, a shadow behind the eyes, a finger that won't stop swelling. You learn the signs. You feel it before it knocks. And still you hope you're wrong. Because even after everything, after the pain, the weakness, the fear, no one wants to leave this hard, beautiful, miserable life. Illness doesn't just affect the body. It changes the rhythm of the house. Fires are stoked higher. Meals go halfcooked. Chores fall to children. Ellen once ran the house alone for 3 weeks while I battled a lung infection that rattled like pebbles in a jar. When I could finally sit

up again, the house looked the same. But Ellen didn't. Her eyes were older, her back more bent. When death does come, it's quiet. No fanfare, no sudden screams, just a stillness in the chest, a cooling of the hands. We wash the body, say a prayer, and bury them before the flies arrive. There's no embalming, no long period, just a short walk to the edge of the woods, a shovel, and enough tears to soak the first handful of earth. Afterward, the priest comes by with blessings. He says suffering is a test. I nod, but I'm not

sure what we're meant to prove. Maybe that we can keep going. That we can wake up the next day, relight the fire, boil the herbs, and pretend the house isn't missing something precious and irreplaceable. Maybe that's all there is to it. Some mornings before my backs even straightened out and my hands have remembered how to grip, I hear the bell, low and mournful, carried on the wind like an old secret. That's the church bell. It tells us when to rise, when to rest, when to repent, and when to bury another neighbor. My name is still

Thomas. I've been a son, a brother, a husband, a father, and after enough winters, a mourner more times than I care to count. I've built fences, tilled fields, raised children, and tried above all else to be good, not clever, not important, just good enough not to bring shame, sickness, or supernatural punishment upon this little stretch of muddy ground I call life. In our village, religion isn't something you think about. It's something that thinks about you constantly. The church is the largest building for miles and the only one with enough stones to look permanent. Everything else

rots, leaks, or burns. But the church stands like God's own ledger, watching and waiting. Every Sunday we file into that stone echo chamber to listen to Father Elrich, who delivers sermons like their firewood. Heavy, splintered, and absolutely necessary. He talks of sin like it's the air we breathe, and heaven like a place we might earn if we just keep coughing through the cold without complaining too much. Mass isn't optional. The Lord demands it. The priest enforces it. and Agnes who gossips with the fury of 10 monks will absolutely report you if your seat is empty.

I missed one Sunday during the fever and spent the next week repenting publicly and coughing into the communal chalice. The church calendar runs our lives. There are holy days, saints days, fasting days, and days when you're only allowed to think about your sins. There are feast days, too. But you better hope your Lord is generous because the church won't be footing the bill for the meat pie. We tithe a tenth of everything we grow, raise, or earn. That means a tenth of our grain, eggs, wool, chickens, even if we're already on the edge of starvation.

It's called God's share. Funny how God's share always ends up in the priest's granary. Religion governs more than food and time. It governs how you marry, how you bathe, how you sleep, and how you die. Ellen and I were married in that church with a blessing and a warning. Obey your husband," the priest said. She nodded, then squeezed my hand so hard I thought my knuckles might pop. Every child is baptized in the first days after birth. Even if they're barely breathing, especially if they're barely breathing, we need to get them in the door of

heaven before fever or fate slams it shut. We've lost two like that. wrapped them in linen, buried them behind the chapel wall. Father Elrich said they were safe now. I didn't ask for proof. Our children know their prayers before they know their numbers. Latin rolls off their tongues like nursery rhymes. We don't understand half of what we're saying, but the words matter. Repetition is protection. Say the right thing. Bow at the right time. And maybe the Lord will let the crops grow this year. The church teaches us that hell is always waiting. A place of

fire, darkness, and eternal wailing. It's described with more passion than heaven, which sounds lovely but vague. Pearly gates and singing angels. But hell, that's vivid. It has levels and rules and demons with names. Makes you wonder which place the clergy thinks about more. There's a saint for every disaster. St. Appalonia for toothaches. St. Anthony for lost animals. St. Scholastica for storms. We don't light candles. We beg favors. Some wear tokens. Others whisper prayers into tree trunks or bury relics in their gardens. Officially, that's not condoned, but we're peasants. We'll take protection from wherever we can

get it. Superstition fills the gaps where the church won't go. A dream of falling means a death's coming. A barn owl in the rafters means a curse. If the fire hisses without wind, someone's lying in the room. We hang horseshoes over the door, place iron near the cradle, and never ever speak the name of someone recently buried after dark. Old Ren keeps bones wrapped in cloth under her bed. Says they're from saints. Agnes says they're from rats. But when the crops failed last year, even Agnes went to Ren for a blessing. Sometimes when the priest

leaves the village, Ren visits the sick. She mumbles over them, burns herbs, and says words in a language no one claims to know. Half the time they get better. The priest doesn't ask how. Confession is its own ritual. You kneel on cold stone, list your sins, envy, pride, sloth, that time you swore at a cow. And the priest tells you how many prayers it'll take to earn back God's good graces. It's not math, but it feels like it. Small sin, five hail Marys. Big sin, longer kneeling, and maybe a scolding. The trick is to never

confess anything that might require public penance. Sometimes they flog people in the square. A boy who stole bread. A woman who cursed during childbirth. The church calls it correction. The rest of us call it spectacle. We watch because not watching looks suspicious. And because the world's so grim, it's hard to look away from a drama that isn't your own. Punishments are harsh but vague. The church's justice isn't about fairness. It's about example. It's about fear. They want obedience, not understanding. We don't ask why. We just bow our heads and avoid questions that don't have safe

answers. Even holidays are theirs. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, days meant for rest, but never for joy without guilt. We attend mass fast. and maybe if the Lord allows, eat something better than grl. I remember once we had venison. The priest said it was a gift. I saw the squire dragging the deer through the woods two days earlier. Maybe the saints delivered it. Or maybe they were just busy looking elsewhere. There's comfort in the ritual, even when you're not sure you believe every word. Lighting a candle for a lost child. Kneeling beside your wife as she prays

for a better harvest. Holding a trembling hand in the confessional and whispering something that's weighed on you since the frost took your neighbor. I've buried friends who died with rosaries in their hands. I've seen men scream for mercy with their last breath. The church says heaven waits for the faithful. But when the earth is hard and the stomach is empty, faith can feel like a coin flipped into the dark. Maybe it lands somewhere good, maybe it doesn't. Still, I pray every night for my children, for Ellen, for the animals, even for Agnes, just in case.

And I try to be good because in a world where you don't have much, no title, no money, no say, your goodness is the only thing you get to choose. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes it has to be. Every family has a story of a miracle, or at least something close enough. My grandmother swore a virgin appeared in the frost on our window one winter. My uncle claimed a saint spared his leg from gang green after he dreamed of fire. Are they true? Who knows? But when the snow is falling and the roof groans under the

weight and the fire's gone low, you tell those stories again, not because they're certain, but because they're kind. And in this life, that's a rare thing. So tomorrow I'll rise again with the bell, bow my head at mass, and thank the saints I've made it this far. Not because it's easy, but because it's what we do. We endure, we believe, and we carry on. One prayer, one superstition, one cold morning at a time. It's strange feeling old in a body that's barely seen four decades, but that's how it goes. I'm 40, give or take. No

one's really counting, and I creek like the barn door in November. My name is still Thomas, and I've worked these fields since I could stand upright. I've got more scars than memories. And most mornings I feel like a tree that was struck by lightning but didn't quite fall over. They call us old when our backs curve and our teeth start dropping. Not because we've earned some great title or pension, but because it's rare to even reach this age. Most don't. Most are buried before they ever get to mutter about aching joints or how things used

to be better back when bread didn't taste like old dirt. So here I am, still breathing, still bending, still one stubbed toe from becoming a cautionary tale for the younger lads. My hands, once strong enough to lift bundles of wheat and wrestle stubborn pigs, now tremble when I grip the plow. My knees, which have spent years kneeling in dirt, prayer, and grief, complain with every bend. I've started walking with a stick. Not because I want to. I'd rather limp like a fool, but because it's that or cruel. You'd think I'd earned some rest by now,

but there's still wood to chop, grain to grind, and animals to feed. Ellen says I should take it easy, but the fire doesn't light itself, and no one else is going to keep the roof patched. So, I move slower, ache louder, and pretend I'm still as sharp as I was back when I could sprint across the village without pulling something. Truth is, you age fast when you spend your life in mud, wind, and worry. The sun carves lines into your face. The cold hollows out your bones. And the hunger, even when it doesn't kill you,

leaves its mark. It's not just the body, it's the loss. I've buried more people than I can name. My father died when I was barely big enough to carry a shovel. My sister in the great fever of 89. one of my boys during the last frost when the chimney cracked and the smoke filled the room before we woke. We don't cry loudly. That's not how it works. We nod. We dig. We lower them into the earth and then we go home and scrub the half as if that will bring them back. Some folks turn bitter,

others quiet. I've done both. These days I mostly just talk to the fire. In the village, you become the old one once you outlive two generations. Children start asking your opinion, even if you've never said anything worth repeating. You get asked to bless meals, settle arguments, explain why the moon looks odd, as if surviving makes you wise. But I know better. Half of survival is luck. The other half is sheer stubbornness. There's no such thing as retirement. That word doesn't exist for us. When you can't work the fields anymore, you mend tools, scare crows, or

tend to the chickens with whatever's left of your knees. If you're too feeble for even that, you tell stories and hope someone leaves bread at your door. If you're lucky, you'll have children who still live close and kind enough to care for you. If not, the winter decides when it's time to lie down for good. Meals grow smaller, too. The best cuts go to the younger ones. They've got work to do. You make do with crusts, soup from bones, and whatever's still growing in the back plot. My teeth are fewer now, and I chew slowly,

carefully, like every bite is a negotiation. Sometimes I forget what food tasted like when I still had all my mers. Not that it was ever much to begin with. My hearing isn't what it was either. Half the time I pretend I didn't catch the insult or the joke. The other half I genuinely didn't. The younger lads think I'm going soft. Let them. There's power in being underestimated and peace in not hearing Agnes' complaints the first time around. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of myself in the water trough. A face I barely recognize.

Sunken cheeks, graying beard, eyes that look like they've seen too much and remember too little. My hair, once thick and dark, is now thinning and wiry, more hay than hair. Ellen says I'm still handsome. I think she lies out of pity or habit. Either way, I let her. The church says we gain wisdom as we age. That time polishes the soul. Maybe that's true. Or maybe we just learn how to complain more politely. Still, I do find myself thinking more. Not about regrets, but about patterns. How the rains come earlier now. How children stop asking

questions once they see you don't have answers. How death doesn't surprise you anymore. Just reminds you to keep your good cloak mended. In the evenings, I sit near the hearth and carve things from scrap wood. Little animals faces once a rosary. Ellen says it keeps me quiet. I say it keeps me sane. There's not much difference anymore. Sometimes I walk to the edge of the village and just stand there looking at the trees. I used to climb them when I was a boy. Now I watch the wind move through their branches and wonder which will

fall first, me or the oak near the stream. The lads think I'm strange, that I've grown quiet, soft, thoughtful. But that's just what happens when you've lived long enough. You run out of noise. You realize that most arguments weren't worth the breath and most of the people you argued with are gone anyway. You notice the small things more. The way Frost clings to the edge of the window like lace. The sound of Ellen's stitching. Late at night, the smell of fresh straw on the floor. They don't seem like much, but when your bones hurt and

your days blur, these details are what anchor you. You also start to reckon with what you've done and haven't. The child you yelled at too harshly. The feast day you skipped to rest. The neighbor you never quite forgave. The little things that stick long after bigger memories fade. The lads in the village say I'm lucky that I've made it this far. But they don't see the toll it takes. How every cough feels like a warning. How every winter could be the last. They see me smile and think I've made peace with things. But most days

I'm just tired. I still work in my own way. I sharpen tools. I teach the younger ones how not to cut their thumbs off with a sickle. I sit with the dying when no one else can bear it. That last one. That one's important. There's something about being near someone when they pass. It's not loud or dramatic. It's quiet like a candle going out when no one's watching. And I pray more, not for myself, but for my children, for Ellen, for the strength to keep rising each day, even when I'd rather not. Faith changes with

age. It stops being about reward and becomes more about rhythm, like breath, all the seasons. So, I carry on slowly, quietly, with a limp in my step and a thousand memories in my bones. I don't know how much time I've got left, but I know how to use it. I'll feed the fire. I'll teach the young. I'll kiss Ellen's cheek while she's still within reach. Because even in a world built to forget men like me, I remember and I endure until I can't. And even then, the sun will rise. And someone else, maybe one of

mine, will carry the pale. So the field and remember my name if only in passing. There's no grand finale, no parade. No one reads your name from a scroll or carves it into anything fancy. When a peasant dies, the world keeps spinning. The bread keeps baking. The animals still need feeding. But for the handful of people who knew your laugh, your limp, or the way you always cursed at the rooster, it matters, at least for a while. I suppose I always knew how it would end. Not dramatic, not clean, just slow. A fire that gets

smaller each winter until one day it goes out for good. There are no doctors, no warm hospitals, no lastm minute miracles. Just a straw mattress, a bucket nearby, and people try not to look too worried or too relieved. The signs come slowly at first. You wake later, eat less. The strength in your hands disappears like morning frost. Ellen watches me closely now, not in fear, but with that quiet attentiveness she's always had. She knows I'm slipping. So do I. I've started putting things in order. Not because I think death can be scheduled like a village

council, but because I'd rather not leave a mess. I've shown our eldest where the tools are buried, the ones I kept sharp. I've told him which wall leaks when it rains, and where I once stored the dried rosemary Ellen likes to use for soup, though I doubt it still smells of anything now. There's a weight to these days, a slowness. The world feels dimmer at the edges, like dusk that never lifts. But I'm not afraid. Truly, I've lived through famine, frost, and funerals. Death is no longer a stranger. More like a neighbor who knocks occasionally

just to see if you're home. The priest has been by twice this week. He doesn't say it outright, but he carries his little book of rights now, tucked beneath one arm like a secret waiting to be opened. Last time he asked if I had any sins to confess, I said I had a list, but the rooster incident was probably the worst of them. He didn't laugh, but Ellen did. We peasants don't get grand funerals. No choirs, no carved angels. If you're lucky, you get a box. More often, it's just a woolen wrap, a short prayer,

and a shallow grave somewhere near the chapel wall. The important thing is the blessing. Without it, well, you're risking purgatory, or worse, I've seen too many buried without rights. A fever takes someone too quick. The priest is off in another parish, and they're laid to rest with nothing but hurried hands and whispered hopes. That won't be me, I hope. I've tried to live clean. Paid my tithes, honored the saints, even fasted on days when there was food to fast from. I remember the last frost that took a man before his time, old Gerard. He slipped

on the path by the well, broke his leg, and never stood again. We wrapped him in his cloak, the good one with the patches, and laid him beneath the utree. His widow, Marjgerie, placed his walking stick at his side, said he might need it in the next world. Burials are quiet here. The bell tolls once, maybe twice. Neighbors gather if they can, but work rarely pauses. The cows won't milk themselves. The village doesn't stop because one soul stopped breathing. And yet there's a kind of grace in the simplicity. No procession, no grand eulogy. Just familiar

hands, familiar dirt, and a cross made from two crooked branches. We mark our dead not with stones, but with stories. The way he laughed. The way he always fixed the church roof before anyone asked. The way he once ate an entire onion on a dare. That's how we live on. Not in marble, but in memory. I've asked Ellen to sing for me when the time comes. Just a quiet hymn, nothing fancy. She has a soft voice like a lullabi wrapped in wool. I'd rather go out listening to that than the priest's wheezing Latin. The children

have started treating me differently, too. My youngest granddaughter, Alice, asked if I was going to turn into a ghost. I told her only if she kept stealing turnips from the cellar. She giggled, but I saw the worry in her eyes. They all know there's a tradition in our village passed from mother to daughter. When death comes, you open the windows. Even in winter, it's said to let the soul out to carry it skyward. I don't know if I believe it, but I've left instructions anyway, just in case. And then there's the matter of legacy. A

strange word for a man who owns nothing. No title, no wealth, no land. But maybe legacy isn't gold. Maybe it's the fence I helped mend. The prayer I whispered beside a sick bed. The way my eldest son now kneels before supper without being told. The church teaches that if we live rightly, we'll be rewarded after death. A place without hunger or pain or frostbitten toes. I hope that's true. But I've also learned not to count chickens, especially after last winter when the fox got in. Still, I do wonder what will they say when I'm gone.

That I worked hard. That I loved Ellen. That I always remembered to patch the thatch before the rains came. Maybe that's enough. Ellen says she'll bury me near the elder tree if the ground isn't frozen. I like that spot. It's quiet. In the spring, the roots smell like sweetness and old wood. And if she places the carving I made, the one with the little rooster on it, I suppose I'll go out with a bit of a smirk. So when the end comes, and I think it's close now, I'll meet it like I've met every storm,

every famine, every failed harvest with quiet resignation, a muttered curse, and a bit of hope. Not for heaven, but for memory, for a life lived, if not easily, then at least completely. It's not the fear of death that weighs heaviest. It's the worry that you'll be forgotten, that everything you built, everything you endured might vanish like smoke up a chimney. But I take comfort in knowing my hand shaped this place. Every groove in the woods, every furrow in the soil bears my mark. The village remembers in quiet ways. A child repeating a saying you once

muttered. A patch of herbs still growing by the path because you dropped seeds there half a lifetime ago. A crooked fence post no one ever bothered to fix because it was just how Thomas made it. And when Ellen lights the half long after I'm gone, the warmth will still reach the same corners. Maybe that's all we can ask. To have mattered in small ways. to have been part of something that keeps on breathing after we don't. So I close my eyes with no grand speech, just the crackle of fire, the smell of Pete, and the

quiet rhythm of life continuing as it always has. And maybe, just maybe, someone will sit by the elder tree one day and feel a little warmth in the breeze. Not enough to name, not enough to explain. But enough to know that someone lived here, loved here, and passed quietly. remembered not in marble, but in the marrow of the village itself.