The Gates of Sleep (17 page)

Traditionally, Boxing Day, December 26, was the day when
those who were better off than others boxed up their old clothing and other
things and distributed them to the poor—or at least, to their servants or
the tenants on their property. But the inhabitants of Blackbird Cottage had a
kindlier version of that tradition. No secondhand, worn-out things were ever packed
up in the boxes they put together; instead, in odd moments throughout the year,
they all had projects a-making that were intended to make those who weren’t
likely to get anything on Christmas a little happier on Boxing Day.

Uncle Thomas carved kitchen implements and other useful
objects of wood and horn, as well as wooden boats, trains, tops, and dolls.
Uncle Sebastian painted the toys, constructed wonderful kites, and used his
skill at stretching canvas to stretch parchment and rawhide scraped paper-thin
over frames to be mounted in open windows. Not as transparent as glass,
perhaps, but tougher, and his frames were actually identical to the old
medieval “windows” that had been in use by the well-to-do in
ancient times. They kept the winter wind out of a poor man’s cottage
better than wooden shutters, and at least permitted
some
light to
shine within during the day. Aunt Margherita knitted scarves, shawls, and stockings
with the ends of her skeins of wool. And it was Marina’s pleasure to
clothe the dolls, rig sails to the boats, and stitch female underthings and
baby’s clothing. There were always babies to be clothed, for the one
thing that the poor never lacked was mouths to feed and bodies to clothe.

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.

When the pony came up alongside the front gate of the
parsonage and Marina and her aunt climbed down off the seat, the children
surrounded them, voices piping shrill greetings. And very blunt greetings as
well—children, especially young ones, not being noted for patience or
tact. “Merry Chrissmuss, mum!” vied with “Gie’ us a
present, mum?”

For all their pinched faces and threadbare clothing, their
lack of familiarity with soap and water, they were remarkably good about not
grabbing. They waited for Marina and Margherita to throw back the blanket
covering the toys, waited their turns, though they crowded around with pleading
in their eyes. Margherita took the little girls, and Marina the
boys—Margherita allowed the girls to cluster around her, but the boys
were rowdier, and soon began elbowing each other in an effort to get closer to
get the choicest goods.

Marina fixed them with a stern glance, which quelled some
of the shoving. “You’ve all done this before,” she said
sternly. “I shouldn’t have to tell you the rules, now, should I?”

One cheeky little fellow grinned, and piped up. “No,
miss. We gotter line up. Littlest first.”

“Well, if you
know,
why aren’t you
doing it?” she retorted—and like magic (actually,
not
like
magic, for order came immediately and without effort on her part) they had
formed the prerequisite line. Marina gave the cheeky lad a smile and a broad
wink, and reached for a wooden horse with wheels for the youngest in line. She
paid most attention, not to the boy to whom she was giving a toy, but to the
ones behind him. Eyes would light up when a particularly coveted object
appeared, and she tried to match child to toy.
All
the children got
kites except for the very smallest who couldn’t have managed one even by
spring; Sebastian had done very well this year in the kite department. That
meant that each child got two toys this year, instead of just one, so this was
going to be quite a banner year so far as they were concerned. Boys also got a
pair of mittens each, fastened to each other by a braided string so that they
couldn’t lose one of the pair unless they cut the string. Boys being
boys, they usually didn’t bother to put them on, either.

Truly small children, toddlers too young to talk, were
usually in the charge of an older sister. It sometimes made her worry to see
girls not even ten with a baby bundled in a shawl on their backs, but what
could be done? If their mothers weren’t working, they were probably
taking care of an infant, and someone had to watch the next-youngest.

In general, these toddlers were too young even for wooden
dolls, but based on the number of babies in the previous year, Marina usually
had enough soft cloth dollies (for the girls) and lambs (for the boys) to
satisfy everyone.

Boys got their toys and ran off shouting with greed and
glee; over on Margherita’s side of the pony-cart, Marina’s aunt was
doing her own distribution. Besides the dolls and kites, girls each got woolen
scarves that they could use as shawls; they seemed to cherish the bright colors
and the warmth as much as the playthings.

It didn’t take long to give out the toys, and when
there were no more children waiting, there were still some toys left, which was
a fine thing. There were probably kiddies too far from the village to get here
afoot, especially through the snow; the parson would know who they were, and
see to it that they got playthings, too. He wouldn’t be as careful about
matching toy to child as Marina and her aunt were, but he was a kindly soul,
and he would see that the farthest-flung members of his flock were cared for.

Only when the children were gone did the parson come out
and collect the boxes, with a broad smile for both of them. Marina suspected
that he took note of the decided lack of secondhand and much-worn articles in
their
offerings, and respected and appreciated their sensitivity. “My favorite artists!”
he exclaimed, hefting a box of kitchen implements, and nodding to the hired man
to take up a stack of window-panels. “As ever, thank you. You ladies and
our gentlemen are generous to a fault.”

“As ever, it was a pleasure,” Margherita
replied, with a cheerful smile. “With Marina all grown up, we would miss
the fun of seeing children with new toys if not for this.”

“Happy hearts and warm hands; you do a fine job of
tending to both ends of the child,” said parson’s wife, who came
trundling up, a bundle of shawls, to take in a box of stockings.