The Gates of Sleep

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.”