Chapter 328 - 239: Cecilia

Cecilia did not like winter, because the river would freeze over, making her ferry business very difficult.

She had to spend a whole morning or even an entire day clearing the ice from the river’s surface. This rather strenuous work fell entirely to her, and people would usually only see her out on the river alone.

’To have it all to herself.’ It was a lovely sentiment, but in her case, it always applied to tedious and annoying things.

So every time it snowed, Cecilia would pray the ice on the river wouldn’t freeze too thick.

But if she was lucky, she might run into a certain Cultivator on one of his excursions, and he would share some of the burden, though he never stopped talking. After enduring his endless complaints and self-aggrandizing boasts, they would arrange to go to the village chief’s house or the Monastery to "borrow" some good food.

It had snowed all day yesterday. Tucked into her quilt at night, she prayed that today’s ice wouldn’t be too thick, and for the morning sun to be reasonably warm.

She woke up very early today, before the sun was up.

It wasn’t because she was worried about the river freezing, but because of the racket her old man, Sinward, was making. He had been cursing and complaining all night, and her mother had been forced to listen to his endless rambling.

Something major had happened in the village—or, well, perhaps it wasn’t so major, but it was to Sinward.

Yesterday, the Monastery had announced they had sold Aogu Village and several surrounding hamlets to a nearby Noble. Aogu Village had been the property of King’s Bridge Monastery for about a hundred years, donated to them almost as soon as the Monastery was founded.

For it to be sold off now was simply unthinkable.

This meant Sinward might lose his job. He was the Dean of this Parish, responsible for the revenue from the Church’s lands within it.

In the Parish under his charge, the Church didn’t actually own much land, thanks to encroachment by the Norman Nobility. It only amounted to one large village, Aogu Village, and three smaller ones.

If Aogu Village and two of the smaller villages were sold, he would only have one small village left to manage. This probably meant his cousin, Bishop Warren, no longer had a use for him. Sinward had always siphoned off a portion of the tax revenue for his cousin the Bishop; that was what Warren expected, and it was why he had made an illiterate man like Sinward a Dean in the first place.

All Sinward could do was pray that his cousin, Bishop Warren, would not abandon him.

’My deanship... my deanship... why is this happening to me...’ he had muttered all night long.

Cecilia wasn’t too concerned about it. Sinward would only spend the money on drink anyway.

Trying to block her ears with a pillow had been useless.

In the end, she just got up.

She fed the hens in the coop, cleaned out the hearth, and helped her drowsy mother bake the bread—a mix of rye and wheat—hoping the aroma might quiet her father when he woke.

By the time she left to see to her ferry business, the sun was already out.

The sunlight was warm. It would be a fine day, though still a bit cold.

But she was quickly stopped by someone—Hall, the son of a village Shepherd.

"I’m not interested in you, Hall," Cecilia said, exasperated.

"Cecilia, you know I’m good at everything—farming, fixing tools, raising pigs, herding sheep."

"Hall, you don’t understand."

"I swear I’ll listen to you! I think your father, Sinward, is a bastard too! I’ll never be like him!" the young man named Hall pleaded, but just then, a roar came from behind him.

"Get your damned stinking socks off my dinner table, Hall! That girl’s meant to be on her own!"

It was Hall’s mother. She was in the kitchen preparing breakfast, banging on the window and roaring at her son.

"Wait, Mom, I’m doing something important," Hall said, flustered by his mother’s shouting. He turned back and tried to answer her as politely as he could.

"Right now! I don’t want to hear any excuses! Or else!"

"I said, in a minute! I’m talking to Cecilia!" Hall shouted back at his mother, his face red. He turned back to Cecilia. "Cecilia, I..."

But his mother wasn’t about to let him off the hook. She roared again:

"She doesn’t care about you, little cheese. And more importantly, she doesn’t have a dowry!"

"I said wait, Mom! And stop calling me little cheese!" Hall grew even more mortified.

"What could be more important than your dear mother’s breakfast! Go wash your stinking socks! Your mother is hungry and needs to eat!" his mother continued to roar.

"Fuck! Fuck! You’re so fat you can’t even fit through the door! Skipping one meal won’t kill you!" Hall shrieked at his mother in a fit of rage.

"Hall, I don’t like you. And I’m not keen on the idea of getting married anyway. I think you should find a girl you like who also likes you back."

"Why, Cecilia, why! Why can’t it be me? We’ve known each other since we were children. Yet you’d rather hang around with that wicked Cultivator!

Give me a break. Not only is he a Cultivator, he’s a Norman. No, maybe he’s not even a Cultivator anymore.

Maybe he’s been expelled from the Monastery. What kind of Cultivator is he, anyway? With those wandering hands of his, someone has probably chopped them off by now.

He’s probably begging on some street corner, frozen to death in this winter!"