Song of the Sea Maid Read Online Free

I see on the pages. My first attempts at writing are poor, scratchy efforts. The ink splashes and spills and resembles the murder of a pen across the paper. But I persevere and make a passable letter A through to E, after much effort. I look at the quill and think of its life as a feather, which bird dropped it in its moulting – perhaps a goose – and what sights this feather saw on its journeys across the skies, winging past treetops below and clouds above.
    I work every night for weeks and teach myself to write. If the embers are not warm enough to light a candle, I write by moonlight if it be full. I hear the night soil collectors on their jolly route from pit to pit. Twice, I see a cartload of people pass by on the road, who all stand shoved together in the cart’s bed; by their clothes they look very poor, all rags and filth, as I was when found. Yet on their sleeves each wears a matching badge, with the letters SG sewn on. They trundle past in the middle of the night, one calling, ‘Where do we go?’ and I ponder this myself. I tell Matron it woke me one night; she explains they are the paupers of our parish of St Giles. These poorest of the poor are entitled to some paltry handouts only if they reside in the area, thus the parish regularly deserts cartloads of paupers outside its boundaries so that it has no responsibility for them. One woman she heard of was heavy with child and the parish did not want another pauper child born within its boundaries, says Matron, ‘and when the big-bellied woman was abandoned beyond the parish border, she fell to pieces and died moments later.’ On these long nights, I think of the woman who fell to pieces and comfort myself that by learning to write, I obtain a skill that could make me a living one day, and thus will prevent me from riding that benighted cart. I listen for the Watch as he passes our windows and I count the hours down. I leave three hours at the end of the night to pack away my tools and sleep till dawn, so that I receive the minimum of rest to feed my body what it needs.
    The days pass in routine: schooling, meals, service. Some of the orphans leave us, three boys and two girls, apprenticed to those in trade. One girl is thirteen years, a lumpish thing who no one would take for a time, yet the others are much younger, from ten down to one of seven years only, the brightest boy here. The gifted ones go soonest. Matron holds a solemn ceremony of farewell to mark each orphan’s entry into apprenticeship, the boys to a cobbler, butcher and calico printer, the girls to household business. The best thing is that the leaver is given a final meal of fat bacon and the rest of us watch with wet mouths; the worst is that none of us knows how our new master or mistress will treat us. There are frightful stories whispered of apprentices beaten, starved, bound and worse. It fills me with shuddersome fear.
    I estimate I have at the most three years left before I am apprenticed – nobody knows my precise age, but Matron estimates gone six or seven years by now. Perchance I have fewer years remaining here, as they say I am very sharp and forward, so I must make progress with my writing before I am gone and have even less freedom than the wretched amount I have now, the portion I steal of it after dark. The nights are where I become myself. In the long days, I have come to an unspoken truce with my fellow occupants and they leave me be, though I sometimes find one or two staring at me at bedtime. Perhaps they know what I am about in the night. I hide my scribblings, the quill and the inkpot beneath my cot. I am forced to steal again, as my quill needs sharpening, and thus I pilfer a knife from the kitchen. Nobody has discovered my treasures, or, at the least, disturbed them. But I cannot sustain this progress with so little sleep. During the day, I am chastised for falling asleep at my desk in the schoolroom, falling asleep at the needle when practising my stitches, falling