The Reeve's Tale
“Peter and Paul. Seated on the bench under the squat-trunked oak at the church-end of the village green, Simon Perryn let the satisfaction of that almost-certainty sink deep into him along with the day’s June warmth. If all held as it was, there’d finally be a harvest worth the name this year, after three years of rain and cold and more of the crops rotting in the fields than ripened. It had been a famine winter this last year, with everything brought near to the bone; but not so near as it woul...d have gone if the nuns had not done their part, somehow managing to buy rye from somewhere the harvests hadn’t been as bad and sharing it out with the village, and even then word was that they had been living on the hunger side of things, too. Not that the hunger was over yet nor would be until harvest was safely done and the granaries, please God and St. Peter-in-Harvest, full, but the year was well enough on now that the early peas were ready in the pod and the young onions well up and there were greens to be had for those who went gleaning the field and hedge and wood edges for them and now and again a plumped-out rabbit if someone cared to set a snare when no one else was looking; and the villagers were most marvelous-skilled at not looking. Not at snares anyway.MoreLess
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