Today, all across the town, the sows are slaughtered to make the feast of Yule, and a great screaming of pigs there be and the tinny scent of blood upon the icy air.
Down in our meathouse hang two sows dripping blood into the bucket for black pudding, four sucking piglets and one fine boar’s head, the rest of him lying in salt to make hams, or spiced to be baked, he being a gift from my Lord Sheriff, for which return I send him preserved apricots and glassed asparagus, his hothouses and manure beds not being as good as ours. Our hall is all steam from the kitchens, where my wife and the maids are boiling sausages and blood puddings, white as well as black, both of which I am most fond.
Tomorrow my tenants come to give their gifts to their landlord, and I will receive them in my blue velvet cloak with silver buttons and red hose, as far from the young man who played the ghost in a tavern sheet as London is from old Verona.
We will give them a good dinner too, this one day of the year when they dine with us as family. I have just seen Jem carry a tray of pies down the street to the baker’s oven, for once again our own is not large enough for the cooking that must be done today.
My fingers crave to write more, but I have been checking the ledgers with Dr Hall to see all is right with the accounts for tomorrow, and though this day’s hours have been weary, yet there were not enough for all that must be done.