Famines
(Day 20 of @thewatchau‘s Annual Prompts! Ending stretch now!
tw: vomiting, but it’s the last line)
Rufus was young, but he remembered the First Great Famine. He was one month away from turning seven years old when it struck.
He was big enough to help in the fields, if not with the sheep. He remembered the horror he felt when he pulled up a carrot and it was black, rotten and reeking of death.
His scream had attracted his Da, who took one look at the carrot and picked up Rufus, letting the boy bury his face into his shoulder so he wouldn’t have to look at it.
His Da told him to go back to the house and help Mam and Dunla and he couldn’t run fast enough.
He couldn’t explain in words why it spooked him so much. It was just a rotten carrot, it was probably the only one. He turned out to be wrong on that.
Dunla was doing some weaving while Rufus went over the farm numbers with Mam. Or rather, she did the numbers and Rufus tried not to fall asleep.
Da came back into the house, and Rufus perked up, glad for something else to do.
“Need a hand Da?” he called out.
Da didn’t seem to hear him, instead slumping into his armchair by the fire.
Mam stood up, ruffling the Rufus’s hair as she passed, and stood beside the chair.
“Brian?”
Da shook his head, running a hand under his eyes. Mam turned to Rufus and Dunla, the latter of which had stopped weaving.
“Dunla, go check on the uplands house. Take Rufus and one of the dogs with you.”
“Mam!” Dunla protested, but a look from their Mam made her shut up. “Come on Rufus.”
Rufus got up to follow his sister, looking back as his Mam comforted his Da. Why he wouldn’t learn until later.
Every single crop they had pulled was black and rotten.
Rufus knew Mam and Da weren’t telling them the whole story, but he knew enough. He wasn’t good with numbers, but he could tell they were going down. He noticed there was less food on the table. Breakfast was the only exception, because they had a brownie, and what they offered in return did not depend on what they could find in the market.
They had it better than most. Rufus could see it when they went to Slinad for market. They had sheep and wool to sell, while those who only grew crops had nothing.
He hated going. He hated seeing people that hungry, that scared.
Everyone hoped it would get better next harvest. It did not.
They couldn’t keep all of their farmhands. They simply didn’t have the money for it. He hated seeing them go, many of them were his friends. He cried to his Mam, who tried to show him the numbers and how it made sense, but that had made him cry harder.
After nearly a year and a half of failed harvest, Rufus’s little brother Liam was born.
Normally this would be a great thing, finally Rufus wasn’t the baby anymore! But, there was less food than before, and Mam was always hungry, matching the baby in appetite.
When Rufus was supposed to be asleep, he overheard his parents arguing. Da was worried that the baby wouldn’t survive, and bring Mam down with him. Mam wasn’t as convinced.
Rufus didn’t stay to listen to the argument, running back to bed before he heard more things he didn’t want to hear.
Liam survived, as did Mam. They weren’t always strong, but they were alive.
Rufus was coming up to nine when he went out harvesting in 1595. He hadn’t been as badly affected by the rotten crops after the first one, but there was still the churning of dread in his stomach.
The parsnip came out, dark from the earth and white underneath. Rufus just stared at it before scanning the field and running for his Da.
“Da! Da!”
Rufus missed that Da’s cart already had a small bundle of healthy parsnips, but that didn’t stop his Da from ruffling his hair before swinging him up into hug. It was over. It was finally over.
He’d almost forgotten about it until he was nearly 21, autumn 1606. He was pulling up a turnip this time, but when the smell hit he turned away, gagging.
It had to be just the one. It happens sometimes. It couldn’t be happening again, not with the raids as well. It couldn’t it just couldn’t!
He pulled another, the same result. The root slid off the stem and plopped wetly onto the ground into mush.
“Holy shit!” a farm hand cried. “What the fuck?!”
He wasn’t the only one. No no no no no.
He heard a lot of the farm hands sounding confused as he turned and walked away. He walked calmly until he was behind the tool shed, where he couldn’t control his nausea anymore and emptied the contents of his stomach.
(As implied in this, the Mason’s are primarily shepherds. Losing the crops wasn’t as big of a blow to them as many, since the crops were supplementary income. It was enough to make an impact.)