My lord's table, though he is nowhere in the room, and no one bows.
There is a bird here bigger than any I have seen, and it is not for the manor house. It is for these people, common folk by their soft hands, and they mean to eat all of it in one sitting. A whole bird. In one day. I have buried children who did not see so much meat in a year of living.
They complain that they are full. They say this word, full, as if it were a curse laid upon them, rubbing their bellies and groaning. I have felt full perhaps four times in my life, and each time I thanked God on my knees for a fortnight.
There is bread they did not bake, and roots they did not pull, and a red drink that is not blood though it stains like it. No one has worked. It is not a feast day I know, yet no one has gone to the fields, no one has fed the pigs, and still the food came, from where I cannot say. The Devil is generous like this. The good Lord makes you sweat first.
One of them scrapes a plate into the slop. Good meat. Into the slop, and no pig even waiting for it.
I have prayed for a winter like their every Tuesday. And they sit here sighing, wanting it over, wanting to sleep.
They have been given the kingdom, and they are bored in it.