They have gathered ten thousand souls into a muddy field, and not one of them means to plant it.
I know this field. I know its churn, the suck of it at the ankle, how by evening a man's legs are lead. We come to such a place only for the harvest, bent double, cursing the rain that these ones lift their faces to gladly. They have paid coin, good coin, to stand in the muck and be soaked. In my whole life I have not once paid to be wet.
Upon a great scaffold, men shout and wail as though set upon by wolves, and the crowd wails back, joyful, and there is no wolf. A din louder than the miller's wheel, louder than the bells, and no man covers his ears. Lights burn in colors I have no name for, burning through the night for no work, no supper, no watch kept against thieves. Wax enough there to light every church from here to the sea.
They do not eat as men eat. They wander with small hot pies at three times the honest price and think themselves clever. They lie down in the wet grass in daylight. In daylight. My lord would have the stocks for such idleness, and rightly.
I watched a maid dance until she fell, laughing, and her friends lifted her, laughing, and no one struck her.
So this is what a body does with a day when winter is not coming for it. It sings itself hoarse in a field it will never sow, and calls the emptiness a feast.
God keep them. They do not yet know they are rich.