The lord's daughter was married today, and no one wept.
I stood at the back with the mud still on me and watched. A wedding I know. My own was a hand clasped over a barrel, a blessing from the priest between the milking and the mending, and back to the field before the ale went warm. This was three days of feasting. Three. In one afternoon they burned more wax in candles than my whole row of houses will see in a lifetime of dark winters.
The bride wore a gown the color of fresh snow, a thing no working woman would dare, for it shows every stain and cannot be worn twice. They mean it to be spoiled. That is the wealth of it: a garment made to be ruined the same day, so all can see she need never scrub a floor.
There was meat. Meat I could not name, and more of it flung to the dogs than my children have eaten since Michaelmas. Musicians, hired only to make noise. Flowers cut and left to die on the tables for no purpose but to please the eye an hour.
And the two of them stood before the priest and made their vows, and I will grant them this: that part I knew. Sickness and health. Until death. On that we are the same, the lord's girl and I. Death comes for the fine gown and the plain one both, and asks neither what it cost.
But Lord above, the waste. To spend a winter's warmth on a single day of light. They have so much they can afford to burn it. I have only ever prayed to be spared.