(1050–1060: Serfdom and Famine in Normandy)
I was born in 1050, amid the howling winds from the Manche Sea, in a tiny village huddled beneath the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel—where ocean and fog merged into an endless gray mass, as if God Himself had forgotten to grant this land a sliver of warm light. The villagers said that children born in the shadow of that stone tower carried the soul of the tides within them: rising to dizzying heights, then plunging into abyssal depths, never finding true peace. My father, Osric, was a lowly serf, toiling ceaselessly for the abbey. He plowed the swampy fields, tended scrawny sheep, and surrendered nearly all his harvest to the monks—those deemed God's representatives on earth. My mother, Elswyth, wove coarse wool from the sheep's fleece, cooked thin gruel for the little church at the hill's base, and sometimes sang trembling hymns to chase away the bone-piercing cold. They were illiterate, knew nothing of the vast world beyond, yet recited Latin prayers by heart as a sacred rite, though their deeper meaning eluded them. I was their only child, born in a harsh winter when sea winds shrieked through the sheer cliffs, carrying the breath of demons. Whenever I close my eyes and recall that moment, I still hear the abbey bells tolling through the thick fog, a reminder that my life began in blind obedience and relentless hunger, gnawing at every fiber of my being.
From my earliest days of crawling, then toddling, I grew familiar with the musty smell of damp earth and the heavy scrape of the plow. My father's hands were calloused like ancient oak bark, cracked from endless labor in rain and wind. Mother often sat by the flickering hearth, mending my tattered cloaks with scraps of thread, her eyes clouded by smoke and exhaustion. We lived in a low wooden hut with a rotting thatched roof; rainwater seeped through every crack, dripping onto the cold earthen floor. In spring, I followed Father to herd the sheep across lush meadows, breathing air laced with wildflowers and sea salt. In autumn, I stooped to gather misshapen potatoes and scattered barley grains from the fields, while chill winds cut like knives into my skin. In this village, serfs' children were born without family names or inheritance—only a simple baptismal name and a predestined fate: to live in labor, to die forgotten. Father named me "Ealdred"—meaning "ancient one" in the old Saxon tongue—with a faint hope that I would endure, not perish young like so many village children, victims of famine and disease. By the dim, sputtering light of a crude oil lamp, I often heard him whisper to Mother: "This boy must one day rise above this mire. He cannot remain a slave to the land forever." But mud was all I knew. I had never seen beyond the abbey's towering stone walls, only the muddy paths leading up the hill, where brown-robed monks glided past like invisible ghosts, never glancing down at us lowly folk.
The abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel loomed like a sacred fortress amid the sea, where hymns echoed through soaring Gothic arches, mingling with the relentless crash of waves. I often lingered by the heavy iron gate, my child's eyes drawn to the gentle glow of illuminated scriptures gilded with gold leaf, and the solemn, resonant voices of the monks reading them. Father had warned: "That place is for those chosen by God, not for serfs like us, born of mud and returning to mud." Yet deep in my young heart, a fierce longing ignited—to touch those mysterious letters, to understand a world beyond the mud beneath my feet. An elderly monk named Brother Anselm, with a snow-white beard and kind eyes behind foggy spectacles, noticed my curiosity. He secretly taught me basic Latin letters, scratching them with a stick in the wet sand by the shore: "Dominus"—Lord; "Terra"—Earth; "Vita"—Life. I didn't fully grasp their meaning, but those marks planted a sacred seed in my mind, sprouting amid the darkness of ignorance. At night, in our dim hut, I scratched those letters into the rough wooden walls with my fingernails, a silent vow that one day I would escape this mire and seize the light of knowledge no one could take from me.
But life did not allow such dreams to flourish easily. In the winter of 1053, Normandy seemed punished by God's terrible wrath. Winds from the Manche Sea roared in, knife-cold, bringing endless rains that turned fields into flooded swamps. Crops failed utterly: wheat rotted in the soil, potatoes decayed before harvest, and the gaunt sheep died in droves from cold and starvation. In the village, people dug up forest roots, chewed dry oak bark, even ate moldy grass to survive. Then plague descended like a dark shadow—chills, swollen glands, pus-filled sores that dissolved bodies from within. Mother was not spared. She burned with fever, delirious in nightmares, calling my name and Father's in the dead of night. She died in his arms when I was just three, her body withered like a dry branch. I didn't understand death—only that she no longer held me, no longer sang lullabies in her warm voice. Father dug a shallow grave behind the hut, laid her in the cold earth, and wept like a wounded beast, his sobs echoing in the sea wind. Three days later, the abbey's tax collectors arrived, wielding leather whips and iron swords. Father had nothing to give—no grain, no coin. They dragged him to the village square, beat him mercilessly with whips and clubs, then buried him alive in the mud like an animal. I stood there, my young legs trembling, clutching the scrap of cloth Mother had sewn, and for the first time understood that this world had no room for mercy. From that moment, I was alone—a orphan child amid the fog-shrouded sea.
After the tragedy, a village widow named Gunnora took me in temporarily, not out of pity but because she needed small hands to tend sheep and do chores. I slept with other children in a stinking sheep pen, ate rock-hard rye bread, drank murky stream water from mountain crevices. The children called me "child of the mud," mocking my solitude, but I didn't cry—I learned silence to survive. On long nights, I lay listening to the distant crash of waves, imagining it was Mother whispering my name. Gunnora was strict but not cruel; she taught me to strike fire from flint, tan hides for warm cloaks, and hide extra food from prying eyes. But in her gaze, I always saw deep resignation, a reminder that life was merely endurance. She often said: "Dream no higher than the earth beneath your feet, Ealdred. Up there are God and the monks; down here, we are bound by mud and hunger." I knew she was right, but my heart silently rebelled, still yearning to cross the abbey's high stone walls, where light from sacred pages shone like a dazzling, distant dream.
My childhood passed in joyless days of sweat and blood. Each dawn, the abbey bells roused the village for labor. We plowed from sunrise to sunset, hands bleeding from gripping the plow too long, then surrendered all harvest to the overseer—a fat man with a belly like a wine barrel, wearing a large silver cross to mask his greed. He beat anyone who kept even a single grain for their family, treating us like beasts. Once, I saw a man bound and thrown down a deep well for hiding a few deformed potatoes. I was eight then, rage boiling like fire in my chest, but I could only bow my head and stay silent. From then on, I understood that justice belonged not to the hungry but to the strong, a tool to oppress. I grew quieter, merely observing—like a stray dog awaiting the chance to snap its chain.
By 1060, when I turned ten, village discontent erupted into a silent but fierce rebellion. A group of serfs—those who had lost families, lost hope—gathered in the dark, set fire to the abbey's granary, shouting in fury: "God loves only the rich; what are we but mud?" In the red glow illuminating the night sky, I saw my father's spirit revive in them—not Osric in flesh, but his unyielding will spreading through each starving man. But the revolt was swiftly crushed by the local lord's soldiers, clad in iron and wielding sharp swords. They stormed in like a tempest, seizing all, hanging the rebels in the village square. I hid in thick bushes, watching my foster father—the man who had sheltered me—strangled by a rough rope, the crack of his neck echoing like thunder. The village fell deathly silent, only wind howling and the stench of blood. That night, I knew this place was dead—a mass grave of hope. Nothing held me anymore.
I left the village in pitch darkness, carrying a small cloth sack with a few hard bread crumbs and a dull, chipped knife. I followed a rugged coastal path to the Manche Sea, where waves crashed fiercely against jagged cliffs, as if to swallow everything. The sea wind carried the bitter tang of salt and rotting fish, but to me, it was the scent of freedom—fragile, perilous freedom. I survived on nature's gifts: sour wild berries from bushes, rabbits snared in crude traps, shiny shells traded for bread in distant villages.
Sometimes I wandered to bustling ports, gazing at sailboats catching the wind, imagining myself sailing to strange lands without mud or hunger. Fishermen often chased me like a mangy dog, but a few kind ones, with eyes wrinkled from sea winds, gave me dried fish or advice: "Beware the dark, lad." Gradually, I learned to live as a true wanderer: knowing where clear springs flowed, recognizing gulls' cries foretelling storms, curling in rock hollows without losing my only knife. I was no longer a weak child—I was a small, resilient creature amid vast skies and savage seas.
On the desolate, isolated coast, I taught myself all needed to endure. I sharpened sticks to spear fish in shallow streams, gathered flint from beaches to kindle embers warming frigid nights. Once, nomads attacked me—fierce-faced wanderers from elsewhere. They stole my scant belongings, beat me unconscious with clubs. I awoke in a damp rock crevice, mouth full of blood, body aching as if crushed. But instead of weeping, I laughed—a mad laugh, not from insanity, but from realizing I still lived, still breathed, still could fight. From then on, each dawn I rewrote my memories with a stick in the wet sand: "I am Ealdred. I once had Father Osric, Mother Elswyth, and a village by the abbey." The waves erased those words, sweeping them into the endless ocean, but I wrote again, day after day—fearing that without it, I would forget myself, vanishing like morning mist. I was ten, with no one left to call my name, so I called myself, reminding that I had existed amid pain and fragile hope.
Now, as I write these lines with a stick on scavenged hide, I am just a ragged ten-year-old, gazing toward distant Mont-Saint-Michel through thick fog. The church bells still toll steadily, reminding me of a world I once belonged to but have now left. I record it all—not for pity from others, but so I do not vanish like my parents, like serfs buried alive in mud. I believe that one day, growing amid sea winds and hunger, I will understand why God allows such suffering—why He gives us souls to yearn, then chains us to lowly earth.
Perhaps I will remain a wanderer, drifting from shore to shore, or perhaps become literate, to tell the tale of forgotten souls crushed beneath power's heel. Beneath Normandy's gray skies, where rain falls ceaselessly and winds howl like a curse, I pick up a sharp stone and carve the first line of my life on the hide: "Ealdred—child of mud and sea, survivor amid pain."