Whether noble or villains, clerics or lay, we feasted all day long instead of working and praying. Houses and castles were all commandeered, in sweet equality. There, we enjoyed the luxury of precious furniture, silk sheets, rich carpets, cushions, fires in every room. Goods were in abundance, left behind by the rich who had died or fled. Men and women alike dressed in canary yellow and sapphire blue and crimson velvet, painted their faces to seduce one another, showed more flesh than we ever had. They got down to copulating like frogs in the spring. Priests ran everywhere, shook their rosaries, ranting that it was a sin not to marry, but no one listened to them. Princesses rolled down stable boys, young monks cheered widows with earthly delights.

Healthy children were begotten from all this madness, as the mixture of blood makes the young stronger. Soon, no one remembered who had owned what fields, who had fathered which children, what family belonged where. My mother worked constantly, births were as common as birds’ twitters. People gave her rich presents, as the next day did not exist. We all lived together and shared because there were fewer mouths. All this breeding fertilized the soil too, resulting in rich harvests. It was a time of joy and plenty, if sinful. Gradually, the plague died down like a fire running out of coal, and religion resumed its rights.

The churches organized beautiful marriages with long ceremonies full of songs and splendors, when couples, before the plague, had been married simply. The survivors regrouped, formed new families who claimed their estates. We should have petitioned too but my father was too timid. We could even have claimed the castle, because the lords had fled and never returned. My mother’s ancestors built it and later hit on hard times, but my father never wanted to believe it, he preferred to pretend my mother was telling fairy tales to shame him.

He has only peasant ancestors as far back as one goes, and Mother does like to put on airs and walk like a duchess. Because he did not ask for anything, we only got tiny plots that no one wanted. But more than large fields and castles, I miss the times when no one worried about anything but to revel together, play games, and tell amusing tales. It did not last long until we were forced to submit to the new order set by powerful, unseen forces. They want to do away with the free ways of the countryside, and with our cherished customs. I am saddened, my dear daughter, that you will bring up your daughters in this new world order where women count for nothing.

This is the 73rd of 100 women who talk to their daughters over 2500 years.

Earlier times (Roman Empire):

The 29th woman preferred her life as a captive of the Barbarians. The 28th woman gives sexual advice to her daughter (explicit). The 27th woman resents her mother using her for her ambitions. The 26th girl feels powerless to stop her father’s violence. The 25th girl is an orphan, or is she? The 24th woman falls for an indigenous rebel.

It all starts here: first thread, and the last stories will take place in … present day America.