St. Valentine's, 1608

...is that my bad son, Digby? Or is it a shadow?
He hath every luck in the world delivered by his mother, carried on his brother's back, and look you I have lived with nothing at all.
His blood rushes on, his family name remains however he treats them. Not even a crust to fill my pocket when I began, only stones to put i'my purse, ywis. But boy Harry had gold on his back his whole life: schooling for a prince, costly drink, glittering harlots and healthy bastards while we…
…we lived from one hour to the next, scraping until our fingers are white just to stay alive these eighty years!

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“I reached into the pocket of that linen apron.” the old lady said to Mrs. Digby. In the last hours her heart came alive with memories of her long life. Sometimes she spoke clear, then she’d lapse into a whisper. Other times her lips moved without a sound, or didn’t move at all “My little hand reaching for the cup my father’d given me: it was smooth and curved, made of cow’s horn.”
“I felt the ghost of his fingers for a moment, inhaled the smell of him once again.”
There he was on his bench in the hall in his bed, in the field; those high cheeks aflame with a little drink from his cup and some life, laughing and swaying with the harvest, dancing then in his bed coughing, drying up.
After a year she could barely recall him, and not remembering made her hold the cup tight as if to keep him from slipping away through the sieve of time, where the flesh of everything is lost.
We had so little: no roof to cover my Mam's head, the ancient lady told her friend "...no place for her to be warm." I have so little.
“How can they ask these pennies of me, ask for these costs this fee this dowry, these taxes. I have nothing. Why come to me--- they have left me nothing in the world. They are fools to ask, they only torment me for their sport.”
I have only enough, if I'm careful. Barely enough to feed my Mam and my children, scarce enough to eat myself. I have et nought this day but a parsnip roasted. A small dish of clary leaves in oil nothing more: save it for the hungry, save it for the morrow.
Tell my bad son how his grandmother dug at the roots of bare trees in the cold wet for the mushrumps that grow up the bark; she pried skyrrits from.the earth. Tell him how I have picked the leaves of purslane in the spring to eat when there was nought else to fill our bellies at the end of winter, and ask him then what I have to give him.
Mam would hold the skyrrit root she peeled, taking a bite of the white flesh: it gave a juicy snap that starts bitter on the tongue, and then magically turns sweet again as you chew. I remember it.
Tell him that, my Digby.