Every day, every hour and every minute I can hear your weak voice plead for rescue, and yet I am not able to help you, as I was not able to do it that day. My whole body is shivering, my heart is throbbing, my legs ready to spring, but where, where? Nothing can be seen, the treacherous fret approached suddenly blinding both the driver and the horse; the evil, maddening shroud fogged the place, cursed by the dead and the live alike, and nothing can be heard, only you, my little boy...

What a mother was I that I let it happen? My little son, I have lived in the abyss of despair. My love and my life, my beautiful child, I promised to love you and to take care  of you...will you be ever able to forgive me? Sitting in a rocking chair in your room, I watch the marshes, the place where I heard you the last time. I watch them and I hate them.


I hate the marches, this house, the village and the whole world for killing my dearest son! It would not have happened if only did they not force me to abandon you, my dearest, and to try to kill my motherly love. But the bounds of a mother and her son shall never be axed!!

Alone, without money and any decent future for you, I had bitterly accepted my father's deal, the deal of growing hell. I had been so young, only sixteen, and already a disgrace of my family, which condemned me not because I had given the birth to an illegitimate child, but because I had loved you so much.

Thick, suffocating and devouring everything on its way, the fret is coming, again enveloping me in a cobweb of agony, and again I can hear Ketwik's trap, clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop...

Your mother,
Jennet Eliza Humfrye