Alewife

Careful now – those stairs are steep. Once you start falling, you won’t stop until you reach the bottom, and that’s a long climb up again.
No, thank you, my lad can manage – it’s an empty cask anyway, we’re taking it back home. Oh, I’m an alewife – I make beer – and I need these casks for my ale. No, we can manage – it was heavier when we brought it here, I can tell you, and we managed then.
I don’t live here, I’m from just outside the castle. My husband died three years ago so now I make ale. The lord has a right to a portion of whatever I make, which I bring here to the castle buttery. The men drink ale instead of water – it’s part of their daily allowance – and the ale only keeps for two or three days, even in the nice cool cave down there, so I’m back and forth up and down to the cave.
Well, it’s not bad work, if a bit repetitive. But it’s one of the few ways a woman can earn money – respectable women like me, anyway. All the other jobs need you to have land, or money, or do a proper apprenticeship, none of which a woman can do on her own. But brewing ale for local folk, that is just about acceptable. Some people look sideways at me and say a single woman running a business has no place in a Christian society, but I can live with that, as long as my children are getting fed.