Arlet murders her husband when they have their fourth child. It's not as though he's going to help with the baby, four is quite enough, she's fully sick of him, and her father-in-law just died of apparently natural causes so if her husband gets "drunk" and drowns in the watering trough nobody is likely to look too close.
It's pleasanter with him gone. She wears the littlest baby on her back, lets the middle two run around playing nonsense games outside, and has the eldest milking the cows and churning the cream and tattling on the slaves. She makes the best cheese in the county. The eldest goes to school so she trains up the next one, and so on and so forth, until all the children are out of her hair for the working day and just show up to do chores and eat supper in the evening.
Then there is some kerfuffle that has her children at home talking all kinds of dangerous chatter instead of in school where they belong. She sells off three slips and has the children making up for it, to keep them busy, but the price of the things is cratering so she doesn't get much for it. Cheese is pricier than ever, though, so she does well selling it off, and the raw milk and the butter and the yogurt. Everyone's hungry. Hunger's good for business.oooooooooWhen an archmage announces that she's been made a conventional delegate they want to know if she's got arrangements made for taking care of her children. What nonsense! They're half grown! They don't need someone to change their nappies any more! She needs someone to take care of the livestock! When it becomes clear that she cannot convince the archmage to let her stay at home she finally places the second-eldest child in charge (the eldest is a little slow and looks likely to run off with the neighbor boy) and leaves them all behind.
