DAUGHTER OF MATTS
She is sitting on top of her rags in a corner of the Hospital of St George, absent-mindedly eating her pale barley porridge. The year is 1421, but to Anna it makes no difference. She has grown old prematurely. She doesn't care about the continuous quarrels of the other patients, nor is she shocked by the wounds or blackened fingers of the lepers. She has already submitted to spend the rest of her life inside these gloomy walls, without any hope for the better - at least not in this life.
Anna used to be a beautiful and fresh young girl, who earned her scarce living by cultivating her little vegetable garden and by fishing together with her husband Peter. Children were born and died. Peter never returned from a storm one autumn. Anna moved to town with the children who were still alive, in order to work as a servant. The house burned up, the fire took the children and almost Anna, too. She wished it had taken her as well.
It wasn't by accident that the hospital was located on the outskirts of the town; it's where the unwanted and those who don't belong anywhere are placed - along with the ones whose diseases are feared or who don't have any other shelter. The payments collected from the city burghers, as well as their testaments, provide the patiens with some sort of support. Those who are only poor, get a shelter at the house of St George. That is where Anna was first, but because her uncommunicative behaviour and ugly, burned appearance scared the other ones, she was moved here, to be with the other hopeless
