My belly roared its frustrations, the noise muffled by the wool of my skirt, as I walked past a small bakery near the heart of the city's market. My feet stalled in place by the store's windows and I stared helplessly at the dozens of fresh goods that lay on display. I sucked in the pleasant aromas that saturated the atmosphere, gritting my teeth at another wave of excruciating hunger pains. It had been nearly two days since anything of more substance than water had passed my lips and I was swiftly reaching the limits of what my body could withstand.
I tucked myself into a little alcove between the bakery and the building next to it and waited. I watched the wealthier people of the city tauter their fat, bulging bodies into the bakery and come out with baskets and arms laden with sweet scented bread and pastries, still steaming from the heat of the oven. I eyed each and every one, my trained eye searching for the easiest targets, while my heart grew heavy with disdain. Finally, an older gentleman swaggered out of the bakery, carrying a selection of sweet rolls. He glanced towards me, smiling. There was a look in his eye that I had grown to know quite well, a look that marked him as easy prey. I made my way towards him, smiling sweetly, making sure to untie the top laces of my bodice for good measure. Thirteen years had passed since my father hung for petty thievery and I had all those years to learn the craft myself.
"Good Sir," I began, pitching my voice higher than my normal speaking voice. "Might you be in need of a woman's company this evening? I'm so hungry. I'll do anything in exchange for just a bit of bread. It's been days since last I ate." I sniffled, folding my hands in front of me and looking down at the ground to seem meeker and more desperate, all the while strategically pressing my breasts together to make them look bigger. What I had seen in the man's eyes was wanton need. Now I felt those same seeking eyes roaming over me, noticing my cleavage and the way my thin rag of a dress clung to my hips and thighs.
"Let us go somewhere we can speak more privately." The man spoke quietly, lowering his feathered cap over his eyes.
I smiled in gratitude and took him by the arm. I pulled him off the main road and through the labyrinth of alleys that snaked through the city, where the poor lived in squalor and criminals did as they pleased out of the nobles' sight. Finally, I came to the place I had called home all my life. It was a tiny, ramshackle one room house made of wood so rotted it was a miracle it was still standing. "Here." I said, coaxing him inside. I ducked in first and he entered right behind me.
Just as he passed through the doorway, there was a loud crack and the man cried out as he crumpled to the ground.
"Good work, Matilda," chuckled Rhys as he tossed a bloodied board to the side. His double, Rolland knelt over the man's body, emptying his pockets of everything of value.
"He's not dead, is he?" I asked, slightly concerned. He was awfully still.
"Naw, the swine's still breathing." Rolland grinned, revealing a mouth full of yellowed, broken and missing teeth.
"We'll fix that, once we get him to the docks." Rhys finished.
I snatched up a sweet roll from the man's overturned basket, too hungry to care if it was covered in dirt. "Good." I muttered through a mouthful of bread. "I don't need you getting blood all over my nice, clean floor."
"Yes, Ma'am" The twins teased me in unison. With Rhys taking up the man's head and Rolland with the feet, they had no trouble carrying the old man to the docks. They would tie a heavy stone to the man's ankles and toss him in. He would probably still be breathing when he went in; the twins rarely gave their victims the mercy of a swift slice to the throat.
They returned about an hour later, neither one bloodied nor even sweaty, and promptly joined me at the table for a game of cards. Perhaps it would be strange for people who have just committed a murder and a robbery to ease so swiftly back into their regular lives in other families, but in mine this was an almost daily occurrence. I was a skilled pickpocket, but I rarely got more than a few coins out of each try, so sometimes, when we were well and truly desperate, we resorted to this kind of thing. I would act as the bait, play the part of a whore and lead some twit straight into an ambush. The twins would kill them, dispose of them in the river, and we'd make off with everything of value that person had. It was a trick that worked, but it was also one that our eldest brother, Jasper, did not condone.
It was in the wee hours of the morning before Jasper finally sauntered through the door. He pulled late nights, so the twins and I often sat up waiting for him, entertaining ourselves with ale and cards and bad dirty jokes. The twins had inherited our father's appetites. We rarely had money for food, but we certainly never went thirsty.
Jasper was as beautiful as Rolland and Rhys were hideous. His raven hair curled into soft, loose ringlets and his eyes smoldered like coals from within a fine, delicately featured face, so pretty he was often mistaken for a girl growing up, a mistake that he quickly learned to capitalize on. Like me, he'd learned to use his charms to coax his admirers into filling his coin purse, only he was far better at it. In fact, I sometimes suspected that he might be giving his targets more than just attention, because he always, no matter how many people we robbed, brought home the most gold.
A scowl pulled down at the corners of his perfectly formed lips as he collapsed into the one empty chair at the table. He held his head in his hands, his fingers weaving through his hair. "Pour me some ale, Matilda." He ordered in a voice as weary as an old, frail man's who was ready to die. I obediently poured the last remnants of ale into his cup only for him to empty it in the very next moment.
Slamming down his cup, he reached to his belt and tossed his full to bursting coin purse onto the table. The contents spilled out onto the table. Heavy, gold coins glittered in the dim candlelight.
"Where did you even get that much?" I asked, still shocked over the amount of coin I was looking at. My hands involuntarily pulled at the itchy, worn fabric of my skirt as my greedy innermost desires threatened to overwhelm me. I could get so much with that, my mind raced as my gaze was trained on that beautiful gold, I could get a new dress made of fine silk, pearls, or even a hairbrush made of silver! All those possibilities, all those wondrous things that had always seemed forever out of reach, in that moment seemed a little bit closer.
How had he gotten so much in so little time? That very morning, we hadn't a bit to eat and no money to buy anything with and yet, here he was, only a few hours later, with a coin purse full to bursting. It would have taken me more than a week to get that amount just pick pocketing.
The expression of a startled deer flashed across his too pretty face, but as soon as it appeared, it passed, leaving me to wonder if I'd been mistaken.
The four of us immediately went to the nearest ale house and spent the majority of the money on a feast of chicken, potatoes, tarts and ale, lots of ale. The place was soon filled with the cheers and happy, drunken bellows of the twins, now full grown and each as big an ox. Rolland and Rhys, though they were mirror images of each other, were Jasper's polar opposites. Where he was painfully pretty, they were painfully ugly. There was never any mistaking them for girls. They had full beards by the time they were fourteen. Their faces were broad, and their dark eyes just looked dull and lifeless like those of a dead fish. Their noses were crooked and swollen from multiple breaks. They were covered from head to toe in scars. They'd been caught a few times for stealing and so, they each were missing the pinkies of their right hands. Their golden hair was the only thing about them that could even remotely be considered pretty, though you could hardly tell it from under the layer of grease and filth that usually covered the locks.
The twins grinned as they filled their bellies with meat and ale, flashing mouths full of yellowed, rotting and missing teeth. "You are a saint, Jasper!" Rhys bellowed, knocking back his second mug. "How in the name of the Almighty did you get that much coin?" He echoed my earlier question.
"You rollin' around with a duchess, brother?" Rolland snickered, leaning over the table in hopes of hearing the good bits.
"Perhaps, but that's my business to know, now, isn't it?" Jasper smirked as he took a swig of ale.
"Come on, Jasper; tell us where you got it." I prodded. I stabbed a piece of chicken with my knife, eager to fill my mouth with another delicious bite. "I want to know your secret. We could live like kings if all of us could bring in that amount of money every day."
Jasper eyed me as he sat his mug down gently on the table. Slowly, his mouth stretched into a smile. "There's no secret, I'm afraid. I just got a loan from a friend of mine." He shrugged. "You'd like him, Matilda. He's very handsome and his family is fairly well off."
"Is he?" My face warmed. "How well off are we talking about?"
"He's a merchant. He sells knives and other pointy things."
"He's a perfect match!" The twins chuckled in unison, sounding every bit like our father. When I was twelve, the twins tried to sell me to a brothel out of shier desperation and had learned first hand that their baby sister was quicker with an knife than they were. Some of the scars they bore were my handiwork.
"He's no prince, but his house is fairly big and he's never known hunger. Were you to marry him, you'd be able to live in relative comfort, I think." Jasper went on. "I can arrange a meeting, if you like."
I bobbed my head happily, tears nearly springing into my eyes. After all the years of scrounging through the dirt, Jasper had finally found me a way out. "Yes! When can I meet him?"
His smile broadened, his handsome face warmed with affection, "Soon. I will discuss the matter with him tomorrow. He'll be thrilled by your enthusiasm. He's had his eyes on you for a long time, he tells me." He said.
My cheeks lit on fire, though not at the knowledge that a man had interest in me, but rather, at the very idea that I'd have to meet with my possible suitor looking like I'd just crawled out of a bog. "You know," I began gently, twirling my knife on its point on the table. "A hopeful bride should meet her suitors looking her best and we still have some gold left." I was practically panting with hunger.
Jasper's smile fell and the twins both began to scowl at me.
"We know what you're thinkin' girl, and you ain't gonna get it!" Rolland jabbed a sausage like finger at me.
"That gold is for putting food in our bellies, not for you to play queen!" Rhys echoed, baring his nasty teeth.
"Don't you think I like not having to go hungry? I'd like nothing more than to save every last coin," I lied, "but none of you are trying to get married!" My mind raced with every excuse I could possibly imagine. "If I marry well, I'll be free of our hovel, free to live a normal, comfortable life, without the threat of hanging or starvation looming over me. I could even help you find honest work through my husband's connections. Jasper's already friends with him, so I'm certain he'd be happy to help you."
"The stupid wench is already planning what she'll name her first born." Rhys snickered. Rolland laughed at me too. Jasper just sat there, quietly drinking his ale.
"No, she's puttin' on. I know you're lyin' through your teeth, Matilda. You just want to buy yourself pretty things. I've seen how green with envy you get when you see the nobles in their embroidered frocks." Rolland jabbed.
I was so angry I could have spit blood, "I can't meet him dressed in a rag! He'll laugh at me!" I whined, expertly painting on a mask of misery.
"You worry too much, Matilda," Jasper played along with my act. "He's already smitten with you, despite the rags and the dirt. You have nothing to fear. We'll scrub you clean, and I'll borrow a dress from one of my other friends. He won't laugh at you." He smirked at me knowingly. "But you aren't getting a single coin."
Shoving the rest of my meal into my mouth, I refilled my mug full of ale, ready to drown out my sorrows.
That night, I lay awake in my cot by the fire, listening to my brothers' snores and the scurrying and squeaks of the rats that I knew surrounded me just out of the reach of the fire's light. I was still fuming at not having gotten my way. Maybe I was being selfish by wanting to buy things besides food, but I couldn't help myself. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd had anything that was worth something. I'd see the ladies with rich husbands saunter through the city streets and every ounce of me would want to run up to them and rip the pearls from their skinny throats, cut them out of their velvet corsets and leave them standing stark naked in the middle of London. I could not help that I dreamed of having the better things in life, of sipping wine from golden goblets and draping myself in jewels. Like everyone else, I desired everything I knew I'd never have, and I doubted that my brothers were any different.