The woman wasn’t particularly young; perhaps she’d seen twenty-two or even twenty-three years. She wasn’t a child. She was clad in simple woolen garments, undyed, and without shape. They were garments the poor would wear because they could afford nothing else but, in this case, the garments were worn by a pledge of St. Blitha.
The only clothes she had.
The gutters were pools of water mixed with urine and feces, and she slipped into the puddles more than once, soaking her simple leather shoes. They were worn and had holes in them that had been repeatedly sewn and mended because, much like her woolen clothing, they were all she had. They were usually clean but, at this moment, she didn’t care about clean. She only cared about food.
It wasn’t the first time the woman had escaped St. Blitha in search of sustenance. St. Blitha was a poor order, the order of St. Dominica, and they gardened and traded for food to keep them alive, only the food they kept in stores somehow rarely made it to those it was intended for– the nuns. More often than not, the Mother Abbess sold the food and pocketed the money to purchase fine food for her own table, leaving her charges to starve.
It was the nasty truth.
Therefore, ventures like this were the norm and the starving young woman wasn’t the only one who ventured from the walls of St. Blitha in search of food. Others did, too, and the Mother Abbess was aware. She didn’t care. As long as chores were done and prayers were fulfilled, she turned a blind eye to her starving charges as they wandered the streets looking for something to eat. Some residents and merchants took pity on the charges, but most slammed their doors, ignoring their extreme poverty.
The wandering nuns of St. Blitha.
Two days. This would be her third day of not eating if she didn’t find something soon. Desperate, she began to wander the alleys, looking for any scrap. Cooking smells assaulted her, reminding her of just how weak she really was, and more than once she had to grab on to a door jamb or a wall to keep from falling.
In this part of the city, towards the town walls, the homes were a little more spread out and there were plots of landwhere gardens could be kept. She knew of just such a garden, with branches of apple trees that hung over the garden wall. It wasn’t even close to harvest time, and the apples would be small and unripe, but it didn’t matter. It would be something in her stomach. Making her way to the corner of an alley and a street they called The Cripple, she could see the branches of the tree hanging over the brick wall but, as she hustled over to it, there were no apples to be found.
Her stomach tightened, cramping with emptiness. In desperation, the woman tried to climb onto the wall, but she was too weak. She stumbled over to the garden gate, assuming it was locked, and was shocked to discover that it wasn’t. She could hear people in the house next to the garden, awakening as the sun began to rise, so she quickly slipped in and stayed close to the wall, scoping out the garden and spying carrots poking out of the ground. With trembling legs, she rushed to the carrots and yanked three of them out of the earth along with a rather large bunch of radishes. Afraid she’d be caught, she ran from the garden with her stolen booty as fast as her legs would carry her.
There was rainwater in troughs from the storm they’d had the night before and she quickly washed the dirt from her vegetables, cramming them into her mouth and chewing quickly, so hungry that she couldn’t stop herself. She was in danger of choking as she shoved them into her mouth, chewing and chewing until they all went down into her rumbling belly.
Although there was something in her stomach now, she wasn’t satisfied in the least. She had to find more, something that would fill her until the next time she slipped from St. Blitha and engaged in this horrific dance of hungry. She could smell bread coming from the street of the bakers, which was to the south, and the breeze blowing off the Thames carried that fragrant scent. Lured by it, she began to head south.
There were more people here in the merchant district, people beginning their business for the day. Merchants were setting out their wares, and that included food vendors. At this time in the morning, the big ovens that the bakers used to bake bread– sometimes several bakers would use the same oven– were burning full-bore. The smell of yeasty bread and pies filled the hair, drawing her ever closer to the source.
Rounding a corner, a large baker’s stall came into view and the man already had bread loaves cooling on stones in front of his stall in a move meant to lure in shoppers. But they were also luring in the starving, and the woman had her eye on a small loaf of bread that was at the end of a line of loaves. She knew she could get to it. But she wasn’t entirely sure she could run fast enough once she took it.
She would have to eat what she could of it before she was caught.
She was taking a terrible chance. Being a postulate, she knew she wouldn’t be severely punished, not like a normal thief would be, but there was always the chance of being apprehended by someone who didn’t believe those associated with the church deserved special consideration. She would offer to work it off; aye, that is what she would do. She could work off the bread and still return to St. Blitha in time to finish her chores.
It’s not as if she had a choice.
With her hands shaking and her stomach now upset by the raw vegetables she’d consumed, the woman moved closer to the cooling loaves, keeping an eye out for the baker. He was back in his stall, tending to his product, so she waited until he turned his back completely before snatching the loaf. She broke it in two, taking a massive bite, when the baker’s wife suddenly screeched.
After that, the chase was on.
*
What a night.
It was dawn as Maxton emerged from one of the bathhouses that dotted the north end of London. This particular bathhouse backed up to the street of the bakers and used their massive ovens to heat the water. It was a smaller bathhouse, one that catered to noblemen, and it also had the dual distinction of serving food as well.
Maxton had just spent a couple of glorious hours sitting in a hot tub and eating bread and cheese, boiled eggs and boiled beef, as a burly male attendant with a missing eye scrubbed him down, shaved him, and cut his hair. Years of dirt and filth and incivility had been cleaned off of him in the early hours of the morning, and he’d dressed in clean clothes that William and Gart had provided for him– fine leather breeches, a soft woolen tunic, boots that Gart had loaned him until he could get some made, and a heavy leather coat that went all the way to the ground. Lined with fur, it was an exquisite piece of clothing, something that had been hanging in the wardrobe of Farringdon House until Maxton had confiscated it. He didn’t know who it belonged to but, now, it belonged to him.
In fact, as Maxton exited the bathhouse at dawn after a night of rain, he felt whole again. Human, even. Bathed, shaved, dressed, and fed, he felt better than he had in years, even if this moment had followed a night of no sleep after too much drinking. Now that he was back in civilization as a free man for the most part, he intended to do some living when he wasn’t seeking out papal assassins.
Perhaps that’s why he hadn’t slept very much. There was a great deal on his mind. After the meeting with William Marshal the day before, Maxton realized that the mission assigned to him and his colleagues was, perhaps, greater than any mission he’d ever undertaken. And there had been many– slitting the throat of a rival Muslim commander, hunting down a rogue Christianknight who had defected to Saladin, and on and on. There was an entire list of assignments that he and Kress and Achilles had undertaken on behalf of Richard and the righteous ways of Christendom, and all of them successful for the most part. The Executioner Knights had a hard-earned reputation that wasn’t built on failure. But this latest task was the most important they’d ever taken on.
And, perhaps, the least bit intimidating.
But he was up to it.
The sun was beginning to rise in the east and the city was coming alive with people going about their business. Maxton looked around, thinking that, perhaps, he should head back to Farringdon House since he was fed and bathed and relaxed, and still even slightly drunk, to sleep a little. In fact, that’s where Kress and Achilles were. They had elected not to go to the bathhouse after their drinking binge, but rather sleep it off. It had been Maxton who had prowled the night. But at this moment, a soft bed was sounding good to him. Turning west along the avenue, he was thinking thoughts of a warm bed and very well minding his own business when a figure shot around the corner of an alley and straight into him.
He was hit full-force in the groin.
It was a painful, heavy, and shocking blow right into his privates and he doubled over, but not before he grabbed the person who had hit him with both hands. As Maxton was sinking to one knee in pain, he had visions of a woman in his grasp, shoving bread into her mouth in between shrieks of fear. He was going down, she was cramming bread into her face, and the whole thing seemed surreal and slightly ludicrous.
