Your Thief

One

It was nearly dawn when Alice felt the cold, greasy drops of water start to splatter her shoulder. It was raining outside, but her only clue was the dirty water trickling through flagstones and dirt to drip and dribble inside the small cell. This was her twenty-eighth day in the cell. Twenty-eight days of imprisonment, twenty-eight days deprived of sunlight, and twenty-eight days living, barely living, in the filthy wet prison.

She pushed to the far side of the wooden bench, and the dirty droplets of water fell past her arm to splash harmlessly beside her. The small groove in the stones, near the ceiling of her cell, showed only a dim pale light. She was long last the days of anxiously peering through the notch, and now resigned herself to the cell.

The first few days were as she was warned to expect. The guards, in their casual cruelty, enjoyed taunting the new prisoner with harsh words. Alice did nothing but lie on the wooden bench and contemplate her reasons for being there. As an all-male prison, she was hoping and praying her disguise would last the length of time required to complete her mission. The visits soon ceased, and she was left alone in the semi-darkness.

It was now Monday, or so she thought. She feigned sleep for a while longer, listening to the dim sounds of the guards echoing down the dank corridor. Today was the last day possible for her grand escape, and it had to be perfect. The light in the cell slowly grew to a dirty yellow, and the sounds faded until the prison was quiet once more. Her left hand chafed inside the heavy iron ring, tethered by a long chain to the wall. Carefully, so as not to cause the chains to jingle, Alice folded her thumb into the palm of her small hand and pulled against the cuff. The iron scraped against the raw skin on her wrist, but within moments the cuff was off. She had been able to remove the cuff from her first day in the dismal prison, but stopped removing it because of how much it hurt to force the cuff on again at a moment’s notice.

Alice sat up and reached down into her right shoe. She peeled the soft leather away from one side and pulled the thick, angled torsion pick and slender lock pick from the hidden compartment. The hallways were still quiet, so she crept forward off the dilapidated wooden bench and onto the slimy flagstone floor. It took only a moment to reach the cell door. The ancient lock had only a single tumbler and could be accessed from the inside of the cell. Several minutes of prying and twisting were rewarded as the lock slowly clunked into the unlocked position. 

The door swung loudly on rusting hinges. Alice grimaced and waited a moment inside her cell, her heart pounding wildly. When no guards came to investigate, she confidently stepped forward into the hallway.

Prison cells stretched in both directions, but she had been escaping to explore the prison since her first day of incarceration and knew which way the new arrivals were kept. Smiling grimly, Alice turned left and started walking quietly down the dim corridor.

The prison was largely unoccupied, but what inmates remained were either sleeping or staring up at the narrow windows in the thick walls. Alice had been told that prisoners were either released after a short stay, transferred to a larger prison facility, or executed. None remained in the castle for very long.

Alice reached several sets of stairs, some leading up into the castle and a set of four rough stairs heading deeper into the prison. When she finally came to the cell, it was, if at all possible, dirtier than hers had been. Empty? How could it be empty? She was ready to despair when she saw the bundle of rags in the corner. “John?” she whispered quietly, “John, is that you? John? John!”

The rags stirred, and a dirty hand pushed a hank of greasy brown hair out of the way. Two dark eyes peered out of the cell. “Alice?”

Alice was smiling, and crying, and about to laugh, “Yes, yes!” she choked out. Part of her was surprised he had recognized her through the elaborate disguise, but she knew her twin would know her anywhere. As he rushed to the cell door, she fumbled and dropped the lock picks onto the slick stone floor.

“Get going, they’ll catch you for sure in here! I’m done for, Alice, you know there ain’t no saving me now. I should never got mixed up in that shifty business, for sure.” His talking made it difficult for her to concentrate as she pried the slender diamond-head pick from a gap in the flagstones. Sharp steps from the end of the corridor caught her attention, and she glanced around frantically for a place to hide. In her dirty, tattered tunic and britches she would be found out as an escaped prisoner immediately.

“In the cell Alice!” hissed John, as he stepped backwards into the gloom of his own cell and the shadows once again obscured his features.

Hurriedly, she turned and ducked into an open cell, sitting in directly on the floor in the dark corner beside the bench. The footsteps grew louder as a ragged figure came into view. Another escaped prisoner? It hardly seemed likely, but the stranger was dressed in a threadbare travelling cloak, with a dirty looking cap squashed onto his dark tresses. He paused in front of John’s cell, peering into the darkness. Two hands emerged from the cloak, and he grasped the bars of the cell as though willing them to disappear. He stayed there for several minutes, not speaking, not moving, and Alice squirmed with the discomfort of sitting on the slick wet floor.

Loud voices suddenly echoed through the corridor, and the ragged man jumped and cast around for a space to hide. Spying the cell door ajar, he leapt across the hall and into the darkness of the open cell. He moved quickly and gracefully, and moved to sit – directly on top of Alice. She let out a small squeak and he jumped in surprise.

“What in God’s name – ?” he hissed. Alice clasped a hand over her mouth and shook her head as the loud voices got closer. Torchlight danced through the hallway, and the man pressed closer into the darkness beside her. She could feel one strongly muscled leg against her side, and she felt distinctly uncomfortable with his close proximity. His entire body looked poised, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. Was this the look of a prisoner? She didn’t think so.

Two guards, and a third bearing the torch, came to stop in front of the cell. The largest one shook a ring of keys free from his belt, and proceeded to unlock the door. It swung open with a rusty shriek and the guard stepped inside the cell. “Come now Johnny, we got ourselves an execution today!”

The other guards chuckled and dragged John from the cell. Once in the corridor, he stopped resisting and solemnly walked between them. He cast one quick glance at the cell where Alice and the stranger were hiding before he was out of sight down the dim corridor. The guards’ boisterous laughter took several minutes to fade as Alice felt despair begin to take over. She was too late!

She should have come earlier, she should have tried yesterday! She felt her chest begin to constrict, and her breathing became laboured. Alice clasped one hand over her mouth to stop herself from sobbing, and the other hand over her chest as it heaved frantically for air. The pressure in her chest increased, and it felt as though something were blocking her throat. Alice couldn’t breathe. Her vision was blurry as the stranger moved beside her, grabbing her arms, standing her up and fairly carrying her to the bench. He knelt in front of her, prying her hand away from her face. Her eyes were shut tightly as she struggled to relax her chest. His warm hand massaged the back of her neck, and she could feel the tightness start to ease out of her body. Slowly, Alice was able to breathe, small tight breaths, and she opened her eyes.

“Hey, hey, ssh, it’s alright. You are alright.” He held her hand, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder, “Just breathe, ‘tis alright. Can you look at me?” Alice took several deep breaths and looked up into his face, into the eyes that were steadily looking at her. He smiled, a small tight smile, “That’s better. Now – who are you and what are you doing here?”

She bit her bottom lip as he took his hand from her shoulder, and coughed slightly to disguise her voice, “I – I am – I was trying to escape. I am a prisoner here.”

He shook his head slightly with amusement. “Clearly, boy, you are a prisoner here. Why are you at this cell?”

It took less than a moment to realize she could never reveal her true purpose in this prison. “I was lost; I have been looking for the way out of the prison all morning. I thought you were a guard… I had to hide quickly.”

His hard eyes studied her in the gloom of the prison cell. The rough lines on his forehead looked quizzical for a moment, but then smoothed and his face was impassive once more. He pulled her hands upwards as he stood. “Then we shall escape together,” he said simply. “Come with me.”