Eat the Poor

I

Less than a day after I set foot in his castle, the King of England died.

His death, of course, had nothing to do with me.

Sadly.

Two nights prior began the month of June, gloomy and damp, with angry dark clouds overhead as I made my weekly trip into the city.

I did not envy the people who lived in the pits of London. In the shack-houses along the stone street, crammed in with the smoke and disease and filth of three-hundred thousand other poor people.

It was much better to live out in the country. In the country, you awoke to the sound of roosters and sheep. In London you awoke to men hollering and looked outside to see that someone had taken a shit on your doorstep.

Still, every week since I became old enough to carry a basket, my mother faithfully sent me off to buy the vegetables we could not grow ourselves and trade eggs for butter and milk.

Why this responsibility fell on me and not one of my older brothers was beyond me. Perhaps I would be most expendable if I never made it back. Martin and Westley liked to join in together and say it was so she could enjoy being rid of me.

I knew that wasn't so. My mother loved me best.

And besides, I didn't mind going. It allowed me time to make my own money the only way I knew how.

"It'll be twice what you paid last time, Brewer," I commented as the man dropped his trousers to the dirt.

"Don' say that." He was an old man, with a voice like air going through a metal pipe. "Makes the ole lad soften up, it does."

I had a glance at his 'lad' and curled my top lip. "Twice," I said, "or you can take it back to your wife and beg for a lick of cunny."

He gripped my forearm and pushed my front to the wooden wall. "Next week," he breathed, and then like an untrained mutt his short prick pressed against the back of my thigh.

"Now."

"Curse you!" His open hand slammed into the wall. "You're stingier than a madam on Soho."

"Try your luck there then," I said. "They'll spit on your boots the day you turn you up at a proper house. Or, you can be glad for what you get and pay me my charge."

He scoffed and bent to pull his trousers up from the ground. "No need. I'm as soft as a worm."

I leaned in. "Pay me and I'll fix it."

"Think you're all that, eh?" he hissed. I could feel his hot breath on my neck. "Someday you'll get what's comin' to you."

"Whatever you say, Brewer." I watched his zig-zag stagger as he felt his way along the back tavern wall into the narrow street. "Go sleep it off in a rubbish heap."

It was getting late. I should have left for home an hour ago, lest miss supper. No food was ever left over after a meal in my mother's house.

I kicked the ground as I walked. An hour wasted, and nothing to show for it. I couldn't keep doing this. I was getting too old and too unhappy. I didn't have a pretty smile or a tight little arse. There was nothing special about me.

Christ on a stick.

Market Lane had cleared out already, no one but the homeless wandering about. My breath caught in bitter disbelief. I waited for a merchant to appear, a milk cart to rumble by. Nothing.

A flutter of movement caught my eye.

A stiff parchment was tacked outside the tailor shop, flapping in the hot wind.