I was the youngest of six. Three brothers, two sisters. They were all much older than me and were forever tormenting me. Sometimes they let me join in their games, but more often I was the victim, the one who was always blamed for everything that went wrong. Every pot that was broken, everything that went missing: it was always my fault. I hated them. All of them. I hated my father too. This was so long ago now that I don’t remember much about him any more, except for his face, which was gaunt and sharp-featured. Sharp, like his tongue. Like his eyes too, which were ever alert and missed little.
He cared nothing for me. Indeed he resented me from the start. He never saw me as someone to nurture and teach the ways of the world. No, instead he regarded me with a sort of cold indifference, as if I were a stray dog my mother had brought in from the cold and to which she’d developed some inexplicable attachment. To him I was nothing more than another hungry mouth foisted upon him without his permission, who nonetheless had to be fed and clothed and sheltered and given space to sleep on his floor. That said, food was never something we found ourselves short of. Even during the worst winters or following a poor harvest, when others struggled to get by, there always seemed to be plenty on our table. Salted sea fish, spices from distant lands, ale of the finest quality and even, sometimes, mead. Meats of various kinds, even during Lent when it was forbidden, although at the time I was too young to know this or to appreciate what luxuries these were.
I suppose I learned my ways from him. He was no one of any great account: the miller on a small estate owned by Bishop Leofgar of Licedfeld. Still, he did more than well enough for himself. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I understood how this was so, that I learned the first of the few lessons he ever did teach me.
There were two ways of living, I discovered. One was by honest labour, the way of all God-fearing men. The other was my father’s way.
He wasn’t a good man either. I sometimes wonder what he would make of me if he could see me now. If he could see what I’ve become.
For every sack of grain the village folk brought for him to grind, he was entitled to keep one sixteenth of the resulting flour, which he could then sell or use for himself. That was his privilege as the miller. Sometimes, though, he would measure out more than his due, mixing chalk dust or grit in with what he gave back so as to make up the weight. He didn’t do it often, lest anyone should guess what he was up to, and only took a little at a time. He claimed that was the mistake people often made and why they got caught in the end: because they were too greedy. Not that he told me any of this directly, you understand. He hardly spoke to me the whole time I lived under his roof. It was my mother who found out. Exactly how she did, I don’t know, but I overheard her confronting him one night when I was supposed to be asleep. He told her not to utter a word to anybody if she knew what was good for her, and maybe that was why he often beat her – to remind her of that warning.
From the very beginning, you see, I grew up surrounded by wickedness and deceit. I was born into it; it ran in my veins. Exactly when I began stealing, I don’t remember any more, but it couldn’t have been long after that. Deep down I knew it was wrong, of course, but the idea of it filled me with excitement, and I suppose I must have thought that if he could do it, then why shouldn’t I?