Chapter 1: The Apple Thief

Danka Siluckt woke up before sunrise, as always. She carefully got out of her bed to avoid disturbing her younger sister, Katrinckta. She cast her sibling a resentful look, irritated that Katrinckta got to sleep in most days, a privilege she couldn’t ever remember having.

Danka stumbled around in the dark, trying to grope for her work outfit. The first item she located was her peasant’s vest, hanging from a wooden peg that had been wedged between two logs in the wall. She slipped the flimsy garment over her shoulders. The vest was not a top that would have been considered appropriate for a young woman in most European countries at that time: it was sleeveless and completely open in the front. It’s only function was to protect the wearer’s back from the sun: it was not designed for modesty or fashion.

Danka felt around the wall before placing her hand on the second part of her work outfit, a worn and very dirty brown skirt. She pulled the skirt up over her hips and tied the drawstring. The skirt, never an attractive piece of clothing to begin with, most definitely had seen better days. Threadbare, torn, and tattered, it was little more than a rag. It was in such poor condition that Danka thought about taking it off again and not bothering with it. If she were to just stay home and work around her parents’ homestead, she would not have worried about the skirt. However, on this day her duties would force her to leave home and work closer to town, so she figured it needed to stay on. The next item she put on was her work boots. The boots were the only part of her outfit that had any value at all: if nothing else, at least Danka’s father saw to it that all of his children’s feet were properly protected against their harsh living conditions.

Finally, she retrieved her mother’s hat. Danka would be working outside all day, so her mother had given her permission to use it. The hat was a typical peasant’s hat, with a broad brim designed to completely protect the wearer’s head and neck from the sun. Danka had heard that in other countries men and women wore different work hats, but in Danubia a peasant’s hat was a peasant’s hat. The sun in the fields was as harsh on women as it was on men, so there was no reason a woman’s hat should be any different from one worn by a man.

Danka cast another resentful glance at Katrinckta, as the younger girl stretched in her sleep and sighed with the satisfaction of the luxury of now having the bed to herself. Dishonored little brat: I ought to grab her hair, drag her out of bed, and make her come to work with me. But no, Danka didn’t dare do such a thing. She would dutifully go off and work, while Katrinckta would sleep in and then spend her day at the pond pretending to feed the family’s ducks, but in reality just soaking her feet in the water and staring at the flowers falling from the trees or the birds flying in the sky. Katrinckta was worthless, but if Danka dared lay a hand on her, their mother would immediately take the younger girl’s side and brutally punish Danka.

Oh yes. Lovely Katrinckta, delicate Katrinckta, sweet Katrinckta, always Mother’s favorite. Danka quietly picked up her shovel. She resisted the urge to raise it over her head and slam it against her sister’s sleeping face. That would be nice. I wonder if she’d be so pretty after a hit to her teeth with this shovel. if she didn’t have her teeth, then they’d all think I’m the pretty one.

Danka struggled to open the rough heavy door that led outside. She decided to leave it open and let the daylight wake her family. It was just starting to become light, a clear early summer dawn that promised a hot day. The young peasant then unlatched the door to the chicken coop. As the fowl squawked and filed down the ramp, Danka walked behind the dilapidated structure to check on an important secret she was keeping from her parents.

Buried, in a broken cup, she kept a stash of copper coins. She had saved 15 coins so far, and hopefully by the end of the day she’d add a couple more to her collection. She knew that what she was doing was risky, but she needed a decent dress if she could hope to get married. If her parents ever could afford a dress, Danka knew that Katrinckta would be the daughter to receive it. Katrinckta would be the one to get married, while Danka would be expected to just keep working. No, that wasn’t going to happen. Danka would have her own dress, regardless of her parents’ wishes, and she would get married first. She grabbed a feed bucket before leaving for work. The feed bucket would be needed for her plan to get a couple more copper coins.

Danka emerged onto the muddy path that connected her family’s homestead to the outside world. She passed the duck pond her parents shared with another family of peasants; then passed several other dilapidated cottages. They were all the same: hovels made from stones and logs, hidden under trees and bushes, and surrounded by flocks of ducks and chickens. Some had vegetable gardens, but none of the properties was large enough to support a real farm. These were the dwellings of the lowest class in Danubian society: the day laborers.

Carrying her shovel and bucket, Danka followed a somewhat better road that was roughly paved with flat stones, passing larger properties. There were several orchards and wheat fields, all neatly kept and surrounded by fences or stone walls. The houses were attractive, and instead of duck sheds, rabbit hutches, or chicken coops, the farmers had built real barns.

Danka came up to an apple orchard and jumped the fence. She looked around for the best apple, which would be her breakfast. She was not worried about the orchard owner, because Danubian protocol allowed a poor person to take a single piece of fruit or a vegetable from a rich person’s property per day. The tradition was ancient, based on the Church teaching that the poor have the right to sustenance.

Danka hid the apple core under some leaves and took a second apple. Now, she did have to be concerned about the owner. She looked around before committing herself to the second piece of fruit, because protocol only allowed her to take one apple, not two. One apple was sustenance, but the second one was theft. Well, thought Danka, that’s just too bad. There will be more theft from this orchard when I come back, a lot more.

When she finished her second apple and had hidden its remains, Danka resumed her trek to work. She walked along a tree-lined road towards the provincial town of Rika Heckt-nemat. By Danubian standards the town was large, boasting a population of over 20,000 people. Only the capitol, Danubikt Moskt, and the eastern city of Rika Chorna were bigger. The city was built on a hill, with its medieval walls still standing, a relic of an age before cannons. On the south side of the town there was another irrelevant relic of the town’s past: a stone pier and row of docks that at one time serviced river barges, but now faced nothing but an open field. For centuries Rika Heckt-nemat had been a major river port, but four decades ago, when the Rika Chorna river flooded and changed its course to the north, the city was left landlocked. What had been a riverbed now was a series of swamps that were gradually being drained and converted to farmland. Hence the city’s new name: Rika Heckt-nemat, which translated to “the river doesn’t flow here anymore.”

Danka approached a group of workers whose task for the day would be to dismantle part of the now useless pier and move the stones to a site where the town council had decided to build a well. Most of Danka’s fellow workers were men. There were only a few women present, and of them, Danka was the youngest and by far the prettiest. She resented being expected to do such arduous work. I’m not a man, she thought bitterly: why should I be treated like one? However, she also knew that she would not be working as hard as most of the others, because undoubtedly, as soon as her male co-workers realized that she was still unmarried, they would vie with each other to give her small favors and even perform some of her duties. She smiled and flirted with a couple of the nicer-looking laborers, to encourage them to help make her day easier. Even though none of the men really interested her, Danka figured there was no reason she shouldn’t take advantage of her appearance while she still was pleasant to look at.

Wearing a ridiculous-looking tri-corner hat and an equally absurd felt coat, a city councilman approached the work site to explain the day’s tasking. Accompanying him was a servant lugging sacks full of hard-boiled eggs and small loaves of bread, which put the workers in a better mood. At least this man had the decency to pass out food before passing out orders.

As the workers sat and ate, the councilman explained what he wanted. The town was building a new well, cistern, and aqueduct; a project that would take advantage of the ample supply of stones and bricks from the remains of the old pier. The workers would be divided into a group responsible for tearing apart the pier, another to dig the holes needed for the cistern and well, and a third group that would move the materials needed for the new project. The councilman pointed at Danka, telling her that because she had brought a shovel, she would be part of the digging crew. A few minutes after finishing her egg and bread, she joined a group of 30 workers filing out to the planned well site.

Danka knew that no one in her group would be participating in actually building the new infrastructure. Their task simply was to get everything set up for the builders’ guild. According to the view of the townsfolk, the laborers were dishonored and uneducated rabble, good for nothing except tasks such as moving rocks and digging holes. Their Path in Life was to sit in their cottages among their chickens and ducks, and wait until they were needed for a project. Once the project was finished, they were expected to return to their cottages and stay out of everyone else’s way.

Danka spent the morning at the edge of an ever-deepening hole, glumly moving shovelfuls of dirt into a wheelbarrow. She did not have the hardest task of the group, but still, it was not a pleasant way to spend the day. The worst part of her job was knowing that her parents would not allow her to keep any of the money she was earning. It was her mother who had arranged for her to be here and who had negotiated her salary. Therefore, Danka’s parents knew exactly how much she was earning and would demand she surrender all of her pay upon returning home. After all, she was part of the household and Danubian tradition dictated that everyone in a household had to contribute to everyone else’s well-being.

While Danka may have burned with resentment that her younger sister was not with her at the work site, her parents did not see anything wrong with that. There would be enough money in the family to marry off one daughter, not two. If that daughter could be married to a husband who owned land; that would benefit everyone. So ... the plan was to save Katrinckta for marriage and use Danka for working.

Danka didn’t say anything, but she had no intention of spending the rest of her youth working for her parents and watching them dote over Katrinckta. As soon as she could afford a proper dress, her plan was to leave home and move into town. She wasn’t sure what she would do next, but she had convinced herself that the only thing she needed to find a decent husband was to change what she was wearing. After-all, she remembered the legend of the servant girl who, with nothing more than some magic, managed to transform her work outfit into a bridal gown, and in doing so got the heir to the kingdom to marry her. Her expectations were not so lofty, but surely she could wander the city in her new dress and attract some handsome young guild member or city official. Why not? The girl in the story did it.

The pace of work slowed as the day got hotter. Shortly before noon, the city councilman returned to the work site, this time accompanied by a female city guard and a couple of wretched-looking criminals tasked with carrying the mid-day meal for the work crew. The woman looked about 30, was very tall, and was dressed in the long gray dress and white tunic used by all female guards in the Duchy. In her hand she held a leather switch. She had a haughty expression and carried herself with an air of severe elegance.

It was evident the two criminals were very afraid of her as they struggled with their heavy loads of food. Danka could see why as soon as they approached. Their bodies were covered with welts from their merciless mentor. After the food had been distributed they knelt, staring at the eating workers with gaunt faces. The guard turned to her miserable wards and Danka heard the following:

“You see, dishonored ones, how people who work get to eat. Look at that delicious food and think about how much you’d like to have some. Think about how that bread would taste in your mouth. Just think, if only you weren’t wearing a collar, how you too, could be sitting with these people and enjoying your meal. Think about it.”

The guard ended her statement with a savage blow to the back of each criminal, striking so hard that they cried out. Danka realized that the guard’s performance was not just to torment the criminals: it also was meant to scare the workers into staying out of trouble.

As soon as the guard and the criminals had departed, the workers passed around a jug of wine and lay under a tree to rest. There was no rush to finish the well, so they would take a nap and resume working when the sun wasn’t so strong. Danka did not join the others. She excused herself, picked up her bucket, and walked back to the orchard where she had eaten her morning apples. She casually strolled along the fence, checking to see if any of the orchard’s employees were in sight. Yes, unfortunately, a few women were picking fruit, but none close to the road. Danka decided to take the risk.

She set down the bucket and slipped under the fence. Crouching to stay out of sight, she snuck up to a tree and carefully pulled down an armload of apples. She quietly moved them to the fence; then returned to pick some more. As soon as she had taken about 30 apples and moved them to the edge of the property, she slipped back under the fence and carefully placed the fruit in her bucket. Trying to stay calm and maintain a neutral expression, she walked back towards the town. Instead of returning to her work site, however, she approached an inn just outside the south gate. She went around to the back where the kitchen was located, looking for a childhood acquaintance who now was working as a serving wench. Danka traded the apples for two copper coins. It was a fair deal with no questions asked. The serving wench needed cheap apples and Danka needed the money. Danka returned to digging site just as her work-mates were waking up. Perfect. Another two coins were safely in her possession.

Danka did not hurry home after she and the other workers were dismissed for the day. During her mid-day foray into the apple orchard she had noticed how many apples there were and that many of them were in perfect condition for picking. Surly the orchard owner’s employees would not have time to harvest them all. Surly another bucket-full of fruit would not be missed. Another chance to sell some fruit, and another chance add coins to her collection.

Why not?

The pedestrian traffic along the road was much heavier at dusk than it had been at noon, so Danka had to carefully time her entry into the orchard. It helped that a group of children had entered to help themselves to one apple each. Danka followed them and helped them pull down better pieces of fruit. As soon as the children finished and continued on their way, Danka crouched, waited for a few moments, then started grabbing apples and quietly placed them in her bucket.

In spite of her caution, she was being watched. Farmer Tuko Orsktackt crouched only a few fathoms away, drawing upon his former career in the Grand Duke’s forest archery battalion to observe the thief without being detected. Danka blissfully shook the branches and continued to pluck fruit as the property owner noted, in careful detail, what she was doing. Farmer Orsktackt was a meticulous man, and wanted to make sure his legal complaint against the thief was completely accurate.