more than that, it was a vegetable garden that was cultivated, and as full of produce as if it was harvest season. By some miracle, there was not so much as a flake of snow on the ground, nor were the plants frost-killed and rotting.
There were squash, kohlrabi, and beans, onions, kale and cabbage, carrots, Brussels sprouts, and beets and turnips. There were peas, potatoes, radishes, leeks, parsnips, and the rampion that Maria craved! He felt nearly faint at the sight of so much food.
There was no sign of life in the house . . . and he did not hesitate for a moment at the theft he was about to perform. My children are starving. And no one has touched this garden. It would be a sin for it to go to waste and freeze and rot.
An hour later, he was over the wall again, wearing his coat and jumper only, with his shirt over his back stuffed full of vegetables and serving as a sack.
Maria wept when he spilled out his bounty on the hearth; wept, and gathered it all in, marveling and looking up as if to say something. But he didn’t stop to answer her questions, for this was an opportunity that might never come again, and while he had moonlight, he was going to steal as much as he could. After all, he had already stolen; the sin was committed, the deed was done, and he thought that how much he took really didn’t matter at this point. How was it the old saying went? Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. By the time the moon went down, the children were awake again, and there were vegetables stacked everywhere in the room, and herbs hanging upside down in bunches from a string knotted between two nails on the wall. The kettle of hot water now held more vegetables stewing away merrily, and potatoes baking in their jackets in the ashes, and they all went to bed again, exhausted, but knowing that, for the first time in more than a year, they would wake up to something to eat.
In his dreams he continued to fill his shirt and bring out more food. But in his dreams, it wasn’t only vegetables he was looting; when he pulled up beet and turnip tops, there were loaves of bread and even a sausage or two attached to the greens.
But then, he almost always dreamed of food. The children probably did, too. At least when he woke to the first light this morning there was something to fill his stomach.
He would have very much liked to have lingered over his breakfast of roasted potato the way the children did, but he was well aware last night might have been a fluke. Surely, whoever had planted that garden was going to notice and take measures to protect it. So when he went out in the thin morning light to see if there was work again at the vintner, he detoured by the old house, fully expecting to find that he had been mistaken—that it was inhabited, and the occupants were now incensed over his raid on their garden.
But the shutters on the street side were all closed and locked, and it was silent as only an empty house could be.
He still didn’t believe in his luck. Perhaps they didn’t awaken in the morning as poor people had to. He passed on; he could not count on a second night of raiding. This was only a brief moment of luck, surely.
He did find work that day, though not at the vintner, but turning a manure pile at the stable. It was filthy, stinking work, but he didn’t care; besides his pay, he managed to get his hands on some coarse burlap grain sacks that had the seams ripped open. Truth to tell . . . he hid them under his coat to sneak them out, since even a sack that could no longer hold anything was worth something, but he doubted that anyone would miss them in time to connect their disappearance with him. He had also taken the time to chip some salt from the block that the horses licked and fill his pockets with it. Salt was salt, the vegetables would be even better with salt and herbs, and he had eaten worse than horse saliva.
He tried not to think about how easy stealing had suddenly become . . . then resolved to repent