The room was silent. Quietly the thief crept into the building, careful not to disturb the resting house. He had been staking out this manor for months. It was formerly the dwelling of a Lord, who had passed it down from generation to generation. The current Lords grandsons were in there now. The perfect time to strike. He had brought his bow along with him, although he doubted he needed it. He’d be in and out within half an hour. Still, one couldn’t be too careful. The news had been littered with stories of thieves who had come in unprepared. Hopefully he won’t be another one of those stories.
The thief rubbed his fingers together gleefully. He was in the money. This house was probably the storage of items of indeterminable value. Exquisite Italian art, fragile Russian vases, even the wine was worth more than he earned per year, back at the shop. Not today. The thief was after money. He needed it to keep his business afloat. Who cares if this manor lost a little money? There was plenty more where that came from. The thief scanned his surroundings. The walls were ornately decorated with the heads of hunted animals. Sickening. These people can go and waste their money and lives hunting animals for pleasure while he can barely afford enough to eat.
Looking to the floor of the room, he spotted a small bump in the carpet. Looking around to see if he was still safe, he gently padded over to the carpet. There! He saw it. A minute cut in the carpet, just enough to lift up. Underneath was a small brown box bearing the inscription “aurum potestas est.” Gold is power. The box didn’t lie, the thief thought. A battered old lock was all that separated the thief from the treasures within. Childs play. The thief simply jammed his knife into the box and twisted. Not the quietest or stealthiest way, but effective. The thief was overcome by lust for treasure, completely forgetting that he was in the middle of a strange house in the middle of the night.
The top of the box clattered onto the floor, swiftly bringing him back to his senses. He cursed to himself. So much could still go wrong. He held his breath, listening for sounds of stirring or movement. Nothing. He was still in the clear. Peering down into the box, the thief gasped as he saw a face staring up at him. Stumbling away from the box, he realised that there was no face in the box, but a mirror. He was not a child, he was a man. It was very stupid of him to scare like that. Shaking and sweating, the thief pressed on.
The house was a labyrinth. Doors let to rooms he was convinced he saw earlier, corridors led to dead ends, meaningless storerooms stretched on forever. The thief was lost. There was no point in leaving the house now. He was in, and another opportunity would not come round for months. He had started to make compromises with himself, to soothe his frayed nerves. First it was “Get a full bag first, and then I’ll go”. Now its “First thing. FIRST THING I find and I’ll get out of here”. Disappointingly, apart from the Box he found, there was no money to be found anywhere. The Thief’s senses were screaming. He was lost in a stranger’s house, in the middle of the night, with nothing to be found anywhere. He stopped. He heard a sound upstairs. Beating against the floor, like an ominous drum. It wasn’t the thief’s heart. That was beating about 4 times faster. As if on cue, the beating stopped, and then started again. It sounded as if it was coming in the thief’s direction. The thief ran, no time for silence now. Self preservation finally prevailed over his hunt for gold. Closer and closer, louder and louder. The thief tugged desperately at a door. Locked. He was trapped. The beating came closer and closer. What was it? A person? An animal? A ghost? Whatever it was, it was coming for him. He was reflecting on the events leading up to this moment. It was a long hard slog getting in here. Nights of sleeping on the floor, almost freezing to death. Nights of eating terrible food and stale beer.
The thief ran towards a heavy oak door. It didn’t open. It was stuck or locked. Tugging desperately at the door, the thief realised that he was trapped. He remembered his bow. Swiftly notching an arrow to it, he was prepared for anything that came his way. His mind was a blur. Why did he choose to burgle this house? His shop might have come good in the next few months. Why did he have to burgle someone, because of the simple and childish reason that they were richer than him? Even if the thief died here today, he would never be able to go to church again, he would never be able to serve on a court. Nobody would ever trust him, all because of this silly hunt for gold.
He was finally aware of his wrongdoing. Nothing mattered to him anymore. Not gold, not death, not life. He would wait. Wait for whatever this thing was and let it do what it needed to do. He waited, as if he was simply waiting for his crops to grow. At least his death would be dignified. But that was no substitute for what he did.
Gold does not always mean power.
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