Treatise on the Ethics of Vampires - one
one
More years have passed than I can remember it seems, as I was born over six hundred years ago. And yet, here I be, facing the change of time, the advent of technology and my own immortality while the twenty-first century beats its chest like a posturing ape defending its territory. I sit here, in the light of a goose-neck lamp picking letters out on a laptop computer instead of scratching away with quill on hempen paper in the light of a tallow candle, as is my natural inclination from over six centuries of practice.
Like stars in the night sky are my thoughts. Each twinkles for attention. So I shall start with the little things, for a road paved makes a smoother journey.
I was born into a time of strife. If religion was the bread of life, then superstition became the ale to wash it down. Although we had a king called Edward sitting on the throne, the true ruler was fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of burning in Hell, fear of angering the landowners, fear of war coming to our doors. Fear of too much rain, too much blight, too much hunger. Outsiders were distrusted and resented unless they brought news or items for barter. Life was harsh. And this is just life in a village, such as the one I lived. Let us not forget the wars that plagued Europe since time immemorial. Blood, ever the fertilizer, kept Europe green.
Not always have I been immortal. For like all of my kind, I was born to mortal parents. Like some, my roots were humble. Like few, I was deemed doomed from the beginning.
I was born February 29, in the year of our lord 1360.
Leap year children were feared. Suffice it to say, I was tolerated by the village at large. My mother was the healer, my father the blacksmith. His mother, the midwife. Because of my family's importance, I was left alone by all, including my bastard-born sisters. Not because they were beget on the wrong side of the blanket, but because I was tainted by my unfortunate birth.
When I was fourteen, my father mysteriously caught on fire in his forge. No matter my mother's ministrations, he never responded. A week later, he passed away in her arms.
When he died, half of Mother died too.
The sun shone bright, birds sang out from the newly leafed trees the day we put my father in the ground.
It was the summer of my father's death that the peddler first came through the village square. A team of spirited black horses kicked up dust as a brightly painted wagon lumbered behind them, holding all the peddler's trade goods, as he sat on the bench with reins in his left hand. He waved, sang and whistled, and soon all in Buckfast knew a stranger had arrived. The sun glinted upon auburn hair and his intense green eyes were as uncommon a shade as my own. Upon his face was a beard that fringed his square jawline. He was handsome, which aided in his dealings with goodwives, for they were like sun-warmed butter when he spoke. The menfolk liked him well-enough, for he never dallied with their women and would attend mass each morning he spent in our village.
After mass, he began conducting his business in the shade of a large elm tree, always dressed in the same manner of a tunic over woolen leggings, in sober colors. He would then present his wagon's secret nooks, crannies opened and uncovered to display all his goods. Bolts of gaily colored fabrics and thread, pots and pans, spices, herbs and salt, jewelry, exotic perfumes and ribbons, knives for the table or belt, toys lovingly carved from wood, and hides all fought for attention from their wooden shelves, bins and cupboards.
Folk gathered all about him, each waiting their turn to barter. I traded a small stone pot containing salve of comfrey for a pack of fine metal sewing needles I intended to use for stitching wounds, and he smiled down upon me. That was the first time I felt the self-conscious flush and clumsy hands of flaming youth. After that incident, I let Grandmother Bet do the bargaining whenever he came through town.
For three summers thereafter, Rowan D'Morsang arrived a fortnight past the Midsummer festivities to sell his wares.
If it had not been for Rowan touching my life as he did, I would not be writing this for you. One could equally curse him and extol his virtues in the same breath, as I myself have done a great many times; starting on the night he changed my life.
Another story I'm backing up because my CPU is on borrowed time. :(