Ardith - A Vampire Story (editing)

Chapter 1 Prologue of Sadness

'There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck, and arms were bare;
Her blue-veined feet unsandl'd were,
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair.
I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she-
Beautiful exceedingly!'

Excerpt from the poem Chistabel,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1884)

Chapter 1 Prologue of Sadness

It was a cold autumnal night and the dogs in the front yard howled as an omen that the Reaper stretched his bony fingers over the Cuthberht's mansion. In the distance, the craggy peaks of the Harz mountain range stood scarcely visible amidst the darkness and the thickness of the clouds in the sky. Lightnings flashed, flaring up the firmament while thunders clashed rumbling by the hillsides to them echo back on the stone walls of the castle announcing that a storm threatened to lash over the region of Harzburg.

Strong gusts blew, howling a mortuary chant to open with rampant force the windows of the room where the duchess agonized. Orla, the faithful servant, wrestled against the raging blinds portending to unbolt to let in the cold and fierce winds.

"Alea iacta est", crestfallen, Bishop Rudrich muttered, still waiting outside the dormitory to give the final anointing as accustomed by faith. Lady Edwina's soul would dwell with the Lord on that stormy night.

The healers also left the room at requested by Lord Aelderic, since nothing else could be done for the poor woman and the duke wished to spend those last moments with his beloved wife. Only Lord Aelderic, his daughter Ardith and Orla, the old maid, remained.

More than a simple maidservant, Orla was a close friend to the Cuthberhts and a mother to the manor's mistress. When Lady Edwina was a little girl, her father, the Duke of Goslar, hired the woman to be the girl's nanny and governess. By that time the young and fair lady renounced to everything; having her own life and a family to serve unconditionally to the Goslars and years later, the Cuthberths. It was the nanny who walked Edwina to the altar when she got married and assisted her when Ardith was born. But that night, the so anguished servant cried with hopelessness, praying by the window; her stare wandered outside in the stormy sky. There, Orla begged fervently to all the saints she recalled by name for a miracle to happen, even though she knew that this evening would be the last for the castle's mistress.

Lord Aelderic leaned his tired back against the wall, his gaze lost somewhere in the dormitory waiting for the anticipated, yet undesired upshot. His beautiful young daughter sobbed uncontrollably while sitting on the bed next to her dying mother. What a pitiful situation, for Lady Edwina was still young, barely in her forties, yet her beauty languished to the specter of a terrible disease. Where it was once abundant and red hair, now reduced to frail gray rags and her bright green eyes lost the luster that life once had given to them. Her feeble and appalled body quivered as she coughed repeatedly, exhaling painfully her last breaths while Ardith held with tenderness her mother's cold and trembling hands.

Contemplating for the last time her daughter's tearful face and making an extraordinary effort considering her circumstances to keep her eyes open, the duchess smiled. A thin line drew on her colorless lips. Her labored breathing sounded more like a loud and laborious moan, giving signs of a weary body losing the battle for life. Edwina tried in vain to reach Ardith's face, but her hand fell to her sides and her eyelids closed forever.

Three years later...

It was early in the morning and Ardith read sitting by the stoned water well in the garden sheltered under and arch of flowers and vines. A beautiful day like no other, that summer nature had been benevolent offering days without heavy showers and somehow warmer than usual in the slopes of the Harz mountain range. Her pleasant reading and her stranded thoughts were interrupted when Orla arrived to the garden. "There you are my girl. I've been looking for you", the servant said beaming a motherly smile.