Blood and Candy Hearts

I sat quietly on the wide wooden window sill, looking out at a sprawling green pasture as the sun was fading behind the mountains. I let one leg dangle from the edge, kicking my heavy skirts lazily. I was impatient. It was St. Valentine's day...this was a special St. Valentine's day. A few years earlier on this day I had done something either very brave or perhaps very stupid and as a result tonight my life would change forever. I pulled my thick blond hair off to one side and began braiding it over my shoulder idly as my thoughts drifted to that evening that seemed so long ago and the events that proceeded it.

The towns folk had been ready to riot, fear gripped us all in a chokehold. Death had descended on our little village and with the population being mostly ignorant, superstitious farmers and peasants a riot was not a hard thing to incite. Every few days for over a week now the body of some poor dead girl was found by the harsh morning glare that cut through the trees at sunrise to fall across the road out of town. Had they not been taken away for burial the road would be littered with the pale white corpses of pretty young women. All left lying awkwardly like broken puppets in the wagon ruts. All bled dry. Some had even had their throats ripped out or were decorated in patterns of bite wounds that seemed almost methodical. No one ever heard screams or caught the act in progress.

At first the town's residents had decided a murderer was among them and demanded the local authorities did something but they could find no one to point a finger at and the brutality of the slayings was inhuman. The teeth used to tear their flesh had been sharp, wolves perhaps. Wolves however were not abundant in our area, farmers had decimated the packs to protect their livestock. Besides wolves would have eaten them, at least in part. Cries of beast and werewolf echoed through the streets for a few days but again, they were not eaten and there was no sign of a beast. We were all afraid, all confused. We each said our prayers that it would end soon. Mothers kept their daughters close and men roamed the streets with weapons late into the nights.

St. Valentine's day had been a sweet reminder that life was not over and most of the village's young girls were still alive. The evening fell soft and hushed and though everyone was rushing to get indoors the air was not as frantic as it had been so much lately. Until a couple hours after the sun went down that is.

I was eating a piece of bread and cheese and listening to my father drone on about the new mare he had won in a bet when the distant sound of an angry mob cut through the stillness. The roar was coming closer and I could tell they were filling the town square. My father frowned at me as we both jumped up from our seats near the fireplace. "Oh lord, this can't be good." Exclaimed my mother with her hands clenched. She was following us out the door at a trot trying to keep up.

We could already see the bright glow of many torches and fire sconces flickering off the stone and wood around us before we rounded the corner into the square. Several fretful looking nuns and two red faced priests stood in a semi circle around a kneeling man in chains. I did not recognize his bent form as any one I knew. The rest of the villagers were yelling so much I couldn't make sense of anything at first. The man kneeling at their mercy was not a large intimidating man by any means yet not only was he shackled but a thick metal collar encircled his neck and two very large men held the chains that ran from it. His hair hid his face from my view, it was long and looked black but it was not. Firelight bouncing off his tangled locks revealed strands of copper, bronze, gold and red from within the darkness. His pale hands were shaking and bloody. His clothing was torn and bloody. He was marked with dirt and bruises as if he had fought hard for his freedom. Surely he had, no one wanted to be at the mouth end of an angry mob with pitchforks and hatchets. There were two butchers and a blacksmith in the crowd alone that could inflict some horrendous torture and without doubt kill a man. That and anything that had the local clergy staring you down like that could not be good.