Crispin the Vampire: The Cross of Blood

3

3

My wretched existence began on the Feast of Saint Giles in the Year of our Lord 1364, the thirty-seventh year of the reign of Edward the Third, the great warrior king of England. We resided in the poor Stromford Village, along with the other one hundred and forty-eight souls.

For as long as my memory permitted me, my mother had called me "Son," and so my common name was "Asta's son." In a dark world that lived by the light and status of a father, I, who had no father, lived in the dark. The better and brighter your father was, the better and brighter you were. I lived in the shadow of my mother, instead. I was told that my father, like so many others, died in the Great Mortality (often called the Black Death or Plague), before my birth. Her words on him were brief and bitter, hinting that there was something off about him.

My mother never took another husband, a circumstance I did not find surprising, since she was oft mocked and ridiculed by the other villagers. Even if she wasn't, very few men would want to take on a wife so frail, feeble, and poor. For in the entire kingdom of England, there was not and has not ever been two poorer Christian souls than my mother and I, well, now only I.

I had few friends, and none that I completely trusted. Being "Asta's son," I was too often the butt of cruel jests, jibes, and relentless taunts.

I had once asked Father Quinel why they bother me at one of my many confessions. Those were numerous, considering there was some monstrous sin buried in me, a sin that I was desperate to determine the source.

"Be accepting," the priest advised. "Remember how our Blessed Christ was taunted and tormented on the road to Calvary."

I did try, but unlike our perfect Savior, I was filled with caution and suspicion at every turn. I always expected to be set upon or mocked. In short, I lived the life of one who was cast aside, forever shunned, yet always looking on, curious as to how others lived.

There was very little my mother or I could do about our plight. We were not slaves, although we were not too far from that. We had few rights, but not freedom. The steward never lost an opportunity to remind us that we were no more than petty villeins-or serfs-forever bound to Lord Duranger of Stromford Village, until death do us part.

The villagers and I had been told that this Lord Duranger had fought in France, been to mercenary wars, or fought some other battle for so many years that very few of us had set eyes upon him. Most have not, including myself.

But Lord Duranger did not matter in the everyday lives of the villagers, since he was never there. Spring, summer, and fall-save certain holy days-every Stromford villager worked in his fields from dawn until dusk. That was destined life.

When winter came, we fed our ox, and sometimes chicken. My mother and I struggled to stay alive- so we gathered wood and brush for heat.

There was a time when bread cost a quarterpenny a loaf, and by King Edward's royal decree, my mother's labor was a penny each day, while mine was but a farthing.

Our food was barley bread, dirty water, and, if the times were good, sometimes cooked dried peas. If good fortune blessed us, we might have a little meat at Christmastide.

Thus our lives never changed, a constant wheel of the seasons, circling beneath the distant promise of Heaven. Time was a great millstone, showing us no mercy, and grounding us to dust like the kerneled wheat. The Holy Church told us where we were in alterations of the day, the year, our daily toil, to name a few. Birth and death gave discernment to our lives, as we slowly made the living journey to whence we would await Judgement Day. Then, God's awesome gaze would fall on us, and grant us eternal life in Heaven, or doom us to eternal pain in Hell.

This was the ceaseless life we led. It was, without doubt, the life my forefathers led, their forefathers, and all the way to Adam. I believed, with all my insignificant existence, that all of humanity would continue to live that way until Archangel Gabriel announced the end if time.

And for me, with my mother's death, it was as if that time had come at last.