“Why, sire, you are in Ludlow Castle.”
Well, I’d been in Connecticut for many years, surrounded on all sides by English-sounding place names, but Ludlow had never been mentioned. “What county?”
She looked at me oddly. “I believe we are in Shropshire, sire.”
“Never heard of it.”
She flinched from me. “Beg pardon, sire?”
“Why, Phillipa, I have never heard of a Connecticut county called Shropshire.”
She began to edge away from me, despite my grip on her body. “Sir, you speak strangely, your dress is… strange, and you press me for answers which I seem not to have.”
I moved closer, holding her head in as gentle a vice grip as I could. “I’m getting fucking sick of this ‘Olde Worlde’ bullshit!” I railed through clenched teeth. I let my breath slowly cascade over her face. “Tell me the truth, Phillipa, only the truth. Do you understand?” She nodded, her eyes clouding somewhat; her last resistance to my questioning now extinguished. “Where are we?”
“Ludlow Castle, sire.”
“And where exactly in the world is Ludlow Castle, Phillipa?”
She paused. “In England, sire, near the Welsh border.”
Crap; not the answer I’d expected.
I felt a twitching in my body as my mind dealt with the information. What she’d told me seemed beyond the pale, beyond my imagination. And yet I’d travelled from the grip of a spinning vampire to being alone in a dark bedroom, and I did not question that.
But a question loomed in the dark of my subconscious, one which surfaced quickly as a realization dawned. “What year is it?” I asked, my lip already trembling, anticipating her reply.
My captive looked to be crumbling before me, even under the control of my vampire breath, scared out of her wits. “It is the year of our Lord, fifteen hundred and one, sire.”
My turn to crumble. I tried to think rationally, but found the processes unavailable to me.
“Sleep, Phillipa, forget me,” I said, letting her head rest back onto the firm pillow.
Even my vampire requirement to feed from her neck lay forgotten as I picked up my boots and walked bemused to her door.
1501.
Shit.
1501?
Consolidation
I made my way silently down to the courtyard, then sped under the long archway between the two drowsy guards, across a further larger grassy courtyard, and through the open main gate. Houses lay immediately beyond these outer walls, and carried on down the hill, but I soon left those behind me. The wet ground under my bare feet woke my consciousness still further, and the bracing cold air filled my lungs as I raced faster, putting miles between me and the dark cold walls of Ludlow Castle.
Eventually my feet hit water, and I suddenly found myself out of my depth in a dark river.
Startled out of my need for flight, I turned around, swimming back for shore. Finally my feet found the pebbled bottom and I walked from the river, my clothes soaking, my body shaking with nervous energy.
Slowly, I began to process. Nowhere in my flight had I seen any form of artificial lighting. No roads to speak of, nothing of modern construction.
I sat on the grassy riverbank, my head in my hands, trying to make any sense of the situation, and found that only one possibility, no matter how implausible it seemed; I had indeed travelled through time and space, and ended up in England in 1501.
With the slowing of my heart came the rationality required to deal with the situation. I needed clothes, and I needed pretty good ones. The choice of serf in this day and age would not be good for my survival. Vampires die from wood through the heart and beheading, both of which are part and parcel of Tudor times; I’d seen enough evidence on television.
I needed an identity. I needed a backstory, and I needed some kind of safe haven in which to hide, gather my thoughts, and settle myself down.
Then I had to find a way back to the good ole USA.
“Ludlow Castle,” I said out loud against the gentle trickling noise of the river. “No shit.”
I sat beside the cool water, realizing that I’d lost my boots somewhere on the flight from the castle.
“Damn,” I said, shaking my head. If anything I could recall about the period, footwear hadn’t been high on the technology side. Not that my cowboy boots would have fitted in anyway.
Then I pondered the period, trying to recall anything which would help me re-orientate myself in these strange, distant times.
England, 1501 meant King Henry the Eighth or thereabouts. Queen Elizabeth? I cursed myself for not paying more attention at school or even to the Tudors on HBO. The White Queen on Starz had been popular, but I had no idea if it had been close to 1501.
Connecticut had one of the biggest Renaissance Fairs in the country, but I hadn’t even been since I was a kid.
And that was back in the eighties. So much for my education.
I’d been ‘turned’ back in 2000, just a few months after my twenty-fourth birthday; initiated into ranks of the immortal, and as a vampire I would remain twenty-four years old until someone put a stick through my heart, turning me to the finest dust.
Oh yeah, and isn’t it a strange turn of irony that puts Jonathan Rhys Myers as Henry the Eighth on the Tudors on HBO, then casts him as Dracula, the most famous vampire. Then me, a vampire, ends up in King Henry’s time.
My scattering of glances at the television didn’t help me now, but my priorities seemed to be settling in my mind; food, clothes, and information. Those would aid my survival more than anything else.
If the year actually turned out to be 1501, then everyone carried swords and such, and edged weapons were detrimental to a vampire’s health.
Stripping my Floyd T shirt and tossing it to one side, I walked from the river and made my way away from the water, following the rutted roadway I’d strayed from. Turning left led back to the castle, so I began to walk. My head felt light and I knew I needed to feed, but I also needed to calm myself down, to begin thinking rationally. Ludlow Castle had proven itself a known quantity, and seemed as good a place to start as any.
As I walked, the sky slowly began to lighten, signaling the beginnings of dawn. Thank goodness modern vampires don’t get burnt by sunlight; I don’t know what I would have done just having a life at night.
Then I smelled smoke. I stopped in my tracks, and found the wind direction. A walk of less than a half mile through woodland brought me to a small house. Cottage style, shutters on the windows, with either mud or stucco used to finish its rough walls. Smoke drifted through the thatching high on the roof; no chimney then.
The increased levels of my vampire senses started to rise to the fore. As I approached the house, noises from within became evident. Then I caught the slight smell of cooking. Porridge, maybe, certainly nothing meat-based.
“…pasture today.” I heard as I neared the door. The words were thick with accent.
“Yes, papa.” A female voice, young, but maybe not too young.
Sensing nothing to alarm me, I knocked on the door. “Hello?”
I heard movement inside, then the door opened slowly. A man stood in the doorway, his hands clutching a pitchfork, aimed at my throat. “Argh?” I moved back from the sharp tines. Even the serfs proved dangerous in 1501.
“I’m lost,” I said slowly. “I seek directions to the castle.”
The man’s face and clothes looked filthy, his hair uncombed and uncut. Perhaps seeing me unarmed, he lowered the pitchfork. “Argh, ye be lost a’right.” He moved back and waved me inside. “Gentry, Elsie, the gen’lman be gentry.”
On initial impression, the inside of the house looked as unkempt as the man’s hair, but once properly inside, it appeared just to be cluttered and disorganized. A central fire burnt on the clay floor, a large pot suspended above it.
“You been robbed, sire?” the man asked, pointing to my bare, bleeding feet.
“Yes,” I immediately replied, latching onto tha
t particular detail, as it fit my predicament so well. “Robbers, they took everything.”
“Kept yir pants, tho’ I see.” He pointed to my wet black jeans.
“Aye,” I said, getting into the structure of the language. “But naught else.”
“Wat be yir name, sire?”
“Richard,” I replied truthfully without any thought. “Richard DeVere.”
“Well, Master DeVere, we can offer ye porridge, that’s all.” He ushered me away from his daughter stirring the pot at the stove, her eyes seemingly intent on her task, yet still catching glances at me. “Per’aps you’d like to get out o’ yir trews, an’ get ‘em dried out?”
I’m glad that I’d kept my wits about me, because as I nodded and looked to the back of the one-roomed house, I saw movement behind me, and ducked quickly. A large staff whistled over my head; so close, I felt it brush my hair.
I snarled at the dark recess of the room and dragged a youth from the shadows. One punch to the forehead sent him reeling, his body limp, back into the darkness.
I turned to find the pitchfork being thrust at me, and slipped quickly to one side, catching the shaft as it passed. Two blows to the man’s neck felled him to the ground where he lay still.
I turned to the girl, Elsie, to find her brandishing a dull-looking knife and a ladle.
“Don’ you be hittin’ me now,” she said, fear flashing over her comely features.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Elsie.” I advanced slowly towards her, stepping over her father’s body. It took little coordination to snatch her ‘weapons’ from her small hands, leaving her defenseless and shaking before me.
I leant closer. “Sleep, Elsie. Sleep.”
She slumped instantly to my instruction and my vampire pheromones, and I caught her under the arms, laying her down on the smooth earth floor.
I looked around the room. These lowly people had realized my precarious state, and tried to kill and rob me for what I had left. Being killed just for your pants wasn’t my idea of safety, so I began to search the house for other people, and anything else to help my situation.
Of course, I found nothing.
I stripped, and hung my sodden trousers and underpants by the fire, standing naked in front of its warmth. At first the material sizzled, but soon became dry enough to wear comfortably. As I buttoned up the fly, I noticed that the beginnings of an erection had started unbidden. Probably the result of having an unconscious woman lying nearby.
I knew in my heart that I had to feed, the requirement manifested itself as a distinct tremble in my hands as I searched the place some more.
Confident that the father and boy were still out for the count, I turned to my recumbent prize. Elsie looked about sixteen, maybe younger, perhaps older. I mean, what did I know about the girls from this time period? Very plain. I mean, so plain she almost looked ugly.
Her one-piece garment covered her from neck to ankles, but one quick lift told me all I needed to know; apart from the many layers, nothing would interfere with a quick hump. Yet on closer inspection she seemed dirty, not only her hands and face, but everywhere else, too. I put my face close to her hairy sex and caught whiff of a foul odor.
“Oh, no.”
I recoiled with a distinct grimace across my face. So, since having sex with this unknown girl didn’t seem to be on the cards, I would feed avoiding the usual additional sexual stimulus.
Without waking her up, I stabbed my sharp canines into her bare neck, found her carotid artery immediately and drank deeply. She stirred slightly from her induced slumber, but did not fully waken. When I had drunk my fill, I licked her wounds clean, my saliva closing the two small puncture wounds immediately.
I gave a wry grin. Seemingly, if I wanted sex in this time period, I’d have to look for it further up the food chain. And that meant getting myself up the food chain, too.
With this aim I strode back to the road, and resumed my trek towards the castle.
Before long, the sun began to rise properly, and as I walked, I mused my situation. If I actually had been transported to the 1500s, cleanliness wasn’t exactly top of everyone’s list as far as I could remember. In fact, I seemed to recall a trivia fact; Queen Elizabeth having a bath twice a year. And I had no idea if sexually transmitted diseases held any danger for me at all. I’d never thought about it back in my own time.
And there I stood, already differentiating between the two time periods, and making the whole time-travel thing official.
Time travel problems also weighed on my mind. I mean, wasn’t there a problem with paradoxes if you travelled back in time; killing butterflies and all that stuff?
I heard horses behind me, and sprang to the side of the road, hiding in a ditch behind a thicket of bushes. I watched as two military men rode closer, then guided by one, they reined their mounts to a halt, drawing their swords as they did so.
“Come out!” the nearest one snapped, pointing his sword directly at my head. “I watched you hide, do not try my patience.”
I slowly got to my feet and stepped through the thicker, longer grass onto the dirt road. Looking up along the shining sharp blade, I became a little more aware of my own mortality here, back in these earlier times. Again, I decreed that I would seek a quick rise in station so that I too would wear one of these wonderful weapons at my waist.
“Richard DeVere, my lord,” I offered before being asked. “I got accosted by brigands a few miles back. I intended to seek refuge or assistance at the castle.”
The man with the drawn sword kept it leveled at my head. “Where do you hail from? Your accent is not familiar.”
“I am from the Netherlands, your lordship.” I wasn’t telling lies; I’d just skipped a few generations, then I recalled the older name. “From Amsterdam, Holland, sire.”
“Ah, the Low Countries.”
I nodded, cataloguing the name like many other newly gathered factoids.
“We await the arrival of a new tutor for the Prince. Are you he?” The man waved me onwards, but showed little intention of giving me a ride on his horse.
This seemed to be no time for hesitation. “Yes, I am the Prince’s new tutor.”
“Ah, in that case, well met.” He sheathed his sword and offered me a hand, pulling me behind him, where I rode, virtually on the horse’s rump. The constant slapping of my ass onto the horse proved immediately annoying, but it proved better than walking, and I’d found my first step-up in this primitive time.
It took most of the morning to get to within spitting distance of the castle walls again, high on a wooded hill, but at least I now had two acquaintances as I neared the shadow of the great sprawling fortress, Robert, who I rode behind, and Alfred.
“I will present you at the gatehouse,” Robert said, letting me to the ground, where I flexed my protesting legs against the morning’s cruel posture on the horse.
As we neared the main entrance, a man with a bunch of scrolls under his arm exited and almost bumped into me. The scrolls fell upon the ground, bouncing and rolling on the grass.
“Master Linacre?” Alfred came to attention. “We rescued this one on the road, he is the new tutor.”
“Sorry to be in the way.” I crouched, picking up one of the scrolls to return it. “It was my fault entirely.”
The man straightened himself and pulled on the collar of his long, dark coat. “You, sir, are late. I am Thomas Linacre, your overseer.”
“I’m sorry…” I repeated, not knowing how much more the man intended to admonish me, nor knowing exactly what title to give. He looked school-masterish in the extreme; thin, awkward, and short-sighted, although he wore no spectacles.
“No apologies accepted.” He pushed scrolls under his arm, leaving me holding three, and waved me inside. “The Prince has been without a tutor for four days already. He will need a much firmer hand now that his betrothal is imminent. Who knows how long we will be able to exert an influence after that.” I followed the dark-haired man through the archwa
y, muttering over his shoulder at me, then across a large interior grassy area, heading towards a stone arched bridge over a moat.
Now that looked cool. Yes, the inner, taller part of this castle was protected by a real, live moat. I caught a glimpse over the side of the low stone wall. Dark green water mirrored my face back.
Inside these ‘secondary’ higher walls, the noon sun did not touch much of the cobbled courtyard, moss extended from every fissure, almost carpeting the stony ground. “Spain will launch its spies, and King Henry will tighten the cordon round the Prince until he is even more stifled.”
I followed in silence, taking the offered information that Linacre provided and processed it as quickly as I could, grasping at any straw of information gleaned. His thin lips seemed to move constantly; his version of a nervous twitch.
King Henry. Okay, I cataloged that away. That meant King Henry the eighth, so the Prince would be his son. In my mind I fast-forwarded through all seasons of the Tudors on HBO. Sadly, the only images that had stuck in my head had been the bedroom romps. Damn my own hide.
“Rescued?” The man suddenly stopped, turned, and looked at me properly. “I just realized the guard had said, ‘rescued’. What happened to you?”
“I was robbed by brigands, sire,” I said, kinda getting into the sire, lord thing, hoping I’d got it correct. “I perceive that I still have not collected my wits fully.”
“Brigands?” His eyes opened wide, perhaps taking for the first time the fact that I stood stripped to the waist, and shoeless. “And you were not killed?”
“I got away, sire.” I indicated my bare feet. “But they stole my boots. And everything else, of course. But I miss my boots.”
He changed direction, and led me to another courtyard door.
“We will get you sorted out,” Linacre said, pointing to my bare chest and trousers. “We cannot present you to His Highness in that state, can we?”
Developing my new persona took a bit of doing, but I felt good about my progress so far. I’d gone from knave to Prince’s tutor in a day.
I just wish I had something to teach him.