Vigil (23 page)

Chapter Fifty-Two

1843

It is not easy to dig yourself out of a hole. You have very little leverage, and your arms are at your side. But I have immense strength. My long sleep had replenished me. Even though I had not fed while I had been in the earth, this time I had not been dead. I did not need to feed to wake. My heart went from perhaps one beat for every ten minutes to a beat a minute…then two…I felt the old power running through me. I began to struggle against the dirt, pushing and wriggling as best I could. Over the years the hole had got deeper and tighter.

             
After what seemed like hours, although there really is no way to tell the passage of hours within the earth, I pushed up with my hand and felt the cool night breeze on my fingertips. My fingers tingled madly in the sudden change of temperature and the wind awakened nerve endings in my fingers that had been dead before my long hibernation. I pulled myself through the earth. My head broke the surface. At first I could see nothing. I thought for a moment that I had become blind over the years, but it was just dirt gumming my eyes. I wiped them clean and peered through the dark and the people dancing and cavorting in the clearing away from me. I saw that trees had grown up around me while I had been asleep. They were dancing in a clearing among the young trees. There was a camp that consisted of perhaps forty people. Women, children and men all danced to a happy rhythm played out on pipes and string instruments and a set of hand drums.

             
They danced, whirling in the soft breeze. The women’s skirts splayed out as they danced, fluttering like the flames from their campfire. I watched, mesmerised. I sat that way for quite some time, relishing the sound of the music and the sight of their bright dancing. I was hypnotised by the wind on my naked skin, the rhythm of the night, their colours and their lives, their verve as they leapt and laughed and sang their strange songs.

             
It might seem strange that I have not heard music but the drums of battle in all my long years. Imagine never hearing a song or singing for centuries, then waking to an ancient tune full of joy and hope. Imagine the way your heart would sing and want to be part of that joy. Then imagine living in silence for a hundred years before you hear that sound and you might understand the impact their song had on me.

             
I wanted to dance and join in. I wanted to be a part of their circle, holding hands with their women and twirling them so that their skirts might rustle in the silent moments of the dance.

             
I knew I could not be one of these happy people. I was not their kind. I was full of hunger. I lusted for blood while they revelled in the dance.

             
I could not be one with them. But perhaps, I thought, there was another way. I pulled myself from the earth and walked toward the camp.

             
I saw their caravans, then, and realised that these were their homes. While they were distracted I walked toward a stream I had felt from within the woods. Along the way I heard a rustling in the bushes and a hammer-like heart beat, strong and virile in its youth. I ran the deer down and drank my fill of its blood. The hunger abated, although I knew it would not be long. But then my need for blood seemed to have diminished somewhat after my long sleep. My body’s desires were slowing, it seemed, with age. In many ways the dirt had nourished me. It had seeped into my wounded body and healed the hurts.

             
My feet were whole. My hands unmarred underneath the blood and dirt. I was healed and stronger than I had been for years.

             
There was food in the dirt. I wished I had learned to sleep before now. Perhaps my troubles would have lessened if I had know I could just creep into the dirt to heal. I should have understood as much after my short initial life, before an axe wound to the head had knocked me insensible. It was the earth that had healed me. The earth was, in many ways, my mother. I had only to creep back into her womb to grow new flesh.

             
After feeding I returned on my walk to the stream. There, I washed the dirt of hibernation from my skin, tore my finger and toenails short, scrubbed my long hair and beard until the skin underneath was clean and burning from the cold water.

             
Then I walked back to the camp.

             
They were dancing again, and I didn’t want to disturb them, but men react badly when they are shocked, and sometimes they do rash things, like try to kill me, even if I have a full belly and no intention of feeding.

             
I did not want to take the chance of being put to sleep again, so soon after waking up. And I certainly did not want to kill these people. I wanted only to dance and bathe in the glorious notes of their music.

             
I called out to the camp, in Romanian.

             
‘Good evening,’ I called. The music stopped and they turned to see what a stranger was doing out in the field of trees, so far from other people.

             
The women saw my state of undress and began to giggle. The older children (I assumed that the younger children had gone to bed) joined in. It was fortunate, I suppose, that in laughing at me their guard was lowered.

             
‘Please excuse my indisposition, but I was robbed on the road of all my belongings. I heard your beautiful song and saw your dancing. I hoped you would allow me to dance with you. If someone would be kind enough to lend me some clothes, that is.’

             
One of the men came forward and motioned me to follow him.

             
I could hear their hearts beating in their chests. Their humour relaxed them. If they had run or fought perhaps it would have been a different story. Perhaps I would have chased them down. As it was the man, roughly my height, took me into one of their bright caravans and took some clothes from a cupboard over a bed.

             
‘Strange for a man to be out this far. Were you lost?’

             
‘Yes, I was journeying to the north. Three men of ill-aspect robbed me of my gold and my clothes. I gave them a few licks of my own, but one hit me on the head and I passed out.’

             
‘You were lucky,’ he said, passing me a gaudy shirt of red and a pair of trousers. I put them on and smiled at him.

             
‘Thank you. They are very comfortable.’

             
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come and join us for the night.’

             
I followed him to the fire. They were dancing again.

             
I stood by the side, watching them dancing around the fire. The man whose clothes I wore motioned me to join, but I was suddenly shy. Unsure of the steps I watched and tried to learn by watching their feet move.

             
Then a woman walked from the other side of the fire and took my hand. ‘Come, I will show you,’ she said.

             
For the first time in centuries I was speechless. Not because I was especially shy of women, or any mortal, but because she was the woman of my dreams.

             
I took her hand like a man in a dream, staring at her face. I danced then, all night, but I did not watch her feet. I trod on her sometimes, and sometimes I bumped into her, clumsy all of a sudden, against my nature. She danced circles around me and laughed, the hollow of her throat flickering with the pulse of life and her earrings glinting in the light of the fire.

             
The music mesmerised me. The woman from my dreams hypnotised me with her swirling, swaying dance and I was a fool for a woman for the first time in my life. I remembered her, but I remembered her forwards. It was as though the future and the past were somehow meshed together to form one perfect moment. In that moment I was wholly a creature of the now. Our natures did not matter. That we were of a different species, as different as dark and light, made no difference to the dance.

             
On and on we danced while my eyes never left her face.

             
In the morning the dance stopped. She bid me a good night, and went to her caravan alone, I noticed. I longed to follow her. I was not a man given to understanding the subtleties of human behaviour, but I thought she wanted me to follow her. I could not. I knew it, even then, in my lust to own her and hold her through the ages. I could not, because I knew that if I lay with her she would be like me and then things could never be the same. We could never have a night of dancing again, just years and years of feeding.

             
I loved her instantly. I would not curse her with this life. She owned her own life, I could see that in every movement she made, every smile she gave so freely. To change her would be to destroy her.

             
I wanted to own her, but I also wanted her to be free.

             
I lay down underneath a wagon to get out of the light of the sun and slept until they woke at noon.

*

Chapter F
ifty-Three

1843
Romani Camp

In the morning the woman from my dreams brought me a cup of some hot brew. I had not been sleeping, just laying underneath the caravan out of the bitter morning light. The people had been up and about for about an hour now. Children were running and playing. I noticed that there were dogs about, which perhaps had been sleeping the night before. The horse that drew their bright wagons were free from harness to graze on the lush grassland, free to wander a little way through the trees and drink from the stream.

             
I took the cup with a smile. She did not seem disconcerted by my bright teeth. Her own were healthy and white, too. I noticed that some of the older people’s teeth had fallen from their heads. It was not like the world of my dreams, where everyone’s teeth were the same as mine and their smiles just as dazzling.

             
‘Thank you,’ I said. I didn’t want to drink the tea. I was afraid it might make me sick and I didn’t want to offend my hosts. I knew precious little about the customs of people. Perhaps I should have made more of an effort to learn over the years, but I usually shunned the world of men apart from when I ate. I remembered how people had eaten in the monastery and tried to emulate them. I took a tiny sip of the tea to show my thanks. It was sweet and disgustingly bitter at the same time, but I smiled again just to show that there were no hard feelings.

             
‘Where do you come from?’ she asked. ‘You have a strange accent. You are not Romanian, yet you speak their language perfectly.’

             
Her face was so open that I was disarmed. I found the lie on my lips and realised that for her it would be an insult, even though she would never know it was not the truth. I decided to be as honest with her as I could. Obviously, there were some things that I could not tell her. I was a fool to believe that I could keep my nature a secret from her. But I didn’t trouble myself about the big lies, not then.

             
‘I do not know where I come from originally. The first language I learned was Romanian. That, I suppose, is my mother tongue. I have travelled widely, though. I can speak many languages and read and write some ten or so more. But your language – you speak like Romanian yet there are some words that I do not understand.’

             
‘We are the Romani. We are not Romanian. We travel widely, too. I speak three languages.’ She said this last without a trace of pride. It was just something that the people did. They spoke the languages where they travelled.

             
‘Do you always carry your homes with you?’

             
‘Some do. Some don’t. Some of us marry and settle.’

             
There seemed to be a hint of question in this last statement. I could not fathom what it was. I did not realise then just how direct she could be.

             
‘I would know more of your people. Do you think I could travel with you a while?’ I felt like a fool asking, like I was asking more than I had spoken aloud. I was scared, I suppose, that she might say no and that I might not be able to stay. I wanted to stay with her more than I had ever wanted anything. She had captivated me more totally than even the blood. She was a new addiction and I hungered for her above all else.

             
It was strange that such a chance meeting with a human woman could have such a profound effect on me, but she was a remarkable woman. In all my years I have never met a human with such power, such poise and composure. I have met powerful men throughout my years, and none could hold a candle to her. She was an inferno.

             
I waited, staring at her soft face, waiting for a smile or a shake of the head.

             
She smiled and my heart leapt.

             
‘We leave in a few days. We are heading south of the mountains for winter. You are welcome to stay with us. Would you share with me?’

             
She blushed a little. I did not know if there was some breach of etiquette among her people, but I knew enough to understand that among other people such an invitation would have been brazen.

             
I think I may have blushed a little myself.

             
‘I would like that very much.’

             
I thought the rest of our conversations could wait for a while. Such as why we could never be as man and wife. I did not want to spoil the day though, because she was laughing and clapping her hands in delight and it was a wonderful sight and the sound of her joy was infectious. I took her hand.

             
‘Come, we must tell the others!’

             
‘Very well,’ I said, and followed her. I assumed that they were probably some kind of elder or leader who needed to know that the people had a travelling companion.

             
When she beamed and called all the people around and told them that we were engaged. I nearly dropped dead from a heart attack. Believe me when I say it takes a lot to stop my heart.

*