Her earliest memories formed during the Roman occupation. Certainly she herself was much, much older. Created from primal drives more ancient than humankind, she lived her ageless life in a fog of obscurity and concealment. Furtive whispers were the only acknowledgement of her presence; anxious believers muttering fervent prayers and obtaining blessed charms to ward off her vapourous attentions. She was of the ethereal, the unsubstantial spawn of buried longings and carefully shrouded desires.
And she fed to slake her hunger.
From one as lowly as a common foot soldier to the Legate himself, she fed. In the cloud-veiled blackness of night she would come, her unformed self wending its way through gaps in tent or blanket. Her warmth like a whisper of warmth once remembered, she traced the sharp angles and sculpted contours of the man below her. Slow, deliberate entanglement of her amorphous self with the mind and body of her prey; a joining ending only in the spastic rush of the body’s ultimate achievement of desire.
Time had taught her cunning. Long association with the victims demonstrated the value of discretion. As the centurions gave way to the superstitious barbarians in their pathetic hovels, her attention gradually turned away from local residents to wayfarers. If she were too aggressive with the occupants of her tiny village, she would frighten them away under the auspices of one of the endless numbers of uneducated priests, men of extreme adherence to the virtues of their calling. Stalking travellers was the wisest choice. Selected with care, a rich, well-fed noble provided immeasurably greater nourishment for her dark and unseemly hungers.
Thus it was that she became the chattel of Alfred Earl of Warwick.
It began as all feedings began. Through the chinks of the rude shelter used by travellers, she poured herself into the presence of her chosen prey. She had passed by the horses of the traveller and his retainers with great care; so often the beasts, sensitive to worlds beyond man’s reckoning, would snort with alarm at her presence and awaken her quarry. But these remained quiet, calmly dozing together in the quiet of the night. The horses were magnificent animals, clearly well fed and cared for.
He was the wealthiest traveller she had seen in some time. Plague and pestilence had made difficult roads yet more treacherous with thieves and cutthroats, starvelings and other shadowy terrors. Occasional crop failures caused starvation and still more disease. A weak man was no man for her; like all predators, difficult times for prey meant difficult times for the hunter.
Behind her, the moon had spread its pale fingers through the walls and rough-hewn door to scatter over the sleeping man and his possessions. As she gathered her dissipated self, her eyes began to perceive the subtle colours of the midnight-washed room. The stone hearth, blackened and grey from years of use, stood cold against one wall. Brown saddlebags lay close by the head of the bedstead. The man’s form was wrapped against the cold under a deep green cloak, finely woven and richly embroidered. She gasped with pleasure at the subtle play of moonlight on the silver and gold threads edging his garment. Her gasp was no more than the slightest intake of breath, not enough to gutter a candle’s flame, yet the man beneath her floating form seemed to stir and sough.
