The Stuart Vampire by Andrea Zuvich

Author:Andrea Zuvich [Zuvich, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: The Seventeenth Century Lady
Published: 2013-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12:

Susanna

She dug her well-used spade into the rich dark brown soil. She held the tall green stems and leaves in one hand and continued to dig with the other until the plant was loosened from the ground. There were many potatoes, and her mouth watered as she thought of how she would prepare them with the soft butter she had churned the day before. She popped the potatoes up and into a wicker basket, which she made only a month before. The soil embedded itself under her short, stubby fingernails, and she brushed the loose bits of dirt off on her apron.

Susanna Edmonds, exhausted after another strenuous day of labour upon the farm, sat back briefly upon her calloused heels, and wiped the sweat away from her brow, inadvertently leaving behind a smudge of dirt. Her warm hazel eyes scanned the whole of the large plot of vegetables that she had toiled arduously upon. She then let her gaze rest on the hole that was left by her recent exertions; ants and worms crawled and writhed in the dirt, disorientated by the sudden change in their surroundings. She could empathise well with such a feeling, for her world had once been upended in a not too dissimilar manner.

Her misbegotten child having died only the previous year, Susanna had endeavoured to work hard and put those awful memories behind her. It had not been an easy task, for she would often awaken in the night, plagued by nightmares about that horrific attack. And now, in the Year of Our Lord Sixteen Hundred and Sixty-Seven, Susanna was now two-and-twenty years old and already considered the village spinster. She was resigned to the fact that no man would have her; for Belinda had made sure that none of the villagers in Coffin’s Bishop would ever attempt to court her, especially after her public disgrace. Susanna did not particularly like any of them, for none had ever been remotely kind or considerate in all of her interactions with them over the years.

For a brief moment in her life, things seemed well: the afternoon’s sun shone brightly down upon her as she completed the rest of her daily tasks. The yellow orb in the sky rarely showed its head in the village, for Coffin’s Bishop was situated in such a way as to be often misty and under heavy cloud cover. The English weather being what it was, it usually rained, and the streets and fields were often muddy, and spotted with large pools of water. The pattens slipped on over her shoes helped her avoid the worst of this.

Susanna was looking forward to her evening sojourn. Every evening, since her boy’s death, she had taken to wander the forbidden Sanguinem Wood. There were tall oaks, birch and lime trees, and the whole of the ground was covered in deep green ferns which browned and curled at the ends. These ferns were tall enough to hide a large man. Red squirrels scampered about, darting up the trees and burrowing into the soil to hide the nuts they had found.

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