now that i know what i?m without
you can't just leave me
breathe into me and make me real
bring me to life
?bring me to life? - evanescence
1611 was a very important year in the history of Western Civilization. King James I released his Bible, the version still used almost exclusively by Protestants to this day. William Shakespeare's masterpiece, The Tempest debuted on the Globe's stage. Henry Hudson was set adrift in the bay named after him and was never seen again. And I died on the dirt floor of a tenement in the Whitechapel area of London.
It was May...or possibly it had been June of 1611; you'll forgive me if I can't exactly recall the date. It was, after all, 400 years ago. I had been born 17 years previously, in September of 1594, during the reign of that redheaded virgin Elizabeth I. My mother was a whore much liked by the so-called nobility of the city due to her fair skin and pretty blonde curls and the fact that she did not look or act like a whore. The night I was conceived, however, she enjoyed the company of a Gypsy thief from Bucharest, Romania, and not one of the nobles who were her regular customers. She said she fell in love with him that night and willingly bore his child. She said that I was very much like him ? dark of hair, eye, and skin; lithe and flexible with quick, dexterous fingers. I've always doubted these stories, playing them off as the fantasies of a woman with too little common sense and too much romanticism in her blood.
Regardless of the truth of my parentage ? whether Ma bedded Dorin Dragomir for love or because he paid her well ? I grew up hard, living on the streets mostly, learning to survive by my wits alone. I stole my first purse at the tender age of five and soon graduated to breaking into homes. I was small of frame, skinny, and could contort my body into all sorts of odd positions, making it easy to slip in and out of tiny windows, small holes in thatched roofs, and chinks in walls before anyone inside knew I was there.
Stealing was a way of life for me. It was much more than simply a means to survive. It was an undeniable compulsion, a way to keep from becoming what my mother had become, a way to take care of myself and occasionally the other children who huddled with me at night in the ground floor of a dirty, wretched building in one of the dirtiest, most wretched parts of London.
There had been rumors about an Albania Count who kept a townhouse on the Strand, near the Savoy Palace, for years. People said he was demon, or a Satanist, or an evil sorcerer. People said that his wealth came from deals with the Devil himself. People said that if you were caught looking into his eyes, he would own your soul and you'd be turned into some kind of unthinking, unwitting monster. All these rumors were ridiculous, of course, but they made stealing from him all the more attractive to me.
I spent a month sneaking out to the Strand, watching the comings and going of the Count and his household. I learned his habits and his schedules and even got friendly with one of the scullery maids. She told me of a big party that the Count would be attending at Westminster and I selected that night to sneak in. The Count would be away from his home for practically the entire night, leaving the place wide open to a quiet sneak-thief such as myself.
I broke into his home and made off with a handful of gold coins. This windfall was enough to feed me for the next six months, provided I could keep them secreted away from the other street kids in my tenement. I had no idea that the man was in the house at the time, no idea that he could hear my entrance and exit through the tiny window in the kitchen, my quiet steps up the stairs to the main floor and into his study, where he kept the sturdy iron box with the huge padlocked chains about it that kept the entirety of his cash fortune. I couldn't have known that he heard me pick that lock and loose the chains, that he followed me home that night and watched me intently for the next five nights in a row.
And I had no idea what sort of future he'd already decided for me.
you can't just leave me
breathe into me and make me real
bring me to life
?bring me to life? - evanescence
1611 was a very important year in the history of Western Civilization. King James I released his Bible, the version still used almost exclusively by Protestants to this day. William Shakespeare's masterpiece, The Tempest debuted on the Globe's stage. Henry Hudson was set adrift in the bay named after him and was never seen again. And I died on the dirt floor of a tenement in the Whitechapel area of London.
It was May...or possibly it had been June of 1611; you'll forgive me if I can't exactly recall the date. It was, after all, 400 years ago. I had been born 17 years previously, in September of 1594, during the reign of that redheaded virgin Elizabeth I. My mother was a whore much liked by the so-called nobility of the city due to her fair skin and pretty blonde curls and the fact that she did not look or act like a whore. The night I was conceived, however, she enjoyed the company of a Gypsy thief from Bucharest, Romania, and not one of the nobles who were her regular customers. She said she fell in love with him that night and willingly bore his child. She said that I was very much like him ? dark of hair, eye, and skin; lithe and flexible with quick, dexterous fingers. I've always doubted these stories, playing them off as the fantasies of a woman with too little common sense and too much romanticism in her blood.
Regardless of the truth of my parentage ? whether Ma bedded Dorin Dragomir for love or because he paid her well ? I grew up hard, living on the streets mostly, learning to survive by my wits alone. I stole my first purse at the tender age of five and soon graduated to breaking into homes. I was small of frame, skinny, and could contort my body into all sorts of odd positions, making it easy to slip in and out of tiny windows, small holes in thatched roofs, and chinks in walls before anyone inside knew I was there.
Stealing was a way of life for me. It was much more than simply a means to survive. It was an undeniable compulsion, a way to keep from becoming what my mother had become, a way to take care of myself and occasionally the other children who huddled with me at night in the ground floor of a dirty, wretched building in one of the dirtiest, most wretched parts of London.
There had been rumors about an Albania Count who kept a townhouse on the Strand, near the Savoy Palace, for years. People said he was demon, or a Satanist, or an evil sorcerer. People said that his wealth came from deals with the Devil himself. People said that if you were caught looking into his eyes, he would own your soul and you'd be turned into some kind of unthinking, unwitting monster. All these rumors were ridiculous, of course, but they made stealing from him all the more attractive to me.
I spent a month sneaking out to the Strand, watching the comings and going of the Count and his household. I learned his habits and his schedules and even got friendly with one of the scullery maids. She told me of a big party that the Count would be attending at Westminster and I selected that night to sneak in. The Count would be away from his home for practically the entire night, leaving the place wide open to a quiet sneak-thief such as myself.
I broke into his home and made off with a handful of gold coins. This windfall was enough to feed me for the next six months, provided I could keep them secreted away from the other street kids in my tenement. I had no idea that the man was in the house at the time, no idea that he could hear my entrance and exit through the tiny window in the kitchen, my quiet steps up the stairs to the main floor and into his study, where he kept the sturdy iron box with the huge padlocked chains about it that kept the entirety of his cash fortune. I couldn't have known that he heard me pick that lock and loose the chains, that he followed me home that night and watched me intently for the next five nights in a row.
And I had no idea what sort of future he'd already decided for me.