An English Whelp: Witness to the Black Death (1335-1350 AD)

My name is, well, I've gone through quite a few, really, but this is the one I was born with: Benjamin Upham. I was born in a town in the south west of England in the Year of Our Lord Thirteen Hundred and Thirty Five, in mid-December, so it may as well have been 1336. At the time, and for centuries on until modern medicine, sanitation, and reliable heating came along, most children born in mid winter didn't last long. To say that I was resilient is an understatement. Must be genetic, as I still can count one brother, several children, and my father among the living. As far as I know anyways.

My family could be said to be moderately well off, as my dad was a sergeant at arms for the local sheriff. Today you would only find such squalid poverty in the worst third world nations, and the folks in question would not be well off at all. Says a lot for the state of the common man in fourteenth century England…

Father ultimately became sheriff when I was five. But, then again, the Black Death also came to England when I was five… That was oh so long ago, but it is one of the events that I can still remember clearly. The mass graves, the great funeral pyres, the futile attempts at quarantine. The stuff currently in the news makes me laugh, as it hardly gives more than the sniffles. This on the other hand was pure terror. Nobody understood how it was spreading or even really what was going on, beyond the fact that people were just dying. Our town lost roughly half of the folks who lived in it. Many other places were simply wiped out and quickly returned to nature. And as quickly as the Plague came, it was gone. Just like that.

Out of the Eight Hundred and Forty Three souls who lived in our town at the start of 1341, Four hundred Sixty One were counted as being lost to the plague. This included the Parish Priest, the first three replacement priests sent by the Bishop, (number four got sent once the plague had ended) the Sheriff, the first replacement to hold that office, Lord ah whatishisname, (such a nobody that I have forgotten his name) all of his heirs, the baker and his whole family, and God alone remembers who else.

In all of the years since, only in 1918 have I seen anything that was near as bad as that, and that was the influenza pandemic that occurred that year. It alone caused me the same fear as when I was really just a boy.

Marriage / My Father's Son (1351-1366 AD)

I married at sixteen, not unusual for those times. Her name was Mary-Jo, daughter of the local smith. I was only three years older than her, her age at marriage being normal for those times too. Sure a couple of children followed, but not as fast as one would have expected at the time. Sort of like my parents.

When I was twenty one, my father joined a bunch of religious fanatic on some minor crusade or other, one that wasn't numbered like the great crusades. I was promptly told that as of then I'd inherited his job. I was now sheriff. Mother died not long after. Among her things was a letter addressed to me, from my father, to be given to me on my mother's death. Literacy was rare at the time, but those who enforce what passed for the law at the time were expected to be literate, more or less.

Father's letter was a shocker. He had gone off on the crusade because people had started asking questions. Questions about why he wasn't aging in a noticeable manner. I'd never noticed, but then, dad had always been dad, so why would I notice that he looked twenty years younger than his actual forty seven? I did find it interesting that his father, my grandfather had lived to be over 100, though he'd died before I was born. In the Fourteenth Century, and for most of the time both before and since, even in modern times in some places, people believed in silly things like witches and demons and Satanic pacts. Such was the case in Fourteenth Century England… No wonder dad left in the way that he did. Had he stayed, at best people would believe him to be cursed, and would then go looking for the witch. Guess where they would look first? My father left to go fight in a pointless war because he really did love my mother, and didn't want to see her burned as a witch.

That was something that I kept in mind. Especially when I was trying to sleep at night.

I really did love Mary-Jo, and I am my father's son. Which is why after fifteen years of marriage I left her. I decided that it would be best if I left before people really started noticing what I was beginning to see in the mirror. Thirty in 1366 sort of looks like fifty five or sixty today. Most people were in that poor health, at lived in such poor conditions, that they were prematurely aged, and died young. I still looked good, with no gray yet, almost all of my teeth (I had had a few punched out), no wrinkles. So I followed in my father's footsteps and went off on some pointless Crusade… Don't blame me. Left to my own devices, I can be such an idiot.

Crusader Revenant (1367-1400 AD), Conquistador (1400-1550 AD), Colonist Rogue (1550-1671 AD)

The Kings who ruled what is now the north of Spain were always in need of soldiers to fight their wars against Muslim Al-Andalus. While most of their recruits were religious nuts and homicidal maniacs, there were many who had more worldly reasons for going. The pay was reasonable for the time, though not for the risks that one would have to take. (Trust me, it never is. I've served in many armies and that has been a constant. Along with foul-mouthed drill sergeants.) The nobles were usually idiots. (Another constant.) And to this day I can remember the ear-blistering rant that the Seargent at Arms went off on when one of the other recruits asked him a question. He wasn't helped that it was a stupid question. From my own prior experience, I knew to remain quiet and do as I was told. (I was also helped by the fact that I could already read and speak French. Made it easier to learn Spanish and I could at least get what most of was being said right from the beginning.) Unfortunately said NCO picked up on my having 'prior experience' and gave me the unwanted task of making the other Englishmen aka “Those f—ing morons”* into something that resembled an effective fighting force. At least I managed to make them into a unit that was capable of obeying orders before they got me killed. I didn't manage to accomplish much else before that happened.

Rule #1 for infantrymen facing a cavalry charge: Don't run away from them, they're faster and they will run you down. And then they'll stick something sharp and pointy through your back. And pray that your men don't run, because then you'll get that treatment, but from the front…

Rule #2: Bring a pike and make sure that your friends do the same. Better that the horseman or his horse gets stuck on a pointy stick, right?

(One of the few joyful sights I saw over the course of the First World War was a cavalry regiment being machine gunned. The horse soldier is gone from this earth, struck down and banished by technology. The foot soldier marches on. Well, better yet, thanks to technology, we don't have to walk quite as much. Trucks, APCs and helicopters have seen to that.)

Getting impaled on a lance hurt. And then I passed out. I came to at night wondering what had just happened and where everybody had got to. The I got a look at where the hole was in my hauberk. Yeah, that was scary. I ditched it and went looking for what remained of my men. Took a replacement off of one who'd taken a sword trough the neck. (He had no head, but also no holes in his armour or shirt.) And then I sort of started wandering as this was not something that I was ready to explain, not to my superiors nor to anyone else. Not that it mattered when I did get found: The Seargent at Arms and our priest both had me made when they'd first met me. The former had served with my father years before and had also not been young even then. he'd learned his trade in a Roman legion fifteen centuries before and had been a Sergeant (or as he put it, Centurion) ever since. The latter was also another of our kind who'd become a priest because the Church had been the first group that had actually given him something that he could believe in. It wasn't that hard for them to gin up a story of 'miraculous survival'. Having a priest state that my return was 'God's Will' made the questions go away just like that. I didn't want to go through the pain of being killed again, so I didn't have to be told to be more careful in the future.

I was careful, I didn't get much worse than a few cuts over the next 30 years. I also didn't attract attention to myself and periodically 'went home'. Military life suited me, so I always found service in an army, either in Spain or elsewhere. Usually in Spain though. I like that it wasn't cold in the winter. I knew well enough to change my name to something that fits the background I claimed upon arrival, but that's a given. And as my French was better than my English at this point, I'd usually go by French Names, or Hispanisized versions thereof.

The next hundred years passed much the same way: Fight the Saracen, and usually win. Every decade or so head off to Italy for some mercenary work and to keep people from noticing things. Come back and do it all again. In the 1490s that all changed. First Granada finally fell and the Reconquista was complete. That was in 1492. And second, this crazy Italian sailed across the fucking Atlantic and fucking came back. Oh, and he found land, people and rumours of gold. Ironically I was about to head off back to Italy at the time. I'm glad that I didn't go with the first or the second bunch who went to the 'New World'. but in the 1520s I did finally go. I found myself in the employ of a nut named Hernan Cortez. We took a trip to what is now Mexico. I'm sure that you've all heard about what we got up to, right. It's not every day that a couple hundred men bring down an Empire. Or at least put together the alliance that brings down that empire. (Had our 'allies' known what was going to happen next, they'd likely have remained loyal to the Aztecs.) I stayed in that New World, even if hiding wasn't always quite as easy as it had been in Europe.

New Spain and the Caribbean were a vibrant place. Especially once people other than the Spanish started to move in. The power hungry in Spain liked that about as well as one would expect. Portuguese, French, English pirates. Yeah, the place got busy. More places to hide too. It also helped me brush up on my languages. (Well, apart from a couple of native ones that had gone extinct soon after I'd become fluent. Go through all that trouble and, well you know.) Oh, and get the accents down right. I'm a natural mimic, so that's easy once I get into practice.

Did jobs on land. Not all of those involved killing people. Worked aboard ships, and not all of those jobs were honest. Pirates are assholes and are not to be trusted. (A bunch who'd robbed me in Jamaica were some surprised when I came looking for them then next day. they really weren't expecting that. Might have the had something to do with the fact that they'd cut my throat before taking my gold. Unlike me, they didn't get back up afterwards.) Privateers and the various navies weren't much better. Didn't mean that I wouldn't work for or with them, just that I took care to watch my back.

More than century of Wandering about the Caribbean and the New World eventually brought me north to a place called Boston. I found that in my heart I was still an Englishman after all. I also met this pretty Irish girl there. Wasn't expecting that hot redhead to be something close to my age. Those of our kind are rare indeed. Believe it or not, she'd never met another like her before then and had thus only relied upon her wits to survive and thrive for 300 years. Shann is such a clever girl.

Apostolos and Benjamim share a discussion

Prometheus: It looks like Benjamin and I are close in age, too. Lots of 14th Century brats, eh? I ended up in Boston eventually as well, but not till the 1800s. I've shunned the damned ocean for most of my days, so it took me a while to make the jump across the Atlantic.

Benjamin: Like I said, I left in 1783, and because I had to, not because I wanted to. Didn't want to find out whether being lynched was something that I could just, ah, “shrug off”… Sodding so-called “patriot” traitors. (furious) Hanging was too good for them. (furious) I'll give the details on that mess later.

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