I have never met a vampire personally, but I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
Bela Lugosi
It’s what you don’t see that keeps you on the edge of your seat in any kind of film – leave it to the imagination of the viewer.
Christopher Lee
Vampires are sexy to a woman perhaps because the fantasy is similar to that of the man on the white horse sweeping her off to paradise.
Frank Langella
Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”
Bram Stoker
On August 30, 1548, King Edward had been on the throne for a year and a child was born to Katherine Parr, widow of Henry VIII and Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral of England, First Baron of Sudeley. They had married in secret, Thomas almost proposed to her just before Henry VIII did, and married without the consent of the counsel. It brought the wrath of Thomas’ brother, the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour down on him. It was a girl, born in Sudeley Castle near Gloucester. For Katherine, it was a blessed event, as she had finally married her long time love Thomas Seymour, secretly, in May of 1547. For Thomas, the ambitious brother of the Lord Protector Edward Seymour, it was a mixed blessing. He loved the baby, but wished for a son, a typical feeling of men at the time. Like Henry VIII, a son was important as he could continue the line and hold the property of the family. Thomas had barely survived the scandals with Princess Elizabeth, but his fortunes were to take a very dark turn. The baby was named Mary, after her stepchild the Princess Mary, and her mother Katherine would die of complications from birth, common in these times, on September 5, 1548. By March 20, 1549, Thomas himself was executed for treason at Tower Hill. Mary was sent to the home of Katherine’s friend, Katherine Brandon (fourth wife of Charles Brandon, Henry VIII’s closest friend, and the 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby) who already had two children by Charles Brandon (Henry and Charles, both would die within hours of each in 1551 of sweating sickness) who seemed to have resented this new charge. Mary lived at Grimsthrope Castel in Lincolnshire, and the last record of her was some entries in a log on her second birthday. The official history goes blank and many assumed she died sometime in her second year.
Mary did not die, first because of the affection that King Edward had for Katherine Parr it was arranged for her to live in Ireland with the Harts, and later moved to Pontefract Castle near Wakefield in West Yorkshire. There she saw King Edward die of a sickness the doctors believed resembled that one that took his uncle Prince Arthur and his half brother Henry Fitzroy. She was at the execution of Lady Jane, the young Queen who only ruled nine days. She was close to Jane, and Queen Mary kept the young Mary at Pontefract in secret to protect her. The Queen once wanted her to be there with Lady Jane, but, at the insistence of the Spanish under Phillip, Jane, who was not as innocent as many believe and left Mary little choice but to execute her. It was a dangerous time, Edward used his own money to keep her, John Dudley arranged such in his efforts to gain control of the council. One of many plots that surrounded the young king, and he was more aware than many believed. Once when Mary was with Edward, they encountered the Lord Protector Edward Seymour who ignored Mary. As he was leaving, the king sarcastically pointed out that he seemed to not see his niece, but then, maybe it was because she remined him of the brother he killed. Later, after the Lord Protector was executed himself, John Dudley, now Duke of Northumberland, complimented the king of a shot he made in archery. Edward just smiled and retorted that Dudley’s aim was better when he took off the head of his uncle Edward. The king often said he felt he was in a prison, but unlike other prisoners, he had no garden to walk in.
Queen Mary’s reign was also dangerous, as Mary Seymour had embraced the Protestant faith, mainly through the efforts of Lady Jane, and had to hide that from the Queen. Things were bad in London, and Mary was glad to be far away in Pontefract, but she knew she was surrounded by spies and those who wished to do her harm. Fortunately, the Queen loved the young girl and those wishing to come between them had to be very careful. The Queen was a frantic in religion, it was her way of being true to her mother, Queen Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife. The Wyatt Rebellion sealed Lady Jane’s fate, her father was a leader of the revolt, and cast some suspicion on May Seymore as well. Mary was brought before the Queen, in a secret confrontation in which the Queen demanded the young Mary to swear alliance to her and the Church. Young Mary was no martyr like Lady Jane, and did as she was commanded. Religion was not something the young Mary was too into, she thought little of an afterlife and usually slept through masses and sermons. She avoided them if she could, which was impossible after the Wyatt Revolt. She soon became the picture of devout Catholic, much like the Princess Elizabeth, she was a great actor. Being only ten also helped, as many excused her lack of enthusiasm as the usual things of a child, not all, but the majority did, and especially the Queen. It was early in 1558, that Mary discovered a plan for her that she totally opposed. The Queen was planning to make her a nun, place her in a convent and thus solve the many problems her husband, Phillip II, who Mary despised, and his entourage had with the child. The Spanish were pushing for one in Spain, the Queen wanted one in England, Mary wished for neither. She secretly planned to run away, it when she first saw the group of night creatures dressed in green.
They danced around a fire and seemed to be having a great time, but one of her nurse maids pulled her back into the house. And then told Mary to never, and she said never three times, go near these creatures. Those creatures, the nursemaid explained, were the much feared Celtic/Scottish vampires, the Baobhan Sith (pronounced Baa-oan-shee) who were split into three groups. Two were the Irish ones, not wishing to be associated with anything from the Island of Britain. The northern group, made of of all the males, were under Abhartach, who once ruled the domain of Foyle, which is between Dungiven and Garragh. It was here in the glen of the eagle Glenullin, upon his throne under the rock of Slaughtahartach, he, who died trying to spy on his wife and rose a vampire out of vengeance, ruled the male vampires of Ireland. (He is also credited as being the real inspiration of Bram Stoker’s Dracula) Here the king of the neamh-mairbh (walking dead) rules as absolutely and cruelly in death as he did in life. The Irish vampires can only be killed with a branch from the Hawthorn tree. The Queen of the Irish vampires, and ruler of all female Irish vampires is Deary Due of Waterford, who starved herself to death to escape the rule of her abusive father and husband, and also rose as a vampire out of vengeance. Her father married her off to the husband to gain his wealth, and both abused her. She took a peasant lover, and when discovered she was severely punished, and thus starved herself to death. She returned and killed both her father and husband as well as all the men of the village, leaving only her peasant lover, who joined her in everlasting life, through everlasting death, in everlasting servitude. They rule from under the Strongbow Tree and are called the Red Thirst. Both the king and queen control the great Madra Dhu, the Black Dog of Ireland. The Welsh dog is called Moddey Dhoo and the Scot-English one is called CuSith, these are under control of the Briton vampire queen, Boudica.
In life Boudica was the Queen of the Iceni, ruling with her husband Prasutagus until his death. they were a Brittonic tribe in the eastern part of Brian, near Norfolk and Suffolk, and upon the king’s death the Roams, based in Venta Icenborum, present day Caisten St Edmunds, looked to take advantage of this a conquer the people of eastern Britain. Boudica rallied the people and defeated the Roman Governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus and burned the Roman settlement of Londinium and Verulamium. The Romans rallied and destroyed Boudica’s army, and she, not wishing her and her daughters become Roman slaves, or worse, became Baobhan Siths. Her bravery so impressed the Celtic spirit of Brittan, Brennus, he made her Queen of the English and Scot Boabhan Sith. The Baobhan Sith, unlike the Nosferatu of Europe, use seduction to catch their prey, and not just hunt them down. Much like the children of Lilith, the Queen of the Succubus, they enter the mind of the sapiens and seduce them like a lover. Unlike the succubus, however, the Boabhan Sith did not want the person’s soul, but their blood. If one bit you, you became a Boabhan Sith, just as one bitten by a werewolf becomes a werewolf. But they have another way to get blood, the retractable ten claws that extend from each of their fingers, in contrast to the four that extend from the first two fingers of the hands of the Nosferatu. If one is killed this way, you are dead, but if bitten one becomes the undead, with a yearning for blood and one that gains eternal life, through eternal death, in eternal servitude. Free will is for the living, and those in heaven, for the rest, they are eternally bound to the hierarchy of the night. In the vampire world, ruled by Caligula for centuries, but the old Roman emperor tried to unseat the devil and was replaced by Vlad Dracula.
Garlic is an annoyance to vampires, it does not keep them away, it makes them sick, like an allergy. The cross, or any holy symbol will deter them, as others, usually unique to each type of vampire. For the Boabhan Sith, to kill one, one must use an iron rod, as iron is the metal of Britain, iron will also keep them at bay, especially if one’s horse has iron shoes. The Baobhan Sith can shape change into a wolf or a bat, but usually change into a raven or crow. There is a myth they have the feet of a deer, another creature they change into, but that is not true. They, like all vampires, can walk around during the day, but their powers are diminished, and like all vampires must avoid the sunrise at Easter, as it is deadly to them. The Baobhan Sith are also partial to green cloth, and wear green many times, but can choose not to. It is a call back to the Druids and the religion of the forest. One of there main ways of seduction comes from a wish made by a sapien, without invoking God’s protection, especially if the wish is of a sexual nature. It is said that one wishing without the protection of He Who Is, especially to the stars at night, will have the wish granted in a terrible manner. The Boabhan Sith’s name comes from one the great portals to the other realm, there the vampire demon, Lilitu lives and spreads the spirits that pocessed the living and turns them into the undead. While all are ruled by Dracula, their are as many different kinds of vampires as their are people in the world. This tale, and those of the Bodach, the terror of children who misbehave, and Joint Eater, a parasite that devours one from within, both can be held off with salt, were told to make the people fearful of the these children of the night. But to Mary Seymour, they became more fascinating with every tale that was told.
Mary saw the family that once surround her be destroyed by religion and power, the fight over which church was true an the power that existed in the monarchy of Tudor England. As a young child she was a favorite of Edward VI, but fate decreed he would die of a disease that many said was the same that took his uncle, Prince Arthur and his half brother, Henry Fitzroy. Whispers said it was a curse coming from the sins of Jacquetta of Luxenberg when she and Elizabeth Woodville enchanted Edward IV into marriage. She saw Queen Mary go from one who loved children and her siblings to a bitter and disillusioned woman who in the end believed she had failed not only her mother, the Church, and her nation, but God as well. Then there was Elizabeth, Glorianna herself, who once was one of the most loving of people who was destroyed by power and the endless struggle to maintain it. Her aversion to marriage came from how she saw her mother destroyed by marriage, along with Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard, (who she was close to) and finally Katherine Parr, a woman who in many ways replaced Anne Boleyn as her mother. She told her closest (and perhaps her only) friend, Robert Dudley she would not marry when she was only eight, a vow she kept. Power was the most destructive agent that worked its evil was on the Queen, best seen in the destruction of the Grey sisters. The first, Lady Jane, who was not as innocent as history says, but in many ways the forerunner of a modern revolutionary, push the envelope until the Spanish forced Queen Mary to execute her in 1554. But it was nothing compared to what Elizabeth did to Katherine and Mary Grey. Katherine was seen as the legitimate successor to Elizabeth, a position that if one is in it under Elizabeth, made the woman suspect and believe you are a threat.
Katherine did marry, in secret to Edward Seymour, the son of the Lord Protector, in 1560, and had two children, Edward and Thomas, both as she was supposedly confined in the Tower. Elizabeth sent the woman into exile to remote estates and did not allow her contact with her husband or her oldest child. Katherine was so depressed she starved herself to death in 1568, her desaponscy was so great she, as the Deary Due, rose as a Boabhan Sith, she lays in an ornate tomb in Salisbury Cathedral, which he later occupied himself, and is seen walking around the city. Mary Grey, a tiny woman who willingly gave up any claim to the crown and threated nobody was the most tragic of all. Elizabeth kept her under lock and key, especially after he married the Sargent Porter Thomas Keys, a man who stood over six feet, and drove her to the grave in 1578, about three months before Mary Seymour joined the ranks of the undead. Even the woman who Elizabeth favored as a successor, Mary Queen of Scots, could not escape her suspicions. But Mary, like Katherine Grey, did much to bring on the suspicions herself. She married Lord Darnley, then had him killed and married James Hepburn, Lord of Bothwell, a pirate, and lost her throne. Escaping to England and imprisoned, Mary tried to ferment a revolt against the ever suspicious Elizabeth and was executed in an act that brought on the Spanish Armada. Fearing that Elizabeth would move against her, Mary Seymour took some action. She knew he could not run away, there were too many guards and spies. That also would give Elizabeth an excuse to have her executed, much as it would with Mary of Scotland.
Mary had learned how to survive, she played the game well, but was tired of it. She had learned that as a beautiful young woman, she could use her “favors” to gain privileges from the guards and the younger sons of those who were in charge, and some of old men as well. She also learned that some of the women also enjoyed company in bed, and she could use that other advantage as well. She even, although her station was well above those who usually performed this task, help a young bride, “get ready” to perform her wifely duties. It also meant she would then assist both the young husband and wife, consummate a marriage. Her learning said this should have been done by a lowly servant, and even they should have doen it reluctantly, but Mary enjoyed it, she enjoyed the company of both sexes. But these opportunities were growing less and less frequent, spies had told those above that Mary not only gained favors for this, but money as well. She was suppose to be imprisoned, one old man said, not on some hedonistic vacation. The walls were closing in, she felt as Edward did, in a prison with no garden to take pleasure in, she saw the signs of troubles all around. She was not a king, she had no power, she understood that her life may now be short, she need to take action. So one night, as the full moon moved over a June night, Mary heard the singing and music of a group of Boabhan Siths, in a forest clearing near the Castle Pontefract. Mary was tired of the games and allusions she had to go through just to stay alive, she was now thirty, and looked over the walls at the lights coming from the forest glen. She breathed in the warm June air and let her mind wander to the camp of the Boabhans. Suddenly the music and songs grew louder, as she could feel the creatures reaching out to her, she stood there, the guards were watching her closely. So she quietly walked back to her tiny room, and there she waited until the guard change at midnight. The last guard was not as through as the other two shifts, as all believed the Lady was sleeping. She gathered some clothes and was going to slip out when she was confronted a a young man, maybe in his late teens.
“You will never make it, Mary,” the young man whispered, ” you ladies watch the door round the clock and the guards at each gate are under the penalty of death if you slip out.”
“So how did you get in here?” She demanded.
“I know this castle, been here long ago, and I can help, but I need to know, do you want me too,” He reassuring whispered.
Mary looked at him, he was dressed in the clothes of a prince, but a prince of almost fifty years ago, he wore a white rose, my God she thought, he is a Plantagenet, how in God’s name is he even alive. Before she could speak, the young man introduced himself.
“My lady,” he said as he bowed to her, with a smile, “I am Richard of Shrewsbury, once Duke of York, the youngest son of King Edward IV.”
“I have been told both of King Edward’s sons were murdered by Richard III many years ago,” she counted.
Richard looked at her and smiled, he knew the tale, it had been told and retold, just as Henry VII and his mother, Margaret Beaufort wished, as the tale now was seen as truth. He took Mary’s hand and placed it upon his chest, and asked, “Do you feel a heartbeat, no, you do not. I am not alive, but I am not dead, I am of the undead, a Boabhan Sith, the creature your ladies have warned you about for so many years. You see when our Uncle Richard, who had proof that my father was not the child of Richard of York, but a French archer, put us in the Tower, it was for our protection. He knew that we would be used for many plots, whether willing l or not, and he devised a plan to allow us to live, another life. But politics intervened and he was unable to slip us out to Burgundy and the protection of our aunt. When he left for Bosworth, he told us, my brother, his special friend, and his illegiamte son, John Plantagenet, to slip out if things did not go his way and make our way north, where he had allies. Edward and his friend, he was much like Edward II, refused to leave, they were murdered by a man from Ipswich, a lackey of Margaret Beaufort, don’t remember his name, and me and John moved north. Sadly we ran into a company of archers belonging to Stanley, who attacked us, we got way but both of us were badly wounded. We then fell amongst a group of Boabhan Sith, who either saved us or condemned us, according to one’s beliefs. So I will ask you the question they asked me, Do you, Mary Seymour, wish me to help you?”
Mary thought for a moment, she did not have a strong religious belief, but now she was reconsidering. But then she thought, her time was almost up, she was so tired of the games being played around her. She felt the end game was near, and this was her only escape, her whole body seemed to urge her on, and she looked into the Prince’s eyes and said yes. Richard smiled and first kissed her, deep and hard on the lips, their bodies entangled and they made love under the moon. As her blood pulsated through her body she felt his bite on her neck, she felt nothing but relief as the blood and life oozed out of her body. The next day she was very weak, and those around almost seemed relived. The next night she was allowed to venture out into the night, there she walked into the camp and joined the world of the undead. She was found the next morning, they people thought she just died overnight, and all celebrated, this exhausting and troublesome duty was at and end. Mary was placed in a dark cold tomb in the corner of the castle, and the people went on their way. Richard returned and revived Mary the next night, and she began her new life as a Boabhan Sith. One difference, as she had seen so much depression and troubles, she began to walk the night and comfort those who were suffering, it was a mission for her. A mission all the Boabhan Sith respected.
Three days later a servant walked into the court of Elizabeth with a message. He said it was private and only for the Queen, so only she and William Cecil were in the room. The messager bowed and began, “Your majesty, my Lord, I have to speak of one you commanded not to speak of except in one case.”
Elizabeth looked both sorrowful and satisfied, it was a look she had many times. She only felt safe with the power of the crown, she believed she had to hold that no matter what. She had done so many things that frankly, she was not proud of, but believed she had no choice but to so. It was a road her brother told her he believed he would have to go down, whether he wanted to or not. Mary had chosen to not, and was destroyed, so Elizabeth was firm in her belief that she had no other choice. She broke the silence of the room and said,” Proceed.”
“Your Majesty, My Lord, Mary Seymour is dead, she died three days ago and is buried in Pontefract Castle, deep in the walls; as instructed,” the messager replied in a monotone voice. Elizabeth shook her head in acceptance of the message and the man rose and left the room,. He would forget the message immediately, as he had been instructed to do.
Elizabeth turned to Cecil and whispered, “Let us hope she does not rise again like Katherine Grey.”
Cecil looked stunned, he believed that had been kept a secret from the Queen, and he knew better than to ask how she had found out about it. He muttered, “Yes., madam.” and they both went on to other business. Two months later, Elizabeth informed him that Mary had rose again, and told him he was to do nothing about it. She said they could do no more harm to her, and maybe she would join them in the future. Elizabeth would not, Mary would go to America after much of the Pontefract Castle was destroyed in the Civil War, but Katherine still walks in England, happy that the Seymours still hold the Dukedom of Somerset. As for Elizabeth, she and Victoria sit in Heaven and marvel over the reign of the second Elizabeth.
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