"There's has to be more to the story right?"
"It was a long time ago I can't tell it like it's happening now, cher," he explained.
"Well..." I thought about what to ask next, "how did you end up in the Roman capital?"
"I was taken during zhe wars."
"Okay and?"
"Are you going to make me recall my entire life for you, girl?" He clicked his tongue and pushed my head downwards to tease my insatiable curiosity.
"Not If it's too hard," I bargained and he rolled his eyes.
I was born in Gaul. My mom had many children and my father was a hard worker, we lived more towards the Celtic region in the small villages, not a part of the more lavish stone buildings towards the capital.
I was the eldest, it was me, my little brother, two younger sisters, another brother and my mother was pregnant with a boy when I first started acting like an adult.
I was ten maybe and my father took me to the fields, showed me how to collect wheat and forced me to slaughter the cow which I'd grown fond of since I'd helped raise it. That act was a bit traumatic for me and I cried in private, if my dad saw me cry he'd strike me and call me weak.
I'm not sure if my dad was always so cruel but I noticed as the years went by. When I was made to show my brother how to do the same things my father taught me he cut his leg and it became infected. Maybe he would've survived but my father put no effort into trying to help him, he saw him as another mouth to feed and one that couldn't help so he let my brother grow sicker despite my mom's pleading.
That's when I lost my little brother, he was closer to me than anyone. But tragedy was never far around the corner back then. In the old days, people were more used to it than people are in the modern world. Because then, anything could kill you. We could be relaxing and having fun and suddenly there would be a wolf. That's how my youngest brother died, a wolf killed him and no one ever caught that exact wolf but my father hunted wolves from then on religiously. My mother died from grief and the child inside her died too.
My father raped my sister and when she confided this to me I didn't know what else to do. So I confronted him and I stabbed him with a kama, the one we used to collect wheat, in the back. He fell into our lamp and the lamp spread the fire through our home and our father and our home went up in flames leaving my two little sisters and I the only ones left in the family be age fourteen.
I had to beg and steal for food and clothing for my sisters. Everyone was too concerned with their own survival and their own rumbling bellies to care about ours. I had to kill anything I could in order to eat.
We three became dirtied and muddied and our clothes were worn and we had fleas and other sorts of awful bugs. I quickly found out the hard way I could never leave my sisters' sides or else they be taken advantage of. I learned this when I found the two, only fifteen and thirteen being assuaged by a group of older boys. One sister became pregnant and the other was stolen away by one boy's family to become his wife despite her protests she went along with it so she could have a roof over her head, clean clothing, and food.
That left my youngest sister and I on the streets still, that is until my sister died giving birth to the son she never asked for. The baby was all I had but I didn't want him to live or die on the streets so I sold myself as a slave to a richer family in the capital and I adopted my nephew out to another rich family.
I worked in the fields for years becoming muscular and tan. At the time tan was seen as a sign of being poor and in the lower working class so it wasn't slightly. Of course some of this happened during the Gallic wars and eventually, that prosperous region fell to the Romans.
I was taken as a slave, this time against my will and my nephew, who grew to be four was taken in by a wealthy Roman family that had no male heirs.
I was given baths and clean clothing and that's when they discovered I was actually very attractive and because of this, I began work as a male prostitute. You think I'd be humiliated but my life was horrible and being surrounded by beautiful women dressed in silk white robes in comfortable beds was a dream.
I lived this way for a few years and ran into the man who'd married my sister, he was working as a slave but had run away and found me. I asked him what happened to my sister and found out she was also sold into prostitution and their children were child slaves in the palace.
I didn't know what else to do but to save my family. They were all that I had so I bought my sister from the brothel by stealing coins from one of my clients. I paid for a ship captain to hide her among the cargo heading to Britannia and went to find my nephews before dawn when it would leave.
At some point, my client found out I'd stolen from her and the guards were searching for me. I had to steal again in order to hide and I found my nephew from my other sister living well and happily and let it be as he'd be much happier there. The palace was the challenge and I as expected didn't make it very far. The quarters where the slaves were kept was heavily guarded and I was identified and slaughtered before I could do anything. By slaughter, I mean impaled with a sword and left for dead. They dragged my bleeding body to a dirty alley where a few other corpses lie about and the other inhabitants were all homeless or on the brink of death. I suppose someone saw my effort this whole time. I'm not sure how long they'd been watching but I know I saw the shadow of a woman before I woke up a vampire on the same boat my sister was stored away on.
She was in tears to be without her children. When I discovered my powers I returned to the capital and I built up wealth and status through rather immoral and illegal means but it didn't matter to me. I eventually succeeded in freeing my nephews and sent them to Britannia to be with their mother, though I'm sure they'd already forgotten about her. I'm not really sure what became of them, I do know that their father died in the arena and I watched it happen gladly.
I spent some time living in comfort surrounded by women and stealing from anyone and everyone before the Romans invaded Britannia and I went there to make sure my sister and nephews whom I'm not sure were even still alive, were not harmed. That's when I ran into the Briton woman and her two sons.
My life wasn't a cakewalk as you call it but it wasn't awful. I lost my family millennia ago so the pain is truly gone, it's just the memories that remain. I don't hate the Romans either, aside from a few things that happened here and there, it was because of them I found out and was able to explore my interest in men. However outside of Rome and in the following centuries, especially with the rise of Christianity, I had to hide my sexuality but when I became more involved with vampiric life I discovered they were open-minded individuals and we didn't judge each other so I spent most of my time dedicated to them until Antonio and I fell in love and then met Gilbert and fell in love with him. After that, we spent all our time as a trio rather than working for the queen. We didn't spend every year together, as I mentioned I spent a lot of time fighting for France, Gilbert did the same for the Teutonic Knights who became Prussia, and Antonio for Spain. I suppose there are a thousand more stories I could tell for every year of the thousands of years I've lived but my human life and the bigger events like Arthur, Antonio, and Gilbert stand out to me the most, to be honest.
I hope you don't mind me leaving it at that for now...
Francis trailed off and I was wide eyes and fucking depressed.
"Holy merde, are you okay?" Was all I managed to get out.
"Oui, especially when we're all together of course," he smiled sadly.
"Then we should get Gilbert and make that happen," I growled.
"We've known Gilbert more than eight hundred years, what he needs is time and space, give it one or two more nights at the very least," Antonio informed me and patted my back as comfort.
"We've been just as worried as you in the past, especially the first times he'd leave. Gilbert has trouble understanding and dealing with his emotions so seeing people from his human life, when things were normal and he was carefree are the only things that put him back in the mindset of things being "the same" even though they aren't the same he isn't willing to let go of his past and live in the present. He doesn't feel like anyone he's met since becoming a vampire actually gives a damn about him because of the venom incident."
"Wait, who's alive that knew him as a human?"
"Elizabetta did."
"What? How did they both end up vampires?"
"You've 'eard my story mon Cherie, zhat one is 'is, I'm sure 'e'll tell you eventually."