Take a map of the Iberian peninsula and trace a line between Pamplona and Burgos. Along that trace you shall find a vinery entrenched upon a modest hill, flaunting a militant, ruined manse, surrounded by silent troops camouflaging their tanned skins in green garbs, their veins prominent and virid. Hush is all there is to hear.
Legend tells these planted folk were not always rooted thus, though the barky commands of their master kept them nigh and fast in place. It was from the tenebrous eyes of the house that he blustered his vociferations at his then slaves in blood and serfs in law, a rather extended family beaten and pressed into thralldom. These his "children" were each hardened more by the relentless leather of his many belts, each one tardily eroding with their sweat the sturdy hide, than by their crushing labour. It was their yells that fecundated the soil each day and night, concocting the sorely delicious grapes that erupted as bodied fireworks into the clusters hanging from their sinewy gallows.
For three handful years the residence drew wealth from their spirited wines, whose taste was sought out by ecclesiasts and nobility, who sought to drink a grape that matched, severally, their habit and blood in quality and colour both. But as the lord aged, his grasp grew weaker, and thus his seal softened, started melting as did the flesh under his skin. As all tyrants, he was disposed of subtly and shamefully, rather than by much deserved violence, by daily doses of arsenic into his chalice, one stone of it in hefty weight across some years that did not show decay until his demise. Indeed they say the poison restored his strength and shifted his aspect from great proud villain to a crooked dwarf, hardening from the innards out; his tongue turned a plank, insensitive to the ratsbane delivered to him in ever greater portions. Die he did at last, at the dinner table, choking on the clumped solute clotting his throat, but not before he gargled through a curse, as Spaniards do, to each relative thrice removed.
Removed they were that eve, before supper, afore they had even time to take his corpse from the table, though try they did. Yet he was grounded in his place, his feet bound to the floor, his hands clutching the woody legs at the table's head, and his own caput twisted over the back of his oaken throne. Their slaver dead, they fell prey to custom instead - without fail, to work the field until the fall of dusk - and when a storm contorted the sky's brow and pushed forth its million tears, they did not take refuge within their quarters, but laboured on until their knees sank deep in mud, as did their hands. Not one emerged, nor knew the house again. 'Tis said the master now eats alone.
Legend tells these planted folk were not always rooted thus, though the barky commands of their master kept them nigh and fast in place. It was from the tenebrous eyes of the house that he blustered his vociferations at his then slaves in blood and serfs in law, a rather extended family beaten and pressed into thralldom. These his "children" were each hardened more by the relentless leather of his many belts, each one tardily eroding with their sweat the sturdy hide, than by their crushing labour. It was their yells that fecundated the soil each day and night, concocting the sorely delicious grapes that erupted as bodied fireworks into the clusters hanging from their sinewy gallows.
For three handful years the residence drew wealth from their spirited wines, whose taste was sought out by ecclesiasts and nobility, who sought to drink a grape that matched, severally, their habit and blood in quality and colour both. But as the lord aged, his grasp grew weaker, and thus his seal softened, started melting as did the flesh under his skin. As all tyrants, he was disposed of subtly and shamefully, rather than by much deserved violence, by daily doses of arsenic into his chalice, one stone of it in hefty weight across some years that did not show decay until his demise. Indeed they say the poison restored his strength and shifted his aspect from great proud villain to a crooked dwarf, hardening from the innards out; his tongue turned a plank, insensitive to the ratsbane delivered to him in ever greater portions. Die he did at last, at the dinner table, choking on the clumped solute clotting his throat, but not before he gargled through a curse, as Spaniards do, to each relative thrice removed.
Removed they were that eve, before supper, afore they had even time to take his corpse from the table, though try they did. Yet he was grounded in his place, his feet bound to the floor, his hands clutching the woody legs at the table's head, and his own caput twisted over the back of his oaken throne. Their slaver dead, they fell prey to custom instead - without fail, to work the field until the fall of dusk - and when a storm contorted the sky's brow and pushed forth its million tears, they did not take refuge within their quarters, but laboured on until their knees sank deep in mud, as did their hands. Not one emerged, nor knew the house again. 'Tis said the master now eats alone.
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