[And that opens the floodgates. All of the pain and confusion and anger and hurt come bursting out and the child who is not a child screams it into Tony's chest. It feels like it goes on for hours but it can't be more than twenty minutes or so until he quiets at last and pulls away. He looks at his knees, not wanting to meet Tony's eyes, and starts to talk:]

I was ten years old when the Plague came to Ely. It was August and very hot, but I was not permitted outside lest I be exposed to the miasma.

Of course, we now know that it was fleas and not bad air that transmitted the sickness, so being kept inside did nothing to keep me safe. I fell ill, and my father abandoned me. He hired a local woman to care for me and fled to one of his other manors. The coward survived the Mortality, of course. I didn't.

The local woman was called Mistress Weaver at the time, but her true name was Aurelia Vipsania. She had been turned when the Romans controlled Britain a thousand years before, and she saw in me an opportunity to claim a child that no one would miss. She turned me, and for the rest of her life until her murder during the reign of James the First, I was her doll. If I did not conform to her wishes, she would override my sense of will. She beat me, then made me forget the beatings. I loved her and hated her. When she was assassinated by a rival Ancient, I was bereft...and relieved.

And then I turned around and used the same powers on others. I'm...quite good at them. A prodigy, they called me.

[He looks up at Tony.]

I could put you under my thrall right now. Easily. That frightens me.