Reflections of an Immortal Waitress: Angelus
1816: A tavern in a remote English village gets four visitors interested in a different sort of drink. One of the serving wenches, however, is out to close the taps.
Angelus and Darla, of course, are the intellectual property of Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, and the rest of the Mutant Enemy crew, and the copyrighted property of 20th Century Fox. The Immortal Waitress was Joss Whedon's original conception of the character who eventually became Buffy. My version of Whedon's Immortal Waitress concept is based on an idea that has rattled around in my head for 30 years.
Chapter 1
The New Place
I no longer remember the actual name of the inn, nor the name of the picturesque village it was in, but they called it the New Place. It was somewhere south of London, off of the main roads and not too far from the ocean.
I assume I had come to the village by way of the continent, maybe France. I remember some of the customers at the New Place saying I spoke my English with an exotic accent, and that usually happened after I spent four or five decades in the continent. I am not sure why England had become my informal home in the past three or four centuries. It certainly is not where I originally came from.
I suspect I must have done something to bring notice to myself in my previous position (and it is my fondest ambition in life to avoid notice). However, even as I reflect on the events I am about to recount, I can not recall why I had traveled to such a remote village, or precisely what event had brought me to such unwelcome notice that I chose to go into hiding. One consequence of a millennia long life is that my poor brain can not contain all of the memories of it. I no longer remember decades, indeed even entire centuries, of my long existence.
At any rate, I eventually happened to this village my imperfect memory has rendered nameless. When I arrived, I believed I dimly recognized the tavern they called the Old Place. Since I did not recall the New Place, I suspected that I had been there before 1410, the year the New Place opened its door.
The New Place was larger than the Old Place, which is to say that it was barely large enough to accommodate four round tables that could seat four men each. Most of the men who came to drink an ale or three were local, either farmers or farm hands. The New Place had two rooms in the back, but few travelers came through the village.
The New Place was owned and run by a married couple in their early forties, who resided in the floor above the tavern. He was a farmer, and spent most of his days and evenings in the fields. His wife, as was common, ran the tavern and inn. She cooked for her husband, their son Ginger, and their two farm hands. She was helped by her daughter Helen, a girl of sixteen who was sufficiently attractive to encourage customers to drink an extra ale or three to stay just a little longer in her presence. That being said, Helen was not particularly good at her job. Too often, she spilled ale and forgot to refill cups. However, for the most part customers overlooked Helen's shortcomings. and not only because of her attractive features and pleasant if somewhat dim temperament. Her mother was a formidable woman, and her father and brother were strapping men of impatient and protective nature.
I came to the New Place with some version of my usual story for the time. Something about a wicked father who wished to marry me off to a lecherous man older than he, or the tragic tale of a fire that left me as the last member of my family. Something to explain why a somewhat attractive woman of young but marriageable age was traveling alone and penniless through the English back country.
I am not sure that the wife, Edna, believed my story (whichever one I told), for she was a shrewd woman in spite of her roughly kind nature. But, with her father and son out in the fields and uninterested in doing much work in the inn after dragging themselves home at the summer sunset, and Helen being poor but earnest help, it was not difficult to prevail upon her my desire for employment. Employment in this case meant little more than a roof over my head (I was allowed one of the rooms in back with the caveat that I would have to sleep in the barn if a paying lodger arrived) and food from her table, but such poor wages were sufficient for my purposes. I was not nearly as penniless as I appeared, but food and shelter for work allowed me to save what wealth I had, and served to occupy my time in the fashion that I prefer.
The pattern of life in a tavern was not unfamiliar to me. I awoke at dawn and helped Edna and Helen prepare breakfast for her husband Edward (the locals liked to call the couple "Ed and Ed"), their son Ginger, and the two farmhands who slept in corners of the barn. These men were already up feeding the chickens and moving the horses and cattle out of the barn before they came in for breakfast. Then, after the men ate their breakfast and went back to work patrolling the fields and checking the grape vines, we ate our breakfast, and Helen and I cleaned up while Edna starting cooking bread and biscuits for the afternoon and evening meals. Helen and I swept out the tavern and scrubbed ale and wine stains off of the tables while Edna checked the fermentation vats. Then we brought in water for afternoon supper, and after we supped we prepared for the evening customers, including the occasional traveler.
As tavern owners went, Edna and Edward were considerate enough employers. Alas, even though my presence made her day to day work easier, my presence was less welcomed by Helen. I unintentionally split the attentions of the young men who came to see her. I worked hard to not draw attention to myself, but some times it was easier than others, such as when I was between sets of teeth (as an immortal, I continually lose and replenish teeth). However, in this village I had a full set of new teeth, and there was only so much I could do to hide my attractiveness without looking like a feral lunatic. Thus did I attract attention away from my namesake, and she did not appreciate the competition.
Also, the competence with which I performed my duties probably contrasted with the awkwardness with which Helen performed hers, which surely made my presence even more unwelcome in her eyes.
It must be said, however, that while Helen on occasion made less than flattering remarks to and about me, and often did not regard me with a friendly expression, she was always outwardly polite and never deliberately cruel to me. So it was that I found myself in sympathy with her plight to the point that I started to contemplate taking my leave of the New Place earlier than I would have normally preferred.
But it was a cruel fate that dictated the day that I left the New Place, and indeed compelled me to leave England altogether for the shores of America. A fate that wore the face of an angel, but had the soulless nature of the worst of devils.