Jon Erik
In Memoriam
The History of Jon Erik
My name is Jon Eriksson. Most people just call me Jon-Erik. My father was a Norseman. He was a lusty man with a quick temper but, in all, a mostly peaceful nature and not given to very many violent outbursts.
My mother is French. I am told she was a comely young girl when she met my father. She rightfully became my father’s wife after a short but decent length of courting.
Alas, my father was somewhat of a wanderer by nature and, as it would come about, not too long after he and my mother were wed mayhap a month or so…he left on a journey out of town to sell his furs. It saddened my mother that he would leave so soon but he told her t’would no be for long only a month or two and in the while her family would well care for her as they were well off and close by. Tearfully, she watched him go but soon her tears were dried as it came to be known that she had conceived and would bear my father a child. Mother was glad and hoped to soon tell her husband of the joyful news.
Now my father, being lusty as it were, fell into sin in that other town and slept with a wild young Irish lass that was waiting bar there. The Irish in her made her so wild that she would not be tied to one man or one town for long. So with little regret he left her and went soon back to his lovely French lady. My father had no idea that she too had conceived a child of his.
So life went on. I was born in France in the year 1350 in the month of March and my half brother was born in another town with in a day of me.
Now my father had discussed children’s’ names with my mother and, apparently, with his Irish lass.
He favored the name Jan, but my mother, being French and a good Christian lady wanted a more traditional name and thus it came to be that I became Jon and, of course, EiriKsson, after my father.
My half-brother whom, as I had said, was born the next day in a little town not too far away was named Jan EIricsson.
One day, much later, oh…20 years or so, by my reckoning, my brother and I met and discovered the unusual circumstances of our relationship. My father, by that time, had passed to his reward. Jan’s mother had never married or settled down, even after having Jan, so he was more akin to the Norse side of his nature and was wilder and more adventurous then I. He had lost his mother when he was 15 and had taken to roaming about on the sea and collecting, as it were, treasures where ‘ere he went.
I, on the other hand, had been raised in a more cultured atmosphere and was of a more refined nature. However, because of my fathers’ influence, I too was a wanderer and traveled about merchanting whatever came to hand.
My brother and I make an unlikely but prosperous pair. Over the years we traveled together we came to jokingly refer to each other as “my twin brother”. Many a time we got away with it, as we both looked much like our father. We both had rather long dark hair that curled about the ends and dark, almost black, eyes. Though the gels seemed to think that his eyes held more mischief then mine. He was certainly more favored then I by those girls and on that score I think I was rather jealous.
So it came to be that when I met the lovely young lady who I took to wife I warned him in no uncertain terms to stay as far away as possible from her. This created an unfortunate rift between us but I felt I had no choice but to somehow stay his uncultured ways.
I still see my brother and we trade much, thus profiting us both but he stays away from my lady and I refrain from comment on his current acquissions.
