Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
The young woman has a dress and an apron and a cowl, all the things she needs to appear presentable to other people who could meet her with either judgment or compassion. Only heaven knows her nakedness, though earth is still touched by her unshod feet.
She recognized my selfish need in trading away my cloak for her to have this clothing. She offers me no gratitude. She saw my gift for what it was, my own selfish appeasement of conscience. So, we sit here in this little harbor shelter in the dark.
There is a horse sheltered here with fresh straw while his rider might be rowing up the river a short way to spend this night in Jarrow. This shed has a purpose. The horse has purpose.
This young Rachel has her focus on the mouse in the corner working feverishly to move its nest out of view of our human eyes. Now two mice are working on this project. When the last of the babies are tucked safely between the boards of this structure and out of our sight, the young woman still stares at the emptiness.
“I could go with you at first light in the morning, when the tide ebbs again, and we can cross the river and walk to the wood where there are people you know.”
“You would take me to the pauper’s woods where already they traded me away? Why would I go there?”
“I don’t know. Is that where your home is?”
“They would expect a princess bringing treasures and food from the castle. But I didn’t take stuff when I was dismissed.”
“The house we saw across the river was no castle it was the ealdorman’s house. This village is small and Cloothar agrees with me that a king assigns a literate villager, hardly royalty, to be the ealdorman. It was your hopes and dreams that made it a castle. And you still have the gift to make castles of your dreams. So, tell me the story. What happens next, when the hour comes, and a castle is an ordinary house and the coach is a pumpkin, and the coachmen are rats? Is there still a hidden princess in a common girl? What is the ever after for this story?”
“There is no ever. I gave that baby prince to the heaps of waters in the sea, and I promised to always keep him safe. but I was taken from the sea.”
“So, what happens next in the princess story?”
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 