Wavelength -- first draw

Middle Ages – a small fief in England


It has been sixty years and forty–nine of them in marriage. Why we married on her date of birth I’ll never know. How old we have become and accepting to fate and it’s limited choices. I at sixty-four am merry for the ability to move on my own as she must be assisted. She bore a child for me, a male, then became baron but with a son to rise as an heir to my name I cared not. For a forced wife, I could not love her more. But as head of archives, I have work.

The castle is still at this hour in the morn but it is refreshing when I check the castle’s manuscripts and scrolls to hear the waking of such a merry home. As the sun briskly blinds you in the morn the bustle and noise is at the same haste and, like the sun, without hesitation.

“How comes the keeping, Artemis?” as Barlow is cued in with the set up line every morning.


“It neither comes nor goes when there is nothing to keep.” The common response.

“We may be a small fief with no role in politics nor war but surely these scrolls must contain something.” Barlow replies with a smirk across his face as he leans down on my desk. His charming deep voice bellows through the room. The voice of a snake, the voice of a merchant, as which he was.

“The only things the scrolls ever keep are dust and mildew as much I am the same.” He blasts a single loud ha and walks out the door. Every morn he drops by thus the neighborly thing to do. We in this age are small and separate but we are together. Yet my job is null and void for all meant for keeping that comes my way are papers of ownership which sits on the tip of a blade beyond these castle walls.

Our Lord John Williams III is benevolent and kind but in scarce land of both life and activity, benevolence is all you have. A young King he is with both a young wife and daughter. Or maybe I’m just old. As I know he wishes prosperity I fear when times of trouble strike his inexperience and ignorance will fail his people. But in a land where nothing ever happens it is hard to know the unexpected when all you have ever known is the expected.

“Morning Princess Williams!” Such a sweet child, like her parents and just as naïve, protected behind stone walls.

“Art! I told you to call me Ash!” She is always so cheery and her smile is vibrant. Usually I see her enter but I guess my eyes are starting to fail me. My how she has becomes so beautiful and such an age for marriage, 15.  I am surprised she isn't already married and with child.

“I told you to call me Artemis! Your name is Princess Ashley Victoria Williams not ash. You are a princess not the material I sweep out of the fireplace.” She is a natural tease (which I’m sure has the boys bouncing.) and pouts at my comments.

“I like Ash. I like Art!”

“As well do I but on walls not as my name.” she pouts. As I keeps a straight face as I straighten the books. “What brings you here?” moving across the room I begin my daily check on inventory.

“Isn’t today your wife’s birthday?” I was curious on when she would bring that up.

“Yes it seems that the old hag will never die.” She giggles picking up on my sarcasm.

“Did you get her a gift?” I saw this coming. So I prepared for her to set me up.

“No.” she seems confused (another quality that drives young me crazy about
her.). She then looks at me and I pause kneeling on the ground looking back at her.

“Why not?” She walked right into it.

As I struggle to stand I grunt out, “Because...” I am getting old if I struggle to talk on such simple movement. “She didn’t use the gift I gave her last year.” She blinks at me as I keep a straight face and sit at my desk which stands at the center of the room.

“What did you give her last year?” I give a serious look at stare into her eyes. They stare back wide open as if she is going to cry at any moment, silly child.

“A grave plot.” I casually look onto the open blank scroll that lies before me, grab my quail feather pin, dip the tip in ink, and begin on the latest property transaction that I must record. I give it a week before I will have to scrape up a new one. I then look up at her to see her reaction. A blank stare. I smile and so does she. Soon laughter filled the stone walls of the room.

“You can always make me laugh. So what did you give her?” she is persistent isn’t she?

“Well as you know she turned sixty, so she is pretty much a dead woman standing.” She giggles.

“I know, I know you’re the oldest man in the castle.” Well thank you princess… but sixty four is old with the rampant diseases that cover the land.

“Don’t remind me dear child. Well we married of her eleventh birthday forty nine years ago forced by our parents and…”

“I asked what you gave her, not of how you met.” She smiles while cutting me off. She smiles with anything she ever does. I have forgotten I had told her the story of how I met my wife, on the day of our marriage, but that is pretty common and most likely not of her interest.

“I gave her nothing as she gave nothing for me.” She gives me a puzzled stare. “You will learn as the older you get items, possessions hold no value and all you have are each other and your soul.” She veers her eyes to the stone floors she knows what the bible says and she knows what I say about souls and always she seems depressed about the thought of inner self.

“Why must soul be such a personal thing?” such a child.

“It’s essence. You have a body, a mind to control the body, but without soul the mind has no motive, mo initiative, no will. Soul defines you.” She still remains in a depressed state twiddling her thumbs.

“I-I must leave.” She looks up and puts on a smile for me. I can always tell when she fakes a smile because her smile is gentle but her eyes are filled with glossy tears. Like many of this castle she is innocence because they have known nothing other than that.  She leaves the room. She had a red dress today, a blue one the day before.

The day remains slow and lifeless but I have been hearing a commotion from the center courtyard, I wonder what it is. I leave the room and head toward the right stone corridor until I reach the high entrance to the upper level of the courtyard to see quite the sight.