Confined To Eternity

Castle Kilborne

Island of Aaron - Western Scotland

1307

"Witch…"

As I look down into the feverish eyes, pale pain ridden features, and parched dry lips of the bloodied man lying on the crude wooden table before me I know I’ve just been handed my doom. The coppery smell of the blood slowly dripping, down off the table, warm and sticky onto my bare feet is making the bile rise in my throat. His whispered ranting has his fellow marauders surrounding the table growling and mumbling amongst themselves. They stare at me, their eyes full of superstition and hatred, I am the enemy, English born and bred.

I was first brought upon Scottish soil nine long years ago. The trophy bride King Edward bestowed upon this now dying lord. After the battle of Falkirk, in which my father William Wallace was defeated, and I captured and given away like common chattel. Brought to this wretched castle sitting atop the cliffs like some great bird perched on its precarious nest, I’ve been nothing more then slave and bed mate to this cold-hearted glacier eyed warrior since the age of ten and seven.

My hatred has remained bright and strong within me, causing me to rebel, to always be receiving some punishment of one kind or another for my insolence. Now as I stand watching my tormentor dying right before me, I can feel nothing but supreme joy in his suffering. I watch the light dimming in his eyes and I smile, his last delirious declamation has condemned me. But I can feel nothing in my heart right now but relief. Better death then life in this cold miserable land of degradation and misery.

The dim light of the scones, bracketed in the cement walls, throw large shadows over the array of rank smelling, sweat coated, torn and bleeding warriors crowded into the entry room situated just inside the main entrance of the Castle. The rushes on the floor are becoming drenched, dyed red by the flowing blood left by unattended wounds, as all eyes are on their dying lord sprawled on his back. Naked from the waist up his belly lying open a present from an English sword. I watch him gasp for air, and I can’t contain the curving of my lips, the first real smile I’ve felt cross my face in nine endless years.

Across the table from me I catch Keenan’s eye, the brother to my husband, and next lord of the castle. If possible his loathing for me is even greater, then mine for him. His eyes narrow, and he comes around the table grabbing me by my arms, shaking me.

"My brother has proclaimed you a witch… what say you to this?" His eyes burn into me, daring me, challenging me. I see desire spark hot and heavy in his gray orbs, and I know death is the only option for me now. His hands biting into my tender flesh clench harder, but I refuse to flinch. Lifting my chin I proclaim in a loud voice unmarred by tremor or quake.

"Aye… I’m a witch. And I curse the whole stinking lot of you!" Just as the last syllable escapes my lips the body on the table convulses, a loud final breath is expelled, arms and legs stiffen, red gore gushes from the straining wound. Hands claw the air, as if trying to ward off the dark specter awaiting the damned soul, eager to grab it and transport it to the fiery realms of Hades.

This once proud Lord heaves one final shudder before all the life is drained away, and nothing is left but the empty husk of what was. As a collective whole all eyes in the room now turn my way. Accusations written across faces beaten and bloody, filter through the dusky smoke ridden shadows of the huge room, they blame me. From my own lips I've proclaimed myself "Witch".

The invasion of the English on the North shore of the island at daybreak has killed many a man on both sides, beaten back, the English have departed, their search for Robert the Bruce in vain. Hidden in the caves on the south shore of the Island the King of the Scots is safe. But their Lord lies dead.

I will pay… I know it… But I no longer care. I long for death, pray for death. Keenan's meaty palm across my left cheek has me flying from his grasp. Landing on the cool hard cement floor rips the skin from my knees but I hardly feel the pain.

The men converge on me, growls and profanities meet my ears, and the stench from their unwashed bodies umbrella me as hands, so many hands, drag me to my feet. Blood seeps from my cracked lip, I can taste its coppery essence feel its warm smoothness as it creeps down my chin to spill on my old worn out overdress. But I care not, for all I can see is Keenan's malevolent eyes burning into mine. The men wait, and all grow silent as they anticipate their new Lords judgment.

"Emily Wallace, by thy own mouth you've confessed to witchery, your lord husband has branded you witch and died upon your own foul curse made inside these castle walls this day. " At this point I watch as he pauses, and I see the tiniest smile flicker across his cruel thin lips, he's enjoying this, enjoying the power he now wields.

Putting his face close to mine, his fetid breath blowing into my mouth makes me want to retch. I swallow hard not wanting to disgrace myself, I refuse to show any weakness. My chin defies gravity and lifts, his eyes narrow; he looks up snarling to his men.

"Take the witch to the tower, the north room, bind her to the wall, call the builders, I want her sealed inside." Looking back to me he whispers to where only my ears can hear.

"You'll scream Emily, there in the dark, you'll beg for my mercy when the rodents start to feed on your live flesh. But no one will hear you, your filthy English carcass will rot inside these castle walls for eternity." His word's chill me to the bone, but knowing my fate is sealed I am determined to go to my death with some dignity.

So I smile, looking right into his astounded gray eyes. Infuriated he grabs my hair and yanks, twisting me around and pushing me along in front of him. He walks me through the castle, often pushing me so hard that I fall forward. Each time only his hands entwined in my shortened wavy brown tresses keeps me from completely falling. My head burns from the swaths of hair torn from my scalp, but I don't cry out. His men follow shouting, demanding my blood, wanting revenge; they are in a full-blown killing rage. I ignore them all.

The spiral stairway leading up into the tower seems interminable; the scones in the wall belch a nauseous smoke that burns my eyes, and the muscles in my calves' strain, crying out at me for rest. Finally we come to the top and an open doorway. In all my years in the castle, I've never been allowed in any of the towers. But I've heard of these rooms. Prisoners are kept here, shackled like animals to the walls.

Some days you can hear their screams resounding throughout the castle, even into the keep, as they are tortured. I can feel the cold dread coiled like a monster snake in the pit of my belly. I want to cry out, beg, and plead, not to be taken here but know I will not, cannot. At the threshold Keenan finally releases me. Looking back over my shoulder I can see nothing in the gloomy light but his gloating smile. I keep my expression as neutral as I can, letting none of my fear and revulsion show. Then turning back around and squaring my shoulders I take my first step into my damnation.

The smell hits me at once, slamming into me attacking my already queasy stomach. Old emanations of bodily excretions, sweat, and some other undeterminably putrescence odors swirl around me like a cloak. The rushes, sparse as they are, carry remnants of past inhabitants that I don't want to study to closely.

Embedded into the wall about waist high dangles a pair of shackles, I can make out the rusty colored stained dull metal from where I stand. Calmly, not understanding how I can walk to my doom so easily, feeling the total silent confirmation of my impending death upon me, and an odd type of peace, I cross the cool floor and sit down in the space between where I'll be bound. I look to the doorway; Keenan just stands there, an almost grudging respect shining from his eyes. Holding out my wrists to him, I lift them up, offering them.

"Finish this." He snaps to the man closest behind him, and turning on his heel starts back down the narrow staircase, his men part for him in silence. I sit complacent as a tall bearded man, a gash open and oozing above his right eye, comes in and roughly grabs each wrist and secures me tightly. I watch the dried blood from others before me chip off the stained metal and rain down as his fingers find purchase.

All the rest of that long evening and into the early morning I watch as the builders come in and slab by stone slab built a wall all around me. When that is complete, I can hear the sliding and scraping as the doorway itself to my chamber is also sealed in, Keenan is taking no chances. It isn't until I hear the last stone slid and mortared into place that I allow my first tear to fall. I sit in complete darkness, with not even the small arched carved out opening to the outside, for comfort. For it is on the other side of the new wall from me, between it and the freshly sealed entrance to the chamber. Now all I can do is sit and wait in the calumnious blackness of my tomb for death to come claim me.

Ruins of Kilborne Castle Island of Aaron - Western Scotland Present Day

He's like a work of art, this mere mortal whom I've spent what seems like an eternity watching. Time is irrelevant to someone, or as some might think, to something such as I. What are minutes, hours, days, years, even centuries to me. Time flows in a continuing circle of nothingness, the sun rises, sets, the sea continues its never-ending quest to obey the moons magnetic pull, tide-in, tide-out. And I play sentinel, silent and unseen, a ghost… yes a ghost, for that is what I've been reduced to in my death for this past many centuries… My body now nothing but a heap of bones, and sand. My soul trapped, denied its freedom to move on to whatever realm is deemed its worth.

Always, I watch from my place in this crumbling ruin, which has fallen down around me piece by piece over the space of time. Never heard, never seen since my condemnation. Alone… He's here today, this prince of men, lying supine like a medieval sun god paying homage to the burning rays. They fall down over his naked form bathing him in light as he lies on the slab of concrete, which used to be part of the once proud ramparts of this dying relic. I remember the day that piece fell, the cracking, rumbling gray rock finally letting loose its tenuous hold, it's old visage as worn and as tired as my trapped soul. It tumbled down the sheer cliff to land on the sand at the bottom, not far from the foaming water's edge, among boulders and other remnants of past eras.

Only a small portion of the room I've dwelt in these past many centuries' remains standing, most of it has lost its war with gravity and fallen. I wonder what happens to me, when this last space I have follows. For as ordained, I have been unable to leave my prison, even when the wall crumbled, and the entry was once again opened, I found I could not venture out. An unseen barrier retained me, and still does, for I try every dawn to leave my prison. That is a disparaging part of each day indeed. I cry buckets of invisible tears.

This is a very lonely place, isolated on the north end of the island. Days go by and I see nary a soul. Many are frightened to venture here. They believe this old fortress to be haunted. I've heard many a whisper carried on the winds invisible hands from lovers young and old who sneak to the beach for trysts using the various slabs of rock to frolic and make love upon. They lay talking afterwards, looking up warily, way up the cliff, to the hollowed out tower where I stand looking down upon them. Sometimes I almost imagine they can see me…

Only this one… My imagined prince ever comes with any regularity. But only for a few very short weeks, every fourth season. This has been so for many years, every since his youth, I've watched him grow from a gangly adolescent to a strapping young man. Before, he came with his parents and what must have been his female sibling. Then one season he came alone, so sad, crying upon the rocks. I felt his loneliness and sorrow, and a kinship was born that day, and the days that followed.

For I knew them well, the emotions with which he suffered. So I watch him come, day after day, to lie upon the rocks, magnificent in his nudity. I watch his skin turn from honeyed to golden before he leaves me to wait another four seasons for his return. It won’t be long now, just a couple more days before he'll once again leave me, to my loneliness and despair.

My eager eyes drink him in, lying there upon the granite slab on the same swatch of pale green cloth that he comes with daily. His skin shining from the liquid he always rubs upon himself, and the strange black oddity covering his eyes, which he sometimes removes. He seems so at peace, listening to the sea splashing in upon the huge boulders, turning periodically from back to belly to back again before getting up and leaving.

Sometimes he stays a little longer, to pleasure himself as he lies upon the rocks. I watch him touching himself leisurely, running his hands over his magnificent body that any warrior of my time would have been proud of. In a very slow and deliberate rhythm he massages his cock, lying there looking straight up the cliff at me. It's at these times that I feel awe wash over me. He's so beautiful, his hands so sure and confident in which tune to play upon his senses. His mouth will slowly part, and his hips will eventually strain upwards as his hand moves so gracefully, faster and faster upon his manhood. And finally upon completion his cries carry up and over the water, into the air to me, and I'm left shaking with yearning.

Today is no different… His shout of ecstasy has left me weak with wanting. Even with no body I feel the taint of desire, and long to have substance with which to relieve myself. I feel my imagined nipples stiffen, and the juices between my thighs flow, and madness almost over takes me with the desire I cannot assuage. I watch in depression and sadness as he rises and gathering his strange cloth leaves as the sun begins to dip over the horizon.

I await the stars, my night companions, for I never sleep. I have named them all, to me each have their own identity, just as I once did. Looking behind me at the pile of bones, dust and cloth that once represented me I still feel the loss even after all this time. Hearing a rumble I realize that yet another piece of my domain is about to start its journey down the cliff. I'm only a little surprised to see the stone floor under my non-existent feet give way. Looking up I see the wall tilting, and know this is it, will I now finally be able to go to my rest?

I seem to float in the air as tons of rock, and stone began to fall around me, the world pitches forward then down in a dizzying swirl as we tumble. I feel nothing touch me as everything passes right through where my body should be. All I can ascertain is a sense of movement as the side of the cliff skates over my vision and the sand and boulders that used to seem so far away reach up and out to welcome me. Dust envelopes me, and the earth rumbles as more and more of the tower collapses, huge slab's rain down all around me, yet I feel nothing, not even the sand and rocks beneath where my feet should be. For I haven't seen my form since my death, I'm an invisible entity.

What takes mere seconds seems like forever as finally the last of the stone and debris settles down around me. The dust clouds begin to drift back to the ground, landing quietly, and all that is left is the sound of the surf crashing into the rocks.

I'm afraid to move; finally after centuries of nothing but stonewalls and gaping wounds were the sides of the tower were once intact, I'm in the open. Excitement courses through me, but fear reins in my heart as well. Am I trapped in this one spot forever? Has my curse been broken? Will I finally be given peace? I wait, frozen, so frightened, and not knowing what I really want more. If I move, will God finally notice me and take me from this forsaken reality?

Getting up my nerve I step forward, so used now to my invisibility that it doesn't hinder me what-so-ever that I can't see my feet. I feel no barriers, and hope begins to beat within my disbelieving soul, I take a second step, feeling nothing but openness and cool breezes coming in off the water. The wind wraps around me, and a tremendous feeling of freedom comes over my senses so languidly that I'm quite confused as to what it is at first.

I begin to slowly walk around in circles, trying to find a perimeter, feeling almost bereft, at the vast quantity of amplitude I'm allowed. The further away I get from the cliff and down the beach, the more I realize that in a way I'm free, I'm finally free.

Then little things start to come in and camp out in my consciousness. I can feel the wind… my mouth, or what I've always perceived to be where my mouth should be, falls open. Oh my god, so long, so very long, I've waited to feel something external, to experience some recognition of touch. Being nothing but a mass of emotion for all this time has left me unprepared for the myriad sensations my shocked brain is now assimilating.

My mere twenty-six years of humanity has been all I've had to go on for the remembrances of the many things I've longed to feel again. I'm not ready for this total rush of completely alien perception. Compared to the centuries of nothingness I've endured, my short span as flesh and blood has left me ill prepared.

I stop in total confusion, I can feel a slight tingling beginning in where my feet should be, and like a flash, before I know it, I'm encompassed from head to toe. I don't understand this, I drop to my knees and realize that I can actually feel the sand beneath me, it's cold and damp, and each grain seems to be impeding itself into my skin. The thousands of tiny pinpricks of electrical currents I'm now registering in my shell-shocked brain and body intensifies. I fall to my back writhing, rolling from side to side. Is this death; is this the true death, first the body dies, then the soul?

So many questions wrack my brain as pain does the same to my essence. Minutes pass, then hours, and still I lay twisting this way and that, I scream out, then grow still, my torment forgotten as I hear my voice for the first time in centuries. It ricochets off the cliffs to bounce back and flow over the endless swells of water and out to sea. Eventually the prickling stops and I lay gasping like a beached whale there upon the salty sand.

A wispy strand of hair blows against my sweat-laden brow, I push it back behind my ear, exhausted. It takes me a full five seconds to realize what I've done. I feel a heartbeat! It quickens, and I can't contain a sob of pure joy as I look at real skin, arms and legs, fingers and toes. I jump up, unable to contain myself. My body is back! How can this be! I don't care! I don’t care!!! Is this a dream?

I pat and pinch and caress, my nakedness. NO… It's real… it's real! I dance… like a crazy loon right there, up and down the sand, the sea my only audience… I grow tired but I can't make my legs obey me, my joy is too great. The night chants with me, to the accompaniment of the water playing drums upon the rocks, and the waves crashing like cymbals to shore. I twist, twirl, humming an unnamed tune upon the night breeze.

Finally, lungs burning, drawing in cool drafts of much needed air, and legs shaky unable to support my weight, I sink to the sand. Looking around me I realize I've made my way back to the piles of granite, and stone slabs, which once enclosed me. Leaning back on my palms I look up the sheer cliff to the scarred remains of the castle, its tower now almost completely gone, crumbled down around me and I can't help the smile, I feel cross my face. Tears course down to fall off my chin, and I feel a dam break inside me. I raise my hand and shake my fist at the dark shadowed remains of the castle, pulling in a lung-full of air I scream at the top of my lungs.