Excerpt:
I sit in my chamber in the Priory of Saint Armand. It is late. The fire in the grate is low and casts but a faint warmth in the cold room. The dank coolness of the stones beneath my feet seems to permeate my whole body and fill me with a wretched shivering.
The candle flickers and turns my meager frame into a dark giant which floats on the ceiling of my cell. The crucifix over my bed wavers, the corpus on the dark polished wood seems to writhe in a hideous agony.
And so my soul!
I feel as if there were a tribe of frogs in my body, and they jump and set up a racket that unnerves me.
Tomorrow I am to be washed in the water of the Christians, those murderers, those rapists, those creatures who murdered my family, raped my mother, those dastards who have consigned me to the most miserable niche of mankind, the place of a slave among them.
My soul writhes, but it also rebels. I have determined to keep watch tonight, to write my story, to wait for dawn, and perhaps an answer.
I do need an answer!
I have prayed desperately in the form they have taught me. I have beseeched that strange creature they call a god, who lies pinned to the crucifix above my bed. But he has not answered me. Perhaps my mentors are correct. Perhaps I am damned, a slave through all eternity.
I did not always think so.
My name is Alethea. They say I cannot keep my name. I must be named Catherine or Maria. I do not like these names. They are not mine. My name is Alethea.
I sit in my chamber in the Priory of Saint Armand. It is late. The fire in the grate is low and casts but a faint warmth in the cold room. The dank coolness of the stones beneath my feet seems to permeate my whole body and fill me with a wretched shivering.
The candle flickers and turns my meager frame into a dark giant which floats on the ceiling of my cell. The crucifix over my bed wavers, the corpus on the dark polished wood seems to writhe in a hideous agony.
And so my soul!
I feel as if there were a tribe of frogs in my body, and they jump and set up a racket that unnerves me.
Tomorrow I am to be washed in the water of the Christians, those murderers, those rapists, those creatures who murdered my family, raped my mother, those dastards who have consigned me to the most miserable niche of mankind, the place of a slave among them.
My soul writhes, but it also rebels. I have determined to keep watch tonight, to write my story, to wait for dawn, and perhaps an answer.
I do need an answer!
I have prayed desperately in the form they have taught me. I have beseeched that strange creature they call a god, who lies pinned to the crucifix above my bed. But he has not answered me. Perhaps my mentors are correct. Perhaps I am damned, a slave through all eternity.
I did not always think so.
My name is Alethea. They say I cannot keep my name. I must be named Catherine or Maria. I do not like these names. They are not mine. My name is Alethea.