ToBoldlyNano Weekly Prompt 8: Room Description
In this entire big place, this castle, there was one room which belonged to her. When she first agreed to move in here, into his home, that was her one stipulation: she must have one room that was hers and hers alone. “That’s fine, love,” he had said, grinning, “You’ll see I have plenty of rooms to choose from.”
So in this castle-she had thought him joking when he told her he would take her away to his castle, but it was, truly, a fortress, straight out of a travel brochure-old stone and battlements, crumbling picturesquely around the edges. No moat, though. That would be a bit much, even for him.
He had laid his castle at her feet, all of it at her disposal, and bade her to choose her own room. The two of them had gone on a tour, three floors, two wings, twenty or thirty rooms in all-she had already seen his bedroom (now their bedroom, of course) the night they arrived, and she had seen the new kitchen and the dining room, but there was a whole wing that she had never glimpsed until that tour. There were rooms for dancing, rooms for music, rooms for armor. (Unfortunately, there was not one suit of armor or harpsichord left in the entire place). There were even rooms for watching television, a room with a hot tub and sauna, and bedrooms of all shapes and sizes. When they descended to the ground floor and she got a good look at the old kitchen, she knew instantly she was in the right place.
The old kitchen was no longer used by the cook. A modern kitchen had been installed in the 60s, making use of one of the many large store rooms scattered about. The new kitchen was cozy and brightly lit, with yellow walls, modern fixtures and spotless countertops. The remodeling had left the old kitchen empty-a cavernous room, with two hearths and countless cubbies built into its brick walls. This was the room she had chosen as her own.
There was still an aged cooker in one corner, and the largest of the pots and pans still hung on cast iron hooks near the north hearth. She had kept the ancient table in place, its scarred oaken surface now half-covered with her books and papers. She loved to sit at that table, at her laptop or with pencil and lined pad. Radiating warmth pervaded this room, even in the depths of winter. Even when the hearths were empty she could feel their warmth on either side, as if the ashes of centuries still smoldered, their embers warming the room in perpetuity.
This was one of the darkest rooms in the house, yet it was hardly dark at all. It did not, quite, sit underground, but was cupped in a hollow in the land. Windows to the east let in the morning sun, and another grouping on the south side lit her work through the afternoon. The south-facing windows were mullioned and probably worth a fortune, adorned with family crests and blurry with the bubbles of aged glass. The eastern windows were newer additions, and their broad transparent faces seemed impossibly bold, gazing out on the herb garden and the neighbors’ fields beyond. She felt sure such windows would have been shocking to the people who built this house; one simply did not welcome the outside world into the house in those days. This home, this castle, had been a place of shelter from the forces of wind, weather, enemies known and strange. The entire structure was an act of protection. A house was one’s security-if one was lucky enough to have a house.
She often mused this way, sitting in the old chintz armchair they had moved down from the library for her. Above her the beams of the kitchen arched, and she felt that she were in a sort of protective space-a womb, perhaps, or cupped in some giant’s hand, cradled in the bosom of the house. The brick and beams were blackened with centuries of smoke, and in the quiet of early afternoon, she fancied she could smell the fires of all those generations of dinners. She would lean back in the fussy old armchair, or relax into the worn seat of one of the great wooden dining chairs, and she would imagine what her own ancestors had been doing when this house was built. No doubt working their fingers to the bone in some frigid Eastern European field, huddled at night in a hovel at the edge of some prince’s land. Had they ever even seen a place like this?
She planted her feet firmly on the worn flags beneath her. Each day she spent in this place seemed stranger than the last, and sometimes this old kitchen was the only spot that made sense to her. She had filled the cupboards with her books, and pictures of her family now adorned the many small cubbies. The cook brought in fresh flowers every morning, leaving a succession of pitchers to serve duty as vases. The current vessel was the most prosaic of earthenware, brown, rough-surfaced. To her it was impossibly beautiful, with early tulips arching over its lip, white and red and yellow. The eastern windows were dark with rain, and she considered drawing the curtains, but she preferred the deep gray-blue of the storm-tossed sky to the prim white lace. On days like this, the sky had a power that could not be denied. She wished (not for the first time) that she had a copy of Wuthering Heights and a rocking chair.
From the floor above, she caught the faint strains of an electric guitar. It was another reason she had chosen this room-Jack’s practice room was directly over her head, in what had once been the Great Hall. Jack was away, though, touring as usual, and his young nephew was in residence, earnestly practicing the same songs over and over.
She smiled. She had never minded hearing musicians at work. A good thing, too, considering she was now living with a bona fide rock star. The thought made her laugh, even after all these months.
She rose from her chair and crossed to the old oaken door, grasping the iron handle to haul the door open. A large, round rock lay on the flags outside the door, and she moved it into place with her foot, propping the door open. She loved the sound of the rain falling on the flags. She poured herself another cup of tea and sank back into the old chair as the smells of the herb garden drifted in. Early lavender and hardy mints predominated this time of year, and the steady beat of the raindrops released scent from their leaves. A contented sigh escaped her lips as she turned back to her computer. Oh, my, yes, she loved this room.
--Cross-posted to www.toboldlynano.com, weekly prompts, here.