A future past

I scan the aged canvases, collared gentry staring stiffly from their hangings. I drift off the back of the group. Distantly the guide intones her rehearsed script but a quiet corridor draws my attention. I want to be alone to forget the modern world. I take slow paces into the shadows.

Red carpet gives way to polished boards. A long-case clock from a bygone era is ticking slowly, measuring long seconds in deep metallic clicks. A narrow shaft of pale light spears from a high window illuminating motes of dust to prove their existence. Panelling hangs heavily like mahogany skin, rich and brittle with age.

My feet tread in prints left by ancient men and my weight presses on the floor, squeezing centuries old bees wax deep in the timber. A bend in the corridor brings cool gloom. Behind me was an even halogen wash, now ivory candles hold their yellow puddles close. Creamy wax planted on iron hoops that hang from chains. This is surely light that will last, its anchors driven deep into petrified stone.

In the belly of the fortress now, tapestries of drab brown deck the cold rock buttresses. Squinting reveals meagre detail and rotting threads, the age-old scenes long played-out and nearly invisible.

The past is a benevolent notion luring the unwary into its murk. I visited this place to enjoy a connection with history yet I sense a serpent is stuffed in the dungeons of this castle, its fat coils filling the dank cellars. My breath is puffs of condensation that hang like smoke. I stand motionless in the dread dark. Far off through a labyrinth maze of green-slime granite walls a thousand souls screaming from the bitter stone.

A glimmer of light pulls me moth-like. A heavy black door yawns onto a dazzling inner courtyard of close cut green and brilliant sunlight.
“There you are! We’ve been hunting all over for you.”
Blinking, I find the words, “I think I was lost.”