So on Christmas Eve I take this down from an ancient monk who was chamberlain once at the court of Michael III. and sometimes wanders in his mind.
Now he is fallen asleep, and the chants are over, and I will write no more.
God guard us all from evil. Amen.
Signed by Theophilus, a little scribe in the Monastery of St. John, Armenia, Christmas Eve, 899.
THE PRISONER
Sophia Dorothea of Zell
“George I. was married to his cousin, Sophia Dorothea, daughter of the Duke of Zell; accused of an intrigue with a Swedish adventurer, she was repudiated by her husband and imprisoned in a castle in Hanover for thirty-two years previous to her death in 1729.”–History of England.
December darkened over the dark flats outside Schloss Ahlden; the sluggish gray river, the barren gray road stretched into the bitter mist; above the stunted alders and broken reeds the plovers circled mournfully.