I can’t even see the ground below my tower from where I lean. My everyday world consists of this bedchamber, the manatu branches immediately outside, the dank staircase that leads from my room to two more doors, and that little patch of garden which I have already mentioned, and where I can’t even venture.

Occasionally I am escorted out one of the doors into an inner courtyard where I may take my exercise or just enjoy the temporary fresh air. On the days I don’t go to the courtyard a guard comes and traipses me up and down the staircase to ensure that I don’t lie in bed all day and make myself ill.

My days follow a monotonous pattern. A servant brings my breakfast an hour after sunrise. It’s always good food, much better than anything I ever had when I was little. After I have eaten I wash in the marble basin in the corner. Hot water is brought with the breakfast along with scented rosewater. I dress and brush and braid my long hair. When the servant comes to collect the breakfast things she brings any messages the king might have for me. Often there are none. If this is the case then I begin my lessons. I am my own tutor and use the books from my bookshelf. They cover geography, mathematics, Latin, Greek, music and the sciences. I finished all the lessons they could give me shortly before I turned thirteen.

For the past two years I have simply been redoing lessons that I had forgotten and reading poetry from a book I can hold in one hand that one of the servants slipped me. I don’t think the king knows I have it. All the other books are large and awkward and must be laid open on the desk or floor for me to be able to read them.

I play my harp for an hour or so after my lessons, then another servant brings my lunch. After the dishes have been removed I usually spend some time by the window eavesdropping and feasting my eyes. Later a guard comes to walk me up and down the stairs, unless I am taken to the courtyard. When I am returned to my chamber I play the harp again until dinnertime. Afterwards I weave for a time, although I usually have no patience with this. Sometimes I embroider or draw, but usually I just stare out the window, watching the sky grow gradually darker and wonder who else is watching the same thing. At some point when I can shake myself from my reverie, I change into my nightdress and go to bed.

Lately I have been even more bored than usual. My small room is no longer enough to occupy me and amuse me. I am sick of taking orders submissively and making no choices of my own other than to keep my secrets to myself. I live for my secrets; my uncomfortable, yet entertaining window gallery and the narrow book of poetry which resides under my mattress. I need something more, these conditions are stifling me – and the sticky remnants of heat that remain from summer aren’t helping the matter. I have already resolved to do something to break the mould by the time I pull myself away from the window.

My chance to rebel against my quiet existence comes sooner than I expected when the king decides to pay me a visit. Before I go any further, perhaps I should explain something more of my life here at the castle of Shalott.

I was born to a wool trader and his wife just over fifteen years ago in the sprawling, many-towered city of Camelot. Already my mother had given birth to four sons and two daughters. After me there came another two sons and two daughters. Our family weren’t exactly well-off, but neither did we go without food or clothes on our backs as many of Camelot’s residents did.

All the children, as soon as we were old enough, helped our parents with wool-gathering, combing, spinning and weaving. We owned our own flock of sheep from whom we gathered and sheared wool, but my father also bought wool from farmers that came to trade in the city. Our flock grazed in a pasture five minutes from the edge of Camelot. To this end our family lived in a house on the fringes of the city, on the side by the river.

If my father or one of my older siblings lifted me on to their shoulders (my mother complained of a bad back and would never give in to my pleas), I could see as far as the island of Shalott and the castle that stood proudly in it’s centre.

Though we worked hard for our living, our life was a happy one, if my memory serves me well.

When I was six, my oldest brother was sixteen and my youngest just a year old, the king came to visit us.The littler of us children saw what, to our eyes, was a fine procession coming all the way from Shalott. Four soldiers in smart uniforms of grey coats and red breeches on horseback before a carriage drawn by two more horses. Another four soldiers rode behind. It stopped before our house and a footman helped the king down from the carriage. Then both footmen and a manservant accompanied him to the door of our house which stood open. He had to stoop to enter the small five-room dwelling that was our home. It was at this point, I suppose, that I was first given the impression that he was a very tall man. This impression has stayed with me ever since, although with hindsight it was probably just that our doorframe was very low.

My brothers and sisters all trooped curiously after the king, but I stayed outside. It’s not that I wasn’t curious – far from it in fact; I had stayed behind to discover what I might about the silent soldiers and the grand carriage. It seemed to me that they were guarding it and my childish mind imagined heaps of jewels and gold.

Gems had always fascinated me and I could have spent hours playing with my mother’s ring, our family’s most valuable possession, which was inlaid with a tiny diamond. I loved to turn it this way and that to see which way the light would catch it.

To this end, of feasting my eyes on the imaginary jewels I climbed right up onto the steps set into the carriage side and stood on tiptoe to peek inside the window. The soldiers didn’t see me, I presume because they were looking around at head height rather than waist. A lace curtain hung down on the inside of the window obscuring my view for most of it, but one corner had folded up on itself.

It was through this corner that I looked.

A moment later I toppled backward with a squeak. A pair of eyes was all I could discern in the internal shadow and they gave me such a glare that I was quite frightened. I found out later that it was the Lady Marguerite who had frightened me so. She is wife to the king.

Needless to say I was horrified when my mother followed the king and his men out a moment later and told me that I was to go with them. Horror-struck I began to run away, but in a trice one of the footmen had scooped me up and deposited me inside the carriage. I was so appalled at being placed right next to what had so scared me. I began to shake uncontrollably and curled up in a corner of the carriage, as far away from the eyes as I could get. I stayed that way until we reached the castle.

As you see, I never even got the chance to say goodbye to my family.

When we reached the castle, I was put in a small room, empty but for a three-legged stool and a loom. Still too frightened to behave rationally – remember I was only six at the time – I curled up uncomfortably in a once more in a damp corner. To me, it seemed days that I was left there. Goodness knows how long it really was, but eventually the king returned with a scribe and a maidservant. With a nod to the maid, the king ordered her to attend to me. Hers was the first kind face I had seen since leaving home and she was to become my first friend. She was about the same age as my elder sister Laverne; fourteen or so.

She picked me up and set me on my feet, brushed the dirt off my dress and guided me to the little stool where I let my shaking legs give way beneath me. After giving me another kind smile she retreated silently behind the king.

The scribe had set down another small stool and a tiny table, and was now seated with a scroll spread out in front of him and a quill in his hand. Then the king began to speak.

“I want you to weave me something,” he said. “You have threads here and a loom. If you have need of anything else it can be fetched. I shall return in three hours and expect you to have for me the finished article.” With that the king turned and swept out of the little chamber. The scribe hurriedly gathered up his things and scampered after him, but the kind maid hung behind.

“I’ll bring you some food shortly. In the meantime you’d do best to get started.” She smiled at me again, and left.

I had been sitting frozen on the stool, but at the maid’s kind words I managed to move my fingers enough to thread the loom and begin weaving. By the time the king returned I had a square of cloth about the size of my palm finished. I was terrified it wouldn’t be enough and that I would be thrown in the awful dungeons I and my siblings had been threatened with when we were being naughty, but he took the cloth from me without a word and left.

My nervousness left me then long enough for me to remember the food the maid had left for me near the door while I was half-way through my weaving.

Later a different maid came and led me to this tower which I have occupied ever since. Whenever the king demands it I must weave thread into cloth – I have never disobeyed. Otherwise I am left on my own in my locked chamber.