(no subject)
TITLE: Und Alle Engel Müssen Fall’n.
RATING: PG
FANDOMS: Tanz der Vampire with potential overtones for my Carpe-verse.
SUMMARY: In one brief spring afternoon, the Graf von Krolock's world falls apart.
PAIRINGS: Johannes von Krolock/OC
WORDS: 6568
WARNING: Perhaps tissues would be useful...
NOTES: Technically, this could be counted as a prequel to my Carpe Noctem series, but for the most part, it could stand alone. And yes, this is pre-vamping. About five years, as I recall. *yoinks opening thingie from bwinter in hopes its about right*
____________________________
Castle von Krolock, the border of Transylvania, Holy Empire of the German Nation, Early Spring of the Year of Our Lord 1611
The girl shrank from him. Her face was white save for the livid scarlet blaze of a handprint on her cheek, which her own thin fingers were pressing against. Wide, terrified eyes stared wildly at him, yet he could not find it within him to care.
How dare she lie so!
“You will leave this house this night,” Johannes von Krolock hissed, a trembling finger pointing at her. “Those who serve myself and my wife are honest. I will not have one who lies serve us.”
The girl’s lips quivered, her words stifled, tears tangling on her lashes.
Johannes, in some recess of his mind, knew he was behaving ill. He knew this girl, had known her and her family for a dozen years, yet when the words she had said had touched his ears, rational thought seemed a long-gone friend.
Strange that only this morning, he had been happy.
With the dawn, he had left Lise sleeping to journey to the village for a meeting with the council regarding an incident of trespassing. She had been sleeping a lot of late, which he could not fault her for, even more so since her pregnancy was leaving her weak and drained with even the lightest of activity.
After almost seven years of marriage, they had almost given up hope that she would ever conceive a child. She was too old, his mother had said, and he had accepted that he would never be a father as long as he loved his wife. The thought of annulling their marriage was one he had shied from, despite his wife and mother’s protests.
Then what they saw as a miracle came to pass and Lise, only six months earlier, had flown into his arms and joyously declared she was with child.
Perhaps it was God’s merciful response to Lise’s goodness and silently shed tears, he had dazedly thought as he had held and she had wept with happiness, or perhaps the Devil’s response to his own supernatural fumblings. He had not truly cared which, though together they had prayed in gratitude.
Yet now, with the lie dripping from his servant’s lips, the shrill, distant whine of a newborn and an empty, bloody bed where his wife had been, blood was rushing in his ears and he felt like his mind was detached from his body.
“Excellency...”
Turning as quickly as his rebellious body would allow, Johannes looked down at the aged woman who had been the housekeeper of the castle since his birth. “Grete, this insolent girl will not tell me where my wife is.”
He needed no words. Every line of the woman’s tired face was etched as clearly as the print in his books. But he did not wish to read her emotions. Misinterpretation was a common crime these days. Yes.
Her white brows twitched together, her knotted hands pressing before her chest, and her wrinkled lips puckered as she seemed to gather the words. “Your Lady is in the chapel, Excellency,” she said carefully. “She...”
He did not wait for her to finish, striding out of the hall, into the grounds.
Though part of the castle, the small stone chapel was a short distance from the building. Modest and discreet, it hid in the shadows of the East wing, and only recently had he found time to have the windows filled with the coloured glass that was so popular. It had been Lise’s suggestion, a gesture of gratitude for the blessing of a child.
It had clearly rained during the day, his boots and breeches sodden by the time he reached the vestibule of the building. The Priest was nowhere to be seen, though even as he pushed the door wide, he could see two figures lighting candles within the chapel, one too tall to be Lise, the other too plump to be his wife.
Both of them turned at his quiet footsteps and he saw the colour drain from their faces as they hastily curtsied to him. The younger girl, Grete’s granddaughter, looked as if she wanted nothing more than to flee, backing up against the image of Madonna and child, oblivious to the taper burning down to her shaking fingers.
“Milord...” the other began to say.
Silencing her with a brief gesture, Johannes noticed detachedly that his hand was trembling. “Where is she?” he said. His voice was calm. Very calm. It seemed that all the turmoil was knotting about his heart.
The woman hesitated, but her eyes betrayed her, darting towards the altar of the Chapel and an unfamiliar object that lay there. “Excellency, would you have me fetch the Pri...”
“Leave me.”
How strange that the words seemed to come from someone else’s lips, in a voice that did not sound anything like his own.
The elder of the two women hastily bobbed into a curtsey, then caught her companion by the arm, drawing her out of the chapel as von Krolock made himself move down the aisle. The young girl’s taper had fallen to the floor, still glowing, the breeze from the opening doors sending sparks and ash fluttering across the stone.
Stooping, Johannes picked it up and lit a candle, ignoring the sheet-covered shape that rested before the altar. Crossing himself, he bowed his head before the picture of the Holy Mother and her child, but the painted eyes revealed nothing, the enigmatically curled lips silently mocking.
He remembered, only days earlier, laughingly saying to Lise that he would have her painted with their child, a miracle to match that first one. Nestled against his chest, she had chastised him for such blasphemy, but he had teasingly reminded her that she had not refused the painting. She had blushed and made a face unbecoming of a lady and together, they had laughed.
They had laughed so often. It was often said they were far happier than any man and his wife had a right to be. Johannes’s mother especially had maintained that they should at least feign solemnity on occasion.
The Dowager Countess’s presence usually ensured that there was at least a little misery in their lives, but her chief complaint had been taken from her when Lise had grown round with child. She had not visited the castle since then, residing with her favoured child and Johannes’s elder sister, much to his relief.
They had been happier than they thought possible in the last six months. Even when Lise was confined to her bed, she had still been smiling. When the child started to kick, they had spent hours just revelling in the wonder of it.
With nothing else to do, she had insisted on trying to embroider garments for the child, which had resulted in even more laughter, when she had proudly displayed her attempts. While he adored her, he could never successfully lie to her, especially when faced with what could only be called an abomination of embroidery. Several small gowns had been thrown at his head and he had roared with laughter, gathering her in his arms and vowing that he had loved her before he discovered the truth of her sewing skills.
They always laughed together.
And now...
It took all his control not to turn and walk from the chapel. Forcing himself to move, he looked towards that shrouded form. His throat felt like it was closing up, his hands shivering by his sides, and every step he took towards the altar felt as if it were weighed down by the very stones of the building.
It was all a lie, a cruel trick they had concocted. He wanted to seek out the wretch who thought it would be amusing and thrash them to within an inch of their life.
Halting before the lower bier, he stared down at the form hidden underneath the sheet of white fabric. He could not make out the features and wanted to believe the raging part of his mind that was insisting it would be one of the servants, leaping up and laughing.
How long he watched the figure, he did not know. There was no rise and fall of the chest to indicate breathing. There was no stifled mirth. Outside, the sun broke through the spring clouds and cast a pattern of colour through the windows, dappling the sheet in rainbow hues.
When his hand moved, it was without his conscious direction. He noted the way the sheet shifted beneath his fingers as he curled them, the way colour played into shadow between the creases and folds.
His palm trembled and convulsively, he jerked the sheet aside.
There should have been a scream. It would have reflected the anguish that ripped through his body at the sight of her face. He wished he could have screamed, wished he could have sobbed, wished he could have done more than crumple to his knees, a faint whimper rising from a throat that seemed closed on him.
She looked just as she had when he had departed, only so very, very pale. Her eyes were peacefully closed, though her hair had been liberated from her nightcap and brushed back from her cheeks. Like a pearl, her cheeks seemed so translucently pale, and he could see the shading of blue in her skin that had naught to do with the light spilling through the bright, glassy angels.
“Lise...” Struggling to rise on his knees, his hand shook as he reached out and touched her cheek. Still so soft. His fingers trembled against her motionless lips and for an aching moment, he was almost sure he saw them shifting into a smile. “Lise...” A half-moan of pain slipped between his lips. “Lise, you must be cold...”
Fumbling fingers unpinned his riding cloak and he managed to rise, draping it over her, his palms slipping to touch her shoulders through the fine sheet that covered her body already. Gently, he shook her.
“Wake up...” he whispered, ignoring the quiet part of his mind that was murmuring that it was too late. “Wake up, mein Engel... the baby... you must return to bed... you must be well for the baby...” His thumb grazed her cheek, a curl of pale gold hair catching on his fingertips. “Lise... Lise, please...” He uncurled shivering fingers, cradling her face between his palms, bowing his head over her. “Lise...”
A breath, a whisper of a sigh, a flicker of her lashes, anything would have been a touch of mercy from a God who cared nothing for his most beautiful of daughters, but she was still, silent. There was no more laughter.
Pressing his eyes shut, his body slumped on the lip of the bier, he touched his brow to hers, the chill of her flesh drawing a strangled sound of despair from him. He felt the stinging of tears in his eyes and could not find strength to restrain them, letting them fall like rain upon his wife’s face.
She always loved the rain, his Lise. She would stand in the summer downpours and raise her rosy face and hands towards the sky and laugh until he would call out and be forced to snare her and carry her back into the castle. She was always so small, but oh, how she could fight.
So small, yet so strong and so fierce and determined.
No longer.
Gathering her to him, Johannes pressed his lips to her pale hair, fresh waves of grief streaking his cheeks, tiny diamonds of anguish tangling in the golden tresses that seemed somehow dulled. He touched the pale gold spill that spread down her back and pooled beneath her, unbound, how he liked it best.
She should have her arms about him. It was her indulgence, wrapping her arms about him unashamedly, whether they were in public or simply themselves. Always touching, be it hands, bodies, hair. How many nights had they spent upon the couches, her body pressed to his, his hands buried in her hair, stroking the beautiful tresses, while they talked and laughed and loved together?
Even when every day was a happy memory, seven years was nothing, barely a drop in an ocean.
“I am sorry, Excellency.”
Unable to look around at Grete’s words, unable to even think of moving, Johannes’s fingers trembled in his wife’s hair. “What caused this?” he whispered, though his voice felt like the voice of a stranger.
“She...” He heard the scuff of aged feet moving closer, could imagine the old woman’s hands twisting anxiously into her apron. “She wished to greet you upon your return, my Lord. She... she felt stronger this morning...”
A groan of pain escaped Johannes’s lips. He had told her time and again to rest, to stay abed, lest she collapse as she had only a dozen days earlier.
“She rose, my Lord...” The woman sounded like she was having trouble forming the words and Johannes understood why. Grete had loved her Mistress, all of their servants had, even those who found Johannes intimidating and aloof. “She wished to walk a while... she... she was tired of the same four walls...”
“Oh, Lise... Lise...” Shaking fingers touched her still cheek, his thumb brushing her lashes, her brow.
Grete’s sob was muffled behind restrained propriety. “She fell, Milord... swooned... she was close to the stairs...” She drew a tremulous breath. “The blow... her labour began... it was so sudden... and she bled... oh sweet Mother, she bled...”
He wished he could comfort the faithful old woman, but pain lanced through his chest and he held his wife’s body closer still, shaking his head against Lise’s hair. His every breath seemed laboured, raw sobs tearing through him, dignity and shame forgotten in the wake of despair.
Only when his raging grief seemed to still, every breath a stabbing pain, smothering any sound he might make, he heard her inhale a quivering, wheezing breath. “My Lord...? You... you have a son.”
Johannes flinched as if the very word was a blow. A son. A child. A being that had left his wife so weak that she could barely stand and, in birthing it, she had given her own life for it. It had taken his Lise from him. It had killed her.
“Leave me,” he whispered.
“My Lord... your son...” Grete’s shuffling steps approached. “My Lord, he may not survive the night.” He did not, could not, look at her. “My Lord, the Priest wishes to baptise the child...”
“Baptise it. Burn it. Drown it. Do what you will. I will have nothing to do with it.”
“Johannes!” That shocked tone alone made him look around. He had not heard her speak thus in decades, since he was an arrogant teenager countermanding his own mother’s wishes. “He is your son!”
“It is my wife’s killer,” he whispered, turning anguished eyes to her. “What good can it be, if it destroyed my Lise?”
He could see the shock and despair etched on the old woman’s face, her hands kneading at her tangled apron. She had known him long enough, though. Long enough to know when he could not be swayed. “My Lady would wish you to see him.”
“Your Lady is dead.” He snapped the words out, turning his face back to Lise’s and pressing his lips to her hair once more. “My Lady...” The pain rose in his chest once more, sharp and wrenching, as if a blunted blade was twisting within his breast. “She is dead, Grete. Lise... she is dead.”
“’Hannes...” It had been even longer still since she had called him by that name.
Only Lise still called him...
Laying his wife’s body down tenderly, Johannes framed her face with his hands, bowing his head to kiss her cool lips, the tip of his nose brushing against hers. Tears splashed onto her cheeks unnoticed, his body shuddering with silent sobs. Tugging his cloak up to tuck it around her, he pressed his face into his hands, his tears scorching against his palms.
A hand touched his arm and for a moment, barely an instant, he dared to let himself believe...
“Johannes...” Grete shook him.
Lashing out with an anguished sob, he almost threw the old woman backwards, away from him. “Leave me alone!” He heard himself screaming as he folded in on himself, like an animal in pain. “Leave me!”
“Excellency...”
Sagging from the bier, he crumpled to the floor, pressing his cheek against the cool surface, his face averted from her. His voice had sunk to a keening whisper, “Leave me alone... please... leave me alone...”
Grete had known him long enough to know that she could do no more. The only person who could have was already with him in the chapel, eternally resting beneath the dark fabric of his cloak.
On the edge of his awareness, he heard the quiet creak of the door opening and for a moment, the scent of the candles was supplanted by a whisper of the breath of nature, the flames swaying and flickering, casting eerie light over the images of the Holy Mother and her Child.
His eyes lifted to the painting he had looked at only moments earlier and, for an instant, the candles made the two figures look demonic, gold and hellfire glistening in the blank, polished eyes.
Closing his eyes, Johannes’s left hand groped across his aching chest, fumbling for his crucifix and coming away empty. He had forgotten it that morning, had neglected morning prayer, had spent hours immersed in study of arts to better focus his gift of sight. A gift that he had added to, learning skills that the Holy Fathers would have burned him for, and now...
He had brought them to this with his studies and skills, but instead of striking him, God in his vengeful wrath had taken from him the one person Johannes loved in all the world. It was a truly merciless punishment.
“Oh, Lise, forgive me,” he whispered, pure agony spreading from his heart. Was it possible to feel one’s heart break apart? The pain erupted afresh, tight, and agonising, making his breath freeze in his lungs and he doubled over his knees. Stifling the cries, his right hand clutched at the edge of the bier, the ridged decoration along the edge cutting into his skin. “This is all my doing...”
No sound escaped him. If this was his own punishment, he would accept it. If he suffered this, he could pray for forgiveness, pray that Lise be restored to him as the daughter of the High Priest was by the mercy of Christ.
Crossing himself with his trembling fingers, prayer after silent prayer overlapped in his mind, begging for a miracle, pleading for an awakening, a chance that Lise would sit up and smile and it would all be a terrible dream forgotten with the morning.
The only response was stifling silence and the scent of incense.
Beneath his knees, the floor was cold and hard, and he felt blood trickle down his gashed right hand, struck open on the bier. Sagging against the stone, he laid his brow against the sharp edge, his eyes pressing shut.
Drained of every emotion save sorrow, his heart tensed to aching, his every breath a labour, he could not say how long he was slumped there. He no longer cared. There was nothing left to care for without her.
Had he possessed the power, he knew he would have damned himself afresh, using the very curse that had brought about her death, just to feel her hand move and stroke his hair and smooth the tears from his cheeks.
From the doorway of the chapel, he heard a sound of a throat being quietly cleared, a deliberate sound to garner his attention. For several moment, he ignored it but it was repeated, more loudly, and reluctantly, he lifted his head.
His body felt weighted with lead, but he rose and turned to face the interloper, uncaring of the tears still marking their way down his cheeks. He recognised the man by his round-shouldered silhouette, the local Priest.
The Priest was a fairly recent arrival in the village, a quiet man of middle-age, with watery, pale eyes and bony, nervously twitching fingers. Though he had given several Masses in the chapel, he had refrained from speaking with Johannes himself, and there had always been something in his expression that reminded the Graf of a hunted fox.
“Excellency.” He approached with his usual, odd gait, one foot dragging slightly. It was almost but not quite a limp and a source of idle speculation for the gossips of the village. “You have my condolences.”
Forcing himself to swallow around the lump that seemed to have formed in his throat, Johannes inclined his head with as much dignity as he could dredge from the hollow shell that was his body.
“It was a great tragedy,” the man continued. His accent was Hungarian, but strongly flavoured by other dialects. “But your servants speak only well of your lady.” He smiled a thin, watery smile, which lasted all of a second. “Her time in purgatory will be short, I have no doubt.”
The numb mantle that had settled around Johannes shivered aside. “Purgatory?” he heard himself echo faintly.
The thought of his Lise, the kindest, gentlest and most loving of souls held between death and eternal life was one he had not even begun to contemplate, and if she was bearing the burden of his sins also...
“Of course,” the Priest said. “Unfortunately, with her birth being so difficult, she had breathed her last when I reached her, so her final confession went unheard.”
“Final confession?”
Nodding, head wobbling like an overeager bird, the priest launched into a clearly rehearsed speech about the significance of confession and death with a clean soul, all of which Johannes knew, but the thought of it caused his heart to clench bitterly.
That this little man, with his watery eyes and twitching hands, believed he could condemn sweet, loving Lise, daring to imply that she could have sinned so terribly since that morning, was more than he could bear.
Ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest, he lunged at the Priest with a sound that was little more than a growl, uncontrollable animalistic rage. Those pale, watery eyes bulged in terror and fear and colour suffused the man’s bland face as Johannes’ fingers wrapped around his throat.
“Exc...”
“Did you know her?” Johannes hissed savagely, shaking the man as a dog would a piece of meat. His breathing was growing rapid and ever more painful, but he did not care. “Did you know her?”
Whatever the Priest intended to say, it came out as garbled yelps, his twitching fingers groping wildly at Johannes’s wrists. Spittle was breaking from his lips and his skin was mottling red and white, pure fear etched on his face.
His fingers tightening, his expression ugly, Johannes forced the man to his knees, his breathing rasping in his lungs. “Tell your God,” he spat. “That if he wishes to punish anyone, punish me.” A bolt of pain shot down his right arm and he winced. “You can tell him that personally.”
But it seemed that the Almighty was listening, his wrath held ready for Johannes.
It felt as if a red-hot poker had been thrust into his chest and with a pained cry, Johannes released the Priest, jerking back and doubling over. His fingers scrabbled at his chest, and he fell to his knees, gagging and gasping, unable to breath, unable to even lift his head, and he fell into the waiting blackness.
______________________________
“I hope you are proud of yourself.”
Lying on his side, staring blindly at the window on the far side of the room, Johannes forced his eyelids to blink. Every motion seemed such an effort in a body that had chosen to betray him.
It was two days since divine intervention and a heart savagely broken had forced him to the floor of the chapel. The day before had been Lise’s funeral Mass and he had not had strength to attend, though his mother had bullied and forced his man servants into dressing him and carrying him down.
It was for appearances sake, she claimed. Rumours were apparently circulating, with the swiftness that rumours did, about his assault on the most unfortunate Priest and the wrathful vengeance the Almighty had laid upon the Graf for his contempt.
Her plans had been in vain, however. The men bearing him had barely emerged from the castle when the cool February air had lanced at his lungs and he had gone into convulsions. Grete had mercifully intervened, sending them back to his room, and tending him herself, the only member of the household with nerve enough to stand against the Dowager Countess.
Since then, he had lapsed in and out of consciousness several times. Every breath ached against his ribs, and his heart felt like it had been replaced with a stone, blood stuttering in his veins.
Now, though, with consciousness so recently restored, his mother had descended, her ire wrapped about her like a cloak. Garbed in black, she stalked around the bed to look down at him, blocking out the light. Silhouetted against the window, she seemed a shapeless demon to his dry and exhausted eyes.
“You claim to be a man, Johannes, yet you weep and swoon like a woman.” Her voice was hard, merciless as he remembered. Only she still spoke to him so flatly, especially now. Even when his father had been alive, it was clear she held nothing but contempt for her second son.
Some part of him had always wondered if she had blamed him for his elder brother’s death when Johannes was a mere babe, or if she despised him because he had been close to his father, while she had never been able to understand her husband.
Wearily raising black eyes to hers, equally dark and equally proud, he wondered now if perhaps it was because he could not be the son she had created in her mind, a male version of her, strong, cold and resolute.
Her thin lips were pressed together, lines of age cutting deeper furrows in her face in her anger. Unlike so many of the women of her age, who were bent and crooked, the Dowager Countess stood tall, straight and aloof, as she always had.
“My wife is dead, mother,” he whispered from parched lips.
Her long nostrils flared, her silver brows arching. “You think you are the first man in the world to lose his wife, Johannes? Ha!” She started pacing once more. “Most men would be grateful, but you... you wallow in pity and misery! What of your title? What of your standing?”
Lowering his eyes, his jaw clenching, he stared at the window again. “What of it?”
He heard her stop mid-step and heard the rustle of her skirts as she whirled to face him. “What of it?” He recognised the familiar rising pitch. “Would you shame your father’s memory because you cannot see past your own self-pity?”
His father’s memory?
He almost laughed aloud at the thought of her preaching goodwill towards his father, or would have if his aching lungs would have allowed it. While his father was a noble man and his mother a faithful and respectable wife, their marriage had been formal, cold and cordial affair.
“Does it anger you that I loved my wife enough that I want to grieve for her, mother?” Struggling to raise himself on one elbow, he shifted that he might look up at her, his voice coarse and rough with pain. “Is that so shameful?”
He could see it in the way her lips twitched that this was among the reasons. “Grief is one matter,” she said flatly. “But this obscene display of emotion... one would think you had never seen a death before.” Her arms folded over her narrow chest, her chin raised imperiously. “You are the son of a Graf, Johannes, and a man long since come of age, thus you should behave like one.”
Though it took effort, he forced himself upright, sitting amid the perspiration-dampened sheets, his hands quivering against the bedding beneath him. “Would you have me cold?” he gritted out.
“In the eyes of the people?” She gazed back at him. “Yes. You have your reputation to uphold. This takes precedence, even over your own emotion.” He started to laugh at that, a hacking, wheezing sound. “You find this amusing?”
“Only that you speak of such things as emotion,” he managed to force the words out one upon another.
His mother’s upper lip curled disdainfully. “Had you listened to me then, this whole affair could have been avoided,” she said coolly. “I warned you that the girl was weak and frail and would do you no good.”
Despite the sudden clenching in his chest, Johannes uttered a sound that was pure animal. “Do not speak of her thus!”
“I have been proven right, Johannes,” his mother retorted baldly. “Seven years to get herself with child and she dies before the infant even draws first breath. Even now, they cannot tell if the boy will live. Next time...”
“Next time?” Johannes echoed in disbelief. “Next time? Elisabeth is barely beyond life, mother.” His upper lip drew back. “But then, you were always so cold. I expect your first thought when father died was finding my bride.”
“And if it was?” she said quietly, but there was a stillness to her now that should have warned him that something was amiss.
Hand pressing to his chest, Johannes took heavy, laboured breaths, then looked up bitterly at her. “I do not believe you even shed a tear for him,” he rasped. “And if you did, they would have turned to ice.”
She slapped him.
The force snapped his head around and flung his weakened body back against the pillows. That, in itself, was shocking enough, but she knelt on the edge of the bed, leaning over him, her black eyes blazing.
“Never doubt that I loved your father, you insolent boy,” she hissed. “My heart went with him when he died.” She rose, her expression freezing as if she had given away far too much. She snorted. “You are weak, softened by love and pity. If you had a care for anything but your own misery, you would stand tall and remember who you are and that there are those who depend on you.”
Bringing up a clammy hand to touch his throbbing cheek, he stared at her.
Once more, she was as one carved from ice, distant and impossible to please. But for the burning in his skin, he would have sworn that he had imagined her flare of passion in the heat of rage.
For several long moments, they watched one another then she turned and strode from the room. Sinking back against the bedding, forcing deeper breaths into his rebellious lungs, he closed his eyes, kneading his chest with shaking fingers.
It pained him to realise it, but she was right. He did have a position to uphold and a title to bear. Grief was a luxury he could not afford, especially not when those who were in his charge and employ needed him.
The door opened again and Grete bustled in, muttering under her breath about the Dowager Countess, and Johannes opened a weary eye. The old woman was unaware of his wakeful state, so he closed his eye again and just listened to her quietly irate mumblings, letting it draw his anger until sleep claimed him once more.
_________________________
It was almost a month to the day since Elisabeth von Krolock had been laid to rest.
Standing on the battlements between the tallest towers of the castle, Johannes found he could think on her without his eyes searing with fresh tears. The pain in his chest had diminished daily, though it yet lingered, faint spasms beneath his sternum that made him catch his breath.
Looking out across his land, he could see the first touches of spring. It had rained in the morning, but with the afternoon’s warmth a light mist had risen over the verdant fields, new buds and blooms arising, fresh life emerging from a land waking from winter’s torpor.
A breeze swirled around the tower and he drew his cloak more fully about himself and the small bundle cradled in his arms.
The tiny being stirred and sleepy grey eyes opened, looking up at him.
Once more, Johannes felt the lingering pain in his breast diminish. In his still-tentative embrace, his son yawned and his small hands curled into tiny fists amid the blankets he was wrapped in.
For days, Johannes had been laid abed, ill and weak, and the servants had obeyed him when he had told them not to bring the child. In the fortnight that followed, he had buried himself in work, avoiding this beautiful little thing that had been created in a perfect moment, the physical proof of the loving union of body, mind and soul he had shared with his beloved wife.
It was mere hours since the boy had been forced into his arms by Grete’s stubborn granddaughter. He had sworn at her and risen in bleak rage, intending to dash the infant to the floor, this vicious little beast that had been the death of his wife and would ever be a reminder of that.
The child had whimpered softly and in a moment of folly and wonder, he had looked down at the face of the babe. Grey eyes that had been Lise’s blinked trustingly up at him, the head thatched with the same downy gold as his mother’s.
Grete’s granddaughter had slipped from the room then, as he sank back into his seat and shifted the baby in his arms, staring at it with dazed wonder. She must have left, because when next he looked, she was no longer in the room.
It could have been hours or mere minutes spent in the study. Tenderly unwrapping the child, he had reveled in the wonder of every perfect tiny finger and each dainty tiny toe. When those little feet pressed against his palms, he had felt his heart ache with awe, and when the small hand clutched one of his fingertips, he had shamelessly wept from the joy of it.
Only when the child had cried out for feeding had he shaken himself free of the spell of devotion that was wrapping around him, bearing the babe to the wetnurse and reclaiming him as soon as his appetite was slaked.
That was when Grete had seen them. He saw her smile indulgently and approach, chastising him for forgetting his own meal. He had smiled sheepishly, looking down at his son, and said he had forgotten. The baby had gurgled in his arms and he had felt laughter rise in him for the first time in weeks.
“He is growing well, Excellency,” the woman had said, folding her hands before her and watching them fondly. “His appetite grows by the day. You would not recognise him as the babe he was.”
“He is still so small,” Johannes had replied, letting perfectly-formed little fingers clutch at one of his. Indeed, the child still barely seemed bigger than a newborn, fitting so neatly and snugly in one of his father’s arms.
“For one born so early and so harshly, it is a wonder he lives at all,” Grete had noted quietly. She had spoken at length about the care he had received, explaining that her own grandchild had chosen to tend the boy, although the name had been chosen by Grete herself, since neither he nor his Lady had been present.
Though it was not a name he would have considered, he had gazed down at his son with his pale gold hair and clear grey eyes. It seemed to fit and when Johannes spoke it for the first time, perhaps his eyes deceived him, but he was sure the babe looked attentively up at him.
Grete had smiled and taken her leave with the same stealth as her granddaughter, because he was unaware of her absence until he turned to ask her a question.
The rest of the afternoon had been spent taking the child around the castle. His own quarters had been moved. The chambers he had shared for so long with Lise had been closed against the memory and the grief. Her blood yet stained the floor and it could not bear to look within.
Instead, he had taken up residence in the West wing, and as he murmured about the building to his drowsy son, he had noted empty chambers that could serve better as a nursery only a brief distance from his own.
Better that he be close lest anything happen to the child.
Ascending through the castle, they had reached the highest balustrades only half an hour earlier. The sun was already beginning its descent over the land, taking with it the surprising warmth of the spring day, the mists hued with golden shades.
“This is your home, mein Schatz,” Johannes whispered, drawing his cloak up to tuck it around the baby’s blankets to stave off the chill, the folds sheltering the boy’s cheeks from the rising wind that was tossing his own hair wildly about his face. “Our home.”
The wide grey eyes looked back at him and he wondered how he could possibly have considered abandoning this child, created by the love he had shared with his wife, the life she had given hers to bear.
Lise had loved the little one so, even before he had been born.
What manner of man was he if he was incapable of loving the very same child? A child born of pain and tragedy, but created in love and passion? A child born of and in his beloved Lise’s blood?
Stroking the soft pink cheek, Johannes smiled sadly as the hungry mouth tried to latch onto the tip of his thumb, ever hungry, his growing little boy. Above them, the night was creeping in, darkening the sky, and the first stars were beginning to show their sleepy light.
Lise would have loved the boy, he knew. Even if he had not been as beautiful, she would have held him in her arms and sung to him and let him wrap his tiny fists in her hair as he fed.
And he had no doubt that the child would have loved his mother. There had been no one, save his own mother, who had not adored her.
“She will watch over us, Kleines,” he murmured, though it was more for his own benefit, as the sleepy grey eyes slipped closed. He caressed the plump cheek again, gently. “And until we are with her once more, I promise I shall let no harm come to you.”
A drowsy yawn was the only response he received, and lifting the babe in his arms, he kissed the child’s soft forehead, wordlessly promising that he would fight off death itself to protect his son.
And to the lullaby of his father’s whispered ‘I love you’, Herbert Johannes von Krolock fell asleep in his father’s arms.
RATING: PG
FANDOMS: Tanz der Vampire with potential overtones for my Carpe-verse.
SUMMARY: In one brief spring afternoon, the Graf von Krolock's world falls apart.
PAIRINGS: Johannes von Krolock/OC
WORDS: 6568
WARNING: Perhaps tissues would be useful...
NOTES: Technically, this could be counted as a prequel to my Carpe Noctem series, but for the most part, it could stand alone. And yes, this is pre-vamping. About five years, as I recall. *yoinks opening thingie from bwinter in hopes its about right*
____________________________
Castle von Krolock, the border of Transylvania, Holy Empire of the German Nation, Early Spring of the Year of Our Lord 1611
The girl shrank from him. Her face was white save for the livid scarlet blaze of a handprint on her cheek, which her own thin fingers were pressing against. Wide, terrified eyes stared wildly at him, yet he could not find it within him to care.
How dare she lie so!
“You will leave this house this night,” Johannes von Krolock hissed, a trembling finger pointing at her. “Those who serve myself and my wife are honest. I will not have one who lies serve us.”
The girl’s lips quivered, her words stifled, tears tangling on her lashes.
Johannes, in some recess of his mind, knew he was behaving ill. He knew this girl, had known her and her family for a dozen years, yet when the words she had said had touched his ears, rational thought seemed a long-gone friend.
Strange that only this morning, he had been happy.
With the dawn, he had left Lise sleeping to journey to the village for a meeting with the council regarding an incident of trespassing. She had been sleeping a lot of late, which he could not fault her for, even more so since her pregnancy was leaving her weak and drained with even the lightest of activity.
After almost seven years of marriage, they had almost given up hope that she would ever conceive a child. She was too old, his mother had said, and he had accepted that he would never be a father as long as he loved his wife. The thought of annulling their marriage was one he had shied from, despite his wife and mother’s protests.
Then what they saw as a miracle came to pass and Lise, only six months earlier, had flown into his arms and joyously declared she was with child.
Perhaps it was God’s merciful response to Lise’s goodness and silently shed tears, he had dazedly thought as he had held and she had wept with happiness, or perhaps the Devil’s response to his own supernatural fumblings. He had not truly cared which, though together they had prayed in gratitude.
Yet now, with the lie dripping from his servant’s lips, the shrill, distant whine of a newborn and an empty, bloody bed where his wife had been, blood was rushing in his ears and he felt like his mind was detached from his body.
“Excellency...”
Turning as quickly as his rebellious body would allow, Johannes looked down at the aged woman who had been the housekeeper of the castle since his birth. “Grete, this insolent girl will not tell me where my wife is.”
He needed no words. Every line of the woman’s tired face was etched as clearly as the print in his books. But he did not wish to read her emotions. Misinterpretation was a common crime these days. Yes.
Her white brows twitched together, her knotted hands pressing before her chest, and her wrinkled lips puckered as she seemed to gather the words. “Your Lady is in the chapel, Excellency,” she said carefully. “She...”
He did not wait for her to finish, striding out of the hall, into the grounds.
Though part of the castle, the small stone chapel was a short distance from the building. Modest and discreet, it hid in the shadows of the East wing, and only recently had he found time to have the windows filled with the coloured glass that was so popular. It had been Lise’s suggestion, a gesture of gratitude for the blessing of a child.
It had clearly rained during the day, his boots and breeches sodden by the time he reached the vestibule of the building. The Priest was nowhere to be seen, though even as he pushed the door wide, he could see two figures lighting candles within the chapel, one too tall to be Lise, the other too plump to be his wife.
Both of them turned at his quiet footsteps and he saw the colour drain from their faces as they hastily curtsied to him. The younger girl, Grete’s granddaughter, looked as if she wanted nothing more than to flee, backing up against the image of Madonna and child, oblivious to the taper burning down to her shaking fingers.
“Milord...” the other began to say.
Silencing her with a brief gesture, Johannes noticed detachedly that his hand was trembling. “Where is she?” he said. His voice was calm. Very calm. It seemed that all the turmoil was knotting about his heart.
The woman hesitated, but her eyes betrayed her, darting towards the altar of the Chapel and an unfamiliar object that lay there. “Excellency, would you have me fetch the Pri...”
“Leave me.”
How strange that the words seemed to come from someone else’s lips, in a voice that did not sound anything like his own.
The elder of the two women hastily bobbed into a curtsey, then caught her companion by the arm, drawing her out of the chapel as von Krolock made himself move down the aisle. The young girl’s taper had fallen to the floor, still glowing, the breeze from the opening doors sending sparks and ash fluttering across the stone.
Stooping, Johannes picked it up and lit a candle, ignoring the sheet-covered shape that rested before the altar. Crossing himself, he bowed his head before the picture of the Holy Mother and her child, but the painted eyes revealed nothing, the enigmatically curled lips silently mocking.
He remembered, only days earlier, laughingly saying to Lise that he would have her painted with their child, a miracle to match that first one. Nestled against his chest, she had chastised him for such blasphemy, but he had teasingly reminded her that she had not refused the painting. She had blushed and made a face unbecoming of a lady and together, they had laughed.
They had laughed so often. It was often said they were far happier than any man and his wife had a right to be. Johannes’s mother especially had maintained that they should at least feign solemnity on occasion.
The Dowager Countess’s presence usually ensured that there was at least a little misery in their lives, but her chief complaint had been taken from her when Lise had grown round with child. She had not visited the castle since then, residing with her favoured child and Johannes’s elder sister, much to his relief.
They had been happier than they thought possible in the last six months. Even when Lise was confined to her bed, she had still been smiling. When the child started to kick, they had spent hours just revelling in the wonder of it.
With nothing else to do, she had insisted on trying to embroider garments for the child, which had resulted in even more laughter, when she had proudly displayed her attempts. While he adored her, he could never successfully lie to her, especially when faced with what could only be called an abomination of embroidery. Several small gowns had been thrown at his head and he had roared with laughter, gathering her in his arms and vowing that he had loved her before he discovered the truth of her sewing skills.
They always laughed together.
And now...
It took all his control not to turn and walk from the chapel. Forcing himself to move, he looked towards that shrouded form. His throat felt like it was closing up, his hands shivering by his sides, and every step he took towards the altar felt as if it were weighed down by the very stones of the building.
It was all a lie, a cruel trick they had concocted. He wanted to seek out the wretch who thought it would be amusing and thrash them to within an inch of their life.
Halting before the lower bier, he stared down at the form hidden underneath the sheet of white fabric. He could not make out the features and wanted to believe the raging part of his mind that was insisting it would be one of the servants, leaping up and laughing.
How long he watched the figure, he did not know. There was no rise and fall of the chest to indicate breathing. There was no stifled mirth. Outside, the sun broke through the spring clouds and cast a pattern of colour through the windows, dappling the sheet in rainbow hues.
When his hand moved, it was without his conscious direction. He noted the way the sheet shifted beneath his fingers as he curled them, the way colour played into shadow between the creases and folds.
His palm trembled and convulsively, he jerked the sheet aside.
There should have been a scream. It would have reflected the anguish that ripped through his body at the sight of her face. He wished he could have screamed, wished he could have sobbed, wished he could have done more than crumple to his knees, a faint whimper rising from a throat that seemed closed on him.
She looked just as she had when he had departed, only so very, very pale. Her eyes were peacefully closed, though her hair had been liberated from her nightcap and brushed back from her cheeks. Like a pearl, her cheeks seemed so translucently pale, and he could see the shading of blue in her skin that had naught to do with the light spilling through the bright, glassy angels.
“Lise...” Struggling to rise on his knees, his hand shook as he reached out and touched her cheek. Still so soft. His fingers trembled against her motionless lips and for an aching moment, he was almost sure he saw them shifting into a smile. “Lise...” A half-moan of pain slipped between his lips. “Lise, you must be cold...”
Fumbling fingers unpinned his riding cloak and he managed to rise, draping it over her, his palms slipping to touch her shoulders through the fine sheet that covered her body already. Gently, he shook her.
“Wake up...” he whispered, ignoring the quiet part of his mind that was murmuring that it was too late. “Wake up, mein Engel... the baby... you must return to bed... you must be well for the baby...” His thumb grazed her cheek, a curl of pale gold hair catching on his fingertips. “Lise... Lise, please...” He uncurled shivering fingers, cradling her face between his palms, bowing his head over her. “Lise...”
A breath, a whisper of a sigh, a flicker of her lashes, anything would have been a touch of mercy from a God who cared nothing for his most beautiful of daughters, but she was still, silent. There was no more laughter.
Pressing his eyes shut, his body slumped on the lip of the bier, he touched his brow to hers, the chill of her flesh drawing a strangled sound of despair from him. He felt the stinging of tears in his eyes and could not find strength to restrain them, letting them fall like rain upon his wife’s face.
She always loved the rain, his Lise. She would stand in the summer downpours and raise her rosy face and hands towards the sky and laugh until he would call out and be forced to snare her and carry her back into the castle. She was always so small, but oh, how she could fight.
So small, yet so strong and so fierce and determined.
No longer.
Gathering her to him, Johannes pressed his lips to her pale hair, fresh waves of grief streaking his cheeks, tiny diamonds of anguish tangling in the golden tresses that seemed somehow dulled. He touched the pale gold spill that spread down her back and pooled beneath her, unbound, how he liked it best.
She should have her arms about him. It was her indulgence, wrapping her arms about him unashamedly, whether they were in public or simply themselves. Always touching, be it hands, bodies, hair. How many nights had they spent upon the couches, her body pressed to his, his hands buried in her hair, stroking the beautiful tresses, while they talked and laughed and loved together?
Even when every day was a happy memory, seven years was nothing, barely a drop in an ocean.
“I am sorry, Excellency.”
Unable to look around at Grete’s words, unable to even think of moving, Johannes’s fingers trembled in his wife’s hair. “What caused this?” he whispered, though his voice felt like the voice of a stranger.
“She...” He heard the scuff of aged feet moving closer, could imagine the old woman’s hands twisting anxiously into her apron. “She wished to greet you upon your return, my Lord. She... she felt stronger this morning...”
A groan of pain escaped Johannes’s lips. He had told her time and again to rest, to stay abed, lest she collapse as she had only a dozen days earlier.
“She rose, my Lord...” The woman sounded like she was having trouble forming the words and Johannes understood why. Grete had loved her Mistress, all of their servants had, even those who found Johannes intimidating and aloof. “She wished to walk a while... she... she was tired of the same four walls...”
“Oh, Lise... Lise...” Shaking fingers touched her still cheek, his thumb brushing her lashes, her brow.
Grete’s sob was muffled behind restrained propriety. “She fell, Milord... swooned... she was close to the stairs...” She drew a tremulous breath. “The blow... her labour began... it was so sudden... and she bled... oh sweet Mother, she bled...”
He wished he could comfort the faithful old woman, but pain lanced through his chest and he held his wife’s body closer still, shaking his head against Lise’s hair. His every breath seemed laboured, raw sobs tearing through him, dignity and shame forgotten in the wake of despair.
Only when his raging grief seemed to still, every breath a stabbing pain, smothering any sound he might make, he heard her inhale a quivering, wheezing breath. “My Lord...? You... you have a son.”
Johannes flinched as if the very word was a blow. A son. A child. A being that had left his wife so weak that she could barely stand and, in birthing it, she had given her own life for it. It had taken his Lise from him. It had killed her.
“Leave me,” he whispered.
“My Lord... your son...” Grete’s shuffling steps approached. “My Lord, he may not survive the night.” He did not, could not, look at her. “My Lord, the Priest wishes to baptise the child...”
“Baptise it. Burn it. Drown it. Do what you will. I will have nothing to do with it.”
“Johannes!” That shocked tone alone made him look around. He had not heard her speak thus in decades, since he was an arrogant teenager countermanding his own mother’s wishes. “He is your son!”
“It is my wife’s killer,” he whispered, turning anguished eyes to her. “What good can it be, if it destroyed my Lise?”
He could see the shock and despair etched on the old woman’s face, her hands kneading at her tangled apron. She had known him long enough, though. Long enough to know when he could not be swayed. “My Lady would wish you to see him.”
“Your Lady is dead.” He snapped the words out, turning his face back to Lise’s and pressing his lips to her hair once more. “My Lady...” The pain rose in his chest once more, sharp and wrenching, as if a blunted blade was twisting within his breast. “She is dead, Grete. Lise... she is dead.”
“’Hannes...” It had been even longer still since she had called him by that name.
Only Lise still called him...
Laying his wife’s body down tenderly, Johannes framed her face with his hands, bowing his head to kiss her cool lips, the tip of his nose brushing against hers. Tears splashed onto her cheeks unnoticed, his body shuddering with silent sobs. Tugging his cloak up to tuck it around her, he pressed his face into his hands, his tears scorching against his palms.
A hand touched his arm and for a moment, barely an instant, he dared to let himself believe...
“Johannes...” Grete shook him.
Lashing out with an anguished sob, he almost threw the old woman backwards, away from him. “Leave me alone!” He heard himself screaming as he folded in on himself, like an animal in pain. “Leave me!”
“Excellency...”
Sagging from the bier, he crumpled to the floor, pressing his cheek against the cool surface, his face averted from her. His voice had sunk to a keening whisper, “Leave me alone... please... leave me alone...”
Grete had known him long enough to know that she could do no more. The only person who could have was already with him in the chapel, eternally resting beneath the dark fabric of his cloak.
On the edge of his awareness, he heard the quiet creak of the door opening and for a moment, the scent of the candles was supplanted by a whisper of the breath of nature, the flames swaying and flickering, casting eerie light over the images of the Holy Mother and her Child.
His eyes lifted to the painting he had looked at only moments earlier and, for an instant, the candles made the two figures look demonic, gold and hellfire glistening in the blank, polished eyes.
Closing his eyes, Johannes’s left hand groped across his aching chest, fumbling for his crucifix and coming away empty. He had forgotten it that morning, had neglected morning prayer, had spent hours immersed in study of arts to better focus his gift of sight. A gift that he had added to, learning skills that the Holy Fathers would have burned him for, and now...
He had brought them to this with his studies and skills, but instead of striking him, God in his vengeful wrath had taken from him the one person Johannes loved in all the world. It was a truly merciless punishment.
“Oh, Lise, forgive me,” he whispered, pure agony spreading from his heart. Was it possible to feel one’s heart break apart? The pain erupted afresh, tight, and agonising, making his breath freeze in his lungs and he doubled over his knees. Stifling the cries, his right hand clutched at the edge of the bier, the ridged decoration along the edge cutting into his skin. “This is all my doing...”
No sound escaped him. If this was his own punishment, he would accept it. If he suffered this, he could pray for forgiveness, pray that Lise be restored to him as the daughter of the High Priest was by the mercy of Christ.
Crossing himself with his trembling fingers, prayer after silent prayer overlapped in his mind, begging for a miracle, pleading for an awakening, a chance that Lise would sit up and smile and it would all be a terrible dream forgotten with the morning.
The only response was stifling silence and the scent of incense.
Beneath his knees, the floor was cold and hard, and he felt blood trickle down his gashed right hand, struck open on the bier. Sagging against the stone, he laid his brow against the sharp edge, his eyes pressing shut.
Drained of every emotion save sorrow, his heart tensed to aching, his every breath a labour, he could not say how long he was slumped there. He no longer cared. There was nothing left to care for without her.
Had he possessed the power, he knew he would have damned himself afresh, using the very curse that had brought about her death, just to feel her hand move and stroke his hair and smooth the tears from his cheeks.
From the doorway of the chapel, he heard a sound of a throat being quietly cleared, a deliberate sound to garner his attention. For several moment, he ignored it but it was repeated, more loudly, and reluctantly, he lifted his head.
His body felt weighted with lead, but he rose and turned to face the interloper, uncaring of the tears still marking their way down his cheeks. He recognised the man by his round-shouldered silhouette, the local Priest.
The Priest was a fairly recent arrival in the village, a quiet man of middle-age, with watery, pale eyes and bony, nervously twitching fingers. Though he had given several Masses in the chapel, he had refrained from speaking with Johannes himself, and there had always been something in his expression that reminded the Graf of a hunted fox.
“Excellency.” He approached with his usual, odd gait, one foot dragging slightly. It was almost but not quite a limp and a source of idle speculation for the gossips of the village. “You have my condolences.”
Forcing himself to swallow around the lump that seemed to have formed in his throat, Johannes inclined his head with as much dignity as he could dredge from the hollow shell that was his body.
“It was a great tragedy,” the man continued. His accent was Hungarian, but strongly flavoured by other dialects. “But your servants speak only well of your lady.” He smiled a thin, watery smile, which lasted all of a second. “Her time in purgatory will be short, I have no doubt.”
The numb mantle that had settled around Johannes shivered aside. “Purgatory?” he heard himself echo faintly.
The thought of his Lise, the kindest, gentlest and most loving of souls held between death and eternal life was one he had not even begun to contemplate, and if she was bearing the burden of his sins also...
“Of course,” the Priest said. “Unfortunately, with her birth being so difficult, she had breathed her last when I reached her, so her final confession went unheard.”
“Final confession?”
Nodding, head wobbling like an overeager bird, the priest launched into a clearly rehearsed speech about the significance of confession and death with a clean soul, all of which Johannes knew, but the thought of it caused his heart to clench bitterly.
That this little man, with his watery eyes and twitching hands, believed he could condemn sweet, loving Lise, daring to imply that she could have sinned so terribly since that morning, was more than he could bear.
Ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest, he lunged at the Priest with a sound that was little more than a growl, uncontrollable animalistic rage. Those pale, watery eyes bulged in terror and fear and colour suffused the man’s bland face as Johannes’ fingers wrapped around his throat.
“Exc...”
“Did you know her?” Johannes hissed savagely, shaking the man as a dog would a piece of meat. His breathing was growing rapid and ever more painful, but he did not care. “Did you know her?”
Whatever the Priest intended to say, it came out as garbled yelps, his twitching fingers groping wildly at Johannes’s wrists. Spittle was breaking from his lips and his skin was mottling red and white, pure fear etched on his face.
His fingers tightening, his expression ugly, Johannes forced the man to his knees, his breathing rasping in his lungs. “Tell your God,” he spat. “That if he wishes to punish anyone, punish me.” A bolt of pain shot down his right arm and he winced. “You can tell him that personally.”
But it seemed that the Almighty was listening, his wrath held ready for Johannes.
It felt as if a red-hot poker had been thrust into his chest and with a pained cry, Johannes released the Priest, jerking back and doubling over. His fingers scrabbled at his chest, and he fell to his knees, gagging and gasping, unable to breath, unable to even lift his head, and he fell into the waiting blackness.
______________________________
“I hope you are proud of yourself.”
Lying on his side, staring blindly at the window on the far side of the room, Johannes forced his eyelids to blink. Every motion seemed such an effort in a body that had chosen to betray him.
It was two days since divine intervention and a heart savagely broken had forced him to the floor of the chapel. The day before had been Lise’s funeral Mass and he had not had strength to attend, though his mother had bullied and forced his man servants into dressing him and carrying him down.
It was for appearances sake, she claimed. Rumours were apparently circulating, with the swiftness that rumours did, about his assault on the most unfortunate Priest and the wrathful vengeance the Almighty had laid upon the Graf for his contempt.
Her plans had been in vain, however. The men bearing him had barely emerged from the castle when the cool February air had lanced at his lungs and he had gone into convulsions. Grete had mercifully intervened, sending them back to his room, and tending him herself, the only member of the household with nerve enough to stand against the Dowager Countess.
Since then, he had lapsed in and out of consciousness several times. Every breath ached against his ribs, and his heart felt like it had been replaced with a stone, blood stuttering in his veins.
Now, though, with consciousness so recently restored, his mother had descended, her ire wrapped about her like a cloak. Garbed in black, she stalked around the bed to look down at him, blocking out the light. Silhouetted against the window, she seemed a shapeless demon to his dry and exhausted eyes.
“You claim to be a man, Johannes, yet you weep and swoon like a woman.” Her voice was hard, merciless as he remembered. Only she still spoke to him so flatly, especially now. Even when his father had been alive, it was clear she held nothing but contempt for her second son.
Some part of him had always wondered if she had blamed him for his elder brother’s death when Johannes was a mere babe, or if she despised him because he had been close to his father, while she had never been able to understand her husband.
Wearily raising black eyes to hers, equally dark and equally proud, he wondered now if perhaps it was because he could not be the son she had created in her mind, a male version of her, strong, cold and resolute.
Her thin lips were pressed together, lines of age cutting deeper furrows in her face in her anger. Unlike so many of the women of her age, who were bent and crooked, the Dowager Countess stood tall, straight and aloof, as she always had.
“My wife is dead, mother,” he whispered from parched lips.
Her long nostrils flared, her silver brows arching. “You think you are the first man in the world to lose his wife, Johannes? Ha!” She started pacing once more. “Most men would be grateful, but you... you wallow in pity and misery! What of your title? What of your standing?”
Lowering his eyes, his jaw clenching, he stared at the window again. “What of it?”
He heard her stop mid-step and heard the rustle of her skirts as she whirled to face him. “What of it?” He recognised the familiar rising pitch. “Would you shame your father’s memory because you cannot see past your own self-pity?”
His father’s memory?
He almost laughed aloud at the thought of her preaching goodwill towards his father, or would have if his aching lungs would have allowed it. While his father was a noble man and his mother a faithful and respectable wife, their marriage had been formal, cold and cordial affair.
“Does it anger you that I loved my wife enough that I want to grieve for her, mother?” Struggling to raise himself on one elbow, he shifted that he might look up at her, his voice coarse and rough with pain. “Is that so shameful?”
He could see it in the way her lips twitched that this was among the reasons. “Grief is one matter,” she said flatly. “But this obscene display of emotion... one would think you had never seen a death before.” Her arms folded over her narrow chest, her chin raised imperiously. “You are the son of a Graf, Johannes, and a man long since come of age, thus you should behave like one.”
Though it took effort, he forced himself upright, sitting amid the perspiration-dampened sheets, his hands quivering against the bedding beneath him. “Would you have me cold?” he gritted out.
“In the eyes of the people?” She gazed back at him. “Yes. You have your reputation to uphold. This takes precedence, even over your own emotion.” He started to laugh at that, a hacking, wheezing sound. “You find this amusing?”
“Only that you speak of such things as emotion,” he managed to force the words out one upon another.
His mother’s upper lip curled disdainfully. “Had you listened to me then, this whole affair could have been avoided,” she said coolly. “I warned you that the girl was weak and frail and would do you no good.”
Despite the sudden clenching in his chest, Johannes uttered a sound that was pure animal. “Do not speak of her thus!”
“I have been proven right, Johannes,” his mother retorted baldly. “Seven years to get herself with child and she dies before the infant even draws first breath. Even now, they cannot tell if the boy will live. Next time...”
“Next time?” Johannes echoed in disbelief. “Next time? Elisabeth is barely beyond life, mother.” His upper lip drew back. “But then, you were always so cold. I expect your first thought when father died was finding my bride.”
“And if it was?” she said quietly, but there was a stillness to her now that should have warned him that something was amiss.
Hand pressing to his chest, Johannes took heavy, laboured breaths, then looked up bitterly at her. “I do not believe you even shed a tear for him,” he rasped. “And if you did, they would have turned to ice.”
She slapped him.
The force snapped his head around and flung his weakened body back against the pillows. That, in itself, was shocking enough, but she knelt on the edge of the bed, leaning over him, her black eyes blazing.
“Never doubt that I loved your father, you insolent boy,” she hissed. “My heart went with him when he died.” She rose, her expression freezing as if she had given away far too much. She snorted. “You are weak, softened by love and pity. If you had a care for anything but your own misery, you would stand tall and remember who you are and that there are those who depend on you.”
Bringing up a clammy hand to touch his throbbing cheek, he stared at her.
Once more, she was as one carved from ice, distant and impossible to please. But for the burning in his skin, he would have sworn that he had imagined her flare of passion in the heat of rage.
For several long moments, they watched one another then she turned and strode from the room. Sinking back against the bedding, forcing deeper breaths into his rebellious lungs, he closed his eyes, kneading his chest with shaking fingers.
It pained him to realise it, but she was right. He did have a position to uphold and a title to bear. Grief was a luxury he could not afford, especially not when those who were in his charge and employ needed him.
The door opened again and Grete bustled in, muttering under her breath about the Dowager Countess, and Johannes opened a weary eye. The old woman was unaware of his wakeful state, so he closed his eye again and just listened to her quietly irate mumblings, letting it draw his anger until sleep claimed him once more.
_________________________
It was almost a month to the day since Elisabeth von Krolock had been laid to rest.
Standing on the battlements between the tallest towers of the castle, Johannes found he could think on her without his eyes searing with fresh tears. The pain in his chest had diminished daily, though it yet lingered, faint spasms beneath his sternum that made him catch his breath.
Looking out across his land, he could see the first touches of spring. It had rained in the morning, but with the afternoon’s warmth a light mist had risen over the verdant fields, new buds and blooms arising, fresh life emerging from a land waking from winter’s torpor.
A breeze swirled around the tower and he drew his cloak more fully about himself and the small bundle cradled in his arms.
The tiny being stirred and sleepy grey eyes opened, looking up at him.
Once more, Johannes felt the lingering pain in his breast diminish. In his still-tentative embrace, his son yawned and his small hands curled into tiny fists amid the blankets he was wrapped in.
For days, Johannes had been laid abed, ill and weak, and the servants had obeyed him when he had told them not to bring the child. In the fortnight that followed, he had buried himself in work, avoiding this beautiful little thing that had been created in a perfect moment, the physical proof of the loving union of body, mind and soul he had shared with his beloved wife.
It was mere hours since the boy had been forced into his arms by Grete’s stubborn granddaughter. He had sworn at her and risen in bleak rage, intending to dash the infant to the floor, this vicious little beast that had been the death of his wife and would ever be a reminder of that.
The child had whimpered softly and in a moment of folly and wonder, he had looked down at the face of the babe. Grey eyes that had been Lise’s blinked trustingly up at him, the head thatched with the same downy gold as his mother’s.
Grete’s granddaughter had slipped from the room then, as he sank back into his seat and shifted the baby in his arms, staring at it with dazed wonder. She must have left, because when next he looked, she was no longer in the room.
It could have been hours or mere minutes spent in the study. Tenderly unwrapping the child, he had reveled in the wonder of every perfect tiny finger and each dainty tiny toe. When those little feet pressed against his palms, he had felt his heart ache with awe, and when the small hand clutched one of his fingertips, he had shamelessly wept from the joy of it.
Only when the child had cried out for feeding had he shaken himself free of the spell of devotion that was wrapping around him, bearing the babe to the wetnurse and reclaiming him as soon as his appetite was slaked.
That was when Grete had seen them. He saw her smile indulgently and approach, chastising him for forgetting his own meal. He had smiled sheepishly, looking down at his son, and said he had forgotten. The baby had gurgled in his arms and he had felt laughter rise in him for the first time in weeks.
“He is growing well, Excellency,” the woman had said, folding her hands before her and watching them fondly. “His appetite grows by the day. You would not recognise him as the babe he was.”
“He is still so small,” Johannes had replied, letting perfectly-formed little fingers clutch at one of his. Indeed, the child still barely seemed bigger than a newborn, fitting so neatly and snugly in one of his father’s arms.
“For one born so early and so harshly, it is a wonder he lives at all,” Grete had noted quietly. She had spoken at length about the care he had received, explaining that her own grandchild had chosen to tend the boy, although the name had been chosen by Grete herself, since neither he nor his Lady had been present.
Though it was not a name he would have considered, he had gazed down at his son with his pale gold hair and clear grey eyes. It seemed to fit and when Johannes spoke it for the first time, perhaps his eyes deceived him, but he was sure the babe looked attentively up at him.
Grete had smiled and taken her leave with the same stealth as her granddaughter, because he was unaware of her absence until he turned to ask her a question.
The rest of the afternoon had been spent taking the child around the castle. His own quarters had been moved. The chambers he had shared for so long with Lise had been closed against the memory and the grief. Her blood yet stained the floor and it could not bear to look within.
Instead, he had taken up residence in the West wing, and as he murmured about the building to his drowsy son, he had noted empty chambers that could serve better as a nursery only a brief distance from his own.
Better that he be close lest anything happen to the child.
Ascending through the castle, they had reached the highest balustrades only half an hour earlier. The sun was already beginning its descent over the land, taking with it the surprising warmth of the spring day, the mists hued with golden shades.
“This is your home, mein Schatz,” Johannes whispered, drawing his cloak up to tuck it around the baby’s blankets to stave off the chill, the folds sheltering the boy’s cheeks from the rising wind that was tossing his own hair wildly about his face. “Our home.”
The wide grey eyes looked back at him and he wondered how he could possibly have considered abandoning this child, created by the love he had shared with his wife, the life she had given hers to bear.
Lise had loved the little one so, even before he had been born.
What manner of man was he if he was incapable of loving the very same child? A child born of pain and tragedy, but created in love and passion? A child born of and in his beloved Lise’s blood?
Stroking the soft pink cheek, Johannes smiled sadly as the hungry mouth tried to latch onto the tip of his thumb, ever hungry, his growing little boy. Above them, the night was creeping in, darkening the sky, and the first stars were beginning to show their sleepy light.
Lise would have loved the boy, he knew. Even if he had not been as beautiful, she would have held him in her arms and sung to him and let him wrap his tiny fists in her hair as he fed.
And he had no doubt that the child would have loved his mother. There had been no one, save his own mother, who had not adored her.
“She will watch over us, Kleines,” he murmured, though it was more for his own benefit, as the sleepy grey eyes slipped closed. He caressed the plump cheek again, gently. “And until we are with her once more, I promise I shall let no harm come to you.”
A drowsy yawn was the only response he received, and lifting the babe in his arms, he kissed the child’s soft forehead, wordlessly promising that he would fight off death itself to protect his son.
And to the lullaby of his father’s whispered ‘I love you’, Herbert Johannes von Krolock fell asleep in his father’s arms.