THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA XXII: THE RETURN OF THE PAST

Previously on The Ringstetten Saga:
The young officer didn't see that coming: a royal pardon, instead of a court martial! And besides, His Majesty reunites Krister with his regiment, for the lieutenant to read a few letters from his loved ones. One from a certain estate in Värmland, the other from a bourgeois household on the outskirts of Uppsala.
The latter is, obviously, his ailing brother Kristian's will. He wishes to be buried in the Ringstetten estate garden in Värmland, he has appointed his twin brother Krister (who survived the war, as he has stated in a letter sent to Kristian during his convalescence, before desertion) his heir, consoled his own parents in another previous letter, and there is even an arrangement of a levirate marriage between the widowed Erika and the still unmarried Krister. The young bridegroom is somewhat startled, and he doubts what to do for a while: he's queer, like his liege lord, yet he feels sorry for the plight of Erika and her daughters. And thus, he decides to return to Vänersvik. With Krister comes Charlotte, now a ward of the State and completely orphaned after her father's death on the battlefield. Peace has been signed. And Sweden has proved not to be a fallen empire by winning the war! 
The young girl is somewhat jealous of her beloved's betrothed, which may have devastating consequences...
The promise has nevertheless to be fulfilled. A modest gentleman, his daughter, and her twin children soon arrive at Vänersvik, all dressed in black and having travelled in a black-draped carriage with the lifeless form of a young scholar across a cold, snowy landscape. At the funeral, in a French garden covered in a blanket of snow, they encounter a young man with Kristian's exact appearance, dressed in an officer's uniform. The next day, as Karl Johan returns to Uppsala, Erika and the twins stay on the estate and prepare a second wedding while getting to know Krister. He has become a reserved and cold veteran, at first indifferent to Erika yet compelled to marry her, but soon he feels sorry for her and opens up to his new relatives, though he is at first reluctant to make love and produce an heir, as Linnéa and Tradescantia gradually start to accept him. They even get to visit Miss Ulrika on Honeysuckle Farm, where the young girls will go to school together with peasant children, to bring the elite closer to the common people. And so will the expected male heir: Krister has finally yielded to his duty, and Erika has a bun in the oven!
As for Charlotte, she reacts coolly to the appearance of a young wife for her Krister and two foster sisters for herself. The redhead is five or six years older than Erika's daughters... and there will be a fourth child in November: a little Gustav or Sophia (the Ringstettens' hopes of a male heir are high once more!). But is her coolness for real?
Erika and her husband decide to give Vänersvik a greenhouse, to transplant all the specimens they will soon inherit from her father in Uppsala. The project is soon approved and scheduled for spring.
In midwinter, straight before Christmas, Charlotte (dressed in her custom blue military overcoat) goes out ice skating in Lake Vänern with the other girls. But, unfortunately, she crosses into thin ice, that soon breaks under her. Linnéa runs off to the estate to warn Krister, and soon the young count is on the shore, throwing the redhead a rope that Charlotte instantly catches to hold herself to and writhe her way onto land. When she has finally made it, she collapses, freezing and exhausted. Her saviour helps her into the sleigh, wrapping her in his coat and offering her a warming draught of brandy.
Thus saved, Charlotte reconciles with Krister and Erika.
On Christmas Eve, the old Count of Ringstetten suffers a sudden stroke, to be succeded by his now only son and heir. The heartwarming funeral celebrated by the local church on such a day can't be a good omen.
When springtime comes in April, the greenhouse structure and the bun in Erika's oven start developing their respective shapes. The "winter garden" is ready, stocked, and open by Midsummer. And the young hopeful sees the light of day in mid-autumn. It's a healthy boy, ostensibly the image of his late father... if it weren't for his violet eyes. Christened Gustav Paul (after the respective Crown Princes of Sweden and Russia) with the first snows, he is meant to be raised by his parents instead of strangers, and to attend the Honeysuckle Farm Public School (which Charlotte and the twin girls already attend) upon reaching the age of seven. Krister finally consents that it shall be so.
The new diverse generation of Ringstettens takes part actively in celebrations, whether Christmas, Easter, Midsummer, or harvest festivals. While, on the 14th of July that year, in another kingdom, a fortress prison yields to a storming by commoners... This is a turning point in world history that the Ringstettens won't learn about until half a decade later.
So quickly and merrily pass a few years of peace and hopes. Little Gustav Paul soon says his first words, and he is gradually learning to walk. He is now the centre of life at Vänersvik, which makes Linnéa and Tradescantia develop middle child syndrome. Krister, Erika, and Charlotte have relationships all three together in secret. What could possibly go wrong?
In springtime 1792, after hosting the Easter Dance on the Midsummer Green, the estate gets an unexpected visit from a detachment. Rather strange... Hadn't Krister, as a lieutenant, received a royal pardon in spite of his desertion?
The commanding officer, who states they've come "in the name of the Regent", wishes to have a talk with Count Ringstetten in private. Krister and Erika part, both of them worried: if a regent rules the land, something must have befallen the King!...
During the short conversation, Krister discovers the reason for the military's arrival: Gustavus III has lost his life in his bedchamber, due to wounds inflicted (a gunshot in the back) during a masquerade ball. The heir to the throne, Gustavus IV, is still a child. Thus, Duke Charles (the admiral of the fleet and Gustavus III's reserved younger brother, the middle one, an eighteenth-century Stannis Baratheon), who made a promise by his older brother's deathbed, is in charge of affairs of state. The oath: to punish the ones involved in the plot that has claimed the ruler's life. And such an oath is meant to be kept come what may.
Thus, the Anjala officers are being arrested throughout Sweden, to be subsequently banished or imprisoned for life.
And thus, Krister von Ringstetten is arrested and whisked away in a cage cart heading for the island fortress of Carlsten, on the west coast of Sweden, not to be set free until his death.
At dusk, the detachment sets off towards the setting sun. Erika kisses the prisoner farewell through the bars of the cage cart, shedding tears and then fainting. She remains between life and death for days, trying to console her children. Finally, in summer, the memory of the arrest ceases to be painful to all of them, and another funeral takes place on Midsummer Eve: the funeral of the old Countess Mother, Katarina, the arrest of whose son caused her to plunge into a coma.
Then, a letter from Carlsten comes to Vänersvik: it's from Krister, now employed as a smith in the garrison forge. He has grown a beard and been branded with the number 39 on the chest and left arm.
Soon, the Ringstettens receive a letter from the Walloons in the forge: they've just given some French refugees asylum, and they've adopted their suddenly orphaned baby daughter, Louise-Antoinette or Louison, called Loulou. Erika, though still somewhat inexperienced in the ways of the gentry, agrees that Loulou shall be betrothed and married to her Gustav Paul, whom she pets, and even spoils, more for each day.
One day in November the same year, upon returning home from school after a thunderstorm, Charlotte and the twin girls come across the Sidhe in the woods. When they finally reach Vänersvik, a threefold rainbow colours the sky.  Her look is worried, though she smiles and offers them a bluebell charm that will bestow protection upon its bearers. The test of the wishing nuts has finally come to an end, and the Sidhe has finally decided to sign peace with the human foreigners who came to these lands a century before. For a new age will dawn within another hundred years: an era of steel and steam, when the worth of a person shall no longer be measured in blood, but in wealth. The world of nature spirits is as fated as that of the gentry, yet there shall be another hundred years before that fateful twilight.
And, though the seeds of syncretism and of freedom have been finally sown after countless wars and persecutions, their shoots will take more than that century to grow strong and firm.

THE END.