SNEAK PEEK: BARATHEON SAGA II.
The scene where Aleksandra convinces Elise to let her live at the Drachenstein vicarage.
A beautiful lady of uncertain age, maybe in her late twenties or in her early fifties, sat in an ornate chair before an equally ornate table in the middle of the cart, her heart-shaped face framed in long ruby-red locks that flowed like blood, covered by a silky crimson veil. She wore a long tunic-like gown of a cherry shade, between crimson and scarlet, from which soft, delicate hands protruded at the ends of the sleeves.
"Come closer, Elise Baratheon", she called, the ruby on her choker glowing red and blazing like an ember, and her eyes as well. "Trust in me. Trust in Aleksandra." Elise felt herself drawn towards the redhead by some power beyond her comprehension, as if she were a fish drawn in with a line, or a piece of iron in a magnetic field, or even a satellite around a planet. "For I know what ails you, and what ails your spouse, in your heart of hearts."
Elise thought of her daughter, who always was enclosed within herself. Of how Irene acted and how little she spoke. Of how ironic it was that she had been given such a child bereft of reason, and none more. And thus, the vicar's wife drew closer to the fortune-teller. And a little closer.
"
The outcries of the oppressed and desperate; the shrieks of madness and of pain, the groanings of despair... Rush from the battlefield to the cloister, but in vain! for no seclusion can shut out one from sorrow. And yet... The whole earth... over the face of the whole earth... in every direction. All nations and empires. Especially those whose lives are secure, those who have nothing to fear for their survival. Across the face of the entire earth. Those who never knew what it is to toil, to be rejected by the system, to drown their sorrows. And that during peacetime, without any wars near to take their toll. The privileged ones, whose ranks are growing in the wake of this new century..."
Elise listened attentively to Aleksandra's cryptic words, and found some sense in their depths. She, Elise Baratheon née Florent, was one of those privileged. Middle-class both by birth and by marriage. The same rank gave a secure existence and few troubles to her spouse and their only daughter. The soothsayer put her soft, warm hands in Elise's, that appeared a little rougher and colder in comparison. And then, Aleksandra resumed her address to the vicar's wife in that soft contralto voice, as she tucked a wisp of blood-red hair into her veil again:
"Across the face of the whole earth... There is free will, and that is what troubles you and your spouse. That freedom... No... that, in spite of being free to do right, most humans are inclined to and decide to do wrong.
That aspect of free will. You wonder, and your spouse too, what if we were only able to do right. Trading freedom for the impossibility of doing any kind of wrong... There is also the issue with your child, which you think is an injustice... An orphan myself, I have often heard how strong and how warm the love between mother and daughter is... Well, I can make her well too. If you and your spouse, the Reverend, wish that little Irene could speak more to others and act like an ordinary girl, with the condition that she be free from passion and only able to do right... so it shall be. I will stay at the vicarage with you, as her governess, and I promise I will do your only daughter no harm. To begin with... I will never tell Irene any stories in which violence of any kind appears: no beating, no stabbing, no shooting, no devouring, no warfare, no madness or pain, no oppression or despair... So that she never gets to know what the dark side of the world is really like until she comes of age. I promise, with these hands on this heart. And I promise to keep her entertained and out of harm's way as long as she is under my wing. Trust in my words, for I will abide by them. As sure as I am Aleksandra and I am talking to you."
There was in her flaming ruby eyes, in her Slavic-accented velvet voice, in her convincing pose, something that seemed to say that Aleksandra was right. Something that made the dark-haired wife feel a tinge in the depths of her heart of hearts. Elise took her hands and looked up to her, as entranced as her husband had been when he first met the redhead at the Baratheon mansion in Sturmende. As entranced, and also by the prospect that this stranger's power could save her favourite child, as the Czarina of all Russias was by Rasputin at Tsarskoye Selo, worlds away from Drachenstein, at the same time.
"All I need to move into the vicarage is my trunk, which you can see at the end of the cart. I have already packed the tarot cards, the crucible, the other alchemy and astrology devices... and a few chemicals that require that the coffer be moved up to the attic and sealed under lock and key. We don't want our darling Irene to be poisoned, do we?"
Gently and whispering in her strange Slavic-sounding language, she placed a padlock on the trunk and turned around the heart-shaped key thrice. Then, to Frau Baratheon's immense surprise, she took the heavy trunk by both handles and lifted it as lightly as if it had been a casket. Elise didn't reply, but rather sauntered ahead of the red-haired, veiled soothsayer in the evening twilight. Aleksandra followed closely, still holding the trunk, along the quaint and rocky path towards the vicarage of Drachenstein. The sun's last rays were a blood-red streak, blazing as the soothsayer's hair, on the waters of the Baltic, and Mercury and Venus had just appeared in the moonless evening sky, with no stars to accompany them.
