This snippet is the climax of the Baratheon Saga.
I will add it at the climactic finale of the Saga, but for now it's something I wanted to write in advance...
So this is the premise for the climax:
In the previous chapter:
XVI. In which we meet both Sandra Stark and the Tyrells again, Laurent is completely broken, Lorraine changes regime a couple of times, the Great War comes finally to an end, it is the twilight of the German Empire, a bride is prepared for the Baratheon scion, and said bride is informed of Gottfried's true colours. And which also concerns a locket and a seed.
Sandra Stark and Laurent Tyrell were both injured with chlorine during the Great War and convalescent at Hautjardin, the Tyrell estate in Lorraine, which becomes French at the end of the war. During their recovery, both of them became friends. At the end of the war, during the interbellum period, military defeat has plunged the von Lännister clan into decadence. Sandra, who bobs her hair and lives at Hautjardin after the war, has told the Tyrells about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her former fiancé, Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister.
In the meantime, the von Lännisters are obliged to support the National Socialist Party and to arrange now marriageable Gottfried's betrothal to a suitable heiress. Tyrell matriarch Hélène seizes the chance and agrees with Count Theibald von Lännister to marry her granddaughter to his grandson. As a condition, the von Lännister patriarch agrees that Laurent also be betrothed to his daughter and now heir (since Jakob was left for dead on the battlefield) Elisabeth a week after Gottfried's and Margot's wedding. Thus it is agreed.
As the wedding is planned, the Tyrells and Sandra Stark plot at Hautjardin. Margot, shocked by the fact that she is to be a sociopath's bride, will remarry in the gown she sewed herself for her first wedding, a little tweaked to be more modern but nevertheless not outrageous, and also wear a pompadour like before the war. Sandra is to be Margot's maid-of-honour and bridesmaid, and wear the silver locket Rainer gave Margot at the wedding. This locket is to play a lead role in the intrigue. Soon, Hélène instructs Sandra to grind a strange little flat round seed, of a pale café au lait colour, the size of a 10-Pfennig coin, into a fine powder, which, after the lock of Rainer's dark hair is moved to the half of the locket with the daguerreotype, is put into the empty lock half of the locket.
Strychnine seeds, it is explained. Used to poison vermin, but also to raise the energy of the elderly, and as a love potion. Soon the plot is gradually taking place as the bridal gown is tweaked, the gifts gathered, the trunks packed for the journey to Potsdam, where the wedding will take place.
As their contribution to the wedding feast, the Tyrells will bring fruit for the wedding cake and a flâcon of exceedingly strong Tyrell-distilled eau-de-vie, which was at least distilled in the days of the Franco-Prussian War. The strong liquor, served at the end of the wedding feast about one or two hours after dessert to hit the bloodstream earlier, will conceal the sharp bitterness of the strychnine that the draught will be laced with. (The elder and the younger Madame Tyrell agree that a hypodermic directly into the bloodstream would make the bridegroom feel pain, a laced drink being more classical and unexpected, unwittingly inserted suffering and death into a person unaware until it is far too late.) The symptoms would be taken for those of tetanus, and the von Lännisters would never accept a post-mortem to desecrate the form of their heir.
The chapter ends and segues into the next by means of the train journey from Sierck to Potsdam, where the Tyrells and Fräulein Stark spend the wedding week at an estate provided by the von Lännister clan for the wedding.
This chapter excerpt begins with the wedding in
Potsdam Cathedral and ends with the end of the feast and its aftermath.
XVII. In which a new regime rises to power, the Only Party saves the Konzern from certain doom, the bride of Gottfried arrives at Lichterfelde with her entourage, some old friends pop up at the wedding, and a tottering mansion of cards finally crumbles. (Excerpts.)
And the impressive pipe organ of the church sounded the Wedding March from the opera
Lohengrin, the one the bridegroom and his siblings had been given names from, played as the lovely bride, in the company of her sire and maid, crossed the threshold and walked up the aisle to the altar.
"Here comes the bride..." Sandra thought to the tune of the march, looking at Marguerite Tyrell, far lovelier in lily white than in the black gown she had worn before.
Dressed in a pitch black uniform, which made the fairness of his skin, golden hair, and green eyes stand out, with the three stars of a freshly-baked lieutenant who has ceased to be a cadet ahead of time, the stalwart bridegroom cast a piercing glace at the bridesmaid who carried the end of the bride's strangely mermaid-tail-shaped lilywhite skirt. The redhead looked down, after she had darted a single glance at her best friend and the one she was due to marry. Both the Lorrainian heiress and the Schutzstaffel lieutenant had twinkles in their young eyes and smiled confidently. And Sandra Stark, who had ceased to be a maiden ever since she had been betrothed, thought as she looked at the bride and groom of what they knew and what they thought. Gottfried was sure (she thought) that this was the greatest day in his short life, his own Breitenfeld or Leuthen or Austerlitz, but little did he know that it would be the last one. That he was to pick a rose, but had not yet seen the piercing thorns that lay in wait beneath the soft petals. Margot, on the other hand, had played the part of rose "without a thorn" as well as any Shakespearean actress, reminding Sandra of both Lady Macbeth and Iago. The kiss before the altar would be like that of Judas Iscariot, only that the victim would not know what lay beneath the soft touching of lips.
Now Fräulein Tyrell had been conveyed to the altar. Her fire-haired maid skimmed the front row and beheld many a familiar face. Sandra's gaze turned first towards the pews to the right. There, a septuagenarian in uniform, surely a military officer of a rather high rank, sitting next to a middle-aged lady as chock-full of make-up as an eighteenth-century coquette, with bobbed hair and wearing the widow's black. Both of them shared the bridegroom's bright green eyes, the lady's hair was golden, and the high officer's few silvery wisps had once been the same colour. Count Theibald remained as stern as ever, while Countess Elisabeth dried up a few tears as she clenched her lace handkerchief. Next to her sat the two newcomers at the Baratheon-von Lännister mansion. The countess's twin brother, dressed in uniform as well, looked now much more different from her, with a steel hook for a right hand and sunken in deep thought (something unusual for him, but Jakob's brooding could, like Laurent's, be explained by the hell of war), and a strange girl whom Sandra thought she had seen at the front: straw-blond and tall, riddled with freckles, dressed in a modest blue flapper gown and sitting next to the hook-handed one. Elschen and Telchen were of course there as well, in an Alice pinafore and a sailor suit respectively, looking full of excitement at their older brother and his lovely bride.
On the Tyrell side, the sinister side of the nave, the father of the bride had resumed his post by his lady wife, who adjusted her gold-rimmed spectacles slightly. Laurent, the only Tyrell brother present at the event, looked awkward in civilian attire, and he looked every now and then at Sissi and then at Margot and then down to the floor. He was the best man, and thus, stood by his prospective brother-in-law's side while smiling what only the Tyrells and the redhead knew to be a fake smile. A very familiar octogenarian lady, also dressed in black, was sitting with the others of her kin across the aisle from the von Lännisters.
The Queen of Thorns was looking at everyone of importance in the room, her strategist mind as occupied as that of a general in the heat of battle. Even if there happened to be a general in the nave, for there
was one, besting the elder Count von Lännister was certainly, for Hélène Tyrell, just like defeating a child at a game of chess.
There, before the completely gilt, blazing altar decked with the Apostles and Jesus soaring above them, stood a golden-haired young man in black and a nutbrown maiden in white, exchanging words with the von Lännister clan's personal chaplain and bending their heads to receive his blessing.
The pair said their vows, and the nave erupted into overwhelming applause.
"I do," Lieutenant Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister confidently said, and his green eyes sparkled with wistful wickedness, those eyes said that he would pick that rose and pluck its petals, and then, once he had grown weary, crush it beneath his black-booted right foot.
"I eat flowers, I burn with
dreams, I have a tower without a door in my heart and I will keep you there..."
"I do," Fräulein Margarethe Tyrell, née Mademoiselle Marguerite Tyrell, said in an equally lively tone, and her golden eyes sparkled with righteous intrigue, coupled with the elation of having her target already locked and soon fallen into the Tyrell conspiracy, yet completely unaware of it.
Then, after receiving the priest's blessing, the bride and groom obviously kissed. And, as he clasped her slender, lilywhite waist in his strong arms, she clasped his strong shoulders, her delicate hands concealed by satin opera gloves, and kissed him as well, touching the parted lips through which soon death would enter his young system, that gateway to the realm that was the young heir, shaded by a soft, wispy streak of golden peach-fuzz on his upper lip... then she thrust her tongue in, a little wistfully, through Gottfried's parted lips and through the twin rows of sterling white incisors that rose beyond, sharp as bayonets, then a little deeper in, probing the first steps of the route that the tainted draught would take ere it plunged down into the darker, throbbing recesses of the lieutenant's system. He saw this as just another sign of his bride's love, that she was willing to become one with him, that she, homeschooled and shining with wit, was bold enough to lead him in the game of love. Which was the way Margot had intended that he would interpret it. That kiss was like the most infamous one in world history, the one stolen by Judas Iscariot, only that the victims of this scheme knew of no treason.
That day, the sound of the cheering crowd on the pews drowned out everyone's worries.
To the von Lännisters and to Brünnhilde von Tarth, the bride and groom were kissing.
To the Tyrells, Margot was fulfilling her part of the plan.
To Sandra Stark, who nervously fingered her locket, she could not wait in bringing the plan into action, letting the strychnine powder quickly fall into the liquor cup that evening. She had been training sleight of hand throughout her sojourn at the Tyrells' and even more on the eve of the wedding, after all.
To Laurent Tyrell, his sister was very brave to risk it all in such a game of pitch-and-toss. And so far, she had the unwitting young officer in her pocket. Soon she would be a merry widow, at odds with the von Lännisters yet still able to best them.
To Hélène Tyrell, the cleverness of her granddaughter, a trait inherited on both sides of her family, added to her charms and wistful, pixie-like demeanor, had ensured that the Tyrells held the upper hand and the higher ground in this military campaign. Those who had been abused would have their revenge, and who would say that the dashing scion with a heart of frozen steel would meet his downfall, his Waterloo, thanks to a tiny seed and a maiden both lovely and intelligent? That the decadence of the von Lännister clan would come from such unexpected sources?
The kiss eventually came to an end, and those were the thoughts of everyone involved.
[...] (The bridal procession leaves the church and enters the von Lännister mansion.)
Of course the bride was in the very best of spirits, and so was the bridegroom, feeling that all eyes were upon them, shaking hands and smiling left and right as, hand in hand, they sailed confidently down the path to take their place at the head of the table, where the guests were already assembled.
(The wedding feast is consumed, finishing with a toast to the bride and groom drunk in champagne on ice.)
The sun was still lower over the ostentatious Potsdam horizon, gilding it with a warm summer glow. Now the afternoon was at an end, and the evening had taken its place.
Confidently taking up her place in the heart of the arbour, like a primadonna upon the stage of La Scala, the dark-haired bride cleared her throat:
"I would like to sing a ballad by Schubert, with lyrics by Goethe. Would anyone here care to listen to 'Heathland Rose'?"
There was no objection to the bride's performance of said lied. Rather, there were encouragements. As she fingered her locket, the maid-of-honour leaned against a linden trunk. Supper had already been served, and so had the cake, and a toast had been drunk to the newlyweds in champagne on ice, which had already gone to her head.
Leaning against the same linden on the other side, Brünnhilde von Tarth, also light-headed from having drunk the same, had not seen that the one she sought was closer than she could imagine.
[...] (The thoughts of Jakob, Laurent, Theibald and Hélène are discussed.)
Yet, in no time, the voices in all of their heads were hushed at unison by the song of the bride, a soprano voice tinkling as a rill, with a slightly mournful tune:
Saw a lad a rose in bloom,
blooming on the heathland,
young and fair, just like the morn.
He ran closer, seeing no thorn,
and beheld it, pleased lad.
Little scarlet heathland rose,
little wild and red rose!
Quoth the lad: "I'll now pick thee,
little wild and red rose!"
Quoth the rose: "I'll pierce your skin,
you'll remember, thus, your sin,
I will not regret woes!"
Little scarlet heathland rose,
little wild and red rose!
And the wild lad fiercely picked
little wild and red rose!
Red rose did herself defend,
young lad cried, to no good end,
in her, no regret rose!
Little scarlet heathland rose,
little wild and red rose!
No one but those involved in the plot knew that, during that evening, the events of the song would become true in a certain way. That it was an omen, a foreshadowing, the writing on the wall.
The performance of "Heathland Rose" was given much acclaim, for the singer, as commented by Count Theibald to his younger associates within the Party, was not only in possession of golden vocal cords, but also remembered the lyrics of the three-stanza song by heart. How much she shone with wit! And how fortunate the septuagenarian was in his choice of a granddaughter-in-law, one who was not a scentless flower only of pleasant appearance and wealthy descent, but also as bright as the sun and Venus added up together when it came to her inner charms!
[...] (Sissi feels even more jealous of Margot. Comparison to the Wicked Queen and Snow White)
Then, as planned by the Tyrells, their lackey brought the brandy flacon and the fine Bohemian glasses, giving Sandra a gesture to come near the lackey in the shade of the lilac bush. The maid-of-honour, with the excuse that she had to relieve herself, sauntered to the cupbearer's side. The time had finally come. The show of her lifetime was about to begin. And, after the whole tiresome wedding service (well, tiresome except for the kiss in the end) fingering her locket, she was now in the shade of the lilacs in bloom, unseen by everyone else, quickly opening the little silver and glass pendant, then looking at the equally silver tray on which the costly Bohemian cups stood. One of them was different from all the others: slightly larger and decorated like the calyx of a lily, while all of the other glasses had a pattern of ripples or waves.
"Is this one for the bridegroom?" Fräulein Stark whispered to the waiter, as she pointed at the calyx-chalice. It could only have been that way. In response, he nodded and smiled. The red-haired maid-of-honour, casting a lightning glance at the Schutzstaffel officer, suffered from no stage fright at all. All of that sleight-of-hand training would finally pay off once the trick had been successfully performed. Then, all that was to do was watching the other actors perform the next scene, the climax, and commence the countdown to the final scene. The von Lännisters would be caught unaware. They would never know what had actually happened that afternoon. Following Wenzel von Lännister to the table in the rose-arbour, she looked at Gottfried slightly nomming on Margot and vice versa, wistfully playing with one another. And she saw the twinkles in his green eyes and read them, as she read the twinkles in the bride's golden eyes. The former spoke of lust and wickedness, the latter shone with wit and intrigue. And Margot winked at her best friend for a single second.
"At the eleventh hour!" the young officer coldly and impatiently said, as he loosened his grip on his bride and wiped the perspiration from his brow. Now that he had been given a military education, he sounded more imperious than before. "We were dying of thirst already!" (What he really was thinking was "
I was dying of thirst already! That Lorrainian brandy must taste good, or else... If the taste doesn't please me, I'll give it to Sandra Stark, right in the face!" How unaware Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister was!) Even though the sun's rays were dying down at twilight, the lively conversation he had carried out with his newlywed wife was already parching his throat, and he felt as if having a sprig of prickly thorns in there, clinging in such a way that he could neither get those thorns down nor bring them up. Furthermore, he had been perspiring for hours under that heavy black uniform. Long story short, his system was asking for a quick refill.
Alas! Little did he know that only one drink, drained at a single draught, would be enough to quench all the thirst of a short life kindled by youthful hot blood; and that such ice-cold, lifeless respite would not come without a prelude of the most intense sufferings, whose likeness he had never felt before!
The fire-haired maid-of-honour had already taken her stance. These were the cues for playing her part on stage. The locket had been already taken off, its glass lid on the strychnine side slightly opened, and the locket hidden in her left opera glove. Repeating the trick dozens of times had changed her from right-handed to ambidextrous, at least only for doing the trick. Now all of that training would pay off. The most tragic decade of her life was finally coming to an end. And to an unexpected one for those who had vexed her, of which she was completely in control.
Then, Wenzel laid the silver tray on the table. Sandra came closer.
Then, Wenzel poured the golden liquid into the costly glass cups, filling the bridegroom's first, then filling the others. As he poured brandy for the other ones at the table, Sandra Stark, seizing the lily-cup with her right hand, let her left one, the locket chain clenched with a bracelet under the glove, slip the fatal seed-powder into its ethylic contents. No one saw it: they were all too taken with their own thoughts or feelings to pay heed to something as mundane as a cupbearer serving liquor.
Then, as Wenzel handed out their drinks to a septuagenarian count and an octogenarian dowager, to the parents of the bride and the mother of the bridegroom, to the one with the hook hand and the tall freckled one, and to the slender one with a wit as sharp as his goatee, to the bride's older brother (who had been the best man), long story short to everyone under the rose-arbour, the redhead stepped forth and advanced towards the bridegroom, holding his calyx-chalice in her right hand. This was the moment of truth. Now her part had been played. And now his part would be played.
The lieutenant's black-gloved right hand quickly snatched the laced cup from Sandra's grasp. She didn't take her eyes off him, the setting sun caught in his golden hair, the sparkles of elation in his piercing green eyes. That stance of pride and confidence in the prime of life would not last more than half an hour at least.
Raising his cup to the sky ere his lips would touch it, Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister praised his bride and confidently said that he was to drink to her health. Margot raised her cup as well, clinking it lower than his, looking at his whole frame, from the peach-fuzz on his upper lip all the way to the belt of his tight black Schutzstaffel trenchcoat, under which, inside his midriff, was the next destination of the laced draught.
Fräulein Stark looked on. There he was, her executioner, her scourge, on top of the world and without wishing for anything. Still as courteous as he was wicked, sure that he had found another flower to pluck and tread on, not having seen the poisonous thorns that lay beneath. The thorns whose lethal infusion would enter his system without any pain or any other discomfort in advance, unknowingly to his consciousness. There he was, throwing back his head and lowering the cup again, his fine lips parting slightly as they kissed the rim of costly Bohemian glass. Then he tilted his wrist ever so slightly, and the level in the cup began to quickly sink, as the laced brandy stole through the young officer's parted lips. The conspirators heard a quick succession of short gulps as the bulge on his throat rose and fell at an equally fast pace. In the end, after those two or three decisive seconds, there was not even a drop of liquor left in the glass, which had been emptied to the very dregs. The poison was inside the victim, and all that was left was watching closely, waiting for its dramatic effect. And the young lieutenant was softly drying up his lips as he rubbed his own midsection, after laying the cup he had drained on the table. Was he aware of the fact that, upon receiving that draught in his throat, upon emptying that lily-glass, he had invited his own death to take him away? Obviously not at all. Then, what was he feeling as he downed the laced draught?
"A finely-scented liquor," Gottfried thought as his lips parted around the costly glass cup. Surely a sign that it would taste as good or better, he thought as he subsequently tilted his right wrist. As the first drops of tainted brandy trickled into his mouth and kissed his tongue, the unusual sharpness and bitterness of the draught surprised him. At heart he revolted and would rather wince, but, given the circumstances, the young officer thought that this was surely the taste of Lorrainian brandy, different from French or Prussian, and that he had to make this draught go down to appear courteous to his bride and both their families, and to all of Potsdam society gathered on such a sacred day. And, besides, he was really thirsty... That tilted the scales in favour of swallowing the fatal cupful as well. Thus, within a split second, steeling himself and putting on a brave face, the lieutenant tilted his wrist once more, his head leaning backwards, and, as quickly as he could, let the rest of his drink in. The tainted liquor, after sprinkling the golden peach-fuzz on his upper lip and lashing like a wave at his sterling white incisors, surged into the glistening red cavern which was the entrance hall to his life-throbbing system, surging in until, once the draught had reached the rear end of Gottfried's tongue and the section where the cavern narrowed, the young lieutenant swallowed instantly, within a second, as if by reflex. As the liquid fire washed and seared this point of no return, the muscles on its glistening walls gave a powerful contraction, and then, forced down, the surge of liquor lashed against the lieutenant's uvula, which hung like a glistening scarlet standard at the brink of the deep, dark, warm chasm that was his waiting gullet, before the ethylic cascade plunged, descending at a lightning speed, into the depths of the young officer's throat, into the darkness within his vitals.
The last thing he had done to the draught on his own free will was swallowing it, unaware of the unseen enemy that he had unwittingly let in, welcoming the lethal seed-powder dissolved into the brandy to enter his young, healthy system. After Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister had emptied the precious glass and swallowed the laced liquor, the involuntary functions that kept him alive while rarely being noticed began to take over its destiny on its journey through his system, once it had already got in.
The Lorrainian brandy was then searing his throat, and the Schutzstaffel officer felt its agreeable warmth spread from the back of his mouth, down his gullet and into his chest, behind his sternum, behind his throbbing heart, deeper in, through his diaphragm, and then stopped at the height of his solar plexus, where his ribcage ended, producing a warmer and more intense glow, the sensation of having swallowed a draught of liquid fire, inside his midsection, right under his shiny belt buckle. At the same time, Gottfried felt more clear-headed and light-hearted, pleased with the draught once it had gone down at last, relishing the inner warmth it had offered, but still stark unaware that his death was closing in on the sources of his life.
Let us now, while the guests at the table enjoy conversation about the future of the Reich and of its resurrection after the war, close in on the bridegroom and enter his system. The events taking place inside his abdomen, within his dark vitals, are now of far more interest than those taking place around him, isn't it right?
We left our lethal, laced draught surging like a cataract down the dark and endless chasm that was Lieutenant Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister's smooth gullet, down his throat and through his chest, then beyond his diaphragm. Now the brandy had poured into his stomach, a far vaster cavern
distended and churning with vigorous contractions to change the whole wedding feast into a lake of some cream or gruel, from which the substances his system needed could be absorbed. The hors d'oeuvres, the roasts, the Rhineland and Lorrainian wines, the delicious wedding cake washed down with champagne on ice: throughout those two hours, nearly everything in his share of the feast had been dissolved by powerful, strong acids, churned and sloshed into a cream whose ingredients, with the exception of the skins and seeds of the berries in the cake, could not be distinguished from each other. This creamy gruel was then diluted even more with the draught of strychnine-laced liquor, whose ethyl content stimulated the further secretion of acidic juices. For another ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, the mixture of healthy and lethal substances sloshed and tossed within those distended scarlet walls, where the seed powder was dissolved and the strychnine within was released... until, at another involuntary command, it descended even deeper, whirling in circles like a maelstrom, gradually surging into the winding tunnel that was the lieutenant's duodenum, where, at the confluences with thinner ducts, alkaline juices were poured in to neutralize the acids in what had once been his share of his own wedding feast, now mixed with substances that endangered his short life. Substances that closed in more and more for every five minutes they spent within him, for every five minutes that they plunged deeper into his vitals, and that soon would be far closer to their goal.
The tainted cream had now passed on into the young officer's jejunum, beneath the lower half of his black trenchcoat. In this long and winding passageway, whose rose-coloured walls were lined with countless little tendrils that waved in the stream like anemones, these tendrils, lined with blood vessels, took up, absorbing, what could be taken up from the creamy mixture into the bloodstream: wanted sugars, amino-acids, vitamins, and minerals, but also a couple of rather different poisons that, once they had entered the lieutenant's blood, would seize the chance to wreak havoc on his young, healthy system. Here and in his ileum, the subsequent section, which was just like the jejunum but twice as long, the ethanol and the strychnine gradually passed into the Schutzstaffel officer's veins. And, once absorbed, they closed even more on the sources of his life.
These two poisons act upon the system in rather different ways, like two different strategists would act during the same campaign: Ethanol is a weakening narcotic which, like Fabius or Wallenstein, takes on its victim little by little, during the course of years, closing in a little more on the liver, the brain, and the circulation for each quaffed draught. Strychnine, on the other hand, forces the motion of the system to be carried out in excess and strikes fast as lightning, going straight for its targets, the spinal cord and the nerves that there have their source, like Gustavus Adolphus would have done.
And now these two lethal substances were coursing through the veins of Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister, surging forth from one confluence of vessels to another among red blood cells and platelets. During the bloodstream's short tour through his liver, a certain amount of the lethal substances inside him was purified and led away, but there was still ethanol to spare, and more significantly, there was still strychnine to spare in his bloodstream, quickly swirling up through his diaphragm and into his throbbing heart, which at first fired the tainted blood into the delicate, fragile structures of his lungs and then, and most relevantly, to every blood vessel throughout his system. The strychnine now spread left and right, never more conveniently said, like poison in the bloodstream, like liquid fire, seeking synapses between neurons in which to interfere. Leaving the young officer's arteries within an instant, the powerful left ventricle of his heart having propelled the bloodstream with the last healthy throb, the lethal substance soon reached the endings of the nerves that had their source at his spinal cord.
From the moment when he had drunk the liquor about an hour before, Gottfried had been completely unaware of what would happen to his system. Now his whole face was given an unexpected twitch, which both surprised the scion and filled him with dread: his jaws were clenched as firmly as jaws could be against his will, and they could not part no matter how hard he tried, making it impossible for him to speak and to consume anything.
Everyone at the table grew pale, remarking on his sudden silence and on the sickening grin on his face. Elisabeth von Lännister reeled and felt lightheaded by seeing her eldest child in such a pitiable state. Now pale and in a cold sweat himself, the bridegroom drew his officer's sword from his scabbard, as, upon seeing his reflection on the blade, he was seized with even more fear: his lips had writhed, against his will as well, into a sickening, sinister Cheshire-cat grin, as impossible to undo as the closing of his mouth.
"I should have taken that lockjaw shot," was the first thought, with a tinge of regret, that flashed through his shocked mind. Years ago, that day at Lichterfelde, he had turned away the hypodermic syringe with the life-saving vaccine that every cadet would receive. "A von Lännister would never yield to lockjaw," he had then said as a cadet, as a boy. Now, as a lieutenant, a young man, a bridegroom, he realized that the scratch he had received when he had fallen to the ground had proven otherwise. He would die of (what he thought to be) tetanus, on his wedding day, right when he could not be happier. Was this fair? It would be to others, perchance. And only then, in the throes of death, did Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister cease to be selfish.
Right then, his whole system was given a jolt, as if an electric surge had been sent through him, and racked with excruciating pain. The dreadful cramps and the pain increased even more. Hélène led Theibald aside. Restless, the bridegroom had risen from his chair, feeling that he had to be restless and stand up against his will (as if he were suddenly placed on stage with strings attached). All of his muscles stiffened, even his heart itself, as if he were paralyzed, and seized with the same excruciating pain, as his whole skin was drenched in a cold sweat, that made his shirt stick to his chest and back, and his feet felt as if they were encased in ice up to the end of his ankles. A shrill ringing rung in his ears, and nausea made his entrails writhe like snakes deep inside. The young officer would gladly have shut his eyes, if his eyelids had not been forced open. He would gladly have uttered a scream of pain for help, if his jaws had not been forced shut. The only thing he could do was retch and strain, hoping to get the poison out of his system, but to no avail. Clutching the tablecloth with all his strength to stand upright, the bridegroom staggered a few steps (searching in vain for another support he could use to stand upright) ere he fell back, as if he had been struck by lightning, on the arbour floor.
"I am suffering—I cannot see. A thousand fiery darts are piercing my brain. Ah, don’t touch me, pray don’t.” By this time his haggard eyes had the appearance of being ready to start from their sockets; his head fell back, and the lower extremities of the body began to stiffen.
The ostentatious society wedding, which should have been a cheerful and grand occasion, had reached a climax worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy.
Sissi shut her eyes and buried her head in her hands, not to see the débâcle that was unfurling straight before her. Margot did not say anything. Hélène advised most of the distinguished guests, with the exceptions of her family and the bridegroom's as well as their associates, to leave the feast. The company was dwindled to those sitting at the rose arbour: the Tyrells, the von Lännisters, Sandra Stark and Brünnhilde von Tarth, and that clever upstart Bälisch. All of them were pale, and some of them were frightened by the dreadful events now unfurling before them.
As the bridegroom writhed and tossed more violently, now bent into a hard arch on the floor, as if he had been possessed by some evil spirit, his mother was finally roused from her state of dejection. Elisabeth wanted to hold her greatest treasure, two decades of well-guarded gold and emeralds, in her arms ere she lost it forever. There were tears in her eyes, and a name uttered in despair on her lips:
"Gottfried!! Gottfried!!!" She held her heir in her loving arms, shedding hot tears on his now feverish face, like a
Pietà from the seventeenth century expressing, in all its angst and suffering, the despair of the Virgin Mary as a mother broken by the violent, painful death of her child.
"I must... die... I must... die... my throat... so tight... my heart... my head... kill me... leave me... leave-me-leave-me!" he shoved her aside after eagerly draining a glass of lemonade that Wenzel had handed over to them.
The aged Count of Lännister and the older Queen of Thorns, the dark-haired bride and the fire-haired maid-of-honour, the Tyrells and Kleinfinger, everyone watched the scene in silent awe and dread.
The Schutzstaffel lieutenant was tossing feverishly, writhing like a trampled snake, twitching and swallowing his pain, his brow ablaze and his ribcage tightening around his lungs, like a corset pulled the tightest a corset can get. Thus lay the hope of the von Lännisters, his painfully grinning lips and his fingertips turning a violet shade of purple, his jaws still locked and his eyes still wide open against his will, as a veil of mist began to cloud his thoughts. Lightheaded and confused, feeling more and more weary as he found it harder and harder to breathe, his very heart racked with pain as if a dagger had been plunged into it through his back, Gottfried had already given up even the thinnest ray of hope. All that pain everywhere and that malaise and that nausea had come fast as lightning, quite unexpectedly.
Now both Jakob and Theibald had sauntered forth as well, and so was Hélène, towards the dying Schutzstaffel lieutenant. Fräulein Mordäne had led Elsa and Telchen back into the nursery, reassuring them that their older brother would make it through.
Elisabeth "Sissi" von Lännister was at her wits' end. Her tears were washing the make-up on her eyes and cheeks away, changing her appearance to a likeness of the feelings that tore her apart. The unexpected debacle had pushed her beyond the brink of despair.
Her young hopeful was losing consciousness.
One might by the fearful swelling of the veins of his forehead and the contraction of the muscles round the eyes, trace the terrible conflict which was going on between the living energetic mind and the inanimate and helpless body. His features convulsed, his eyes suffused with blood, and his head thrown back, he was lying at full length, beating the floor with his hands, while his legs had become so stiff, that they looked as if they would break rather than bend. A slight appearance of foam was visible around the mouth, and he breathed painfully, and with extreme difficulty.
For all this time, there had been struggle between life and death, a dramatic battle in which life had the health and youth of its holder as allies, but death had strychnine for a more powerful and redoubtable ally, and thus held the upper hand.
In the end, life was defeated, and the tortured young lieutenant, after one last painful twitch, fell back and ceased to move altogether.
The Schutzstaffel officer, his ribcage now completely constrained against his will, had entirely ceased to breathe. His green eyes were blood-shot and glossy with tears, still wide open, now protruded from their sockets like those of a frog, looking wild and staring at the one who loved him the most; his now purple lips were still writhed into the same ironic Cheshire-cat grin, his muscles were hard as iron or steel. For a while his clouded mind still kept itself active, though it grew more and more confused by the lack of oxygen.
"Can you speak?” the countess asked in a soothing tone, trying to steel herself in the middle of her anxiety. Gottfried muttered a few unintelligible words. “Try and make an effort to do so, my lad", she said, as he reopened his bloodshot eyes and she put her right hand to his heart and placed a glass of before his violet lips. His mouth forced now three-quarters shut, he couldn't drink the ether-laced water within, but still felt a new strange warmth upon receiving it.
"No... thanks... my throat... so... tight... I suffo...cate... my... heart... my... head... how... long... will... I... suffer?" Then, his lips were sealed by force for the last time. Right as Sissi tore the plume off her flapper's headband and pushed it down his throat, trying to tickle her young hopeful in there and make him throw up. In his painful throes and convulsions, as he strained and made vain efforts to throw up, the bridegroom's incisors bit into the feather, whi
ch was unable to pass any deeper. Right before shoving it in, she had bitten into the other end of the plume's quill and cut that end off, thinking she had found an impromptu way to fill his lungs with air, to prevent suffocation, but it was in vain, no matter for how long she huffed and puffed like a madwoman into the plume quill, nor that she had removed the uniform coat and belt of the writhing stripling. Sending for an emetic would be to no avail either. Neither would any solace that the healing arts could procure in that decade.
In a certain sense, but not the expected one, the strychnine was acting as a love potion.
For then, only at the close of his life, gradually intoxicated with lack of oxygen, the wicked scion at last learned the meaning of true love. The love of family and of those who could have been friends, awakened by his distress and suffering.
It was ironic that it should have been too late.
That his death-throes were what would make him understand how wonderful the power of love is.
That he would understand the value of a mother's tears, of concerned loving ones' sorrows, of the black coat that was being loosened around his chest and the belt that was being taken off his waist, as the poison and fever usurped the throne from which reason had finally fled.
Then, exhausted by lack of life-giving oxygen, his weary heart was still.
Elisabeth was devastated, weeping incessantly on the lifeless form. The make-up running down her face and her blood-shot, empty eyes told of the wreck of her greatest expectations. Theibald came even closer, and so did the hook-handed younger count. The seventyish nobleman laid a gloved hand on his daughter's shoulder. She coldly shook it off, embracing her young hopeful even closer to her. Her twin brother's right hook and his sinister hand, one cold and sharp, the other warm and soft, the despairing socialite slapped away as well. She was not in the mood for respite.
Gottfried had died a painful and untimely death, nipped in the bud when his whole life lay ahead, Elisabeth was completely brokenhearted, Jakob disowned and unwilling to have anything to do with the military, and though forgiven for his sins and invited to the wedding, he would soon leave the von Lännister circle to live a pitiable life as a crippled tramp. Theibald himself? Both the defeat of the Kaiser he served and his descent into the winter years made him feel that death was closing in on his weary heart: he was the living image of his surname's decadence. The shattering of all the hopes he had placed on his eldest grandson and on this grand wedding made his heart heavier and let a stabbing pain in. Once Theibald von Lännister, ever since he was sent to Magdeburg as a cadet, had begun to fear being seen as weak. Now, decades later, all of the surname's expectations were drifting away. All of the worst fears which the count had harboured since childhood were coming true.
It pained him to see his dear Elisabeth, whose life he had lived, and whose desires he had overlooked in favour of the clan, so deeply intrenched in despair.
It pained him to see his dear Gottfried, to whom he had been firm and stern as never before to correct his many faults and succeeded, having died so painfully, struck down by cruel chance when his whole life lay ahead, at the twilight of the sacred day, on such a meaningful and hopeful evening.
It pained him to see his dear Jakob, whom he had disowned in a fit of rage, becoming, instead of a powerful and renowned statesman, an inglorious ragamuffin surely condemned to a life of crime.
It pained him to part from his dear Elschen, who would soon leave for Spain, convert to Catholicism, and live among unknown foreigners, and perchance, like her older brother, die an untimely death.
It pained him to see Hélène Tyrell, ten years older than he was himself and equally successful, equally risen from the landed gentry into high society, a woman and eightyish, as his Waterloo.
It pained him to see the Kaiser and the Kaiserin living in exile, the poisons he had unleashed upon the battlefield having claimed the life and health of the Reich's own troops, the Baratheon steelworks lowering their production, the business left in the hands of associates who whispered to one another behind the septuagenarian's back and would not hesitate to lace his drink, to stick a syringe into his arm, to plunge hot lead in between his shoulder blades and make it look like a stray bullet.
Maybe these younger, ambitious men had already made their move, just like the Tyrells.
Theibald von Lännister was a tragic hero as well.
This was his journey's end.
As the von Lännisters gathered around the one they thought had died of lockjaw, a slender gentleman in his fifties, with a silver-streaked dark goatee, closed in on Sandra.
"You're no longer safe here. Pack your case as soon as possible. We're leaving tonight," he whispered in her ear.
"Are we leaving... this region? Or do you mean this country?" The redhead looked up, with a look of both hope and anxiety, to Herr Bälisch, whose slate-grey eyes shone with a look of concern.
"For our château in the Alps. Lizzie wasn't invited to the wedding, and she'd love to hear her niece giving an account of the whole grand affair." To soothe her, Peter was stroking her fire-red locks.
"Since you're Aunt Lizzie's husband, I'm
your niece as well," Sandra said as she got upstairs in the Tyrells' provisory residence, having been carried there in his company.
"To me, you're
more than that. You'll become our
ward as well. Lizzie and I can sadly have no children, and we'd like a sweet and lovely maiden who shines with wit for our own."
With a lighter heart, she began to pack her trunk as well, beginning with the gloves and the locket. In her new foreign home, she would keep it as a memento from what she would always call "the wedding of her lifetime."
Indeed, the day had been full of irony, she thought as she packed her trunk. A newlywed bridegroom, in the prime of life and pleased with everything that day, on top of the wheel of fortune, had suddenly been racked with excruciating pain and forced to grin like a Cheshire cat.
A leaden bullet the size of a hazelnut had plunged into Gustavus Adolphus in between the shoulder blades at Lützen, and the Thirty Years' War had thus unfurled in a completely different direction from the expected. Likewise, a seed the size of a ten-pfennig coin, ground into powder and dissolved in distilled liquid, found its way into Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister, and the whole palace of cards that his dynasty had raised was crumbling around his lifeless form. Why are the most fatal catalysts that could end an important person's life smaller than said person, and tear at the fabric of that person's life from within? Isn't that unexpected? And... Isn't that irony?
Reader, you may be thinking the same and asking the same question as our heroine. Which I, as I must confess, have often wondered myself.
Still, that day would bring another casualty, a decades older person sharing Gottfried's gender and surname. Let us thus leave Sandra Stark quickly packing her trunk and head back to the von Lännister mansion. There, pensive and depressed, a seventyish patriarch and veteran is wondering the same things that our red-haired heroine was thinking of.
Indeed, the day had been full of irony. A newlywed bridegroom, in the prime of life and pleased with everything that day, on top of the wheel of fortune, had suddenly been racked with excruciating pain and forced to grin like a Cheshire cat.
A leaden bullet the size of a hazelnut had plunged into Gustavus Adolphus in between the shoulder blades at Lützen, and the Thirty Years' War had thus unfurled in a completely different direction from the expected. Likewise, a seed the size of a ten-pfennig coin, ground into powder and dissolved in distilled liquid, found its way into Gottfried Baratheon-von Lännister, and the whole palace of cards that his dynasty had raised was crumbling around his lifeless form. Why are the most fatal catalysts that could end an important person's life smaller than said person, and tear at the fabric of that person's life from within? Isn't that unexpected? And... Isn't that irony?
The aged Count Theibald was pondering on these stressful thoughts, as well as on the decadence of his own dynasty and his own life, in the lavatory, as he relieved himself. Of course, emptying his rectum while brooding and regretting mistakes past was putting even more stress on his weary system.
Should he ask his children and grandchildren, and the Tyrells, for forgiveness? Never before had he dared, but now, in his seventies, he had to atone for all of the decisions he had made for the clan's sake, without paying heed to his loved ones' happiness. When he had finished his duties, he would ask both Jakob and Elisabeth for forgiveness, and, for the first time in all three of their lives, lock both of them in a heartfelt embrace.
Alas! The veteran warrior and statesman would never reconcile himself with them in life!
For then, suddenly, he felt a stabbing pain in between his heart and his solar plexus, as if a gunshot had pierced his vitals. It was too intense a pain to be the usual ulcer. Those plotting associates' fault? Maybe they should have never been invited to the wedding. Clutching his midriff, screaming in pain, and slightly staggering off the seat, before he could stand up, everything turned pitch black before his cataracted eyes, and he was falling backwards on the seat, as if struck by lightning. Then, he was completely still.
Seeing how much he was delayed in such a simple task, his valet and Elisabeth rushed into the lavatory to see what had happened. They found, in a room that reeked of death and feces, the seventyish count bereft of life, leaning backwards with his head resting on the wall, sitting on his inglorious "throne."
His chest didn't heave, he was strangely pale and cold, and a little rill of ruby blood trickled from the parted lips. Had a blood vessel burst in his chest? Was it a heart condition? Or perchance a stroke? Or had the younger associates finally made their move?
The mere sight of her sire dead and the disgust she felt upon entering the room made her wince and stagger, until she fell unconscious on the floor, deeply alive, but shocked. She'd love to have a talk with Theibald after he had done his physical duties, about her marriage, the disowning of her brother, the recent demise of Gottfried... Alas! Her lord father was deceased, and her eldest son was deceased as well, and the other half of her, now bereft of his rightful place, was leaving the glitter and glamour of Potsdam society to err around the wastelands like a wheeling outcast, but at least staying for the night in the neoclassical mansion where both of the von Lännister twins had been born and raised.
There was also concern in Jakob's green eyes as he carried the half-conscious Sissi out of the lavatory. He had been shocked by what he had seen and by the strong scent of the room as well, and he dried up her tears as both of them undressed and went to bed. Yet his peridot eyes were sharp and piercing like glittering bayonets, as sharp as the end of his right hook, and, in a cold and emotionless voice, he called her Elisabeth.
Never had her brother called the dowager by her full name. To him, she had hitherto always been Sissi, and he had never been icy or shifty. For a second she thought that the rage of war, the pain of desertion, the loss of his dexter hand, all the suffering he had been through... had frozen his heart cold as ice and hard as steel, but the reply she received struck and pierced the lady's heart like a bullet at point-blank range:
"Pardon me, Elisabeth. What I felt for you is dead since long ago. And there is another."
"You love another!?" There were tears in her eyes. Right when she needed the solace of the only one she had got left, he told had her that, during the war, he had fallen out of love and given his heart to another. Jakob didn't tell her the name of her rival, but at least he told her how another woman had kindled the hope that had died within his heart of hearts, saving his life and leading him back to the light, to reconcile himself with the past and with his own darkness. And how he now merely saw Elisabeth as his sister, no longer as an object of desire.
"Tomorrow I leave for Valencia, on the east coast of Spain. With Elsa and with my new flame, the one I truly love. Don't worry about the girl, and by that I mean Elsa. Trust me. I'm still your twin brother, after all. And I swear by my von Lännister honour, which I had not lost after all, that she will be right as rain."
She burst into tears on his chest, drying them up on his shirt, as he caressed the crown of her golden head and hummed a reassuring, familiar tune to soothe her. She listened to his soft tenor voice humming Brahms's lullaby, as she clasped his slender waist and he ran his lithe left fingers through her golden hair, curling it with his hook on the other side. Thus did the von Lännister twins spend that whole summer night, not as unfaithful lovers, but finally like brother and sister.
