'Anniba!'
A 'Hannibal Rising' Variation
"Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened"
PART 1
LITHUANIA
Chapter 1
Count Giedrius Lecter looked at his wife and smiled.
"A new generation Lecter family," he said, kissing his wife's hand as intimately as circumstances allowed. The town-doctor could not help but smile – inwardly of-course, he would not dare being too familiar with the good Count – and added instead a few words of comfort while he quickly packed his bag.
"Madame appears to be in perfect health. I think we can expect a perfectly healthy baby in January."
"Thank you, doctor," she said.
"Thank you, Madame. Please, do not hesitate to call upon me if there is anything. Or even if there is nothing. Madame. Count."
Politely, the doctor bowed and took his leave.
Simonetta held the Giedrius' face, held his temples in her hands, turned his face and looked into his pale blue eyes.
"Simonetta," whispered Giedrius, feeling as if his heart was burning.
"Giedrius," she replied and brought his face close enough to hers to share a breath.
Giedraičiai Castle, built in 1410, home for the Lecter family for thirteen generations now and with the fourteenth generation on its way, had seen many wars, leaders and armies, but the Castle had managed to survive those battles unscathed. Alas, in 1809, a careless servant that tried to light a hearth, managed to burn down the Castle. Count Juozapas Lecter - who had recently married the only heir of the Giedraičiai family, a maiden named Marija - had the Castle rebuilt in Classicism style, on the stone foundation of the Castle that remained after the fire. Unfortunately, the design did not match with the existing lay-out of the foundation; it was simply built upon it. Incompatibility problems were solved on the fly, creating unexpected stairs, doors and steps, causing many a servant to trip while visiting the cool storage rooms. Compared to the dark and complex basement, with its many hidden, faraway rooms, wells and other secrets, the Castle itself was luxurious, bright, almost simple, but above all a real pleasing home.
After Juozapas' death in 1838, according to his wishes, his heart was immured into one of the Castle's walls. Count Giedrius Lecter had also lost his heart to the Castle. In his youth, not yet Count, he had spent a lot of time abroad. But every night, as he lay down to go to sleep, as his mind wandered of along the paths of real and imagined explores, Giedraičiai Castle had entered his thought sometime, somehow. No, he was not homesick. He had fully lived those days away from home. He had seen many things, he had met the most interesting persons and had the most wonderful encounters and adventures. He had even met Simonetta Sforza, descendant of old and once powerful families: the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan. But not even she had managed to keep him away from Giedraičiai Castle. On the contrary: she had followed him to his home in cold Lithuania, opposite the town of Giedraičiai on the other side of Lake Kiementas, far from her own Palazzo in warm Milan.
Giedrius - Count Lecter by the time he took her along with him - could not have done more to make her feel at home. First, he insisted she should take with her all she wanted. Being of so noble and old a family, she could have wanted a lot, but she decided to take only what she thought to be the essence. Her father and mother denied her none of the art she wanted to take along, mainly because she took, first of all, a tapestry with the coat of arms of the Sforza of Milan. It depicts the biscione, a serpent who is swallowing a human, but some believe it is a serpent giving birth to a child. And there were paintings she asked for. A small painting of Venice. Guardi's "View of Santa Maria della Salute", both Bernardo Bellotto's and Canaletto's "The bridge of sighs", and more. Sketches. Sculptures. Books. And finally, she asked for her room. So, every carved wooden panel was detached, every cupboard was deconstructed, all was carefully packed, shipped and finally refitted in her room at the Castle. Secondly, Count Lecter ordered all at his Giedraičiai Castle that every wish Madame would ever have, had to be fulfilled, every command had to be followed. But it turned out he need not have been that strict in his instructions. Simonetta was a gentle woman. Once her room was rebuilt and her belongings were in place, she had travelled the miles between Milan and Giedraičiai and took her place with ease. She brought grace and elegance into Giedraičiai Castle and she requested only minimal – just enough to make clear what had to be done. The hostler, Berndt, found her to be the perfect mistress, houseman Lothar could not have agreed more.
All of Madame's belongings found their place among the many artifacts in the Castle. Each member of the family had added his or her own portrait and personal belongings. Walking through the Castle was a walk through more than five hundred years of Giedraičiai history. In the halls were armours, dented and rusty, that had been worn by the Counts in battle. Some armours would tell you how the man inside had died. On the walls, both in the halls and rooms, were all sorts of weapons. Battle swords that had slain Teutonic Knights. Daggers, halberds, lances and shields. The Giedraičiai and Lecter families had seen many battles.
But, in the years between the fighting, they had also bought art. Firstly, they had themselves portrayed, so that posterity would not forget them. Paintings. Walking through the rooms in the right order, one could see how art had developed in time. As all Counts had found their art most pleasing, so did Giedrius. First time he had seen the impressionist paintings, painted only years before he was born, or the same year he had been born, gave him an extra-sensory feeling. Dabs and streaks of paint on canvas, that only showed that paint was applied, would unleash a world of joy and detail once the observer took back a few steps and let his imagination do the rest. He had bought quite a few of them. Part of their beauty, for him, lay in the fact that they reminded him of his time spent in France. Simonetta's Classical Italian art made up for the lack of contemporary Italian art – he had not thought of buying one single painting while in Italy.
After they had shared a breath, she let him go. Giedrius sat down in the chair besides the bed and looked into his wife's bright maroon eyes that were still focused upon his. She looked upon him with eyes full of such Divine sparks of love, his conquered strength fled away and he almost lost himself, with eyes cast down.
As happened more often, they just sat and looked at each other, not saying what not needed to be said. And each time, a certain point in time would be reached where words of love were no longer needed, and the silence could and would be broken without compromising the feeling.
"I hope it will be a boy," said Simonetta.