A/N: As of the post date, I have at least one more story in this arc planned; after that I'll be splitting my time between more conventional FI stories and transferring the non-FI elements to a manuscript that I hope will stand some chance of being published—going all the way back to my first FI story here. If you're a regular reader/reviewer, please send me a PM through this site if you'd like to help me hash things out, and I'll mention you somewhere in the final manuscript, even if it's just in my dedication page! Meantime, enjoy this latest...
§ § § – October 29, 2008
The same Wednesday that had started out so incongruously sunny on Fantasy Island was more appropriately cloudy and chilly in Lilla Jordsö. Bleary-eyed, Leslie gave the landscape and the skyline of the city of Sundborg little more than a desultory glance, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep—or better yet, go back in time and prevent Gabriella's death. Her stomach began roiling; by now the news of the queen's murder had become common knowledge around the world, and was causing enormous buzz because of the way Gabriella had died. Unfortunately, Rogan and Marina's experiment had had to be made public too, so Leslie had learned to avoid all news outlets as much as humanly possible. Christian, who had approved of that measure, had spent his online time monitoring the royal family's website, fielding about half again as many condolences on Gabriella's death as congratulations on his and Leslie's forthcoming baby.
Michiko had insisted on packing up Cat and accompanying Christian, Leslie, the triplets, and Gabriella's body to Lilla Jordsö; and she had also talked her stepson, recently crowned King Paolono, into providing use of a specially outfitted jet to transport the body and the grieving relatives without having to deal with commercial flights and the ever-nosy media. As the plane touched ground and immediately began to slow, she now stirred in the seat across from Leslie, blinking. Beside Leslie, Christian too began to regain consciousness, having been thrown forward by the jet's braking motion.
"Are we here?" he murmured sleepily, his accent thicker than usual, as if he had only barely remembered to speak English at all.
"Just landed," Leslie murmured, absently rubbing her stomach. "How are we ever going to get out of here and to the castle without being gaped at?"
Christian grunted and pushed himself up from his slightly slouched position, wincing when muscles protested. "Ach...I'm too old to sleep sitting up." He slipped his hand into Leslie's and curled his fingers around it. "This may never have happened before, my Rose, at least not quite in this way, but believe me, we'll be able to pull this off with the smallest possible intrusion into the process by outsiders."
"I hope so," Leslie mumbled pensively, still massaging her stomach, which was reacting to all the stress and had been ever since she'd awakened from her faint in the wake of Gabriella's death. "I don't want to know what the people here must think of me now."
Christian and Michiko looked at each other, and Michiko tipped her head aslant after a glance at her still-sleeping daughter. "Have you seen anything in all those news reports that've been flying around?"
"Very little," said Christian, "and if they mention Leslie, it's only in tandem with the rest of the family. I've seen no indication that anyone's placing blame on her."
"Leslie, you worry too much," Michiko told her best friend, gazing at her with some worry in her dark tilted eyes. "You really need to trust Christian."
"She's right, my Rose," Christian concurred with a brief little grin. He tipped aside long enough to kiss her cheek. "Once we stop taxiing, I guess you'd better get back there and wake up the children. We'll be going to a special gate where our longest limo will be waiting to take us and Briella back to the castle."
This process took about ten minutes; Michiko woke Cat while Leslie roused Karina, Susanna and Tobias, and they all gathered their carry-ons and waited to disembark. From one of the windows, Christian and Leslie both saw about half a dozen castle servants carefully shouldering Gabriella's body, which had first been wrapped in a shroud and then placed in a black body bag. Fortunately, the children seemed to be too sleepy to take much notice of what was happening around them, so that the body bag was loaded into the car with no fuss, and only a few tears from the late queen's aunt and uncle.
Another ten minutes later, the car was on the road across the capital city and on its way to the castle. Karina fell asleep in Leslie's lap, while Cat stared out the window at the passing buildings, clearly curious in spite of herself. Susanna followed Cat's lead, while Tobias pushed every button he could reach before Christian told him in low tones to stop before he did something dangerous, or at least potentially messy. At that point, he crawled into his father's lap and peered up at him. "Daddy, is Briella really gone forever?"
Christian closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, visibly controlling his knee-jerk reaction to this, before nodding solemnly as he gazed at his little son. "Yes, Tobias, I'm afraid she is. It was a terrible thing that happened to her, and we're all very s...sad." He had to swallow before he could finish saying the last word.
"You don't have to cry, Daddy," Susanna offered, raising herself onto her knees on the seat and resting both hands on her surprised father's shoulder. "Now Briella can see farmor and they can watch us."
That caught Leslie's attention too, and she and Christian exchanged an astonished look before he turned to their daughter. "How do you know that, lillan min?"
" 'Cause I 'member when we got to see your mommy and daddy when me and Karina and Tobias were little-little. Farmor said she got to see our cousin Ceci that died, and your big sister Martina, and everybody else she loved a long time ago." She turned to Leslie and added, "And she said she was gonna look for your mommy too."
"What in the world is she talking about?" Michiko asked, completely at sea.
"It's a long story," Leslie said softly. "I'll fill you in later, if Christian's okay with it." She turned back to Susanna. "You can remember that? But you were only two."
"I do 'member it. Farmor let me sit in her lap and she called me Susi, 'cause we have the same name. I wish we could see her again, Daddy."
Christian lowered his head and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, before he could focus on her again. "I don't know how you remember that, Susanna Shannon, but you're right about everything you saw." He cleared his throat. "I wish we could see her too, lillan min, but we can't." Once more he closed his eyes and turned his head aside, as if trying to hide his emotions from his children. Tobias cuddled up to him and Susanna smoothed his hair with one small hand, both trying to give comfort. Leslie's eyes filled with tears and she glanced at Michiko, who smiled, just as one of them fell.
The car stopped at last under the mossy portico of the castle, and everyone got out one by one, the triplets huddling beside their parents as if sensing the somber mood. When the luggage had been unloaded and placed inside, the car moved on toward the garages; from there Gabriella's body would be prepared to lie in state for the next three days.
The rest of the Enstad family began to file in from the living quarters in the castle's north wing; even the youngest children were solemn-faced, picking up on the sorrowful atmosphere. Everyone hugged one another hard.
The greetings were soft or altogether silent, but nothing else was said till Kristina appeared, being pushed in her wheelchair by her personal servant. The expression on her face froze Leslie: she looked far more bereft than she had after Arnulf's death, her eyes red from what had to have been constant weeping and her expression hopeless. When she saw Leslie, she stared for a moment while everyone waited as though frozen in a tableau; Leslie began to tremble where she stood, certain that of all the people who might censure her, it was Kristina who frightened her the most.
Then Kristina wordlessly stretched out her arms toward Leslie, and Leslie stumbled forward and returned the grieving mother's embrace, bursting into tears as she did so. The rest of the family gathered around, and Christian laid a hand on his wife's back, furiously blinking back his own tears.
After supper—which neither Christian nor Leslie had much appetite for—Michiko excused herself and took Cat away to the suite that had been prepared for them, while the adults gathered to go to the south-wing basement area where monarchs had been prepared to lie in state for centuries. No one had said very much all evening, leaving Leslie very ill at ease. She and Christian waited silently at the west entrance to the south wing, watching the family arriving in listless twos.
Gerhard and Liselotta were the first to actually approach; as parents of the new monarch—just shy of his seventh birthday—they were a little nervous, particularly Liselotta. "Does this mean we must move back into the castle?" she was asking Gerhard as they joined Christian and Leslie. Now that Leslie had a reasonable knowledge of jordiska, this was the language everyone used, though Leslie didn't always feel comfortable trying to speak in her husband's native tongue and was quieter than usual as a result.
"I don't know," Gerhard admitted and caught Christian's eye. "Do you?"
Christian shrugged, looking only barely interested in the question. "I don't have the official answer—your aunt Anna-Laura probably will know—but I don't see why you should, when it's yet another eleven years before Matti will even be able to take on the duties of a king."
"True," Gerhard mused, and Liselotta gave Christian a grateful smile.
Carl Johan emerged with Amalia from the corridor at that point and crossed the great entry, somehow looking his full fifty-eight years now that the burden of running the country as regent for his grandson had fallen on his shoulders. "Never," he said bleakly, staring at one of the walls, "never did I think for one moment that I would find myself in this position."
Leslie flinched and looked away, and the others noticed her movement; but before any of them could comment, Anna-Laura, Esbjörn, Roald and Adriana arrived all at once, and Gerhard put Liselotta's question to Anna-Laura. With the others' attention on this, Leslie took the chance to turn away and wrap her arms around her stomach, drifting a few paces aside from the group and wondering with deep dread why they hadn't seen Daniel and Anders, Gabriella's husband and three-year-old adopted son. Daniel will blame me for Briella's death, she thought frantically, feeling hysteria creeping in but not quite able to beat it back. I know he will. The first time he sees me, he'll hurl accusations at me. A grieving spouse isn't too likely to listen to reason—I ought to know! And what can I tell him? That I warned Briella and Margareta and Anna-Kristina against volunteering? What difference will that make to him? All he'll see is that I'm the one who told them about that damn trial!
"Leslie, my Rose, come here," Christian said softly then, and she felt him turning her into his embrace. "We're about to go down to have our private viewing, before they move Briella's coffin into the great entry for the public lying-in." She let him gather her in against him, but couldn't look up, with one hand over her stomach and the other curled into a fist pressed hard against her mouth, as though she were damming herself up. She felt him slip two fingers under her chin and raise her head so that she was forced to look at him; his expression grew worried. "My darling, what's wrong?"
Her eyes filled and she could only shake her head helplessly; Christian wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. "All right, my Rose, all right. For now we'll let it lie, but we do need to go on down. Come on, I'm right here, and you don't need to say anything."
Just as the family was about to make the trip down, the sound of footsteps grew audible and a couple of voices murmured with surprise, "Daniel..." Leslie flinched again and squeezed her eyes closed, huddling against Christian.
"Are you all right for this?" she heard Carl Johan ask.
"I have to see her a final time," Daniel's voice responded in a wrecked-sounding rasp.
"Then we'd better go down," Amalia said, and Leslie let Christian guide her along, unable to do more than watch her own feet moving along the stone floor. It seemed an eternity before they had filed into the chilled room where Gabriella lay in the prepared coffin as though sleeping in an ornate bed. It was all Leslie could do to look at the young queen's face; despite the makeup, Gabriella looked unnaturally pale. She was still wrapped in the white shroud; the jordisk tradition of being buried in this, rather than clothing, was strongest within the royal family, which had instigated it somewhere in the first two or three generations because the struggling people of the new country couldn't afford to bury their dead in clothing when it was needed by the living. She looked almost like a mummy, with only her face showing and some of her caramel-colored hair arranged around it like a frame. Her hands also showed, folded neatly over her chest—just about where that monster shot her, Leslie realized, and had to hide her face in her hands to keep her misery from overwhelming her. Christian pulled her in close to him again; she could feel him trembling from deep inside, just as he had when Arnulf died.
They heard someone break down into sobs: Daniel, Leslie realized when he choked out, "Briella, my orchid..." and then gave in to his grief. For some reason Leslie couldn't let hers out. In her mind she could hear Roarke's voice admonishing her that it wasn't good for her to hold it in, but that made no difference. It was as if it wasn't even her place to grieve, especially now when she could hear Daniel's.
"My baby," Kristina's reedy voice wailed, and her cries joined Daniel's sobs. A few other soft weeping sounds, particularly those of Anna-Kristina and Margareta, underscored the voices of Gabriella's husband and mother; even Christian was crying again, she realized when she grew aware of his chest heaving irregularly against her. Still she couldn't let go.
Voices murmured around her in jordiska and she realized that one by one, they were saying their final goodbyes to Gabriella. Christian regained control but continued to hold her, waiting in patient silence, till the only voice she could hear now was Daniel's; even Kristina must have been wheeled away.
"You...you must have seen her," Daniel blurted suddenly in a waterlogged voice.
Once again Leslie flinched, but then Christian responded, "Yes...we did. We saw it happen." His voice was flat and wooden with tight control. "I tried to stop her. I kept begging her to stop wailing, to stop screaming...I tried to keep her in one place—all she wanted was to get out, to get away. She seemed..." He hesitated. "I don't know. She was convinced she was going to die, that we all were. I wanted to see to it that...that she was wrong."
"Then she..." A sob cut him off and it was a moment before he tried again. "Something had panicked her, maybe?"
"We think it was...side effects from the serum that Rogan Callaghan and Marina LiSciola were trying to develop to eradicate the need for Briella and her sisters, and anyone else who has to have amakarna every day, to take the spice. Because of what Rogan had to use to make the stuff an effective counteragent." Christian spoke in a monotone, but his voice wavered a little nonetheless. "Briella wasn't the only one who suffered that effect. It got her k-killed..." Leslie heard Christian's voice thicken and die, as if it had been squeezed into disuse by his latest round of grief. "I'm so sorry, Daniel."
"Where did she find out about this...serum?" Daniel asked. Leslie froze stiff in her husband's arms.
"My father-in-law was looking for volunteers from a large database of people he knew of who had to have amakarna. He...he told Leslie to send the girls a message explaining about it, but insisted that she emphasize the risks any volunteer would be taking. She did that, Daniel—in fact, she went out of her way to insist that they not step up to volunteer themselves. She just thought they were entitled to know about it."
There was silence, and Leslie waited for the explosion, the verbal abuse, the attack born of grief. But the pause stretched until her muscles ached from holding herself so still, before at last Daniel cursed softly in his native Swedish. "My stubborn orchid. You could never talk sense into her when she seized on an idea. I...I always knew she hated having to take that spice every morning, but I never dreamed she loathed it to the extent that she would willingly present herself as a guinea pig for a serum under trial."
"She kept saying she shouldn't hold herself above doing such a thing just because she was the queen, that she shouldn't be exempt from risks. I was so angry with her..." Again Christian's voice was squeezed into momentary silence. Leslie heard him swallow hard before he resumed speaking. "Leslie and then Briella herself told me it was her decision to make, but I couldn't stop myself from trying to change her mind."
"Did Leslie talk to her?" Daniel asked.
"I don't know. I know only that she told Briella and her sisters specifically not to volunteer. That was as far as she could go; after that it was out of her hands."
Daniel made a noise of thoughtful acknowledgment. A few beats elapsed; then his voice changed. "What's wrong with her? She's so quiet."
"I...I think she's suffering from a misplaced sense of guilt. She's afraid that the family and the people will blame her for Briella's death." Christian loosened his grip on Leslie and took a step back, lifting her head. "My Rose, you're going to make yourself sick, and you may endanger that baby you're carrying. For fate's sake, let it out, please."
Leslie blinked at him, hand still fisted against her mouth; then, fearfully, she dared at last to turn her head and look at Daniel. His face was lined with grief, but there was compassion in his eyes. "Christian's right, Leslie. Let it out. Briella chose to step in and do this, even after you told her not to. It's not your fault, and if any of the damned tabloids in this country try to say it is, we'll squash them without further ado. But you must stop taking the blame when it's not yours to take."
By the time he finished speaking, Leslie was quaking so badly that Christian's face had filled with alarm. "Leslie, come on—let it out, now!"
"I wish I'd never told them," she bleated in a wobbling squeak. "I should never have sent that message...never should have..." She threw Christian a look of desperate appeal that made him gasp and tighten his grip on her, before the dam gave way at last and she broke down, her legs no longer holding her up. Christian crushed her against him and rocked her back and forth, smoothing her hair.
"Herregud, it must have been killing her," she vaguely heard Daniel say, over her own uncontrollable sobbing. "She saw Briella die too, didn't she?"
"Yes, and she's had nightmares every night since it happened," Christian confirmed. "I haven't slept very well myself...I know we'll never forget what we saw. In a way, Briella herself can't be held to blame either. She wasn't in her right mind by the time that conscienceless maniac shot her. One of the other participants in the trial, a man from Switzerland, died the same way, for the same reason." He sighed. "It's best if we explain everything to the whole family, so that there's no need to tell it over and over again."
"Perhaps it's better to arrange a press conference," Daniel said. "I'll speak to Carl Johan about it—now that he's acting ruler, I expect these are his decisions to make."
"Agreed." Christian sighed again, then pressed a kiss to Leslie's head. "All right, my Rose, it's going to be all right now, I promise. I told you you aren't to blame, and now you see I was right, don't you?"
"Wh-what ab-bout the oth-others?" Leslie managed.
"Ach, Leslie, my Rose, do you have any idea how exasperating you can be sometimes?" he teased softly, shaking his head at her. "I suppose they'll have to prove it to you as well. We'd better leave Briella in peace; she has to make a final public appearance for the next three days, and that's our time for private mourning. Fate knows we need it. Come with us; we're going up to talk to Carl Johan and Amalia."