§ § § - June 29, 2001 – Fantasy Island

Where it was midmorning on Lilla Jordsö, it was late evening on Fantasy Island. A little past nine, the phone rang in the study, and Roarke answered immediately; he had been clearing out more of the never-ending paperwork and was nearly caught up. "Yes, may I help you?" he asked.

To his surprise, he heard, "Mr. Roarke, this is Prince Carl Johan—Christian's older brother—calling from Lilla Jordsö. You are, of course, aware of King Arnulf's passing two days ago; the funeral is scheduled for late this afternoon. However…we have had some serious problems, and I hoped perhaps you could offer some advice."

"Are Christian and Leslie all right?" Roarke asked, his first concern naturally for his daughter and her husband.

"No, I don't think so," Carl Johan said, touching off a frisson of alarm in Roarke. "I am not sure what Leslie may have told you; but Christian has been filled with guilt over his feelings toward Arnulf, and admitted to her, my sister and me that he was ambivalent about the possibility of Arnulf's dying. Now that it has actually taken place, that very ambivalence is driving him mad. It has become so all-consuming in fact that he's gone so far as to shut out Leslie. Our only hope just now is that this is temporary. In the meantime, when we finally came to pull them out of seclusion once and for all, we discovered the true severity of Christian's emotional condition. It made Leslie physically ill, and we felt the best thing to do was to separate them for a time. At the moment Leslie is napping, and we are looking for Christian…he seems to have…" Carl Johan sighed heavily. "This is surreal, Mr. Roarke."

"I can certainly imagine," Roarke said. "Before I go further, please accept my deepest sympathies and regrets at King Arnulf's passing." He paused long enough for Carl Johan's acknowledgement, then said, "Please tell me exactly what state Christian and Leslie were in when you found them." As Carl Johan related what he, Anna-Kristina and Gerhard had walked in on, Roarke closed his eyes and suppressed a sigh.

"We brought the castle doctor in to check Leslie," Carl Johan said, "and he advised that her emotions had been making her ill. Yet it's Christian who has…gone around the bend, if I have the idiom right. I am afraid I don't quite understand."

"Leslie has a strong tendency towards empathy," Roarke said. "She has been known to take personally the emotions of some of our guests, if they have had experiences similar to events of her own past; but it is most notable when she is around those she loves. Because Christian is the one who is affected, she would take on as much of his trauma as she could—far too much for her. You did right, Your Highness, to separate her from Christian for a time. She must regain some measure of equilibrium, or she can never provide the strength and emotional sustenance that Christian needs."

Carl Johan exhaled audibly on the other end. "Then we have done the right thing. I'm very relieved to know that. As I said, at the moment she is asleep; our concern now is for Christian. My son went back to fetch her wedding rings for her, and discovered that Christian was no longer in the room he and Leslie have been using. Leslie made a suggestion as to where he may have gone, but quite frankly, this castle has more hiding places than a carnival funhouse. Do you have any suggestions, perhaps?"

"When you do find him," Roarke said, "I think you are better off keeping him separated from Leslie for some time yet, just so that she can get the sleep she needs. You should certainly have your doctor see him; if Christian is in the state I suspect he is in, he may need a sedative of his own. Without having seen him, I can't suggest anything more."

"I understand," said Carl Johan. "We may call again, Mr. Roarke, if Christian's condition persists. For now we must prepare for the funeral…"

"Of course," Roarke said. "By all means, yes, keep me informed. As a matter of fact, contact me again as soon as you can after the funeral."

"We will do that, then," said Carl Johan. "My deepest thanks, Mr. Roarke."

Roarke acknowledged this quietly and then hung up, half falling back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. In truth, he wasn't surprised that this had happened; Christian had been battling guilt from the moment he'd learned of Arnulf's initial heart attack, and Leslie had absorbed his emotions to the point that they had overwhelmed her. He wished, futilely he knew, that Leslie could attain some level of detachment; but at the same time, those empathetic abilities were part of what made her so good at her job. And when all was said and done, that very empathy would be what helped Christian recover from all this—if, indeed, he would let himself be helped. Roarke wondered what sort of state he and Leslie would be in when they finally returned from Lilla Jordsö, and had to hope that perhaps the celebration of his niece Gabriella's crowning would give him some relief.

§ § § - Lilla Jordsö

Christian's blind wandering had taken him as far down as it was possible to go without digging. Some vestige of the country's—and the castle's—Viking origins was hidden here in the damp, moldy depths of the centuries-old foundation. When he blinked in the dimness and really looked around him, he noticed several tiny, cramped rooms with slits at the tops of their far walls serving as windows. Half-rotted wooden doors did nothing to deter the comings and goings of the assorted vermin that lived here. I must be in hell, he thought blankly. Just about where I belong after what I did. A rat ran over his bare foot and he yanked it reflexively off the ground. So he had company, he realized, gazing detachedly around him, amazed but only vaguely repelled by the sheer numbers of living creatures that scuttled back and forth across the dank corridor in which he stood. Mentally Christian shrugged: he'd come to the right place to wrestle with his guilt.

Morbidly curious, he ventured into one of the tiny rooms—unquestionably a cell in an ancient dungeon—and peered around, sidestepping rat nests and ducking spider webs, poking ahead with one foot prior to every step. He half expected to find bones lying in the corner…maybe a skull as well. But this particular cell was empty of human remains, and he thought just for a second that maybe someone would find his own skeleton here one day, perhaps one of Arnulf's great-great-grandchildren…

At that point the sunshine that had been filtering in faded, drawing his attention to the slit near the ceiling that passed for a window. The sliver of sky visible through it had turned gray. Some nearly-unnoticed corner of his tormented mind entertained the possibility of a storm, and his interest was piqued, however faintly. Might rain have blown in on those long-ago prisoners through those crude air vents up there? What a miserable existence. Christian ventured a little closer to the back wall and abruptly stepped on something warm and wriggling, which let out a chorus of tiny squeals. With a shouted curse he leaped away and backpedaled at speed, colliding hard with the stone wall. When his eyes finally adjusted from staring at the light through the tiny window, he realized he'd managed to plant his foot squarely on a rat's nest full of young. Again he cursed, half awed, half repelled. But before he could react any further, out shot mama rat, streaking at him from some hole in the wall. It was too much for Christian, and he careened back into the hallway, expelling curses in both English and jordiska, crashing into another wall and almost falling. Shock and some fear had his heart rate going double time and his breathing fast and shallow. Yes, this was hell, no doubt about it.

"Well," he yelled in jordiska at the ceiling above him, "here I am, Arnulf. I've finally found Hades. Maybe now you can rest in peace, knowing that I've presented myself for whatever punishment I'm going to get." As if in response, the same enraged mother rat came flying at him from the cell he had just abandoned, screeching in fury. But Christian, back in his strange mental miasma, was visited with some fury of his own and reacted accordingly, lashing out at the rat with a vicious kick. He was as surprised as the rat probably was when he connected, sending the animal sailing back into the cell it had emerged from. Since he was here to stay, he thought, he'd show those vermin just who was boss around here. He barely heard his own faintly hysterical laughter, echoing off the stone walls.

‡ ‡ ‡

Carl Johan was pacing his and Amalia's room while Amalia, Anna-Laura and the seven Enstad children, along with the spouses of three of them, watched uneasily. "We have less than an hour before we have to leave for the memorial," he fumed, frustrated and very angry. "Where the hell can he possibly be?"

"We've looked everywhere," Gerhard said with a helpless shrug.

"Did you try the third floor, as Leslie suggested earlier?" Carl Johan demanded.

Anna-Kristina nodded. "We girls went up together and split up to look around in all the empty rooms, but he's not there. Maybe he isn't even in the castle."

Carl Johan cursed, running his hand through his hair. "I expect all my hair will be gray by tomorrow, at this rate. We're going to have to awaken Leslie soon as it is…she's been sleeping all afternoon. I didn't want to disturb her, but things are getting critical. Anna-Kristina, if you and Liselotta will go across the hall and—"

He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and Cecilia, who was closest, reached out and opened it. Two servants stood there, both looking extremely spooked. "Forgive us, Your Highnesses," one said in a quavering voice. "But we feel you should know."

"About what?" asked Gerhard.

"Voices," said the other servant with a solemn nod. "We've heard strange cries from beneath the floors. Laughter and shouting and terrible curses…"

The royal family exchanged glances, and Anna-Laura demanded, "Where did these noises come from, then?"

"Beneath the floors, Your Highness, as I said," the second servant told her.

"Beneath the floors?" Carl Johan echoed. "That makes no sense. Which floors do you speak of? Where precisely did you hear these…these voices?"

The first servant hugged himself, visibly shivering despite the summer warmth. "We heard them in the old larder. One of us went there to retrieve items for dinner this evening, and he came back crying out that he heard someone screaming at him from hell."

"Superstitious rot," muttered Rudolf, disgusted.

Margareta frowned. "Maybe not," she said. "What did this voice sound like?"

"Crazed," the first servant said, eyes wide and solemn. "Full-on lunatic."

"That's not what we mean," Gerhard said, a little impatient. "What we need to know is, was it male or female?"

"It was—" The second servant clammed up at a sound from behind, and he and his companion both turned to stare: Leslie had just closed the door to the room across the hall, looking only slightly better than she had when she'd gone in. She stopped in the middle of the corridor, uncertain and a bit unnerved at all the eyes on her.

"Am I interrupting something?" she asked timidly.

Carl Johan shook his head. "Come in here, Leslie," he said kindly, and in jordiska he snapped to the servants, "Step aside for Princess Leslie. Now what was this again? Was that voice male or female?"

"Male," the second servant said immediately, watching Leslie edge past him into the room. "Perhaps this castle has been haunted by the ghost of our good King Arnulf…"

Rudolf cursed volubly. "Far, is it really necessary to listen to such foolishness? These are provincial people—we'll never get anything useful out of them. How is it that our servants always seem to be the most ignorant and superstitious people in the country?"

All this had been going on in jordiska, and Leslie stared, wondering; her attention shot to Carl Johan when he spoke a bit sharply to his younger son. "I'm sorry, but what's going on?" she asked him. "Have you found Christian yet?"

Anna-Kristina caught her eye and made a few frantic downward fluttering motions with her palms down, then put a finger to her lips, wide-eyed. Bewildered, Leslie subsided, with the feeling that she'd missed more than could be accounted for by her lack of knowledge of jordiska. And why the secrecy?

The conversation continued for a few more moments; then Carl Johan dismissed the two servants and turned to Leslie. "They don't understand English, Leslie, but I didn't want to take the chance," he said. "You see, only the family realizes Christian is missing."

"Oh," said Leslie. "So what was that all about, then?"

"Only two superstitious servants, Aunt Leslie," said Rudolf with an apologetic shrug. "They came up here to claim they were hearing voices somewhere in the kitchens."

Leslie went alert. "What sort of voices?"

"Screaming and laughter and…what was that the one said?—'terrible curses'," said Gerhard a bit mockingly. "As if the place were haunted."

"That one fool suggested it was Pappa haunting it," Gabriella spat. "When I am queen, that servant will lose his job for such an insensitive statement."

"Calm down, Briella," Carl Johan said. "You know they don't know any better. In any case, Leslie, it's not our concern."

Leslie protested, "But what if it was Christian?"

Her in-laws all stilled and gaped at her. "You can't be serious," Rudolf finally said. "I mean…screaming and laughter?…"

"Christian's not himself," Leslie said, her eyes beginning to sting with tears. "You know that as well as I do. And nobody can find him, right? I guess he wasn't upstairs or he'd be in here with the rest of you, probably. Please, tell me exactly what they said."

"One of them said the voices were coming from beneath the floors," Carl Johan said gently, obviously seeing her distress and trying to calm her. "The kitchens are on the lowest level of the castle, below the main level. It wouldn't be possible for anything to be heard from beneath those floors."

"Actually," Anna-Laura said suddenly, "it would." Everyone stared at her. "The servants' work quarters are not the lowest level. There is a sub-level below that…I believe that was where the first eight or ten kings maintained dungeons in the Dark Ages. To the best of my knowledge, the accesses to this dungeon were sealed off sometime in the seventeenth century. Christian always had a way of exploring every remote corner in the castle when he was a child. Perhaps he somehow found his way down there."

"There can't possibly be anything down there after more than three hundred years," said Carl Johan. "And if the accesses were sealed off, how could Christian get in?"

"Oh, he'd find a way," Anna-Laura said, nodding knowingly. "He always did. Why should it be any different now that he's grown? We'd better look."

"But we wouldn't know where to look," Gerhard protested. "I think you're the only one who even knew there was a dungeon down there in the first place. How could we know where the access to it is? If Uncle Christian really is down there, we're going to need a lot of help just finding out how he got there, never mind getting him back out."

Anna-Laura smiled faintly. "You forget," she said, "I'm the family historian, amateur or no. Now as I recall it, the old larder is located at the end of the main corridor on the lowest level. I always believed that corridor didn't stretch all the way to the outside wall as it should have. It seems to me that something in there was walled off—quite possibly the access to the dungeon. Or at least one of them."

"I hope there's more than one," Leslie said softly. "If it was walled off, it wouldn't be possible for Christian to break through. He'd have had to find another way."

"I think so too," agreed Anna-Laura. "But that's a good place to start. Who will go?"

Carl Johan sighed. "I'll do it," he said. "Rudolf and Gerhard will come with me."

"I will too," Leslie said.

"No," chorused several voices, startling her. Gerhard went on, "No, Aunt Leslie, you shouldn't go. Dr. Salomonsson said that you shouldn't see Uncle Christian until the funeral, remember?"

"I spoke with Mr. Roarke," added Carl Johan, "and he agreed: he told me we had done the right thing to separate you from Christian for a time. You needed a chance to calm down and get some sleep, and regain a little strength. Frankly, you still don't look normal, and I don't think you should be there whenever we do find Christian. No, you are to remain here with Anna-Laura and the others. Not only do I not want you seeing Christian in whatever state he may be in, but I don't think it's wise for Christian to see you either. I don't know what reaction he may have."

Leslie bit her lip nervously, but there was resolve in her eyes. "I don't care," she said quietly but stubbornly. "I'm going anyway. I want to be sure Christian's all right."

Anna-Kristina gave her uncle a knowing look. "You can't stop her, Uncle Carl Johan," she said wryly. "Mr. Roarke says Aunt Leslie is very stubborn. And I know if I were in love with someone the way she's in love with Uncle Christian, I'd want to be sure he's all right as well. Besides, now that Uncle Christian's been away from her all day, maybe seeing her will make him come to his senses again, even just a little."

Carl Johan regarded her with enormous doubt, but when he looked at Leslie, he could see immediately that Anna-Kristina was right. He shook his head. "Let me go on the record as saying that I don't like this at all. I think it's completely inadvisable. But we're running out of time and we must find Christian…so very well, Leslie, come with us."

"You'd better get some shoes, Leslie," Anna-Laura advised. "I have no doubt that those dungeons are unimaginably filthy. There's no telling what may be down there."

"Rats and snakes and every sort of insect, I'm sure," said Rudolf, eliciting revolted squeals and cries from Anna-Kristina and Cecilia. At that, he gave Leslie a wry, twisted smile. "Do you still want to come, Aunt Leslie?"

"Yes, I do," Leslie said firmly. "You're not going to change my mind."

Rudolf grinned, admiration in his eyes. "Good for you. Well, then, let's go."