IN VINO VERITAS

CHAPTER 6

A/N: There are several important changes and additions in this story, so you should read the first five chapters first.

A little warning - the changes made the story a bit darker, and probablymore controversial. So, if you like to see Georg and Maria as practically perfect in every way, maybe you should stay away from this one.

This is the extra chapter. I may still do some work on it, but I think it will be the last one in this story.

At last, but not least, to my friends from my fan fiction forum - you know who you are:-) - a huge thanks for your supports and your ideas, while I was working in this one.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Sound of Music, etc.

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He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.

Martin Luther

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How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Alexander Pope

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Georg von Trapp was immediately drawn by his children's happy squeals mixed with sounds of splashing water. He turned to where all the noise came from and frowned deeply. With Fräulein Maria in the house, he no longer expected to return from anywhere in the world to a silent house. Smiling, he realized that he did not mind their noise anymore, even while still suffering from a mighty hangover because of the previous night. His head pounded, but the unmistakable evidence that his children were happy made him feel lighter, in spite of the troublesome past hours.

"They are swimming this afternoon, Captain," Franz informed him with his impassive irony, as he was handled the keys of the black Horsch.

"All of them?" Georg inquired meaningfully.

"Yes, sir, I believe so. The – uh – governess is with them."

"Swimming…" he whispered to himself. Weeks ago, he would march towards the lake, preparing to lecture at whoever was responsible for allowing his children to scream like a savage barbarian horde while playing in the water.

He had no wish to do that now. None at all.

Not waiting for an answer, he walked briskly towards the lake, bracing himself for he would see… bracing himself for another vision of Fräulein Maria in a bathing suit frolicking with his children. An image that was, in all likelihood, going to disturb him for the next days to come. Yet, he practically run towards it.

Fräulein Maria… But he did have the most absurd feeling that he had called her Maria last night.

"I should be stoned to death buried alive," he said between clenched teeth, censoring himself for his thoughts, and slowing his pace. Weren't those the penances awaiting those who dared to even consider violating a vestal virgin during Roman times? It was certainly the punishment the poor women received if they broke their vow of chastity. Whatever fate was reserved to those who harmed them, death was certainly one of them – undoubtedly accompanied by some cruel kind of torture that made the whole process agonizingly slow and painful. On the other hand, it was also said that the vestals could free condemned prisoners and slaves by only touching them. Did that mean they could free their own assailants if they so wished? Although he was not planning to lay a finger on that particular virgin, vestal or not, if he could avoid, he would certainly ask for her forgiveness. He had to - his unbreakable code of honor demanded him to do so.

The question was – how do you apologize to someone who would most certainly have little or no clue about what exactly he was apologizing for? It was a most difficult situation – the apology was likely to make things even worse if it was done carelessly. To make things even more impossible, he was not a man used to admit guilt and ask for forgiveness, not at all… although since the little Fräulein arrived in Aigen he did acquire some practice.

He was not sure yet what he was going to say to her. It was one of the few times in his life he did not know exactly what to do, because every alternative that presented itself in his mind could lead to potential disaster. The verbal battle during breakfast had been unexpected enough to him. He had expected her to cower, to blush and hide under the table, or something equally silly like spill hot coffee in her lap in order to have an excuse to leave the table quickly. He had not expected her to fight back, and more, to taunt him as she had. If it weren't so crazy, he could swear she had been very close to telling them all at the table the whole truth about what had happened in the attic.

The problem was that nothing had happened in the attic.

At least nothing palpable. Yes, he should not be up there alone with his young governess in the middle of the night, that was obvious enough. Other than that, if any of them had sinned, the sin had been committed entirely in thought. The alcohol he had drunk had made the memory of the events slightly blurred, not clear at times, but he did remember the essence of it. He had pushed her too far; farther than he ever had before, and throughout the day today he started living with the consequences of it. What was the worst of all, he indeed had come so very, very close to seducing her. His raised hand had been only a hair breath away from touching her when that cursed door slammed downstairs. If he had touched her only once, only ever so lightly, he knew he would not be able to stop himself.

It would have been so easy… Frighteningly easy… What she was made her too vulnerable, and if he were a less honorable man, he doubted he would resist the temptation for too long. He hated himself for being aware of that, he would never forgive himself because he would not be able to stop himself.

After she left him, he did something he had not done in years – he went outside, and walked in the storm, for God knows how long. While the rain cooled his heated body, it failed to do the same with his mind. He found himself imagining how it would be if he had seduced her that night. He did not know if it was the wine or the rain, but he could visualize exactly what would happen afterwards, what would happen to him and his family if he had started an affair with his children's governess. It was like watching a movie; he saw everything – the reaction of his friends and family, Elsa's reaction… if any of them ever find out. And then, there would come the day where their liaison would be over. The thought hit him like a knife stabbing his heart – what would happen to them both after that? Oh, he would move on, as the man of the world he was, and would marry Elsa as originally planned.

What about Maria?

She would be banished from Nonnberg forever – that path would be closed to her. The thought of Maria being compensated for her lost virtue with a generous check, expensive jewelry and a luxurious apartment in Vienna was enough give him chills. The mere possibility of her going from lover to lover in order to be able to survive after he ended their affair with her made him ill.

"I cannot do this to her," he thought. The question was: why?

Such a fate would destroy her. She was not a woman of the world – she was a convent bred innocent who believed that the worst sin she had ever committed in life was to have stolen half a bottle of consecrated wine. At the same time, she was clearly, irrevocably attracted to him, and she was, in her innocence, being quite obvious about it. He was experienced enough to know that Maria would not resist temptation, that she would willingly give herself to him if only pushed her just a little farther. She didn't know anything about lust, but she would learn, once he was done with her. She would find herself completely besotted, and would go on sleeping with him because she would believe herself to be in love… Afterwards, she would not know the difference between the mortal sin of lust and love… He would make him no better than those libertines aristocrats he despised so much! It made him feel despicable. Being stoned to death or buried alive would not be punishment enough.

Grimly, he remembered the days in Pola, where his submarine base was located. His memory went further to the past, to the days when he made his choice to command submarines. In those days, the Austrian U-boats were in their very early stages of development, and something seen by some of the higher ranks in the Navy as a career with no future at all. The officers chosen to work in those frightfully primitive underwater boats were name as eccentrics, and the crews were a curious the most disreputable cadets who volunteered from all corners of the already decadent Habsburg Empire.

His own mother had been disgusted when he announced his choice, saying that his father would be rolling in his grave if he knew.

The somewhat blemished reputation of the submariners never bothered him, on the contrary. When he made his decision, he had his mind set in changing all that, he was bent on showing Austria and its Navy exactly what those unimpressive little boats could do to defend the Habsburg Empire. That meant completely changing the reputation of the U-boat commanders and their crews. Undoubtedly, he had time enough in the Navy to accomplish his task beautifully. He only wished that it had been enough not to win the war, but at least not to let it end with such disastrous consequences to the country he loved so much.

Even with all those things considered, and, maybe, precisely because of that, no matter what their social status was, the women in Pola practically threw themselves at the submarine crews (1). His good friend Hans Schneider would say that the attraction was typically Freudian because of the particular shape of submarines – and explanation that had always amused him. Young as he was, and with good looks to add to the appeal that his career had to those women, he took full advantage of whatever the ladies of Pola could offer. Until the day he met Agathe Whitehead, of course. After he lost her, he tried to return to his old pattern, but it had nearly destroyed him.

Now this… Maria – Fräulein Maria was not exactly throwing herself at him, at least not consciously.

Things had taken a turn for the worse in Fuschl, where he planned to spend a peaceful couple of days in the company of Elsa, under Max's chaperoning, which was merely a formality. Right after they had lunch with their friends, he found himself alone with his future fiancée. It was when he had made a bad move with her, a terrible faux-pas. She pushed him away, when only weeks ago she would have welcomed him. The whole incident angered Elsa beyond belief, and they had their first serious argument since their early days together, when she was trying her best to bring him out of his depression.

"Please, Georg, do not mock my intelligence. I know exactly what is going on," Elsa had said.

"You know absolutely nothing!"

"Oh, don't I, darling? I know more than you can possibly imagine. I'll tell you what – after the ball, I will return to Vienna for a couple of weeks. I'll even take Liesl and Louisa with me if you want."

"Elsa, you don't have to do that."

"No, no, let me finish. This will give you time enough to solve your little problem."

"Uh – what problem exactly? If you mean sending the children to some boarding school in Switzerland, that is absolutely out of the question. We already discussed this before."

"Darling! I don't need to give the problem a name, do I? It is certainly not Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Brigitta, Kurt, Marta or Gretl. Do not look at me like you don't know exactly what I am talking about. After you take care of the matter, we can go back to where we left off – and by that I mean before your outrageous behavior of half an hour ago, and, most importantly, before you left Vienna in the first place."

Elsa had refused to tell him exactly what she meant by his problem and how exactly he was expected to solve it. Was she hinting that she would close her eyes so that he could have his way with the governess, and thus get rid of his growing obsession once and for all? Or simply that he should send her away for good? Their argument became heated, and instead of staying the night in Fuschl, as originally planned, he got into his car and drove back to Aigen, leaving Elsa and Max behind.

Fräulein Maria was not one of those women of Pola. She was worlds away from the two sophisticated women he had taken to his bed after his wife died. She was not Baroness Schraeder, whom he pretended to marry as soon as the summer was over. She was…

He watched her now. She was not swimming with the children, as he first believed. Instead of the bathing suit he was preparing himself for, she wore one of the light summer dresses she had made herself, which made her equally alluring to him. She sat in the shade, under a tree, and was watching the children frolicking in the water with a smile in her face. Yet, in spite of her smile, her face told him that she probably did not get any sleep the previous night. He wondered if the sip of wine she drank had caused her any harm.

Nevertheless, apart from whatever discomfort ailed her, Fräulein Maria seemed unaffected by the previous night, at least apparently. One of the phrases that he had said to her came back to his fuzzy memory.

"There is so much light around you that sometimes it is just… unbearable," he had said, and with that he nearly shouted his relief, because he knew at that moment that nothing that he had said or done had dimmed that light around her. All he wanted not was not to be the man with the power to extinguish that light.

Just as it happened before, the children saw him first and started waving and yelling from the water, begging from him to join them. Fräulein Maria turned slightly towards him, but there was no joyful cry this time. Her gaze dropped to somewhere in the middle of his chest.

"Fräulein," he greeted her with the customary nod.

"Captain, you're home!" she blurted out, and although he could distinguish a myriad of different feelings in her tone of voice, joy was not one of them. "I thought… I thought…"

"Yes?"

"Frau Schmidt told me that you were probably going to spend the weekend in Fuschl."

"I changed my mind," he said simply, and sat on the ground next to her, watching the children.

"I see," she whispered.

Not completely unaffected, he thought. She is not looking at me.

"I hope you don't mind that I allowed the children to go swimming today," she said, trying to sound casual. "They are having such a wonderful time in the water."

"No, I don't mind it at all – in fact, I am surprised that you did not join them." He looked at her again, waiting for an explanation, but she merely gave a small shrug. "I myself am tempted. It is terribly hot today, isn't it?" His hand automatically went to his neck and he loosened his tie a bit. He hesitated before proceeding, but it was something that had to be done. The least that he could do was to set her mind at ease – it would be the first step towards fixing things.

"Fräulein, about last night…"

She stiffened a bit, her eyes now fixed not in the children anymore, but somewhere in the middle of the lake. "What about it, Captain?"

"That is exactly my problem. What happened exactly? And I demand… no, I would like a truthful answer."

"You don't remember?" She smiled, in pure relief, and finally met his eyes. "Oh, I knew something like this could happen, I told you that didn't I?"

"If you did, obviously I have no recollection of it. I was… slightly intoxicated."

"Slightly intoxicated?" she giggled. "I beg your pardon, Captain, but you were drunk!"

"What happened?" he insisted. His intention, this time, was not merely to provoke her – he merely wanted to hear her version of the events.

"You asked – no, I think you ordered me to keep you company. Then you played, I listened. You talked, I listened…"

"Well, Fräulein, you maybe a dismal liar, but you are an expert when it comes to telling half truths," he thought.

"I have trouble believing that one."

"Well, Captain, you needed the talking and the listening. But don't worry, you did not make much sense most of the time."

Now she was clearly lying. His head started to pound again. That damned wine!

"Fräulein, in any case – if I said or did anything remotely disrespectful to you, I apologize."

Her cheeks suddenly reddened, and not because of the summer heat. "Captain, you were not disrespectful in any moment. You were just a little…"

"Yes?"

"Bold, I guess. But no more than I have been towards you at times in the past. I think we can call it even."

"I am asking you to forgive me all the same, for being… ehm… obtrusive."

She let out another laugh. "Captain, if you knew how obtrusive those nuns can be when a girl decides to enter a convent, you would not be so concerned. I have been questioned about my life before. Considering that I am temporarily responsible for the well-being your children, I think you have the right to do so as well if you find it necessary."

"But I am not a nun!"

"Obviously not!" Her eyes were full of mirth, but she was not meeting his eyes again.

"Fräulein!" he exclaimed – not harshly, but softly this time.

"Very well, if you insist."

"I do."

She tried to hold his gaze them, but only briefly. "You are forgiven, Captain."

"Thank you."

"You´re welcome. Well, I hope that apart from your memory loss, you are not suffering from any other ill effects of that bad Bordeaux vintage."

He chuckled. "You know, I just had quite an argument during lunch with a friend of mine in Fuschl. He is French, and he claims that there is no such thing as a bad Bordeaux vintage. Naturally I spend a good portion of my time there trying to convince him otherwise!" That earned him another honest smile, as she visibly relaxed. "The truth is that I woke up this morning with a splitting headache, and every little sound made me feel like all the bells of Salzburg peeled at the same time inside my skull. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when I came downstairs this morning and realized that you were not giving the children yodeling lessons. I should have the rest of the bottles in his cellar dumped into the Salzach!"

"Better yet, Captain. You should have them shipped to your French friend from Fuschl…" she suggested mischievously.

"Fräulein, you do have a wickedly cunning mind at times! I think I might do just that."

What he did next was impulsive and as unexpected to him as it was to her. He extended her hid hand. He remembered he had not granted her with that most ordinary act of courtesy the day of her arrival. She looked at his hand for a few seconds, uncertainly.

"Truce?" he asked.

Silently, she took his hand, and he gave hers a light, gentle squeeze. Immediately, she tried to pull it away, but he held it a bit longer. He could not help himself.

"What ails you, uh Fräulein?" He frowned – her first name had come naturally to him and he had to stop himself at the last moment from calling her Maria. He finally let go of her hand.

"Mmm?"

"Your hand is cold and you look pale. There is that, and my experiences in the war are enough to tell me that you are under a certain degree of physical pain."

"Oh, I'm fine, Captain," she said, with a dismissive gesture.

"Why are you not with them?"

She was not longer listening to him. The children attracted her attention again, as they all fell laughing on the water, after another failed attempt to make a pyramid. Next to him, Maria seemed to have forgotten his presence and burst on laughing. He had not heard her laugh like that in a while – the carefree, contagious laugher of someone who is truly enjoying herself.

Suddenly his head did not hurt so much anymore. His vision had cleared.

Everything would be fine now. She would be fine. All was just the way it was just how it was supposed to be. He would not have to give the matter any other thought, he did not need to. His ship was once more sailing smoothly.

Yes, he thought, satisfied. All is well and normal again.

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A/N: (1) The idea came from John Biggins´s book, A Sailor in Austria, which gave me a good idea of how the Captains wild days at sea might have been like.