Written by Pt, September 1, 1998
(Ideas inspired by Stella Tan: The Attic)
Chapter Three: Dissension
It was a festival for Wagner's honor, a yearly event Ludwig hoped would become a tradition even after his long reign. Many musicians and masters from nearby lands gathered in the week long celebration of beauty and song. Wagner feted his audience with pieces of dreams long in their telling, and it would be years before their true completion. The ruler had never been so hopefully merry, and his girth suffered some from the richness of the many festivals. He met with Gowden openly, now a trusted advisor in his counsel, and spoke with him some of this rumor of discord that concerned his otherwise happy land.
"We must befriend Austria, Sir Gowden. She had been with us since before my great grandfather's time."
"Our small armies, even combined, will not stand against that of Prussia's. Such a war will not last even a few weeks. We should send notice now that we will not be at her side, and perhaps they can negotiate another way out of this argument. Whether they can or not, we should not be involved."
"How can I be true to Wagner's ideals when I cannot even side by a friend that may be loyal to us for centuries? There must be a way we can aid her by our strength. You must find a way."
"Prussia's armies are 50 times our own. A hundred times. I cannot make one soldier fight like a hundred men."
"You said I would not even see my enemies, Gowden. I believed you. I believe you can find a way."
"My friend, you are not celebrating enough! How can you hear my songs from here?" Richard shouted his greetings from a little beyond the king's dais. From there he could see the masses of people enjoying the music and the food, and could probably walk the poorest warrens of his land this night alone and unafraid. Bavaria had never had such a king, so young and generous, beautiful and idealistic. "Come down from there and sit with my orchestra. You have given them to me, and should suffer how it is being in their midst." Richard smiled cheerfully. The crowds were meeting even his tiniest offerings with the loudest shouts and applause.
"That would be an interesting perspective, Richard, would it not? Almost as if I were in the play itself."
"You are in it, my Lord, you are." Richard waved for the king to come down and join him. His guards were wary, but the crowd seemed in a safe if boisterous mood. They cheered and made way as Ludwig walked unhindered through the throng and to the grand stage that was the center point of the celebration. He was ushered to an ornate chair to the right of the conductor's hand, well in front of the mass of musicians but hidden to the audience nearly in the back of the stage. Only Richard was put on high, on his podium, center stage, facing his orchestra and cheering listeners. It was a safe place for his lordship, perhaps even more than his dais, for no arrow from the crowd could find a straight mark.
Thomas watched the proceedings from the wings of the stage. He was lucky to still be somewhat in the monarch's company, though no longer a captain in his army. He was judged unfit for such duties, and no longer knew what was being done inside those ranks. There was unrest and rumors though, circulated among those still loyal to him, and he did not know what to think of those tales. He watched his king enjoy his beloved music from under the satisfied gaze of his new master.
No players or even singers performed for great stretches of Wagner's presentation. It was part of a new, tremendous opera he had not fully conceived. Long passages of music dominated the pieces he played, though at times so powerful that the crowd could feel the strains pass through them, could scarcely draw breath without feeling the tremblings in the air. The music reached another pulsing crescendo, and some in the crowd seemed to even sway before the current of sound. Thomas bowed his head. He could no longer listen to it without heavy pangs of sadness not due to the melody. The audience enjoyed the performance without hesitation, and loudly shouted and clapped their approval. They did not realize the rudeness of this since it did, indeed, counteract the efforts of the symphony. It also hid another disruption.
Shouting broke out from the opposite wing of the stage. Some commotion was happening there, and the guards didn't seem able to overcome it. Thomas hesitated a moment. He was no longer allowed the defenses of his former rank. He saw something rush at his Lord, and bolted after the thing nonetheless.
Thomas was closer, but his king was already knocked to the ground by the incredibly fast attack, and the aide could do no more than pull at the fur cloak and flailing limbs of the attacker. Other, supposing trained and loyal soldiers finally came to their side, but seemed to stop on viewing the struggle. The aide grabbed a hesitant sword, and precisely struck the enemy without harming his Lord. It turned on him in attack, and for a moment, Thomas saw the reason for the hesitation.
The assailant was not entirely beast. His face was contorted to that beyond human, and his limbs stretched almost to pure muscle and bone, but the former soldier recognized that its torn clothing was the uniform of his own army. The animal snarled, its eyes madness, and it did not even know the reasons for its attacks. It was a night creature caught in the sun, only half realized, and confused by the revealing brightness. "My captain," it rasped, surprised recognition in its expression, but only for a moment, a moment. The former soldier could not have known this thing. His training would not let him falter further, and Thomas struck once more, through the very heart of the beast, or where the heart should be if it were still a man. The creature fell, and the other guards finished whatever life may still have been in it.
The orchestra had faded as the commotion began, many standing up from their seats, interfering with the audience's view whose attention was now entirely focused on the chaotic scene unfolding above. They had missed the assault, so fast and confusing in movement, hidden behind the alarmed orchestra. Most thought something had happened near the king, perhaps to the maestro or an older musician, a seizure or some ailment prevalent to age. Since there were no players on the raised stage they had not been observant except to the music. Some from the orchestra itself had tried to attend to Ludwig's wounds, crowding around the fallen lord, though Wagner himself stood a good distance back from the turmoil. He was quickly taken from the platform after the creature was dealt with, and the corpse was soon bundled off as well. Thomas did not have a scratch, and followed his king, guilt ridden, to where good doctors would hopefully see to his needs.
Gowden entered the tent. The condition of the monarch was so unsure that they did not want to move him far lest further injury result. The crowd was forcefully dispersed outside, though many, whispering, perplexed and worried, did not want to leave. Gowden instructed Wagner to continue his play, but with merrier music, perhaps even other masters, to show the people that all was well. These duties were Louis's excuse for his delay.
The wounds on his Lord did not seem deep, though there were many, and Ludwig seemed in a deep state of unawareness. He did not respond to his name, to those around him, and his eyes were unseeing to all. It was not until Gowden, many minutes overdue, came to his side that the monarch seemed to awake, and then it was only on him that his gaze would fall.
"He must have lost much blood," the puzzled doctor announced. "That would account for his belatedness. I cannot find deep wounds that are menacing, but this seepage of blood must be quickly dressed."
"Poison?" Thomas asked. "That would cause this state. An assassin would know many poisons." He looked to Gowden.
"My Lord," Louis said to his master, "Do you recognize me? Do you know who I am?"
"Yes," Ludwig replied weakly. "You are my trusted advisor. Tell me what… has happened to me?" With Gowden, he seemed more alert than with all others.
"A poison would not act in reverse. He is more aware now, not less, and an assassin who would give his life in the attack would use a quicker method, or at least a quicker venom." Louis looked at his king as he spoke, uncaring of the others.
Ludwig closed his eyes. He was falling into a deep slumber. The doctor and his attendants tried to wake him, fearing it was the sleep of entering death, but Gowden stopped them. "No! Leave him! You will not help him by taking away ease."
"Unless we wake him now, he will fall into the sleep of slow death, and will never awake." The doctor was adamant. "Have you ever seen this death, advisor?"
"I have seen many things. This is not what you have spoken. He must rest, or he will be crippled."
"Can you vouch for that? How do you know this? I cannot follow the dictates of a political advisor on medicine."
"I will watch him. It will be on my head. I will tell you the precise time that he will awake."
The doctor looked to Thomas for advice. They had finished dressing his wounds, and there was no more to be done, except on this judgement. There was no one closer to the Lord to ask.
The aide looked to his fallen command. Was it not his duty to protect? What had caused this failure? Was it jealousy after all? Thomas shook his head. "How long must he be kept awake for death to be chased away?"
The doctor could not give an exact answer. "Some for days. Most it does not help. I just know that if he enters it, he will not awake."
"I have seen his eyes, Thomas. He is not in that sleep." Even Gowden, who knew, was moved by the aide's sad decision.
"Let him be still." Thomas brushed a strand of bloodied hair away from his king's closed eyes.
For the next few weeks, all true affairs of state fell to Gowden, and not the royal family, as was let on. Ludwig's even younger brother, Otto, paced outside the rooms of his royal sibling, not sure how he felt about this turn of affairs. It was as if there was a curse on his family, and each of the men in it had found great disfavor in God's eyes. Otto did not want the throne, and though their lives seemed very different and apart, and they almost strangers, he did not want his brother to die.
There was a great resentment that Louis was taking the role that he assumed. His darkness put many loyalists ill at ease, and there was a call to more formality in such important ascension. Gowden tried to calm distress by saying that such actions were only very temporary, and that he was only continuing work already given him. The advisor was watched very closely, and all his communications surveyed. And then there was talk of that beast.
Thomas inquired about the creature as soon as he felt he could leave his king's side. He made the doctor and attendants also promise to be constantly with Ludwig, and not forsake such duties to Gowden alone. They assured him they had no such thought of abandonment.
When the aide found what the other guards had done, there was not a bone left whole and unblackened.
"Who ordered this? That creature could have given us clue to the king's sickness. Why have you done this?"
An older statesman Thomas did not recognize turned him aside from the smoldering corpse. "There was nothing that atrocity could have given us that would aid, only curse," he whispered harshly.
Thomas pulled away from the man. "I do not know you, stranger. Let me speak to one of my guards."
"They are no longer your guards to command, least you forget." The older man walked away from him, toward the bewildered crowds within that day's city. He would answer nothing more.
Thomas spoke to one of his former captains. He was a man not easily swayed to unreasoning action. "Sir, why was this done? The uniform - if he was of ours, even a burial…" The leader turned to face him, grateful for another sight. The younger man was startled by the fear still in his eyes. He looked as lost as those waiting the king's fate, except here the apprehension was for the spirit, not the body.
"Thomas? Were you hurt by it?"
"No, captain. Not even a cut in the skin, unlike my Lord." The older said nothing further. "Sir, please, why did you burn the body?"
"You saw how many tears were in the beast. After your strike, we almost cut it to pieces, such was our panic." If the captain were not so distracted, he would have been ashamed to admit this to a former pupil.
"So, the body was already too disfigured to offer us answers?" Thomas could understand the soldiers' desires to hide their frenzied work.
"It still moved."
He watched as the soldiers crushed the remaining bone splinters to ash.
"Thomas? The king wishes to speak to you." Otto looked to him, wanting to enter the rooms with him, and also not. He had not been asked, and the boy looked too confused, and defeated. The aide had tried to console him, to tell him that his older brother was fit and strong, to remember those long hikes in the mountains with his family when all were panting, except his kin. He would be a leader to this country for many more years. Otto remained quietly outside as Thomas ventured in.
The king was flushed and the blood that surfaced to his skin was dark and corrupt. He looked no more than a thin container for the disease that ran in him. For almost a week he suffered this thing, refusing to eat and even drink at times, though he burned with sickness. The doctors did not know what to do, and Gowden would just sit quietly, almost amused, when they struggled with the Lord, maddened by violent fits of fever. At these times, after the physicians had failed, Gowden could calm Ludwig with a mere word or two. It was the sole, remaining reason he was still allowed into the monarch's presence. Because of his abilities with the Baron, many believed Gowden was the cause of this curse, or its commander, though none could find the connection.
"Thomas." His king's lips were almost black with blood. "Do you still know me?"
"What, my Lord? Of course I know you."
"Do you? After all I have done?" His voice was soft, taken by the fever. "I wanted to ask what position you want in this kingdom. Something I can grant…"
"I am well satisfied with all you have done, my Lord. I have no other needs, except that leadership be restored as before."
"I can no longer be a leader, Thomas, if ever I was. I had dreams of it once, but now…. I can tell I am being lead, and cannot break the hold."
"You, my Lord? When could you not do a thing you had set your mind to? Can I not unwillingly testify to that a hundred times? You will come back to us, my King. You will be well again."
"You may not want that, Thomas. You do not know what that means…." He paused a moment, an unknown secret trying to find escape. He had no words for it. The attendants looked sadly on as Ludwig instead began instructing Thomas on his guardianship of the next, young king.
The servants whispered about the king's continuous insomnia, his easy fits to anger, and his night prowlings. Though he had miraculously climbed out of that deep sickness (as Gowden had predicted), he reclused himself within his chambers, and few saw him, even the Queen. Louis avoided the rooms, though there were nights people suspected he was there, and the angry shouting from their Lord grew to their worst heights. Still, the king would announce nothing that would take away the advisor's powers. The doctors could do little for his sleeplessness, his fevers and night sweats. He isolated himself more and more, and asked for strange, bloody meals. They could hear him ranting in his rooms at night, cursing Gowden, who now refused to see him. Ludwig would not argue the refusals.
The servants that were left let the king restlessly sleep another day away, rumors about the whole ordeal speculated far into the evening.
The hounds in the royal kennels began howling that night. Servants were rousted from sleep, and the hounds keeper cursed his charges. A young rabbit had most likely stupidly burrowed into the kennel grounds, and the dogs were noisily celebrating a surprise, midnight feasting, fighting each other for the scant remains.
"Brutus! Vlad! Hold your noise!" The hound master shouldered the main kennel door open against a strange weight. Brutus, the alpha dog, was always the first to greet his master, and he popped his head and lolling tongue through the gap in the door. Unfortunately, his large, thickly muscled body did not follow. His head bounced once on the stony ground, rolled over his master's foot, and teetered to a stop, rolling back and forth on the rounded top of its skull. His upside-down, fixed gaze questioned his master about his undue tardiness.
The hounds keeper pushed harder at the weight on the door, the dog's massive, valiant remains, and entered the carnage.
The dog killer feasted at the back of the cages, its own back turned fearlessly to the entrance. Perhaps it was he who had positioned the large dog's body at the door, to guard against intruders as he ate. The kennel master shuddered. What sort of man was this?
"What have you done to the King's royal charges!" he shouted, angry righteousness and fear mixing in the roar. The hairy, naked man turned, and by his moment in silhouette, the kennel master saw the beast's too long heels, his inhuman balance on the pads of his feet ending in black, sharpened nails, and the length of a snout ending in a wide, cruel, hungry, bloodied mouth. The dog keeper had not brought his weapons, for he was merely prepared for a rabbit in the midst of his loyal, defensive, loving, brethren dogs. What danger could meet him in their presence? He froze to this unexpected, single terror, his royal defenders long departed. Another easy prey.
The beast stared, blood lust only appetized by the dogs, and absently licked his dripping jaws.
"My God have mercy," the hounds master uttered, not realizing he had spoken, perhaps, last words.
"Father?" a young boy asked as he entered the kennels. His son had always loved the dogs, and their equal loyalty had always been returned to him. The boy sensed the loss in the gloom and unusual quiet, but was not afraid, only saddened.
"Boy. Go out of here. Now."
"Father, the dogs…"
"Go!"
The beast looked at the tender flesh of the new arrival, heard the pounding blood rush of his strong heart, saw the sad innocence of his face, and howled.
Both stood frozen for the final moments.
The beast ran past them, sorrowfully by his eyes, and into the night.
"What curse have you brought to me, Louis?" They were not in the royal rooms, but in the advisor's private ones, now in the western wing of the castle. Ludwig could not see his beloved, quiet gardens from the massive windows here, and Gowden had covered them, to protect his sleep when resting during the day.
"I have done nothing against you, my Lord. I had only done all that you ordered."
"I know it is you! My blood and my dreams seek you out. You knew all that would happen to me, and of my new desires. Do not deny it as before."
"You only seek me out because your true master is dead. I have merely tried to help you."
Ludwig did not know where he was when he woke in these rooms. Gowden had kept them bare, with no frames of family or personal items except clothes and scattered work. He had accepted gifts from his lordship and placed them around his living space, but for the benefits of others, not for himself. His rooms were as impersonal to him as the crypt.
"You said you never wanted to see your enemies. You said you wanted soldiers that could fight like a dozen men. I had already started that work, though not for armies. It would have gone well. You have seen one of them, though not in the way I had desired. Circumstance have thrown my plans off, for a while."
"I was mistaken. Your heart is too cold to deserve any leadership in this country."
"I did not plan this for you. And I cannot take it away. You have entered one of Wagner's tragedies more than you know." Louis realized the harshness of these words, and his coldness - results of too many years with his own inheritance. There was only one comfort he could offer. "But I can teach you how to live in it."
"Live?" Ludwig's laugh ran Gowden's blood even colder. "I have no thoughts of survival after this night. To see all around me as death and blood. Is that not the dreams you had wanted for me not to have, Louis? Are those not the sights you had promised to protect both I and my people from? Now it seems those that I cherish are to be my prey, or live in misery. I will fail in all my duties, to myself, my people, my hopes."
"It need not be this way. I can teach you…"
"To deny everything that is truthful. To live in ugliness instead of the beauty I wanted. Do you not see the kind of creature you are? I fear that someday you will have me believe you beautiful as well."
"I could have easily killed you as you prowled, confused, in the woods. I knew your presence out there. You were mad, wandering, and fell to the wild creatures in the night. No one would have questioned it."
"Then you should have done so." Ludwig paused, opening the grand windows so he could view the lands beneath his castle. He would not be able to live here for long, so close to the cities, and its temptations. "In return for your favors, I will grant you your life. There are others who can run this province, though not as well as your thought out plans, apparently. Be well gone from here by tonight."
"You don't know what you are doing, Ludwig. You will need my help. You do not understand the growing madness, especially if denied. It must be trained."
"I know true madness would be living in this curse. That is what has happened to you, Louis. You thought you could somehow bring about good from this. Arrogance and futility. If I can find a way out of this thing, I will send word to you, wherever you are."
He turned from the windows without another look or even thought to Gowden, and left his advisor to their fates.
If you have any comments, you can email Pt at ptech@usa.net.
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