LUCINDA(Charles E.J. Moulton) Tuesday, October 13th, 1422 A.D. – The Eve of Infamy

Practically everyone was up and dancing. There was much ale, mead and wine circulating and for those moving it was hard to see straight. The guests either found themselves drunk with the sheer sight of it all or full of what was on tables.

Chicken, geese, peacock, duck, elk and other kinds of meat decorated the tables. Asparagus, meatballs, partridge, calves, capons and pigeons, boar, roast sheep, turtledoves, partridges, pheasants, quail. Ancient Roman dishes such as Pullus Fusilis, wine-marinated chicken with ginger graced the tables. There was even a dish with a chicken stuffed inside a duck and a plate of peacock tongues.

Belinda was laughing, the fifty flickering torches in the room dazzling in her beautiful eyes, almost making it too hard to see where she danced. The reaction in actually having survived the wedding without a disaster prompted a sense of feasting in her that was hard to combat. The flames flickered in the light of brown reindeer eyes, the memories of her Aunt Lucinda’s many attacks on her and the promise of returning echoing in her mind. This was the last day of celebration. She wouldn’t arrive now anymore, would she?

King Alexander’s daughter, the Crown-Princess Belinda, took her newly wed Prince-Regent by his left hand, picked up her dress by the bottom strings and almost broke her shoes. She kissed her husband, kissed other men, forgotting that her life had been threatened and that her memories of having been abducted as a child had left her screaming every night for the past year.

Court musician and self proclaimed jester, Bantrard Silvermoon, was now stamping his feet, closing her eyes, full of sweat.

STAMP YOUR FEET FOR LOVE IS IN TOWN
Estampie in 6/8 with Saltarello
for voice, fidicula, aulos, recorder, shawm, zither and kettledrum

From the sea coast to the forest
In the country that breeds our crown
The vigour of a thousand dreams
Reverberates to whence it is bound.
It is the roar that strengthens the weak,
And the hope that rejuvenates the old,
It is the power that, as we speak,
Entails a tale yet to unfold
It is the untold story,
It is the newfound glory,
It is the men we are
Carried by women that travel far.
From the North Star in the middle to the Capricorn down south
Love is the affection that works best mouth to mouth,
There is no doubt, no reason,
To sit and brood my friend,
Nuptial folly is the best, so be jolly,
The sound that keeps us alive is the sound of another one’s heart.

“Stop the wedding celebrations, Belinda! Please, it is enough that you have awoken the beast… Don’t rub it in! Listen to my warning! End it here, send the guests home and you will fool her…”

She took her husband by the hand and danced with him, he went down on his knees and applauded whilst she danced around him lifting her skirt and the people made a circle around them as they were dancing.
He was given a wine bottle and drank out of it as he banged with a wooden spoon on the bottle given to him by someone else, eating a chicken from the hands of Morgana laughing wickedly. Belinda took a bite herself and danced and sang, as she never had before.
With chicken in her mouth and wine dripping down to her cleavage, she giggled.

“Belinda! Do you know the future?”

“Who are you?” That voice again was calling out to her somewhere in the dark.
Never mind. She would just dance it away, brightly howling that she was happy.
Dance now. Dance later. Dance in fifty years. Drool on the tables. Sing while she ate. Eat while she sang. Drink all kinds of alcohol. Stamping her feet and looking up toward the gilded ceiling and walking up the tapestries of Roman Gods, taking the servants by the hand in order to just dance. Make sure to have a good time. Belinda began hopping up and down to the beat of the kettledrum.
For every hop there was a shout. For every shout there was a hop.
“Yes, Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Clap. Clap.”
The entire crowd on its knees, Belinda was the star and the toast of the town.
“In Clurafar they are drunk as well. Drunk as well. Drunk as well.”
Belinda ran to the table, took a bottle from it and gulped down the contents; she threw the bottle into the fireplace and continued dancing.
“Stamp your feet, love’s in town, there is no place, for a frown.
From the east, to the west, make the rounds, pass the test. Stamp your feet, love’s in town.
Nananaaa … Nananaa “
Happy people completely pissed. Royally drunk.
Somewhere in the night a spirit waiting.
Something crashed through the ceiling, creating havoc, making pieces of wood, stone and marble crash toward the floor. Screams, wails, shrieks and moans resounded through the castle walls that night and then that silence that promised eternal damnation settled down amongst the courtiers.
The crowd that had been in the midst of a spectacular wedding feast was now struck with remarkable, stunned silence. Lucinda, the witch that thirty years had promised to return, simply hung there in the air and slowly, ever so slowly, descended toward the ground. The main representatives of Medatlantian politics sat, lay or crawled along the front wall now and were fixed on one thing alone: the two creatures that had just crashed through the ceiling.
Princess Belinda had married Prince Steven. Despite having been abducted at age 11 and almost killed as late as this year, the moody young woman had gone through with the wedding. Lucinda had been exiled in 1392, evicted for burning down a summer house on the royal grounds. She had not been invited to the wedding.
She was here to avenge her family’s ruthless spite.
The witch was dressed in a black flowing gown that fluttered in the breeze and it seemed that this dress expressed everything that Lucinda stood for: darkness, mystery, perversion, hatred and allusive splendour.
The creature that Lucinda had with her had ten heads. The necks of the creature were thin and serpentine. All heads came together on a furry neck that ended in a lion-like mane. The tail looked as if it actually also belonged on a serpent.
Its feet and body resembled that of a dragon.
Wasn’t Cerberus the guardian of Hades, the creature that chose what souls would be given admission to hell? This could be him. On ancient parchments, in accounts of Greek mythology, this mythical creature was told never to have existed, but here it was. She was petting the creature as she descended. She rattled his leash and every time she did, the creature whined and growled and kicked simultaneously.

ÊÝñâåñïò

was a Greek word that meant demon of the pit.

Alexander was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. The heads bobbed in different directions. The beast drooled, spat, cackled, farted, belched and sneered. At times, the heads looked at each other and sneered, nodding and bobbing. It was a fitting companion for the royal persona non grata upon her return to the scene of the crime.
It screamed with what seemed to be human voices.
Everything moving slower. He saw his entire life in retrospect leading up to this moment. King Alexander Roderick Winsletenna of the kingdom of Prosperania saw the birth of the realm. How was it that this noble kingdom born out of the Roman Empire was now standing at the crossroads of another exiled sibling?
Alexander had waited thirty years for this moment.
Lucinda was in for the kill.
It had happened before.
It was the place for ceremonial dinners. Four sets of Grand Hall mahogany doors were placed in the four corners of the room. They opened the visitor’s eyes to a black and white chequered marble dance floor with a roundabout parquet floor. At once transfixed at its height, the mirrors, the red satin draperies and the oriental rugs, a first time visitor would just gaze in awe at all this wealth.
There was a painting of a beautiful horse by a lake at sundown on the mid wall, mounted by a painted King Alexander and painted by Maestro Penderesci.
On the left side were enormous windows overlooking the grounds. They were leaded glass windows with red-brown-coloured wooden frames. In the middle was the royal coat of arms of Prosperania: the royal eagle surrounded by the five symbols for the individual counties: the bridge for Gargetania, the lion for Starinia, the juggler for Caryllinia, the antelope for Ingolfstadt, and the singer for Kyrilliland. On each side of the Grand Hall were pictures of Iuventus Sacrum and above and below them were lances and swords.
Bantrard Silvermoon, the royal court musician, was a very noble fellow who saw himself primarily as royal artist. He had today put on a cap of bells and a colourful suit just to please the aristocrats. Known for his wit, he had also become a bit of a comic and a clown.
Alexander was still holding his glass of wine, standing exactly under the painting of himself. A plate of chicken had dropped due to the chaos. The butler Rolf, who had just been serving Princess Patricia and Princess Morgana some food at their request, had fell on it. He had tripped over his long tailcoat toga and was now lying with his arm around the edge of table corner. The scene was as vivid as a fresco from a painting by the old palace court painter Penderesci.
The sound of the king’s shouting voice echoed through the hall. Seeing her within the walls of his palace was like traveling back in time and seeing how all that distress actually made him feel. He had seen her before anyone else did. He had expected her before anyone else expected her and the shout had reverberated through the Grand Hall with fury.
“Sister!”
As he spoke these words, he remembered feeling how hot the flames had burned into his skin. It was thirty years, one month, two weeks and one day ago.
The day Lucinda burned down the summer house on the palace grounds.
Belinda and her future Prince Regent and new husband Steven were distraught. Not only hands, but also feet and arms and legs, were clenched. Faced with her fears, the crown princess studied the object of her terror as it slowly sank to the floor. It was after the initial shock and her first scream that she saw what her aunt was wearing. It was her own wedding dress in a perverse pitch-black rendition. The elevated derriere and the train were there. The tiara and the lace, the cleavage and the diamonds, they were all there at public display.
Without a word, as Lucinda Iuvinhurmya Winsletenna slowly sank to the floor, Belinda stood up from her chair next to her father’s erect place. Alexander watched his daughter walk around the table toward his sister.
Her weird dog kept bobbing its heads without even attempting to attack. Belinda looked at the dog with abhorrence, at the sight of this woman she remained absolutely cold.
Face to face with her, Lucinda cocked her head.
The crown princess dressed in white faced a woman in a black version of her own wedding gown.
“Believe me when I say that I am going to make your death slow and painful. I warned you when I abducted you eleven years ago about the trick rider Nina Ray commencing the apocalypse. She arrived.”
Belinda wished to explode, kick her, beat her and call her names. Instead of doing that, she swallowed her pride and let that one tear roll down her cheek onto the floor before whispered:
”If you want to kill me, then you better be ready for to fight. I don’t give in easily. Ask anyone here. Ask my husband. He’ll tell you how well I can put up a fight.”
“I know you do.” Lucinda grinned. “I love to fight. I am looking forward to a good catfight.”
Belinda looked down at her hound. “What is that?”
“My pet.”
“Strange pet,” Belinda sneered in a whisper. “A hound fitting for a cat.”
“How so?” Lucinda spat. “Cats can’t scratch mutts?”
“Your weapons have never been as good as mine, bitch.”
“What magic powers do you possess that could equal mine?”
“The greatest magic of all,” Belinda mused. “The love of a family.”
Lucinda cackled amused and cynical.
“Belinda Winsletenna will die an old, happy woman.” Belinda said of herself. “Who will remember you? Who will stand at your grave and weep? Check mate. Your turn.”
Belinda gave her aunt one patronizing look and slowly went back to her place to sit down.
When Belinda did sit down, taking her husband’s hand, Lucinda turned to her brother and gave him a very strange grin. She had just been disarmed, but now she was recollecting her weapons.
Her grin was a weirdly erotic grin, appealing maybe to wolves.
She rattled Reficule’s leash and ordered him to sit.
There was a dreamlike atmosphere in the room.
Alexander saw everything heightened in a way that he never had before. Alex sat down as if numb, plopping down into his cushioned chair of red velvet, his arms resting on the decorated dark mahogany seat. Sweat drops ran along his forehead like small squirrels chased by a wolf. They dropped onto the wood carvings on the chair. The king felt the breeze on his neck from an open window.
Queen Sieglinde, the Prosperanian female ruler and secret leader of the country, sunk her head into her husband’s purple velvet clad, caped shoulder.
Lucinda paced the hall, meticulously studying every face before she finally decided to stop in front of her brother, whom she hadn’t met in 11 years.
Belinda cried bitterly.
This was too much.
“Third time lucky?” Lucinda sang.
“Wasn’t abducting me enough?” Belinda screamed through her tears. “You returned to drown me in the waterfall.”
“And now, a half year later, I’m back with a vengence. Vindicare, Persona Non Grata. A bene placito a capite ad calcem.”
Belinda remembered her eleventh birthday.
“Hello Alexander,” she cooed consumedly. “I’ve missed you.”
Alexander said nothing.
“I never wanted you to stay in my mind, but like a festering wound or an aching knee, you never seemed to disappear. You turned into a throbbing wound.”
“You totally ignored me.”
It was like witnessing very old enemies talk for the first time and not wanting to disturb them for fear that one might rattle a knife or turn a page and set off an earthquake. “You killed my sisters and brother. You left our parents devastated. That was no easy thing to handle all by myself. I had only been king for a short while and your act made me run into the arms in lies.”
“I have come to keep my promise,” she said. “I always keep my promises. You know me.”
“What do want to talk about then? Do you really believe I want to socialize with you?”
“I am here to congratulate the newlyweds in their paradise of nuptial bliss.” Lucinda simpered. “You are a dog lover, Alex. Let us talk canine breeding. What do you feed your oldest daughter’s dog?”
“Nocturanian hearts,” Alexander said softly, slowly giving up that she would leave. “Boiled in vinegar and cream.”
“That is an unusual choice.” Lucinda said, smacking her red lips. “I think I shall switch to bad blood after this” Alexander added.
Lucinda leaned over to breathe a bit of bad breath at her brother.
“Start with your own.” she croaked.
Her bear like dog scratched its body, then peed on the left table corner closing his twenty eyes.
"Why did you not invite me, dear?" Lucinda said, her voice a throaty mezzo, rich and dark. “This lovely young girl and I spent such wonderful months together back at the royal palace in the other country. Did you hear of that? Oh, yes… uhhh… you were there, weren’t you?" Lucinda murmured. “Huh… I forgot that.” she whined coyly.
The chain of the leash clinking in Lucinda's hands was the only other sound heard accompanying the crackling of fresh wood from the fireplace.
"Now she is a voluptuous woman with a ravishing and sensual cleavage, married to a dashing prince." She shook her head and cackled. “She is an alluring little gem, isn’t she? You should see her in the privacy of her bedroom. She is hot as Pompeii. Mount Etna is Lapland in comparison. Up and down and round and round, pounded fiercely by a stunning steed.”
“How do you know about what I do in my bedroom?”
”Well, sometimes you do it on the balcony, dear! Rattling the tables and looking up at the moon pretending to be a Cleopatra of the western Roman heirs. His manhood’s so prominent.”
Steven stood up. “It is time you leave.”
“Unstable, aren’t you?”
Alexander said. “Get out of my palace right now.”
“What would you have the old farts in the Senate do?”
“He would have them drop you from a cliff!”
“Zedrick!” Lucinda sang. “Well, wasn’t it you who gave Alexander the idea to throw me out of the kingdom?”
”I was just on errands.” Zedrick stated calmly.
She took a green vase from the table and threw it in the fireplace. It hit the fire inside and the flames grew at least ten feet high. She patted one of Reficule’s heads and said something in Nocturanian. “Siruluparidia Grui!”
Reficule lifted his hind legs and stood on his front paws. He parted his hind legs and out of his behind came three flames that took off in all directions. These three flames parted into groups of three that finally formed nine something’s that spent a moment or two screaming the hell out of the entire group in every part of the Grand Hall. All the while, Reficule remained erect on his front paws. The nine spirits entered his behind again and disappeared.
Lucinda made a fist and rubbed it against her mouth. When she opened it, three worms came out. She fed them to Reficule and he gobbled them down.
“I need you to listen for once.” Lucinda flicked with her tongue a couple of times, leaning against the large table almost in her brother’s face. “Belinda was a sweet trophy for sending away me.”
Belinda whispered haughtily. “Well, if you are the flower then this must be the garden.”
Lucinda stepped back and said nothing for a while. Steven half-smiled and was given a dirty look from his aunt-in-law. She walked a few paces away from the table and then turned around and pointed at Belinda. She turned around again and pointed at Steven.
“Then that must be the weed.”
Steven jumped at Lucinda and was held back by Zedrick and Belinda’s brother Patrick, who calmed him down.
“I am here to make a deal with you, Alexander.” Lucinda looked at him with cats’ eyes. In his mind she walked up to him, told him he was a good dog and kissed him clean of purity. He found himself in the dungeon of Rigor Mortis outside Yambollah tied to a bed, covered with wax just like Belinda back then in 1411, Lucinda sitting on him, licking the wax off his fur and riding his chest. “Ten thousand days of pain, 262,800 hours, if hours mean anything to you at this point in your era of history. I shall give you no less than what you gave me, you must understand that.”
“Does that mean that I have to suffer until I die?”
“Yes.” she sizzled. “Suffer until you damn well drop in a pool of your black spit.” She paced the room, flung around with her dress, clearly enjoying the attention she was getting. “Your whole country soon extinct, you will become but an odd memory. I will put your heads in glass jars and look at them while I eat breakfast. I’m going to play a game with you. It is called

Sizzle My Brother Over Hot Burning Coal,
Salt Him And Pepper Him And Serve Him Up Whole.”

“Why didn’t you just ram a spear down my belly in?”
“You were always a spoilsport, a wimp, a faggot, a really bad actor. Your lisping vanity is as big as mine, you little milquetoast, so don’t point at me for vanity. You stand in front of the mirror as much as I do.”
“What was that old saying you thundered out about the four horsemen of the apocalypse rolling over the country before the century was over? That never happened. Why?”
Lucinda smiled. “I never said that. I said before the quingenium was over.”
”There is no such word. I have read enough Latin to know.”
“It is the half of millennium. It means half thousand. If you can count I shall present you a year. Anno Domini 1500.”
“That year has no relevance to me,” the king laughed and waved her away with his right hand.
Lucinda walked up to her brother again, Reficule constantly following her obediently. “We are playing for keeps here, Alex. This is more than just a sibling quibble. If I win, I win for real.”
Alexander’s expression was one of confusion. What is with the year 1500?”
“By then, one of us will rule what we know as reality.”
”We will all be dead by then.”
She lifted her right index finger and shook it. “Your cute little princess won’t want to refrain from little cuties hopping in palace grass.”
Belinda pointed at Lucinda. “They will all relish in walking over your face.”
“Good Day to you, Sir! How about if I walk over your face?” Lucinda leaned over, laughing, and it was obvious that she enjoyed this. “Lucifer and I want some little ones one day. Besides, he has more potential and a variation of assets to offer than most men with two... That is beside the point. I am talking a negotiation here. I offer your father a real challenge and then he can see how you deal with it. If he wins, you will never see me again. Believe me, he will not be able to win this, I will give your country a make-over it will never survive.”
“Your threats have never ever amounted to scratch.”
“Not so fast, brother. Remember, I have a business to attend to. You have a country to run, a wedding to organize. I am here on errands. You see, when I thought of taking revenge I could not just blow your palace up into smithereens or kill a few of your citizens. Killing you slowly would be more fun, I gathered.”
She took out a bottle full of green, foggy liquid that seemed to entail some dancing spirits.
She opened up the cork and set them free, all the time she was smiling. The spirits oozed out of the bottle and were white.
There was a green fog in the room.
The fog spread slowly and surely from the bottle onto the floor and into the floorboards and up the legs of the tables and into the open mouths of the surprised spectators. The entire hall was soon full of the green fog. All that anyone could see was Lucinda’s glowing eyes and the green smoke.
As the hall turned all green and foggy, dancing, dreamy ghouls circling the gilded mahogany hall, the royally unwanted bitch recited a poem that obviously had been self created:

"THREE PLAGUES SHALL STRIKE YOUR LAND:
ONE FOR THE ARMIES THAT WILL MAKE IMMORALITY GRAND,
THE SECOND FOR THE DECIET OF YOUR NEAREST FRIENDS,
THE THIRD IS A TALE THAT NEVER ENDS.
WHEN THINGS IN YOUR KINGDOM GET OUT OF HAND,
YOU SHALL WISH THAT YOU WERE KING OF ANOTHER LAND.
ONE IS FOR THE WEAPON THAT LIES IN YOUR SOUL,
ONE FOR THE HEALTH THAT IS CHARON'S GOAL,
THE THIRD FOR YOUR DAUGHTER AND HER BELOVED STEVE ,
ONE FOR THE ROAD THAT WILL MAKE ONE OF US LEAVE.
BELINDA WILL DIE AND THE WOUND WILL FESTER,
THIS IS THE GIFT OF LUCINDA YOUR SISTER."

The crowd dared not say a thing, least of all Alex.
"Remember: one for the weapon, one for the health and one for the road."
She looked at Belinda and pursed her lips, half-closing her eyes.

“True to my fashion I come uninvited.
I spit on your face and keep you excited.
You stop for my lecture and next it comes.
I state it, I leave it where it festers on plums.
If I bored you, my lovelies, then I hope you nap well.
If I tickled your fancy then I’ll see you in hell!”

She turned around and bowed, walked to the middle of room and stopped under the hole she had made. She watched Alex and smiled. The woman crashed through the roof again creating her own thermal centrifuge, repairing every single damage, taking with her the green ghosts and even clearing the fat drummer's wounds. There was a big flash and she was gone, every trace of her presence eradicated. There was not a word spoken and no trace that Lucinda had ever been there.

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