The Forgotten Princess

°•○Four○•°

"We believe..." Ines spoke on a sigh, as if she was about to say something perfectly unbelievable or crazy.

Her eyes, seeking her husband's look for support, confirmed Leon's impression-- what he was about to hear would not be easy to comprehend.

"Please. I need to know everything," he begged, letting his eyes roam around the large office. It felt like... they were not alone. Someone was watching them intently, impatiently, someone who had had enough of being lonely and invisible.

Ines laced her fingers through her husband's, took a deep breath, and started again. "If I didn't think you are the one she's looking for, whom she had been waiting for for so long, I wouldn't be telling you any of this. As I've already told you, the lady in the picture is Elisabetta von Habsburg."

Leon only nodded, hoping she would give him more information. That was quite a common name in the noble families of Europe. He didn't know too much about history, but he was sure that he knew at least two different princesses or queens carrying that name from books and films.

As if she could read his thoughts, Ines added, "Our Elisabetta is the medieval one, there's no doubt about it seeing how the dress she wears in the picture is fashioned, and by the age of the paints and the canvas she's painted on. She was orphaned at an early age and spent her childhood in the court of her grandfather, Emperor Frederick III. She was also one of the only three remaining grandchildren of Emperor Sigmund and thus had a strong claim to the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. That made her an attractive bride for a Polish prince... But then the rumours about her legitimacy started and spread like wildfire, and Prince Casimir never proposed to her after all."

Ines trailed off, her eyes strolling towards the window momentarily. It was starting to rain outside, Leon noticed as he waited for her to continue the story. Her words were riveting, and the more she told him, the more he felt impatient... for himself, or rather some past version of himself to appear in the tale.

"I wish he had proposed, sometimes... Maybe her life would have been happier... But then again, if she had married Casimir and had been whisked off to Poland to become his queen, she would never have met the love of her life, her painter..." Ines muttered, her words only a little louder than the sound of rain now pelting the window.

Leon's breath caught, and Ines looked at him enquiringly, but he only shook his head. He had nothing to say so far; he needed time to understand his crazy emotions, and he needed to hear Lis' whole story to... start... remembering.

"In the end, instead of being sent to Poland in glory, she was hidden here in shame. She was forced to marry an unimportant princeling, the owner of the old castle that stood here before Neuschwanstein was built upon its ruin."

Hans shifted in his seat, drawing Leon's attention. "I'm sorry," he apologised for interrupting the tale. "I just know this story by heart and don't like this part. But please, Ines, continue. I'll behave."

Ines smiled at him before she continued, the unconvincing, tremulous smile unable to banish the sadness from her eyes. "Prince Fridrich was an awful man. He wasn't rich, and all the money he had he used on drink, and women, you name it. So, Elisabetta, coming to live here with him from the decency and comfort of the emperor's court, found herself in a sort of hell upon earth. And she wasn't happy, not until she met her husband's painter. See, art was another thing Fridrich couldn't afford and yet couldn't resist."

Leon nodded. He meant to ask Ines how come she knew so much about some unimportant medieval princeling, but the longer she spoke, whether her information was coming from myths, fairy tales or local legends, the stronger her words felt like memories. He was starting to recall some things-- a drunk man staggering towards him as he sketched two scarcely dressed women lying in his bed, the same man forcing him to drink with him until sunrise, an... orgy lasting an entire night and the following day... And his beautiful Lis... who always hid when her husband had visitors, unless he forced her to attend his parties, in which case she would stay until he got drunk enough to forget about her...

"We know nothing about the painter. He only really appears in the legends about the old castle, and until we found the two paintings, Elisabetta's portrait and his self-portrait, the one that is missing now, we thought he was just a figment of the people's imagination. But he was as real of any of them, he's just much harder to trace in history as he seems to have come from nowhere and only signed the two paintings. And not even by his name, but by a tiny drawing of a golden lion seated upon an islet surrounded by a lake. We call him Löve. According to the legends, he killed himself after Fridrich murdered Elisabetta... but not before he killed the prince for what he had done."

Leon swallowed hard and closed his eyes as he suddenly felt the air whoosh around him... he remembered the fall. He had jumped off the tallest tower of the old castle. He had chosen not to live without her.

"Löve. Lion. A lion surrounded by a lake. Leon du Lac," he muttered, his voice barely audible through the sound of rain falling against the window pane.

Hans stood up even as Leon reopened his eyes, walked towards a small fridge the artist hadn't noticed until then, and returned with bottles of water for all of them.

"So... the painter and Elisabetta were secret lovers," Leon said after he took a long drink, the cool, sparkling liquid helping to clear his mind a little.

"From what I know, yes. Fridrich wasn't in love with his wife, he didn't care about how she spent her days until he apperently realised that it would be convenient to get her pregnant, because of her connection to the emperor."

"He raped her. He raped her more than once and there was nothing I could do about it, she wouldn't let me, she was afraid that he would kill me if I tried to interfere," Leon said through gritted teeth, crushing the half empty plastic bottle in his hands. The sudden memory caused him near physical pain.

Ines gasped but collected herself fast. "Please, go on," she encouraged.

Leon took a deep breath and shook his head. "It's still very unclear. I don't know what exactly happened on the night she was killed. Knowing her," he smiled melanchonically at his choice of words, he really knew her, he had known her as well as he had known himself once, "she just might have told him that the child was most likely not his when he found out she was pregnant. She wouldn't have been lying; there was a high chance Fridrich wasn't the father."

He looked between the couple, then dropped his eyes to the crushed bottle in his hands, feeling half awkward and half embarrassed by this confession of something his past self had been a part of centuries ago. It was mind-boggling, and the worst was still to come.

"I held her in my arms as she exhaled for the last time. He had stabbed her and let her bleed out while he returned to his guests. And I killed him at daybreak in a duel and then... I ended my own life. I didn't want to live without her."

Ines seemed stunned into silence for a long while, and Leon didn't rush her. He allowed her to collect her thoughts as she leaned against Hans, and he wrapped an arm around her.

"Elisabetta is here," she said finally. "Her ghost, I mean. Somehow, she took this castle as hers when it was built around the tower, the tallest tower of the castle which had stood here before, the only remaining part miraculously untouched by the passage of time, centuries of abandon, and thus worth preserving..."

"My tower," Leon said matter-of-factly. It made sense to him that she would have stayed here, tied to the place where so much had occurred. It didn't make sense why he hadn't stayed with her, though.

"I hear her laugh sometimes, but more often she cries," Ines went on. "I suppose even after all the years since this castle stands here, obliterating hers, it feels alien to her. She must feel lost and lonely... I... had a feeling she had been looking for something, someone, I could perceive her presence much stronger recently, as if she knew he was finally coming for her..."

She looked at Leon hopefully, her eyes pleading, asking, 'Is it really you?'

"May I, please, spend the night in the castle... alone with her?" he muttered, feeling overwhelmed, not trusting his voice.