Book - At The Gate By Dimitrije Ignjatovic

At the Gate By Dimitrije Ignjatovic

DIMITRIJE IGNJATOVIC

At the Gate

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At the Gate By Dimitrije Ignjatovic

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To the children of the future, whom we may or may not have, but if we have them, to defend them from evil by exposing it to what is left of our children, from Dimitrije Ignjatovic

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Preface This is a novel that tells the story of the melancholy Lucia wanting to become an heir to the Throne of Poleceny. Hopefully it will expose my taste towards matters, as I said in the preface of The Lost Past, gothic, perchance eerie and dream-like. I use a style in impersonation of Walpole’s, oft using thou and liberal research into Italian names. Yet I write for children. But my style still is the exact opposite of Walpole’s at the same time. Whilst there is the liberal use of thou, as in the poor Ode to a Skylark by the pastiche-churning Percy Bysshe Shelley, in this Tale, there will be bombast, for bombast did make an Elizabethan man ‘loffe’. The emotional reflection will be poor and not quite according to the Four Humours. It will be a bit too bombastic for the modern gothic tastes. Here one should forget old stories and parables. However, one shall not be told anything about faith, but throughout the story there will be hidden piety. I think we can all learn from this book – it has what modern high fantasy and modern sword-and-sorcery fantasy, a.k.a. low fantasy don’t have – the trait that should still live, expressed in one word: Piety. Dimitrije Ignjatovic

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The Throne of Poleceny Manfredo was a Count of Poleceny, and he had everything in life. He perchance took his reign as a Count too seriously – so he was cruel and he pitied no one. He was the cruellest Count that ever ruled Poleceny. Whoever came into his castle had no defence: when one stole a loaf of bread to feed his starveling family, he could already fear that the Count will take him to the dungeon. But there was one thing he lamented – he didn’t have an heir. He had an only daughter Lucia, but she could not be an heir as ‘countesses were not usual in Poleceny’. But Lucia admired the first Countess of Poleceny, named Annalisa, for her achievements as a Countess, and Lucia has therefore desired to be a Countess and went that far as to dream of ruined castles beside new, glimmering ones; candles in the Count’s castle going out; strange visions of the castle’s basement as a dungeon, with many people imprisoned inside, barely held alive; skeletons all over the same dungeon and other rather eerie visions, and when she would wake up, she could recount those dreams just as vividly as if she saw these horrors for real. As Lucia’s wish could not be fulfilled, she withdrew into an eccentric, melancholy personality. She started wearing black, and her voice became cracked, at times sounding almost as if her vocal cords were about to snap, her face became pallid – in dark, lit by a single candle, she reflected in poems about the meaninglessness of human life and even started to mock death – sometimes in iambic pentameter; sometimes in the alexandrine; or in the famous seven-syllable style oft used by men for railing at women and chiding them, rather than writing normal love poems – she railed like no woman before her; her handwriting became overall more similar to Wintersreich’s black letter. The more Manfredo watched his poor Lucia degenerate into almost an eidolon of oddity, the cooler he was with her – further and further removed from her.

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‘Come thou into my working esture, Lucia,’ he said coldly. O cruel fate-spurner! She followed Manfredo down the corridor, then down the stairs, then through the room of shields to the left, which was a long hallway that led straight into Manfredo’s working room. Manfredo was awaiting her there. ‘Thine abhominal behaviour hath led me to think that thou art devising something.’ ‘But father – ’ ‘That is Count Manfredo for thee from now on!’ shouted Manfredo angrily. ‘C-Count Manfredo,’ Lucia stammered, ‘you are incorrect. I am still a Human.’ ‘A mad one!’ screamed Manfredo, madder than before. ‘Count Manfredo,’ said Lucia, regaining her temper, ‘I have but one behest – I – I want to be the heir to the Throne of Poleceny.’ ‘That meaneth losing the Name of Aconi,’ said Manfredo, calming down, but retaining his anger, ‘and I want not to risk it.’ ‘That is an unreasonable fear.’ ‘No, no and no! I do not want a daughter! I disherit thee from now on!’ ‘But Count Manfredo, mine heritage is very small – ’ ‘Was very small, ingrate! Begone, ingrate knave!’ Lucia said nothing. She just went to her room. She silently set down verse in the famous, chiding style of bards she heard singing at inns where Manfredo celebrated various occasions, melancholy in humour, but still affectedly maintaining the same railing style: O, through Forests I have gadded, To my sadness I have added. When I thought my Love was o’er – Thou hast come yearning for more. Before thee I can barely say ’t – My Love for thee doth abate.

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She stopped for a while. She has lost her track of thoughts. Then she continued, but in a different style, an alexandrine style completely revealing what she thinks. I am a sad Spright if ye can call me thus – But if ye do move me, I’m periculous. And through my Mind’s silence my home I wander, Many sights disturbing have I seen down under: Those that I imprisoned for my Peoples good, Not giving them to drink, nor giving any Food. I repent, O I repent: I will free them, bless, O when I do: when I become Cometess. When she saw what she wrote, she hid the roll of parchment, so no one notices her mind is uneven. She looked out the window – it was the dead of the night. She wasn’t ready for sleep, so she decided to stay awake, and explore the castle – if somehow her dreams were true.

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The Secret Behind Manfredo Lucia exited her room into the dark hallway. The moonshine illuminated the whole main-foyer somewhat, but not enough, so that one really had to squint in order to see what is around him. She sneaked further, trying hard not to make any noise. The shields on the wall opposite the wall beside the hallway she was walking looked horrifying when unlit. Above them was the armour one could, in the dark, think it was made for a skeleton – the moonshine illuminated it thus. She descended the entrance stairs and carefully went into the second room to the right, thus opposite the room of shields and Manfredo’s room. There was a long, narrow staircase in the room. The staircase was lit by a series of torches above her, so she closed the door to it. At length she reached a room. It was a big, lit rectangular room with seven doors. She was in this room before. She knew where six of the seven doors lead. She decided to try the seventh door. Quietly she opened the mysterious seventh door, and in turn found the room behind it unlit, therefore completely dark. She took a four-inch candle, lit it up from a torch that lit the room, and let some hot wax from the candle drip onto a small saucer from the dinner table in the centre; then she put the candle onto the hot wax and thus she got the candle attached to the saucer. She took another candle from the table, but didn’t light it or attach it to the saucer. Just for stock. As she descended the stairs she found various monstrous engravings glaring out at her. She tried to comfort herself. The stairs were not cleaned for long and were therefore thickly covered with dirt. When Lucia reached the bottom, O what a surprise for her! The whole of this cellar was a dungeon in which almost every other cell was occupied by a skeleton, and in the cell further away, to the further parts of the dungeon,

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she noticed someone wailing. When she neared him, she noticed that he was in shackles, and almost dying from undernourishment. ‘I hear thee, Count,’ he said, with the voice of an old man. ‘Even though I’m blind from the treatment thou givest me, I can still hear thee.’ ‘It is I, Lucia,’ said Lucia in a hushed voice. ‘It’s still the same, Countess Lucia. Ye Counts are all of the same sort. Villains, each just as evil as the other.’ ‘Thou art wrong, I am disinherited – yet I would free thee, if I could.’ ‘My Lady, thanks in advance, but as thou canst see, I am dying right here. Please ... let me die here.’ Lucia pitied this prisoner whose death was his last wish. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, ‘I will never forget thee.’ She ran away, out of the dungeon and up the stairs. She extinguished the candle and put it on the table. She closed the dungeon’s door, the seventh door whose secret she now revealed. Then she went up the lit stairs and to the main-foyer. She closed the door, so nobody could suspect she was trespassing. She then left up the entrance stairs, up the hallway and into her room. Then, when she went to bed, she was sound asleep before she could say ‘dungeon’.

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Manfredo Stands Guard Lucia’s everyday ventures into the mysterious dungeons behind the mysterious seventh door continued for a month. She was never kinder to Count Manfredo, whom she long since stopped thou-ing, and to him she pretended she knew nothing about the dungeon behind the seventh door in the chamber to the left of the entrance; in some way, she managed to silence the passion of her mind and she didn’t even hint her suppressed wish to become Countess in her poems: all the way, a steady, railing, chiding seven-syllable style. However, she still wore black, and her voice was still cracked as if she hasn’t slept since Manfredo disinherited her. But Manfredo constantly hinted that Lucia was insane the whole time. One day, Lucia was left in the castle alone as Manfredo went for an afternoon nap. However, he told Lucia, ‘I’m leaving to sleep for the afternoon – and touch thou not anything!’ But she decided to break that order. Lucia pretended to walk around the castle until Manfredo was out of sight. Then she entered Manfredo’s working room, and opened his diary on the table. It opened on the last entry. She read the shocking details. My daughter Lucia, who wanteth to become Cometess of Poleceny, is now becoming a Lunatic. She weareth black, e’en her voice hath changed since I disinherited her a Month ago. She sheweth all the Signs of Melancholy. From Now on I shall, I will, watch her Day and Night to protect my treasure from her Lunacy. Lucia stopped reading. Does that villain truly think she is a lunatic? A lunatic couldn’t have discovered the mystery of the seventh door a month ago. Night soon fell; Lucia was sent to bed; but she decided to find a way past Manfredo, and she left her room. There were no torches burning, probably only to catch her off

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guard, but Manfredo was standing in the entrance room as she hid behind the pillars that were supporting the handrail. She watched on as Manfredo pointed angrily up the staircase, but nowhere in particular. ‘I know thou art there, villain!’ he screamed. ‘Come thou out!’ Lucia didn’t reply. Manfredo exited to Lucia’s left, into the room next to his working room, his cape sliding quietly behind him. He then muttered something about prisoners calming down once they have been in the dungeons for long. Lucia knew this room had seven doors in it, too, and one of them had to lead into another dungeon – he probably heard some shackle-clanking from there. A new prisoner? It’s times like this Manfredo is of extremely cranky temper, and Lucia knew that very well. When Manfredo was out of sight, Lucia went down the stairs, quickly and without a noise. As she opened the door of the hallway to the room of seven doors, she heard Manfredo coming back, so she quickly entered the room and closed the door completely. Uh-oh! The door emitted a little creak. She ran down the hallway to the room of seven doors, whose illumination torches were still burning, and the room was awaiting her untouched. Just as she lit the four-inch candle from the illuminating torch, as she usually did, she heard Manfredo’s voice. ‘Lucia!’ Manfredo bellowed. She ran up the stairs again, taking the candle with her as an alibi, and opened the door to meet up with Manfredo. ‘Where hast thou been?!’ Manfredo cried out at her. ‘I j—just wanted to check your treasure in the Treasury.’ she said, trying to sound natural. ‘And steal some?!’ Manfredo screamed. ‘N—no.’ ‘Get thee to bed,’ hissed Manfredo. Lucia obeyed him. When she was in bed, she quickly fell asleep. She dreamed uneasily of the prisoner, whose skeletal face now looked pleading. Then his head melted into that of Count Manfredo, saying, ‘Get thee out of my castle.’

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Manfredo Regrets Winter’s gusts blew stronger and stronger as the harvesting period of the Autumn long has ended. Inside the castle it was pleasantly warm as it started snowing outside. Lucia was getting bored, leaving her bedroom only to eat. She showed extreme signs of melancholy and depression. Her desire to flee the Castle of Poleceny was forming on and off, but in midwinter it was fully formed by her dream of Count Manfredo banishing her from the castle. Lucia put on her black fur cape, took out a scroll of parchment, one of her very ink-stained quills, and a bottle of ink. She wrote a note to her father. Dear Father, Count Manfredo, I’m not suffering from ne Melancholy ne Lunacy – neither of mine humours is astray. What I am experiencing is Sorrow – Sorrow in that, you might have been so mad with Power, you have become cruel to everyone, including your daughter. How would you live without her? She took the note, then went downstairs, sneaked up into Manfredo’s working room, and left the note there. She quietly opened the front door and exited the castle. As she closed the front door, it creaked. She went out through the castle gate into the streets, partially closing the gate. Then, Manfredo awoke from his nap and left his bedroom. Seeing his working room’s door partially open, he ran downstairs, screaming, ‘Villain! I have an intruder in my castle! Lucia! Get thee down quick! And bring a partisan!’ He ran into his working room with his partisan-spear, screaming, ‘Lucia!’ and he was most surprised when he found his working room empty. He found the note on the table and read it.

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‘Lucia!’ he screamed. Finally realising what has happened, Manfredo started to chide himself for what he has done. She would not accept her father good-for-granted? he thought. Am I, Count Manfredo of Poleceny, that evil in my quintessence? No he isn’t. ‘Come, happy dagger, stab through my heart of evil,’ he said, and pulled out his dagger and directed it towards his heart. But he changed his mind. He opened his diary, and turning the pages, he found one word – ‘Lunatic’. He used his dagger to cut out the word. Then he turned out the diary for every appearance of ‘Lunacy’ or anything similar, and cut all the words out. Remembering, Lackaday; what is done cannot be undone, he ran back into his bedroom, leaving his dagger behind. He was crying into his bed. He heard almost as if the birds nearby twittered, syllable by syllable, ‘The one whose soul is plagued will confess his secrets to the deaf pillow.’

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Manfredo Adopts An Orphan Manfredo listened to the sentence deep into the night. Manfredo could no longer stand the derision of the sentence, as he found it making sense if applied to him, so he dressed and went downstairs. He waited. It’s of no use, he thought, to stand here in the hall. I want to do something to atone for mine abhominal, horrible mistake. He went outside. The air was fresh and cold. His garden had two eagle statues, and three fountains adorned with statues of skylarks. The strong winter wind swung the gate’s wings back and forth; yet he couldn’t help thinking that he sees someone at the far end. ‘Lucia,’ he lamented, ‘mine heir! I repent for my cruelty!’ He fell to his knees, saying, ‘Alack; thou art forever gone. I was blinded by power.’ However, no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn’t help noticing the shadowy figure outside the gate. He sneaked carefully towards it; it wasn’t moving. It was just shivering, cramped partly from the cold. He daringly proceeded out through the gate, and faced the figure. It turned out to be a poor abandoned boy, about eight years old, in a dirty white tunic. He had blond hair, and a round face; his eyes were a cold grey that showed traces of green. ‘Good day, young lad; wherefore art thou shuddering?’ said Manfredo. ‘My name is Cesare, and you are ... ?’ he asked in a hoarse voice that didn’t suit him. ‘I am Count Manfredo Aconi of Poleceny. Wherefore art thou shuddering? ‘Oh! Sire – may I call you sire? – I’m shuddering because I have no home, my parents have abandoned me. And even erst have I lived in poverty.’ ‘Marry thou art in t’ right, and I want to take thee to my castle. From now on, I shall adopt thee as mine heir. It is thou wilt rule Poleceny when I die. I shall adopt thee as

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mine heir to atone for what I have done, and to express my pity for thee.’ Count Manfredo and young Cesare went through the gate, then through the yard, and then they entered the castle.

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Lucia Wanders The Land Two months has Lucia wandered throughout the land of Poleceny, while Cesare was taught manners and politics. Two months have passed since Count Manfredo Aconi of Poleceny decreed that an adopted orphan can be an heir to the Polecenian throne. She came by a home in the town of Acerbia, which was not far from the chief city. The moon illuminated the earth, and the snow left over from the winter, a ghostly blue. Lucia knocked at the logcabin’s mouldy wooden door. ‘Well met, sweet Mistress,’ said the patron. ‘Gramercy, well met,’ replied Lucia. ‘Marry how grey is your mercy, sweet Mistress, to the same gramercy of melancholy it leadeth!’ the patron joked as Lucia entered. They must be scholars, Lucia conjectured. ‘Will it not make thee laugh if I said I am of royal blood?’ asked Lucia politely. ‘You are the disinherited Lucia Aconi of Poleceny?’ asked the patron, surprised. ‘Nay you shall stay with me a guest; you have entered, so you shall. Besides, my name’s Domenico.’ Soon Lucia was introduced to every member of the house. They accepted her very well. The youngest son, Gustavo, about the age of eight, was very friendly towards her. Domenico gave her books to read, and all was well. But as days passed by, Lucia withdrew further into melancholy, she couldn’t sleep at night. As months passed, from this insomnia she became thin, and her skin, once so healthy with cared life, became so pallid, she looked more of a spectre than a Countess. Her lustrous, curly blond hair now fell limply down to her waist like hay. Her voice, once so melodious, was getting still more cracked, revealing her insomnia most strikingly. Her blue eyes, once merry and

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healthy, now had blackish circles under them. Her habit of wearing black only seemed to emphasize her condition. Eftsoons, the family saw her through the room they gave her. She was weeping loudly – it was the noise of her weeping that conjured their attention – and writing a poem in the iambic pentameter. If I, as well I said, am a sad Spright, By Day I do sleep, and I weep by Night. Methinks these are Humours, and I will methinks guess: These Humours have struck me if I become Cometess. They had to interrupt her. They asked her what she was doing, and she just said, ‘Go ye away!’ ‘Why?’ asked the patron. When he read what she wrote, he got angry at her, but he told her nothing.

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Lucia Atones Gustavo asked Lucia the very next morning, hitting on the wrong spot, ‘Why are you sad enough not to come out of bed when breakfast is served?’ Lucia sighed, ‘If only thou wouldst know, esquire to the wrong Count ... there is ne Love ne Life ne family link left any-more to lift my humours as is the throne of Poleceny ... a life I am destin’d for.’ Gustavo was thunderstruck. Lucia knew why: it was a long-cherished custom in this region of Poleceny to train up children so they be satisfied with what they are. That was why no overthrowing count ever hailed from Acerbia. Acerbians called such ambitious persons ‘malapert’, and were not ashamed at offending them. ‘Thou malapert cut-empire!’ Gustavo’s voice rose. ‘I’ll tell my father!’ He ran off. Lucia knew that instant what they were going to do. In a mere twenty minutes of struggle, she was expelled from the cabin. She walked off to the street, hiding from people who did not recognise her at all. She was wont to mockeries like this one during her wanderings; had she not told Domenico she was of royal blood when she first entered the cabin of the scholarly family that now think she is an empire-thief, she would undoubtedly be accepted worse than a boil, a plague-sore, or an embossed carbuncle. Seven years like this have passed, and still she went from home to home, from town to town, and she has been called a cutpurse, a high-stomached recreant mongrel, and a curst-tongued tosspot. Even inexperienced children scorned her, thinking her a traitor – to them, thought Lucia, traitors were as easy as hide fox, and all after: they should have seen Count Manfredo shackle the spy, take out his sword and in a slash of it, the spy’s head falls off his shoulders. The mnemonic imagery made Lucia shudder. No home would fit her and her longsuppressed needs. Her sorrow made her deteriorate more.

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The more she deteriorated, and the more branches tore her black dress, the more it was, that even adults considered her a spy; so she hid in forests, but even there, there were rude children, who would poke fun at her slim outline, gaunt face and traitorous countenance, yet she hid, and walked on, not knowing where, not knowing why, not knowing who she is; yet some force in her carried her where she wants to go with ease. It seemed, that she knew all the forest paths – no matter how much she craved to be home, no matter how much she desired to go away from the hand of Man, no matter how much she was depressed into an antic disposition almost bordering with true madness – it seemed, that she let strong emotions of scorn flow through her like water through a wild river, forsaking all of her that is Manfredo. Whether she wanted so or not, the forest path led her out of the forest, through a city full of children, and to her home castle – the castle of Poleceny – flag lowered, unguarded, with black decorations.

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Lucia’s Return A great crowd had gathered round the castle, and Lucia knew it could mean no good. Lucia was the first to enter the castle, past the gate, the skylark-statue-adorned fountains that were now extinguished, and the two familiar eagle statues. O the eagle statues! She had run many times behind them when she was a child; she hid behind them long ago, when she played hide fox, and all after; she drew in chalk the Polecenian coat-of-arms on both of their bases, and each of her attempts is now washed away – after such acts of vandalism, Count Manfredo would chide her and threaten her with the dungeon – she never took him seriously. All the candles in the entrance hall of the Castle of Poleceny were covered with green glass, to fill the room with a sickly green light. Lucia knew, right when she entered the castle, that something is amiss. She went into Count Manfredo’s working room. No one was there, but it was lit with the same sickly green light. ‘Count Manfredo?’ she asked. No one answered. ‘Father?’ she called desperately. Silence. She went to her room. It was empty. Her revealing poem she hid, in which all her hidden rage lay, was untouched. She called again. No one answered. She went, then, into Count Manfredo’s bedroom, which was opposite hers. There she found Count Manfredo on his deathbed; four guards, and a youth she did not know, were tending him. ‘Halt,’ the youth stopped Lucia. ‘Why have you come?’ ‘Do not be rude towards her ... Cesare,’ said Manfredo in a dying man’s whisper. ‘She is Lucia Aconi, my true daughter. Come, Lucia: I regret about all I have done to thee.’ As Cesare withdrew, Lucia proceeded. ‘And I forgive,’ she said, shedding not a tear. She embraced Manfredo with might and main, kissing him on the forehead. Released from Lucia’s embrace, Count Manfredo blinked. The whole castle fell silent.

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‘Lucia,’ Manfredo whispered, ‘I am dying, and I regret for disinheriting thee. I give thee back the throne of Poleceny.’ At these words, Manfredo died. It was only then that Lucia truly wept. The four guards took Manfredo’s body away for to be buried, and called other guards to coronate Lucia. When the crown fell on Lucia’s head, Lucia cast off her absurd melancholy; and when the coronation was over and Lucia was led to Manfredo’s working room, she proclaimed Cesare, who was left without heirloom, her Lord Chamberlain. As we leave these merry rulers, you may wonder, What is the point of all this? One should never hate; never scorn; and think about what the true effects of what he has done will be, before he manages to cut thread and thrum of Life.

The End