Operation Augustine

[Eryane 3698]

Spoiler

 

OPERATION AUGUSTINE

"When you are a mother, you are never alone in your thoughts."

 

1849

The Duchess of Furnestock woke in the midst of the night with only an hour of sleep. That singular hour had been the most significant amount of time in weeks she dedicated to the endeavor that is resting. Since her first footstep upon Almaris soil, she had refrained from eating. Anastasia claimed it was fasting and a display of her piety, and perhaps some of it was. The strength she was required to display in the face of the world would not allow her a moment’s respite; she could show no weakness. 

 

Yet each time her eyes clamped shut in hopes of acquiring a moment’s slumber, or even amidst her prayer in the San Luciano cathedral, the faces of her children as they left Ulyssa port haunted her. These faces had been frozen. Catherine was five years old; scared, trembling, yet stalwart for the little princess who was being sent off by her parents to attend to her title’s royal duties. This was a falsity of the mind, a trick, for her cheeks likely hadn’t remained as chubby and her auburn brown hair had grown in length. Victoria clutched a wooden sword as if it had been Anastasia’s own hand - she could see it still, she could see it always. Peter outlined the embodiment of royalty, as much as could be possibly exhibited in a child. 

 

Anastasia tossed in her bed sharply, as if an assassin entered her private chamber in the Palazzo Aggarde and twisted a serrated knife into her stomach. Her throat constrained as guilt strangled her and suffocated her of any air. She prayed that their eyes still remained the same; their big, beautiful eyes full of wonder and excitement; joy and happiness - and horror, abandonment, as the ship continuously left when each child was of age. 

 

They are in the palace, her consciousness reminded her with temptation. They are in the Augustine. 

 

Sweat poured into her palms and anxiety rushed through her bones. Whilst Philip slept at her side, Anastasia slipped the covers and blankets off of her and grabbed a tattered blue robe to cover her nightgown. Her heart sank as Philip stirred.

 

And she released a stiff sigh as he hadn’t woken to the sound of her rustling. She could no longer feel her fingers and wondered how the blonde wig had snugged its way onto her hair, how the cosmetics were horribly plastered onto her face, how she appeared as the handmaiden Angelica without remembering any of her preparation. Feeling came back into her hands, tingling bit by bit until touch was as real as it always had been to her. 

 

Then she was out the door, breathing erratically, unrhythmically, and hadn’t remembered her paces to the grandeur exit that led to the outdoors, where a beautiful garden and the city of San Luciano had been. The buildings looked as if they were from a novel now, painted, rather than a realty as they flashed by. Her heart pounded through her chest and thumped in her ears. By God, she could feel the blood pulsing in her fingertips as she reached for the reins of a horse she stole from the stables. Something had taken over her, an instinctive feeling that she must find her children. They would be held hostage. They would be prisoners. Not my children. Not my children. 

 

Whether the ride had been short or long, she hadn’t known. The unruly men, bandits, she passed on the street had not brought her any worry as she rode past them without a chance to see more than a fast blur of their muddied expressions. My children. Her thoughts were split, barely managing coherent sentences or phrases. The gates of Providence were upon her now as she rode up the stairs that dipped her mind into nostalgia unlike any time before. The pristine, pearl white walls were not as welcoming as they had once been; now they held her children behind them. Now they were an obstacle. A kind woman she could not remember the name of let her inside - let Angelica inside, that is, not the Duchess - where had the horse gone? She moved forward, step after step after step. The streets were longer than she remembered, and greyer. The buildings were taller, the houses were brighter. Or were they duller, grimmer, given what was to occur in only a few saint’s days? 

 

The elongated walls of the imperial palace beckoned into her view. These walls were now the iron bars of a prison, in which it held her children as its hostages. She moved down from the horse and tied it, somewhere - she had not known where, as her feet led her onwards into the courtyard. A red-headed child halted her. 

 

“You look lost!” The little princess exclaimed. Underneath her arm was a book tucked away, and on her face was a beaming smile. Anastasia grasped the shoulders of her child as she rushed forth, frightening the young girl, as the Duchess fell to her knees. 

 

“Katyushka, Katyushka,” the mother cried out in a pained whisper, her fingers tightly holding onto her shoulders still. “We must go. Quiet now. It is me. It’s Mother. I’m home, and Father is too. Come now, let’s go. Where are your siblings?” Confusion sprawled over the princess’s features; happiness, relief — yet confusion more than anything else. 

 

“But Father, he died—”

 

“He is alive, Katya, it was fabricated by your great grandfather—”

 

“We buried him, we had a funeral—”

 

“It was all a lie!” She muttered to her daughter in a hushed voice, yet it raised in intonation as her voice, in her pleas, broke. “Listen, Katya,” she ran her hands over the back of her head, combing desperately through her hair in some attempt to comfort yet with little to provide in her own fears of what was to come and swirling thoughts of the danger ahead. 

 

“What’s going on here?” A courtier approached, seeing the blonde woman grasping onto the royal before her, perhaps with —from a perspective of the unknowing eye— a strange unwillingness to let go. Anastasia froze, her entire body stiffening at the foreign voice behind her. When she rose, she stood upright and proper at the princess’s flank. And she prayed.

 

There was a brief silence, and they could hear the gentle chirp of the insects in the early morning. “We’re going through a night stroll, sir, and I got a bug in my hair,” the child displayed a smile. The man, whatever be his occupation, only offered the two a little nod and continued on. The knees of the duchess crashed into the hard cobble as she lost her balance as soon as there was the sound of a closed door behind her. 

 

“My sweet Katya, I have never needed you to listen to me more than I do now.” The thick smoke that consumed her head began to dissipate and her thoughts came to her in precise sentences rather than jumbled words. “You and your siblings will become hostages, do you understand? You will see your father soon, but we must move quickly.” Disbelief, hesitancy - she could see it all so blatantly displayed on her daughter’s features. As soon as Catherine moved, Anastasia followed in tandem. 

 

Those glittering walls that towered high above had always resembled no more than an illusioned prison, and now the decorative painting of a lie had fallen further from any inkling of respects she may have held. The only detail that was no longer an illusion was the matter of it being a prison, for in fact now it held her children as hostages against the regime. It all passed in subtle blurs in the corners of her eyes, and the deeply red carpet turned to white stairs that echoed each footstep. And with each sounded footstep, she winced. It felt no less than bile that tightened her throat with anxieties. 

 

Catherine opened the doors to the imperial quarters, a part that even the Duchess had never seen throughout her life as the daughter of Princess Helen nor after her marriage to Philip. Perhaps it was the situation that made such secretive apartments have no shine, no godly appearance that marked a regal reign under divine right, or perhaps her views were skewed with desperation to seek out her children and hatred for the population that was suffocated.

 

“Victoria? Peter? James?” Catherine called out, and one by one the three peaked their heads out around the grandeur door. And their eyes widened at the sight of their mother. There was no time for anything more than a short reunion, no time for the warmth of an all-embracing hug that she dreamt of with all her children together. 

 

One was missing. 

 

“Where is Julia?” She asked so quietly, and suddenly that all held back feeling of bile resurfaced. “Where is your sister?” 

 

“She’s away, as a ward,” the little princess, blonde as akin to her grandmother Amadea, voiced. 

 

Anastasia could feel a wobble in her stance, a pressure in the corners of her eyes as she fought tears. A scream was muffled in her throat, suffocated out, until it was nothing. She pressed her shoulders back as though to straighten her posture, resolute, and she gestured the children on. “Let’s go, quickly and quietly now. Not a sound from any of you, and follow me exactly. It’s-”

 

“A game,” the young Catherine chimed in, and Anastasia nodded in assurance.

 

“It’s a game.” 

 

Eyes of the paintings lining the wall stared down at her as she rushed down the steps and across the red carpet once more. The people of the past; relatives, leaders, soldiers - all of them stared at her as if they knew what she and Philip intended to do. Emperors and empresses and archchancellors watched with careful eyes until one by one her children ran from the palace as the prisoners they had become and into the carefully lit night.

 

The crunch of gravel was not alone this time as it was in the approach towards the palace. Now the sounds of little feet shuffling through the pebble paved path coincided with Anastasia’s, and in that sound alone her shoulders drooped. There was one missing from that queue, and in each step she could hear it. Or perhaps it was her imagination that tortured her. The horse would have to be left behind, for there was no way for her to gather all her little ones atop it and the noise - she couldn’t risk it. She untied it, hastily, to at least be free of its bindings. 

 

Leaving felt simple; she gathered her children and walked now as she saw no guards in sight. It was strange, to never see a soldier of the Imperial State Army about, and to see the streets so desolate. Never were they empty at dark; the setting of the sun hadn’t an effect on the city’s liveliness. She gathered Victoria under one arm, and Peter on the other. Catherine tailed close and James wandered a little further until the eldest of the lot gathered him back in. The gates remained open, and out they stepped on their long journey through the early morning and into the sun’s rise. 

 

It was picturesque when the sky was gently painted in light reds and oranges that stroked the rippled clouds and shimmered over them in a warm blanket as the sun crawled higher. Tiredness caught in her throat, as it did the children, yet they still walked along that quiet road with quiet yawns and slow steps. Home, where they would at last reunite with their father, not a gravestone, and to meet the youngest of the family; Anna, and the newborn Frederick.

 

 

Spoiler

This is some old writing I had started working on back in January or so that I saw in my folder and wanted to finish up now for fun. Hope you all enjoy, I may write some more excerpts later on!

 

Please feel free to respond in what may be fitting to your character, or a past character, as this post is simply for some fun creative writing :]

 

[valecu 2128]

Carolina Luisa would recall of the events prior to the Aster Revolution and her friend the Empress Anastasia, as both continued their tradition of drinking tea even in the Seven Skies. 

[Franczhiz 4437]

Spoiler

 

 

From the Seven Skies, Joseph Clement Sarkozic; the Baron-Emeritus of Pompourelia recalled the events in the Aster Revolution. In his mind, came the quote of his late mother-in law Anastasia I to mind when she announced the official initiation of the Revolution. "Rally the Faithful"