The Blue Book Affair: Prologue

[twistdfateangel]

 Title: The Blue Book Affair--The Startling Death of Lara Antonovna Rubina
Fandoms: The Man from UNCLE/Sapphire and Steel
Canon Characters: None Yet
Summary: It all began at an ending...
Warnings: Alluded Gore, Religious Themes That Some May Find Uncomfortable
Disclaimers: I own neither Man from UNCLE or Sapphire and Steel. Certain themes are loosely based on the works of Margaret Starbird. None of this actually happened. Hopefully, none of it ever will.

 

Prologue

It was in the winter of 1860, in St. Petersburg, when Miss Lara Antonovna Rubina died screaming. The Tsar was still master of all the Russias. Ladies still murmured about poetry and music in drawing rooms, while gentlemen smoked and argued politics and science in studies. A world away, an adolescent country was tearing itself to bloody, stinking shreds. But, in a nursery in one of the city's finest neighborhoods, Madame Rubina was singing to her nine-year-old niece as the snow fell through the black of night.

Little Elizaveta was unwell, the family would say. She was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, with a brilliant smile and no fear of strangers or death. But, she rarely spoke. She hated to be held. She had trouble looking people in the eye and a savage way of lashing out at people. “Madness,” the doctors would say, and would recommend sanitariums. But, her parents couldn't bear it. Their only child couldn't be sent away to one of those dreadful places. Lara fought just as hard, and had all but replaced the girl's nursemaid and governesses. All the better, because “Aunt Lara” understood Elizaveta much better than anyone. Elizaveta's madness was a gift from God.

“No fire-gazing, tonight, milka,” said Aunt Lara, “it's very late, now.” Truth was, it wasn't yet 6:00. But, her sister and brother-in-law had asked her to join them at the opera that evening and she couldn't refuse. Yet, her hands trembled as she tucked Elizaveta in. She had just enough time to finish translating page 53, though the thought was tinged with bitterness. At times, the translation work was soothing, sometimes, exhilarating. But, lately, it felt like a damned nuisance. In fact, it was beginning to feel downright impious. But, the benefits, she told herself, never forget the benefits! In the end, you will enlighten not just yourself and your patron, but all of mankind!

She sat a small distance away at the worktable, while the nursemaid, sat by the bed and read her Bible by candlelight. The domesticity of it all brightened the near-eternal smile on Lara's face as she reached for...

“Auntie,” said Elizaveta, “please, don't read from the Blue Book tonight!”

Lara stopped and looked over at the tiny girl, who sat bolt upright in her bed. One chubby hand reached out, warding off an invisible force. The other arm had wrapped tightly around her stuffed rabbit, squeezing its throat so tightly, the head threatened to pop off.

“Please, Auntie,” she cried again, “don't read from the Blue Book! Please! Please!”

The nursemaid reached out to hold and soothe Elizaveta, but drew back a scratched and bleeding wrist.

“Elizaveta, milka,” Lara rushed back to her niece's bedside, “hush, now! It's only a book I'm translating. Books can't hurt anyone!”

“It's gone mad, Auntie! The Blue Knight! He's gone mad and he'll kill you! Don't read the book, Auntie! Please!”

“Elizaveta?”

Lara's sister, Anna was framed in the doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown. “Elizaveta, you should be asleep, my dear one!”

“Mama, please! Please, don't let Aunt Lara read from the Book! Oh, please, make her stop!” Elizaveta was now out of bed and on her knees. Her hands lifted in supplication.

“Lara, what on Earth does she mean?” Lara's sister fixed with a peculiar look. It was the sort of look that made her want to slap the silly little thing. She was fretting about a child's nightmare, while Lara had real work to do.

“It's nothing, Anna!” Lara snapped, “She's had a little fit, that's all! Nothing but a fit!” She looked Elizaveta and felt her face grow hard. What should have been the child's native fearfulness sank in and she shrank back into her nursemaid's arms. Anna reached for her little girl with a reassuring smile, but she was rewarded with a cold, ancient stare. Anna drew back, looking from Lara to Elizaveta and back again. She backed away from them both until she stood safely in the hall.

“We'll be leaving a bit early, Lara,” she said softly, “Please, be ready at 7:30.”

Lara turned back to the bookshelf and took the Blue Book down. It had been rebound some years ago, but the pages were brittle and the gold leaf gone from the illuminations. Even then, the first pages confessed that this was a translation of a translation, 13^th century German if she had to guess.

“No, Auntie!”

Lara turned around, ready to snarl at the child again, but stopped. Elizaveta was pointing coolly to the door.

“Go away, Auntie,” she said, her voice as icy as the wind outside, “I hate you and I don't want you in my room. Take the Book away! Leave!”

Lara was stunned. But, then, after calling her a liar, Lara realized that she should have expected such. The shock, she decided, was from a nine-year-old behaving like a jilted lover towards what she hoped was a favorite aunt. Slowly, she left, clutching the offending object tightly. She'll grow up to be a great queen, someday, she thought to herself and, immediately after, What an odd thought to have!

 

In her own room, Lara opened the book gingerly. The illumination that caught her eye was simply breathtaking. A woman, garbed in blues and greens, stood on an enormous scallop shell, like the Birth of Venus. In her arms, she clutched a pair of amphorae, pouring out gushing blue waters to swirl and mingle at her feet. In over-wrought, Gothic script beneath her, was the name “Ashera, Stella Maris, Regina Oceanus”. Ashera, the Star of the Sea and the Queen of Heaven.

The other page was several lines of text. The vowels, rather than being red as was typical, were written in a soft, but brilliant blue-green. Lara licked her lips in anticipation and took out a sheet of paper and her pen and ink. It was, she found as she went, another hymn. While the other hymns had been dedicated to an unknown woman, one she could only assume was the Theotokos Herself, this one was explicitly to Ashera. How dull, Lara thought. She'd come across so much in the Blue Book that might actually have a purpose. There were enough hymns and, to be perfectly honest, she was sick to death of them. But, it was mercifully short and, she discovered, pleasant enough.

As her pen touched the page, she became aware of a smell of saltwater. She held quite still and waited. Another vision? Coming on now? Oh, what a nuisance!

But, nothing else came. The scent went away quickly. She sighed, sure now she'd been over working herself. Perhaps, after the Season, she'd take Elizaveta to Egypt to see Giza and Amarna, to show her the blue waters of the Nile and the golden enigma of the Sphynx. Thinking of Elizaveta brought on a new pang of guilt. In the morning, she'd apologize. For Christmas, she was planning on giving her a diary, to help her release all her innate fury into a tidy, civilized little package. Really, she'd have to watch her more carefully. Such a little girl, with such strange--!

Saltwater, again. This time with the chime of sistrums and the scream of seagulls.

She bent over the bed of the child, laying a gentle, maternal kiss on her brow. The girl's time here was growing short. Soon enough, she'd be thirteen and her father and brother would come to claim her and find her a groom suited to her birth and family. But, she'd looked after little Miriam for so long and had watched her bloom. More than any girl here, she was like her own daughter...

No! Lara slapped the pen down mid-word. That was clearly a past life and was not relevant. What would Madame Berezutskaya say? “My mind, my body, my soul, my control.” Lara recited that vital litany over and over and over, feeling the damp, salty perspiration that had risen soak into her clothes.

Now, she was determined to finish on time. She would not allow her will to slip so readily that she missed the opera. She looked down at the paper, checking her work.

Hail to thee, Ashera,

Mother of the Gods and Embracer of Gods

Your hair is in the grass of the sea

Your voice is the crash of the waves

Your heart is the beat of the tides

In your waters, we are ma--

 

Good, that appeared to be correct. She finished the line, teeth clenched in triumph.

 

...And her hand kept moving.

 

In your waters, we are made pure

In your pillars, we find love

In your arms, we find peace

Hail to thee, Ashera,

Mother of the Gods and Embracer of Gods--

 

Lara frowned as her hand went on and on, moving like a puppet. Each quick, jerky penstroke was alien. This was not her penmanship anymore. This was the sharp, spidery scratching of a child's first attempts. She tried to rip her hand back, or at least wrench the pen free. The inkwell was knocked aside, dumping the thin black liquid into the otherwise immaculate carpet. Finally, she managed to wrench the pen away with such force, it flew free of her hand and buried itself, nib-first in the door. Panting with exhertion and alarm, she glared at it. There was some dark force at work here. Her hands ached and the taste of seawater lingered in her mouth. Clearly, she was under psychic attack. She made a quick sign of protection.

“I banish thee, creature of darkness and destruction” she said, in her most sepulchral tones, “to the blackest pit from whence thee came! Haunt no more the halls of light! I banish thee in the name of the Greatest of All Names! Begone, foulness of the world!”

She turned to what she hoped was east and did it again. Then, south, and then, west. But, at her presumed north, there was her dressing table, with its large, gilt-framed mirror. It had been in the family since the Reign of Peter the Great and was her favorite and most prized possession. She froze at what she saw there.

She was no longer in her soft, inky blue tea gown with its goldenrod flounces, but ancient robes of a bright blue-green, with a lily-embroidered veil of silk covering her head. And behind her, stood a Roman centurion. But, his skin was horribly pockmarked and blistering and his eyes burned with unholy fire. He was thin enough that he seemed a skeleton, and his mouth was open and filled with fangs like a wolf's. He was right behind her and his sword was drawn.

 

The whole house stirred to action at the sound of her screams. But, she was silent as soon as the first footman reached the bottom-most stair. By the time they reached her, she was already dead. The fire in the grate had gone out, as well as her lamp. The mirror was shattered. The Blue Book that had caused such strife in the nursery was closed firmly, but no-one thought to touch it, of course. For, of far more interest, was the fact that Lara had been stabbed. Thirteen times, the coroner would later say, by a wide, leaf shaped blade. But, there was no blood on the carpet beneath her. Only blue ink and what smelled like saltwater.

 

The Blue Book was retrieved a gentleman who claimed to be a correspondant of Lara Antonovna Rubina and her sister Anna was happy to see it go, as it was the one thing belonging to Lara she had not been able to sell, give away or move to the attic. The family moved away at their earliest convenience and the grand house was sold to become a hotel. Elizaveta stopped speaking after the incident, but eventually married a Prince of excellent family who was passionate about her and fled with him to France when the Revolution started.

The murder of the eccentric Miss Lara Antonovna Rubina would never be sufficiently solved and, in time, it was forgotten by all but the most melancholy of her relations. But, in salons and in cellars, the whispering gossips of the occult world demanded to know: “Where is the Blue Book?”

 

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Author's Note: Right, so. It's been a long time since I've felt comfortable writing any kind of fanfiction, but the spark hit me. I'm naturally a little worried it won't work or that I'll portray a character wrong, but I'm going to give it a shot, because it's a good break from other works and, believe it or not, is helping me get a better handle on my original fiction. So, here's to the next part!

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that I messed up on the nomenclature there. It's been fixed, I hope.