The cold weather of the morning was no longer felt, on the contrary, it had been replaced by an oppressive heat, perfidious and selfish, one of those heat that had the sole intention of entering through the nose or mouth and suffocating those who breathed.
It was already five o'clock in the afternoon and the fuzzy yellowish light of the sun penetrated the large windows to illuminate his face. Juniper lay in his bed, dozing in his young thoughts. He was sweating in his clothes of noble manufacture, but he could not do anything about it, he could not wake up from his uncontrolled sleep.
His thin pink lips were parted, trying desperately to receive some draft of cold air. He was in the North, in his dream. He walked over the cold snow, he loved that soft and cozy feeling. It was nice to see the snow again, he missed it, he would have liked to hug it like an old friend who has not been seen for centuries. He wanted to spread that white and heavenly divine creation on his body, receive the cold embrace.
He laid down silently on the soft ground and began to stare with curious eyes at the blue sky that suddenly became cloudy and dark. Juniper stood there in every way to feel on his body the patter of the cold and fast rain falling from the sky directly on his young body and wet him completely. He closed his he eyes and exhaled, he couldn't believe it, he had finally managed to reach his North, his beloved barony.
His golden hair wet from the cold rain fell in tufts down his forehead and face. He felt the heat invade his open hands, it was disgusting, a hot liquid, he wanted to drive that dirty feeling away from his young body.
The young baron took a look at his hands, his fingers and to his disgust he could see that he was completely wet with warm blood flowing down the snowy hill above him. Juniper stood up and looked a point ahead of him, finding himself the most disgusting and unpleasant figure he had ever seen. A huge table was in the middle of the snow-covered hill and sitting behind that table was the usurper Baron of the North, his uncle, his father's brother.
The usurper stood there, behind the table and held in his hands a large silver goblet full of a red liquid similar to blood. On either side of the table were his parents, one on the ground on the right and the other on the left of the table. Both had been slaughtered, and the bright red fluid that the young baron has touched moments before was their blood.
Seeing his father dead brought almost no feeling to Juniper. He had always hated his father, his unpleasant appearance, his advanced age, he never appreciated the way he treated his mother. The problem came when the boy's eyes meet his mother.
Juniper loved his mother more than anything and everyone, they had a strong connection, she was a strong young woman she survived a forced marriage with the elderly Baron of the North when she was only fifteen. Ella Hannover agreed to giving up his adolescence by giving birth and raising him, Juniper, her son, but she couldn't survive the blade of that knife that cold winter evening.
The young baron's eyes moistened, he could no longer smell that sweet smell of his mother, he could no longer perceive the colour of her long golden-blond hair soaked in blood. The man sitting behind the table, began to speak -These were your parents, nephew, you will be next...very soon-. Juniper felt the man's body approaching him, and then nothing more.
He snapped his eyes open, keeping his hands firmly on the mattress and prized blankets of his bed. He exhaled and inhaled very quickly, his body needed air, he couldn't find it, or at least he found very little. His eyes were completely wet and some tears were streaming down his pale cheeks. It was not new for him to have such a dream, and it was not new for him to have such a reaction upon waking.
No one at the castle knew this, that the young baron often suffered from panic attacks, nor did Juniper want somebody to know. If anyone had come to find out, they would certainly have taken him as mad, but he wasn't. He was just a young man dealing with a difficult past and a still uncertain present. Juniper breathed again, everything was gone, the snow was gone, he was in his room, everything was in place again.
The young baron sat down with his back to the massive back of his big bed. He thought about his past. That night many years ago, he remembered the panic of the attendants, remembered the cold of that night when his uncle's mercenaries penetrated the fortress belonging to his father.
He remembered the carriage, he remembered being hugged to his mother all the way so tightly that it was hard to breath, the starry sky, he remembered everything in detail. He was only ten years old then, when they left the North; he and his young mother to take refuge in the royal residence of King Karlheinz Hannover, his mother's brother.
The king was a kind man to him, he offered protection to him, to his mother, but the usurper baron was not a foolish person, nor stupid. He knew that the longer the rest of his brother's family were alive, the more there would be chances, one day, of being hunted and brutally killed by his nephew.
He remembered everything: that night that the mercenaries sent by that man went beyond the walls of the castle and killed his mother without remorse, fortunately the guards were quick enough to stop those people from founding him.
He did not want to forget, he remembered and cried but at the same time he was happy, because all that hatred he now felt would have stimulate him, once as an adult, to return to the North and regain the fortress, his home. Despite it was five in the afternoon, the hot sun continued to shine in the blue English sky. Some sweet laughter went up from the big royal garden to the young baron's room and entered through the large, wide open window.
It was an innocent laughter of joy and fun, it wasn't that common to hear that kind of laughter at the castle, which was usually a pretty serious place. Juniper got up from the bed, moved his body with such a great lightness that he could not even feel the movement of air. He looked out of the open window, finally breathed some fresh and clean air, or at least fresher than the one that was in his room. He could see the inner courtyard of the castle which, in any case, was smaller than the complete royal garden.
It was still verdant and even had a more rustic air. A fairly spacious green lawn stood out in the centre of a porch created with mighty columns of white marble. Within this verdant meadow there were some Winter Calicanthus trees which continued to keep some whitish brown leaves and numerous other saffron yellow flowers. While on the lawn some winter jasmine brought a precious and delicate smell to the young man's nostrils. In the middle of the lawn stood three young girls.
Princess Isabelle certainly stood out among the other two for her decidedly better-made and more precious clothes, for her beautiful face and her stature slightly smaller than that of any thirteen-year-old girl and her doll face, porcelain, but in particular for the vivid colour of her long golden hair.
The other two young courtesans who were playing with her in the garden also had quite noble clothes and their beauty was beautifully particular, but not as much as that of the princess. The game they were playing was that of the blindman's buff. Isabelle was in fact blindfolded by a white handkerchief with gold edges, same colour of her hair and scented with lavender oil. The two young courtesans began to gently spin the girl around. She was left by the two in the middle of the paradisiac garden.
The laughter started up again and the two young courtesans ran around the lawn and their sweet voices were to guide the princess to touch them and finish the game. Even the princess, who rarely laughed, had managed in that moment to gain some time of relief and lightheartedness together with other young girls of her age, which she was not always allowed to do.
Juniper sat down on the massive crosspiece of the window. He was not afraid of falling down, the beam was spacious enough to accommodate a human body, and the young baron was pretty thin.
He began to stare at the delicate face of his cousin, the princess. She looked seriously like a porcelain doll, she had a small enough stature for a lady of her age, but not excessively, she had big light-blue eyes like the sky, red cheeks, a gaunt face. She still had slightly rounded and soft shape of a child. She had a wonderful smile and she didn't know it yet how such a smile made the people around her feel.
She was so small, so fragile, Juniper felt the innate instinct to protect her, as if she were a small child, unable to protect herself from the outside world. She talked about war, but it was clear that that young princess, who had never gone beyond the walls of her castle, didn't really know what a war was, or what death was or how many injustices there were in the world. She couldn't know, she was too young and inexperienced.
Juniper was now seventeen, four years older than her, he had grown up, and was born in the North. Already as a child he knew about the injustices of the world or what assaults and wars meant. It was a bit like that in the North, it often happened, one day an assault, another day an ambush and another day a murder in the city.
It was because in the North it was separated only from the North Sea by Norway and on the west coasts there were frequent attacks by the corsairs of the Scandinavian coasts. He had seen death in the eyes since he was a child, he had seen villages destroyed, people lying on the streets with streams of blood coming out of their throats.
He had seen heads hanging on pikes, he had known about rapes and for this reason perhaps he could be found in the fishing towns the largest number of "bastards", who were most likely conceived with violence.
Juniper's eyes had long since been open, he had already gone out into the open, outside the fortress of the North, and apparently death had never ceased to haunt his loved ones even in the great central kingdom. He knew that all this was happening, but she, his young and delicate cousin had never left the castle walls, or the great royal garden, she could have no idea of such injustices.
The girls' game had just ended, and finally the white blindfold was removed from the big eyes of the princess and Juniper was able to perceive the light-blue of the girl's eyes. He could see her innocent smile, how delicately she covered her soft lips with her graceful fingers. Soon the princess's gaze fell on one of the windows overlooking the inner courtyard of the castle, she set her gaze on the young baron. Her gaze seemed surprised for a few seconds, but then it turned into a gaze full of happiness and understanding.
-Are you not afraid to stay up there, cousin? -Isabelle asked gracefully having her long golden hair fixed away from her face. Juniper looked down at the girl's face, watched the glow of her eyes and the light of the strong sun shine in them. He felt something strange in his body. He felt it in his head, he felt it strongly, it was an annoying sensation. His head, it started to ache. Juniper started to sweat, what was happening to him? His sapphire-coloured eyes began to see objects and people confusedly and with imprecision, so much so that for a few minutes his sight, which was usually very acute, began to blur.
His body began to move back and forth and shake, it was more dangerous now that he was sitting on the window.
-Cousin, Juniper, are you okay? - the princess's voice was worried and full of fear at what she had seen that the young baron of the North had begun to behave in a curious and inexplicable way. Juniper tried to hold one of his hands in a ledge that the window created with the inner wall and held himself. He tried to come back to himself for a few minutes, at least just long enough to move from that risky place and fall again on his bed.
He tried to force his mind and focus briefly, he had to succeed. He grabbed the ledge in the wall with more force and pushed his body towards the room until it fell back onto the damp wooden floor. As his body managed to slip inside the room, a clamour of restless voices began to be heard from the garden. It was almost as if he was starting again, his panic attack, his lungs were starting to close again, but Juniper didn't want his cousin to send some guards to check on his health.
The young baron didn't want anyone to see him crying and sobbing, let alone seeing how he barely breathed. The young man was blaming himself for that situation, for that reason he hated to think about the past, because every time he did it he ended up feeling damn bad. He tried to get up, to pretend to be in good condition, he did not want to confuse or worry the princess. Once the young man was able to stand on his feet again he tried to pull a smile on his pale face and to tidy up his golden curls that were in orderly arranged on his sweaty forehead.
-I feel good my lady, do not worry, I am only slightly dozed off, I only need rest-. Isabelle tried, to put a smile on her face, yet it didn't seem like a sincere smile, or in any case not quite sure. For a few minutes Juniper thought about what he had said and realised that it really wasn't a quite justifiable excuse.
Normally people do not faint when they have only a little sleep, but on the other hand, princess Isabelle could not forbid the young man to rest, so the only words that came out of her confused mouth were: -Anyway I wish you a good rest, cousin-. Juniper smiled one last time and slowly closed the openings of his bedroom window. He went back to his bed, lay down on the mattress and cried. He was tired, really tired of having to hide his problems from the world.
He looked around the room and immediately began to calm down. When his mother was still alive, when she was still a young girl, a few years younger than him, this used to be her room. Juniper tried to imagine how his mother could spend her days in her early teens. He remembered his mother well, he remembered her harmonious and beautiful face, her small red cheeks, her thin pink lips, with which the young woman used to sing sweet melodies to her son. He remembered her long golden curls that almost reached the bottom of her back, he remembered her comforting light-blue eyes, like the sea and her long fingers with which she used to gently caress his hair.
Juniper missed his mother incredibly. A sense of chills hit him from his back to go from his neck and finally to his hair. The young baron smiled with joy, when the last tears were still drying on his pale cheeks, he liked that feeling that led him to believe that his mother was still watching over him.