You mocked my lofty aspirations, cynical as ever.
“We are not arbiters of justice, Constanta,” you said after I left an abuser’s body slumped over and drained in a cesspool. A magistrate, well known about town for skimming off the top of his ledgers and dragging his wife through the house by the hair when she displeased him. “When will you give up this ridiculous crusade?”
“It isn’t ridiculous to the woman who no longer has to cower in fear of him, I’m sure,” I said, taking your offered handkerchief and wiping my mouth. “And it isn’t ridiculous to the poor who will no longer be threatened with destitution now that he’s dead.”
“You will have the poor with you always, is that not what your Christ says?” you said with a sneer.
I recoiled. An unexpected harsh word from you was as jarring as a slap from any other man, and your temper had been spiking more and more recently. Vienna made you irritable as much as it made me blossom. I wouldn’t realize until later that you were irritable precisely because I was in bloom, because there were suddenly so many sources of joy in my life apart from your presence.
“Why shouldn’t I take my meals where I please? You certainly do. So many young minds cut down in the promise of youth—”
“Are you criticizing me?” you asked, deathly quiet. You were suddenly very close, looming over me in a way that usually made me feel protected, but was now having an entirely different effect.
I staggered back a step, my calf banging into a low crate stuffed with rotting cabbage.
“No. No, of course not,” I said, my throat tight. It was a scared girl’s voice, not a woman’s.
“Good.” You reached for me, and suddenly your eyes were gentle again, your voice slippery and sweet. “Don’t look so grim, darling. Let’s seek some fresh diversions. There’s a travelling show in town, would you like to go see it?”
A smile broke across my face, uneasy but delighted all the same. I had been taken by a voracious passion for theatre since our move to Vienna, and was always straining to see bits of morality plays through whatever crowd we found ourselves in. But you had no patience for “common” entertainment, and always complained that humans had lost their flare for the dramatic arts after the fall of Athens. A colorful travelling show lit by firelight was exactly my idea of a night well spent, but I doubt it even ranked for you.
“Yes, I’d like that very much.”
You smiled magnanimously and put your arm around me, leading me away from my victim and towards a night of fire eating and fortune telling. I was enthralled by the grace and talent of the performers, but I couldn’t help but cast a nervous glance to you ever so often. In the shifting firelight, there were moments when you didn’t even look like yourself. There was a darkness in your eyes and a tightness to your mouth I hadn’t noticed before—or perhaps hadn’t wanted to.
There are other shadows across the bright spot in my memory that is Vienna. I didn’t realize, then, how deep your contempt for human companionship ran. There was an embroiderer who came by the townhouse to stitch intricate designs into the hems of my sleeves and the bodices of my dresses, a bright-eyed young woman near the age I was when you had claimed me. Hanne had an airy laugh, dark skin, and tight curls of hair she always wore swirled up into a coil. She was clever and lovely, and could create entire landscapes from tiny stitches of thread.
We enjoyed each other’s company during our time together, and I started inviting her to the house more and more frequently, always coming up with some pillow or chemise I wanted her to decorate at the last minute. We shared stories and secrets and plenty of laughter while she worked. I would go out of my way to fix her plates of cheese and apples even though I had started to lose my taste for mortal food by then. I think I could have loved her, if given a chance.
“Who was that?” you asked crisply one day after she had left. I was watching her go from the parlor window, admiring the way her green cloak swirled around her feet.
“Hanne?” I asked, startled from my reverie. Surely you knew her name, and her trade. You had been in the house every time she had visited, locked away in your basement laboratory or upstairs reading in our room.
“And what is Hanne to you?” you said, spitting out her name as though it were a curse.
I recoiled, pressing my back into the fine needlepoint of my chair.
“She is my…embroiderer? My friend, she—”
“You have fallen into a shameful infatuation with a weak human girl,” you snapped, sweeping across the room. You snatched up a pillow she had covered with daisies and a songbird, sneering at it. “A peddler of fripperies.”