All the sermons equated God with triumphant, searing light, rising in the east to drive away demons and disease. But I wondered if the Creator of the day also dwelled in night, guiding us all in the darkness. Perhaps I had not been forsaken when I made the night my eternal home.
The thought sent a warm shiver through my body, and in that moment I understood the rapture of mystics who burst into tears when they felt the presence of God.
“Constanta,” a voice behind me said. I gasped as I was roused from my reverie. For a moment I didn’t know where or who I was.
But it was not God who had spoken.
It was you.
You stood behind me in your long cape, holding your hat between your hands. You might have looked apologetic, if it hadn’t been for the expression on your face. Haughty as ever, but with the telltale signs of restrained fury that I had trained myself to look for. Your lips were drawn tight together, and there was a furrow between your brows.
“I’ve been looking for you for an hour,” you said, in such a calm tone of voice that my stomach quivered. I don’t think I had ever seen you so angry. I had no idea what you were going to do, and I was terrified.
Good, I wanted to say. I wanted to spit the word out onto the ground at your feet and watch the shock cross your face. I wanted to cause you a lifetime of inconvenience, dig my heels in the next time you tried to move us, kick and scream when you tried to enforce your curfews. I wanted to fill the cathedral with accusations of every unkind and controlling thing you had ever done to me or Magdalena, and make you answer for them.
But instead, all I could say was:
“I’m sorry.”
You held a hand out to me silently. I pushed myself up onto shaking knees and took a few tentative steps towards you. In that moment, I couldn’t have predicted what would happen next. You could have kissed me or slit my throat and either would have made as much sense.
Still I walked to you. Slow, obedient steps. I walked when I should have run the other way.
Your hand slid up my neck and your fingers threaded through my hair. Slowly, they tightened into a painful grip, and you tipped my head back so I was looking up at you. Your eyes were entirely dark, devoid of any pity.
“No more running, yes?” you said, voice silky and low.
“No more running,” I whispered, tears springing to my eyes. What else could I have done? I belonged to you. There was no world for me outside the range of your watchful gaze, no past and no future. There was only this moment, you holding me like a kitten by the scruff while your own blood coursed through my veins.
You kissed me. Punishingly, until my lips were bruised, until there was scarcely any air left in my lungs. The force of your love nearly drove me to my knees. I was no woman, I was merely a supplicant, a pilgrim who had stumbled across your dark altar and was doomed to worship at it forever.
I don’t know what I had been thinking, supposing I was strong enough to leave.
The years ticked by, and our honeymoon with Magdalena became daily domestic life as the world changed around us. A new continent was discovered across the ocean, or rather an old one that the squabbling armies of Europe gave a new name to. Pascal, Newton, and Descartes advanced their theories in the world, much to your rapt delight, and the steam engine revolutionized agriculture and commerce. Europe’s might grew by leaps and bounds alongside her brutality: the cities got bigger and dirtier, imperial expansion became more widespread, and my corsets got tighter and more elaborate.
By the turn of the eighteenth century, we had traversed so much of Europe that we had seen fine city squares and capital sieges, driven through just as many pastoral scenes of harvest as we had fields razed to the ground by war. The world turned on its axis, ever spinning, ever coming back to where it started, but we did not change. The greatest philosophers Europe had to offer declared that we were in an Enlightened age, progressing from rudimentary darkness into elevated civilization, but I had trouble believing them. The constant warmongering of imperial powers and the brutal capture and trafficking of human beings were dark marks on any claim to enlightenment, as far as I was concerned.
You remained raptly fascinated by the cyclical rise and fall of the human animal, drawn like a hungry wolf to empires limping along on wounded limbs. And Magdalena remained adamant on corresponding with the greatest minds of any century, trading letters with kings and courtesans and court philosophers. Her intellect was unparalleled, and she craved the stimulation of advising on political matters. Edicts and coronations were like chess pieces to her, and she had an uncanny ability to predict how one head of state would respond to another’s treaty. She seemed to find a sense of purpose in these exchanges, and would sometimes write so many letters in a day that she would pace through our rooms dictating her thoughts to me while I wrote them down for her.