A Dowry of Blood

by Gibson, S. T.

  “Say hello to your fresh start, my love.”

  The apartments you rented us were near the city central, optimum for hunting. I wish I could remember more about them, but we weren’t in Russia for very long. All I can clearly recall is the beautiful crown molding rimming the room Magdalena and I shared, tiny flowers rendered in swirling white plaster.

  Autumn disappearing fast into a frosty winter, with the last rain-battered golden leaves still clinging valiantly to the trees. Still, we spent most of our time out of the house, attending night markets and visiting whatever theatrical performances were still running. The city was too dangerous for Magdalena and I to walk freely without a chaperone, you said, although I couldn’t fathom what terror any human could unleash on us that we weren’t fully prepared for. You urged us to stay at home, to read Pushkin and sew and practice our music, while you purveyed the coffeehouses and taverns. You trafficked with radicals and constitutionalists, anarchists and Decembrists and representatives of the Duma, cataloging them with rapt fascination. Such a vibrant symphony of human philosophy and desire on display, you said. Such a roiling brew of ideas, of potential.

  Potential. You always loved that word. You were drawn to potential like a shark to blood.

  Magdalena all but seethed with jealousy over your political connections, and begged you to inform her over every new coup, each philosophical principle. You doled them out the way you would candy to a child, smiling warmly at her as you teased her with your knowledge, all the while forbidding her from taking up correspondence of her own. It was too dangerous for a woman, you said.

  Unsurprisingly, Magdalena and I became restless. I could not resist the siren song of a new language, a new culture to explore, and Magdalena was itching for fresh air and fresh ideas. She privately referred to our time in the apartment as her “gilded confinement”, and I had to talk her out of letting herself out onto the street more than once. I wanted to let her go. I wanted to turn my back while she slipped out the window, or throw the door open wide for her the moment you disappeared from view. I wanted her to taste freedom, to feel the salty sea air toying with her hair, to find a lover or a meal in a darkened tavern. She was still young, still fresh and vibrant. I feared smothering the light that came back into her eyes when she dreamed of roaming the whole of Petrograd.

  But, my captor, I feared your ire more. So I coddled her and shushed her and kept her shut up in our stuffy home just the way you wanted, without you even having to ask me to.

  You must have known, my lord. You always knew. You could sense the moment one of us began to draw away from you with the acuteness of a bloodhound. That’s when either the iron fist or the velvet glove came out. Sometimes it was both. But ever since Magdalena’s melancholy became more pronounced, you favored sweetness. Magdalena was delicate, you confided to me. Prone to emotional weaknesses and flights of fancy. We must handle her carefully for a while, give her everything she wanted. I didn’t want her to run off and abandon our family, did I? I didn’t want to lose my only friend. Best convince her to stay then, by whatever means necessary.

  I didn’t realize what means you were referring to until you took us to the artist’s studio. He was a favorite of yours, lauded in the coffeehouse for both his progressive politics and his mastery over stone, plaster, and oil paints.

  “A true savant,” you declared as you helped Magdalena into her coat. “A genius of his age. I must show you some of his work. Anything you want in the studio, you can have. Pick whatever beautiful thing strikes your fancy and we’ll bring it home.”

  At the time I thought you were just in one of your magnanimous, indulgent moods, the ones that made your kindness feel extravagant. I should have learned by then to expect some kind of scheme.

  The artist’s garret was squashed between two tall buildings, accessible only by a narrow set of stairs. Inside, the close air smelled of plaster and silk flowers, and a fine dusting of white powder clung to Magdalena and I’s skirts as we walked. The walls were crowded with blank canvases and half-constructed wooden frames, with chisels lying about haphazardly on tarps. It was like entering the harried mind of the artist at work, untidy thoughts and all. Magdalena and I stopped to admire every bust, every painting, but you strode on ahead, eyes keen as though searching for something in particular.

  “Chin a little higher, please.”

  A man’s voice, distant yet close. The artist, perhaps?

  “Show me imperious,” he went on, and I heard the soft tapping of a paintbrush against a pallet. “I want to see the arrogance of Alexander.”

  You ducked behind a sheaf of cloth draped across a doorway, moving towards the sound of the voice. Magdalena and I followed, stepping lightly to avoid pots of paint piled up on crumpled newspaper.

  The artist stood wrapped in a tattered smock, taking in his subject as he compared life to the fantasy he was creating on the canvas. The subject in question was a young man, golden haired and lovely, with sea-blue eyes and a full, mischievous mouth. He stood stripped to the waist despite the frost on the windows, holding up a platter of fake fruit and doing his best not to shiver.

  “I’d feel more imperious if it wasn’t as cold as the devil’s tit in here,” the model said, in a musical tenor.

  I looked at you. You were observing Magdalena, who was watching the model. Desire, as faint yet undeniable as the light thrown by a single candle, flickered across her face.

  I swallowed and folded my hands primly in front of me. After living with the both of you for so long, I knew trouble when I sensed it.

  “Ah my friend, you’ve made it,” the artist crowed, clapping you on the back. The gesture startled me. I couldn’t imagine someone speaking to you so familiarly, but you seemed at ease around him. Perhaps acting the congenial comrade was one of your new personas. You spun whole personalities out of silken promises to get close to whomever you needed to. It was one of the reasons you were able to keep us alive so long, and one of the reasons I sometimes woke with a start in the middle of the day and stared at you, wondering who I was sharing a bed with.

  “Who are these lovely doves you’ve brought?” the artist asked, stroking his greying beard as he looked at Magdalena and I with a twinkle in his eye. Not leering. Friendly. Truly happy to see you and to see us. I was impressed, if a little concerned, at your ability to convince a being you saw as little better than breakfast that you two were bosom friends.

  “My wife,” you said, extending your arm and pulling me in close. “And my ward, Magdalena. Her mother drowned in the Spree last spring, very tragic.”

  I resisted my urge to roll my eyes at you, and Magdalena nearly managed it.

  You delighted in making up stories about Magdalena, whether you claimed she was your ward or your daughter or your widowed niece or your sister in training for the convent. But I was always your wife. I think you categorized us this way less to elevate my station above Magdalena’s — we were both your wife behind closed doors — and rather because no one would believe I was anything but a matron, a spoken-for woman. Magdalena said I always radiated a faint sense of motherly worry.

  “Of course, my friend,” the artist said with a chuckle. “Of course.”

  I had no idea whether he believed you, but I saw that it didn’t matter to him either way. A true libertine, then.

  “I’m freezing, Gregori,” the model complained. “Either tell your handsome friend and his ladies to take a seat while you paint or give me back my coat.”

  “Mind your manners, Alexi,” the painter grumbled. He shot a sidelong glance to you as he picked back up his brush and palette. “These young actors, they’re all the same. Heads as big as the moon. Please, sit.”

  He gestured to a few mismatched folding chairs and we sat, Magdalena looping her arm through my own. She squeezed gently as Alexi resumed his post. Back arched, neck angled gracefully, eyes shadowed by thick lashes so blonde they were nearly transparent. He was one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen. And he couldn’t hav
e been more than nineteen.

  Desire and foreboding curled together in my stomach.

  We watched in patient appreciation as the painter worked, you occasionally pointing out some lovely piece of statuary in the studio to Magdalena, who nodded her approval. Your eyes kept creeping back to Alexi, however, in tiny flickers that would have been invisible to someone who didn’t know you as well as I did. You stole glances to him like tiny sips of wine with dinner, and he did his best not to color under your gaze. When he caught your eyes with a disaffected toss of his head calculated to look natural, the electricity between you two went through my heart like a needle.

  Of course. I shouldn’t have believed you would do something generous without your own motives hiding in the shadows. I pressed my lips into a thin, white line, anger sparking in my chest.

  I would not allow you to do this to us. Not again.

  “Take a turn with me around the studio, husband,” I said, voice light as I rose to my feet. I fixed you with a look that told you I would not accept any refusal, and held my arm out expectantly. You arched an eyebrow but obeyed, winding our arms together as you led me in a slow circle along the edge of the studio. I’m sure our antiquated manners must have looked strange to Gregori, with his radical ideas about equality between the sexes and a society without hierarchy, but I knew my place. I knew the circumstances under which I could request a private word with you, and I knew how to leverage them to the greatest effect.

  I waited until we were out of earshot to levy my complaint.

  “You want him. The model. I can smell it on you. Like a sickness.”

  “So do you,” you countered. “So does Magdalena. Why should that change anything?”

  “Don’t make this about me. This is the piece of art you intend for us to take home, is that it? You found a boy. A vulnerable, poor boy and you, what? Picked him out? Made him promises?”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You’re lying,” I said through gritted teeth. “God, how many lies have you fed me during our life together? I can scarcely tell them apart from the truth anymore.”

  “Keep your voice down,” you ordered, voice deathly quiet. “You’re working yourself into hysterics. Look at me, Constanta my love.”

  I met your eyes. So very black, like I could fall into them and never find my way out again.

  “I haven’t deceived you,” you said levelly. “Not knowingly, at any rate. Alexi was an accident. But a happy one, don’t you think?”

  You inclined your head towards the model, who was laughing and flirting with Magdalena. She had drifted towards him and was clutching her purse in her hands as he made her giggle. Her eyes were bright, and there was color in her cheeks. She looked more alive than she had in years, and it was all because of this golden-haired boy with a clever tongue and eyes warm as summer.

  “Look how much joy he brings her,” you murmured, your mouth as close to my ear as the snake must have been to Eve in the garden. “She’s smiling again. When’s the last time you saw that?”

  “Too long,” I admitted miserably.

  “Perhaps we could all be that happy,” you pressed. “Together.”

  “He’s too young,” I said, in one last valiant effort to be the voice of reason. “He’s barely more than a child. You would steal the rest of his life from him.”

  “Look around you. What sort of life is this? When’s the last time you suppose he had a good meal? If we leave him he’ll starve.”

  You cupped my face in your hands. Your thumbs made little circles around my cheekbones so tenderly that I almost began to cry. You always knew how to thaw my heart right when I had resolved to freeze it against you.

  “We’d be doing him a great kindness, Constanta,” you said, your voice soft. “He has no one else.”

  I should have said no. I should have stamped my foot, or began to cry, or icily demanded we leave right away. But I didn’t. I loved you too much, my lord. I craved you like maidens crave the grave, the way Death burns for human touch: inconsolably, unrelentingly, aching for the annihilation in your kiss. I had no practice saying no to you.

  And then there was Magdalena, so much like her former self that it brought tears to my eyes. And this boy, so thin and so beautiful, and so, so young. Alone in a city torn apart by revolution without a mother to make sure he was getting home safely every night. I didn’t know how much he made posing for paintings, but it was probably barely enough to buy bread. With us, at least, he would have a chance at happiness.

  Or at crushing despair, the same despair that drove you towards frenzied research, that overtook Magdalena in a dark cloud, that drove me weeping into the arms of a God I wasn’t sure I still believed in. None of us were immune to it. It was simply a byproduct of our unnatural lives. People aren’t meant to live forever. I know that now.

  But then, I was still optimistic. I still wanted to believe I was living in a fairy tale, that I laid down every night with a prince instead of a wolf.

  I wanted to believe you.

  “I will allow this thing,” I whispered. “But for Magdalena’s sake, and for the boy’s. Not for yours.”

  It was one of the boldest things I had ever said to you. I expected you to snap at me, but instead you raised your eyebrows and nodded. Almost as if you had stumbled across a newfound respect for me.

  “And I’m not saying he can stay forever,” I went on, fingers shaking as I gripped them together behind my back. “I don’t need a little brother, or a child to nurse back to health.”

  Even then, I knew I was lying. I watched him juggle wax apples as Magdalena cheered, the lines of his ribs showing through his thin skin, and I wanted very much to run my fingers through his hair as I held a cup of broth to his lips. I wanted to lay out a feast for him, let him recline on my lap and tell him to eat as much as he wanted.

  I had a weakness for weakness, just like you.

  “Of course,” you said, in your voice specifically made for placating me. The one you made such fragile promises in. “We would have to all agree on something like that.”

  You swept back over to Alexi, who looked every inch the mythical Ganymede in his drapery. That was probably why he had caught your eye in the first place. You had a dispassionate appreciation for aesthetics; after such a long life only the most perfect symmetries could stop you in your tracks. Still, there was a romantic streak lurking in your rational mind, and you loved to be surrounded by beautiful things while you worked, whether it was the scenic backdrop of an ancient city, the baroque interiors of a fashionable apartment, or the lovely faces of your consorts. You loved to collect and show us off like a tsarina might show off her family jewels.

  You carried on a brisk conversation with Alexi while the painter grumbled and tried to capture the curve of Alexi’s throat, the inviting divot over his lips. Alexi did his best not to smile or color under your gaze, but he didn’t have much success. His eyes kept skittering over to Magdalena and I with a boldness that was almost scandalous. He had no shame, this one.

  You caught him looking and gave him a secretive smile. It seemed to give you a particular pleasure, watching him watch us.

  “They tell me you have no family to care for you,” you said. “Tell me, did you ever wish for sisters?”

  Alexi gave a nervous laugh, but I saw a little shudder go through his stomach at your implication. He knew exactly what you were talking about. I wondered how many times you and he had met before. If you had already made him dark promises with your lips on his neck and your hand under his shirt. I shoved this thought down as quickly as I could. You wouldn’t do that to us. You had learned your lesson with Magdalena; I was just being paranoid.

  “Would you like to leave?” you asked in his ensuing silence. I knew that tone. I had heard it before, in the mud and blood of my home country, and then in Magdalena’s palace. It was a quiet double entendre, a question that covered up a much weightier one.

  If possible, Alexi colored even more.

  �
��With you?”

  “With us.”

  Magdalena’s breath caught next to me, and I felt her heartbeat kick up in the tight grip she had on my hand. I realized that my own breath was fast and shallow. What were we doing? What was I allowing? And why did I feel like I was powerless to stop it?

  Alexi swallowed and then nodded, a glazed look in his eyes.

  “How much did you pay for him?” you asked the painter, breaking your scorching eye contact with Alexi for only a moment. “What was his sitting fee?”

  The painter told you. You produced three times that amount from your purse and pressed it into his hands.

  “For robbing you of such an inspiring subject,” you said by way of an apology.

  You held out a gloved hand to Alexi, welcoming him through an invisible door that Magdalena and I had already walked through. My heart battered wildly in my chest. Part of me wanted to throw myself between you and Alexi and tell the boy to go home, to forget all he had seen and heard. But another part of me wanted to welcome him into our warm carriage and hand-feed him berries until he was sated.

  Alexi let the bolt of fabric slip from his shoulders as he stepped down off his dais. You shrugged off your winter coat of sealskin and draped it around his shoulders, and he swayed under the weight of all that finery. Magdalena grinned at this game and stepped forward to claim her prize, removing her mink stole and draping it around his neck. I went last, tugging off my winter gloves as I walked towards the boy whose life I was either about to save or ruin irrevocably.

  Alexi’s skin was so warm that the tips of my fingers burned when I took his hands in mine. I delicately tugged the fabric over his wrists, feeling the small bones of his hand, so close to the surface. When I met his eyes he was looking at me with absolute reverence, the way a child might look at a statue of the Madonna.

  In that moment, a thin fracture ran through my heart that has never been repaired. It was a wound in the shape of Alexi’s name, and I scarcely knew how to hold all that feeling inside me. My heart was expanding, making room for him in a world already defined by two great loves, and it hurt so sweetly. But this was different from my obsession with you and my passion for Magdalena. This was the love of the maid for the children in her care, all springtime bloom and tender affection.