It Always Smells Like Roses Here
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Image by Jorge Guillen from Pixabay
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Addie Explores Her Avenues in the City
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I’d been in the Capital City for a month when restless boredom got the better of my intimidation.
Autumn was also at its peak, and the season seemed so strange in this city of majestic buildings where trees lined the streets, but there was relatively little greenery.
Therefore when the colors changed, I was rather confused.
In the country, the explosion of color meant we were in the hardest months of labor. But it also meant that winter was close, the season when everybody slowed down enough that we peasants weren’t worked to exhaustion.
For some odd reason, I got it in my head that I was losing my last chance to get to know the Capital City.
So I ventured out everyday and explored, ambling through my neighborhood of bohemians and the Avenue of the Theaters. Once I grew familiar with those streets and the hidden places there, I was comfortable enough to wander beyond those boundaries.
I had my daily ritual though.
I always started and ended my day at my favorite café where the waiters knew me. I’d have tea with muffins and fruit when I began, and tea with finger sandwiches when I finished.
I took my time as I observed the other people in the café, noticing the differences and similarities in the clientele there early in the day, and those who came in the evening.
Once I had my fill, I’d pick a direction from the Avenue of the Theaters and go.
The Avenue of the Theaters was in the northern half of the City.
The bohemian neighborhood where I lived was in the northeastern corner of the Capital, and east of the Avenue of the Theaters.
The northwestern corner was the most dangerous part of town, where the joyful decadence of successful harlots, gamblers, courtesans, and the creatives took a downturn into the wretchedness of addiction, seediness, poverty, and despair.
West of the Avenue was where the opium dens, the violent gambling houses, and the most wretched brothels were, along with the slums.
West was where the beggars and hustlers along the Avenue of the Theaters disappeared when they were done panhandling, picking pockets, or conning the gullible.
The Sorcerer had described this part of the city to me.
I only ventured two blocks in before I remembered what I’d been taught and turned around.
But I had already attracted attention I didn’t want when two men started to follow me. I quickened my pace and they drifted off when I was back in the crowd along the Avenue of the Theaters.
Then I ventured south of the Avenue of the Theaters, to the part of the Capital where business and government meet in the stately buildings circling the town square in a circumference three blocks wide.
South of the neighborhood of business was the wealthiest and most elegant neighborhood in the Capital, where the Mayor’s Mansion was flanked with stately homes of the diplomats, the Parliament officials, and the wealthiest businessmen all around.
East of that exclusive area were the more modest, but still comfortable homes of well-made merchants and middle officials.
And to the east of that neighborhood were the apartments and humble dwellings of the respectable serving class, everybody from teachers to waiters to the servants, stewards, and maids who didn’t reside with their employers.
Their neighborhood was safe, but their abodes quite small.
If I had chosen the safe yet undistinguished path for my new destiny, I could have easily lived in this neighborhood for the rest of my life without worry.
When I walked through those streets, I felt the most at home and that these people were the most similar to those I had grown up with.
This was also the part of the Capital where nobody looked twice at me, where the women and men dressed simply, not fashionably. So my country attire and braid that I wore daily did not attract any attention.
I finished each day’s exploration in the café around the corner from the Avenue of the Theaters.
Sometimes, I was tempted to go there late on those many nights I couldn’t sleep, but I was too shy to go alone.
And likely, it would have been dangerous anyway.
As the weeks passed, I started to recognize more faces of people who recognized me.
I often saw Carla there.
She was usually with other courtesans. Every time she saw me, Carla gave me that knowing half-smile of hers, followed with a wink.
But there was one gentleman who accompanied Carla to the cafe quite often. He must have been one of her lovers, but I also saw him with other women, including Filly.
He and Carla seemed very close, yet this gentleman also showed affection for every woman I saw him with. He leaned close and his gestures were intimate, his focus solely on his lady that evening.
He inspired my curiosity, for certain.
This gentleman was handsome in a unique way. He reminded me of a hawk with his lean face, stark features, and sharp-eyed gaze.
Like most gentlemen of fashion, which he was, he walked with a cane. But unlike those who carried canes for elegance, he needed his for support and he leaned on it discreetly.
He walked tall and proud with a long stride and no discernible limp, but that was only self-control. The tight grip of his hand on the knob betrayed his dependence on the cane.
I really liked the look of him.
He differed from the other fine gentlemen I saw daily throughout the Capital.
He wasn’t soft.
He looked like he knew what it was to suffer.
Whenever Carla winked at me, her hawkish gentleman usually turned around and peered at me, with a faint grin on his mouth.
He always nodded to me whenever our eyes met.
His regard penetrated, but never invaded. The sensation was not unpleasant.
The Ruin of Fools
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Image by DivvyPixel from Pixabay
Her debasement was the most exhilarating horror I have ever witnessed.
From the essence of the Brute, the Sorcerer annihilated a lifetime of indulgence. The haughty Patron’s Daughter was reduced to a desperate whore in weeks.
Looking back from the perspective of the particular experience I’ve had with the upper classes, I long ago realized the hideous disservice my former Patron and Patroness did their progeny.
Raised with excessive vanity and convinced of their superiority, their daughter and son were rendered helpless faced with the predators who would be their undoing.
They had no skills to make their way through life.
This is the tale about the ruin of the Patron’s Daughter, yet her brother’s fall from grace was no less drastic.
In some ways, it was worse.
A little more than ten years after I came to the Capital City, I heard how their son ended up destitute.
The estate where I grew up had been in that horrid family for more generations than could be counted. Early in his patronage, the son would lose everything because of an elaborate and exceedingly brilliant swindle.
Although the son was as spoiled as his sister, he wasn’t nearly as difficult to please when it came to marriage.
Perhaps it was because he was less beautiful. He married fairly young and seemingly well to a girl as highborn and indulged as he was.
His bride was said to be rather beautiful, not so much as the Patron’s Daughter, but enough that the spoiled son and his parents were pleased with the marriage.
Two years after their lavish wedding, the patron died, and his wife followed within months.
Thus the young couple became the new patron and patroness of the village.
Yet there was already trouble between them.
Like most marriages between the upper classes, there was very little courtship between the betrothed couple. So unless there were strong objections on one side or the other, the parents went ahead with the wedding plans.
It wasn’t long after the sumptuous nuptials, when the couple spent real time together that the blushing bride decided her husband was insufferable and their life tedious.
Rumor had it that she refused to take her place in the marriage bed after their honeymoon.
The sudden rise in stature did nothing to ease her dissatisfaction or make her more agreeable to the intimacy of a husband and wife.
They were in a uniquely vulnerable state.
The wife’s loathing of highborn married respectability and the fact that the young couple was ill prepared for their new responsibilities made them succulent prey.
So of course, predators were quick to appear.
Within months of their ascension, a family of intelligent bandits moved into the village.
This breed of outlaw was not violent. These were the criminal minds who preferred to use their brains to separate fools from their wealth.
The gang of ambitious con artists had their sights on the foolish young patron, new to his position, uncertain in how to wield power, and with nobody to guide him.
How these never-do-wells gained entry to the social circle of the patron and patroness is beyond my experience to figure out.
I heard they had an extravagant story, that they had flair and charisma, and plenty of props to support the illusion of false respectability.
However it happened that such opposites should cross paths, the young patroness fell hungrily in love with the ringleader as soon as she saw him.
Wily creature that young man must have been, he took full advantage of the unexpected gift Fortune had bestowed and seduced the young patroness.
Word had it that the wife’s role was crucial to the elaborate scheme played upon her husband.
Good lord, how she must have despised him!
The swindle cost him everything, and thus, the interminable lineage of that awful family came to an end.
Their fortune made and evidence against the bandits impossible to obtain, the young patroness ran off with her lover and his unscrupulous family, leaving her husband wretchedly poor and suddenly dependent on his sister.
I heard the Patron’s Daughter had been so furious with her brother she made him live in the gardener’s cottage at the back of her property, rather than in the house with her.
Yes, darling Shepherd, the Patron’s Daughter had been able to get on with life.
I hope it reassures you that she fared much better than most girls taken in by the Sorcerer.
Her ruin was subtle enough for camouflage. She even married within her social class. Less than a year after I left, I heard the Patron’s Daughter married a man much older than she, a few years older than her father.
Because she did not sell her heart, her scandalous nature was suspected and gossiped about for years. Her reputation was shaky for the rest of her life.
But she was never caught, nothing was ever proven, and appearances were maintained.
I believe the marriage of convenience suited her rather well, and I’m sure her parents must have been relieved to see her go.
A Little Talk Over Breakfast
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Image by Bernadette Wurzinger from Pixabay