Chapter Text
He was not an ordinary guest, she knew, despite his almost pointedly ordinary appearance. If he had been, Uncle Werner would have sent Helena to bed hours earlier to keep her from spoiling their conversation. But for an extraordinary guest, the pretty little niece could stay. To look pretty, and little, and to stand ready with hot Apfelküchle for the end of the meal.
“They butchered my book in Ulm, you know. I can’t bear to set foot in that city anymore, not since.”
“The Great Surgery Book? Then you must have found another printer, the copy I have is marvelously—”
“Basel, Nuremberg, now Ulm… The gates of the world close to me one after another, you see. When I die, I expect I’ll find the gates to Heaven barred as well.”
Uncle Werner gave a surprised laugh at this wholly unsurprising jest, then paused, and laughed again. As though the cleverness of his extraordinary guest was so expansive, he needed time to properly take it in.
“And you, Frau Schmidtin?” their guest continued. “Are you familiar with my work?”
In the half a moment it took for Aunt Hedy to sip her beer and compose a response, she caught Helena’s gaze with her own and flicked her eyes towards the hearth. Get those damn apples ready, girl, and put an end to this insufferable meal. Eight months since her arrival at the Schmidt household, Helena had learned her aunt’s mind and moods well.
“I’m fortunate to have a learned husband, Herr Doktor,” Hedy said as her niece excused herself from the table. “My Werner reads passages to me, those that interest him. Your writing has featured in these readings, I’m sure.”
“I take my wife’s education in hand myself, so that she may assist me in my own work,” Werner cut in. “On occasion.”
“And what occasions,” the guest asked slowly, “would those be?” There was a strange rasp in his voice. Something hungry at the base of his throat.
Standing over the blazing hearth, Helena shivered.
A beat of silence and the rustle of cloth—she imagined Uncle Werner waving a hand at his wife, as though this were not a subject that, for whatever inscrutable, masculine reason, pained him deeply.
Eventually, Aunt Hedy spoke. “I attend to the women of the town, in those matters where it is proper.”
“A midwife,” the guest said plainly, impatiently.
“Yes.”
“So then you are this town’s most experienced practitioner of medicine, isn’t that so?”
Unabashedly rude. The insult to his host plain to even the dullest creature. Helena nearly caught a splatter of hot oil in her haste to pull the last apple from the pan and return to the table. She could see Uncle Werner’s jaw working beneath his thin beard, his hands picking a crust of rye to crumbs. Hedy herself seemed torn between amusement and fright.
Their guest pressed on. “Do you read? Have you read Rösslin?”
“We… Yes, we have a copy of The Rose Garden in our collection.”
“‘We, our, us.’ How tiresome it is to couch everything in such modest terms. You have a copy of The Rose Garden, Frau Doktor”—at this Werner nearly did rise from his seat—“unless your husband has so much idle time he can spend it studying medical texts for which he has no use.”
“The Apfelküchle is ready now. Hella, dearest, come around and serve our guest first.”
“And your niece, what hidden talents lie there? Is her Latin better than her Greek?” He laughed, hard and cold.
“Better than my Greek, worse than my Italian.”
Her aunt's hand shot out to grip her wrist, too late. The table turned as one to the girl, flour in her dark hair, round face red from the fire. And beautiful, still and forever.
Each of their three gazes burned with a message for her. I will have you bruised and bloody, said Werner’s. He will have you dead, said Hedy’s.
I will have you, said Von Hohenheim’s.