Other Earths (14 page)

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Mad’r.

“Getting me to tell Erzs’bet’s story because you want me to talk about my father. He sent me away just like King Andr’s send Erzs’bet away. Well, I think he should have kept her in Hungary!”

Mrs. Mad’r shook her head. She looked, Csilla thought, like the mathematics teacher at her school, when she had hopelessly muddled a multiplication problem. “Then she would have been killed, just as her mother the queen was killed. Csilla, you must understand that the Inquisition was burning anyone identified as a witch. And the easiest way to be a witch was to be one of the T̈nd’r. We have always been hiding, always fleeing, since the days of the Daughters of the Moon. Your father was working to change that. He was writing a book—”

“I know,” said Csilla. “He worked on it all day long, and sometimes all night long.” She would wake in the darkness and hear the sound of the typewriter. So she would put on the sweater that her grandmother had worn on days when the apartment was cold, walk down the hall to the kitchen, turn on the old stove, and boil the water for tea. When she brought it to him, he would look at her with that tired look in his eyes, her handsome Papa, and say, “Thank you, Csillike. You are my own guardian angel, aren’t you?”

In the mornings, she would make his lunch so that he would eat something while she was at school, but often when she came home, she would find the bean soup cold, the brown bread gone stale. “You forgot to eat again,” she would say, accusingly. “Have you been typing all day?”

“I’m so sorry, Csillike,” he would answer. “I seem to have forgotten some of the details of Szent Erzs’bet’s story. Could you sit beside me and tell me if I have the name of the Abbess right? I promise I’ll eat whatever you made me, no matter how cold it is.”

“It was a book about the T̈nd’r. He was writing down all of my grandmother’s stories. I used to help him with it.”

“Help him?” said Mrs. Mad’r. “How did you help him, Csilla?”

Csilla looked at Mrs. Mad’r curiously. She was leaning forward in her chair, no longer the disapproving teacher. Instead, she sounded like an eager child. “Well, not really help. I mean not with the typing or anything. But when he forgot something, or got something wrong, I told him how the stories went. My grandmother told them to me, and she made me tell them to her, so many times! I don’t think I could forget them if I tried.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “Don’t you know why your father sent you away? He sent us a message, but messages are so difficult. They have to be—well, not exactly clear, in case the wrong person reads them. He said he was writing down his mother’s stories, the whole history of the T̈nd’r. We’ve never had a history, just stories, Csilla. Stories remembered by the old people, because the young had so many other things to think about, and when something was forgotten, it was forgotten forever. In Erzs’bet’s time the church burned everything written about the T̈nd’r, and even now in Hungary books about the T̈nd’r are banned. They cannot be published or sold because the state believes that we do not exist. Can you imagine what that means to us? We have been hiding and fleeing so long that the T̈nd’r are scattered now, over Europe and here in America. Without a history, how can we know who we are, or find each other again? Your father was trying to teach us. His message—it was so difficult to understand. First we heard he was sending us a copy of his manuscript. Then Helga said he was sending us his daughter. And then there you were—”

“In my science class,” said Csilla, “the teacher told us that the T̈nd’r had a genetic defect. That we were . . . sick, not as strong as other people because we had bad genes. She said everything could be explained scientifically.”

“Do you believe that?” asked Mrs. Mad’r.

“I don’t know,” said Csilla.”My father believes in the stories, and he’s a professor at the university. But of course, he’s a philosophy professor, and not at all practical. He can’t even keep his socks mended. If the stories are real, what happened to M’rta’s ointment? I mean, there’s nothing like that now.”

“It’s another thing we’ve lost,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “That’s why the stories are so important.”

Csilla said, suddenly, “Did you know my name, when you told me about the Daughters of the Moon? Or did you really think I could be named T̈nde”

“No,” said Mrs. Mad’r, “not exactly. But in his message your father referred to a guiding star—another thing I didn’t understand at the time. Csilla—star. And so I guessed. I thought if I told you about the bravery of another Csilla, you might respond. About your father—you have to understand that he was in great danger, of going to prison or worse. But he was very brave.”

“I could have been brave too,” said Csilla.

“I’m sure he knew that,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “But like the king of Hungary, he loved his daughter too much to put her in danger. And like Erzs’bet, you’re going to have to make a choice.”

 

When Erzs’bet could not sleep, M’rta would stroke her hair and tell her about the Daughters of the Moon or how Saint Istv’n rode the White Stag. She was stroking her hair now. “Do you see why I brought you here, Erszike?”

Although she could hear the forest around her, the rustling and scurrying, and the crackles of the dying fire, she felt the stones of the Wartburg pressing against her, so that she could not breathe.

“To escape the landgravine?” But she knew, as she said it, that it was not the reason.

Cec’lia took her hand and looked at the spot where the thorn had pierced, which had already stopped bleeding. “To give you a choice.”

M’rta stroked her hair again, but now it offered no reassurance. “You could help the T̈nd’r, Erzsike. If you stayed at the Wartburg . . .”

She had not noticed when the piping had stopped. S’ndor lay by the fire with his mouth open, snoring slightly. He had taken the baby from his daughter, and it lay beside him, wrapped in his ragged coat. Green curls tumbled over the baby’s eyes. Its thumb was in its mouth, and it made a sucking sound in its dreams.

Erzs’bet looked down at the mark on her finger. Then she said to Cec’lia, “M’rta and I have to get back before dawn. Will you distribute the money?”

 

“There’s more,” said Csilla, because Mrs. Mad’r had stopped.

“Is there?” said Mrs. Mad’r. “You see, I don’t know the rest. We know our stories only in fragments. But your grandmother knew more of those fragments than anyone.”

“Yes,” said Csilla. “You’re missing the most important part.”

The chapel was filled with the thump of boots sewn from embroidered leather, the shush of sleeves edged with ermine.

I am a cloud, thought Erzs’bet. I am a mist, creeping across the room. I am invisible, like air . . .

“Elizabeth!” said the landgravine. “Father Conrad, this is the Princess Elizabeth.” The pearls in the landgravine’s hair glowed in the light that came through the stained glass window, turning her left cheek a delicate blue. “Elizabeth, surely you know enough to kiss the Inquisitor’s hand?”

It happened, as Erzs’bet knew it must, when she bent to kiss the wrinkled fingers, dirty under the nails and wearing an iron ring engraved with a cross. Out they tumbled, the rolls that she had stolen from breakfast, stolen for the woman who waited in a corner of the scullery, anxiously holding a child whose head was wrapped in a ragged scarf. How carefully she had wrapped them in her skirt, how carefully she had held her skirt so they would not fall out. And now they lay on the chapel floor, where boots stepped aside and skirts drew back to avoid them. What good was it being at the Wartburg, when all she could do to help the T̈nd’r was steal rolls? Lenke, the scullery girl, could do more than she could.

“Bread?” said the landgravine. “Why do you need bread?” She watched the rolls rolling, as though she had never seen bread before.

Erzs’bet felt as though she could not breathe. What should she answer?

“Speak, child,” said Father Conrad. “Speak as truthfully as our Lord taught us.” He smiled, a smile that he might have thought was kind. But his eyes glittered like steel.

What had M’rta whispered, lying beside her at night when she could not sleep? The T̈nd’r could call the blossom from its bud, the rabbit from its burrow, the fox from its den. They could smell the storm coming while the sky was still blue. She was one of the T̈nd’r, but none of these skills would help her now. What good did it do her, having the blood of the Moon?

Then suddenly she heard it: soft, insistent. The cooing of doves in the courtyard. Usually they stayed in their cote beside the kitchen, where they were kept for their eggs, and for pie.

“Come,” whispered Erzs’bet. “Come to me.” It was not much, it was probably less than nothing, but it was what she could do. Because she was one of the T̈nd’r.

“What was that, Elizabeth?” asked the landgravine.

“Speak up, child. Father Conrad can’t hear you.”

Then a rush of wings, and the doves, so many of them, white and brown and gray and speckled, were stepping over the chapel floor—pecking, pecking, until the very last crumb was gone.

“Surely these are the birds of God.”

Erzs’bet turned to see who had spoken. There was a boy standing beside her. He was tall and thin and slightly stooped, as though ashamed of his height. His eyebrows rose to a peak in the middle, which gave him a look of perpetual curiosity. Like the landgrave’s, she thought, and, suddenly realizing who he was, looked down again at the floor, where the doves were still searching for more bread. She noticed that his boots were covered with mud.

“You don’t remember me, Princess. Or if you do, I’m sorry for it. I seem to remember that I was a particularly unpleasant boy.”

“Ludwig! I thought you weren’t arriving until—well, later.” The landgravine did not look particularly pleased to see her son.

“I left the university as soon as I heard that my father was ill. But I find that I have arrived only in time to pray by his body.” He looked toward the chancel, where the landgrave lay beneath his crimson pall, in a cloud of incense. Erzs’bet saw that although he seemed calm, his eyes were red, as though he had been weeping. He turned back to the landgravine. “Surely the princess meant this bread for the poor. The landgrave himself would have done no less. The Word of God traveled as a dove to announce our Savior. Isn’t that right, Father Conrad? I think these birds rebuke us for our impiety. Here, Princess. Give this to those who need it.”

The purse jingled as he dropped it into her hands, sending the doves flying upward, while velvet sleeves fluttered to protect faces. They flew around the beams of the chapel, then out through the door and up into the blue of the sky. She clutched the purse carefully and watched as Ludwig walked up the steps to the chancel, then knelt beside the landgrave’s body, with his head in his hands. She thought, He is not like Herman, and perhaps in time I could like him, just a little.

 

“So she married Ludwig,” said Csilla, “and they lived happily until he died in the Crusades. Then she went into a convent, where she lived for the rest of her life. And the people said she could perform miracles, like curing the sick. So they called her a saint.”

“Is that the end?” asked Mrs. Mad’r. “I’m glad you told it to me. It’s not like in the official history books, is it?”

“It never is,” said Csilla.

“And you know all of your grandmother’s stories, like this, so complete?”

“Of course,” said Csilla, wondering why Mrs. Mad’r should doubt her.

“Csilla,” said Mrs. Mad’r, “I want to tell you a story that I know you have not heard. But first we must have some dinner, and then we must take a walk into the forest. Do you think that you’re strong enough? It’s not too far.”

“I’m all right,” said Csilla, although as she sat up, she felt the nausea again. But she was going to be brave, like her father.

 

Mrs. Mad’r wrapped a shawl around Csilla’s shoulders. “This dress used to be Susanna Martin’s. That’s Mrs. Martin’s daughter. You look a little like her—it was her passport we used to get you on the airplane in Vienna. It’s going to be colder in the forest. Are you ready, Csilla?”

“Yes,” said Csilla, although she did not know what she was supposed to be ready for.

They walked down the back steps and through what had once been a garden. It was dilapidated now. Weeds grew in the flower beds, and the pond was covered with scum. But some ancient peach trees still stood to mark where an orchard had once been. Soon the garden gave way to rhododendrons and mountain laurels, and then an oak forest, and they were walking along a path littered with oak leaves. Sunlight came down through the branches above, and the shadows of the trees stretched eastward. The sun was beginning to set. The forest was silent, except for the occasional call of a bird or the rustle of a squirrel in the treetops.

“I wonder if Erzs’bet’s forest was like this,” said Csilla.

“Older,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “This forest was cut seventy years ago for lumber. These are young trees. No, this reminds me of another forest.” She walked on for a moment in silence. Leaves crackled under her shoes, and a twig broke with a loud snap. Then she continued, “Once, there was a girl named Margit.”