The Countess (19 page)

“Of course you did. Such words are always meant to offend. I have more sense than to believe your lies, but nor can I let your behavior go unpunished.” At a gesture I had Darvulia and the head seamstress, a woman three times my age, take her by the arms. “Strip her naked. Then have the guard take her out into the courtyard to work the rest of the day in the hot sun,” I said. “If you act like a whore, I will treat you like one.”

Amália pleaded her innocence, saying that her accuser spoke falsely, that she never said anything about the count falling in love with her. The other girls, she claimed, envied her the beautiful mirror, her friendship with the lady of the house, and told lies to ruin her reputation. Unfair, she said. Unjust. Would the countess believe anything some jealous girl said to her and make the others suffer for it? Would the educated lady of the house believe the lies of a prattling laundress with cracked hands?

On and on she went, struggling, cursing. I looked not at the pretty little thing whose company I had always enjoyed but just over her shoulder, where I would not have to see her jealousy and anger, where I could keep my face calm and stop the tears that had begun to pool at the corners of my vision. Having started this business, I must see it through to the end. I kept hoping she would relent, confess her offense and beg my forgiveness and put all the trouble behind us. She had been my favorite, after all. If she had only confessed her crime, if she had told me with her own lips that she had offended me, that she had been vain and selfish, and begged forgiveness, I would have stopped it all at once. I would have brought her
a fresh gown and dressed her with my own hands and petted and comforted her. Instead she stormed and cursed in the courtyard all that morning while the sun came up hot over the walls of the keep, then hotter. A small crowd of men and boys gathered to watch her, to shout insults and throw stones that hit her on the cheek and drew blood, left marks on her buttocks. Whenever I passed the courtyard on this or that errand I saw her standing still and straight under the hot sunlight, sunburn creeping along the fair skin of her shoulders and across the tops of her breasts, so that her skin and hair were the same mottled reddish color. She didn’t dare speak to me, but her eyes blazed. Even then she didn’t have the good sense to be contrite. She had used my love for her own advantage, had turned on me the minute my back was turned, and all my love for her shrank and burned away the longer she stood in the courtyard.

At midday, thoroughly exhausted by the ordeals of the morning, I went down again, hoping to put an end to it. A crowd gathered in the courtyard to watch, men and girls both, the tools of their work still in their hands. Amália gathered herself to standing and crossed her hands over her breasts, as if newly ashamed of her nakedness. “Why did you speak against me?” I asked again. Again she said she had not, that the others were jealous of her, they hated her because the men in the house looked at her and not at them. When it was clear she would not relent, I decided to increase her punishment. I had Darvulia bring a jar of honey, and while the guards held the girl by the arms Darvulia poured the honey over her, over her head, down her shoulders, over her breasts. It dripped in the light, coating her with gold. Before the guards even released her arms the honey was drawing every insect at Sárvár. Flies and bees and gnats bit and stung her. Red welts appeared along her arms and legs, the tender flesh of her belly, the line of white skin around her hair and under her neck. She swatted and scratched, running through the dust and creating a racket, falling on her knees and begging me to let her bathe, to wash the sweetness away. Then she wept, and her tears drew more flies, and her eyes swelled. By the late afternoon she had collapsed in a
corner, half delirious. The other servant girls, who at first had been so amused by the sight of their tormentor being tormented, quietly filed away during the course of the rest of the afternoon and went back to their work.

When Ferenc came in that evening from town, dismounting in the creeping dusk, he passed the girl in the courtyard and stopped for a moment to look. By then she was a quivering lump, red from the sun and covered with welts and stings, her lips parched with thirst, the honey on her breasts and arms thick with dust and trapped insects. An ugly thing, twisted by vanity. What a spectacle she must have made as my husband came inside the house for the evening, her face unrecognizable, her beauty burned away so that Ferenc would have to have asked one of the servants who she was. I was nearly ready to send Darvulia out to have the girl brought in and washed, and her stings and bites treated, when Ferenc came into my room and asked what she had done. I thought he meant to reprimand me for taking aim at his current favorite and was prepared to defend my actions. “She was tormenting the other girls over the gift I gave her, a little silver mirror,” I said. “There was a quarrel, and none of the maids were doing their work.” I added, “And she was spreading some malicious gossip around the house.”

“About you?”

“And—about you as well.”

“I see.” Ferenc seemed to consider a moment, though he didn’t ask what she said. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he knew precisely. “She will certainly think twice before doing so again. And did she cry, and scratch, and try to protect herself from the insects?”

“She made a terrible noise. It’s been distracting the other servants from their work all day.”

“Next time,” Ferenc said, “have her chained in the courtyard. There are shackles for use around the fetlocks of the horses when they are being treated for illness. Use those. If she cries, you should bind her mouth as well. She should endure the punishment she’s earned, not make everyone else in the house suffer as well.”

“I will remember that.”

“And Erzsébet?”

“Yes?”

“Well done, my dear. A general could not have done better.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled, his hawklike expression growing ever more predatory, and considered me for a moment, as if he were deciding just how much he might be able to tell me, how much he might trust me to understand. As if I might be more than a name and an alliance with whom he had to share a house, but a friend and companion. A wife. “If you’d like, I can show you a few tricks that may come in useful in the future, battlefield techniques I have found very instructive.”

“What techniques are those?”

“I will revive her for you. Watch.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket, tore it in several pieces, and dipped them in oil. Then he went outside to the courtyard, and leaning down, set the oiled paper between the girl’s toes. He took a twig from the ground, lit it on a torch, and set it to the pieces of paper, which went up in quick orange bursts of flame. Even in her half-conscious state the girl jumped to her feet with a little yelp of pain and shook her feet to dislodge the papers. She looked around like a horse that had stepped on a snake.

“There,” he said, and looked at me with more pleasure than I had ever before seen on his face—his dark-bearded, dark-eyed, handsome face. My husband. “You see? It is called ‘star-kicking.’ Now she can walk inside under her own power, and spare the backs of those who would have to carry her. Or she could endure further punishment, if you think she’s not had enough.”

In the darkening space of the courtyard, with the tang of burning oil in my nostrils, I felt something in him open up to me, to the possibility of me. “Tell me more,” I said.

Afterward Ferenc began to take more notice of me. It was as if before I had been a shadow in his eyes, and only now did I take on solid form and substance, when he discovered we had a common interest—he the war abroad, I the battle at home, both of us equally dedicated to victory. Several times over the next few days I caught my husband staring at me with a kind of delight over the supper table in the evenings, over cards before the fire. If I spoke harshly to the cook over the roast or slapped the face of the girl who dropped a bottle of wine, shattering it all over the rug, I would look up and see him watching me, judging all my actions anew. I could not tell if it were the heat of summer or something more delicious that lit the coals in his eyes, but I remembered my mother’s advice to me, that husbands desire their wives, but that wives must take care to keep those desires from being ever fully satisfied. They must never be too ready to please, she’d said, but remain a mystery their husbands long to solve. Perhaps after the punishment of Amália, Ferenc had decided that my mysteries were something he wanted, at long last, to unravel himself.

One night I decided to prepare a special meal for my husband, sending the cook out of the house and preparing everything myself—the game birds dressed with cloves and stuffed with onions, the platters of sugary beets and vinegary olives, the loaves of bread studded with rye seeds, the candied citrons and cherries. For an entire day I worked in the hot kitchen until I could hardly stand, and when Ferenc and his friends Bocskai and Thurzó came in that night and sat at our table under candelabra polished to a blinding brightness, I served him from dishes I carried myself to show my pleasure at his visit, bustling in and out of the kitchen with a pot of butter in
a silver bowl, a gilded plate with sliced beef and dumplings in dark gravy speckled with herbs. He ate it all with relish and leaned back after each course to pat his stomach and compliment the cooking. “Perhaps I should come home more often,” he said.

“I would like that very much,” I said, and smiled, to try to show that I was sincere, that there was no sarcasm in the sentiment. When I came around the table again, he touched the hem of my skirt as I paused beside him, rubbing the fabric between his fingers, and the smell of him—new sweat, old horse, damp hair and lye—rose up and combined with the rich brown smell of the food. My eyes swam. It had been too long since any man had looked at me with affection, much less love. All through the night his enjoyment seemed to increase, his compliments growing in lavishness and his manners warming to me. His eyes followed my movements around the table, the intensity of his gaze increasing so much that when I came at last to the table with the platter of capon to offer him the first piece, he caught me by the wrist. I could feel the warmth from his body through his waistcoat, the heat from the palm of his hand encircling my arm. “Erzsébet,” he said in a low voice, so that only I heard him. “My Erzsébet.”

He was drunk—the bottle of dark wine I had brought to him when he first sat down was already half empty—but only a little. He would need to drink a great deal more before he would be lost in his drunkenness. Instead his cheeks were flushed, and he tipped his head back to look up into my face, where I stood over his chair. My husband was noticing me. I nodded to him to let him know that I understood, and then set the platter down and gave him a piece of the meat, dripping with juices and small green bits of the mistletoe that my mother had said would excite a man’s desire. I had been right to follow her advice from long ago, as well as the herb lore she had imparted to me. At last my humiliation would be at an end.

All that evening I watched him watching me.

He wore a dark red waistcoat and breeches, his black boots polished to a glossy sheen that matched his black hair and eyes, his white cheeks flushed with red warmth. Across my neck and under
my blouse a warm bloom began like the first days of summer, so that I wondered if the herbs had had an effect on me as well, but later I would know it was simply the desire that comes from being desired oneself.

His eyes under their heavy black brows moved like an animal’s, finding my face and then holding it, as if daring me to make a move, to slip away. His mouth and tongue were stained a rich red from the wine. Sometimes Thurzó, sensing Ferenc’s attention was diverted away from him, would tell a joke and make my husband laugh, but then Ferenc would find my face again and hold my eyes, and for the first time in my life I felt myself blush, a creeping warmth that grew up my neck, across my face and into the dark roots of my hair.

Later in the evening, when the men were boisterous and pounding the table in a lively argument, I announced I was tired. I left to go up to my room as usual, glancing back only once to see if his eyes were following me. His look—face lowered, eyes raised—pierced me from across the room. I felt a little relief when I slipped into the cool air of the darkened stairwell, like I had been close to smothering and could breathe freely once more.

In my room Darvulia helped me undress and undo the braids in my hair, brushing it out in long, dark waves, framing the pale skin of my face, the tops of my breasts. I sat in bed with a book and read a little by candlelight, expecting at any moment for Ferenc to come to me. I read one page, then read it again, realizing I had not retained a word of what I was seeing. Still he didn’t come. I wondered if I had been mistaken in his looks, his intentions. It was only when I gave up and blew out the candle that I heard the door to my chamber open and saw the dark figure of my husband come in from the hallway outside. “Erzsébet?” he said.

“Here,” I said. “Here, follow my voice.”

In the dark he stumbled into a chest of drawers, a wooden chair with a carved dragon’s head, and cried out. “And here I thought I would surprise you.”

“You do.” I had been careful to drink little that night, retaining
full control of my faculties, and now I chose my words as carefully, for the slightest misstep would ruin everything. He needed to trust me. “I have never been so surprised.”

“So you are glad that I’m here?”

There was an uncertainty in his voice I recognized as shyness, as fear that I might send him away. He was still a new husband, after all, twenty-two years old, still learning what a wife could offer. His uncertainty, his shyness, warmed my heart toward him. “I have been waiting for this since we first met, when I thought you the handsomest man in the kingdom.”

“You flatter me.” Sullen now. He thought I teased him.

I took a breath and relaxed back into the pillows, weighing my words carefully. “I flatter only myself, as the wife of such a man,” I said. “Will you stay?”