The Countess (22 page)

Ferenc, having heard the news of the child’s birth and illness, rushed home to be with us, but it was too late—he would not see little Tamás alive. A few days later we buried our darlings. Orsika I dressed in a white shift encrusted with tiny pearls, and baby Tamás, the heir we had hoped for, I wound in a fine linen sheet embroidered with gold thread. A little prince, even in death. We invited no one to the funeral. Plague funerals were not public funerals, and even if they had been, we preferred to mourn together, out of the eye of the public, when it came to the deaths of our children.

Your father wanted to try for another child right away, but I couldn’t bear to think of it. For nearly a year I would not let him into my bed, saying that I would not bring another child into the world only to see it die before my eyes. Ferenc tried to be patient with me, wrapping his great arms around me until I felt I would disappear, but sometimes he would press himself on me further, and I would beg him—no, please. No more children, Ferenc. I could not endure it. He said that we still had two children living, that there was no reason to think another child would not live. The plague had been bad luck, he said, but bad luck doesn’t last forever. I remembered the gypsy man who had died in the belly of the horse, and how his people had left him there, where bad luck was bound to linger. I wondered if perhaps it had landed, of all places, on me. I remembered the child I had given away, and how I had felt doomed to lose all my children as punishment for giving up the one. But I didn’t speak of my anguish to Ferenc, whose heart was breaking with want. Instead I let him into my bed, in a fog of desperation and grief that must have looked like love. Even the chance of a son, an heir, the protection of our old age, lifted his spirits, and when it was over I held him against me and thought that if God were so merciful as to give me another child, another son, I would give anything I had—everything—to see him grow to manhood. My very self.

Our little Pál was born on a morning in the spring of 1598, a cool morning of mist and rain. You were the most easy and well behaved of my children from the beginning, since I had barely an hour between the beginning of my lying-in and the moment of your birth. The moment you fell free of me your father held you aloft, counted your fingers and toes, and laughed so long that tears squeezed from his eyes. “His name is Pál,” he said. Darvulia could hardly snatch you back from his hands long enough to wipe the blood and wax from your plump, pink little body. A healthy child, a son. Our prayers answered at last.

Afterward your father hosted a great celebration, a feast that lasted more than a week, with enough food and wine and dancing for an army, as my own father had once done for my sister Klára and my mother. Friends and family came from all over Hungary to celebrate with us the birth of the Nádasdy heir, the palatine’s grandson, on whom we lavished all our hopes. Thurzó came from Bicske, though he left my friend Zsofía Forgách and their two daughters at home, where they were recovering from a long and difficult illness. Your uncle István came all the way from Ecsed despite his own troubled health, bringing little Gábor and Anna with him, the two Báthory orphans he had adopted after he and Fruzsina Drugeth had given up hope of children of their own. Gábor especially was a pleasure, a teasing, lighthearted boy who preferred dancing and games to the serious pursuits my brother tried to bend him to, scholarship and philosophy, the great questions of our day. Anna and Kata were delighted to meet their little cousins and ran up and down the halls squealing so much that your father told them, only half in jest, that if they did not quiet down he would have their mouths sewn shut until
the celebration was over. I told them to play outside, out of earshot of their father, and they went giggling into the garden to continue their games.

My cousin Griseldis, newly widowed, wrote that she could not make the trip to Sárvár, though she thanked me for my invitation nevertheless. Her husband, who had taken a wound fighting at Mezőkeresztes and suffered for some time afterward of a lingering illness, had finally died, she wrote, leaving Griseldis in charge of the small estates they had inherited. This news, which at one time would have broken me in two, now left me unmoved. András Kanizsay was dead. A lesser man than Ferenc Nádasdy, after all.

Afterward, she wrote, her two sons-in-law, along with a couple of her wealthy neighbors, had joined forces and turned on her, seizing her croplands and vineyards, the little
kastély
that had been promised them in her will. They had been unwilling, apparently, to wait for her death to possess it. The younger children had been sent to live with their older sisters, and my cousin sent to a nunnery. Her letter complained bitterly how ill her daughters treated her, how lonely she was in her present state.

The other nobles were scandalized by these actions, but no one lifted a finger to defend her. Such was life, they said. She should not have tried to keep the
kastély
for herself when she had promised it to the sons-in-law. I sent her some fine blankets and a few bottles of wine, some good cheese and other small kindnesses, but I had little sympathy for a woman like Griseldis. If her neighbors and relations felt they could treat her like a joke, an obstacle to be pushed aside, I thought, it was her own fault by proving them correct. How was I to know that in time my friends and family, my own sons-in-law and my neighbors, would do the same to me?

In Sárvár we gathered our friends to us to celebrate our good fortune. My friends among the noblewomen came to sit with me in my rooms and fuss and fret over you—my husband’s aunt, Margit Choron; Countess Zrínyi; Countess Batthyány—all the women who had once pitied me for my childlessness, who had whispered
about me, had flaunted their many children in front of me like prizes they had won. My sisters came too, with their little children, and my sister-in-law, your aunt Fruzsina Drugeth, held you and cooed over you longer than anyone, she who had adopted her children when they were already half-grown. How lovely it was then to sit in the white room at Sárvár surrounded by my sisters and friends and hold my little son in my arms and feel their admiration now that my happiness was complete. They rejoiced with me and prayed with me that after all our sorrows you, at least, would grow to manhood and strength, the heir that every family wanted and needed.

All that week I wrapped you in the softest linens and showed you off to our many guests. Your father held you up in front of his comrades-in-arms and declared that the sultan in Constantinople had better beware, for another Nádasdy had come to plague him into his grave. As fine and strong a boy as ever was born, the envy of all our relatives and friends. Your father gave me a ring, a large yellow diamond in a gold band, as a gift for producing his heir, and I remembered what my mother had said to me, that when I gave my husband a son he would value me above all his possessions. Your father’s gaze never landed on me in those days but he looked pleased, more pleased than I had ever seen him.

It was during that time that I began to notice Thurzó’s eyes on me too. As Ferenc’s dearest friend he claimed a seat close to me at meals, smiling at me over his silver cup. He would lean in so close that, at times, I could feel his lips brush against my ear, so that I would wonder what he was up to, what he had in mind. One night during dinner he came forward to ask about the troubles with my uncle Zsigmond in Transylvania, who had separated from his Habsburg wife and abdicated in favor of my cousin, the Catholic cardinal András Báthory. I was picking up my glass of wine when he brushed a strand of hair away from my ear and leaned forward to ask me in a low voice whether I heard anything from my Transylvanian cousins. How did they do lately? he asked, his breath smelling of herbs and wine. I shook my head and laughed, though the question was no
joke. Perhaps Thurzó was trying to pry some family secrets from me to use against my uncle and his supporters. I changed the subject to his wife and children at home, asking after their health. He studied me for a moment, as if deciding how much he could trust me. Zsofía Forgách, he said, growing melancholy, was more ill than most people knew. “I do not expect her to live out the year,” he said, sighing, and set down his cup.

I put my hand on his arm, which was thinner than Ferenc’s, even under his coat. Zsofía Forgách had been his stepsister before she was his wife. They had grown up together and knew from the very beginning they were meant for each other. The thought of losing her must have been hard for him. “I am so sorry to hear it,” I said. “I hope you will take her a letter from me when you return. I have some herbs, too, that might help her, if you will give them to her.”

Now his hand was over mine, rough and calloused from many years in the saddle, but pleasant and warm nonetheless. I had not always trusted him, but we had been friends a long time, Thurzó and I. “Thank you, yes. She would be glad to hear from you. It would lift her spirits, if not heal her body.”

He seemed about to say something more, but then Ferenc was by our side, his black brows moving up and down in half-drunken merriment. I could smell the
pálinká
on his breath, the spiced meats and fruit, and I knew that he would suffer from indigestion long into the night. He had stayed away from my bed since the birth of our son, but still I knew him well enough to know his suffering. If Thurzó had not been sitting there, I might have scolded him to take his drink in more moderation, but I would not want to shame him in front of his friend, so I said nothing, only removing my hand from Thurzó’s and folding it in my lap.

“What’s this?” Ferenc said. “Moving in on my property, are you, old friend?”

“Not at all,” I said, with a little more heat than was merited, for I never liked to think of myself as any man’s property. “Thurzó was just telling me of his wife’s illness.”

Ferenc’s face grew serious. He knew how much Zsofía Forgách meant to Thurzó. He mustered a semblance of sobriety and said, “Is there anything we may do?”

Thurzó sighed, and looked away, at the servants moving around the hall, the young girls in their brightly colored skirts, the stewards dressed in black, as if someone there might know the secret that would save her. He picked up his cup and took a long drink from it. “Thank you, but I think not. Perhaps I will return home a little early to be with her. It might do us both some good. I will say good night, my friends.” He drained his drink and set the cup down. I motioned for one of the servants to take him a candle to lead him to his room, so that he might find some rest before his journey, and wondered what it was that Thurzó might have said to me if Ferenc had not interrupted him.

After he was gone, Ferenc leaned heavily against me, calling for more wine, more music, laughing when I urged him to moderation. He was still calling for more of everything when the sun broke over the horizon and the revelers were asleep in their furs, bodies piled here and there around the halls of Sárvár like the aftermath of a little war. I put his arm around my shoulders and led him up to bed.

Your sisters grew into lovely young ladies, and I often set them the task of watching their little brother, a serious boy with his father’s heavy brow and bone-black eyes. Kata was an eager little mother who loved to pick you up under the arms and carry you around the house. Of course this manhandling made you cry, especially when you had been in the middle of some game or other from which your sister was taking you away. Anna, my responsible eldest child, would
scold her sister that the baby was not a puppet to play with, but Kata could not resist something smaller than herself after having been the baby of the family. Like a moth to a candle she went at you again and again, until you began to cling to me or Ilona Jó whenever you saw your sister coming.
“Anyu!”
you would say, loudly, and hold up your round little arms for me to rescue you. But Kata would wait until I was not looking, or until her brother became distracted, and try again. She was never one to give up easily.

Anna grew more serene as she got older, less mischievous, but my eldest never came to me with her secrets or clambered into my lap as her sister did as I sat writing my letters or reading a book. She was well named, for she had my mother’s cool eye, her calculating temperament, as well as her extraordinary beauty. A dangerous combination. Whenever I would see her move past the servant boys at home at Sárvár, the street boys in front of our house in Bécs—how she watched them watching her, how she lifted her hand just so to smooth her dress, to pat her hair, to bring attention to the parts of herself she liked best and that would make them shudder with want—I sometimes fancied I was looking at a small version of my own mother as she might have been before my own birth, relentless, self-contained, and completely aware of the power of her charm. At thirteen Anna drew the attention of every man in the room at festivals held in Pozsony, in the new Habsburg capital at Prága, even old grandfathers three times her age. Whenever she lifted her lashes, a sigh moved through the male quarter of the room, and her nurse—the heavyset, beetle-browed Dorottya Szentes—would spin her around by the shoulder and march her back out again with as much ferocity as any captain with an inexperienced and troublesome soldier.

Ferenc began to talk of betrothing Anna to the son of his old friend Miklós Zrínyi, a young man of sixteen with his father’s name and his father’s warlike interests. She was a good age to be betrothed, older than I had been when our parents made our match, and his mother was my dear friend, but for Anna’s sake I had hoped Ferenc
would choose someone less likely to be away at war year after year than the son of Zrínyi. I had thought she might make a good wife for my nephew Gábor, whom I had seen whispering with Anna in the halls at Sárvár more than once, a couple of young conspirators. The thought of my daughter as the mistress of Ecsed filled me with joy, remembering my own happy childhood there. Still, I could not deny that when your father approached her about the match with Zrínyi, Anna seemed pleased. The younger Zrínyi was broad shouldered and slender hipped like his rich and famous Croatian father, and Anna did seem to favor him more than the others, sitting closest to him at dinner, offering him the first olives, the first glass of wine. Once I even caught her reaching for his leg under the table at a feast, her soft little fingers nimbly moving across the fabric of his breeches, his face dreamy, my alarm growing with every moment until I called her name, sharply, and saw her snatch her hand back. So at last I approved of the match. She needed a husband, and quickly, too.