The Countess (26 page)

“I did,” said the girl, too young and stupid to know when to hold her tongue. “I’ll go to the palatine and tell him what happens in this house. I’ll tell him how you stabbed me with the needle in the carriage when all I did was poke fun at that fat Doricza. I’ll tell him about the girls you beat when you find out they’re with child. I’ll tell him how the old women keep us locked up at night without food and water when we don’t work fast enough. It isn’t right. Even rich noblewomen aren’t above the law. I’ll tell him everything, I swear it.”

The walls went dark, and the light in the room narrowed to a small white tunnel with the child at one end and myself at the other. “I think you won’t,” I said. In my ears there was a sound like water rushing. I took the poker out of Dorka’s hand and went toward the girl, who curled into a little ball, and brought the poker down on her back once, twice. I threw all my weight into the blow, all my anger that she would blame me for her own failures, that she would take my kindness and turn it into something ugly. Who had taken her in and given her a place? Who had shown her favor by placing her in my own carriage? Who had shown her mercy in having her wounds treated? She had mutilated my kindness to her, made it ugly. The poker fell on her back again and again, making a heavy thump like the sound of the cook beating a piece of beef to make it tender. An awful noise rose out of the girl’s mouth, and I hit her again, harder.
She would say nothing to the palatine, to anyone. She would shut her insolent mouth, or I would shut it for her.

At length she fell and was silent. “Do you have anything else to say,” I asked, “or have you learned finally to hold your tongue?” She lay still, her chest rising and falling with her breath, and said nothing.

It was so quiet that from the monastery next door I heard someone throw a pot against the wall of the house, a loud
clank
that echoed in the otherwise quiet nighttime streets. A complaint for all the noise. In the morning one of the scullery maids would find the pot the monks had thrown in the street and bring it back, though the monks would not accept it, as if it had been tainted. I would have a mind to speak to the abbot, to tell him to mind his people better, but I would have enough to do without worrying about the monks and their silly superstitions. For the present I handed the poker back to Dorka and told her to keep the girl in the laundry until she regained consciousness. I said Dorka should tend to her in secret so that the sight of her would not upset the other maidservants, for the child was all over black and blue, and a thin trickle of blood came out of her nose. She had provoked me beyond the limit of what I could endure. Next time she would know better.

With Dorka in charge I went myself back up to bed and slept more soundly that night than I had in some time, since before Ferenc’s death at least. When she came to me in the morning and told me the girl had died in the night, I felt a strange curiosity at what had happened, that it was I who had killed her, although I had not meant to do so. The light came into my room in long yellow strips like golden cloth and fell across the bedclothes, but otherwise I saw nothing, felt nothing. The girl was dead. She would trouble me, or anyone else, no longer. I would not have to find a place for her in someone else’s house. I would not have to pay for her dowry out of my own pocket, nor listen to another minute of her outrageous ingratitude. I washed my hands of her, and all the others like her.

The next evening, under cover of darkness, I had my servants
take the body to our Lutheran priest and bury her in the churchyard in a plain box, along with a coin or two for the priest’s coffers. Though Dorka and Ilona Jó complained that someone else should be made to do it—the boy Ficzkó, perhaps, who was younger and stronger than they—they did as I bade them and removed the body from the laundry. I told them I did not trust anyone else to do it, which pleased them so much they stopped complaining, and afterward I gave them each a fine dress of silk for their troubles. I thought no more about the girl. She had been a thief, a disturbance in my house, and a weakling besides, who could not even take a beating without rousing all of Bécs in the middle of the night. I could not afford to keep such troublemakers among my maidservants, to let their greed and jealousy infect everyone around them. Let them go to the churchyard, then, where they could be no more trouble to anyone.

Once the trunks were unpacked and we were settled into the city, the first thing I did was to send word to György Thurzó that we had arrived in town. Thurzó spent many months each year in Austria with his Habsburg friends, and he especially loved winter in the capital, with its music, and dances, and pretty young things in satin and velvet and lace, though he never seemed to indulge in the little affairs and speculations the way some of the other nobles did. He certainly seemed forlorn since Zsofía Forgách had died, and I wondered whether he would marry again. He might find ample companionship in me, I began to think, if he looked carefully enough.

The next day Thurzó responded to my letter—with astonishment, because widows were expected to stay at home for at least
a year—but then with pleasure, too, urging me to come to him at my first opportunity.
My dear madam, I am surprised and gladdened to hear that you have arrived at court and rejoice, along with all the citizens of the city, that you walk among us. Please accept, at your earliest convenience, an invitation to dine at my house …

His note pleased me, not because dinner at Thurzó’s house would be a grand affair—as a widower he did not oversee the quality of his hospitality nearly as much as he had when his wife was alive—but because the swiftness of his reply hinted that I had not been wrong to think he would welcome my company. I responded that I would join him the following week and set about making certain that the impression I made on Count Thurzó on this occasion would be a meaningful one.

The seamstresses I had brought with me from Sárvár worked for several days to make me a new dress to wear especially to Thurzó’s invitation. It must not seem too ostentatious—I was still a new widow, which no one was likely to forget—but it should be becoming in color and style. I settled on an oxblood satin with a wide collar to frame my face, and a pair of new calfskin slippers so fine and soft that even walking downstairs to climb in the carriage might wear them out too soon. I dressed all my long hair in rose oil, spreading it out to dry by the fire. Afterward Darvulia and Ilona Jó helped me to braid it, using a special new coif that hid my ears and framed my eyes with little wisps of curls. A net of pearls stood out like dewdrops in my dark brown tresses, and the fat little seamstress Doricza brought down the new lace ruff she had made, larger and finer than any I had owned before. I thanked her and patted her arm, telling her she had done well, and went to press a silver
tallér
into her hand, which she refused with a great deal of modesty, saying that I had given her enough, that she was not worthy of so much attention. Dorka shuttled her out of the room before I could tell her how pleased I was to see that my punishment of the other girl, the little blonde, had made such an impression on her.

I took my time at my toilette that evening, not wanting to appear too anxious. The longer Thurzó had to wait, the more he would anticipate my arrival.

When I was ready, Darvulia had the carriage brought. Before I stepped inside, my old friend tucked a piece of parchment into my hand. “A prayer,” she said. “To bring you what you want.”

I unrolled the parchment. As always, Darvulia knew what occupied my thoughts. “Will it work?”

“It has always worked for me.”

I smiled. “Has it?” I wondered what it was that Darvulia had wanted and got for herself that she had not told me. The inner workings of that creature had always been something of a mystery to me, no matter how I much I loved her. The other two, Ilona Jó and Dorka, frowned and put their heads together, but they had the good sense at least to remain silent on the subject of Darvulia, after the many times I had made it clear how much I loved her. “How many times must I repeat this prayer to make it work?” I asked.

“As many as you can between now and the moment when you set eyes on the one you desire. Then afterward, when you have left his sight, repeat it three more times.”

Thurzó was no Ferenc Nádasdy. It would take more than mistletoe and magic to make him love me, but I decided to trust Darvulia once more.
Little cloud, grant me your favor. Holy Trinity, protect Erzsébet in her time of need, and grant your daughter your love
. I whispered it again and again, under my breath.

At last I stepped up into the carriage, being careful not to crush my new dress, and we were off through the torchlit streets of peacetime Bécs. Music fell down from the windows we passed and landed in my lap like droplets of silver. The darkness in the streets flowed around the carriage, and I felt myself awash in hope and possibility in the imperial city, which had withstood even the onslaught of the Turks following the disaster of Mohács, the siege of the sultan as he moved north and west through the kingdom in the years before
I was born. Like the sultan I would now besiege the city and its inhabitants—Archduke Mátyás, György Thurzó. Unlike the sultan I hoped to achieve my aim and return home victorious.

Thurzó’s house, a newer affair with marble columns and dark brickwork, was close enough for me to walk to, though it was unimaginable that a noblewoman would traverse the city on foot. We passed the red roofs of the Hofburg rising along the walls of the city, quiet now with its master the king away in Prága, but here and there a window showed a light. In a very few minutes we passed under an archway into a courtyard that opened into a small tier of windows where candles were lit, and maidservants scurried in and out carrying bouquets of flowers, polished silver, gilded candelabra scrubbed of their wax. Thurzó himself came out to greet me and open the carriage door, his deep-set eyes even more tired-looking than usual, the bags beneath them stuffed full as two down cushions. I wondered if it was the trouble with Rudolf that pained him, or if it was the loneliness that comes with the death of a spouse, loneliness that I had come to know too well in the preceding weeks. He took both my small hands in his large ones and placed a gentlemanlike kiss on my cheek, the length of beard ticklish against my mouth. “Welcome, cousin,” he said. The endearment warmed me, for although there was no blood shared between us, we were distant relations by marriage, as most of the nobility of Hungary were. I didn’t blush but looked at him with clear steady eyes and said how happy I was that he could receive me, what an honor it was for a poor widow to be a guest at the Thurzó house.

He laughed. “Poor, indeed. You look remarkably well,” he said. “One might even think that widowhood agrees with you. Is that a new dress?”

“It is,” I said, pleased he had been paying attention. “One cannot go around Bécs looking like an old crone, widow or not.”

“One can,” Thurzó said, “but
you
cannot. I think you have never spent an ugly day in your life.”

I laughed. “Thank you for that,” I said. “An old woman always needs to hear a little untruth every day. It keeps the mind sharp.”

“You will paint me as a liar, madam,” said Thurzó, looking aghast, but he smiled at this old game. Feint and counterfeint. A politician through and through. He would be still my trusted friend, or else a most worthy adversary. “What brings you to town?”

“Sárvár grows a bit small for me. There has been so little pleasure there lately, now that Ferenc is gone and my elder girl is married. I was so desperate for company that I simply had to bring Kata to town. You were the first person I thought of when I arrived, since I knew you would find some way to amuse me.”

“I’m certain I can. Shall we go in?” He offered me his arm, and I took it and went inside.

All that night we dined and enjoyed each other’s company. He sat near me at the head of the table in his private dining room and leaned on his hands when I spoke, his eyes lighting up at some joke or bit of news about some mutual acquaintance. He did seem to be lonely, for even after the food was finished and I might have taken my leave for the evening he kept ordering the servants to bring more and more wine, as if to keep me there a little bit longer. He leaned in close to listen when I asked him questions about our friend Bocskai’s troubles with the king, so close his head nearly touched my own. How unfortunate, he said, that István Bocskai would choose now to side with the Hungarian nationalists and the Transylvanians against the king.

But surely on the question of religion, I said, it was best that the Hungarians be able to choose their own faith, rather than have it imposed by the Catholic Habsburgs. As a Lutheran himself, Thurzó must see that.

“It is possible to overlook matters of faith for the good of the state,” Thurzó said. “The Habsburgs remain Hungary’s best hope against Constantinople. Bocskai makes a mistake by forgetting that. Rudolf’s ties to Rome are not as strong as his ties to Hungary.”

I said the fact that Thurzó managed to retain both the trust of
Rudolf and of Mátyás in such turbulent times was testament to his shrewdness of mind, his great ability in sorting out the affairs of men. He laughed, because he was no fool—he knew what a woman’s flattery was worth. But my interest in his affairs, and praise for his decisions, seemed to please him nevertheless.

“Rudolf is a friend of yours, isn’t he?” I asked.

“He is. A worthy king, very learned.”

“Not unlike you yourself.”

“His interests are different from mine, but I like to think myself the intellectual equal of any man.”

Or woman
. “He spends much time with his artists and astronomers, from what I hear. Even Kepler is there now as his court mathematician. It must cost him a fortune.”

“A fair bit. Many of his Spanish friends come to seek his advice and encouragement, and the great minds of Europe, too, find no better friend than Rudolf. Hungary needs such a patron, if she is ever to be the equal of the great empires of the west.”