The Countess (36 page)

“Those last three have died, madam,” she said. “I do beg your
pardon again on that account. I thought I was following your orders. When I caught them sneaking the soldiers into their rooms, I clamped down, just as you said, to punish them. So they remember their place and all.”

“I understand that, but you can see what a predicament it left me in. There were no girls to take with us to Pöstyén, just that fat one who is so clumsy with everything. I’ve left you in charge before and seen you take matters a bit too much into your own hands. I can’t be everywhere, so I’ve left Ilona Jó in charge for now. Until you remember to handle yourself a bit better.”

“Of course, madam.”

“That’s all, then. Thank you.”

When she was gone, I was joined at the fire by my daughter and Count Zrínyi, who had arrived just that morning, in time to embrace his wife. After the healthful waters of Pöstyén, Anna was more hopeful than ever of conceiving another child and eager to put the cure to the test. When she thought I wasn’t looking, she whispered something into Miklós’s ear that made him blush and glance at me in utmost embarrassment. “Not right now,” he said in a low voice. “Surely you can wait until after dinner, at least.” But he kept one arm tight around her waist while they warmed themselves in front of the roaring logs, and I was pleased to see the closeness return between them. Either the visit to Pozsony, or the generosity of my will—or both—had restored some of their former happiness.

We dined that evening on pheasant and capon and salted fish from Lake Balaton that the count had brought back with him as a gift for me. He talked of how the new palatine had set up his court, how mistrustful Thurzó seemed of his fellow Hungarians, insisting in the most strident tones that all the nobles swear fealty to Mátyás, especially any with close ties to the Báthorys. His eyes met mine across the table. “Thurzó knows that Gábor, as the new prince in Transylvania, is exciting the nationalists. He wants to be sure that we are in his pocket, at least in public.”

“You will do as you must,” I said. “Now the wind blows from
Bécs, but tomorrow it may blow from Gyulafehérvár. It’s best not to make too many enemies before the storm hits.”

“That is just what I said,” Anna chimed in, yawning. Her wineglass was empty, but she waved away Istók Soós’s offer to refill it and said she was going up to bed. She looked significantly at her husband, who blushed again—even in the firelight I could see the crimson spots on his cheeks—and said he would come to bed momentarily. He wanted to speak to me, he said.

“Oh?” I asked. The last time Zrínyi had wanted to talk to me, it cost me a third of my properties.

Anna gave her husband a look, but then she kissed me and took her leave, and Miklós and I found ourselves alone, sitting on the carved-back chairs before the fire. The servants were gone, even the shuffling of their feet stilled on the stones. Miklós took a great gulp and drained his wineglass, setting it back down again. A bit of red liquid clung to the sides and slid back down to settle at the bottom of the glass. I assumed my son-in-law had some questions for me about his dealings with Thurzó, or perhaps a message he wanted to send to Gábor in Gyulafehérvár without the palatine’s knowledge. It was no secret that Miklós had dreams of increasing the glory of his illustrious grandfather’s name, and if anyone could have offered Gábor Báthory an ally in Hungary, it would have been Miklós Zrínyi. But when my son-in-law opened his mouth to speak, it was not Gábor or Thurzó he wanted to ask me about.

He had been out in the woods around the castle hill that morning flushing game with his new rifle and the three dogs, he said, when the best of them got wind of something and took off through the woods. He called after the beast, but the other two were soon lost to his sight among the trees as well. When he came upon them, they had dug up from the shallow earth the mottled hand of a girl. Her skin was bruised and beaten, and around her wrists and ankles there were signs of shackles. As he was seeing to the first one, the dogs had uncovered at least three or four more. I pictured him in the fig orchard on the slopes of the hill, where the old washerwoman
must have buried the dead girls, sitting astride his white horse and bending down to see what it was his dog had nosed. His revulsion when he realized what he was looking at, how he would have called to the dogs to leave the bodies. The carrion smell. Zrínyi told me how he had to pull the dogs off the corpses, to pull them snarling back to the house, where he asked Dorka why there were five girls buried in the orchard. The old woman told him they were plague victims who had died the previous summer and been buried in haste, so as to not frighten the people around Csejthe. Zrínyi hadn’t believed the servant’s explanation, especially since he could see for himself that the girls had not been dead more than a week at most. “Your servant looked,” he said, “as if the devil had her by the throat. But I was determined to ask you about it first, my lady, because of my love for you. I would not want to assume the worst.”

“Nor should you,” I said. “The girls did die of the plague, Miklós, but it is as you say, they were dead only a week ago, up at the keep while you and Anna were staying here. We did not want to worry the village with the news. The poor things, they were so blackened when Dorka found them they were hardly recognizable.”

“What of the marks from the shackles?”

“They were tied at the wrists, as usual, to remove the bodies. The servants could not lift them otherwise.”

Miklós looked thoughtfully into the fire, swirling the dregs of the wine in his cup. A bit of sap popped in the fire, and the house grew still around us. Near the door I could hear the dogs settling down for the night, sighing with contentment, curling their tails around them. Zrínyi said, “Then it is what I thought. I knew you would explain it all.” He stood, then bent and kissed my brow like a good son. “Of course I won’t mention this episode to Anna. It won’t do to upset her.”

“Thank you, Miklós,” I said, watching him turn to go. In the line of his back I could see a curl of distrust settle. I would have to watch him, young Zrínyi, to keep the peace in my house. God knows I needed no more troubles just then. “You’re right, there’s no reason
to upset her over nothing,” I said. Then I too took up a candle and made my way to bed.

At Christmas, when the snow muffled the sounds of the kites and hawks wheeling in the skies, when ice grew along the edges of the river like mold across old bread, I opened the house in Csejthe to my friends and neighbors for the celebration of the birth of the Christ child. The healing waters of Pöstyén had left me much improved in spirits, and in a jovial mood I sent for my children, my good friends, to join me. Thurzó wrote from Bicske that he was sorry he could not come, but his wife was nearing her confinement, and he wished to be by her side when the child, their first, was born. I was not sorry to miss them. My son and daughters all planned to come, as did my husband’s uncle Kristóf Nádasdy and his wife. I had rooms prepared for all of them, moving the servants once again to the keep at the top of the hill, this time leaving them in Ilona Jó’s charge, with strict instructions that there was to be no trouble of any kind while my family was with me. “The girls are to return as fat and fed as when they left,” I said, looking significantly at Dorka, who stared back as if she did not know of what I spoke. If I needed the girls to return, I said to Ilona Jó, I would send Ficzkó up with the cart to fetch them down again.

The first to arrive at the manor house were you, Pál, and Megyery, on that bitter afternoon when the wind blew the snow hard against the shutters, driving it onto the sills and in the corners of old rooms like fine dust. Istók Soós and Ilona Jó and I had settled in before the fire for the day, convinced that no one would be foolish enough to come to Csejthe in this weather, when we heard the sound
of someone pounding on the door and muffled voices demanding the house be opened to them.

I went to the door, pulling the fur of a silver fox around my shoulders, to see several white figures, men on horseback, moving in the courtyard, hunched and shivering in the cold, their mustaches and beards frozen and white. You were riding the little Arab mare I had given you as a gift, a creature I would have thought too delicate for the harsh journey between Pozsony and Csejthe, but she pranced and jangled as if a two-day journey through the Little Carpathians in a blizzard were nothing at all. You had grown since the summer, nearly as tall as me, so that I didn’t recognize the snow-covered figure riding the little mare as my son at first, but then you swung down off your horse and flung yourself at me with great cries of happiness, and I took you in my arms. You were wrapped in a red fur-trimmed cloak and wore a high black bearskin hat round as a drum, but when I embraced you, I could still feel how cold you were, how you shivered. The others came to the door stamping the snow from their boots and brushing it from their mustaches, their faces the color of new-pressed wine. I scolded Megyery for risking the roads on such a terrible day. “You should have stayed at Pozsony until the weather cleared,” I said.

The old tutor bowed and murmured one of his usual apologies, but you spoke up for him. “It wasn’t Imre’s fault, Mother,” you said. “The snow didn’t start until we were halfway here, and he wanted to turn back, but I said that with half the distance covered already we may as well finish the journey. I made him keep going, because I was so anxious to see you.”

I looked to the tutor, whose eyes remained on the ground, but I knew the tadpole had more on his mind than he was willing to say. If Megyery had truly wanted to turn back, you would not have been able to convince him otherwise, Pál, but I said nothing. I would not argue with your friend and make you suffer. As before, it worried me that my own son felt always the need to lie to protect the tutor from my displeasure. If old Imre were to ask you for a dukedom, I
knew you would not be able to refuse him. It made me afraid for you and makes me afraid still. If something should happen to me—if I die before you reach your full majority and can be reasonably emancipated—there will be no one to counter your guardian’s influence over you. After the frail health I had suffered for a little while in the fall, I had begun to be more aware that the number of days ahead of me might be fewer, far fewer, than those behind.

“Very well,” I said, “but we should get you inside before the fire. You look half frozen, my love.”

“I’m not cold, Mother,” you said. “Did you see me riding Sabina? Master Bálint says I’ve become as good a rider as Papa ever was.”

“I believe he’s right. Your father would be proud. Now let me have Deseő bring you some soup, and let’s get you out of those wet clothes before you catch cold.”

“Megyery needs some soup and dry clothes too.”

“Yes, Megyery, too. I’m sure we can set another place for him.” I took you by the shoulders and marched you in front of me into the house. “Now tell me what you have been reading lately.”

On Christmas we met in the dining hall to gather round the long wood table, to eat and drink. György Drugeth and Kata, who just that summer had converted to the Roman faith after an intense campaign by Bishop Pázmány on the pope’s behalf, did not join us for the morning services in the church but instead held a small mass in the chapel with their own priest, who had traveled all the way from Homonna with them. They invited me to join them as well, but Ferenc had converted these lands to the reformed church, and I was not about to discard the faith that my husband had chosen for them. When I said this to my
daughter, she smiled and nodded and said nothing, but when her eyes met mine, an understanding was there, a kind of apology that said she would much rather have come to services with us than endure the formalities of her husband’s well-timed Catholic conversion. “You are welcome to use the chapel at the
vár
, if your priest doesn’t mind,” I said, by way of excusing them. “Old Ponikenus is likely to pollute the congregation with the wind of his fetid breath, but it wouldn’t do for me to be absent on Christmas morning, of all mornings.”

Kata laughed, placing her hands on her round belly, for she was expecting her first, and I could tell she was a little green this morning, for the child was making her ill. “Go to bed with two tablespoons of honey and brandy,” I said. “If you must stay behind from services, the good Lord will understand you are only doing your duty as a mother.” Kata thanked me and went back to her room. Then I put on my hat and cloak and went up to the church arm in arm with you on one side and Anna on the other, in the path that the servants had cleared for us. Ilona Jó and Dorka followed behind, each dressed in new velvet coats, my Christmas gifts to them for the loyalty they had shown me all year.

I did not often attend Sunday services at the church with the townspeople, since Ponikenus’s sermonizing usually exhausted me, but I had made it a tradition that at Christmas I would join the people of Csejthe in the church, sitting among them and listening to the nativity story read aloud by the priest. Afterward I would pass out gold and silver coins as gifts to the parishioners. In the past few years, it had become a great event in Csejthe. Commoners, especially women, came from miles around to greet me and speak to me about this or that matter of business, or to introduce to me daughters whom I might take into my service, or just to touch my sleeve as I passed by them on my way out the door and pressed a coin into their hands. It was always the mothers to whom I gave my money. Mothers would not gamble it away or drink it up in taverns or spend it in whoring. Mothers would make certain it went where it was most needed. It was always the mothers I searched out when I passed through the
crowd—the eyes wide with need, the belly empty so that her children might have bread. I would take out my heavy purse and press as much into her hands as I could spare—copper, silver, gold.

The townspeople were singing as they came up the hill toward the church, which looked gray in the new snow despite its coat of whitewash, but the bells were ringing and the air was fresh and cold. The silvery chimes of the bells rang across the hills and echoed back at us. Fathers came bearing their little sons and daughters on their shoulders, breaking paths in the snowfall for their wives and older children to follow in, smiling, rosy-cheeked. I recognized the butcher’s family and returned his bow with a smile. The townspeople were dressed in their best clothes, everything clean and pressed, fresh embroidery shining on jackets and waistcoats, cloaks and hats like a spring garden of new flowers, red and yellow and blue. They stood back to let us pass without a murmur.