The Angel Makers (23 page)

‘All right. Well, you will have to write to them and tell them that he is ill, and that you’ve been trying to help him, but it’s getting worse.’

Sari looks thoughtful. ‘You know what they’ll do, though? They’ll try and make him go to the doctor in Város. Or they’ll try and get the doctor to come and see him. They can do that, I think – they have enough money and influence.’

‘Then it’s all a question of timing. You have to be sure when you write the letter that, by the time they have received it in Budapest, and have thought about what to do about it, they won’t have time to act. He will have to be dead before the doctor in Város can see him.’

Sari shudders slightly. Judit has a way of talking about this that makes it seem terribly real. She has an idea that Judit is doing it on purpose, forcing her to face up to the reality of what she is proposing to do.

‘It’s always possible,’ Judit says, ruminatively ‘that his parents will call for an investigation, that they won’t be satisfied with me filing the report of the cause of death as usual. I’m not sure what we can do about that. I’m sure that if a doctor was to cut him open after he was dead, he could work out the real cause of death. All we can do is to try and ensure that they have no reason to be suspicious. No matter what they think of you, it would be quite a stretch for them to imagine you a murderer. The facts point away from you – you’ve got no motive. Now, let me put this stuff in a bottle for you. Do you have a good place to hide it?’

‘I’ll bury it in the forest. There’s no way that anyone would find it there.’

‘Good idea. Just try not to lose it. I can always make you some more, of course, but I don’t like to think of any of this stuff out there and unaccounted for. And now,’ Judit looks out of the window at the sky that has shimmered into gold, ‘you should get home. If you leave now, you’ll be back before Ferenc gets up.’ Her smile is unsettling. ‘You can have a nice hot breakfast waiting for him.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sari lets herself back into the house quietly; Ferenc is a heavy sleeper in general, but she doesn’t want to risk waking him. She needs some time to think.

Like Judit, Sari’s never given a great deal of thought to her immortal soul. Brought up by her father, he instilled in her a sort of distant respect for the church, more for its power over other people than for any intrinsic value that it might hold, and the subsequent four years with Judit did nothing to further endear the church to her, as Judit has an excoriating disrespect for it and all of its rules.

‘I have no respect for anything,’ Judit has said on many occasions, ‘that only wants to stop people from doing things. Out here, we need as many possibilities as possible.’

Sari is inclined to agree, and as a result she cares little for the doctrines of the church – she’s not even sure if she believes in God. She’s even less sure if she believes in hell, which always seems too convenient a concept to explain the unfairnesses of life. Religion is an irrelevance for her.

Still, Sari works to bring life into the world, and to sustain life; the idea of taking it has always been anathema to her. But she realises now that the only people whose welfare she can truly be responsible for are herself and her unborn child, that it is not her job to protect Ferenc from herself, but to protect herself from him. He’s bigger than her, and stronger, but she has resources, too. It’s a fair fight, and one that she’s prepared to lose, but she’ll be losing by default if she doesn’t even try. Sari has heard about the fierce protective impulses that assail women when they become mothers; she’d never believed them until now, but it’s more than just that. One never knows how strong one is, or how selfish, until pushed.

Ferenc’s tread on the stairs comes an hour later, while she is preparing breakfast for him. She’s already added a touch of what she’s taken to calling, with grim humour, ‘special seasoning’. A small amount of it is wrapped in a handkerchief and stored for safekeeping in the toe of her boot. The rest is buried in the roots of a tree a few paces away from the house; she carved a mark on the trunk to remind her where it is, for when she needs to replenish her supplies.

‘So you’re back,’ Ferenc says behind her, voice gruff and croaky from sleep. She’s thought carefully about how she needs to behave around him. She needs to give no indication that she has changed from the cowed, conquered woman she has been in the past few weeks. Her behaviour the night before is going to be difficult to explain or excuse, but throwing herself on his mercy can’t hurt, and may just flatter him into forgiving her.

‘Ferenc, I am so sorry for the way that I behaved last night,’ she says, in a low mutter that feels alien on her tongue now. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I promise that nothing like that will ever happen again.’

He stares at her, obviously wary, asking himself whether she needs some more discipline to bring her properly in line. She thinks fast, and goes on,

‘You were right to be angry with me. I don’t know why I behaved like I did, but sometimes women – in, in that state – act like that, act irrationally. That is the only reason that I can think of.’

There’s a worrying pause, and then his face cracks in a smile. Sari is relieved. She should have known that playing the stupid, irrational female with him would work.

‘I forgive you,’ he says expansively. ‘Did you go to Judit’s last night?’

Sari nods. ‘I wanted her to check that I was all right.’

‘And are you all right?’

‘Well,
I
am,’ she says. She wants for him to believe that the baby is dead – with any luck (and she has stopped shivering at thoughts like these) he’ll be in the ground by the time it becomes obvious that she’s still pregnant.

‘Ah,’ he says, looking concerned, picking up on her hint. ‘I’m sorry if you’re upset about this, Sari, but I’m sure you see my point. We will have children ourselves, I do want us to, but
this
child,’ his face twists with distaste, ‘I could not have this child in my house. And,’ he goes on, forcing his tone back to lightness, ‘we’re not even married yet! There’s plenty of time in the future for children.’

She struggles to smile back and manages it, knowing that she has to for her own survival, but she loathes him with all her being. She finds it odd that he can say anything he wants about her, hurt her as much as he likes, but it’s only when he tries to hurt or insult her child that she feels that she could rip his throat out with her bare hands.

Oblivious, he sits down at the table, and she places a plate in front of him. ‘There you go,’ she says in what she hopes pass for fond tones. ‘Breakfast!’

It’s four o’clock and Ferenc is still walking around, strong as an ox and Sari is growing concerned. Judit hadn’t been able to give much advice on levels of dosage (‘It’s not as if I make a habit of this sort of behaviour,’ she’d said, though Sari’s not convinced that she’s as inexperienced as she would have Sari believe), but suggested that she start off small and work up from there. Sari chides herself now for being overly cautious that morning, and when she is preparing the evening meal she is more generous with her seasoning. Ferenc washes down the
tésztakása
with a bottle of rough red wine, and is in bed and snoring by eleven o’clock. Disturbed by the depth and comfort of his sleep, but still hoping for the best, Sari joins him at midnight.

She wakes in shock. Something is wrong, someone needs her help and it takes her a moment to realise that what she is hearing is not the sounds of things going wrong, but things going right. Ferenc is twisting and moaning on the mattress beside her.

‘Ferenc? What is it?’ she asks. He gives a shuddering groan, and she gropes for the matches on the table by the bed, lighting the lamp. In its dim glow he looks sweaty and greenish, not well at all but, she is pleased to notice, no different to anyone else with stomach problems. She’d had a vague, irrational idea that somehow the fact that he’d been poisoned would be obvious, written on his forehead, and she’s happy that’s not the case.

‘My stomach,’ he moans. ‘It’s come back – thought I’d got rid of it.’

Play the nurse
, says Judit’s voice in Sari’s head. She leans over him and places a hand on his cool brow, composing her face into a simulacrum of sympathy. ‘Oh, you’ve got a fever,’ she lies smoothly. ‘It must be that sickness you picked up at the front come back. Let me get you something for the pain.’

She runs out of the room and down the stairs, and by the time she’s in the kitchen she’s bent over herself but not in pain; instead, she’s biting hard on her knuckle to stifle a hysterical giggle. It’s working! It’s horrible and wonderful all at once, and she has to be so, so careful from now on. A million unconsidered concerns flap at her. What if he decides that he wants to see the doctor in Város himself? She hadn’t even thought of that. It would be unlike his recent reclusive demeanour, but it’s possible, isn’t it, that the pain could drive him to it? There’s not much that she can do about that. The degree to which Ferenc has isolated himself from the rest of the world is on her side. She is in the unusually privileged position of being able to manage and manipulate the information that comes in and out of the house, and it’s up to her to use it to her best advantage.

A thump from upstairs reminds her what she’s there for, and she scrabbles in one of the cupboards for some medicine, before running back up to Ferenc. It turns out the thump was merely the sound of Ferenc knocking a cup off the bedside table, rather than anything more ominous. He’s still in the bed, face contorted with pain, and she feels a swift twist of revulsion: so ready to give out pain, and so unable to take it. He’s pushed the covers down and his stomach is exposed – it is distended, though whether it’s the result of the poison, or the sheer size of the dinner he ate earlier she doesn’t know. She sits down on the edge of the bed, and he opens his eyes.

‘It hurts,’ he says pathetically. Swallowing her exasperation, Sari puts on her most syrupy tones.

‘I know,’ she says, hoping that he doesn’t notice how unlike her this sugary voice sounds, ‘but I have some medicine for you which should help you feel better. Here.’ she pours a liquid into a small glass and lifts it to his lips. A simple painkiller, laced with a sleeping draught, it’s next to useless but she needs to court his trust, make him believe that she is helping him. He swallows it down as obediently as a child, and Sari remembers what Judit said about men and illness, marvelling at how right she was.

‘It’ll take a few minutes to work,’ she says, but already his moans are decreasing in anticipation of feeling better. She places a hand on his swollen gut and strokes it gently. He gives a little whimper, but she can tell from his face that it’s one of relief, rather than pain. ‘Your stomach’s been weak since you came home,’ she says. ‘It’s partly my fault – I should have known not to cook a rich dinner like that last night; it was bound to upset your stomach. I’ll stick to lighter foods from now on, shall I?’

He nods, eyes closed. She takes her hand off his stomach, thinking to get back into bed herself, but he says ‘Don’t stop,’ and so she doesn’t, shivering slightly in the chilly night air, rubbing soothingly until he falls back into a fitful sleep.

Sari soon discovers that it doesn’t take strength to kill a person, only persistence and cunning. By the next morning, Ferenc claims to be feeling a great deal better. The pain is gone, at least, but he seems vague and disorientated, complaining of a headache, and Sari brews him up some chamomile tea to settle his stomach, while he blames the headache on a surfeit of red wine the night before. To her relief, he seems unsuspicious about the origins of his stomach pain, but she decides to engage in a little acting herself, occasionally holding her stomach with a grimace of pain on her face. It takes him a while to notice.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks eventually that evening, and she shrugs.

‘I feel a little unwell. Judit said that there’s some illness going around the village, people are complaining of stomach pains and vomiting …’

‘Maybe you picked it up when you were at Judit’s?’

‘Maybe. Maybe that’s what was wrong with you last night.’

‘Maybe.’ He doesn’t look particularly convinced, but at least he doesn’t look disbelieving. If she can just get him to believe that the symptoms that he is experiencing are normal, it will make things so much easier. Then, by the time it’s clear that they’re not normal, she hopes that things will have progressed far enough that he won’t be able to do anything about it.

As she cooks dinner that night she feels resolved; now that she’s sure that the stuff Judit gave her works, she can afford to be a little more sparing with it over the next little while.

Day four, morning. Ferenc has passed another painful night, but as ever, the next morning he doesn’t seem too worried by it. Tucking into a large breakfast, he comments casually that this latest illness that’s been going around is rather nasty, and he hopes it passes soon.

He seems sleepy that day but that is understandable, the pain kept him up for a couple of hours the night before and Sari encourages him to nap that afternoon. He takes her suggestion well. He has definitely softened towards her over the past few days. Judit was right: men are naturally chastened by illness, inclined to cling to people, and this is to Sari’s advantage. After lunch he is tucked up in bed. When she brings him some water, he pats her hand fondly and she notices something odd – strange marks on his fingernails that she’s sure weren’t there before. She doesn’t comment on them, not wanting him to notice, but once she is sure that he is safely asleep, she takes the opportunity to slip away and visit Judit.