The Countess (16 page)

From my first moment at Varannó I felt myself at the center of a dance that seemed to go on whether I wanted it to or not, though I—or rather my family name and fortune, and the children I would be expected to bear on behalf of both—was the object of it all. When I stood on a box in dressmaker’s pieces in a room full of windows, faint with hunger while the ladies pinned the pieces of silk and lace, the servants scurried in and out of the house carrying flour, nutmeg, honey, eggs, oranges, lemons, figs, soft-skinned apricots, bright red pomegranates, pale plucked chickens. The butchers skinned steers and boiled hogs, and kitchen boys rolled barrels of wine and great wheels of cheese up from the cellars. All around me women young and old swept and scrubbed, kneaded and whisked, and outside young men mucked the stables and mended the livery and gave the walls a fresh coat of whitewash, so that the castle gleamed in the sunlight that rose each morning as if it had been ordered especially for me. Gypsies in colorful dress came in from the countryside to
play music outside the palace walls for the local people who gathered there to join the celebration and strain for a glimpse of the Hungarian grandees coming and going, reminding me of the gypsy man I had seen executed as a child. I had the wedding stewards arrange for great pig roasts on the plains near the riverbank, where long into the night the people drank and danced by torchlight until dawn. The palace of Varannó turned for a time into a city as large and splendid as Bécs itself.

At night I could hardly sleep for the sweet strains of music out the window, or for the anticipation that soon my loneliness and sorrow would end, and I would see András Kanizsay once more. The fact that I was shortly to be Ferenc Nádasdy’s bride hardly factored into my thinking at all, so centered was I on the object of my desire. Ferenc and I had to wed—it was decided for us long ago and could not be set aside without dire consequences on both sides—but my heart in those days was a thing he would not, could not touch.

By custom my own family traveled first from Ecsed to be with me for the wedding preparations. They arrived one afternoon in the same great creaking wooden carriage that had once carried me across Hungary to Sárvár, my sisters leaning out the window as it crossed the bridge into the castle to wave at me. I came down to the courtyard to meet them, hardly able to stand still long enough to hear the rattle of the wheels on the boards of the drawbridge, much less wait for some steward to climb the stairs to my room and tell me they had arrived. In a moment the carriage door opened and my sisters tumbled out to embrace me, grown in loveliness and health in the three years since I had seen them last. Little Klára, whose birth those many years ago had frightened me so much, had inherited our mother’s tiny frame, making her look younger even than her six years. Dark-eyed Zsofía, at nearly twelve, was the image of our mother, but my sister smiled much more easily than our mother had the last time I had seen her, so that the resemblance quickly faded, along with the stab of pain at my heart. She teased me immediately on reaching up to place her
arms around my neck. “Ferenc Nádasdy will have to stand on tiptoe to kiss you, sister,” she said. “Or is he really as tall as they say? A giant of a man in more than height alone?”

I rebuked her with a glance and a word. “I see your confessors have a great deal of work before them,” I said. “Unless they have given you up already as a lost cause, a wild girl with no manners and no hope of redemption.”

But then I touched her lovely dark hair, black as deep water, and she said, “It is good to see you again,” and it was as if no time at all had passed since we had seen each other.

Next István stepped forward and embraced me, his shoulders hunched despite his increased height, several inches at least in the year or so since I had seen him last, the white line of his mouth pressed together. How solemn he had grown. He had always shown an inclination toward quiet contemplation and isolation, toward books and prayer, but it must have cost him a great deal of sadness to leave home so soon after the death of our mother. I had not been able to go to Ecsed for the funeral ceremony, since it was so close to my wedding date and because my mother needed to be buried swiftly after the smallpox took her, so István and I had not seen each other since I had left for Léka, to bear my illegitimate child in secrecy.

I asked if he was well, and he kissed me with warmth and assured me he was. “I apologize,” he said. “It is only that I wish our mother were here. But I’m happy for you. We will think only of you and your marriage.” Then he took my arm and led me once more into the house. I had a sense of us grown up and grave, István in my father’s place now and I in my mother’s, and my heart broke for my poor brother, whose grief since our mother’s death must have been deep indeed.

We had little time to dwell on our family sorrows. Soon there were numerous wedding traditions to see to, first among those being the arrival of the groom’s messengers to come greet us and tell us of Ferenc’s approach. We had a servant posted to watch out for them for several days before their expected arrival, and every rider who
approached the gates stirred in me old hopes and desires, old wishes and fears, as Ferenc Nádasdy and his retinue made the long journey from Bécs to Varannó.

I had not seen András Kanizsay since the end of the previous fall, since before my mother had taken me off to Léka with his child in my belly. I remembered how after I told him about the child his attitude toward me had changed utterly. He no longer teased Ferenc for his lack of interest in me, or me for the change from girlhood to young woman, all as he had before. He hardly looked at me, speaking to me rarely, finding excuses to leave whenever I entered the room. He had justified his behavior at the time by telling me we needed to give no hints or clues that would make anyone suspect what had passed between us, but now I was not so sure. How would he be when he saw me again? Would he be glad to see me? Would he be cold, and laugh at me as he had the night I told him about the child? He had not written to me during my absence, nor I to him, despite the anguish I felt at our separation. I wrote to Ferenc once or twice, as expected, but my letters were all politeness, containing as little of my heart as possible—my studies, my travels, the sickness stalking the woods and fields around Léka, my own health, as well as the expected formal expressions of joy at the prospect of our upcoming union. I mentioned András in my letters not at all, except to have Ferenc wish his friends and family well for me in my absence, as uninterested a pose as I could manage. Ferenc wrote to me to tell me he was well, that life in Bécs continued to be busy and amusing, but he never mentioned András in his letters to me. That the wedding would allow me a chance to see András once more filled me with far more apprehension than my upcoming marriage vows to Ferenc Nádasdy.

On the day the servant came and said the groom’s heralds had been spotted on the road to Varannó, I sent for István to go down to greet them as the head of the family and waited in my rooms for the steward to come up to fetch me. I picked up some bits of embroidery to hide the fact that my hands were shaking and felt a little throb of
gratitude toward Orsolya, whose patience I had tried by deriding embroidery as nothing more than a pursuit for uneducated ladies, but now I saw it kept the hands and eyes busy and the outward demeanor calm while the mind was free to travel elsewhere. I pictured András riding toward Varannó and did not know if I would be able to sit still.

My impatient sisters went to the window again and again to report the progress of the riders toward the chateau, calling news over their shoulders and looking at me to see if I blushed. The chance to meet friends of Ferenc, young men of a marriageable age and situation, made them bold. Now they were at the edge of the village, Klára said, now approaching the river, now riding up the castle hill and across the drawbridge, now dismounting their horses and slapping the dust from their thighs. “I cannot see who they are from here,” she said. “But they are both young men.”

“Thank heavens,” answered Zsofía, standing up to look. “At least Nádasdy didn’t send us two old grandpas without teeth.” She was already engaged by then to András Fígedy and thus felt free to indulge in speculation over the identities of the two messengers without embarrassment. She said they were handsome, at least from several stories up. Would I come to the window and see?

No, I said, but I managed to smile at their teasing. I didn’t dare go to the window but kept at the embroidery, pretending not to care in the least about the identity of the messengers. With my needle I made a stab of blue into the white cloth of a handkerchief, but my hand shook and I missed my spot, making a dent in the side of a cornflower. I had to pull it back out again and start afresh, but missed again and stuck the needle into my own finger. “Look how nervous she is,” said Zsofía. “I have never seen you so lacking in composure, Erzsébet. You must be afraid of the wedding night.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“I hear it is not as terrible as everyone says. That with the right man it could even be pleasurable.”

“Just watch the window, little sister,” I said, sucking the blood
from my finger. “Perhaps you will see your own future husband there, unless he thinks the better of it upon catching sight of you, and runs away again.”

After a decent interval, a servant came up to fetch us, and I was able to put the embroidery aside. I paused to smooth a hand over my hair at the mirror and compose my face, as I had the day I arrived at Sárvár and learned that the young man with my mother-in-law was not Ferenc Nádasdy but his cousin. I went slowly down the stairs though I wanted to fly, followed by my own entourage of ladies, who flanked my back and my sides as we entered the great hall at Varannó. The two gentlemen were already there waiting for us, changed into clean clothes, speaking quietly but with evident pleasure to my brother, István, who seemed to know them. My heart lifted for a moment. Then they turned, and quickly I arranged my face to hide my disappointment. I recognized István Bocskai, Ferenc’s closest friend from Bécs, who was as pleasant as Ferenc was cold. He seemed taller than he had since we danced at the engagement ceremony, quite well grown, and I composed my expression into a look of pleasure, bowed, and said how genuinely happy I was to see him again after my winter away from the court. “We missed you at Christmas at Sárvár this year,” he said. “Ferenc was quite bereft without you.”

A hint of sarcasm crept into my voice as I answered, “Yes, he must have been.”

“I hope your health has improved since the winter. I can see that it has.”

I searched his face for any sign of knowledge, for any hint of a secret lorded over me, but there was none, just the honest expression of a true friend. “Thank you,” I said, warm with gratitude and nearly ready to weep with relief, “I am feeling very well recovered.”

My brother turned my attention to the other messenger, a thin poker of a man whose narrow, uneven shoulders belied his relative youth, and deep gray bags under both eyes that I would later learn were a permanent fixture of his pleasant but unhandsome face. He was a complete stranger to me. He bowed, his back a little more
stiff than Bocskai’s, his dress too elegant for the occasion—all gold braid and polish, as if he were trying to impress others above his company—but his eyes roamed around the room, speaking of restlessness and impatience. A man of my own temper, surely. “Erzsébet,” said my brother, “may I introduce György Thurzó, a friend from Bécs and one of your husband’s newer comrades-in-arms.”

“Welcome. I hope we may be friends.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking my hand. His hand was warm and closed over mine a little too tightly. “I’m sure we will. I have heard of the celebrated beauty of Nádasdy’s bride-to-be. None of it has been exaggerated.”

I could not tell if he was in earnest but thanked him nevertheless. His name was familiar to me—he was the scion of a mining family, wealthy moneylenders and landowners who had risen to power financing the Spanish wars, recently elevated to the nobility—but otherwise I knew nothing of him. At a disadvantage for real topics of conversation, I reverted to small talk. “How did you leave Ferenc?”

His tired eyes crinkled in the corners, just a hint of mirth, but I could not tell at what. “Very well. He does seem to enjoy his time in the saddle. He jousts, and races, and drinks enough for three men.”

“You sound as if you don’t approve.”

“It’s not my place to approve or disapprove. But he certainly has the king’s favor. Old Maximilian adores his antics.”

“And you envy him that. No, don’t argue. I can see it in your face.” He ducked his head, but I had caught it—the stench of jealousy. “Well, Ferenc does as he chooses. I am glad the king favors him.”

“And through him, yourself.”

“I suppose so. A woman can rise in position through her husband, but the reverse is true as well.”

He bent over my hand. “Then may both your families benefit from your union,” he said, and left me to rejoin his friend Bocskai on the other side of the room, his thin shoulders giving even more
of an impression of youth and inexperience as he walked away. Why Ferenc chose to surround himself with men who envied his wealth and position I would never know, but it seemed to point to a weakness in him that reminded me of his mother. Orsolya too had surrounded herself with incompetents, hangers-on and weaklings. There would be none in the Nádasdy household after I was mistress there, I would see to it.

I had the stewards bring wine for our parched guests, and later musicians for dancing—all the formal ceremony of wedding preparations, as expected. That night I danced a
palotás
with Bocskai, who as an old acquaintance claimed the first dance with me. He was an excellent dancer, slapping his thighs with such enthusiasm that I had to smile. The newcomer, Thurzó, danced first with my sister Zsofía, who smiled and chatted with rather too much zeal. She would seem too eager, give offense to Thurzó, or else to her future in-laws, the Fígedys, who might hear of her behavior. But Thurzó didn’t seem offended as he spun Zsofía around and around the floor, and so I turned my attention back to my own partner and asked him what music they were playing at the court of the king, and pressed him for details on the private lives of the imperial cubs, with whom Bocskai and Ferenc were intimately acquainted. He told me all with a liveliness of temper that matched my own, for we were very fond of each other, István Bocskai and me, like a brother to his sister. His ties to my Transylvanian uncles made him a great favorite of Báthorys everywhere. His family expected great things from him, and I had no doubt even then that he would fulfill those expectations and make himself a famous name that would live for a hundred generations.