The Countess (29 page)

My brother had left me a few of his properties in his will, including
the
vár
at Dévény, just north of the capital at Pozsony. The castle perched on a high outcropping of white limestone, a single tower rising dramatically from the naked rock, turreted and alone, so that it looked like one of the old gods perched on the lip of Olympus and scowling at its demesne below. It was a highly valuable and strategically placed property, situated as it was between Pozsony and Bécs at the confluence of the Duna and the Morva rivers, and I intended to look it over with my ladies and my retainers, introducing myself to the steward and spending a few nights as the new owner, to see what was needed for the upkeep of the place. Letters had gone ahead of us so that the servants could prepare for our coming.

Thurzó had tried to caution me against stopping there, saying it would only anger the king and Mátyás at a difficult time between Austria and Hungary. My brother, before his death, had been an ardent supporter of our friend István Bocskai and his revolt against the Habsburgs, a believer in a Hungary reunited against both the Turks and the Habsburgs, and Mátyás knew I was friendly still to both Bocskai and our friends and family in Transylvania, despite my close relationship to Thurzó. My nephew Gábor, whose support inside Transylvania was growing, also supported Bocskai’s efforts against the repression of the Habsburgs. Thurzó said it was a mistake to make a show of ownership over Dévény when so many of my family ties were anti-Habsburg, and my own personal loyalties unknown. But I was determined to stop at Dévény before heading north to Csejthe and make myself known there among the servants as the new mistress of the place.

As we followed the river road, the blurred shapes and purple hills in the distance settled into clearer objects, the stone cliffs and trees of the town of Dévény, and soon we could see the fortress itself, the white outcropping of stone shaped like a clenched fist where from Roman times lookouts had been posted for enemy on the march. After the Turks had occupied the center of the old kingdom all the way to Buda and Eger, Dévény had become more significant than ever to keeping the peace, and now that Bocskai was on the move
and my nephew Gábor was cementing his power in Transylvania, it would be so again. I was thoroughly gratified that István had thought to give it to me, because I planned to give it to you, Pál, a jewel in the crown of your inheritance.

As we approached the ferry crossing on the near shore, the ferryman’s house and stable came into view, the horses that pulled the massive ropes and heavy boats across the water, the white stucco garrison house where the soldiers slept. On the far bank of the Duna huddled a few old men, burghers in somber black, bolstered by a not-insignificant number of soldiers in light armor. At first I wondered if the burghers of the city had come out to welcome my arrival the way the children had followed behind the carriage when, as a young bride, I had ridden across Hungary to my mother-in-law’s house. But as we came closer I could see the grim looks on their faces, the way they rustled and shuffled their feet like priests at a funeral. It was clear that something here was out of order. Perhaps Mátyás had decided I had been asking too much in demanding the return of the money owed me by the royal treasury and now wanted to make an example of me. Or perhaps the city burghers, to show their loyalty to Mátyás, chose now to stand against me and my claim on Dévény. I swore under my breath. Thurzó would hear of this. The minute we arrived in Csejthe, I planned to write him to complain of it. What good was my friendship with Thurzó if his friend the king used his men against me, to keep me from my own property?

At the edge of the river, where the road turned and grew broad and flat and the smell of river water and reeds grew thick, we paused while the captain of my soldiers spoke to the ferryman whose job it was to take me across. From my place in the carriage I could see my man calmly sitting his horse, offering a fat purse he had been given for just this purpose, saw the ferryman shake his head and gesture at the river as if the river were the thing to blame. After a moment my man came back and said the ferryman was under strict instructions not to let us cross. “The city fathers are here to make certain he does so,” said the soldier, a gray-haired veteran who had been
the captain of my personal guard for years in honor of his service to my husband. His face betrayed a mixture of anxiety and weariness, as if I might ask him to fight the garrison stationed at the ferry, to battle and bully my way across. Instead I told him to stand his men down while I sent Gizela Modl to speak to the ferryman. Gizela, I thought, would be just the thing to convince the ferryman to let us pass. “Offer him double his usual fee,” I told Gizela, handing her a second small purse filled with gold, a fortune to a man in his position. She would use all that ruthless charm on him, and if the money didn’t sway him, Gizela would.

She spoke with him for many long minutes and then returned to the carriage with the purse still in her hand, the ferryman trailing behind her. “He says there is no price you can offer that he would accept.”

I cursed the ferryman, his insolence, the burghers and the king. It was not I who had begun the rebellion, I said, nor supported it when it did begin. I had spent the winter in Bécs with Mátyás and Thurzó. I was a loyal subject to the king and to Hungary, and I had a right to my property. Did the rule of law no longer apply? I asked. Was it all to be set aside at the whim of a dictator? Perhaps Bocskai was right to take up arms against a king who thought nothing of the people he ruled, I said. Perhaps Bocskai should be king, and then we would all be better off.

A disagreeable-looking fellow with chipped yellow teeth and a jacket stained with river water and stinking of creosote, the ferryman had rough hands from holding the reins of the horses that pulled the rope across the Duna, but he looked so miserable as he glanced sidelong at Gizela that I thought he might let the carriage cross on his own back if the burghers weren’t watching. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I would lose my head if I let you cross.”

That the burghers would be so brazen as to deny me my rights as owner of the property was the highest possible offense. “The king will hear of this,” I said, and with as much dignity as I could manage I opened the carriage door to reclaim Gizela. As we drove away
I could see the city fathers retreating on the far side of the Duna, a scattering of the Habsburgs’ dung beetles running back into their safe little holes.

Traveling until long after dark, we rode farther downstream to find a Hungarian ferryman, one who was only too glad to take my gold and pull us across despite the late hour, but even when we were on the other side of the Duna I would not dare approach the fortress at Dévény. The burghers would be watching for me, for their master Rudolf—or was it Mátyás?—to reward them for denying me.

The Hungarian ferryman was amiable and garrulous, chatting the whole time about the news from abroad and showing a great deal of respect when he learned the name of the lady he ferried, lavishing praise on my dead husband, on my noble family name. “I served with your husband at the siege of Esztergom,” said the ferryman. He had a scar through the meat of one cheek, and when I looked more closely, I could see he was missing several fingers on one hand. “A great man, a handsome and kind man, the best soldier I ever saw. Like one of the saints come to earth.” The ferryman was still talking about poor Ferenc. “I grieved like I lost my own father when I heard that he died.”

I rewarded him with the purse I would have used to bribe the German ferryman farther upstream, and he wept and said he would pray for me for a seat in heaven. Still, for a long time I could not remove the bitterness in my mouth over the encounter at Dévény, even as we passed into the empty plains, the miles and miles of grassland that had once—before Mohács, before the Turkish occupation, before the world had gone upside down—been the breadbasket of Europe, fields of wheat and barley and rye, uncounted fields from the Duna to the Carpathians. Nothing that had once been remained, and what was to come, I could not yet see.

After the trouble at the ferry at Pozsony, I traveled on to my own house at Csejthe, where I had first come as a young bride myself thirty years before. We spent a quiet summer there, in the calm that builds before a great storm, with a hushed sense of expectation and hurry toward the eventual release. I sent several angry letters to the king and some private, less strident ones to Thurzó, asking him to intervene in the matter of Dévény castle on my behalf, and he wrote me back that he would do what he could for me, but that I must listen to him for once and not anger the king further.
Remember your friends and your place
, he wrote,
and all will turn out right in the end
.

My place
, I wrote back,
is with you. When are you coming?

Soon
, he wrote.
Soon, I promise you
.

Summer turned to autumn, and autumn to winter, but Thurzó did not come. I put aside my plans to return to Bécs for the winter, since Thurzó said he would not be able to return to the city that year to see me. Once a month or so he wrote to me, always saying the trouble with Bocskai was keeping him away, that the king had urgent commissions for him that took him far from his estate at Biscke, which was only a two-day trip from my own house at Csejthe. For my part I did my best to be accept his reasons for staying away, even as I looked forward to his company at Varannó that coming September, at the wedding of my daughter to young Drugeth.
Come early
, I wrote to him,
as my dearest friend and companion. Every day is a year until I see you again
.

I will come as soon as I may
, he wrote back.
You can depend on it
.

So more than a year after our last meeting, still missing Thurzó, I made the trek across Hungary from Csejthe to Varannó to prepare
for my daughter’s wedding. Guests would begin arriving even in August, although the festivities didn’t actually begin until September. As always I enjoyed playing hostess, seeing to the lavishness of the arrangements as once my mother and father had done at Ecsed, entertaining my many friends and relatives. Afternoons my ladies and I would ride in the countryside or organize fishing expeditions to the banks of the Vág, out of the earshot of men where we could wade in the river’s edge with our skirts pulled up and eat cold chicken and cakes sweetened with honey. How pleasant it was in the afternoons when the sounds of bullfrogs and the feel of the cool water around my ankles gave refuge from the ordinary problems of minding my many estates, answering letters to this or that relative or friend.

Always, always, the need to keep the peace in my house necessitated the punishment of the maidservants, who had grown even more worthless in the time since my husband’s death. That year I spent many grueling hours in the cellars of Varannó with the butt of a whip or the handle of a cudgel in my hand, seeing to the lazy, the insolent. One especially troubling week not long before the first guests arrived, I went every evening to the cellars, my arms sore from wielding my stick and my clothes ruined with blood. The young boy, Ficzkó, had to carry me up to bed because I could no longer walk from exhaustion. And every night Ilona Jó and Dorka brought more girls to me for punishment, mostly the ones who had shirked their chores or been caught stealing, but also ones who rutted with the stable boys, who had talked back to one or the other of the old women. The prettiest and most admired were also the most trouble. They thought beauty was their privilege, and it was up to me to disabuse them. Beauty was a curse to be borne, not a blessing.

Most endured their punishment well, recovering after a few days and returning to their duties with renewed humility, but sometimes there would be a sickly girl who would fall ill afterward and need to go to the churchyard. I did not pity them, since they saved me the time and expense of nursing them back to health. As before, I arranged the funeral rites and the singers, too, to send them to the next world. No
one could accuse me of neglecting my Christian duty, though István Magyari, the longtime Nádasdy family pastor, had the audacity to threaten to go to the authorities if I kept up my nighttime activities. Desist, he said, or risk offending God. I told him he had better not risk offending me first. I made certain a few extra coins went into his coffers, and afterward I had the servants take our dead girls elsewhere for burial, where they would not fall under Magyari’s watchful eye.

All this I had to endure without the help of my dear Darvulia, who that summer was afflicted with the onset of paralysis, a sudden attack one morning that left half her body limp, unable to walk or even stand. She took to her bed, and the others—Ilona Jó, Dorka, and Ficzkó—took over most of her duties. Every day I visited her and brought her the flowers she asked for from the fields and forests around Varannó, which she crushed and drank in a tea, though nothing improved her affliction. The skin on her face drooped soddenly toward her chin, like a cloth soaked with water, and her tongue too moved so slowly that she had trouble speaking. Only her inky eyes moved still the way they always had, making me think that at any moment she would shed this illness like an old cloak, just another disguise she had worn to confound the devil. She didn’t know her age, but I had known the
táltos
for more than thirty years and guessed she had to be nearing sixty at least, as ancient a crone as I had ever set eyes upon. For weeks I pressed her old, gnarled hands to my chest and begged her to get better, but she only smiled and said there was no cure for what ailed her. “I will go to God soon enough,” she said again and again, “and I’m not afraid of what he will say to me.” Every day when I opened my eyes I expected someone to rouse me with the news that she had died in the night, tarnishing all the joyous preparations going on around us with a coating of dread. My happiness could not be happiness at all if Anna Darvulia could not have a share in it.