The Countess (33 page)

“Do it,” I said, “or I will have Dorka take you to the laundry, where you will learn what it means to be obedient.”

The girl’s eyes widened, her mouth parting as if to speak, but she did not. A shadow crossed her face, the shadow of submission that comes with an extra dose of humiliation. She was entirely in my power, for the sake of her son and herself, for her mother and the family at home who could not take her in when there were so many of them, but she knew the servants in the courtyard would gape and jeer, and the little boys throw stones when she took out her breast and held the log to it. If she was so concerned with her dignity that she would not wait at the table, she would have even less if she suckled the log as if it were a child. “Do it,” I said, “and I may let you stay here with your child and enjoy my home, and my protection. Do not and you will have to find someone else to put up with your insolence in the morning.”

At last the girl reached up and with trembling hands opened the buttons of her blouse one by one, pulling the cloth aside. She had the dark nipples of a woman who had in fact borne a child, but her skin was milky, and it was all I could do not to imagine my Ferenc burying his face in her soft bosom, as he must have done nights while I slept only a few doors away. He always did have a weakness for servant girls, the prettiest ones, the basest and most ignorant ones. The Modl girl held the log to her breast, cradling it in her arms as if it were a suckling babe. Next to her the Sittkey girl, like an imbecile, began to weep. Gizela’s expression shifted like the weather, now hot with anger, now with humiliation, and I waited until I saw her settle on a hatred for me so naked and fierce that I knew that the
minute the guests left the house, she would not be able to hold her tongue. She would curse and damn me as she cursed and damned everything. She would call me every name she could remember, and I would be forced to teach her her own insignificance. She was not the kind of girl who learns a lesson once and is done with it. I would have to beat her until she couldn’t stand. I would put my fingers in her mouth and tear the insolence out of it.

But for now she held the log to her breast. The men were already laughing and joking. I turned and crossed the courtyard and stopped to speak to the servant who had brought the girl’s impertinence to my attention. “Make certain she doesn’t cover up when my back is turned, Istók.”

“No, madam. I wouldn’t dream of allowing it.”

He bowed, but a hint of a smile crept over his broad red face as he watched the Modl girl endure her punishment. He was enjoying it. The spectacle, or the girl’s humiliation. Perhaps both. His mouth was more sensual than I had given him credit for, the lips large and red, and he licked his tongue over them once, then again. When he saw me looking at him, he bowed his head in submission. He was a man of very few words, unlike Thurzó, and unlike most of the men I had known in my life entirely dependent on my goodwill. I could see him weighing that goodwill now, and in a moment he dared to smile at me—a naked, immodest smile. If I had not looked at him before, it was only because I had someone else in my thoughts. But Istók Soós might be the kind of man I had been looking for all along. A servant could be very valuable as a lover, someone who would do my bidding when I needed it done and stay out of my way when I didn’t. He was not Thurzó. He would not dare set me aside for a young girl with a firm backside and no education.

“I believe you are a man of some worth, Istók. Come to me later, and we will speak some more.”

“Yes, madam,” he said, smiling at his boots.

I tried to enjoy what was left of the evening, but when I went up again to the room off the kitchen, I found that Darvulia was gone.
She had taken a few things with her—a small bundle of clothes, a few bottles of herbs, a fine red cloak I had given her as a gift. But her bed was empty. Not even a note remained to tell me where she had gone, or how, in her blindness, she expected to find her way. I went to find Ilona Jó and asked if she had seen my dear friend. “She said she was going off alone, madam,” said the old wet nurse, cowering as if she expected me to strike her for relaying such news. “She said you should not look for her, because you wouldn’t find her. I told her you wouldn’t like that, I said, ‘She won’t like that, Darvulia,’ but you know how she is.”

I did indeed know how Darvulia was. My death, she would have said, is no one’s business but my own. A wise way to leave this life, I thought then, and I think so even more now. If I had been as clever as she, we might have gone together, Darvulia and I, into our futures, while they were still ours for the choosing.

December 31, 1613

Winter is upon me once more, and once more I feel the cold so deep that it reaches my bones. Three years now I have been in my tower, three years of loneliness and decrepitude, and this morning of all days I heard the halting notes of Ponikenus’s voice outside my stone gap, the jumble of Hungarian and Latin and Slovak with which he tries to communicate with me. The pastor of Csejthe must think of these visits as his Christian duty, for otherwise he would not dare to show his face here. His real name is not Ponikenus at all but Jan Ponicky, which he changed to affect more importance than he is otherwise entitled to. This time he did not come alone, bringing with him a fellow pastor from Lešetice to witness what I could
only imagine was a spectacle of great humor to them both: Countess Báthory in a cage. What the visitor wanted I could not guess, unless it was my immortal soul. They pulled up chairs before my stone gap so that their faces were visible to me and in thickly accented, halting Hungarian asked if my health was good, since they had heard I was ill. When I said my health was fine, they went on, exclaiming what a pleasure it was to wait upon me in my tower, how great was their honor that they could be of service to me. I laughed and said they may well think so, since they were the reason for my imprisonment.

“My lady,” said Ponikenus, placing his hand oh-so-reverently over his heart, “you cannot think I did anything to harm you.”

“We have never been friends, Ponicky, and I will not pretend otherwise. I know you went crawling to the palatine with your lies.”

He said it was not true, that he always held me in high esteem. I know he flatters himself that he might be useful to me in my present distress, as if I would want help from the likes of him, but I knew I must be careful. Anything I said to him would be likely to get back to Thurzó, to the court. The visitor from Lešetice—one of Thurzó’s minions, surely—said he bore me no ill will, that he too had heard of the greatness of the widow Nádasdy and only wished to serve me in my hour of need. His hands clutched at his shirt, plucking the fabric like the strings of a lute. A sudden weariness overtook me. I said I had misspoken, that I knew it was not the pastor of Lešetice who had sent me here. “But the pastor of Csejthe knows his guilt,” I said, “since he used his pulpit to rail against me.”

“I never did,” said Ponikenus, searching for the right words. I would ask him to use Latin, but his vocabulary in that language is even more absurd than his Hungarian, and my Slovak is not up to the task of arguing with him. He said, “I preached the gospel. I preached humility and kindness. I never mentioned you by name. If your mind was troubled by what I said, perhaps I bit a little too close to your conscience.”

Conscience, indeed. “It doesn’t take much imagination to know that when you speak of the corruption of the nobility in the church
of Csejthe, you are speaking against the family who owns these lands. Be careful, Ponicky. I have witnesses I can call when the time comes, and powerful friends still who will aid me.”

He shook his head as if he did not understand, but I have known him to pretend to be ignorant of my language when it suits his purpose. I saw the tightening along the soft part of his jaw, the way he mashed his teeth together. He was not entirely certain of his position here. He wondered if my children or my friends would now be his enemies and remove him from his position at the church in Csejthe. Or something worse.

Then he controlled his expression and changed the subject, asking after the state of my soul. Did I pray, he wanted to know, and how often? He had spoken to the guards and heard that I sobbed in my cell at night, that I cursed God and begged for death when I thought I was alone. He felt it was his lot as pastor of Csejthe to protect me from temptation.

“Are you under the impression,” I asked, “that I intend to murder myself?”

“Many prisoners have been tempted by the idea.”

How exasperating is the tongue of any man inflated with self-importance, none more so than a man of God. “I could not even do the deed if I wanted to,” I said. “Thurzó didn’t leave me so much as a darning needle so that I might repair tears in my dress or a knife to sharpen my quills. The guards make certain my servants bring me nothing without their permission.”

“You might find something else. Your dress for a noose, perhaps.”

I smiled. “Now you are trying to give me ideas. Would it please you to see me hanging naked from the rafters?” He pretended to look aghast, but I waved away the words before he began to speak again. I would not let him blather more lies about how much value he placed on my life. “I can assure you I have no plans for self-destruction. Only a guilty woman would think of it, and I am not guilty.”

Then the priest from Lešetice asked if I still believed in the divinity of Christ, in my redemption through the Crucifixion. Of
course, I told him, though I refused to accept the prayer book he tried to give me through the gap in my stone door. I don’t need it, I said. I know my prayers by heart, having spoken them every day of my life. “Ask Thurzó if he remembers his,” I said.

We went on like this for some time, the two priests dancing around the salvation of my soul, the purity of my thoughts. I watched the hands of the two men perform an elaborate ballet in front of my stone gap, chopping the air for emphasis here, flopping in resignation there. Ponicky’s hands were soft and fine, stained black with ink on the inside of the second finger, the hands of a scholar, of a man in love with the sound of his own voice. What would he do, I wondered, if he were denied the privilege of preaching every Sunday? Would he curl up and die like an old woman locked in her tower? After more than an hour I was weary and impatient with their visit, ready for them to be gone. I stood up from my chair and was about to bid them leave when Ponikenus came to the point at last: Who, he wanted to know, told me he was the one who betrayed me to Thurzó? Who spoke these lies against him?

A smile crossed my face. No one told me such, I said, except that he himself admitted it by asking me so.

“I never lied about you to anyone, madam.”

“You lie to me now to deny it. I know you wrote to your superiors, who sent the letter to Thurzó. It was entered into the evidence against me. You made up stories about what happened to the Modl girl. You told people I murdered her at my daughter’s own wedding.”

“No one has seen the girl since then, my lady.”

“Because I sent her home to her mother. She was flaunting her bastard child all over my house.”

“Then why has no one heard from her since?”

“Whom would she write to, even if she knew how to write, Ponicky? You?”

“One of my priests saw her body on a cart that was headed out
of Csejthe. Her face was gashed. It looked like someone had torn open her mouth.”

“Your priests have been known to drink. They see the devil, too, I understand, when they’ve had a few sips of brandy.”

“Under cover of darkness your man Ficzkó took her away toward Pozsony, with two or three others. Why would he take the bodies out in the middle of the night, if you were not trying to conceal your misdeeds?”

“The only misdeed I intend to conceal is the appointment of you as pastor in Csejthe. The Modl girl went home to her mother. The others died of the plague. The disease was all over the county in those months, and the bodies had to go out as soon as the girls died. Do you think I have enough strength to tear a girl’s face in half? Do you think you can pass judgment on me? I supported your priests, all of them, as I would have my own children. Like a mother I made certain they had their education, their food and warmth. I welcomed you here after old Barthony died and made you pastor in his stead. Your ingratitude overwhelms me. Will you turn on the palatine, too, when he has outlived his usefulness to you?”

“I have never shown you ingratitude, madam. I remember you in my prayers every day. I ask the Lord to show you mercy and forgiveness for your sins, and once again make you prosperous.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “begging for others’ prosperity is the highest good there is. Congratulations, Ponicky. You must be a living saint to have the Lord answer your prayers thus.”

He shook his head and spoke something low to his friend I did not understand. The Reverend Zacharias said he would come to me again, and we would speak some more. I told him not to bother, but he insisted, and afterward the two of them stood up and left. I heard their footsteps going back down the stairs.

I wonder why you do not come to me here in my tower, Pál, where I must suffer alone with priests, with fools.

After Kata’s wedding, I passed a time of relative peace, traveling between the many Nádasdy estates once more to see that everything was in order—Sárvár to Bécs, Bécs to Keresztúr, Keresztúr to Csejthe. My health was sometimes poor—a lingering ague, which left me so hot that sometimes I stripped to my chemise and still I was soaked with sweat, sometimes so cold I froze in the heat of summer—but otherwise I had much with which to be content. Both my daughters were married, and you would soon be of an age to take up your father’s titles. Istók Soós, who had come to my bed for the first time the night of Kata’s wedding, remained all that time a trusted friend and confidant, useful in dealings with my tenants and menservants, especially the ones who thought me nothing more than a weak old widow, easy to defy. The other servants nicknamed him “Ironhead” because of his large skull and thick neck, and they soon set about currying his favor much as they had always done mine. He was stubborn in arguing his every advantage with them. What will you do for my lady, I often heard him ask, if I help you? I trusted him as much as the two old women and Ficzkó with the doings of the house when I was absent and rewarded him with new horses, a silver-handled dagger, fine clothes in which he swaggered like a rough little general. He did turn into a bit of a peacock, strutting in front of the others and earning himself some enmity, but under cover of darkness his soft red mouth was as sweet as any nobleman’s. I was nearing fifty and less particular, perhaps, in my company than I had been in my youth, but I was truly fond of Istók, and after the disaster that was Thurzó I had no desire to sit around pining for one of the Habsburgs’ toadies. Let Thurzó have his child bride, Erzsébet Czobor, and may they both be damned.