The Countess (35 page)

He looked up. Above his head curled a thin veil of smoke. “I did wonder if you might not consider giving Anna her portion sooner rather than later.”

“Now, you mean?”

“I hadn’t planned to ask you, but yes. It would ease my mind to know that little Miklós would have his inheritance secured.”

“I see. Yes, you would be worried for the child’s sake.” Despite the warmth from the fire, I felt a bit chill. “I will have to look into it, Miklós,” I said. “I had not planned on doing it so soon.”

“It would be the greatest kindness if you could,” he said. “You are a mother, and you know how much worry there is in raising a child. As I said, I would not ask, except that it is on Anna’s behalf, and your grandson’s.” Excusing himself, he went out again while I sat by the fire and brooded over what to do, the right course of action.

I was still brooding the next morning when Miklós said he planned to depart three days later, leaving Anna behind with me. He was stopping at Csejthe on his way to Pozsony, he said, where Thurzó had summoned him especially. My son-in-law stayed long enough to have dinner with us a few evenings, to sit with us before the fire on nights cool with frost. He shivered under a blanket, so that I asked Anna if he were ill. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Only he’s preoccupied at present. Thurzó is pressing the nobles to declare openly their allegiance to the king, and swear to it in front of all the others, now that he’s palatine. You know Miklós would prefer to do no such thing, but our uncle Thurzó is insisting.”

“Yes, your uncle does insist on his way, doesn’t he?” I said.

The morning he left I had Zrínyi sign his name as witness to my will. A scribe had made two copies of my original, one for Zrínyi to keep and one to take to Pozsony to give to young Drugeth, whom Thurzó had also called to take the loyalty oath and who had promised to meet Zrínyi there when they arrived. I thought it odd that
Kata’s husband would not have time to stop at Csejthe on his journey, as my other son-in-law had done, but decided not to mention it. He must be pressed for time, and nothing more.

In the will I left everything to the three children and asked my daughters’ husbands to be especially mindful of my son’s rights, since he was still a child. Nothing was laid out in particular, nor did I want it to be. Young Zrínyi thanked me in most profound terms for the generosity of my will, saying how grateful he was to be part of such a grand family, how pleased his wife made him. I hoped rather than believed him to be sincere. Then he climbed on the back of his horse for the two-day journey with his valet and a few other servants and gentlemen for company, kicking up a line of dust as they followed the road north toward the capital.

As Anna and I watched them go I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me, thinking of the disagreements and strife that would be going on inside the old town hall in Pozsony, the capital of what was left of the old Hungary. I felt a momentary fear that the men I had known all my life—good men, mostly, honorable men who with this or that scheme or allegiance had always hoped to restore Hungary to her former glory—were ultimately led not by national honor but their own greed for power and riches. The old Hungary, the one I knew only from stories, was indeed gone forever.

Anna and I spent some pleasant evenings in each other’s company, but every night I felt myself droop after the wine, the game birds, the beef and dumplings, the goulash, the oranges Anna and Miklós brought as gifts from their orangery in Croatia. I went to bed early and got up late, with pains in my neck and shoulders, in my hands, and I
was always, always too warm. I was exhausted in mind, exhausted in body. In the rain and growing cold an ache had begun to take root in my limbs, an ache like an unset bone. Over the next few days it grew and spread to my arms, my hips. I took to my bed from time to time to see if some rest would improve it, and Anna would sit with me all day, reading to me the love poems of Balassi and laughing with me at the old rogue’s throbbing sincerity.

When my pains were worse after a few days, Anna mentioned that perhaps we might drive out to Pöstyén to take the cure there, along the banks of the Vág where the mud baths were known to restore people to health. We had gone there from time to time when she was younger, just a few ladies for company, all the formalities of daily life subsumed to the pleasures of the hot mud and steaming water, good food and easy company. My house there was small but comfortable, close enough to the banks of the river to walk to the baths. “Wouldn’t it be nice, Mama,” she said, rubbing my aching feet between her little hands, “to warm your bones in Pöstyén before the snow flies?”

So although the idea of a jolting ride in a cart between Csejthe and Pöstyén hardly appealed to me, I agreed that we both needed a change. For me the mineral baths would surely ease the aches that plagued me night and day, and for Anna they might help speed along another child. I told her to send for Ilona Jó to make the arrangements for us to leave in the morning. Anna went out to fetch her old nurse into my room. From down the hall I could hear the music in her voice, the joy of anticipation. “Ilona!” she called. “We are going to Pöstyén after all! Tell the others to begin packing.”

In a moment there was some kind of noise from the dining hall, raised voices, and then Ilona Jó came into my room alone, carrying a tray with tea and hot soup for my midday meal. Her thin white face betrayed more than her usual amount of anxiety, the white knot of hair at the back of her head fairly quivering as her head wagged back and forth. No matter how many years she spent in my service, she never lost that sense I first had of her as a frightened horse about to
bolt. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened? Is it Count Zrínyi? Is there war?”

“No, mistress, but there is some trouble up the hill that I’ve just discovered,” she said. She set down the tray, sloshing a little of the soup over the lip of the bowl and mopping it up quickly with the hem of her skirt. “The girls there are quite ill. Two have died already, and three others are so weak that Majorosné doesn’t expect them to make it through the night.”

“An illness? What kind?”

“I’m not sure, madam. I heard about it from old Majorosné when she came down to fetch some food and tea for the sick ones. She was shouting and clattering around the kitchen like anyone’s business, and upset the cook.”

“Go and find out what’s happened, and come straight back to me. Dorka should have let someone know before now if they were so ill.”

The old nurse curtsied and left, but nearly an hour later she returned with more disturbing news: it was not illness that had struck the girls at the
vár
but starvation. Two girls had died already and three others were at the point of death.

“Starvation?” I said. “I sent them up with a month’s worth of food. How could this happen?”

“I don’t know. I come up to the keep and the washerwoman, Kata Benecká, says that Dorka had the girls locked up in their room all week, freezing and naked, with no fire and no food. Dorka said she’d beat anyone who gave them a morsel to eat. Missus Benecká tried to give them some bread, and Dorka went after her with a broomstick so bad that she’s been in bed for four days. The two that died are still chained to the three who are still living, and the smell is terrible.”

Unbelievable. Dorka had really gone too far this time. I specifically told her there should be no trouble while my daughter was here, while the house was open to so many new people—my son-in-law’s valet and servants and my daughter’s maidservants—all of whom
were strangers to our house, not used to our ways. “Have the cook send up broth for the sick ones, and have Istók Soós carry them to their beds if they can’t stand. They’re to have a fire immediately, Ilona, but don’t give them too much to eat yet or they’ll vomit it all up. A little broth for now, and then some bread.”

“What should I do with the dead ones?”

There must be no gossip at Csejthe while Anna’s servants were in the house, and Ponikenus had said several months back that he would not bury any more bodies for me in the churchyard at Csejthe. It would be difficult to remove the dead ones with Anna’s servants in the house, since they might see. “Hide them. Kata Benecká should be able to help you take them to the laundry. Send Erzsi Majorosné to the others with food and tea right away, and tell Dorka to come down to me immediately. From now on, Ilona Jó, I’m leaving you in charge of the maidservants.”

“Thank you, mistress.”

“Are there any left to come with us to Pöstyén?”

“None that are well enough.”

“Not even that fat little Doricza?”

“She’s been moved to the laundry as punishment. For lechery, madam. She was caught rutting with one of the men.”

“Which one?” I asked, astonished that any man would bed her. “Never mind. She will serve in a pinch. Send her back to me in the morning. She’ll be glad to get out of the laundry, at least.”

“I should imagine so.”

“Thank you, Ilona,” I said, indicating that I was finished eating and she could take away my tray. “You can send Dorka in as soon as she comes down. I’ll give her a little reminder about who is mistress here still.”

We left for Pöstyén with a small retinue of servants, only Ilona Jó, the new herbalist Majorosné whom I’d brought in after Darvulia left us, young Ficzkó, and the slow Doricza to wait on us. Dorka stayed behind as punishment for overstepping her authority, but for all that we spent a few pleasant days at the baths, going several times a day to the muddy edge of the river, Ilona Jó and Erzsi Majorosné each taking me by the arm so I would not stumble in the mud in my weakness. I hated the way my body felt, trembling and creaking like some kind of ancient ship under sail, but I allowed the ladies to help me, hoping that the mineral baths would provide some relief, as they had once done for Orsolya long ago. Age, it seemed, was finally catching up with me.

The waters smelled strongly of rotten eggs, but the servants scooped up cups of it for Anna to drink to improve her fertility and give her another child. She would hold her nose and swallow it hard, shaking her head afterward to rid herself of the taste. When she had drunk, we would sink down into the pools at the water’s edge to warm and relax. The mud was as hot as the inside of a cauldron, bubbling and thick, and I smeared it like a paste onto my joints and across my breasts, sitting still while old Majorosné spread it on my back. When it was cold, I would wash it off and begin again. Majorosné said for the waters to have their effect I should sit in them from sunrise to sunset, but after two or three hours I would grow light-headed from the smell and the heat and ask to be taken back inside. The ladies would dress me on the riverbank and help me back to the house, and in truth I did feel less stiff in my joints, so that I did not need their help as much leaving the river as I did entering it. After the midday meal we would go back again, floating in the cloudy water and
laughing like girls, until the heat and the smell drove us inside in the cooling dark of the evening.

Doricza was slow and lazy about her work, and often when we returned to the house we would find the beds unmade, the clothes wrinkled from being piled on the floor where we had dropped them. Often by the time she got ready the midday meal the soup would be cold, the bread burned, but she had much to do as the sole maidservant in the house and I was not too hard on her, reprimanding her only when she ruined the dress I was going to wear at dinner by burning the hem with her iron. Ilona Jó and Erzsi Majorosné helped in the evenings, but during the day they had to attend to me at the baths, for I wanted their company as I sat in the hot springs and would not let them go back to the house with the girl. I had Ficzkó ask around the village if there were young girls looking for work, but he came back several times telling me that he had been unable to find any who would willingly come with him. Anna sometimes asked her own woman, Margit, to stay behind to help Doricza while we were bathing, and when that happened, at least then the meals were better, but the house remained a mess of clothes and towels, empty glasses and upturned books, from sunup to sundown.

After a week of this routine, despite the joy I had in my daughter, I began longing for home, for a well-run house where the food was always hot, for the sight of Istók Soós in my own bed, and so we made the return trip just as the first snow began to fall, wet and heavy, coating the upper reaches of the valley and the hills of the Little Carpathians. The fallen yellow leaves of oak and beech crunched under the wheels of the carriage. Anna chatted with Doricza, who was asking about Croatia, which she had never seen, and Anna regaled her with stories of summers in Dalmatia, of the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea. Doricza said she should very much like to see it sometime.

“Perhaps if my mother could spare you,” said Anna, “I might take you with me when I go, and you could see it for yourself.”

I smiled at my daughter, at her thoughtfulness to the poor dumb
creature. “You are very dear to offer, my love,” I said. “But this one already has more work than she can handle. Maybe next year you can take her.”

Doricza frowned and stared at her folded hands, and Anna reached over and patted the girl. “There, then, that will give you something to look forward to. We’ll go early next summer, maybe, when the oranges are still small and green. I can give you a little tree of your own to look after. Would you like that?”

The girl looked up. Her face was round and ugly, pasty as unrisen dough, but I thought I read a hint of mute hope underlying the softness of her chin, the emptiness in her eyes. What she had to be hopeful about I couldn’t guess. There was no likelihood I would let her go next summer, either. “I would,” she said at last, and Anna sat back and talked to Ilona Jó instead, satisfied that she had shown as much kindness to the child as was merited.

Ficzkó had ridden ahead on his horse to let the servants know we were returning a week early, so as we pulled up to the
kastély
in the carriage Dorka and Istók Soós were waiting for us. Some sourness that hung in the air between the two of them convinced me that they had had a disagreement of some kind while we were gone, since it was with more than his usual gruffness that Istók offered Anna and me his hand to help us out of the carriage and then barked orders at the driver to steady the horses so he and his valet could get the trunks down. Dorka waited until I had a chance to take off my cloak and shoes and warm myself before the fire before she began the list of grievances that needed my urgent attention: the new stable boy had been caught peeking at one of the maidservants in her bath, and two of the horses had contracted some sort of lameness, and we were out of the good Tokaji wine. I told her to have Ficzkó beat the stable boy, to have the grooms wrap the horses’ fetlocks in hot towels, and to order more of the Tokaji from Thurzó’s steward, since it was his estates that produced the best vintages. “And how are the maidservants?” I asked. “The ones who were ill?”