by Lana Popovic
The girl is so weak and frozen through that she can only wade clumsily to the edge before collapsing onto it. The stable boy and I drag her out, but he leaves me to peel the clothes off her alone, struck by shame rather belatedly. The garments are frozen fast to her, and in some places I yank painfully at her chilblained skin despite my ginger touch. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to her under my breath. “But you’ll be warm soon, I promise.”
By the time we march her back to the keep, Elizabeth has lost interest in her predicament, much as I suspected she would. Her malice seems to spark easily and then burn bright but fast, leaving her dull and bored once sated. She instructs me to supervise the girl’s procession of shame in her stead, retiring to the library to read while I hasten Orsolya through the halls, nudging her as close as I can to every open flame. I only relax once I have her safely bundled in her pallet, with bottles of hot water tucked at her hands and feet. She won’t be dying; at least, not today.
Though I am only helping her, the scullery echoes like a cavern with whispers of “Witch, witch, witch” every way I turn, the word snapping like the crack of frozen branches in the wind. But whenever I whirl to confront someone, I’m met with a bland, impassive face. Even Ilona will not look at me, averting her gaze from my eyes. She remembers how I failed to defend her and her knees.
It all makes me long terribly for Peter, my mother, and my sister, and even my mutton-headed brothers. What I wouldn’t give to see them smile at me, speak to me with warmth.
Only Krisztina has the temerity to address me directly, and only to my back.
“You may be her favored witch now, Anna the Cunning, even her dearest plaything.” Her voice follows me, so corrosive I can nearly feel it burning through my skin. “But as surely as she is a snake, the worm will turn—and then you will find yourself twisting, impaled upon the hook.”
I turn back to her, slow and deliberate, unflinching when I meet her gaze. “You had better hope that’s not the case, if you know what is good for you,” I say grimly, keeping my face composed, though my heart batters furiously at my chest. Now that they have turned against me, I cannot let them see how deeply the loss of their regard wounds me. And I don’t know what else to do but cling to my precarious ground. “For if I lose her favor, who do you think will stand between her wrath and you? And who else would send you food from her table?”
Her freckled face flickers with a rage to match Elizabeth’s own, though hers is pure and somehow clean, almost wholesome in its earnest fury. “We don’t need your protection, witch,” she snaps, spitting at my feet. “Nor your filthy scraps!”
“Then you may well die painfully, and hungry, to boot,” I snap back, bile welling up my throat. “I hope that suits your scruples better.”
When I whirl back to the door and stalk out, the room resounds with a deafening silence behind me.
Chapter Thirteen
The Pennyroyal and the Fléchette
Sometimes I think Elizabeth must have two faces.
There is the one I see each morning when she wakes, cheerful and eager to meet the day and all it offers. That Elizabeth is indulgent and kind, quick to offer praise and shower me with affection, teach me letters and ciphers and the mind-bending stratagems of chess. She is also quick to learn: insatiably curious as to the properties of plants, how they might be applied not just for sickness but to augment health and bolster beauty. She makes me consider familiar herbs in entirely unexpected ways, as if a wholly different world exists nested within the one I know so well. And all I must do is tilt my head to see it.
I find it impossible not to love that Elizabeth, the one who is beguiling in a thousand different ways. I want to hate her, now that I know what she is capable of, but how can I, when everything I have—my fine new garments, the rich food that leaves me fully sated for the first time in my life, and most important, the coin that keeps my family hale—I owe to her generosity? And the pleasure she wrests from me is beyond anything I could have imagined, second only to the closeness between us. She speaks of such enticing things under the cover of the dark, the secrets and hopes she concocts for us.
Her favorite is imagining what we might do if there were no Ferenc.
“Can you imagine, if he simply never came back,” she likes to muse while nestled in my arms some nights, blinking dreamily up at the canopy. Her eyes glitter like black water in the darkness, to match the wet glint of her teeth when she smiles wide at the thought. “If the war would only be so kind to us. We could be the mistresses of the keep, ruling side by side. We could even bring your family here, imagine! Your sweet sister and boisterous brothers, running wild in these halls. Your mother would never have to strain her poor hands again.”
“They are already so grateful for the coin I send them,” I always assure her, and it’s true. She has increased my salary to three forint a month, more money than I could have imagined earning. I send almost all of it to them—what use have I for it, when she showers me with such plenty? The letters that I receive in return, written on my mother’s behalf in Peti’s clumsy but careful hand, are joyful and exuberant with gratitude. My mother reports that Klara is even packing some meat onto her bones for the first time.
I have so much to be grateful for. And even more to fear.
Because there is the other Elizabeth, consumed by the raging choler, like a dark twin that writhes close beneath the surface. Sometimes I fear she will tear my beloved’s skin to shreds. I can see that thrashing shadow in her eyes even when she is at peace, as if that part of her never quite subsides or rests. Even when she is placid, there is the distant flicker of a rage just beyond the horizon. Like the threat of lightning playing across a cloudless sky.
That other Elizabeth breathes fire more readily than the dragons on her family’s banner, rises to rage like hot summer air whipping into wind. That Elizabeth thrust the head cook’s hand into the hearth for burning her favorite poppy-seed rolls; the smell was hideously like roasting venison. I still can’t eat meat for remembering it. That Elizabeth caught one of the maidservants pilfering sweets from the kitchens, and made her eat so many figs the girl was violently sick onto herself.
That Elizabeth haunts the halls like a lovely reaper. Only ever a breath away from wreaking torment and death.
And yet, every week that Ferenc is away, I count our blessings. As bad as it is, how much worse would it be if we had him to contend with, too? He is not the sole cause of her malice, I can see that now. Whether she was born with the ember of her choler already blazing within her, or developed it as she grew, it is undeniably her own. But his presence surely stokes her flames, fans them to ever greater heights. While he is gone, I can work at diluting the venom even if I do not understand it, gently quell her when she bursts into rage like a phoenix, ashes raining everywhere. Because of me, the clumsy cook retains use of her hand, and the gluttonous maidservant was able to expel the sticky mass of unchewed figs that would have choked her otherwise. Because of me, unsightly chilblains are the worst of lusty Orsolya’s fate.
You’d never know it from the foul looks they fling me, but I do what I can to watch over them, cleaving to the corners of every violent spectacle. Subverting the worst of Elizabeth’s will whenever I am able, bringing her to some uneasy balance.
I take some comfort in the fact that she has never raised a hand to me. Her affection and regard for me seem unshakable, entirely at odds with how easily she inflicts violence on others; it makes me believe there must be some hope for her yet.
And then Ferenc returns home for Christmas, and dashes all my efforts to hell.
“I. Will. Not.”
Elizabeth paces wildly across the confines of her chambers, storming back and forth, spinning on her heel like a whirling dervish every time she encounters a wall. More mobile obstacles, she kicks or pitches over, until the two of us are standing in a jagged sea of shrapnel. Were anyone else responsible for such destruction in her vicinity, I think darkly, they’d be lucky to escape with their li
fe. Her hair tumbles in snarled curls around her stark-white face, and her lower lip blazes scarlet from being dragged viciously through her teeth. I hate to see her chew on herself so heedlessly in her distress, as if she has no care for her own flesh.
But I can’t blame her, not for this particular frenzy. Last night, Ferenc demanded that they dine alone, and she did not retire to her chambers to meet me after. I tossed and turned all night, alone in her vast bed, wondering how she fared. Morning saw my worst fears confirmed; she came tumbling in with another livid black eye, her fingernails splintered where she had tried to fend him off.
But this time, she does not take to her bed.
“I will not bear his foul, wretched get,” she hisses again, beating her fists against her hips to punctuate each word. “Even if he kills me for my barrenness.”
“But, Elizabeth,” I argue, “how can he blame you for what isn’t your fault? You can’t help it that you haven’t conceived.”
She casts me such a blisteringly scornful look that I lift a hand to shield my heart, as if she has nocked an actual arrow at me. “Don’t be such a naïf, Anna,” she spits scathingly, pacing away from me. “It doesn’t suit you. Surely you, of all people, know how pennyroyal, rue, and angelica may be used by a woman in need.”
“Pennyroyal . . .” I trail off, blinking stupidly. All the herbs she has named are emmenagogues, used to purge the womb of unwanted get. As the realization descends upon me, I roll my shoulders like a twitching cat, wondering how I could have missed the signs. It had not even occurred to me that the excruciating pain of her flux might have been artificially induced—and yet she was so familiar with the abortifacient’s smell that she sniffed it on me the first time that we met. Which means I should have seen her desperation, understood what she was doing to herself. “Is—is that why he is so furious at you, Elizabeth? Does he know what you have been doing?”
She looks away from me, gritting her teeth so hard her chin juts like a blade. “Ferenc is many things, but not a fool,” she murmurs. “He does not know for sure, but he suspects. Strongly suspects.”
“But why did you not tell me?” I whisper, my stomach clenching with pain. I think of that first conversation I witnessed between them, Ferenc railing at her for failing to provide him with an heir. I had thought it his boorishness and cruelty—not the additional fury of a scorned husband whose wife was intent on scouring her womb clean of him.
She rounds on me again, nostrils flaring. “Because I am no fool,” she snaps. “We barely knew each other then. How could I have known for sure you would not find me monstrous for it? Besides, my reason remains the same. I will not be sucked dry by his foul spawn, nor imperil my son’s future inheritance. My child is perfection; his would be the devil’s own get.”
It is as if she believes she made Gabor wholly of herself, as though he budded off like some replica of her flesh and blood and bone. As far as she is concerned, his father may as well have not existed.
“But—every month, Elizabeth? Since you were married three years ago?” I cannot keep the dismay from my voice. “Such powerful, scourging herbs are not meant to be used thus! You could have killed yourself that way!”
“And I would have, happily,” she retorts. “If it would have spared me this. I cannot suffer myself to live as the mother of his get, and I will do anything it takes to prevent it! Anything, do you hear me?”
I surprise both of us by bursting into tears.
Elizabeth is so taken aback she draws up short, as if bolted in place. I myself am so shocked I press my palms to my cheeks, as if I could ward the weeping off. But it will not be thwarted, boiling up through my fingers, mortifying and irrepressible. The opposite of my usual, painstaking control.
“Anna, are you—are you crying?” She says it so tentatively, with such incredulity—as if my tears are an unheard-of wonder—that a hysterical hiccough of laughter burbles in my throat. “I have never seen you cry before. I—I think I may have believed you could not.”
“Well, I obviously can,” I blubber through tears so thick they slide like a hot wash down my face. “And if you die, Elizabeth, if you kill yourself because of him, I will cry for months, I swear it. Perhaps I will never stop. I love you, Elizabeth. If you, if you die . . . I do not know what I would do with myself.”
Her face softens, melts with concern. “Oh, Anna . . .”
She sweeps over to me, enfolding me in an embrace so tight my head tucks into the perfumed curve of her throat, so close that I can feel her swallow hard. I forget sometimes how much taller she is than I am, but now she rocks me back and forth like a swaddled babe, swaying us in place.
“My little sage,” she croons into my hair. “My sweet, loving dove. You would help me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course!” I gasp against her skin. “Of course I would!”
“Well, there is one way out for us,” she muses thoughtfully, resting her chin against my head. “Only one way that I can think of, at any rate.”
“What?” I gasp, hope flaring so painfully inside me that my chest burns with its force. “Anything, anything I can do—”
“If he were to die, instead of me . . . I would be set free. Liberated by my widow’s weeds.”
“Die?” I twist in her embrace, brow wrinkling as I look up at her. “But Ferenc is hale and healthy, isn’t he? I don’t think I’ve ever heard him so much as clear his throat. Why would he oblige us by dropping dead?”
Her grip loosens, and she steps away from me—but her eyes, so dark and bottomless, with all the star-pricked dimension of the night sky, maintain their hold. “As I have often said, so many things can befall a man,” she says with studied lightness, twitching one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Disease, malfeasance, accident. A fall down the stairs, a tumble from a balking horse, a slim knife speared through an eye under cover of the night.”
Or poison, I can almost hear her saying. The unspoken word echoes in my mind, expanding in volume, like a whisper growing into a shout.
Poison him, Anna, that is what she is truly saying. Poison him for me.
“Are you—” My heart seems to have grown and hardened in my chest, ossified into a rough-skinned stone that bangs against my lungs. “Are you truly asking me to kill him?”
“Anna, mind your words!” she chides, her eyes growing wide with shock—but I can see a hint of an approving smile tugging a corner of her lip. “Who speaks of murder? Have I said any such thing? I am merely saying what might happen, should the world be kind to me. To us.”
“But . . .” My mind races, whirling end over end, as if tumbling pell-mell down a hill. I would give so much, almost anything, to spare her pain. But I am a healer above all else, above even my love for her. As much as I loathed my father and do not mourn his death, I never envisioned killing him. The thought of such violence runs against my grain, hitches up hard against the solid, unyielding, impermeable core of who I am. Against my own inner star.
As I think, Elizabeth watches me avidly, unblinking. She is barely breathing, though the delicate hollow at her throat thrums with the frantic force of her pulse. I can see the glinting ember of her hope catching cautious flame in her eyes.
It pains me sorely to huff it out. “I cannot,” I whisper finally, my own heart cleaving when her face falls. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she says dully, turning away from me as her face caves into itself. Curling into her misery alone. “I did not ask anything of you.”
That night, I accompany Elizabeth to the great hall for dinner, despite my misgivings.
“Apparently my demon of a husband has something special planned for me tonight,” Elizabeth tells me smoothly, having recovered her composure. Though the lurid bruise around her eye cannot be concealed even with my best efforts, the rest of her is impeccably groomed, shiningly coiffed and perfect. Her arm is hooked through mine as we walk the keep’s corridors, and I am so grateful to be forgiven for my lapse in devotion that my feet may as well be feathers, so l
ight is my step. “To atone for his uncouth behavior last night.”
“And he wants me there, too?” I balk as she draws me along. “Are you sure?”
“You saw his note for yourself, did you not? It called for both of us.”
It did. My reading has progressed enough to allow me to decipher most writing for myself, though it is still a strange, disorienting thing to see my own name written, made indelible. Bring Anna, please, Ferenc’s note had read, written in a smooth, assertive hand that sprawled across the foolscap. As if to claim even the paper as his own. All has been arranged for you. Both of you shall be my honored guests.
“‘All has been arranged’ . . .” I quote nervously. “What do you think that means?”
“I haven’t the slightest.” She cocks her head pertly, considering. “But Ferenc does have a marvelous sense of occasion; it is one of his few redeeming qualities. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be acceptably diverting.”
I do not know why I allow this reassurance to allay my foreboding when I know full well what Elizabeth considers sport, and what kind of wolf peers through her husband’s eyes. And yet, when we step into the great hall to behold what Ferenc has arranged, I find that I have allowed myself to be lulled—and I am miles away from prepared for the sight that greets us.
“What—” I croak through a throat gone so dry my voice rattles in it like seeds in a gourd. “What is this?”
Ferenc lounges at the head of the table, its surface buckling with food. But at each of the four corners, there now stands a whipping post secured to the floor. Orsolya and the daydreaming cook who burned Elizabeth’s pudding are lashed to the two posts on either side of Ferenc. At the opposite end of the table are the sweet-toothed maidservant and my own poor, dear Ilona.
I can see Janos and another manservant I do not recognize, likely Ferenc’s own valet, prowling the room’s shadowy corners, their faces studiously blank. They must have been the ones to drag the poor women here, I think, awash in loathing, as if I have a leg to stand on.