by Lana Popovic
As if they and I are so very different in our service.
“A gift,” Ferenc proclaims, reclining in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. He is smiling lazily, a sardonic curl that twists my insides with its heedless self-assurance. As if he does not have four helpless women strung up like carcasses on posts. “I have heard rumors that these ill-mannered wenches have displeased my lady wife in my absence—imagine my astonishment when I found them surprisingly hale. So I thought, what better gift than a reprise? A proper punishment, unencumbered by the mercy of the fairer sex.”
Unbelievably, he has the gall to tip Elizabeth a wink.
Something unfathomable passes between them then, an electric current that leaves me out. Whatever it is, it brings a gratified, almost feline smile to Elizabeth’s lips. She dips into a deep curtsy, inclining her head. “It is a lovely gift, husband,” she murmurs. “Very apt. I appreciate the thoughtful gesture, and offer you my thanks.”
“Good,” he says silkily, interlacing his fingers on the table. “I am pleased to hear we’ve ventured back to common ground. Come, sit with me. Some wine for you both? You’re looking especially peaked, Anna. A draught might serve to relax you.”
I find that my hand has drifted to my mouth, that I’ve sunk my teeth into my knuckle without noticing. “Thank you, my lord,” I manage, eking out a clumsy curtsy before following Elizabeth to our end of the table.
“Are you all right?” I whisper to Ilona as I pass by her, keeping my gaze from straying toward her. She whimpers against the post, but I hear the soft exhale of her “Yes” trailing behind me.
A maidservant fills both our goblets as soon as we sit. I drain mine in one fell swoop, nodding at her to refill it. I will need to be fortified for tonight, I think grimly. I sense already that it will test me worse than anything I’ve borne thus far.
“Look, Anna!” Elizabeth exclaims, gesturing at our plates. “What a cunning addition to the place settings!”
I glance down, my breath rasping in my throat as my gaze wanders over the switch laid to my right, beyond the knives; the paddle and bullwhip to the left, beside the forks; and the wicked little fléchette knife above the dessert spoon over my plate. An instrument of torture set for each course planned.
My vision sparkles at the edges, swimming with flecks like tiny, swarming moths. If I weren’t already sitting down, I would have fallen to my knees, lost my tenuous hold on myself.
“I thought you could join us, Anna,” Ferenc drawls, his eyes glittering maliciously. “In this more piquant feast. I am told you rarely take the pleasure of indulging in such . . . rarified pursuits yourself. I mean tonight to be a gift to you as well, for the unparalleled service you provide my lady wife.”
I glare at him, sucking shallow breaths through parted lips. The bastard clearly knows what has passed between me and his wife—though as she surmised, he does not seem to care beyond taunting me with it. He must know, too, that I have no stomach for these torments. Whoever feeds him information would also have relayed my role in tending to the victims of Elizabeth’s ire.
“Thank you for thinking of me, my lord,” I say quietly, not bothering to conceal the arch undercurrent in my tone. “It was most considerate of you.”
Ferenc gives me an appreciative nod, as if acknowledging a surprisingly worthy opponent, before transferring his gaze to Elizabeth. “Well, my lady? Shall we begin, before our entertainment falls asleep?”
Scant chance of that, I think darkly, catching Orsolya’s terrified gaze as she twitches to attention on her post.
“We shall,” Elizabeth confirms, picking up the switch, giving it an experimental slap across her palm. “They do say activity whets the appetite!”
The rest of the night unfolds like some jittering, gruesome vision of hell, a mirage beheld through the wavering smoke of an inferno.
I keep my seat when they rise, and drink glass after glass of wine in an attempt to obliterate myself, while Elizabeth and Ferenc caper like Lucifer’s own fiends, laughing and toasting each other. “To my lady wife, Beth,” Ferenc proposes first, with a wry twist to his lips. “A singular woman, truly like no other.”
“And to you, Ferenc,” she responds, tilting her shining head demurely. “The Black Knight of Magyarország—and as fearsomely spectacular a husband as he is a champion. When he is so inclined, that is.”
I can barely force a single morsel down my throat, but the two of them feast ravenously, as if the acrid reek of fear pervading the room is the finest aroma. They hold a strange, courtly conversation, him regaling her with tales of victories wrested from the Ottoman emperor’s invading troops, all while he rises to lash Orsolya’s back.
“And then the janissaries strove to harry us at our flank, can you fathom it, Beth—as if I had not executed such a stratagem myself with our own troops, only the week before!” he exclaims, bringing down the bullwhip to draw out a keening moan from Orsolya.
“What sublime arrogance,” Elizabeth breathes, watching him beat the poor woman with avid, glittering eyes. “They do not know whom they think to bedevil, do they?”
Even the steady stream of wine I swallow cannot block out her anguished cries, yet the two of them barely seem to bend an ear. They compete as if to outdo each other, playing out some struggle I cannot comprehend. For every blow he strikes, she matches him with two, until the ill-fated cook sags unseeing against the post.
It is as if Elizabeth strives to prove herself more than his equal at exacting punishment. Maybe she thinks, if he finds her to be his match, he will leave her be and stop forcing the matter of a child. I can almost believe it, witnessing her feverish ardor, the furious yet ebullient way she applies herself to causing harm. This is far beyond even her own cruel appetite—so depraved I think she must truly believe she can buy her own freedom with someone else’s flesh.
But when they graduate to the fléchettes right before dessert, I finally push back from the table. Anything else, I can endure. But I won’t let them cut Ilona.
“May I?” I slur when Elizabeth takes a step toward her, struggling to unknot my drink-sodden tongue. “She—she used to be my friend, when I lived below the scullery. But now she only looks at me askance, as if she begrudges my every joy. I would punish her myself for her insolence.”
“Of course, Anna,” Elizabeth purrs in a languid, indulgent tone. Though her face is flecked bright with blood, her hair curling sweaty at her temples from her exertions, she looks heavy-lidded and indolent. “Who is she to hold you in such contempt?” She takes up the fléchette by my plate, pressing it into my hand. My fingers curl reluctantly around it, and I am abruptly and wholly stone-sober, as if icy water has been upended over my head. “Do me proud, my little sage. Show my husband how it is done, when a woman wields a blade.”
The fléchette grows sweaty in my hand as I approach Ilona, inwardly cursing Ferenc with every step for driving us both to this. The way Ilona is restrained prevents her from turning her head, but she can see me from the frantic corner of her eye, and she squirms madly against her bindings. As if she is truly terrified of me, just as she would be of our lady. Like mistress, like pet, I’m sure she thinks.
In her mind, I’m now cut from the same cloth as Elizabeth. “Please, Anna,” she whines desperately, tossing her head like a panicked filly. “Please, don’t hurt me!”
I grip her by the hair, bring my mouth close to her ear under Elizabeth’s rapt gaze. “Don’t be afraid,” I whisper, my heart quailing at her ragged breathing. “I will try not to hurt you very badly, though it will hurt, I won’t lie. But if I do not cut you, one of them will—and they will not take care that you live through this. Do you understand?”
She hesitates, panting against the wood, then jerks out a nod. At least she still trusts me this far.
“One more thing,” I whisper, bringing the knife up to her bared back, pressing it to her skin so she can feel the cold blade and prepare herself. My gorge rises in my throat at the thought of bearing do
wn. But I tell myself that I have done as much before, to heal. My intent is the same, only the execution different. “Scream, Ilona, if you value your life. As loudly as you can. Now is not the hour for holding back.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Angel and the Gripe
I will never forget the sound of Ilona’s pain.
Though I have scrubbed myself over and over, my hands still feel hot and sticky with my crime, the rollicking echoes of her shrieks resounding in my ears. Perhaps they will plague me to my dying day, hound me into hell. For that is surely where I now belong, regardless of my intentions.
The only thing I can do to atone is ensure that Ferenc arrives there first.
Elizabeth would not let me clean her when we staggered back to her chambers, rubbing the blood over her cheeks like some savage goddess reveling in sacrifice.
“No, Anna, leave me be—it will do such wonders for my skin! Goat’s blood and milk could not compare to such freshness and heat; you will see it gleam like silk in the morning,” she raved, rubbing it into her face as though it were some vile unguent.
Now she sleeps, leaving scarlet smears across her pillow, while I rouse myself and venture out into the woods by the keep. As I slog through the soggy, mud-choked ground, softened by an unexpected thaw, I cannot thrust Ilona from my mind. True to my word, I cut her shallowly and only where I deemed safest. It ensured that she would bleed profusely enough to slake Ferenc’s bloodlust, while protecting more crucial tissues from harm. Preserving the soundness of tendon and ligament.
At the end of the evening, she was the only one of the four left alive.
All my work to save them from Elizabeth’s wrath, undone in one debased night. Just as he intended, I’m sure. A precisely crafted punishment for my claim to Elizabeth’s love.
I left Ilona slumped senseless on the post, but breathing still. I can only hope whoever tends to her in my stead has the sense to send her home once she is bandaged up, her scull’s salary be damned.
“We showed him, didn’t we, my little sage?” Elizabeth kept repeating as we stumbled back upstairs, so drunk off wine and torment that she fairly bounced along the walls. “Now he knows, now he finally understands, who it is that he took to wife!”
“Yes, Elizabeth,” I’d said woodenly, my face feeling numb, throat stripped and sore from the tears I’d swallowed while working on Ilona. “I have no doubt that he does.”
And I have no doubt that if he lives, many, many more will die as he continues to fan Elizabeth’s flames, coaxing her to ever more infernal depths—including myself, eventually. His indulgence of me is bound to sour, once he sees for himself how Elizabeth dotes and relies on me. Then he will see fit to cull me, too.
Unless I cull him first.
I understand now that it must fall to me. I owe it to Elizabeth, who has given me so much, to guide her back to her humanity as best I can. Without Ferenc’s fangs at her throat, I can try to purge her of the choler, or avert it into less deadly channels. If I do not at least make the attempt, the deaths within these walls will surely multiply at his hands. And I cannot simply stand by and watch, not any longer. Not now that I am tainted, too.
At the very least, perhaps I can save Elizabeth’s blackened soul from him.
When I step into the woods, fragrant with pine needles and bark and squelching mud, I know exactly where to look. In my first weeks here, I came across several squirrels dead right near this spot, having dropped out of the trees during their madcap rush to fill their winter caches. They would have eaten something, I reasoned, that disagreed badly with them. It behooved me to know exactly what. The search led me to a cluster of amanita mushrooms, of the destroying angel type, nested within a rotten log. Their cloistered home should have sheltered them from the snow, and the recent thaw encouraged even more to burgeon up.
There are other methods, of course, different poisons I could procure or brew. But all of those are rare or otherwise difficult to obtain, and the appearance of the amanitas now seems an omen, a fortuitous gift. As if they were left here for me, meant for this very moment.
Holding my breath, I kneel before the log and bend to peer in. In the darkness I can spot the destroying angels’ ghostly gleam, the clammy, bulbous shape that has tricked countless foragers to death. They look fleshy, appealing, mimicking many other mushrooms that are safe and good to eat. It allows them to hide in plain sight, flourish while small and pale.
The destroying angel mushroom is not so unlike me.
As soon as I return, I slip the amanitas into Ferenc’s breakfast.
The new head cook blanches when I appear in the kitchens, as if I am a floating shade, a specter presaging her own death. I tell her that Elizabeth has requested that, from now on, I will see to both her and Ferenc’s meals to avoid any more unfortunate mistakes. The woman is so terrified of what befell her predecessor—surely no one in the keep could have avoided hearing of the lord and lady’s diabolical diversions, even if they weren’t tasked with scouring the great hall—that she bobs a nervous curtsy and scampers off without a word. Only too happy to cede me her place.
I slice the mushrooms up and dredge them generously through butter, then fry them with eggs, spiced sausages, and plum-stuffed dumplings rolled in cinnamon and sugar. I know that amanitas taste deceptively mild and pleasant, so I foresee no trouble there. To further deflect suspicion, I cook the other batch of the mushrooms I gathered—harmless, edible parasols—into an identical meal for Elizabeth.
I carry it up to her myself, instructing one of the maidservants to bring Ferenc his breakfast, just to be safe. I doubt he would think to question who cooked it for him, not here in the sanctity of his own keep, where he cannot imagine himself threatened. But I won’t risk alarming him.
Elizabeth is awake and washed when I slip in with her tray, though she looks limply hungover. But she accepts the tray gratefully, smiling at me when I instruct Margareta to draw her a bath. “Thank you, my dove,” she sighs, prodding at the food. “This will do me good, I’m sure. I feel dreadfully wrung out from last night. Though my skin feels quite taut today, just as I told you it would! And perhaps, now that my husband has seen my strength, he will no longer strive to bend me to his will.” Her face brightens, glows almost incandescent with hope—almost as if the blood has truly worked the wonders she ascribes to it. “Perhaps everything will be different now, don’t you think?”
You have no notion, my beloved, how different things will be.
“Perhaps it will,” I say instead, as mildly as I can, though my heart rages like storm-racked waters. “We can only hope.”
The destroying angel is an insidious, languid sort of poison. Though it takes effect quickly, its first symptoms are quite mild. It can take weeks for it to fully debilitate the liver and kidneys, to churn the hapless victim’s innards into an agonizing slurry. And once it has begun there is no antidote, nothing at all that can forestall its course.
Once admitted, the angel will not be denied.
The death it brings about is so excruciating and prolonged that it almost hints of the eternal torments that await some beyond the veil—hence the name. It’s the sort of death that Ferenc deserves, has more than earned for himself.
By the time night falls like an unraveling curtain, he is already well within its thrall.
I attend to him readily when he calls on me, unwitting, to make him a tonic that will soothe his griping guts. He complains of a turbulent stomach and loose stools, which I know precede the bloody flux to come. I make a great show of examining him with care, brewing him tisanes of chamomile, licorice, and peppermint, graciously accepting his grudging thanks when they provide temporary reprieve. I don’t mind tending to him; the act only casts suspicion away from me. I treat him as I would any other patient, tending to him night and day—seemingly as devoted to my lady’s husband as I am to her.
By the fifth day, Ferenc is beset by such pain that he can barely speak sense. He thrashes like an eel and soils himself,
incapable of stomaching more than a drop of water. In his delirium he rails against us all, from his manservant and Elizabeth to King Ferdinand, his patron, blackening his name. By the time he finally fixates on me, ranting of malfeasance and poison, he is such a reeking wreck that only I can stand to see to him. There is no one to hear him condemn me, not when even his valet deserted him days ago, unable to bear the ungodly miasma of his stench.
Elizabeth has not been to see him once since he fell ill.
“Witch,” he rasps at me in a rare moment of lucidity, glaring at me with one rheumy, bloodshot eye. “Murderess.”
“At your service, my lord,” I say, not pausing my wiping of his brow. “I’ve done quite a fine job of it, wouldn’t you say?”
“You . . .” He struggles, panting, his head falling back to the sweat-soiled pillow. “You will burn in hell for this, you wicked bitch, you vile abomination. You are even worse than her.”
“If I do,” I reply equably, shifting my weight on his bed, “I trust you will be there afore me, ready to show me all the sights.”
When he finally dies three days later, I believe it comes as a relief to the both of us.
Chapter Fifteen
The Confession and the Malady
The weeks following Ferenc’s death streak by in a blur. There are funeral arrangements to be made, the winding shroud to be woven, the Nadasdy and Báthory families and their friends to host as they trickle in, gathering for the ceremony.
Elizabeth manages it all with grim, white-faced efficiency. I keep to the shadows of the overcrowded castle, not wanting to draw attention to myself by interfering unless I am called upon. Small scraps of guilt have begun to hatch inside me, squirming like maggots, and I cannot bring myself to so much as meet his grieving family’s eyes. And Elizabeth and I barely have a moment to exchange more than a few words until after he is delivered into the ground, his family dispersed.