by Lana Popovic
It is only then that I finally feel as though I can draw a full breath again.
“It must be a relief to you to have them gone,” I say to her that morning as I dress her hair. She has been uncharacteristically terse with me since he died, quiet and withdrawn. I have been so eager for this moment, counting down until we had the time and room to rekindle the warmth between us. “His mother, in particular, all that ceaseless wailing and carrying on. I thought it would burst my eardrums.”
Her eyes, sharply rimed with frost, flit up to mine in the mirror. “How unkind of you to say, Anna. He was her son,” she snaps, tight-lipped. “And a healthy man, in the prime of his life. Of course she was aggrieved. How could she not have been? In some ways, she lost even more than I did—and I had my husband stripped from me.”
“But . . .” The words wilt on my tongue, and my hands still in her hair. “Do you mean to say that you—that you miss him? That you are sorry for his passing?”
“What a foolish thing to ask,” she retorts, still in that caustic tone. “He was my husband, and now he is gone. We did not always get on, and he had a heavy hand. But I would never have wished such an ill death on him.”
“But you hated him!” I blurt, unable to restrain myself. “You used to fantasize for hours about what it would be like if he were gone, do you not remember? You—you asked me to kill him for you!”
“Asked you to kill him . . .” she repeats, incredulous, her eyes growing so wide in the mirror I can see a ring of white around them. “Anna, are you unwell? Fevered, perhaps? What could cause you to utter such a thing, such unspeakable, morbid nonsense?”
“I—I am fine,” I reply weakly, stepping back and winding my suddenly cold hands in my skirts. My mind mills with a thousand biting little thoughts. The sober widow sitting before me seems so far removed from the half-crazed, desperate woman I remember storming about this very room, railing against her brutish husband, plying herself ruthlessly with emmenagogues to rid her womb of his get. And yet, she blinks at me now with such disbelieving eyes that I almost question what I recall. “But you, you did wish him dead. You told me so, after he beat you the last time, for not wishing to bear his child. You asked me to—”
I cut myself off when she rises, pushing away from the vanity and turning slowly, warily, to face me.
“Anna,” she says, so somber it is almost sepulchral. “Are you saying that my husband’s death was no sudden illness? That Ferenc, may the good lord rest his soul, died by your hand?”
“Of course that’s what happened!” I say, my voice shrill and tremulous. “I—I poisoned his food. I did it to free you, Elizabeth! At your own behest!”
Elizabeth turns away from me, clapping a hand to her mouth. Silence ensues, stagnating around us like a swamp. When she wheels to face me again, her face is taut, aghast, colorless save for the blazing red of her worried lower lip. “Listen to me, Anna,” she manages between clenched teeth. “I would never have asked you to do such a thing. I was angry, certainly, but it is often thus between husband and wife. And he was my husband. Sometimes I even loved him, especially in the early days.”
“So, what, now you claim to mourn his death?” I ask, disbelieving. This admission of this past love for him, even if distant, tears at me like talons. What about me? I want to shriek at her. Do you still love me? “If you were so distressed, why did you not visit him once while he lay dying?”
“Because I could not bear to see it!” she lashes out, eyes snapping with ferocity. “For all his faults, he was always so robust. How could I have withstood it, seeing him weak and diminished?”
“But you said!” I counter frantically, my heart stamping like hooves against my ribs. This cannot be happening, it cannot. And yet it is. “You talked of what could befall a man, malfeasance and accident and assault, you spoke of poison . . .”
“I admit to having dark thoughts, yes, in the extremity of my distress,” she concedes, inclining her head. Her grave mien is terrifying, though not as much as the strange, roiling furor in her eyes. “Those are on my soul to bear. But I never spoke of poison, Anna, and I certainly never directed you to kill him. Go on, cast your mind back. Do you truly remember me saying any such thing?”
I reel my recollection back to that day, rifling through the memories. And it is true, dreadfully, fearfully true; I cannot remember her outright asking for his death, or even mentioning poison aloud.
I had surmised that it was what she wanted, but the words themselves were never spoken.
“No,” I falter, feeling the blood sluice from my face in a flood. It leaves my body weak and shaking, my head swimming upon my shoulders. “But I could have sworn that it was what you wanted. That I heard it between us quite clearly, though unspoken.”
She bites her lower lip, and something subtle and unnerving creeps across her face. “When you say you hear it, though it was not spoken, what do you mean?” she asks in a low tone. “Do you mean that you heard it inside your own head, perhaps as though it were whispered in your ear?”
My breath grows short as I struggle to pin the fluttering memory down, spear needles through its wings. I simply knew that she meant poison, that she wished for me to do it. But how could I have known, if she did not say as much herself?
“Something like that,” I admit feebly. “It was as if I heard what you were not saying. As if I felt, understood in my heart, what you wanted of me.”
Out of instinct I lift my hands, reaching toward her for comfort. When she shies back a step, away from me, the pain is fit to break my heart. I clutch both fists against my stomach, fearing that I might double over, collapse to the floor and spew out my own shattered innards.
Because I finally recognize that unfamiliar expression on her face. Elizabeth is afraid. Of me.
What dread reversal of fortune is this? That I have driven her away by attempting to secure her freedom? What if she is thinking back to all the times she accepted medicine for my hand, considering how close she might have come to death herself?
What if she stops loving me, casts me away? Not only will my heart break, dash itself to bitter smithereens, but my family will starve to death.
If I lose her, everything is lost.
“Is it possible, Anna,” she begins hoarsely, in an overly cautious voice I have never heard from her before, “that it was not my voice you heard inside your head?”
“What do you mean?” My voice scales up to a needling shrill. “Whose voice would it have been?”
“Not who,” she replies, shifting her jaw. “But what. After all your talk of omens and portents, and the midwife’s sight you have told me of—perhaps this is of the same otherworldly ilk. Whatever spirits or demons granted you such sight . . . maybe they now grow bolder. Whispering directly in your ear.”
I shake my head a little, so dumbstruck and appalled I think at first that I must have heard her wrong. Yet how could I have, when the horrid accusation echoes in my ears, spooling around itself like a worm curling inside my brain.
“They do call you a witch,” she says gently, sensing my agitation. “I heard it said even before we met.”
“But . . . But the sight is merely intuition.” I flail, pressing my hands harder against my stomach in an effort to thwart the building panic. “I know it isn’t real, so much as a tool. My own instincts leading me toward what I already know to be true.”
She closes the distance between us, her hands alighting on my shoulders with such caution, such restraint, that my lips tremble with all that she is holding back. As if I am both a hissing viper and a frail, shattered shell. As if I might either bite her or crumble beneath her touch.
“I believe that you believe that,” she says softly, leaning forward to tilt her forehead against mine. “You are a good person, Anna, I would never doubt as much. But whatever this is, this loathsome taint, it has clearly crept inside you. Made itself at home. And if that is not the case . . .”
“What?” I ask fearfully, my insides contracting a
t her billowing sigh. “What else might it be?”
“A malady of the mind,” she replies after a weighty pause. “They do say the deranged hear things that others do not. And is that not exactly what you complain of? Hearing things that aren’t there? Things that drive you to fiendish acts—to murder?”
“I don’t know, Elizabeth,” I whisper, and suddenly I cannot restrain myself. Scalding tears come seeping down my face, and a guttural sob wrenches itself from my throat. “I do not feel deranged, but if I were—would I even know?”
My voice blurs, eclipsed by an encroaching wail. I collapse as if my bones have melted, lost all integrity. Elizabeth catches me easily by the elbows, maneuvers my weak form into her arms.
“Hush, Anna,” she croons as I weep abysmally into her shoulder, clinging to her as if a great flood seeks to sweep me away and drown me. “Be still, my little sage, and do not be afraid. You are not alone in this. Whatever has befallen you, we will fix it together. You have my word.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Shade and the Flower
Despite Elizabeth’s reassurances, Ferenc’s unquiet shade does not let me rest.
Though I have often navigated my way by the light of omens, those temporary stars meant to lead one onward before winking out, I have never truly believed in spirits. And yet now I feel his oily specter lingering all around me. It is as if Ferenc’s restless soul has steeped into the keep’s already malign stones; the castle seems to exhale malevolence into the air, curdling my every breath. Its miasma fosters my guilt as wet air nurtures mold, and my insides fester with it, my every nook and cranny teeming with its invading tendrils.
Until I am riddled with it like a fallen fruit. Veined with rot, on the brink of collapse, my whole self soft with putrefaction.
And if I was not deranged before, I have since succumbed.
Without sleep, my tempered disposition abandons me completely, terror gripping me in its fist until I fear I will be crushed. My turmoil is such that my head aches incessantly, splitting my skull and distorting my sight. Every shadow caught from the corner of my eye nearly chases me out of my skin, and sometimes I swear I can even smell him, wafts of that loathsome scent he favored cloying in my nose.
Once, as I walk through the halls, I catch a hissing whisper that dogs my step. Murderess, it rasps at me like a beckoning as I round each corner, though there is nothing to be seen beyond. Wicked murderess, deceitful bitch. I seem to hear it emanating from all directions, even whistling on the wind that filters through the cracks in the timbered walls. I turn in a frantic circle, searching for its source, but it remains mockingly out of reach.
Whispering over my shoulder, high above my head, ricocheting off the walls.
“Stop,” I hiss back through gritted teeth, clamping my palms desperately over my ears. “Begone, shade, hie you back to hell!”
The whisper rolls into peaks of derisive laughter, resounding so loudly in my head it’s as though it has wormed directly into my brain. Breathless with panic, I pelt heedlessly through the halls, up and down stairs, until I thoroughly lose myself in an unlit part of the keep I’ve never seen before. Furniture looms ominously beneath the shrouds of dust cloths, and trailing cobwebs tack the rafters. Yet the susurrus only gains in volume the farther I run, until I press my back against the dusty wall and slide down, slumping against it with my wobbling knees drawn up to my chest. I am so full of fear and loathing I feel as though I may burst through my own skin, split its seams and shed it so at least my shambling skeleton may flee this place.
I’m still mumbling to Ferenc through tears, my eyes screwed tightly shut, when Elizabeth finds me hours later. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to kill you, but I had to, I had to, I’m sorry!”
I only open my eyes when her warm hands steal over mine and lower them from my ears, her soft cheek pressing against my face. “My dearest dove,” she whispers, her brow furrowing with distress, “what are you doing all the way up here? I couldn’t find you anywhere, I was near driven to distraction!”
“It’s Ferenc,” I gasp, tumbling forward into her arms. I am shuddering like an animal, strange parts of my body twitching without reason. My left thumb, an eyebrow, a small muscle in my jaw. “He is—he is still here, Elizabeth! He haunts me, I swear it, he will not leave me be . . .”
Unable to restrain myself, I dissolve into sobs so wrenching they feel as though they might crack my rib cage open like a chestnut under a horse’s hoof. Cooing under her breath, Elizabeth gathers me up against her and rocks me like a fretful babe.
“It is only your mind, my love,” she murmurs. “You are merely overwrought, that is all. He is gone, dead and buried—far beyond the veil, if any stubborn part of him even persevered after death.”
“Then why can I hear him, Elizabeth?” I keen against her neck. “Why can I smell him? No, he is still here inside these walls, hiding like a phantom. And he will not let me rest!”
I continue weeping as she helps me, stumbling, to my feet, and guides me to her bedroom. “You need sleep, my dove,” she whispers, easing me into bed, lifting my feet off the floor one by one and tucking them beneath the covers with a pat. “I know you have barely rested for over a fortnight. Here, let me feed you a sip of the laudanum you gave me when it was I who ailed. All you need is proper sleep.”
When she tips the spoon to my mouth like a mother bird feeding her young, I take it obediently, though the bitterness curls my tongue. I have resisted sleep remedies thus far, fearing that my mind could only conjure darker things behind the confines of my eyelids, but I agree with her. I cannot go on as I am without sleep, or I too will falter and die.
But perhaps death is sometimes kinder than the vengeance that lurks behind closed eyes.
And it is just as I fear. After the first blissful wave of somnolence breaks over my head, I find myself trapped in darkness. My dreams become a cruel land that may as well be the fairies’ realm, populated by long-faced wraiths that caper about me and yank at my hair, gabbling nonsense in my ears. “Murderess,” they kettle-shriek at me in a hellish cadence that mimics Ferenc’s tone, “wicked, conniving witch!” As their voices blend into high-pitched titters, the black coalesces into a horde I recognize—the beetles that once ate me in my sleep, back when I lived down in the cellars.
“No,” I scream at their onslaught, scrabbling backward in the shapeless dark, though there is nowhere to run. “Do not take me!”
But they pour over and engulf me, skittering down my throat and tearing my lungs with their needling legs. Stuffing me full with their bodies until I cannot breathe.
When I gasp myself awake, washed in sweat and shrieking, it is Elizabeth who coaxes me back to myself. “Come, dearest, hush,” she whispers to me as I cry, curling herself around me. “It is all right, I promise. You are with me. We will make you better.”
But I do not get better.
After that I refuse any more laudanum, and none of my own herbal remedies can guarantee a safer sleep. The nightmare seems to bleed over into my waking hours, uninvited. Floods of beetles follow in my footsteps, skittering at the very edges of my vision, dispersing into thin air whenever I wheel around to catch them in the act. But I can hear the clicking of their shells against the floor even as they disappear, and smell the musty reek of their great numbers. I even grow fearful of my own reflection, reluctant to look at myself in any mirror; my unfamiliarity terrifies me, as though I’ve become my own haunt. I see a stranger with bleak eyes, sallow cheeks, and limp skeins of hair like cobwebs. Worse yet, sometimes there is a roiling somewhere behind me, reflected in the glass like drifting smoke.
It disappears as soon as I round on it, leaving me with nothing but a galloping heart.
Is any of it real? I wonder in my darkest moments. Or is it as Elizabeth believes—a conjuring of my ill-used mind, broken on the wheel of my guilt like a martyred saint? Shattered perhaps beyond repair?
And does it matter either way, if it will not grant me a mome
nt’s reprieve?
“Nadasdy Castle wants me gone,” I tell Elizabeth miserably one night, sitting at her feet by the fireplace with my head in her lap. “I can feel it. It’s Ferenc’s, he’s in its bones. And it seeks to cast me out.”
Her long fingers stroke my hair, though how she can bear to touch its filthy mat is beyond me. “How can that be true, dearest, when this keep belongs to me—and there is nothing closer to my heart than you?”
I shake my head despondently against her knee. “Then make it stop plaguing me, Elizabeth,” I whisper into her skirts. “Before it kills me just as I killed him.”
When time brings no relief, Elizabeth decides to spirit me away to Csejthe, her honeymoon estate.
“You shall love it, you will see,” she rhapsodizes as the rest of the household packs its bags. She will not allow me to lift a finger to help, as if I even could. The enormity of my relief at the imminent departure has only enervated me further, and I can barely lift my head from my hot bath. Instead, Margareta and Judit huff and puff sullenly about the chambers, stowing everything away for us while Elizabeth washes my hair. “The hills just around it are so lush and wooded, they leave the castle beautifully secluded. There is no press of humanity at the door. Only an idyll of quiet and peace, perfect for healing.”
“That sounds wonderful,” I whisper, barely daring to hope that such a haven truly exists. And that if it does, Ferenc will not be able to follow me there. “Thank you for taking me.”
“Of course, my love,” she murmurs into my ear, tipping a ewer of water over my hair as I once did for her. “Did I not tell you I would take care of you?”
“You did. And I am so grateful for you.”
We arrive a fortnight later after a tortuous carriage ride, the caravan of servants and covered wagons wending like a scraggling dragon’s tail behind us. Though I am sure this diminished retinue would have far preferred to be left behind, they have little choice; they belong to Elizabeth as her chattel, and must go where their mistress goes. And perhaps there has been enough peace of late, since their master died, to settle their minds and keep them from running.