Rakóssy

by Cecelia Holland

  “What should I do with this?” The messenger held up the packet with the summons.

  “Take it back with you. Rakóssy cannot read. There is no man here who can.” Rakóssy grinned. “Take it back to the Diet and the King.”

  Another rider was coming. Rakóssy looked toward him and swore. “Open the gate,” he said, “but make sure you let in only the Gypsy.” He turned back to the messenger. “Go to Buda. And keep your ears open on the way.”

  “My horse is tired.”

  “There is a village only a little way west. You probably passed it. Go there.”

  The Gypsy reined in by the gate. Rakóssy did not recognize him. He went down to the courtyard and called, “What news?”

  The Gypsy pretended not to hear him. The gate rose and he rode through. Rakóssy waited for him. The Gypsy dismounted. He looked up at the guns and the men on the walls.

  “The Turks,” he said and shrugged. “Lots of them, Rakóssy.”

  Rakóssy called a man to take the Gypsy’s horse. “Come up with me.” He started across the courtyard. “Arpád, Béla, Alexander, come along.” To the Gypsy: “Does my brother know?”

  The Gypsy nodded quickly.

  Rakóssy knocked on his door. Mari said, “Come in.”

  They went in. Catharine was sitting by the window, but she stood up when she saw them all.

  “Sit down,” Rakóssy said to the men with him. He made the Gypsy sit in the big carved chair and sat down himself on the oak chest at the foot of the bed with his legs dangling. “Now. How many?”

  The Gypsy looked as if he were counting. He shook his head. “Many.”

  “Where?”

  Catharine sat down again. She looked at none of them. Her face was serene.

  “Upriver from the Iron Gate, on the plain.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Four days.”

  “You rode fast. Horsemen or infantry?”

  “Most of them were on foot.”

  “Coming fast?”

  “Yes. Very fast.”

  “Were they all together or spread out?”

  “Oh.” The Gypsy’s eyes were wide. “They were scattered all over the plain. There are drummers and pipes and cymbals. You can hear them miles away. You can hear them marching for miles. There are thousands of them.”

  “Janissaries. The Jew, ben Jakub. Have you seen him?”

  “They killed him.”

  “What? A Jew?”

  “They caught him and killed him. I saw.”

  “Why?” Arpád said.

  “They thought he would tell us,” Rakóssy said.

  “Venn was with me,” the Gypsy said. “You know Venn?”

  Rakóssy nodded.

  “He said to tell you that Mustafa was with them.”

  “Guns. Did you see any cannon?”

  The Gypsy shrugged. “They had wagons. They had more wagons than I’ve ever seen, big ones, huge, all covered.”

  “How many?”

  “Three hundred, maybe. Maybe more. In a train.”

  “You’re lying,” Béla said.

  “He isn’t,” Rakóssy said. “He wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “I don’t lie,” the Gypsy said to Béla. “To you, maybe, not to him.” He looked at Rakóssy. “I don’t lie. Maybe more than three hundred. I think so.”

  “How many men?”

  The Gypsy opened his mouth, shut it again, and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Guess. Think about them.”

  “I don’t know. Thousands. Many thousands. Maybe a million.”

  “All right,” Rakóssy said and shut Béla up with a glance. “Catharine, bring me that Spanish necklace of yours.”

  Catharine brought the necklace from her trunk. Rakóssy held it out to the Gypsy. “Give this to Trig Columbo.”

  The Gypsy put the necklace in his shirt. He stood up.

  “Trig says,” the Gypsy said, “that he doesn’t think he will see you again, maybe. If there is anyone you want to send to him to take care of for you, he will do it graciously.”

  Rakóssy grinned. “Trig Columbo is getting sentimental in his dotage. Tell him for me that if he wants anything kept in a safe place for him while the Turks are here, to send it to me and I will keep it for him.”

  The Gypsy smiled, showing all his yellowed teeth, and said, “I think we are going to Poland for a while. Good-bye.”

  He went out. Catharine said, “You should have asked if you could give him my most expensive necklace.”

  “I should have looked like a damn fool asking you if I could give away anything. You’ve worn it only once. You don’t like it much, do you?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “A million Turks?” Arpád said.

  Rakóssy stretched. “Try fifty thousand. That sounds like a nice figure.”

  “When will they be here?”

  “That depends on them. It could take them a month. Or they could be here the day after tomorrow. If they come here at all.”

  “They will,” Arpád said.

  Rakóssy shut his eyes. “Barricade the two bridge gates. Use the wagons we brought the cannon in. Make it so that even if they blow the gates to pieces they won’t be able to get through. Send me Stepan Hálasz.”

  Arpád leaned out the door and called for a page, dropping his voice a full octave. When the page came, Arpád sent him for Stepan Hálasz. He turned back toward Rakóssy.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Not unless you have any ideas.”

  “Me?” Arpád touched his chest.

  “Yes. Of late you’ve been acting as if you knew everything, everybody, and all the ways to do things in the world. Don’t tell me you’re waiting for orders or anything dull like that.”

  “I—”

  “You will get out of here. Now.”

  Arpád glanced at Mari, turned on his heel, and stamped out. Catharine said, “Mari, go fetch me some water from the kitchen.”

  Mari went and shut the door quietly behind her.

  Catharine smiled. She folded her hands. “So. So, here we are.”

  “I’m glad they’re coming. I was getting sick of waiting.”

  He stood up, went to the window, and looked out, looking south. Catharine said, “We have plenty of food.”

  “We’ll have to bring the sheep in.”

  “I’ll have to make sure we’ve got enough hay and grain.”

  “We just brought in a crop.”

  She watched him, keeping her head turned, so that her neck began to ache. “And you’ve finally gotten back at Arpád.”

  “Arpád got what was coming to him.”

  Stepan Hálasz came in. Rakóssy wheeled. “Take two horses and go to the ridge by Hart. Keep a watch until the Turks come, and then come back here and tell me how many there are.”

  “And if I can’t get back?”

  “I think you’ll be able to.”

  He thought of sending a letter to Denis. But Denis knew already that the Turks were coming. There was nothing Rakóssy could tell him.

  “Denis!” Catharine said suddenly.

  He looked at her.

  “Denis is in Hart. Will they attack Hart?”

  She looked frightened. He said, “I think so.”

  “You left Denis there — poor little Denis — to fight them all alone.” She stood up. “You have to bring him here. He’s entirely inexperienced. They’ll kill him.” She was panting, and she had made fists of her hands in front of her. “It isn’t right,” she said. “Why should Denis—”

  “Why should any of us?” he said. He had it in his throat to say that if Trig Columbo was right, there were all going to die, that probably they would all die. He took her right hand in his and straightened out her cramped fingers.

  “Denis will do as well as anybody,” he said. “He’ll do as well as I would.”

  “He’s too young,” she said. She sighed. “I’m sorry. But he doesn’t have a charmed life.”

>   “And I do?” he said.

  She looked at him, surprised, and suddenly laughed. “Yes, my dear, you certainly do.” She kissed his cheek and drew her hand from his and went softly out the door.

  Stepan Hálasz came back in the evening of a hot, cloudy day, some eight or ten days after the Gypsy had gone, and said that Hart was besieged by at least five thousand men and twenty guns, that there had been some kind of exchange between a Turk messenger and Denis under a flag of truce, and that immediately afterward the guns had started up. He said that the Turks would be wary of Denis’ guns, and he smiled when he said it.

  “About half of them charged up that slope, and he held back with the guns until they were almost at the walls. God, I saw it and I was shouting at him to shoot. Then he shot, and he mowed them down. I’ve never seen so many down, kicking and flopping around.”

  After that, he said, the Turks settled down to hammer Hart to pieces. He left as soon as he saw that they would not charge again.

  Rakóssy ordered a triple watch on the walls and went to bed. In the early morning, Béla woke him up. The Turks were at Vrath.

  Rakóssy went to the walls and stood between two cannon, looking out at the Turks. They were still arriving. Their trains and columns straggled out across the plain to the horizon. A great cloud of dust hung over the whole plain, rising up into the southern sky. They were unloading their guns and rolling them into line. He heard drums pounding. A detachment of Janissaries jogged toward the river not far from the Chapel Gate. A wagon rumbled after them.

  The Magyars were all on the walls of Vrath, watching the Turks roll up. On the wall there was silence. The camp grew on the plain, starting near the river’s edge, where Janissaries were erecting a tent of green silk; the camp spread off in a crescent toward the other riverbank. Boys with strings of horses ran through the newborn camp toward the water.

  The sun rose higher. The line of the Turkish cannon grew, unbroken from riverbank to riverbank. Rakóssy took off his doublet and leaned against the wall. The air was gritty. He looked up behind him and saw Catharine on the balcony of the Countess Tower. She wore a white gown, and her hair shone. The women were with her.

  Alexander, gnawing on a carrot, said, “Big bastards, those guns.”

  “They are that.”

  Alexander laughed deep in his chest. “Arpád got his hat rammed down his throat, I take it.”

  Rakóssy looked up at Alexander’s face. “What was wrong with him?”

  Alexander shrugged, still laughing, almost soundlessly.

  “Are all the guns loaded?”

  “Yes.”

  “With scrap?”

  “Yes.”

  Rakóssy looked south, squinting, trying to see through the cloud of yellow dust. “They’ll be getting into position for at least another day.”

  He went down into the courtyard. They had brought the horses and the flocks in right after Stepan Hálasz got back from Hart, and in the rear courtyard they were slaughtering some of the sheep to cure the meat and store it. Three of the young boys were fishing from the wall. When Rakóssy showed up, they turned to watch him with hungry eyes. He noticed it and went over to them.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “Nothing, my lord.”

  The boldest boy spoke, but the other two suddenly became very interested in their lines.

  “Go watch the Turks,” Rakóssy said. “Go on.”

  “Oh, thank you, my lord, thank you.” They ran off down the ramparts, shouting and laughing.

  Rakóssy stood looking down at the lines, trailing down over the wall and bellying in the wind, until they dropped into the dark-green river. He called to another page to reel them in, and went on.

  He spent the day doing nothing and saying nothing. He did not see Catharine except at dinner. After dinner, when it was dark, he went back to the walls and leaned against one of the cannon and watched the lights on the plain — torches and campfires, clustered all over and for almost a mile away south. He could see people moving in front of the fires. They were still not all collected, and he could hear wagons rumbling around, empty wagons and full. He could tell by the sound they made. In the darkness the great green tent opposite Chapel Gate shook and quivered with the wind.

  After a while he went inside and went to bed.

  All the next day the Turks made a big pretense of continuing to set up their cannon and move their troops into position, but by midmorning they were ready. In the midafternoon Béla and some of the other Magyars shouted insults and jeers, saying that the Turks should let the Magyars give it a try and it would be done in no time. Rakóssy listened to them, smiling.

  “That should tell them it won’t work,’ Arpád said.

  “What?”

  “They’re trying to scare us, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t think they ever thought it would,” Rakóssy said.

  That evening Rakóssy had dinner with all the knights in the great hall. They all shouted and laughed as loud as possible, so that the Turks would hear. After they had eaten, Catharine and Rakóssy went up to sit on the balcony. It was a beautiful night, without a moon, so that the sky was milky with stars.

  “When this is done with,” Rakóssy said, “I will buy you ten necklaces, each ten times better than the Spanish necklace.”

  “Anything would be better than that,” she said. “Will we be a Count and Countess?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Let’s go back to Vienna and spend a little time there.”

  “So you can prove something to your relatives?”

  “Of course.”

  “No, I don’t like Vienna.”

  “Oh, why not?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t.”

  “What’s that green tent?”

  “The Sultan, sweet.”

  “The Sultan? Oh, my.”

  He looked at her, and she laughed with a sound like shattering glass.

  Early the next morning the Turks raised a truce flag and sent in a messenger. Rakóssy ordered the gun crews to the ready. He thought that the Turks would try a plunge for one or both of the bridge gates as soon as they thought the Magyars were off guard.

  The messenger was letting his horse pick its way through the earthworks. It was Mustafa. Rakóssy went out on foot onto the plain, leaving the portcullis raised and the little door in the outer gate open behind him. He walked a little way and stopped.

  Mustafa reined in before him. He made his chestnut mare prance and rear and stopped her dead with a great show of horsemanship. He held the white flag on the butt end of a lance. Bending, he stuck the lance into the ground.

  “I hope you enjoyed Constantinople,” Rakóssy said. He spoke Turk. “It was a cold winter up here. Probably much warmer by the Bosporus.”

  Mustafa raised an eyebrow. “And you, Rakós’. A most successful winter it was. How can I express to you my surprise and fellow-feeling — my delight and pride — when we heard from your brother that you had captured Vrath?” He paused. “He fought well, your brother. I did not expect it of him. Of course, one charge and . . .”

  Rakóssy stared at him. The left corner of his mouth drew down.

  “Useless, I see. You amaze me, Rakós’. I am delighted. We knew, of course, that you had gotten cannon with your new bride — the Emperor’s kinswoman, I believe? And a plain girl, but one of great intelligence and wit, not what I expected you to marry. Thirty-five cannon. And of course we noticed that there were only eight at Hart, and then your brother said something about Vrath. What was it? ‘If you seek my brother, you will find him waiting for you at Vrath.’ He and Kamal should have fun fighting each other, literati that they are. Imagine my master’s glee when what seemed to be only a boring war should offer some tidbit of sport.”

  “I can imagine,” Rakóssy said.

  “Of course you can. He was overjoyed. And he has sent me now with some distaste to offer you terms. I say distaste, because he does not like to see such sport turne
d aside. Of course, I have told him that you are a man of some animal cunning, if not wit, breeding and subtlety, and he believes, as I do, that anybody but a complete moron would accept these terms with haste. But he is a generous man.”

  “You may give your generous master my greetings. Also my condolences on his losses at Hart yesterday morning.”

  “A feint. They only pretended to die. Allah protects us.” Mustafa bowed. “He offers you these terms. Surrender Vrath to him, and you will continue on as his honored guests until he has subdued the rest of Hungary, when he will hold you all for easy ransoms.”

  “All?”

  Mustafa considered this. He looked up at the sky. “My, what a lovely, lovely day. The heavens washed, as it were, with blue, adorned with the marvelous heraldry of the sun, a faint promise of heat, but no matter. Not a cloud there.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “There is one man of your troop, Rakós’, whom the Sultan — blessed be his name and works — feels should enjoy a more prolonged stay in the bosom of Islam. This man the Sultan will honor with all the glory at his command. He will wash him with rose water and dress him in silks, he will deck his horse with gold and rubies and show him the wonders of the Faith.”

  “Your master is more than generous.”

  “More than that, my master would grant this man the boon of eternal youth,” Mustafa said. “Never would this man feel the cold of age or the bitter tooth of time. He would never sense the ebbing of life or the trembling of his ancient limbs or the chill of lost love and the oppression of ungrateful children—”

  “You may tell your master that I long to embrace the wonders of Islam and drink the drink of eternal youth from his hands, but I have duties elsewhere. Much as I regret it.”

  “Rakós’. You have learned grace.” Mustafa bent and picked up the lance with the white flag. “This woman must be more than human, if not more than female.” He backed the mare three precise steps, stood in his stirrups and looked straight at Catharine.

  “Good day, Rakós’,” he said smoothly and whirled.

  He galloped back toward the Turkish lines. Halfway there, he turned and flung the lance, end over end, to the ground. Rakóssy wheeled toward the Janissaries, gathered by the Countess Gate. Their drums broke out, and they bolted for the bridge. They ran straight for it. Rakóssy shouted, “Alexander.”