by Alma Boykin
“Invasion, good sir,” one man replied in broken German. “Russians coming. We heard the guns.”
Blessed St. Martin, that’s the silliest . . . maybe not. “No, the Russians are not coming. His majesty’s army is conducting an exercise.” The wrinkle-faced man seemed even more anxious and István tried again, slower and in plainer words. “The Imperial Habsburg army is practicing. There are no Russians anywhere near the border,” he assured the man.
“Then what are you doing here? Man from my uncle’s village north says he saw soldiers, hundreds of them.”
“Good. That is because we are conducting an exercise, training here so we know how to protect you better.” Protect the Empire, actually, but you don’t think farther than the next village. He tried to sound reassuring instead of annoyed at the man’s stubborn stupidity.
“You certain, good sir?”
István did not sigh. “Yes I am. I was in the fields near your uncle’s village and there are no Russians there, I give you my word as an Imperial officer. You should go home.” István rode on. He found himself repeating the message at least ten times, meeting various degrees of disbelief, joy, and resignation. What sort of rumors were spreading up here, István wondered? He knew that the region was almost as remote as eastern Transylvania, but still, people should be able to tell by looking at the soldiers that they were not Russian. Unless the Russians had been spreading tales themselves, sneaking people over to encourage trouble and to spy on the maneuvers. That sounds like them, especially with their goading the Serbs. I’d better tell Col. Marbach so he can pass the word.
Despite the heavy road traffic István made good time, arriving in late afternoon. He joined the flow of pedestrians, pack animals, carts and wagons, and motorcars going into the inner city. He shook his head at the motorcars. Given the state of most roads, the cars’ owners either lived in town or were mildly insane. He suspected the latter, although the drivers certainly shouldn’t have trouble finding fuel. I wonder if any of them burn the raw stuff? Can you? You must be able to, like burning pitch.
He checked into a suitable hotel near the fortress and freshened up. Refreshed and tidied, he strolled the main streets, watching people and looking at shops before eating a hearty meal and sleeping in a real bed.
The next morning he walked out to see more of the old city’s sights and to revisit a jewelry store that had some nice amber, as well as to post some letters. As István crossed in front of an elegantly and tastefully decorated cream-and-green building, one door opened and a slight, older man in dark clothes ducked out, chased by a beefy man waving a walking stick and bellowing, “You bloodsucker! You have no right to demand any more money from me, you thieving Christ-killer!”
Before he thought about it, István lunged forward and caught the man’s wrist, stopping the cane’s descent. “Is there a problem?”
The stranger twisted free and started to swing at a new target. He caught himself when he saw the uniform and recognized István’s bearing. “Who are you to ask?”
Glad you asked. “Major István Joszef Imre Eszterházy, oldest son of Count Janos.”
The heavyset Pole snorted but eased back and rammed the cane into the soft soil between the road and the building’s sidewalk. He stood as if planted, his thick legs in heavy boots shoulder-width apart. István took in the sturdy dark blue pants, bright yellow coat, red cape, and white shirt with red embroidery as the stranger declared, “I’m Baron Wladislav Sobieski, elevated by Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand himself. This Jew is trying to squeeze me even though we finished our little transaction.” He spat toward the Jew.
István raised an eyebrow. He outranked the man twice, by inheritance and by rank. “Thank you, Baron Sobieski. You say you have been cheated?”
“The damn blood sucker says I owe him more than the price of my goods.” The other noble smiled, as if anticipating István’s approval. “I’m not the first he’s cheated, but by St. Stepán I’ll be the last.”
István turned to the old Jew, who wore the skullcap and coat of one of the backward eastern Jews, like the ones from beyond the Pale that the Russians had forced to go across the sea. István had seen them passing through Budapest on their way to the coast and a ship from Triest to North America. “What say you?”
The skinny man shook his head, ducking back in case the Polish noble decided to attack him again. He said in Jewish-German, “We agreed to a hundred crowns for a month at five percent interest. He refuses to pay the interest and attacked me when I showed him our contract.”
“Let me see the contract.” The Jew scuttled into the shop, then returned with a page in both Polish and German. István read the German portion and sounded out the Polish, which seemed to be the same as the other half. “This says that you agreed to pay him the value of the goods plus five percent for the use of the cash, my lord,” he observed.
“Church says no Christian has to pay interest,” Sobieski snarled, but half-heartedly.
“And the law says that this contract is valid, no matter who you signed it with. You own him what you agreed to pay.” István took a step closer and lowered his voice, locking eyes with the fatter man. “And Jews are protected by the emperor himself, like it or not. I suggest you pay the five crowns or I’ll report a breach of the peace.”
The Pole’s smile collided with the hatred in his eyes. “Police won’t listen to you, you damn Magyar.”
“No, but they’ll listen to a cavalry major who is the cousin of his majesty’s chief financial advisor and the palatine of Hungary,” István brushed back his one-shoulder coat with an elbow as he spoke, revealing the pistol on his sword belt. “Or do you challenge me?”
Red faced, the man hesitated, fingers moving on the head of the cane. Then he growled, “Damn you.” He reached into the coin purse on his wide leather belt and threw a coin in the old man’s face.
The Jew caught the coin as if he’d anticipated the attack, darted into the building and returned with a flat leather case. The Polish man wrenched it from the moneylender’s hand, spat on the dirt by István’s boot, and stormed off.
István wanted to draw his saber and poke the piggy bastard in the ass, or challenge him to a duel right there and then. Instead he handed the Jew the contract.
Instead of cringing, the man took it, straightened his back and bowed with great dignity. “I thank you, my lord count,” he said. “My house is in your debt.”
That’s a strange choice of words. I wonder if . . . István blinked, then dropped his shields a little. He didn’t find any hint of House membership on the man, and raised them again. No, he just meant family and business, not House. Although there is a Jewish House not far from here inside the German border, if I recall. Ah well, enough of this. “I only upheld the law. See that you do so as well.” He walked off before the Jew could reply, bound for the jewelry store. He didn’t want to attract any more curious looks from the people on the sidewalk and street.
He stopped, feeling eyes staring at him, hostile eyes. István turned around and saw a thin man in the uniform of a logistics officer studying him. István returned the regard. That’s a custom tailored uniform, and those boots are not standard issue. In fact, I don’t think they cost less than a hundred crowns. I wonder who he is and how he paid for that. After the scandal about Col. Redel selling us to the Russian intelligence office, maybe I’d better report this to Col. Marbach. The stranger glanced to the side, as if something in the shop window had caught his eye, and turned away on his own business, leaving István speculating. He shrugged and continued his own errands.
The exercise concluded four days later, the same day that mail arrived from Nagymatra and Kassa. István put them aside for the moment and turned his attention back to Felix Starhemberg’s complaint.
“. . . and the referees gave the Russian artillery too much credit. How can they hit us when we’re on the move? Really, Stepán, there’s no way short of an angelic intervention that the Russians can get artillery to reposition that
fast. If they even have small guns. And all I hear about are those damned big fortress guns they bought from the French.”
István shrugged, enjoying the warm afternoon sun and watching gnats dance in the slanted afternoon light. “How did they move fast enough to get this far inside the borders in the first place?” He waved a hand, forestalling Felix’s comment. “I know; the referees said they did, and that the exercise was not really about fighting on this particular bit of smelly dirt.”
“Unless they manage to capture a dozen of our trains, turn them around, reload all their equipment, and then figure out how to run the engines, they can’t. They’re the only people in Europe to use that odd track width.” Felix shook his head. “Even with French help they still manage to be strange.”
Aren’t all you Slavs strange? István only thought the question, since Felix had as much German blood in his veins as Bohemian. Probably a little Magyar too, back a thousand years before, István thought with a hidden grin. My ancestors cowed all of Europe into whimpering terror. You can’t say that about yours.
“And their roads are too bad to move anything quickly,” Felix continued. “Although some of these are a little rough.”
“That I won’t argue. And you can’t tell me that the government isn’t sending enough money up here to keep them passable. Besides, that’s supposed to be the landlords’ job, part of their tax payment.”
Felix ran a hand through his dark brown hair, slightly damp from washing off the day’s dust and sweat. “Bah, two-thirds of the nobles are Poles. The way they treat their people . . . even if the Ruthenes were as backward as the Rumanians, the Poles have to at least grant them their imperial rights.”
“Tell me about it. I got to meet one of the new nobility in Lemberg. I prefer the old, thank you. Over dressed, too fat to ride anything but a plow horse, trying to beat a money lender to death over five damn crowns.” István shook his head. “Tell me again about the mystical saintliness of the Slavic soul?”
“Thppppth. Too much Russian influence, not enough Bohemian,” his friend opined. “Speaking of bad influences and arrogant newcomers,” he leaned forward conspiratorially, “Have you seen anything of Fischerbach since he stormed off to argue with one of the umpires?”
“No, but I’ve stayed away from headquarters,” István confessed. “Unless it’s the daily briefing, I’m dead.”
“That’s right.” Felix grinned, flashing a gap-toothed smile. “Can I have your beer? There’s no beer in heaven and the damned don’t get any.”
István smiled back. “Sod off.”
The next day’s review of the exercise left István and most of his fellow officers confused and more than a little unhappy. They gathered in the shade of a tent and large tree, waving away flies and listening to Lt. Col. Greenberg, Col. Marbach’s chief-of-staff, reading the referees’ report. “The cavalry attack on the Russians’ left flank succeeded in breaking through their lines, cutting off the forward parts of their force and leading to a general retreat, to be harried to the border and past.”
That much everyone agreed with and the officers nodded, looking pleased. However, the next part sent their blood boiling.
“The success of the cavalry attack would not have been possible without the efforts of the artillery units, notably ‘Count Chotak’ and ‘Prinz Windishgratz,’ to bombard the enemy in advance of the cavalry’s advance, weakening their morale and softening up the Russian lines.” Greenberg almost ducked away from the roar of disagreement.
“What? Wait, what artillery?”
“Who said the imperial artillery are here? We left the powder Jews in Moravia.”
“And who is it that keeps the Cossacks from killing all the gunners, somebody tell me.”
“Colonel, what’s going on?”
Col. Marbach raised one hand. “Enough,” he snapped, cutting off the storm of protest. “The artillery came with Col. Tarn’s infantry. No one told me either, and I am not pleased, but the overall orders did include some artillery. No, I do not know why, unless it was to justify someone’s fodder budget and to cover account padding.” He glared back at the officers. “I will protest, but not now. Continue, Major.”
“Yes, sir.” Greenberg adjusted his glasses and returned to reading the report.
That evening István finally read his letters, starting with one from his younger brother Mátyás. “Oh, bother.”
“What?” Felix didn’t look up from his report, scratching through something and reworking it for the fifth time.
“You remember my strange cousin Imre? The one that can’t stick with an idea for longer than it takes a woman to change her mind?”
“Yeah. What’d he get into this time? Spiritualism or whatever that fake Russian Blat-something woman was peddling in Britain?”
“No, he persuaded Mátyás to read that banker Jan Bloch’s old book about why war is impossible to win, the book the pacifists and Communists always bleat about. The one explaining that modern weapons and railroads, and conscription, mean that offensive warfare is a thing of the past and any war will bankrupt the country in a month and on and on.” István had read it, made note of the statistics, and had almost laughed himself sick at the foolishness of it all.
“Oh, joy. And your dear brother thinks Bloch-head’s right?” Felix snorted.
“More right than wrong, and wants me to transfer to artillery.” Felix muttered something rude in Bohemian, and István nodded. “Not quite that bad, but close. He also says he’s heard rumors in Budapest that Franz Ferdinand will swear on the Crown of Sv. István but not be crowned.”
Felix looked up and blinked. His eyebrows drew into a ragged V before he raised one, his head tilted to the side in a way that reminded István of a badly confused Visla hunting dog. “Swear on the crown but not have a coronation. What about St. Wetzel’s crown?”
“Mátyás doesn’t say, although I don’t see how his highness could be King of Bohemia without being crowned.”
“Tell your brother to tell your cousin and his friends to switch to beer. Whatever they’re drinking has rotted their brains.” Felix shook his head and returned to work.
István leaned his head back and contemplated the first stars of evening and the waxing moon. How can Franz Ferdinand not be crowned? Swearing to rule Hungary justly through God’s grace won’t work, not under the treaties and traditions, and the Houses won’t accept it. Franz Ferdinand possessed the ability to tie to the Powers, so that was not an excuse. Was he worried about invoking the Golden Bull and then being swarmed by the minor nobles and gentry? István straightened up, set the letter on the camp-desk, and cleaned a bit of dirt out from under one nail with his penknife. When had the Golden Bull been nullified? He tried to recall what his father had said.
After the attempted rebellion in 1848, that was it. In fact, Franz Josef’s first major act, after witnessing the executions of the traitors, was to declare the Bull null and void and to back it up with brute power, eliminating the lever the gentry had used against earlier royal lineages. That revocation had eliminated the right of the nobles to elect the king, among other things, including most tax exemptions, and had broken at least half the Hungarian nobles back to commoners. Father said a few had gone to Moscow to whine to the Tsar for help, the utter fools. Asking the Tsar to help get your ancient elective rights back is like a mouse asking a cat for help getting supper ready. István shook his head, a little sad at the foolishness that had cost Hungary some decent men, but also disappointed in their stupidity in 1848 and after. A few of the survivors had thought that they could regain something after the Prussian-Italian War in 1867. Maybe if the Empire had lost, but Wilhelm the Elder had accepted a peace without penalty when the Imperials broke his lines and almost captured him at Sadowa. Then his majesty Franz Josef had turned east and had revoked the last privileges of the lower nobility, at least those who tried to use the war to their own advantage, the stupid, desperate fools.
Mátyás needed to listen more to reason and le
ss to his drinking friends, István decided. Oh well, he’d be spending too much time learning all the details of the daily operations of the Eszterházy lands and businesses to be getting drunk on rumor. And everyone was allowed a few youthful foolishnesses, especially around university leaving or cadet school graduation. István squirmed a little at a certain memory, wondering again how much his father and mother really knew and how much they just hinted at knowing.
The other letter pleased him more. He’d decided, after quiet consultation with his father and other House members, to make the family town palace at Kassa his primary residence until his father passed away, God grant it be many, many years in the future. Budapest didn’t agree with him, even if Barbara liked the bustle and social whirl of the land council’s and royal capitol’s seat. I have to be available to the House and Power both, and Nagymatra is too far from everything. And after 1915 I’ll be in the Reserves and free to live in Hungary. He hoped that maybe Barbara wouldn’t object to Kassa too much. It wasn’t Vienna or Budapest, but it wasn’t Temesvár or Transylvania, either. We have running water and streetlights, and paved streets, too. Unlike some so-called national capitals that come to mind. And the town palace’s plumbing was new, complete with running hot water and indoor flush toilets, which she should like.
Thinking of Barbara brought to mind thoughts that were delightful to contemplate but absolutely inappropriate for camp. István sighed, shoving away his physical reaction to dreams of his fiancée as best he could. He finished the letter and set it aside as well.