The Countess

by Rebecca Johns

  I wish you would come to Csejthe so that I may tell you these things in person. I wish for one minute Megyery would loosen your reins, so that I may see you again, that I may kiss you and take your hand through the gap in my stone wall. You must be taller by now, I think, with maybe some of your father’s breadth of shoulder, some of his height and good looks. I wish you had known him better. If your father were alive, the palatine and the king would never have dared imprison me. If your father were alive, you would be here with me now instead of miles away, under the guardianship of a man I have never trusted nor loved. We would be a family still. But God had different plans for us, it seems, and so we must endure the present as best we can, with all of his good grace.

  10

  Regardless of my mother-in-law’s assurances that her son was eager to meet me, it was half a year and more that I lived in the Nádasdy household before I laid eyes on your father for the first time, when he traveled home for his Christmas vacation. In all that time Orsolya rarely left me alone. Every day there was something else of great importance she had to ask me—a manner of dress, perhaps, or a letter of thanks to write to this or that relative I had never met for some gift she had sent for me. Her instruction in childrearing was especially humorous given that my mother-in-law had raised only the one child while I myself had cared for both my little sisters and several cousins at Ecsed without much in the way of help from my mother, who had counted on my maturity from a very young age. But nothing I did was beneath Orsolya’s attention. She would come into my room at all hours of the night with this or that question about how would I like the design for my new skirt, and should she have the cook make more bread for the week, and did I think she should invite this or that relative to Sárvár for a feast? In my head I was always screaming, I don’t care! I don’t care! But I had determined from that first day that I would be a credit to my family’s honor and never speak those words aloud, though they rang often in my head those first months when Orsolya made me her pet.

  By All Saints, Ferenc wrote with news of his intention to come to Sárvár for his school vacation, and his mother was so overjoyed that her interest in me grew even more intrusive. For several weeks ahead of his promised arrival Orsolya made certain to take special care with me, so that my appearance, my manners, my mode of address might be pleasing to my future husband on our first meeting. She gave instructions on my clothing and hair, my meals, even the types of pillows that adorned my bed so that I might sleep more soundly, for she often observed that I seemed tired and out of spirits in the mornings and asked whether or not I spent the nights tossing and turning or if my evenings were restful. No, I always said. I’ve never slept so well in my life. I never raised my voice or laughed at her, at least within her hearing, and I had the servants take her favorite glass of wine to her each evening to help her sleep, and I propped up her pillows with my own hand. Orsolya would love me, so much that, unlike my own mother, she would never send me away.

  It was not only fear that inspired me. By showing duty and honor I hoped to gain a modicum of independence in my life with the widow Nádasdy and her son, the boy I was to marry. A boy whom, as my first Christmas in the Nádasdy household approached, I was finally going to meet.

  It happened in November, before the first snows came. Orsolya’s estate at Sárvár was her favored home because it had been her husband’s favored home, only a few days’ journey south of Bécs, at the far western edge of Hungary where it meets Habsburg Austria. The old palatine had built a white tower in the fortress to house the family apartments, as well as several impressive high-ceilinged halls, and it was here Orsolya chose to spend her comfortable winters, entertaining friends when she felt well and convalescing in the thermal baths when she didn’t, for she suffered at times from weakness, from nausea, from frequent headaches that seemed nothing more than the ordinary complaints of advancing age. Yet she was determined every day to go to the baths, to be in better health and spirits when Ferenc arrived home. We were all expected to be at our best for Ferenc’s visit, his mother included.

  My fiancé arrived from Bécs one night so late in the evening that the whole house had gone to bed and didn’t learn of his coming until the next day. I myself was unaware of it until Darvulia came in to stoke the fire in my room and help me get dressed. I had slept too little that night, had in fact stayed up late reading the very books Orsolya didn’t want to see in my hands evenings when we sat together before her fire—Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy. Bent on turning me from my mother’s Calvinism, she preferred that I read her some passages from a recent treatise by Father Bíró, the Lutheran, whose work she greatly admired and who had been three times a guest at Sárvár. I always obliged her in her reading, knowing my place. But afterward when I returned to my own chamber, I read as much of the ancient philosophers as I liked, squinting at the words by the faint light of the candles until long after midnight, the only time in the whole of the day when I might have some peace.

  At Ecsed I had been used to sleeping until dawn broke, but Orsolya, whose piety awoke her before the sun, thought dawn was too late for highborn ladies and had begun a campaign of waking me an hour before the first pink light was growing over the walls of Sárvár. So when Anna Darvulia came into the room that morning and stoked the fire and lit the candles, pulling back the curtains around my bed and turning the darkness of my chamber into a semblance of daylight, I thought it was merely another of Orsolya’s attempts to make me a respectable little copy of herself. I groaned and pulled the blanket over my head. Darvulia pulled it back down again.

  “The mistress requests you get up and get dressed,” she said. She held out a robe for me to wear, and wearily I climbed out of bed to put it on.

  I assumed my mother-in-law had more lessons for me. Besides instruction on the Bible and the teachings of her favorite scholars and priests, Orsolya filled my days with what she saw as talents necessary to women’s lot—dancing, drawing, music, embroidery. The rhythms of Latin and long unbroken strings of German, the latest treatises of astronomy and physiognomy, the discoveries from the explorers combing the New World that I had learned from Leopold were all unknown at Sárvár—pursuits best saved for men, according to my mother-in-law. Instead we were to sit and sew all day. To me all these delicate occupations were an absurd waste of time. “What?” I asked Darvulia. “More embroidery? Will the kingdom fall if I do not finish another cushion?”

  The servant smiled, for she was accustomed by then to my saucy tongue. She never tattled on me to the lady of the house the way the other ladies sometimes did to gain the countess’s favor. She was respectful when she spoke to me and silent if she had nothing to say, which was often, but sometimes when she had a free moment she would sneak me a pomegranate or a bowl of dates, or sit and brush my hair over and over because she knew I liked it, and listen to me talk about my family and friends far away in Ecsed, or what I was reading in the evenings by candlelight, or complain about the countess’s constant and unrelenting attentions. Darvulia had become, over my short time in the Nádasdy house, a kind of second mother, attentive and kind, and the only person to whom I dared show my true feelings.

  Now she shook out a clean skirt for me to wear. “Your fiancé has arrived,” she said. “He came very late last night. My lady asks that you join them for the evening meal. I’m to dress you for your meeting with him.”

  I sat up straight in front of my mirror. Darvulia would not meet my eyes, keeping her back to me as she placed the breakfast tray on my table and kicked the bearskin rug back into place on the floor. She must have known something of young Ferenc Nádasdy, having spent a few years in the countess’s household, and many times I had asked her what kind of boy he was, was he handsome, was he kind? What did she know of him that she could tell me? “Nothing, miss,” she always said, “except that he is a fine young man, and you will be lucky to wed him.” A good diplomatic answer befitting a good diplomatic servant. And I always let the matter go, not wanting to anger the one friend
I had made at Sárvár.

  But that morning, when I asked her the question again and she gave the same answer—he’s a fine man, you are lucky to be marrying him—I snapped at her. “Good God, Darvulia,” I said at last. “I’m a servant here as much as you are, so let’s have some honesty between us, shall we?”

  She laughed aloud, a quick bell-like sound such as I never thought to escape from a mouth such as hers. “Yes, miss,” she said. “All right then. Get dressed, and I will tell you what I know.”

  She dressed my hair and then bound me inside a gown of fine red Florentine silk with a pattern of stripes that I had chosen as my favorite because it brought out the color of my eyes. No more heavy brown velvet for me—I was determined the embarrassing spectacle that had happened with András Kanizsay the night I arrived at Sárvár would not repeat itself with Ferenc Nádasdy. Darvulia dressed my hair with some pearls, fine and white against the dark brown tresses, and while she worked she told me about the boy who was to become my husband. How he could read and write Hungarian at only five years old, how instead of going at once to Bécs for his schooling he had stayed with tutors at the family estate in Sárvár after his father’s death and only a few years ago been sent with his cousin András Kanizsay to be educated at the king’s court, where he lived with György Bocskai’s family. How István Bocskai, György’s son, was his dear friend and traveling companion. My future husband, it seemed, was a favorite of the Habsburg king, a golden youth marked for greatness, already named Captain of the Horse when he was eight years old in honor of his father’s service to the country. A fortunate alliance, my mother would have said, whispering in my ear, if she had been witness to our conversation.

  “You know more than this, surely,” I said at last. “I have heard some of these reports already from Orsolya. You told me you have lived in this house for nearly ten years.”

  She was silent for a moment, and I wondered what game she was playing. The creases in her brow deepened as she looked at me. “I did wonder,” she said, “if you meant what you said, that I should feel free to speak my mind.”

  “So you were testing me?”

  She shrugged. “Noble ladies sometimes say they want honesty when really they want someone to flatter them, tell them how important their men are, and by extension themselves. I wasn’t sure which you might be.”

  Impatiently I flung a piece of hair out of my eyes. “I’m meeting Ferenc for the first time, and I would like to know, in truth, what kind of man he is. Let the others flatter my vanity.”

  “All right then,” she said, and began again.

  She said that Ferenc was an honest man, a fine soldier and horseman, and more learned than most gave him credit for, given his penchant for horses and soldiering. He was known to be proud and could seem haughty at first, especially to ladies. Even his mother’s company was sometimes too much for him. Orsolya would fuss and fawn over him, and he would endure it, but only just.

  “She does seem to dote on him, even when he’s not here,” I said. “But my own mother was the same with my brother. After my father died, she hardly spoke to anyone else. I think that’s only natural with mothers and sons. What is the servants’ gossip?”

  “Gossip?”

  “I know the servants laugh about us when they think we don’t notice. What do they think of Ferenc?”

  She paused as if to consider what I’d said, as if weighing the worth of what she knew on some internal scale. “Some of the young ladies,” she said, “have bragged in my hearing of having bedded Ferenc on various occasions. One even claims to have got a child by him, though she says she miscarried.”

  “Which one?”

  “Judit, the seamstress.”

  I knew this Judit, who did the sewing in a room at the back of the house with four or five other girls of equal birth and stupidity. I had seen her smirk in my direction on more than one occasion and had wondered what I had done to offend her. Now it made sense—the laughter that had risen from the maidservants the night of my arrival, how András Kanizsay had raised a hand to shush them. “Do you think these stories have any truth to them?” I asked.

  She shrugged again, doubting, but it was not with enough certainty to ease my misgivings. “They could. But he is handsome, so it may be a way for them to soothe their own hurt feelings if he shows no inclination for them.”

  “I wonder if he will show any inclination for me.”

  “I’m sure he will. Any young man would be glad to have a lovely young lady like you for his bride. With your wealth and education, too, you will be more than a pretty face to him. A true companion.” She picked up a brush to smooth out the tangles in my hair, wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and said, “I could not be more proud if you were my own daughter.” Suffused with the warmth of her affection, I closed my eyes, enjoying the strokes of the brush as she bound my hair and tucked a fortune in pearls into the design.

  Inside, though, I was busy turning over and over the things she’d told me. That the servants in Orsolya’s employ would dare to spread such spiteful gossip about Ferenc was intolerable. I wanted to punish the offending girls, but I did not dare. I was not the mistress of the house yet. If Orsolya chose to surround herself with such maliciousness and dishonesty, that was her prerogative. But I began to wonder what those same servants might be saying about me. Everywhere I went in the house I seemed to come across this or that insolent maidservant smirking in my direction, her cheeks pink and her eyes full of mischief. I could hardly exit a room without peals of girlish laughter following me out the door. Did they think that Ferenc would never love me, that he would reject me and send me home to Ecsed? I could not understand why Orsolya surrounded herself with imbeciles, why she would trust her sewing or her meals or the scrubbing of her floors to giggling fools without an ounce of brains. But then some women preferred to surround themselves with stupidity, either out of pity or else because it made them feel more accomplished. I began, after a time, to wonder if Orsolya was not of the latter kind—a fool, wanting to appear learned by comparison.

  Either way I began to be aware of the gossip in the court, and how the servants seemed to fear no one. Not Orsolya, not me. Only Darvulia commanded their respect, for they would cease their incessant laughter when she came into the room and remain silent, at least until that fearsome creature left them once more to their own devices. Then the chatter would begin anew, a sound that grated on my nerves more and more every day.

  When Darvulia finished dressing me, I observed myself in the mirror. My skin was fine and white, smooth and unspoiled by blotches or marks—I took great care to wash my face several times a day, the way my mother had taught me—and though I didn’t have her dramatic black-and-white beauty, her heart-shaped face, I did have a high clear forehead, expressive brown eyes, delicate hands that could write a fine hand in four languages or play the latest songs from Italy on the lute. I smiled, and my solemn expression transformed itself into something more lively, animated with vivacity the way my mother’s had been before my father’s death. A young man like Count Nádasdy might be happy to sit and talk with me. I touched my hands to my hair like I was making a prayer, like I was protecting myself and all my mother’s hopes for me against what was to follow that day. All my thoughts bent toward making my husband love me, a love fine enough and large enough to protect me from anything the future might bring—wars, illness, famine. None of them would touch me if I could win Ferenc Nádasdy’s love, or at least his admiration.

  That evening Darvulia led me down to the dining hall as Orsolya had bidden her. I knew very well where it was, but my mother-in-law made sure I was very rarely alone in her house. The hall was lit at both ends with a bit of gray November light, but I would not let the weather distract me. I put on my sunniest expression, my best face. Some candles had been lit to dispel the gloom, and under their light I could see the figure of András Kanizsay, the wry-mouthed and insignificant cousin, sitting with his boots in the ashes of the fire. He had returned to
Bécs not long after my arrival at Sárvár and had grown a little since I had seen him last, a lengthening of leg and arm and a broadening across his shoulders, and it did seem to improve him, make him seem less boyish, less handsome, a new bit of beard tempering the insolence around his mouth. He stood and bowed when I entered. I curtsied as slightly as I could.

  Next to him sat a broad-shouldered young man with a shock of black hair and intense black eyes flanking a rather prominent nose, which gave him a look I was always to think of as predatory. A hunting bird, a hawk. His clothes were expensive and yet carelessly put together, rumpled and only half buttoned, as if he could not be bothered with silly matters like dressing for company, but he was especially tall and broad, so that two of me could have fit inside his frame. Next to the smaller, fairer András he was positively ferocious. He didn’t look up when I entered but carried on speaking to Orsolya, who either did not see me enter or did not heed my presence. No one immediately made an effort to introduce us. Orsolya herself sat at the head of the table, her cheeks flushed and pink, her manner lively as she chatted and waved her hands about. I began to suspect that she had not been at all ill from any kind of physical ailment but had languished for want of her son, and that his appearance had improved not only her spirits but her health. After a moment, she caught my eye and stood with some little bit of aloofness to introduce me to him. “Ferenc,” she said, “I am pleased to present to you Erzsébet Báthory.” Immediately I realized she would not like sharing her son’s attention with me. She was used to being the center of his world.