He greeted me with a nod of his head and a little noise—ahmmm—as he cleared his throat and spoke. “Hello,” he said finally. His voice was lower than most young men of his age, as deep as a full-grown man’s, but he seemed to be saddled with more shyness than other young men I’d known, for he had trouble meeting my eyes and looked from my face to the floor and back again, as if we might be expected to tumble into bed together that very moment. “It is a pleasure to meet you at last.”
I would have held out my hand, but he didn’t hold out his. “And I you.”
“I hope we will be friends.”
“I’m sure we shall.” I curtsied low the way Orsolya had taught me. It was all exhaustingly polite.
András remained at Ferenc’s side, but when it was clear that my fiancé had not much more to say to me, his cousin turned to me instead and inquired how I felt. “How is your health?” he said. “Are you likely to swoon again? I’m only asking so I can be ready. It wouldn’t do to let you hit your head on the floor.”
I frowned, trying to think of something to say in return. I didn’t like being teased and was not sure how to treat him. He was not a servant, but he was not a member of the immediate family, either, and he didn’t speak to me with the kind of respect that I was used to from my own small cousins, those from less well-off branches of the family whom I had looked after when I had lived at home. From Darvulia I had learned that András was a distant relative of my mother-in-law who had been taken in by the household after his father had died and his mother’s money had run out. He and Ferenc were being educated together in Bécs, as was the case with so many cousins of lesser nobility. Now I asked if he didn’t think himself mightily clever, if he thought he was some kind of wit. “Sarcasm,” I said, “usually marks a lack of intellect as well as respect.”
His manner grew faux serious. “I speak only out of genuine concern for your well-being.”
“Oh, of course,” said I. “I recognized your concern the moment I entered the room. It must have been there on the back of your hand, for I saw you studying your nails when I walked through the door. Looking for a bit of horse dung, perhaps, left underneath the quick?”
“So much for your pronouncements against sarcasm.” I colored, but all wryness left his expression as he said that he was pleased to find that I was not the glum little girl who had met him in the courtyard at Sárvár half a year before but a young lady with intelligence and temper. “I had feared,” he said, “that my cousin was marrying a solemn little nun who would plague him into an early grave.”
“I’m pleased that you find me improved,” I said, with as much archness as I could muster. “I wish I could say the same.” András tilted his head and laughed.
Orsolya took her son by the arm and talked of how she had enjoyed the waters of Sárvár recently, when her health did not keep her confined to her bed. Ferenc settled her back into her chair, sitting down beside her to listen dutifully, though I sometimes caught him looking longingly out the window where the snow was beginning to fall, as if he would prefer to be somewhere else. He took no more notice of me. I felt abandoned by them both, my fiancé and my mother-in-law. My hopes, and my heart, sank.
“Don’t mind my cousin,” András said as he held out a chair for me. “Orsolya depends on him, as you can see.”
“Yes,” I answered. “She dotes on him completely.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, though the humorous expression playing around his mouth didn’t quite leave him. “Is it his part you envy, or hers?”
I sighed, feeling the mask of politeness slip a little. “Both, I suppose,” I said at last. “If I’m being truthful.”
András smiled again. “With me, I hope you will always be truthful, cousin.” He picked up my hand and bent his head over it.
I wanted to roll my eyes, thoroughly annoyed at these niceties from the dependent cousin, the sarcastic boy, but I managed to keep my face neutral once more. “Thank you,” was all I said.
All that night Orsolya plagued Ferenc with questions about his tutors and his studies and the people they knew at court, the balls and parties he attended, the friends he had there. Occasionally I would catch a name I knew and chime in with some little bit of news, hoping to impress him with my knowledge of court life and politics the way my mother had once done with her male admirers, but anytime I spoke he would stare for a moment as if I were a pig who had suddenly learned to talk, and then he would turn back to his mother without acknowledging me at all. For the most part I was forced to do nothing more than eat my soup and listen, but sometimes I spoke to András instead. He would ask me this or that question about my studies or my family back home, friends we might have in common, and sometimes he would lean over to explain to me a little background on some story Ferenc was telling his mother about the people at court—the shyness of Archduke Rudolf, lately returned from Spain, the brashness and jealousy of his younger brother, Mátyás, who thought he should have been the heir to the Habsburg throne instead of his introspective older brother. András sat so close to me that I could smell the wine on his breath, feel the warmth of his leg through the thin red silk of my skirt. He leaned in in the middle of some story about the palatine’s horse to tell me how his cousin loved the theater, how he acted in theatricals with the royal family in the Hofburg afternoons when they were done with their lessons. “You should see my cousin in a wig,” he said. “A blond curly wig. He looks like some kind of angry cherub. Like he should be shooting arrows from the roof of the Stephansdom at the sinners below.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Shh, cousin,” I said. “I’m trying to display my good manners.”
“To the devil with manners,” he said, lifting his glass. “If you were my fiancée, I would pay you more attention, Erzsébet.”
I lowered my head, not wanting him or his cousin to see the expression on my face. He was not my fiancé, nor ever would be. It was not his place to call me by my Christian name, nor criticize anything Ferenc said or did in regard to me. Of course I wished Ferenc would speak to me, but it was not something András should have mentioned, and I couldn’t help thinking of Rudolf and Mátyás, how jealousy had colored what should have been the closeness between brothers. I turned away, sliding my chair ever so slightly away from him, and did not speak to him again for the rest of the evening.
When the meal was over, Orsolya dismissed me, and I took my leave of the young men and my mother-in-law as exhausted as if I had been on the road for two months together. Darvulia took me back to my room, where I threw myself into her arms as I would once have done with my own mother, complaining that my new husband had not even so much as glanced in my direction after that first greeting. “Don’t lose heart,” she said, brushing out all my long hair, her fingers deft and soothing. “He will come around in time. What man could fail to love you?”
I wanted to believe her, but I was not at all certain that Ferenc Nádasdy would even notice me. The next day I tried again, and again the next, asking about his friends and his studies, even sinking so low as to inquire about the weather and the state of the roads on his journey from Bécs. It was all in vain—Ferenc was as polite and civil to me as he was to his mother, as if I merited no more attention or consideration than courtesy demanded. All that Christmas season he rarely spoke more than two words to me at a time, attending his friends and relatives and leaving me to the attentions of András Kanizsay. I began to look for ways to avoid spending time with them, begging Darvulia to tell Orsolya I was ill, staying in bed to read or write letters home to pass the time until Ferenc went back to Bécs.
I wrote to my brother, István, who expressed alarm that Count Nádasdy seemed so little interested in his bride-to-be. It was in his Christmas letter, in fact, that István asked me how Ferenc and I were getting along, and I wrote back and confessed that we were not, that he seemed completely uninterested in my existence. He shows me less deference than one of the servants. Even the livestock command more of his time and attention
, for he spends several hours a day with the horses. He does not look at me at all, if he can help it. I begin to fear that if his mother dies before we are wed, he may send me back to Ecsed, he shows so little inclination for my company.
My brother’s letter reached me less than a month later, so that I knew how worried he was, how much the alliance between the Báthorys and Nádasdys meant to him and to my family. You must make him look at you. You must make him forget that there are any other women in the world at all. Remember our mother, and the things she taught you. She knows how to enchant a man more than anyone I have ever seen. Make yourself pleasing, as she does, and Ferenc Nádasdy will fall madly in love with you, the good Lord willing. If he sends you home, I don’t know what will become of you.
So I did as my brother suggested. For the last week or so of the visit I tried to engage Ferenc in conversation the way I had seen my mother do with the men of her acquaintance, lowering my chin and raising my eyes to him to convey my modesty, my honor at being his betrothed; or laughing and trying to make merry, to seem both virtuous and worldly all at once. He did little except blush and stammer and find reasons to check on his horse, to speak with his steward. I tried to dazzle him with my education, to discuss the latest on the Turkish occupation of Cyprus and the pasha’s defeat, the previous year, at the Battle of Lepanto. It was all in vain. At supper or in company he looked at me aslant whenever I spoke, as if I were a witch trying to put a spell on him. In our later years together, your father would come to repent those days, Pál, but it is no exaggeration to say that during the first moments of our acquaintance, from the time he arrived at Sárvár until he left again two months later, Ferenc and I stayed at opposite ends of the house and had as little to do with each other as possible.
The only one who didn’t mind my attempts at being pleasing was András Kanizsay, who always sought out my company as if to make up for his cousin’s disregard, smiling and joking and making me so miserable with his teasing I wished I were mistress of the house, so I could send him away. It was difficult not to compare the two of them—Ferenc so dark and serious next to András, who winked when he saw me, as if I were a favored young cousin—but I paid the insolent cousin as little attention as I could and focused on my future husband instead. Every time I met Ferenc after that first day at Sárvár, knocking into him on my way out of my bedchamber or during a chance encounter in the stables, I longed to speak with him privately so that the disguises of civility we wore might be dropped completely. But he merely blushed and bowed and went in the other direction as quickly as he could. I didn’t dare seek out Ferenc Nádasdy in private, not even for the honest discourse I was wishing for, not even in the spirit of the friendship I wanted to feel for him. There were too many eyes watching us, too many foolish girls ready to believe the worst of me. There was too much at stake.
So your father and I would not be friends, not yet. The day he left Sárvár I did not even watch him go, so relieved I was to be free of the burden of Ferenc Nádasdy, to be myself once more. The young men packed their saddlebags and kissed Orsolya good-bye, and then they were off. Afterward I heard Orsolya weeping behind her chamber door but did not offer to go in and comfort her. I could not share her misery that the young men were gone. Instead I went to the music room and played a lively tune on my lute, a song for a palotás, a song for dancing.
11
My mother-in-law’s love for her son was so great that she could not bear the loss of him, and a few weeks after his departure that January, Orsolya took to her bed with some pain in her legs and chest that soon moved to her head. Over the next few months she grew sickly and confused, sometimes thinking I was a young cousin she had known as a child, sometimes that I was her own mother. One night as I bent over her pillows she slapped me so violently that the servants talked of calling for a priest to perform an exorcism, but I convinced them that she was merely falling victim to the confusions of old age, that Ferenc should not hear that the servants thought his mother was possessed by the devil. Afterward she was quiet again, and slept more often, except when she complained of pains in her chest and the servants carried her down to the river on a litter so that she could take the waters.
She died one evening in her sleep not long after midsummer. The servants found her in the morning, slumped against the pillows with her eyes open, not unlike my father’s had been at his own death. I had the best seamstress make a fine sheet of linen and pearls to wrap her in, and I behaved in public as if my own mother had died, keeping a serious countenance, refraining from music and spending long hours on my knees in prayer in the chapel of the estate or in conference with István Magyari, the family priest. I knew that Ferenc would hear of my actions through his steward, Imre Megyery, and in this way I hoped to show him I was a friend, an ally. There were two years between that time and when our wedding was scheduled to take place, and I knew more than ever that I must convince Ferenc that our future marriage, though arranged by our parents, could bring him some happiness.
When he returned to Sárvár for a few weeks to mourn his mother and see that she was properly placed in the family vault beside his illustrious father, my betrothed was naturally more out of spirits than ever. I spoke warmly to him on the night he arrived, telling him how happy I was to see him, even under such difficult circumstances, and said I hoped to aid him with the arrangements for his mother’s funeral. All my efforts were met with nothing more than a polite nod of the head, a murmured word of thanks, and then Ferenc’s quick retreat from my presence.
When he was not writing letters to this or that relative, he often went out hunting, and these excursions kept us apart for long hours every day. András Kanizsay and their friend István Bocskai often accompanied him. I made sure they had cool glasses of wine and fresh fruit on their return and took great care with my hair and dress every time I knew I was to meet them, so that Ferenc would never look on me except at my best, but in general things stayed as they had been before. When the weather grew hot, Ferenc and his retinue returned to Bécs for the rest of the summer, leaving me at Sárvár with only Darvulia and Megyery and the servants for company.
Megyery was left in Orsolya’s will not only as the steward of Sárvár but as my own personal tutor in the Lutheran lessons she had so valued. I found him as officious as ever and shrank whenever he came near, and he too seemed still to resent my presence in the house, speaking to me coolly whenever we had some business matter to discuss, some lesson to study. Still angry, perhaps, that I had embarrassed him in front of his beloved Orsolya.
But that summer Megyery was struck with some sort of ague that left him feverish and delirious for a few precarious days, days in which Darvulia tended to him carefully, for among her other talents my friend was an artful healer and trusted by all the ladies around Sárvár when someone or other of them took ill. If I could not make myself useful to Ferenc, perhaps I could make myself useful to his odious cousin instead. I spoke to Darvulia, who made me her assistant, and I mixed plasters and teas and helped to collect the gore and leeches whenever Megyery was bled. I undertook these tasks with as much enthusiasm and humility as I could, reading the steward letters and notes that came in from all over, or passages from the Bible when his eyes were weak, and brought his favorite priest to sit with him and keep him company while I stole a few hours’ rest. Every night I ordered him a glass of wine to improve his sleep and brought it to him with my own hands. I said nothing to offend, either in or out of his hearing, and eventually Megyery warmed to me more and more. He even said he wrote to Ferenc of how greatly my disposition had improved, which of course was my design all along.
Soon Megyery began to trust me with more responsibility, such as paying debts to the surgeon or the priest out of the estates’ rent or answering the letters from the tenants in the nearby village. He had me call in the butcher’s son, a certain László Bende, to question him about a fight he’d begun with one of our servants the week before. The young man—plain and nervous, with very clean
, well-scrubbed hands, despite the stink of the slaughterhouse on him—endured my questions with a look of embarrassment, his chin raised, his eyes settled firmly over my left shoulder. He was not used to answering to a woman, and a very young one at that. I sent him away satisfied that he would handle future quarrels with greater decorum. It was all preparation for the day when I would be mistress of Sárvár myself, so that I would be intimately familiar with all the day-to-day needs of such a large house, such a great staff.
One day Megyery even asked me to deal personally with a squabble between two maidservants over a missing skirt. The offender was that same Judit who had said in Darvulia’s hearing that she had got a child from Ferenc and lost it the summer before I arrived at Sárvár. Apparently another girl had accused Judit of stealing the favored piece of clothing, a skirt covered with beautiful and costly silk embroidery, a gift from Orsolya before her death. Judit denied taking the skirt, leading to an altercation in the sewing room that had turned violent. The girls started pulling each other’s clothes and hair and even drew blood by scratching at each other with their nails. Their shouts rang through the house for several minutes before the other servants could pull them apart and send for Megyery, who sent me in his stead.
When I arrived at the scene, I dealt with the accused girl myself, questioning her in the sewing room in front of the other servants to make certain they could all see I was being fair, giving Judit every opportunity to defend herself, but she would not tell me where the skirt was hidden and denied she had taken it. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said, raising her chin to me. Already a woman with a woman’s bosom and hips, where mine were still narrow as a boy’s, she was coarse in dress and cleanliness but rosy and plump in complexion, and up close, with her blue eyes flashing anger at me, I could see why of all the girls on the estate, Ferenc would bed her. I thought of Ferenc’s little animal eyes searching out Judit’s languid blue ones and felt a strong desire to slap her impudent face. Neither whoring nor thievery could be tolerated among the servants in the Nádasdy household. Ferenc may not have thought much of me, but if I were to be mistress there, it was I who would deal with the servants on a daily basis, I who would hire them, dismiss them, keep them working harmoniously. Ferenc didn’t have to love me, but by God, he would respect my position and my dignity, and so would the maidservants. They, at least, were something in the house I could control.
The Countess Page 9