Anna kissed me dutifully and climbed into the carriage, but she did not cry, not even when she waved to you and Kata out the window, and the horses took her into her future, away from our sight. I knew she would be happy with young Zrínyi for a while at least, until his charm, or hers, began to wear thin. But I knew my friend Countess Zrínyi, her future mother-in-law, would help her understand her place in the family, and Anna would make herself useful there as I had done in the Nádasdy household. A woman could find great satisfaction in making a home and a life, even if it didn’t always turn out exactly as she expected.
Meanwhile, with an uneasy peace settled between the king and Constantinople, I watched and waited for your father’s return. He came at last in the winter of 1599, not long before Christmas, bringing his friends Thurzó and Bocskai, Zrínyi and Batthyány with him, and they in turn brought their wives, my good friends and companions. Together we spent several days drinking and feasting at Sárvár, the men teasing each other with games and good-natured violence: taking a drunken friend outside on his cot and leaving him to sleep in the snow; betting who could hang the longest off the side of his horse at a full gallop without falling; dunking each other in the icy water of the river and then running back to the house, where the last man to the door would be shut out to freeze until his lips were blue and he begged the others to have mercy on him. The more danger they faced in battle, the more violence crept into their games, as if they had lost all their fear of death and were daring God to take them. At night the ladies and I would have a chance to visit with them and hear firsthand the stories of their adventures at the front, the fierceness of the sultan’s men, the blood that ran through fields of this or that strategic town, the smell of burnt flesh that rose into the air with the funeral pyres after every skirmish. I would watch the eyes of our friends as they looked with envy around Sárvár, at the house the old palatine had built with its rich carpets, its gold and silver treasures. How many of them had grown poorer in the years of fighting, while Ferenc’s fields and vineyards had done so well? None of the wives of the other noblemen were as accomplished at managing their estates, at keeping them safe and prosperous, as I was. It was a point of pride that while Ferenc had been fighting for Hungary, I had been fighting for Ferenc, and for our children. Even without the money we had lent the royal treasury, I had managed to put together a sizable dowry for Anna, and money for Pál’s education. Kata’s dowry was still in the king’s hands, but Ferenc assured me that Rudolf would repay us, with interest, now that the fighting was over. Still, the Nádasdy estates were the envy of the Hungarian nobility. Even my brother István told me so, whenever he was well enough to write. You have done well, little sister. Everyone who sees your vineyard and fields, your houses and stables, says how beautiful they are, how lucky Ferenc is to have you by his side. Our mother would be proud.
It was during one of these evenings of wine and companionship that Thurzó came to see me, leaving the pleasant company and good fire in the great hall to come to the library, where I kept a great wooden desk and my cask of important papers and deeds. I was writing a letter to Anna about some little piece of advice she had asked me when I heard his step at the door and looked up to see his heavily bagged eyes, his unhandsome face. He looked more tired than usual. Zsofía Forgách had died in the spring, and since then I had noticed a change in him, a subtle shift from merriment to contemplation, from engaging in the games the men played to an almost womanish need to stand back and watch with an appraising eye, as if his companions were people he had never seen before and did not know how to place. “Is everything all right, Thurzó?” I asked, and all at once I knew that nothing was right with him. He sagged somewhat against the door frame, the graying hair, thinner than it had been, tucked behind his large pale ears, giving him a rabbitlike, hunted look.
He leaned forward to see what I was writing—a bit presumptuous of him, and instinctively I put my arm over the paper for I was still somewhat wary of him, uncertain of his intentions. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your letter is none of my business. How are the children?”
“Kata has trouble with her teeth still, which sometimes keeps her from her books, but Anna is doing very well. Her mother-in-law says she is a credit to the household and looks after all the little cousins there better than their own mothers could do. And Pál has begun talking, as you’ve probably noticed. One can hardly get him to stop.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You are so blessed.” Again I felt the undercurrent of jealousy in him, a hint of resentment against his friend’s good fortune. Thurzó himself had no son but only two daughters. The eldest was married, but the younger, Borbála, was Kata’s age, only six and too young to be betrothed. She lived with his old mother at the estate at Biscke while Thurzó was away at the front.
“You may have a son still one day.”
“Perhaps not. I’m getting too old to think about such things.” He sagged more, and I wondered again if he were the kind of man to marry only once. I sensed that he was somewhat uncomfortable around women now that his wife was dead, with little sense of how to talk to them, what his place in a woman’s life might be.
“You’re not too old,” I said, and put my hand on his arm, wanting to offer him some comfort. He had been always a worthy companion to Ferenc, even if I had not always trusted him. “You’re only forty. Ferenc has still not given up the idea of another son.”
“Ferenc has a beautiful wife and a fine heir. He has reason to hope for the future.”
“Oh, György—” I began, and lowered my head. It wasn’t right for Thurzó to say such things to his friend’s wife, and I was immediately aware of the brass bell of Ferenc’s voice in the house, laughing at something or other Zrínyi was saying. Thurzó was as ugly a man as I’d ever seen, certainly not a candidate for romance, even if I had been in a temper to take a lover. Yet we had both suffered so many losses, so much heartbreak, how could I fail to try to console him? There was nothing I could say that would be appropriate under the circumstances, or that would ease his suffering. There was hardly a family in Hungary that did not have a similar cross to bear. He wanted to say something else to me, I could feel it. But then we heard the footsteps of some servant coming down the hall, and Thurzó sagged against the door frame, the declaration dead on his lips. I wondered for a long time afterward what it was he had wanted to say to me, what he was thinking. “I’ll leave you to your work, Countess,” he said, and went back to rejoin his friends.
6
For all his bravery and heroism during the Turkish wars, Ferenc had not escaped unscathed. He had been wounded several times, receiving cuts on his arms and back and face at Buda that festered and putrefied, requiring the doctor to cauterize the wounds with the hot blade of a dagger. One cut on his face sliced his right eyebrow into two pieces, like a black caterpillar run over by a carriage wheel. At Esztergom he took an arrow in the shoulder, which healed well, but at Pápa his great black horse, struck down by a gunshot, rolled onto his left leg and broke it in several places. Thurzó and Bocskai had carried him all the way home to Sárvár on a stretcher, drunk and singing of victory.
Despite being reset by a good surgeon, the bones of his leg never healed properly. The skin turned black in patches, and the opposite leg—which bore the brunt of his weight when he could not stand on the other—gave him great pains. His surgeons told him to stay home and let his wife tend to him, but Ferenc wouldn’t stay off his feet when he was supposed to and often went riding off on this or that errand. The leg had to be rebroken and reset several times. It was gruesome business. The last time I held my husband down with my own hands while the surgeon took a club to his limb. “Press down with all your might, Erzsébet,” Ferenc said. “I might struggle, and I don’t want to hurt you.” The surgeon gave him some brandy to dull the pain, and then I climbed on his chest, pressing into his muscled shoulders with my thin hands and whispering in his ear that this position might be an excellent one for lovemaking. “If you’re up to
it later, that is,” I said. He blushed—the surgeon might overhear us talking of bedroom matters—but I didn’t care. I was trying to keep his mind off what was about to happen. I looked down into my husband’s face, my body blocking his view of the surgeon’s club, so that only I saw how the pain moved through him when the bone split and the surgeon snapped it back into place with a sickening crunch. Your father, I am proud to say, never made a sound. Afterward I bound the wounds myself, forbidding him from traveling to Prága to see the king until they had healed. As I plied him with valerian to ease the pain and help him sleep, he smiled and patted my hand. “It is lucky for me,” he said, “that you have a strong stomach.”
“It is,” I said, “for otherwise you would have to be tended by old Darvulia. She might try to kiss you, tickling you with her whiskers while you slept.”
He gave a mock shudder and sank into valerian-induced torpor. I didn’t tell him that Darvulia came to his bedside when I needed to rest, nor that the surgeon had threatened that if Ferenc rebroke his leg one more time, they might have to remove it for good. It would do no good for him to worry about such things before they came to pass.
For days I fed him valerian to keep him asleep. If he slept, he could not try to stand and walk on the injured leg. It healed much better this time, and a few weeks after that he was up again, moving about slowly but with increasing strength. A few weeks later he was well enough to ride and went off again before I could make good on my threat to tie him to his bed to keep him from leaving the house.
In the meantime I kept up my work on the Nádasdy estates, increasing the demands on the tenant farmers for oats and barley, for wine and livestock that we could sell to Bécs or Gyulafehérvár. The tenants complained, but I would not relent. Kata’s dowry needed to be set aside, for the day would soon come when we would have to find her a husband. Your father did not want to sell off the estates if he could help it, wanting to save them for you, Pál, when you were grown. Ferenc had already asked Rudolf for a return of the money he had lent for the war, but the king insisted he was stretched too thin after the war, and my husband would have to wait a while longer for his loan to be repaid. Ferenc wrote home to me complaining that Rudolf had enough money for his alchemists, for his poets and astronomers and architects, but not enough to settle his debts with the nobles. The king is a king in name only. The power in the kingdom shifts, and we must be ready when the change comes.
He went to Mátyás, whose power was growing in opposition to his brother, but officially the archduke told my husband he could not authorize payment if his brother would not. Privately, he told Ferenc that if my husband would support his bid to remove Rudolf from power, Mátyás would see his loan repaid. Ferenc preferred not to come between the two brothers, friends and allies both, but secretly he agreed that Rudolf’s rule was fading and that Mátyás would make a better king, more engaged in the life outside his palace walls. Ferenc agreed to do what he could to support Mátyás, if Mátyás would agree to return the loan.
Ferenc asked me my opinion on the matter, and I told him that his support for Mátyás seemed like a wise course. Without the repayment of the thirty thousand forints owed to us by the king, I worried that our accounts would fall short and we would be forced to sell off one of the estates, Léka perhaps, or my own Csejthe, to pay Kata’s dowry. Without a rich dowry, our little Kata, our beloved daughter, might have to go without a husband altogether, and women who did not marry were at the mercy of the world. After the war there were fewer eligible bachelors than ever among the higher-ranking nobility. Something would have to be done for Kata, and quickly, too.
Four years after we had packed Anna up and sent her to the Zrínyi house to her future mother-in-law, Ferenc fell ill once more and took to his bed in the house at Sárvár with some pains in his legs and coldness in his extremities. His health had been plaguing him off and on in recent months, especially a fatigue that seemed alarming given that he was no longer a young man of twenty with endless energy for the Turkish wars but a father of nearly forty-eight who had spent most of his life on horseback with a sword in his hand.
One terrible night I recall clearly. I made certain he had a comfortable chair and gave him a plump cushion to place under his feet before the fire. He didn’t seem to think there was much to worry about, so I went myself to bed, where I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Later your father told me that he woke in the night with a need to relieve himself and threw the blankets off to visit the latrine, but when he tried to stand his leg went out from under him, and he crumpled to the floor. His legs were so weak they could not bear his weight, and when he tried again to stand, holding on to the back of a chair, the pain was so terrible that he bit his tongue and made it bleed. The maidservant who had been in his bed that night called for Darvulia, who fetched me, bending over me so closely her chin whiskers tickled my cheek. “What is it?” I asked.
“The count has fallen,” said my old friend, “and I can’t lift him. He won’t let me call for the valet.”
“Where is he?”
“In his bedchamber.”
I found him in the middle of the floor with sweat on his brow and a wild expression in his black eyes that made him look like a calf about to be branded. In a corner of the room a young thing not even as old as my own daughter Anna with breasts as small as honeysuckle buds pulled her shift close to her. There was a moment when I paused to consider whether to have Darvulia take the girl to the cellars and have her horsewhipped. If the maidservants were going to debase themselves with my husband, they could at least have the good taste to hide it from me. But at the moment I had other, more pressing matters to attend to. “What are you standing there for?” I asked. “Go back to your own bed. I’ll find you in the morning.” I heard her running away in her bare feet, loud enough to wake the entire house.
At my feet Ferenc panted and strained. I had never seen my husband look so helpless—Ferenc Nádasdy, the Black Bey of Hungary, could not stand on his own two feet. “I need your help, Erzsébet,” he said. “I cannot bear for the menservants to see me like this. Will you help me kneel so that I can relieve myself? My bladder is about to burst.”
I brought him the chamberpot and knelt beside him, moved and frightened that he would ask me for help, since he would never have asked if he could have managed it without me. He pulled himself upright, and when he finished, Darvulia and I helped him stand and half carried him to the bed. When he was in bed once more, I covered him with a bearskin, for he said the cold was so terrible it burned him, and called for Darvulia to bring her bag of herbs, her powders and potions. She and I sat with him all night and tended him until his fever broke. Only then did I see to the girl who had been so stupid as to allow herself to be caught in the count’s bedroom in the middle of the night. I made certain she would not make the same mistake again.
Ferenc spent several weeks in bed that winter. By the spring the illness seemed to go away gradually, though there would be days when he would feel poorly again and spend time in bed with his legs propped on a great tower of cushions. He was again in good health for Anna’s wedding and feasted and danced as much as anyone, proud of the match he’d made between his daughter and the son of his friend. He and old Zrínyi and Thurzó spent most of the celebration in a corner, outdoing themselves with wine and pálinká the way only old friends can do. They told stories and reenacted several battles scenes, complete with sounds of cannon fire, and Zrínyi’s wife and I laughed and rolled our eyes, having heard these stories many times before. Each time the number of heads they took, the number of enemy, increased at least threefold. But no one dared correct them when they were enjoying themselves so much.
But the following winter, after another brutal summer riding across the kingdom to see to the king’s business and our many estates, Ferenc came home suffering more pain than ever. His black hair seemed suddenly streaked with more gray, his eyes sunk into dull red pits like stones in a cherry. I feared, when I met him in the courtyard to
welcome him home, that he would fall off his horse; when he embraced me, I could sense how thin he had grown, frail even, for a man who had once stood so tall and broad that two of me could have fit inside his frame. I could count his ribs through his waistcoat. I made certain his bed was ready and took him to it straightaway, telling the valet I would see to my husband myself, please, on this, the first night of his return.
Ferenc tried to rally, even coming down to dinner that evening—saying that he could not refuse the quality of my hospitality, and remembering the night I peppered his food with mistletoe, I smiled a moment—but he went up again to his own chamber sooner than usual and spent a good part of the next several days on his back, eating little, sleeping much. His legs hurt him, he said, and when I removed his breeches I could feel that they were ice cold to the touch, pale as death. Below the knees he said he had no feeling at all. As the weeks wore on, the numbness and cold crept up to his hips, and his hands too felt the effects of it. He could hardly hold a pen to write and had to have his secretary compose his letters, and a new will that now seemed to be a dire necessity. Through it all Ferenc sat propped up with pillows, a servant rubbing his cold hands, his numb legs, with pepper and cloves to try to stimulate the blood to flow through them again. Darvulia brought him herbs from the fields to dress the bedsores that festered and oozed all along his limbs, and pine boughs to help drive the smell of death from the room, a smell that deepened and grew worse no matter what we did to stave it off.
The Countess Page 18