The Countess

by Rebecca Johns

  Her silence, he said at last.

  We were in my room, the room I had shared with him night after night for nearly three years. His words were still hanging in the air between us like smoke from a burnt-out candle. Silence, he had said. If he wanted silence, I would give it to him in abundance. He stood near the door, waiting to see what I would do, if I would fly at him, if I would collapse at his feet and weep. Once again I had been passed over for a younger woman. It occurred to me to have him taken to the cellars himself and whipped and beaten, but who among my servants, now, was strong enough to stand up to him? Who could I rely on except for Ficzkó, who was a dwarf next to Istók, and a bunch of old women?

  I told him it would be best if he started looking for a new place. He would not be welcome in my home any longer. He seemed about to say something else, something he knew he would regret. Then he seemed to reconsider, set his great bull of a neck more firmly on his shoulders, and turned away. Left me there, alone, not even bothering to close the door after him. I watched him turn his back on me, sat at the window to see when he would leave. In an hour or two, just long enough for him to pack up his few things and saddle his horse, I heard hoofbeats retreating from the kastély, and after that I refused to hear his name spoken by anyone in the house. It would be as if Istók Soós, the wedding steward, had never existed at all.

  It was four days after Christmas. The girls who had been taken away for stealing and kept in the catacombs under the hill continued to protest their innocence. I had Dorka and Ficzkó whip them a couple of times a day until they reconsidered and asked my forgiveness, and report back to me on their progress, but so far there had been none. They still insisted they had done nothing wrong.

  The night Istók left I went down to the passages that led from the manor into the cellars of the castle. They were dark and stony, with dripping white teats of limestone growing down from the ceiling. We passed small antechambers where barrels of wine were stored, and ice cut from the river in the winter kept buried in sawdust. Sometimes a white handprint or bit of writing smeared with age betrayed the long history of the place, and I wondered about the women who had lived here before, and all the ones who would come after. The smell of earth and damp was everywhere, and underneath it something sour and decayed, as if the stones and earth themselves had gone rotten. Ficzkó, who went in front of me, had trouble at times finding the way among the many passages and dead ends. Several times we had to double back to find our way, until I slapped his ear and told him to watch where he was going, that I did not have all day to wander around in the dark. After that we made our way with little difficulty.

  In a little while we came to the room where the girls were tied up, chained to the wall and clutching at each other, naked and shivering, smeared with dirty handprints on their faces where Dorka and Ilona Jó and Ficzkó had slapped them, and bruises along their buttocks and under the shackles that bound their wrists. The room was wet along the floor, smelling of piss and blood, and cold, so that our breath came out in little white clouds. There was hay piled in the corners, and ash on the floor to soak up the wetness, and the smell of living things in close proximity—the smell of barns, and childbirth rooms. A frightened, animal smell. The torchlight flickered and gave everything a furtive look, as of things only half witnessed.

  When they saw me, the chained girls began to wail and protest their innocence. They had done nothing, they said. They had taken nothing. Mercy, mistress, they said. Mercy, please, for the love of God. The fat Dorizca, her pregnant belly showing, the stripes on her back crusted from where I had beaten her, pulled at her chains and tried to cover her nakedness, whimpering.

  The flesh of her back bunched into little folds almost like a second set of breasts, the skin of her thighs bulging together at the top, at the place where Istók Soós had so willingly buried himself. I imagined them rutting in my room when I was out of the house, defiling the white bed where I had spent so many pleasant nights with him. She wrapping her fat legs around him, he burying his soft red mouth in her breasts. Laughing at me, and telling each other stories about me. Turning all the many kindnesses I had showed them both into less than nothing, into excrement.

  Now I took the whip from Dorka’s hand. Doricza whimpered, and looked at Ficzkó as if to plead, but the boy wisely decided to say nothing. “Will you ask forgiveness,” I asked, “for what you have taken?”

  “I did not take the tray, my lady. It was only the pears. I was going to bring the tray back to the kitchen when the pears were gone, I swear it.”

  She swore she had taken nothing, but I myself had seen the tray in her room, I said.

  The cook had given her the pears, she said.

  I said the cook was the one who had accused her of stealing.

  At this she began to cry. “I never did,” she said. “I never took anything from your ladyship, I swear it. Don’t you remember,” she said, “don’t you remember when we went to Bécs, and the other girl, the one who died, you remember you gave me that coin? You gave it because you liked the work I had done. You promised that I would be rewarded. You promised my mother you would try to find me a husband, but I have lived here six years and have never heard of a husband yet. You promised my mother, when she brought me here, and I have done nothing but be loyal to you and treat you with kindness. I only wanted a pear.” Her face was blubbering with snot and tears. Save me. “It was Christmas, and I wanted a pear. That’s all. Just the pear. I was hungry, and no one was eating them, why couldn’t we have them?”

  “If you had asked me,” I said, “I would have given them to you.”

  “I did ask,” she said. “I asked Istók Soós if we could have them. Ask Istók, he will tell you. I asked permission, and he said we could have them. He gave me the tray, I swear it.”

  “Istók Soós is gone,” I said. “He left this morning. He took his horse and rode away, and left you here with me.”

  Her blubbering echoed in the underground caverns and infected the others, set off a chain of wailing that assaulted my ears. The girl had been nothing but incompetent since the first I had taken her into my home. She had been less than worthless at Pöstyén, at Bécs. I could not have thievery and dishonesty and incompetence among my maids, and now she had lain with Istók Soós, whom I had been obliged to send away. Once again a young girl—a simpleton, a whore—had come between me and a man who loved me. Once again I had lost the comfort of affection, and pleasure, to one I had trusted, to a girl of no education, no breeding, no worth.

  As if in a dream, I raised my hand and put the lash across her back myself, over and over. Her back was a mess of stripes, the yellow fat showing through the wounds. The floor sticky, my clothes. There was blood on my hands, my face. The room went dim again, and cleared, and dimmed, the slow beat of my heart in my ears the only sound, though I could see their lips moving, I knew they were saying something to me, imploring me for something, but I did not know what. Save me. The girl slumped forward, curled on the ground like a pig that had its throat cut. Silent.

  From behind me I hear, as if from underwater, the sounds of weeping, perhaps my ladies themselves, perhaps the girls still chained together to witness the punishment of Doricza. Perhaps it is myself. It comes to me from very far away, like a horn, like a clatter of hooves. The girl is naked on the cold stones and her eyes are closed, and I think, she must be cold, we must get her off the floor before she freezes, or she will be no more use to me. I tell Ficzkó to cut her down and have Ilona Jó tend her wounds. There is spiderweb, I say, and plaster to make her well. The women look at each other. Ficzkó bends and picks her up under the arms, but she is bigger than he, and he stumbles. “She’s dead,” he says.

  “What did you say?”

  “Countess, the girl is dead,” said Ficzkó. “Plaster and spiderweb won’t help her.”

  Somewhere behind me someone begins to cry. There is another voice, raised, shouting, one of the chained girls. Škrata, it says. Witch. A bit of spittle flies out and land
s on my cheek. Anger. White anger, and cold.

  I raise my hand and the heavy end of the whip—a lead bludgeon wrapped in strips of leather—and bring it down on the head of the one who spoke, the one nearest me, who is so filthy I can’t make out who she is. A cracking noise, like the breaking of stone, and the room grows dim before me, blackens. I am alone in the darkness, and then, as if from a great distance, colors come back to me, sounds, light. There is a girl in front of me, a girl crying. Her nose is bright with blood, and her eyes tear, making tracks in the dirt on her face and the blood. There is something about her eyes that is familiar. Her eyes are green and watery, like someone else’s I knew long ago. I recognize her, I think. A cousin I took in a few years ago when her mother wrote to me that the young men of her village had all died in the Turkish wars. I had promised to get her a husband, I wrote the mother. Éva, the name comes back to me now. Éva Cziráky. A pretty little thing, with a sweet singing voice and a mass of yellow curls, like my cousin Griseldis long ago. How small she looks, how frightened. For a moment I wonder what her days are like, what love there is for her, whether she feels fear, or anger, or pity, or love. Whom does she love? What have those she loves done to her? There is blood on her face, running off her chin in little spins and rivulets. I’m not sure how it got there. My hands grow numb; something falls to the floor. There are raised voices and shouting, and the barking of dogs, but it’s all a distant roar, like thunder heard from underground. My heartbeat slows and steadies; my skin is damp. There is blood on it. Someone is taking my arm, someone is speaking in my ear. I cannot hear them, I don’t know what they’re saying.

  A rough hand spins me around until I am looking into the red face of Ficzkó, bending toward me, shouting. I cannot hear him. My ears are full of water. He shakes me once, then again, harder. “Countess!” he says, urgent, almost fearful. “The palatine is here. He’s come for us. We must leave now, or else.” He pulls on my arm but my feet are rooted to the ground like old trees, deep into the underground of Csejthe, my home.

  In a moment he is gone, Ficzkó, back down the tunnels we came from, toward the manor house, where the palatine’s men are already waiting for him. From the vár above come the voices, deep and drowned, the cries of my servants and the girls in the room and the smell of death everywhere. I have never felt so alone. There are soldiers, the shine of metal, and dimly, in the lamplight, I recognize the face of young Zrínyi, the face of young Drugeth, the face of Megyery.

  They have betrayed me, then. The face of Thurzó himself coming toward me, swimming toward me, his deep-set eyes, his unhandsome, disloyal mouth, ordering his men to unchain the girls. How could I ever have loved him? How could I have shared my bed with him, he who loved no one except himself?

  Arrest her, he says, pointing at me, and the guards come closer with their hands on their swords, and I drop my whip—my hands are numb—and the men are coming toward me, shouting, but the palatine stands back in the darkness, away from me, he will not look at me, but on his face—I will swear it to my dying day—I see his mouth turn up in a smile.

  25

  August 20, 1614

  Outside my tower walls Csejthe has stilled in the heat of another summer, the hawks turning slowly in the air to search for mice in the fields, long black snakes sunning themselves on bare rock below, curled there like question marks. There are tracks in the dust outside my tower, the cloven footprint of the devil himself, whose stamping impatient feet I hear again and again beyond my door. I will meet him soon enough. The guards bring me my daily tray of food, and whatever letters come to me from the world outside, and complain that the rooms are too close and too hot, though I am always cold. “Look,” I tell them. “Look how chill my hands are. Look at how I freeze.” They only shrug and go away again.

  More than three years I have traced the patterns of light on the walls as spring turns to summer, summer to winter. The summer solstice has passed, but these are still among the shortest nights of the year. The air coming through my window turns sodden with the scent of rain, but still I can see little outside except the hills that roll away from me, toward Poland, toward Moravia, toward the world I will never see again.

  Once a week the guards bring me fresh clothes, and each time I beg them for a mirror. A little piece of mirror, I ask, so that I might look on a friendly face at least once before I die. Today one of them brought me a broken shard with jagged edges, a fragment left behind in some corner of the keep. The weight of the mirror in my hand makes me a bit calmer. I often found something soothing in a mirror, in the lines of my countenance, which changed throughout a long lifetime from the round, pink-cheeked flush of youth to the firm clear lines of maturity. My visage has been my constant companion these many years, even as family and friends have failed me, or love turned to disappointment.

  When I look in the mirror now my hair is wild and streaked through with more gray than I remember, especially at the temples. Unbound, without the pearls I always wore in it, it falls in waves to my waist, looking heavy and rough as a horse’s tangled mane. My normally pale skin is marred by dark, ashen pockets that have sprung up under my eyes and in the hollows at my temples, and between my brows a crease has developed from sleeplessness and worry. At the corners of my eyes webs of lines grow deeper, making me look like an ancient crone who has spent her life herding goats in the hot sun instead of a noblewoman of fifty-four who has cared for her beauty like a monk with a cherished icon. How quickly beauty spoils, how final is its demise. I put the mirror away again carefully, shaking my head. I do not want to weep, not here, in front of my jailers. There will be plenty of time for that later.

  I undress. Exposed, my body is a thing I do not recognize. The skin at my belly, stretched from the pregnancies and births of six children, hangs under my navel, webbed with white stretch marks and so loose I can gather it in my two hands. My breasts hang limp and empty as wineskins, and the flesh at my neck is crumpled, mottled red and brown, my feet calloused and tough. Up and down my legs are spidery veins, blue and green, that divide my new self from the old like borders drawn on old maps, conquered by time and indifference.

  I put on the clean clothes, but they hang loose from my shoulders and gape open at my wrists. I have grown thin in the past three years, fed on porridge and fatty meat, bits of undercooked pork or overaged cheese, the sour wine left behind in the cellars. It is as difficult to take pleasure in food as it is to take pleasure in breathing. It is just as well you do not come to me. I wish you could see me as I once was, Pál—my cheeks pink and blooming, my bosom plump over the tightly laced waistcoat, my hair glossy with health, my smile as sure of a man’s love as any woman ever was. Now my skirt hangs about my waist because there are no ladies to tie the cords, nor are there ladies to iron the lace frills of a new collar into stiff little points, to serve my face upon it like a platter, as my mother’s ladies once did for her. I do the best I can with the ties but still nothing fits properly. I push the sleeves up my wrists, bunch the blouse under the waistcoat. When I am dressed, I take a moment to rub sweet almond oil into my hands, my face. A little berry juice on my lips and cheeks gives them a little of the old life back, rose and cream. A few drops of ink help to cover the streaks of gray at my temples. When I look in the mirror again, I see a little of the Erzsébet who arrived at the house in Sárvár as a new bride, who danced with Thurzó in the moonlit halls of Bécs. I touch my face, feeling the old bones under the flesh. I once laughed at the vanity of women of forty and fifty who wore cosmetics to balls and parties, who whitened their ruddy old skin with lead, but now I know such salves are not disguises for old crones who wish to catch a young husband. Instead they are only a mask we wear so that we can, for a little while, still recognize ourselves.

  Now that my nephew Gábor is dead—murdered in Transylvania by his own men—the palatine will no longer have any reason to think of me at all. I am no more use to him now in my prison tower, just another old woman with failing health, hands that ache from cold
even in the hottest days of summer. What my mother said to me long ago was true, that a woman who does not marry is at the mercy of the world, but equally powerless is a widow with a young son, a widow hidden away in a forgotten corner of the house, a relic from an earlier age. When you are a man, when you are old enough to understand what I have written in these pages, I hope you will remember your old mother and how she loved you, Pál, what she sacrificed for you.

  Kata has promised to visit soon, but she is expecting again, and naturally she is afraid to travel far in her condition. It does not seem likely I will see her before the snow flies in the winter, and if not then, then not until the roads between Pozsony and Csejthe clear in the spring. The worst news, however, is that after her latest miscarriage, Anna has taken to her bed, and though the doctors come to her again and again nothing seems to improve her spirits. Miklós writes to let me know how she is doing, for the poor girl cannot even hold a pen herself. I know that if I could only go to her, I could nurse her to health again. I worry for her. She is still young and could be happy, but the death of the child has blighted her spirit, and she withers as much as her old mother does in her prison tower. I fear I have not been fair to Anna and left her without the resources she might have needed to weather this storm. But there is no turning back now, nor, perhaps, should there be. The sins of one’s youth need only be repented once, as my guest Rev. Zacharias tells me during his visits. “For God’s mercy is everlasting,” he says. I don’t tell him that even if God forgives you, you do not forgive yourself. You live in your sorrow like a room of mirrors that reflects on and on to eternity.