Grasping for the Crowns (The Powers Book 2)

by Alma Boykin

  Archduke Rudolph called, “Come in.”

  The messenger rushed into the room, letting in a wash of cold air as he did, and looked from one man to another. “Your pardon Your Grace, my lord, but is Count Eszterházy here?”

  “His Highness Prince Miklos has died,” István said.

  “Ah, my lord, not as of half an hour ago, but Duke Zúard requests your presence at Eisenstadt as soon as possible.”

  István shook his head. “His Highness Prince Miklos has passed.” He and Rudolph crossed themselves. “Thank you for the news and I will attend Prince Zúard as soon as His Grace permits.”

  Rudolph nodded. “Go, and give His Majesty’s condolences to the family. I will inform him myself of the Palatine’s death.”

  István bowed to Rudolph. “Thank you, Your Grace.” He sketched a shallower bow to Duke Ernest. “Your Grace.”

  «Go, and take my condolences with you. His Highness was a good man and his calm council will be missed.»

  “Thank you, Your Grace, and it will.”

  After the private funeral Mass, István offered his condolences to Prince Pavel Miklos Zúard Eszterházy. The new prince ran a hand over his balding pate. He’d always reminded István of a komondor dog—heavy, strong, and very direct in taking care of his own interests. He seemed a touch less heavy now, and sported thinner hair on top of his head, but the overall impression remained unchanged. “Thank you, Count István. It was time, I think. He never acted quite the same after Catherine’s death.” István tried to recall who Catherine was, then remembered her. She’d been the oldest child, a daughter, who’d died of complications of childbirth just after the war had begun. Prince Miklos’s wife had died twenty years ago at least, in a boating accident on Lake Hallstatt.

  “You are welcome, Your Highness.”

  “How is your House doing?”

  István shrugged a little. “We survive, Your Highness. House Sárkány has been blessed thus far, compared to many.”

  “Indeed. We live in hard times, Cousin.”

  István inclined his head in agreement and prayed that they would not grow any harder.

  The riot interrupted István’s half-nap. What now? Except he knew very well what that sound, and the crack of breaking glass, and the yelling, meant. He’d gotten into Budapest so late that he’d found a room for the night rather than calling for a carriage from the town palace. The beastly weather, freezing sleety rain driven by winds that cut through rather than going around, had something to do with his decision. That same rain and wind made the riot in progress outside his hotel even more surprising.

  Morbid curiosity brought him to the window. He peered out into the morning light, searching for the cause of the commotion. Not on his block, not yet, but he could see the chaos unfolding across the next intersection. Women in dark coats and heavy skirts surged back and forth, men mixed in with them, yelling and shrieking in Hungarian, German, and Bohemian. The trouble seemed to be outside of a food shop. István had passed by the line the night before on his way in from the train station. Women had sat on chairs, mats, and blankets, in a line that already stretched several hundred meters by two hours after midnight. He’d been astonished despite his exhaustion. Now he just wanted the noise to go away, and the rioters with it.

  “How dare you—!”

  “You damn Jew price-fixer!”

  “Justice and bread, justice and bread!”

  “Thief! This flour is bad!”

  “He’s hiding the real flour! Arrest him!”

  “Arrest him!” The call grew louder and louder, taken up by hundreds of women, in German and Hungarian. “Arrest him, arrest him!”

  István let the curtain drop and finished dressing, wishing Szombor had come with him. Instead, his valet waited at the town palace on the other side of the bridges. István got his tie right on the second try, then descended to breakfast, such as it was.

  The other diners and the staff in the restaurant’s crimson-papered dining room discussed the ongoing commotion in hushed tones, as if they feared that the women outside might overhear. “He was selling light weight,” one waiter explained to another diner, a businessman, István guessed. “Then a woman came back with her children and a neighbor and said he’d added,” the voice dropped lower, “sawdust and ashes.”

  And with that all hell breaks out, István thought. “Tea and bread with jam.” István showed his waiter his ration cards.

  “Very good, gracious sir. Would sir care for a bit of ham as well?”

  “Yes, if it is true ham.”

  The waiter did not blink or hesitate. “From the hotel’s own pigs, sir.” He swept István’s card off the table and shambled off. He returned five minutes later with tea, a half-loaf of dark bread with a suspicious yellow dusting on top of the crust, a thimble-full of jam-like something, and a piece of ham so thin István could read the name on the hotel’s china through the slice. The cook’s knife must have been far sharper than István’s razor. That, or perhaps the cook also worked as a barber. But the slice tasted like ham, and the bread contained no grit or strange flavors.

  Once István reached the Eszterházy town palace in Buda, he found a surprise waiting for him. “Cousin Imre!”

  “Welcome back, Cousin István.” Imre stood up and crossed the library, hand extended. As always, his smooth, graceful way of moving reminded István of a dancer, except no ballerina had such a strong grip and blocky body. Imre looked almost more Slav than Magyar, at least to István, and could be as stubborn as any Galician peasant farmer. “Mátyás thought you’d be here yesterday.”

  “I would have, except for the slow trains and bad weather. How are you?”

  They shook and separated. “Fine, considering things. You?”

  István wondered how honest he should be with his odd relation. “I’m well, considering the past few days’ events. You heard about Prince Miklos?”

  Imre lifted the lapel on his black jacket.

  “I see. Your family?”

  “Father is busy, as always. So is Frederic,” his brother. “We are trying to get working conditions in the factories improved, but the fat capitalists refuse to . . .” and he was off on one of his lectures.

  By now István anticipated the sermons, and he sat down as Imre pontificated, warming his hands on the small fire in the hearth and pretending to listen. Apparently Imre had slipped back into the socialist fold after his flirtation with Magyar nationalism. Or he was planning to, and wanted to see if he could shock István. After the morning’s excitement, István felt too tired for shock.

  “. . . especially for the women. There are women’s labor laws for a reason, damn it.”

  István raised one hand. “Wait. You now have women on the factory floor, working the heavy equipment?”

  “Of course.”

  “What kind of woman—come in, Mátyás,” István beckoned to his brother, who limped in through the doorway behind Imre and took the other chair by the fire before his cousin could grab it.

  Imre’s square face flushed. “What kind of woman works the factory floor? Any woman who can do the work.”

  “Ugh. I know we are at war and need labor, but really, Cousin, that’s not good.”

  Mátyás frowned. “Why not, István?”

  The quiet question surprised István. “Because, well, women should be at home, taking care of the family, or doing women’s work if they have to earn a few pennies more. Sewing, cleaning, nursing perhaps, not something as hard and dangerous as factory labor.”

  Imre’s flush darkened to an angry red. “What world are you living in, Cousin? How are women supposed to feed their children without work? And don’t tell me their husbands will do it, not with the men at war.”

  “By doing women’s work,” István repeated.

  Mátyás shook his head. “Women’s work is now whatever they can find to do. It takes money and points together to purchase food and fuel, and clothes, and medicine—to get anything. And there is not enough laundry or m
ending in all of Budapest to feed a family of six without a father.”

  “But the charity groups, the women’s groups, the government assistance—”

  Imre’s cutting motion interrupted István. “Not meant for this, and not enough. For the Head of a House you are rather naive, Cousin. There are women who work for ten hours, then go sit in line for another ten, then try to feed their children and get some rest before going back to work. And that is if they got in line early enough to get anything.”

  “It can’t be—” but he stopped himself. István had seen the lines, the riots. “Alright, so it can be that bad. But not for most women, and not enough that they are doing heavy work.”

  Mátyás shook his head again. “They’d work the saws in the yard if I would hire them, which I can’t do. Too dangerous in skirts. They don’t work in the foundries, either.”

  “Yet,” Imre added. “Although most men are barely strong enough to do that work, as little food as they eat and as hard as their employers are squeezing them.” He folded his arms, the portrait of stubbornness. “Mark my words, Cousin, come warm weather all hell will break loose unless the government changes and the emperor goes.”

  István shot to his feet. “You go too far, Cousin Imre.” Imre’s mouth opened, then closed, and pale replaced red in his face. “His Majesty is what holds the empire together. Recall, if you will, that the Entente and the United States have promised to break us apart into at least five different countries if they have their way. His Majesty is doing everything he can to keep us together, to keep the Houses and all the other people together and safe. Or do you want Galicia and Poland handed back to Russia to chew on?”

  “Russia won’t be around to chew anything, not once the revolution starts,” Mátyás ventured from his chair.

  “And who says if that Lenin person, or one of the other would-be revolutionary leaders does take over, the fighting will stay east of our border?”

  Imre gulped and backed up a step. “Your pardon, Lord István. You are correct, and I retract my earlier statement, spoken in haste and anger.”

  No, you said what you truly believe, but I’m not going to challenge you, not now. “Thank you. I accept your apology.” István sat again, Imre found a chair, and Ferenk appeared in the doorway with a tray of tea things. “Thank you, Ferenk. I managed to see one of your riots this morning, Imre.”

  “Where?”

  István told him, then concentrated on not dropping the teacup as he handed it to Mátyás. “At first they were blaming each other, like they did in Vienna, but finally they settled on demanding the arrest of the grocer.”

  “I’m surprised we have not had a full out war between the Czechs and Magyars yet,” Imre said. He poured his own tea. “Another thing to look forward to come spring.”

  István looked his question at Mátyás, hoping to prevent an Imre sermon. Mátyás caught the hint, or maybe he also wanted to forestall a lecture. “We don’t have enough hunger yet, or enough agitation from the nationalists yet, for a true national riot, not like Vienna suffers.”

  “The rifts are there, though. His Majesty will have to pull a miracle out of his— hat,” Imre said.

  István didn’t want to believe his relatives but, on the other hand, he could all too easily imagine the trouble. He decided to shift the topic a little. “So, are you applying for a goat, Cousin?”

  “A what?”

  “A goat. Some of the charities are pooling their finds to buy goats and whistle-pigs and rabbits for people to raise in the cities for food, and for milk.” István smiled at his cousin’s astonished expression.

  “I’d like to see someone milk a whistle-pig,” Mátyás said, grinning.

  “You could make a fortune selling black-market rabbit milk,” István suggested to a still surprised Imre.

  His cousin finally recovered his wits. “Bulk sales only, and it is not truly funny. If the state cannot feed the people, then the state has lost its legitimacy.”

  “The job of the state is not to feed the people, it is to protect them and to govern well enough that they can grow their own food without having it stolen. Enough, Imre. I’m tired, the funeral was draining, and I am not in the mood for a lecture.”

  Imre grumbled but subsided, for the moment. “I’m here because I’m on my way to Graz to look into one of the plants there. We’re having reports of poor quality and Father wants to know why.”

  “Good luck,” Mátyás said. “Especially if that’s the one that uses the raw ore from Germany.”

  “It is. And that’s what bothers me, but enough of that.”

  The next day, István looked at the papers strewn across the second desk in his brother’s office and shook his head. “I don’t want to believe this.”

  “Which ‘this’?”

  “Either of them.” He looked up at Mátyás, then to the ceiling, then back at his brother. “The diet has, tentatively, with great reservation and question,” he read, “agreed to grant the franchise to any man who has served in the military or who is on active duty. Including reserves, without property qualification or religious tests required.” István shook his head a little.

  “Oh, that will set off the Magyar Nationalists and the nobles.”

  “Not just Magyar, because His Majesty wants similar rights granted to all men in the empire.”

  Mátyás whistled. “Ay yay yay, that’s dangerous. The diets and parliaments will never, ever agree to it.”

  “And I don’t want to believe that the only source for these parts is through this Tisza Enterprises.”

  “What’s wrong with Tisza Enterprises? They have connections, and they are the only people who have those parts right now.”

  István thumbed through the pages, looking for a name. “This is the problem—Col. Georg Tisza.” He looked at Mátyás, trying to decide how much his brother needed to know. “We crossed paths several times in the army. He was abusing his position, abusing his Gift in order to manipulate his superiors and fellow officers, and, hmmm.” I don’t have proof, but Mátyás needs to know. “I saw strong suggestions that he was dealing goods and favors in the black market in 1914, and I do not believe that he has reformed since.” And he deliberately sent a messenger under false pretenses so that I was injured too badly to fight and might still end up more crippled than Mátyás.

  Mátyás pursed his lips and frowned, his eyes shifting as he glanced to the side. “I . . . Those are serious accusations. You know he was misusing a Gift?”

  “My hand to the Lord, I felt him. He tried it on me. He’s good, probably self-trained—maybe he had some basic shielding technique but he’s not in any House that I know of.” The Houses didn’t have a monopoly on people with Gifts, after all.

  “I’ll have Mr. Horthy look for other sources, but the Germans are no longer selling those parts outside their borders, ‘due to imperial need,’ or so I was told.” Mátyás drummed his fingers on the desk. “But if Horthy can’t find anything, then we’ll have to deal with Tisza. And it could be a different Col. Georg Tisza.”

  István doubted his brother’s confidence, but said, “It is possible.” And the war might end tomorrow with the Serbs petitioning to join the empire, and Britain might attack France. All were equally likely. “Whatever we find, I do not want to buy anything black market.”

  “Imre’s right. You’re too idealistic and stubborn, Brother. Come down from the mountains and acknowledge the real world.” Mátyás folded his arms. “We have to deal with the black market. We have no choice. Most people who buy illegal or over-priced goods don’t have any choice. Otherwise they wouldn’t do it, either.”

  “Coffee is not vital to one’s survival, my private plaints to the contrary notwithstanding,” István began.

  “Pish. Oh, look around, Lord István, for once.” Mátyás heaved himself to his feet and limped over to where István sat, leaned on the desk, and locked eyes with his astonished brother. “People are on the edge of starvation. Women are working outside of the
house so they can feed their children. Hell, Brother, soldiers are sending rations home to help their families! Our soldiers, not just the Germans, no matter what the War Information Office people claim. If your choices are starvation, watching your children dwindle, or paying ten times too much for cheese because you know it is real cheese and the seller won’t ask for ration points, what are you going to do? Let your daughter starve so your conscience will be clean?”

  That bad, Brother? Why haven’t you said anything? She’s family, part of the House. But István knew very well why Mátyás would not say anything. I’ll play along for now, Brother, but once the war ends . . . “No, but if there is any way at all we can find any source, any legal source, that meets quality standards, go there first, cost be damned. But we can’t afford to buy a foundry to make them ourselves, unless, these,” he waved at the books behind him, “Are not the real account books.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?” Mátyás refused to be deflected.

  István folded his arms and glared back. “I understand very well. That’s why most of the funds that should go to my household budget, or to the House’s reserves, are now going to helping those House members who no longer have any support. Do you have any idea, Mátyás, just how many men from our House alone are missing or Russian prisoners? And how many children and aging parents and other dependents they have? Or how hard it is for a hungry woman with small children to work as a forester? Because some are trying, so that Gellért won’t hire a man to replace their only means of support, in case he comes back soon.”

  Mátyás met his stare for a few seconds more before looking away. “Damn and blast it.”

  “I’ve seen enough of that for two lifetimes, thank you.”

  Mátyás limped back to his own seat and sat firmly enough to send dust out of the cushion. “How’s Mother?”

  “She’s not here. She’s in 1890, writing letters to long-dead relatives and talking about how her nieces and nephews are growing so well.” István shook his head. “I think it’s better for all of us if she—if she is not dragged back to the present.” She seemed happy, or at least happier than she had before her most recent spell, and Jirie and Clara and the other servants were no longer spending hours trying to explain why they could not grant some desire. And Barbara no longer had to placate Lady Marie after her latest fruitless shopping or coffee excursion.