The Angel Makers

by Jessica Gregson

  Judit shakes her off with feigned irritation. ‘I know that, you stupid girl. Now get going.’

  Béla sees the door open, and next to him, Géza gasps. ‘Here we go!’ he says.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ Béla admonishes. ‘It might be nothing.’

  Dear God, let it be nothing, he says to himself. He watches Sari emerge, look around, and, obviously seeing no one, descend the steps. Just go to the river, Béla urges her, or to the forest. Look for herbs. Don’t, please, God, don’t do anything more to implicate yourself. He knows he can’t avoid arresting her now that Francziska has tearfully added her voice to Jakova’s, but maybe, if nothing else happens, maybe she can avoid being convicted. Maybe.

  Sari’s at the bottom of the steps now, and she turns, to Béla’s dismay, not in the direction of the forest, or the plain, but towards the cluster of houses at the centre of the village. Géza hisses with excitement. She rounds the corner and they ease themselves out from where they’ve been hiding, and follow her, Béla with utmost reluctance and Géza trying to hold himself back from a run. They catch sight of her again, and she’s approaching a house. It’s not a house that they’ve been to before, and Béla feels a brief blossoming of hope; perhaps this is the woman who was sick yesterday, perhaps that’s why Sari’s visiting her today. It might still be all right. Perhaps.

  For five minutes, there’s no movement. Béla is acutely conscious of the way the wind feels on his skin, the faint prickling as his body hair stands up in anticipation … and then Sari comes out of the house. Five minutes, Béla tells himself; plenty of time for a cursory medical examination. No matter that Sari doesn’t have any equipment with her; she could just be checking on the woman’s well-being, planning to come back later if further attention’s needed.

  Géza urges them closer. ‘I’ll stay outside,’ he whispers, ‘see where she goes next. You knock on the door.’

  Obediently, for he has no energy to challenge the sudden revolution that’s left him powerless and Géza in charge, Béla climbs the front steps, and knocks quietly. No answer. Well, that would make sense; an ill woman wouldn’t want to open the door to a stranger. He looks back down at Géza, who gives a frustrated signal: go on! Béla knocks again. Again, no answer, but a noise comes from inside the house, a confused, fumbling rattle. Béla tries the door handle, and to his surprise, finds it open. He walks into the house, feeling like a cad for infringing on a poor woman’s privacy like this. The living room is empty, but has a curious atmosphere of warmth and movement, as if it’s been occupied until very recently. Working on a hunch he can’t let himself ignore, Béla moves on silent feet to a room at the back of the house, which he knows to be the bedroom, and there he finds Matild Nagy easing her plump, comely body out of the sash window.

  It’s as good as a confession.

  There’s no time to take her down to the church. Uncomfortably certain that it’s very much against procedure, Béla sits her down on a chair, binding her hands and feet with hastily torn up sheets, to which she submits with unexpected placidity. Perhaps she’s in shock; perhaps her abortive escape attempt has shaken all the life out of her. By the time he’s able to leave the house, Géza’s already crouched like a cat by the porch of a nearby house. As Béla approaches, he raises his eyebrows in a wordless question. Béla nods, feeling sick.

  ‘Sari left here about a minute ago,’ Géza whispers, and Béla’s insides twist – she may be a murderess, but that doesn’t give Géza any right to use her first name. ‘She’s gone up there – Orsolya Kiss’s house. She’s still inside. We’ll go there next.’

  As they mount the stairs, Béla realises that it’s the house of Zsofia Gyulai. It’s not a surprise, therefore, when they open the door to the sound of agonised sobs.

  They tie her up, too. Géza’s as discomfited by the idea as Béla is, but can’t come up with an alternative solution; ‘We’ll be back for you in an hour at the most,’ he says to Mrs Gyulai, in an attempt at consolation, but she just sobs harder.

  Béla has been looking out of the window at intervals, and saw Sari leave the Kiss house a few minutes before, heading back to Judit’s. ‘Let’s go,’ he says to Géza. Arresting Orsolya Kiss is going to be one of the only redeeming features of this entire fiasco.

  They knock on the door once, for courtesy, and predictably, the house is silent. Predictably again, the living room is empty, and Béla beckons silently to Géza, drawing him towards the bedroom, where he feels certain they’ll find Orsolya trying to make a break for freedom through the window. He’s surprised, then, to find Orsolya sitting, still, head bowed, on the very edge of the bed. But any hopes that she would come quietly are dashed when she raises her head, giving them an oddly coquettish smile, which distracts them just long enough for her to raise the pistol held loosely in her right hand.

  The bullet sails harmlessly past Béla’s right ear, but it’s enough to scare them both, and within a second Géza has tackled her and brought her heavily to the ground. After the initial resistance, she doesn’t struggle, though Béla kneels beside them just in case. When it seems certain that she’s subsided, he turns to the dresser on his left, yanking open drawers until he finds her underwear drawer, whereupon he snatches up a couple of handfuls of stockings. Géza heaves her onto her front and starts to bind her hands behind her back, and Béla stands, brushing himself down, and that’s when he catches sight of something glinting alluringly in the opened drawer.

  ‘I’ll go and pick up Miss Arany,’ he says.

  From his awkward position on the floor, Géza twists himself around and gives Béla a searching look.

  ‘Why don’t you take over here, and I’ll go and pick up Miss Arany?’

  Béla shakes his head. ‘No, no. You’re doing an excellent job here.’

  ‘But—’

  At that, Béla’s last remaining nerve, already painfully frayed, decides to snap.

  ‘Géza! I am ordering you! Stay here. Subdue Mrs Kiss, and take her to the church. Then go and collect Mrs Nagy and Mrs Gyulai and take them to the church. I’ll meet you there.’

  For a moment, their eyes lock, Béla’s wide with feigned innocence, Géza’s narrowed with suspicion. Then Orsolya Kiss gives a final, desperate lurch, like a landed fish, demanding Géza’s full attention, and Béla slips away.

  He doesn’t knock this time, just leaps up the steps three at a time and pushes open the door, and …

  ‘Ah,’ says Sari. She is holding Rózsi with her right hand, she has a cloth bag in her left, and looks remarkably calm, all things considered. ‘Ah,’ she says again. ‘Well. It was worth a try.’

  For a moment he can’t summon any words at all, and then only banalities. ‘We’ve arrested Mrs Nagy, Mrs Gyulai, and Mrs Kiss,’ he says lamely.

  She nods, smiling. ‘Well, that’s something, at least. They’ll probably be able to give you some other names – I doubt they’ll need much persuasion, really.’

  ‘Sari,’ he says, tasting her first name for the first time. Bittersweet, it stops up his throat and he can’t go on. Instead, wordless, he tosses her the small leather pouch he has in his right hand.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asks, puzzled, and he makes an aggravated gesture with his hands: open it. She does. Pearls, gold jewellery, money. She suppresses a gasp, biting her lip swiftly, and then looks up at him through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Orsolya?’ she asks, and he nods. She takes a deep breath, once, twice. ‘Why?’

  Finally, he finds words. ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he says, damning his voice for trembling, and then relents. ‘You said that you needed money. To get to the city.’

  She shuts her eyes for a moment, and Béla wonders whether this is the first genuine emotion he’s seen pass over her face. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘I hate myself for doing this,’ he bursts out. It’s true; he’s not sure whether he hates himself or her more. He used to be proud of his behaviour, particularly with regard to his job. He used to be proud of his abil
ity to read people. Now he questions everything. There’s a smile on her face that seems faintly sympathetic, but how can he possibly start to interpret her?

  ‘I’m sorry for that.’ She flicks her eyes nervously to the door.

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s time. Géza is taking the other three down to the church.’

  ‘Very well.’ She trains her implacable eyes on his face, anticipating the question before he asks it.

  ‘How did this all happen? Why did you …?’ he can’t finish the sentence. There’s no way he can sum up all he feels, or even if he could, there’s no way that he could bring himself to say it to her: how could a woman like you, a woman I thought I could love, have done all of this?

  She seems to understand though, and raises an eyebrow. ‘I chose to put myself first,’ she says simply. ‘Myself and my child. Just as you’ve chosen to help me. You probably want to hear that I was treated badly by my fiancé, some nice, neat, explicable reason why I’ve done the things I’ve done. It’s true.He did treat me badly. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is what I chose to do about it. I was tired of just letting things happen to me, and I imagine that many of the other women here feel the same way.’

  She hefts the bag in her left hand. ‘And now we’ve got to go. Judit—’

  Béla turns. He hadn’t even noticed the old woman sitting there, grinning her manipulative grin, hands neatly folded in her lap.

  ‘Ha!’ she crows, seeing his surprise. ‘I’m the consolation prize. As a matter of fact, I was the one who gave Sari poison in the first place, so really, I’m more culpable in all of this than she is. Not a bad bargain, me for her, wouldn’t you say?’

  She turns away before he can offer an answer, fixing Sari with a gimlet stare. ‘Get going, both of you,’ she says roughly. ‘And for the devil’s sake, be careful.’

  Sari nods once, and Rózsi stretches out a hand to Judit, who grips it fiercely before letting it go. The two of them move towards the back steps, and Sari gives Béla one last glance. ‘For what it’s worth,’ she says, ‘I would have found this all a whole lot easier if I didn’t genuinely like you.’

  You’ve got to take consolation where you can find it, Béla tells himself. He watches out the window as Sari and Rózsi cross the back garden, as Sari lifts Rózsi over the fence and follows her, as they move swiftly towards the wood, staying carefully in the shadow of the houses. Their silhouettes get smaller and smaller, vulnerable stick-figures against the vastness of the plain. Béla shudders, and jumps when Judit puts her gnarled claw on his shoulder, in a gesture evidently meant to be comforting. He hadn’t even noticed her move beside him.

  ‘They’ll be all right,’ she says. ‘Don’t you worry about them. They’ll be just fine.’

  Together, they stand and watch until the tiny shadows of Sari and Rózsi are swallowed up by the large, looming shadow of the woods.

  ‘Right then,’ Judit says, her voice bright and brittle. ‘Let’s go.’

  EPILOGUE

  I watched from the woods, when they went to get men from the nearby villages to guard over the church, while Géza made more arrests, and Béla went to Város for reinforcements. They looked for me, naturally, combed the forest, but that forest has been my playground since I could walk; I know every leaf and every tree, and evasion was simple. There were twenty-five women in the end, led away from the village in a way that was almost processional, and I heard afterwards that eight were hanged. I never heard which eight. I hope that Judit was right when she guessed that she’d be dead before she stood on the gallows.

  Now, we walk. My main aim is to put as many miles between ourselves and Falucska as possible. My secondary aim is not to get caught, which involves detours and decoys and occasional backtracking, but generally we walk west. I know this plain like the back of my hand, the inside of my own eyelids; that’s how I’m able to move through it without being seen, and that’s why I want to leave it as far behind as possible. I’m sick of the whishawhisha of dry grass in the wind, the ominous smudge of a pine wood at night, the fat, complacent moon. I tell Rózsi that we’re ready for somewhere warm and fragrant. Maybe somewhere by the sea. She doesn’t answer, but sometimes she smiles. She knows, as well as I do, that we’ll be all right.

  We walk west, tracing our steps in the deepening snow.