by Lana Popovic
I lower myself cautiously down next to my mother, taking her hands into my lap.
“What’s happened?” I ask when she raises wide eyes to me, glassy with tears like a fancy doll’s, the pupils so wide they blacken her vivid irises into nothing. Panic bucks inside me again, and I think of tattered webs and skeletons huddled in nests. When she dips her head, silent, I suppress a wild urge to take her by the shoulders and give her a solid shake. “Mama, what is wrong, tell me!”
“Your father,” she says almost dreamily, her eyes flitting over my shoulder as if she sees something in the shadows beyond the dangling strings of peppers and herbs strung from our buckling rafters. “He is dead.”
Dead. Father, dead.
The reality, the truth of it, collides into me as though I’ve run into a tree trunk and knocked the wind straight out of myself. Though he lived only this morning, I abruptly know it’s true as I know the lines of my own face, and I feel a terrible sear of relief that we will no longer suffer his rages, the daily squalls of his temper. Then I am overcome by a conviction, like the opposite of foreboding, that precisely this was fated to pass. The entirety of this day has somehow conspired to warn me, from the death nest with its six skeletons to the spider’s web, as if I could have forestalled all of this somehow. But it’s only in hindsight that I see the signs for what they were—portents strung together by some powerful hand, leading me onward to this very moment.
I cross myself by rote, with trembling fingers. While I do not think God bothers with our pleas, I believe in the devil’s work. And right now, it feels dreadfully close at hand.
“H-how?” I ask hoarsely.
“He was shodding a horse for a passing traveler,” she says, a corner of her mouth twitching to the side as if yanked. “The horse was skittish, took a fright and kicked him. It—it crushed his skull. Struck him square in the face, burst out his eyes like jellies, it was—”
“But why?” I ask hastily, before she can describe more of the grotesquery in front of my siblings. Klara has already clapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes huge and welling above it. “Father is not—was not—a farrier. Why did he not send the man to Antal?”
“I don’t know,” she replies, just above a whisper. “Maybe the man did not wish to wait, and Istvan thought it easy coin? Andras had come home to fetch their lunch, and when he returned to the smithy . . . it was already done. The traveler stayed only long enough to tell him what had befallen Istvan, he did not even . . .” She heaves a shuddering sigh, her face collapsing like a sinkhole into grief and helpless fury. “He did not even see Andras home, though my boy could barely stand when he rushed back to fetch me!”
I look to my oldest brother, clammy-faced with a tinge of green under his eyes. Normally he would mock me for it, but he does not squirm away when I reach out and sweep his damp hair from his face as I did when he was only a babe. Instead he leans into my touch, his lips trembling. “Was it . . .” A black, terrible suspicion crawls up my throat like a spider, threatening to choke me. “Was it Janos, Andras? The man from this morning? Was it his horse that Father shod?”
Andras shakes his head, his hand rising to hover in front of his mouth. He fidgets with his bottom lip, and for a moment I wonder if he will suck his grubby thumb as he did for so many years, so long that he misaligned his two front teeth. “No,” he says, adamant, with a firm shake of his head. “This was a different man. Tall but scrawny, with a strange face.” His own screws up with bemusement, a tinge of revulsion. “Almost pretty. Like a lady’s, but not.”
While I puzzle over this, mother collapses against my side as if her bones have dissolved all at once. “What will we do, Anna?” she keens into my shoulder, reaching for my arms with her gnarled, pitiful hands. “How will we fare when winter comes, without the coin from the smithy?”
“What will we eat?” Balint wails, having retained firm hold of his priorities. It nearly, but not quite, stirs me to smile despite myself. “We will be hungry!”
“We will not,” I counter firmly. My mind has been whirling, a leaf tossed about by the ferocious winds of fortune, but it settles all at once. Peter’s offer of marriage flares up for one last, hopeful moment before I stamp it to cinders under my heel. No matter how well he loves me, I cannot burden my best friend with six more mouths to feed, not without a dowry; such a strain would rupture even the most enduring of friendships. Even if I could bring myself to do it, I find I do not wish to wed him, not even now.
And even if I redouble my efforts, seek the sick beyond our village, I cannot feed all of us by myself.
Not as the midwife’s daughter, anyway.
But as a lady’s chambermaid, perhaps I could.
“I will go to the countess,” I say, unwavering. “I’ll leave on the morrow.”
Chapter Five
The Journey and the Gauntlet
Klara’s plaintive entreaties follow me out onto the road. “Please don’t go, Anna,” she’d begged before I set out that morning, her little face wretched with tears. “Please do not leave me, nővér, I love you!”
“I’ll be back, dandelion,” I’d soothed past the lump in my own throat, hugging her tight against my midriff. I love her pet name for “big sister,” but today it claws cruelly at my heart. “Before you know it, and with plenty of coin for bread and cheese and roast chickens.”
My mother had embraced me, too, sliding her hand over my braid. “Will you be all right catching babies without me, what with your hands?” I’d whispered low into her ear so my sister wouldn’t hear my concern. “I wouldn’t want you to lose that coin, too.”
“I’ll take Magdalena’s middle daughter as an apprentice, Annacska, don’t fret,” she’d murmured back. “She won’t fill your shoes, but she’s done well enough before when we’ve called on her for help. And you take care at the keep, my sweet. If anything is amiss, anything at all, come back to us, do you hear? We’ll find some other way.”
Except there was no other way, I thought grimly, even as I nodded and made her an empty promise to ease her mind.
There was only me.
Now I walk with my midwife’s bag bumping against my hip, a cloth satchel slung over my shoulder, and a small knife tucked into my boot. Fortunately the terrain is flat, as most of Hungary is; a land held in God’s own green palm, as people say. It certainly makes it easier to foresee danger coming, without any need for omens. Whenever I hear the rattle of carts and thump of hooves approaching, kicking up dust at the horizon, I melt out of sight like a snake into the roadside undergrowth. I know what may befall a woman traveling alone, and even with my sharp little companion at hand I see no reason to tempt fate. And though the sky threatens rain, a roiling black bank of clouds marching across the blue like an invading army, none falls as I walk.
Without pounding sun, storm, or skulking footpads to stall me, I make good time even with my caution. Still, I do not reach the keep until well after dusk, as the dregs of the day deepen into night. The temperature drops precipitously once the sun has sunk. It leaves the eve brittle-bright with cold, as if a slim pane of ice has been laid across the sky to sharpen the outlines of the stars and moon, bring them into finely cut focus. I feel as if I could crack it open by reaching up and tapping a fingernail against it. Bring it all tumbling to the ground in a shower of glittering shards.
Such silly thoughts, I chide myself as I hasten across the castle bridge that leads to the Nadasdy castle. As if a creature small as me could be big enough to break the sky.
In daylight, the keep is sprawling and lovely, its square, whitewashed towers snowy and roofed with a rich red. I remember its splendor from the one time I came here with my mother, to tend to one of the candlers. At night, I find it much less enticing. I have not dared rest while on the road, and now I am so tired that my exhaustion seems to be playing tricks on my sight. The keep rears up before me like something wicked, a beast lying in wait. Firelight glimmers behind the dark windows, but in my fatigue, I find an infernal tinge to thi
s inner glow. Even the thick copse of trees all around, looming like sentinels, whisper of menace.
Worst of all, there is an unsettling, illusory flatness to the keep. The more I look at it, the more it seems like a mirror image. A reflection rather than something real.
Perhaps if I lifted my hand, I think, I would see myself already in one of the windows.
Already inside the belly of the beast.
“Get a hold of yourself, Anna, for God’s sake,” I hiss to myself under my breath, reaching up to pinch my cheek. “There is nothing here to fear!”
When I approach the gate tower, heart still rampaging in my chest, I find the great wooden door already bolted for the night. No one answers my knock. I step back, perplexed; it had not even occurred to me that I might not be able to gain entry once I arrived. Visions begin to swarm of a night spent outside in the biting cold. It’s much too late to set out for home, and I can’t sleep out here, with no shelter. I’ll freeze long before morning, and tomorrow they’ll find me, blue-lipped and glass-eyed, my lifeless flesh encased with ice, like a child’s discarded doll.
There is no need to panic yet, I tell myself, as if I have not already begun to quail. Perhaps the castle is preoccupied with dinner, and I need merely wait.
So I settle in, huddling by the door in the hope of catching a balmy waft through the cracks. I try to warm myself with thoughts of heat; sated honeybees drifting lazily over fat and drooping flowers, the thick, dizzy warmth of a high summer day. But hours pass, and no one comes. I’m so frozen through, my hands and feet numb and my nose dripping salt, that the last measure of decorum deserts me, giving way to a scorching flush of panic almost welcome for its mimicry of heat. Abandoning restraint, I fling myself at the door, battering it with my fists.
“Hello!” I cry, wincing at the high-pitched despair in my voice. I sound like a fretful child, but I’m unable to contain it. Great gusts of my breath billow around me. So cold, so cold, so cold beats in my mind like a second, frigid heart. “Is anyone there? Will you let me in? The countess has called for me, and I, I’m so cold, I’ll catch my death out here, please . . .”
Finally, when my hands are bruised to tenderness from pounding, I hear the groan of the bolt being lifted, the scrape of the wood against the iron brackets. I step back, half tripping over my own numb feet, as the door swings outward to reveal a beetle-browed guard with lank scraggles of graying hair. He peers at me churlishly, glowering over a harelip.
“What d’you want at this hour, girl, with your ungodly racket?” he demands, spitting by my feet. “The castle’s sleeping, as are all decent folk.”
I’m so weak with relief that my entire body fractures into trembling. My teeth chatter so hard I can barely force the words through them. “I have c-c-come to be the l-lady’s chambermaid,” I stutter, hugging myself. “Sh-sh-she has summoned me, and I arrived earlier, b-b-b-but no one has come for me. Did you not h-h-h-hear me knocking?”
He surveys me a moment longer with flat, impervious eyes, and I am stricken with the sudden conviction that he will turn me away. If he does, I am dead. I will not survive this night.
“Fine, then,” he says grudgingly, without even acknowledging my question. “I’ll take you to the stables.”
My brow knits in confusion as I follow him into the blissful, fleeting heat of the gate tower and then back outside into the courtyard. “The st-stables?” I ask, willing my ungainly lips to thaw. “But, sh-shouldn’t I meet the steward? Or the keeper of house, if not the lady herself?”
“They’re all abed,” he replies, leading me across the flagstones. “The lady’s retired early, and given orders that all others at the keep should hie to their own beds after their meals. None are awake to see to you, so the stables it shall be.”
“But why?” I ask, still baffled. “Is the lady ill?”
“‘But why?’” he mimics, in a whining tone. “Jesus wept, girl. The hell should I know why the lady does as she does? Because it pleased her, I reckon. Now, here we are. M’lady’s quarters for the evening.”
He shoves me inside none too gently, then turns on his heel and marches back across the courtyard. I stand for a moment, squinting in the pervasive darkness; there are no lanterns or candles inside the stable, of course, nothing but the soft whistling of horses’ breath, their nickers, and the shift of hooves. But it is infinitely warmer in here than outside, and smells comfortingly of the animals’ sweet breath and musky coats. More by touch than by sight, I find my way to the rear, behind the last stall. There I settle myself against a stack of hay bales, wrapped up in my cape with my belongings tucked behind me, where no one can steal them from me in my sleep.
I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep almost as soon as my eyes slide closed. But a final thought follows me under, like a beacon glowing against the clotted dark behind my eyelids.
Could the countess have sent the entire keep to bed for one reason only—to ensure that I would be shut out when I came to beg admittance a day later than summoned? As I succumb to sleep, I can only think that the answer must be yes: She meant for me to suffer for making her wait. And she intended to test my resolve, ascertain if I am fit to serve her.
Tomorrow, I must show her that I am.
The next morning, I wake to hot breath in my face.
In my stupor, I think it must be a horse. Befuddled, I swipe my hand up to push it away—my eyes flying open when my palm encounters warm and unmistakably human flesh.
A freckled face hangs above me, leering. “Morning, little pudding,” the lout says, catching me by the wrist. “What a glad surprise, finding a beauty like you among my beasties. Can’t say I was expecting you to wake quite so eager to caress me, but—”
In a flash, I draw my leg up and reach into my boot. Before he can so much as stir, he finds the point of my dagger poised beneath the soft flesh of his chin. The knife is a gift from Peter, who also made sure I would not lack the skills to use it. I send a silent thought of gratitude in his direction.
“Get off me,” I snap through gritted teeth as the stablehand’s eyes grow wide. “Before I carve out your foul tongue.”
He hesitates, muddy dark eyes shifting craftily between mine for a moment longer than is my liking. Clenching my jaw, I press the point up until it pierces the taut surface of his skin. Braying like a donkey, the boy leaps off me, clutching at his underchin.
“You—you stabbed me!” he accuses, breathless with disbelief, when his hand comes away wet and red. “You vicious little slag!”
“Oh please, it’s no more than a scratch,” I scoff, taking care that my voice does not betray the bucking chaos of my heart. I shift my grip on the knife and brandish it at him, tilting my head in challenge. Be brave, I urge myself. Be who you want him to see. “But I will happily gut you, should you lay so much as another finger on me. My father is a butcher, you see. He taught me how to cut.”
The boy’s jutting Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, his eyes flicking between me and the bloodied blade. I’ve always lied well enough, and he is not sure what to believe; the sight of the slight, mostly defenseless girl before his eyes, or the casually murderous intent in my voice. And I see now that he’s barely fifteen, even younger than me. Not quite old enough yet to trust in his instincts, nor his own brute force.
“Take me to the keeper of house,” I order, swiping at him one more time. “Or I will return in the night with my little blade, and make you sorry that you ever thought to touch me.”
Perhaps I mean my threat more than I think I do; perhaps he can tell. In any case, some minutes later I’m standing in the castle’s vast kitchens, by the busy hearth. The stable boy vanished as soon as he brought me here, unwilling to linger near my knife. A legion of cooks and scullions bustle around me, paying me no mind as I gaze, transfixed, at the glistening side of lamb roasting on a spit, the crusty rounds of a dozen loaves of bread baking on their stones among the cinders. The castle cannot possibly need so much, but I assume it’s the lady’s pleasure t
o enjoy a lavish feast every night. So what if most of it is destined to become pig slop. I’m sure the castle sows appreciate the abundance.
“So you’re the girl bloodying stablehands,” a gruff voice croaks behind me. “I assume you’ve come for some purpose beyond such sport?”
I turn and dip into a curtsy. The keeper of house is a mountain of a woman, with steely hair bound up so tight it drags at her temples. A chatelaine encircles her sturdy waist, clinking with keys, scissors, and other little tools suspended on chains. I’ve seen my father make them, and the toolwork on this one is very fine. The lady must prize her if she compensates her well enough to afford such adornments.
“He got only what he deserved, mistress,” I say simply. “He was forward with me. A bit of a lackwit as well. I would not trust him with the care of noble animals, were I in your place.”
The housekeeper’s stern expression does not waver, but the amusement deepens in her eyes. I sense that she likes me, perhaps against her better judgment. “Can’t say as I disagree with you. Boy’s a dreadful dullard, and a ruffian to boot. Unfortunately, the horses’ care isn’t up to me. The keeping of this castle is, however. What business have you here?”
“The Lady Báthory wants me for her chambermaid,” I reply. “She called me here.”
The housekeeper’s eyes flash with something indecipherable, and her thin lips part, as if she wishes to say something before changing her mind. Then she gives a brisk shake of her head. “No such position is open.”
I stare at her, baffled. “She summoned me only two days past! Her manservant Janos came to fetch me. How can it not be open?”
She shrugs, and again there is that odd flicker in her eyes. “If it were, I would know of it—and I do not. Now, be off with you. I’ve duties to attend to.”
I plant my feet and set my jaw. “No, mistress. Beg pardon, but no. There must be some mistake—and I will not be leaving until it is resolved. If you know nothing of it, allow me to speak with the countess herself. Surely . . . surely she will at least grant me an audience.”
