by Lana Popovic
The lady shrugs, pursing her lips dismissively. “Small minds. The fault lies with them, not you.”
“Perhaps, but the end result is the same,” I forge on, gaining in boldness. “And then the first night I came here, I slept in the stables, as I told you. When I woke, the stable boy was atop me. Had I not had a knife to fend him off, he might have forced himself on me. That’s—That is desire, isn’t it?” I shudder convulsively, like a horse twitching flies off its withers. “And I want no part of it.”
She nods slowly, pensively, sinking down into her vanity chair. Without her asking, I come to my knees by her feet. She doesn’t seem perturbed to learn of the stable boy’s advances, I note, nor my possession of a knife. Like me, she knows such things happen far, far more often than they should.
“I see your meaning,” she says thoughtfully. “And I can understand how, given your circumstances, you failed to find that coin’s other side. But I disagree with your gist, which, if I understand aright, is that the liability of your beauty outweighs its worth as an asset.”
She arches an eyebrow at me, seeking confirmation. I nod, because that is exactly what I meant.
“Everything I know, I learned at my mother’s knee, much the same as you,” she says. “Your face, she always told me, is your greatest asset, a weapon that you wield. And what she taught me of herbs was not to heal—but rather how to exert and magnify the little force a woman is granted in this world.”
“My lady?” I ask, not understanding. What could be a greater asset, I think, than knowing how to stitch a wound together, or which herbs can be used to staunch the flow of blood?
“Cosmetics,” she supplies after a pause. “How to redden lips and darken eyes subtly, without looking like a common trull. Which oils clear your skin when it blemishes, which remedies keep it supple when it threatens to sag. For instance, goat’s blood mingled with milk has an especially potent effect when applied to the face.”
She laughs a little at my disconcerted expression, a silvery chime. “What a lot of useless bunk, you’re thinking. Such vain, silly nonsense. I can see why you would think so—and yet, how do you think I keep my lands, Anna, when my husband is away? What weapon have I against those avaricious dukes I told you of, when I cannot heft a sword or lance, or even sit a horse properly when hampered with skirts?” Her face hardens like sap snapping into amber, and she leans close enough that her breath sweeps across my face, smelling of caraway seeds and mint. “My charm, my wit, my beauty—they are what I have. All I have, to secure my place. Without them I am nothing. Already a ghost.”
I lean back, digesting what she has told me, marveling again at how oddly similar we are despite the gulf of birth that lies between us. Just like I do for me and my family, she does what she must, for herself and the vassals in her estates.
“I understand, my lady,” I say slowly. “At least, I think I do. Unlike me, you cannot rely on your hands—it would be too lowly, not befitting of your rank. So you make other things into your tools.”
“Yes!” she crows triumphantly, clasping her hands with pleasure. “What a quick study you are, so swift to understand. You are like a gift—my own little sage, delivered to me by the wings of fate. How have I even done without you for so long?”
I can feel my cheeks bloom with pleasure, even before she trails appreciative knuckles down the left side of my face. “Thank you, my lady.”
“Oh, no, no,” she tuts, gathering my hands in hers. “If we are to be as close as I wish us to be—you must call me Elizabeth.”
Chapter Ten
The Spheres and the Shards
For the next week, the countess—Elizabeth, as she insists that I call her, claiming that her name has never sounded so sweet on another’s tongue—summons me each day to help her dress. I do so in darkness, relieved only by the pools of light shed by the candelabra that crouch around the room; Elizabeth prefers to keep her curtains drawn late into the day, allowing barely any sunlight to penetrate her chambers. Too much exposure will only mar her skin, she says, wrinkling her before her time. As much as I detest the cellars’ murky depths, I find that, up here with her, I hardly mind the absence of light. With the dark drawn close around us, she shares her breakfast with me, an impossibly indulgent array of sweet porridge, candied cherries, and eggs poached so gently they burst into a golden flood of yolk as soon as they’re prodded with a fork. My wonder is tempered by guilt at each new delicacy I try; how Klara would love the unabashed richness of the yolk, I think each time, or the tart sweetness of the cherry cakes.
But I find solace in the coin I send back home, and Elizabeth’s assurance that my salary will only grow. And though I almost do not dare extend my hopes so far, I cannot help but think that perhaps, if I please the lady, she might even allow my sister to visit us.
Each day, she reads to me by the fire, sometimes for hours. I love to hear her speak in other languages, and she indulges me by reading selections from the Hippocratic Collection in the original Greek before translating it for me. I don’t believe a word of these teachings—hot and dry temperaments, what utter rot, almost as worthless as bloodletting and leeches—but I love that I am learning what she knows, beginning to understand her thoughts. And I haven’t seen a trace of the cruelty that Krisztina accuses her of. Merely kindness and a curious, attentive nature; a tart, ready wit; and an insatiable mind. I particularly enjoy hearing her read Aristotle and his treatise on the heavens, her avid interest in what rules the skies. I lean back on my elbows and close my eyes as she reads of celestial bodies made of imperishable aether, impervious and flawless as they transcribe circles around our earth.
Whether Aristotle believed that the stars hold sway over our human hearts, I am still not sure, but Elizabeth seems to think they do.
“Do they not sound so wondrous, his crystal spheres and wandering stars?” she muses as we sprawl together over the bearskin in front of her fireplace. “Charting the courses that our own souls strive to follow. Stitching us together from above, determining our destinies.” She casts a half smile at me, faint and dreamy. “Do we not feel somehow fated, you and I?”
“Is that why you called me your cousin, to your lord husband?” I ask her, my cheeks burning with the presumption of saying so aloud. “Because you feel that we are—destined to be close?”
“It’s because I don’t want him touching you, should he have a mind to do so,” she replies sharply, reaching out to trace the curve of my fire-flushed cheek. Nothing pleases her more than the thinness of my skin, how readily it reveals the activity beneath. “He thinks all our servants belong to him, to do with as he pleases. And yes—also because it feels true, does it not? You feel like my blood already, perhaps like a sister. My newfound kin, as if our hearts have yearned for each other long before we met.”
“I have a sister as well,” I tell her. “But what I feel for her is not the same.”
“No?” she asks indulgently. “And what do you feel for her?”
I think on it for a moment, resting my chin on my fist. “We are so similar that sometimes looking at her feels like peering into a mirror. Just as it is with you and Gabor, perhaps. She feels like my own younger self. More tender, sweeter, mostly untouched by the world’s cruelties. And when I look at her . . . the urge to protect her trumps all else.”
“Is she truly so like you, then?” Elizabeth marvels. “It seems improbable for two of you to grace this world.”
“She is her own person, of course. Quieter than me, and more biddable, always eager to please. I call her my dandelion.” A smile skates across my lips as I consider Klara, all her hidden facets. “But she’s more mischievous as well. She plays such clever tricks on our three brothers, confounding them absolutely, and they are never any the wiser for it. They do not even think to look to her when searching for the culprit, instead feuding among themselves.”
“I’m sure you could pull a trick or two yourself,” Elizabeth teases, dimpling at me. “Had you a mind.”
&
nbsp; “A mind, and a need,” I add. “I’m not given to such mischief for the sheer fun of it, as she is.”
“Well, she sounds glorious,” my companion pronounces, reaching out to trace the slope of my nose with a light fingertip. “And if you prize her so highly, I hope to meet her one day.”
When she instructs me to return the next morning with all my belongings, so that I may sleep on a pallet by the foot of her bed as her chambermaid, I can scarcely believe my own good fortune. I will be receiving two forints each month, just as she originally promised.
Finally, my family will have nothing to fear from the encroaching winter.
I barely sleep that last night in the scullery, feeling like I have swallowed stars, brimming with their fiery aether. When I wake the next day and begin gathering my things from the wooden chest beneath my pallet, I already know my departure won’t be met kindly. The mutterings have grown in volume each day that I am called upstairs, though none have challenged me to my face. But they call me a witch when they think I can’t hear them, whispering behind their hands. They think I’ve compelled the countess, caught her in my thrall. Somehow forced her to dredge me up from the muck of the scullery and stitch me to her side.
If there is a thrall, I wasn’t the one who cast it.
I can feel all their eyes on me, but I don’t care, not with my heart swelling inside me like the sun vaulting over dawn’s horizon. Me, the Countess Báthory’s new chambermaid. Me, Anna Darvulia, born in a village so small it wasn’t even worth a name. Me, whose only lot would have been to catch babies like my mother, and eventually grow fat with them myself.
Instead, I’m here; I’m hers. And now that I’ve steeped in the fragrant darkness of Elizabeth’s chambers, I’ll never let myself sink back to these rancid depths.
Krisztina watches me fold my smocks, her green eyes baleful. “Won’t you tell us all about it, Anna the Cunning, your new milk-and-honey life?” Krisztina finally spits when she can no longer restrain herself. Her thorny tongue is now bent toward me, as if I’ve somehow betrayed her, despite all I’ve done for her health. The thoughtless expanse of her ingratitude astonishes me. “How does our lady’s newest lap cat spend her days? Tell us, does she have you purr for her while she reads to you from her wicked books? Do you lick cream from her cupped palms?”
“Krisztina,” Ilona chides, darting a glance at me. “Let her be. Anna has no choice in it, and you know you’d be up there in a whit yourself if the lady had wanted you.”
“I wouldn’t,” Krisztina retorts coldly. “That snake doesn’t even know my name, and I pray she never learns it. Besides, I don’t look the part, not like our Anna, with her corn-silk hair and twilight eyes. Half a lady herself already. And I’m no—”
I cut her off before she says it out loud. They can think what they want of me, but I won’t let them speak brashly, breathe words like “witch” out into the wind, where the devil himself can snatch them. “Then I suppose you have nothing to fear,” I snap, though I’d promised myself I’d be gracious with them.
“All of us have something to fear, from her,” old Katalin intones from her spot in the shadows. “You’d do well to remember it, Anna. Whatever it is she truly wants from you.”
I can’t listen to them any longer. They seethe with envy, boil with it. Perhaps I would, too, if I were them. If she hadn’t chosen me.
But she has. I don’t belong down here, not anymore, and I’m not bound to listen to their welling poison.
Silent, I gather up the rest of my smocks and ball them carelessly into my cloth satchel. Then I leave this dank pit behind me, and step out onto the stairs that lead only up.
It’s early yet, hours before Elizabeth likes to rise. So I head outside into the crisp November morning, my breath rising above me like fog as I gather milk thistle and motherwort to replenish my supply. I think of Elizabeth as I cut them with my little sickle knife, and feel the tugging of the still-invisible waxing moon in the velvety sky.
The midwife’s sight has been stirring in me of late, uncurling and stretching like a waking cat.
I never saw that shadowy opposite of glow in a person, not before I met Elizabeth. But now, when I close my eyes and look at her, I can almost see it, writhing like smoke all around her silhouette. I feel that same dark pull that the moon exerts, and I surge toward her helpless, like the tide.
Maybe they’re right, when they call me a witch. After all, it’s only a fearful name devised by the rabbit-hearted for what truly I am—Elizabeth’s little sage, delivered unto her by the stars.
Thinking of her makes me eager, and I rush back inside, fairly trotting up the tower steps that lead to her chambers. Outside her door, the faintest sound draws me up short. It’s both muffled and high-pitched like a mewl, a still-blind kitten crying for its mother.
Her door is heavy but well oiled, and it doesn’t so much as squeak when I crack it open, just enough to see. Her bed is empty; so is her plush settee, and her vanity. But there are flowers strewn across the floor, crushed into the bearskin rug and scattered over the stones. A vase lies shattered among them, in a winking spill of shards.
“What did you think, hmmm? Tell me again. That because I have so many, it would not matter? That maybe I would not even notice?”
At the sound of Elizabeth’s voice, my mouth goes dry. It’s the same as always on the surface, rich and low and creamy-sweet. But beneath, there’s a vicious, cutting rasp, a chill that slithers like shifting scales. I’ve never heard her like this before, but it’s so familiar all the same. As if this is the voice that lives within her voice, the one that always lurks beneath.
My skin bursts into gooseflesh, from my nape to my soles, and for the first time I know why Krisztina calls her a snake.
“No,” someone whimpers back. “I swear, my lady, it was an accident. I was putting a shine on it, and it—it slipped through my fingers—”
I crane my neck to glimpse farther, past the door—and then I see them both. Ilona, sweet-faced, cheery Ilona—so like my dandelion sister—kneels on the floor, her dun skirts hiked up so that her legs are bare. Why is she even here, I wonder desperately, when sculls have no business in the lady’s chambers? And then I know. She must have come under the pretense of some invented task, in search of me, to let me know there was no ill blood between us. Just as my own sister would have done.
Her face is pale and tear-streaked, and every time she shifts she lets out that awful mewling sound, biting down on her bloodied lip. Because she’s kneeling on the shattered remains of the vase; I can see where they’ve bitten into her skin, thin scarlet rivulets dripping onto the polished stones. Behind her, Elizabeth stands with one slim hand on Ilona’s shoulder. Pressing, pushing, bearing down, grinding Ilona’s bare knees harder into the shards.
Her face is avid, almost gleeful with delight. More rapt than I’ve ever seen, even when she reads her beloved books to me.
“It sounds as if your fingers are more trouble than they’re worth, doesn’t it, you clumsy little sow?” Elizabeth is smiling now, dimpled and wide, so sweet I can’t understand how these barbed words fit with her face. “But don’t fret, for it will be a very simple fix. I’ll fetch my pruning scissors, the heavy ones—then you’ll give me your hands, and snip snip snip!”
Ilona’s face turns ashen with terror, and I can’t help it. A gasp hitches in my throat.
Elizabeth’s head snaps up. Her eyes fly to mine, slitting narrow and dangerous. I should turn and run, but it’s far too late; I can’t pretend that I haven’t seen. That I haven’t heard.
The change that rushes over her is so sudden, it’s like I can see her molting. Her face sheds that vicious elation as if it had never existed, and she becomes who she always is. The Elizabeth I’ve come to know.
“Anna!” she calls merrily, holding out a hand to me. “Ilona did the silliest thing, come see. She broke Ferenc’s vase—his best one, the one his mother gave us as our wedding gift.”
Biting on the inside of m
y cheek, I step warily in, terrified that I will tread on broken porcelain, or show my fear, or do anything to make this worse. I stand like a statue, trying to quell my trembling as Elizabeth sweeps over to me, ignoring the crunch beneath her slippered feet. She takes my icy hand and clasps it tight between both of hers, dry and very warm, like embers.
“Oh, why that face?” she exclaims, peering into my eyes. Hers are so black and deep, so shiningly inviting, that I fear I may inadvertently tumble into them and be somehow lost. “You did not—You do not actually think I was going to cut this silly little slattern’s fingers off, did you?”
“I . . .” I can’t finish, my heart is so slick in my throat. It cuts at me to hear her call Ilona such names, but I don’t know what to say in her defense. I can’t even think properly, not with such dread crouching inside me like a poisonous toad. Do I believe her? Dare I risk her displeasure, maybe even her wrath, by protecting my friend?
“Oh, Anna . . .” Elizabeth bursts into ringing peals of laughter, lifting a hand to graze her knuckles down my cheek. “What nonsense. She broke a vase, a precious one; she needed to be taught a sharp lesson, that is all. And fear teaches caution like nothing else.”
She drops my hands and comes closer, running pale strands of my hair through her fingers, like she might with a pet. I can hear Krisztina’s mocking “lap cat” echoing in the hollow caverns of my head. “You believe me, don’t you, my Anna?” she says glibly, so near I can feel the soft brush of her breath fan over my lips. “That I only meant to teach her to be better?”
I nod, not trusting my own pounding heart. I can’t believe she would have done it. And yet, I also can’t forget her face, that all-consuming rapture. Then there’s the caution in her eyes, a serpentine wariness I’ve never seen before.
I have a sudden, lurching feeling that if I don’t lie—and don’t lie well—I will find fangs buried in my throat.
