The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  Dagny cried, “Someone yelled ‘man overboard!’ Where is Tomaj? Who’s overboard?”

  “Broadhecker!” Youx shouted. “Tell them not to lower the boat until we’re well round!”

  Broadhecker growled, “Aye!” and shook Dagny some more for good measure before sloshing off to the longboat.

  She wended her way to the wheel, where Hector bawled, “She’s gaining sternway—we might heave into them!”

  “Get to the boat! Keep an eye on him—you’re the signalman!” Youx gave Hector a powerful shove with his free arm, and the youth flailed away from the wheel, skidding down the deck toward the ladder. Cupping a hand to his mouth, Youx yelled, “Tell me what you see!” His dark Gallic eyes flashed at Dagny. “Get below, woman!”

  “Who went overboard?”

  Youx only jutted his lower jaw out, the picture of the salty quartermaster, face weathered by sun and wind.

  She would get no answers here. Descending the ladder, it was a simple thing to wait for the next scend to slide her along the deck, allowing the wind to buoy her up, until she slapped against the gunwale, all air painfully expressed from her lungs.

  “Dagny!” Hector cried, at her side. “Get below! We don’t want to risk losing you, too! Go on, get out of here!”

  “Who went overboard?”

  Hector’s eyes flashed furiously at her, but he also refused to answer her, turning his face back to the sea. It seemed near every hand now lined the gunwale, screaming various orders.

  “There she blows!”

  “That’s the way to go! Bear a hand!”

  “Steady, Stormy!”

  “Pull! Pull like vengeance!”

  Stormalong swam furiously about ten yards off amidships, her drenched bronze head a curious speck rising and falling with the gigantic swells. Her teeth flashed as she battled toward the hull, a strip of someone’s shirt in her mouth, three or four life buoys bobbing uselessly against the hull.

  “Who is that?” Dagny screamed. “Who is Stormalong pulling?”

  Zaleski slammed against them, wrapping an arm around Dagny’s shoulders, and tearing Hector from the gunwale with the other. “Tell Youx it’s pointless to lower the boat!” he shouted.

  Hector bawled, “It were the Cap’n’s last order, before he—”

  “We’re casting the fishing nets that Stormalong’s accustomed to! Every last man jack is willing to get into the boat, but I’ll not risk it.” He shouted more gently into Dagny’s ear. “You must get below. I’ll not be responsible for—”

  “You’re the fourth person who’s told me that, and I won’t go below until—”

  The dog reached the hull, or the ship had bumped into the dog, and Stormalong struggled frantically, scrabbling her paws and legs to gain a footing in the net. Hoisting herself onto the gunwale and swaying by a shroud, Dagny saw the dog dragging a torso from the water.

  Sal.

  Shoving Zaleski away, Dagny jumped to the deck and dashed to where the crew had cast the net over the side.

  She clambered back onto the gunwale, viciously elbowing aside a few hands. “Stormalong! Come, girl, come! Good girl!” So many hands had gone larboard it seemed their weight was heeling the ship, and Stormalong and Sal would be sucked under the keel at any moment. “Sal! Sal! Grab the net! Wake up! It’s me, Dagny, your sister! Grab the net!”

  A sudden spate of water sent Dagny sprawling on her behind off the gunwale. She swung from the shroud, seeing only bare poles above. She whirled freely until someone clutched her hips and stayed her. Uncaring who her savior was, she raised herself up tall in time to see a wave recede from the hull. Zaleski had clambered down the precarious net, twirling and buffeted about by the wind, unfurling it and straightening it properly so he could haul Sal into its cradle.

  Suddenly all hands stood still, the only sound the slamming of waves against the hull. Many crowded about Dagny’s feet, silently watching Sal’s rescue. No one spoke now that rescue was certain.

  “Are they leaving Stormalong out there to go get—” a hand started to say, but Broadhecker, somewhere by Dagny’s feet, said, “No. We’re hauling her back up in another net.”

  The hand standing behind Dagny on the gunwale, gripping his own rope, put his face against her cheek and said, “He’s gone, Dagny. He’s too far for Stormalong to try for.”

  “He’s not gone!” Dagny cried to Zeke. “Look! He’s moving his arms, he’s in the net! He’s almost to the top!”

  Indeed, they hauled Sal over the gunwale, and Dagny tried to leap back to the deck to rush to Sal’s side, but Zeke shook her mercilessly.

  “No,” he bellowed, pointing. “Look out there, at the horizon.”

  Oh, what was Zeke talking—

  Someone else bobbed on a ridge of water, some seven mountainous ridges away. Between the curtains of driving rain, Dagny saw the speck of a man as he rose and fell, floating on his back with limbs spread wide, then vanishing into the trench beyond.

  Her brain felt as if it were bleeding inside her skull. Suddenly she had no legs, and had to rely on her weak arms to keep a hold on the rope, though now that didn’t seem to matter so much.

  “Tomaj,” she whispered. “Where is Tomaj?”

  Zeke clutched an arm round her waist and held her fast. “He’s gone, Dagny. There’s no hope. Come, let’s go see Sal. It’s dangerous here.”

  Dagny waited for the next scend. The speck of a man was barely discernible, merely a head bobbing upon the tremendous, powerful arm of sea. All hands were silent, crowding round her feet.

  She dove from the gunwale.

  For a moment she hovered there. For a fraction of a second, serenity cocooned her, as she was happily certain of hitting the water and being propelled deep beneath. It was the only way she could be with Tomaj again, and she was happy. With mouth wide, she sucked water from the sky. The more water she sucked into her lungs, the more assured she was of joining with him.

  That was all she wanted. She had worked too hard, had lived too long, had spent her life saving everyone, and now it was time for her and Tomaj to save each other.

  Enough of this life. I don’t want what it gives me.

  What it gives and takes away …

  But this God had even more heartless plans for her. A dozen hands grasped her in midair, laying themselves over every inch of her body, holding her aloft, lifting her forcibly down to deck.

  Dagny thrashed, howled, bellowed to the pouring sky above. “Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!”

  She screamed that over and over, for hours. She had never screamed so loud and for so long. She fought, tried to kick and punch the men, but their bodies entombed her. She was mummified, and she had to submit to their unwanted salvation. If she could only get out of her body, she could escape them, and join again with Tomaj in the peaceful place where one didn’t have to wake, or eat, or sleep, where they could soar out beyond the planets and have intelligent conversations. But the seamen’s hands kept her firmly sepulchered in this detestable land of the living.

  EPILOGUE

  March 1833

  Rio de Janeiro

  MISS DAGNY,” HECTOR SAID, STANDING JUST INSIDE the door of her planting barn.

  Dagny looked up from the Cattleya luteola orchid she was potting. She had brought it back from a seven-week excursion to the São Francisco River, called “The Brazilian Mississippi,” through the Minas Gerais region where Sal’s gold concessions were. Smiling as she always did at the sight of the strapping Hector, Dagny squinted to see what was in the large jar he clutched. “Sim, meu caro pássaro?” Yes, my dear bird?

  Coming toward her, Hector ducked the beams that sported dozens of hanging baskets stuffed to bursting with ferns, orchids, and vines that traveled the length of the open barn’s rafters. Dagny had ordered it built in the Portuguese pavilion style, with no walls so it didn’t get stuffy inside and she could look out at the garden. Hector deposited the jar on her tabletop.

  “Oh, the constrictor,” Dagny said with appr
oval.

  “I put it in spirits,” Hector reported proudly.

  Dagny examined the boa. Its sleek pantherlike head looked awfully mealy and gray. “It’s right squashed into this jar.”

  Hector shrugged. He had bloomed into such a striking young man, his shoulders nearly rent the shoulders of his white tropical coat, and she had to tilt her head up to look him in the eyes. “Was the biggest jar I could find. Otherwise I’d have to go with terra cotta, and the spirits would seep through the pores and evaporate.”

  “True. I think we can send this fellow back to Philadelphia, don’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I don’t think I got him into the spirits in time. We’ll get another.” Hector stood silently, gazing at the boa’s cloudy eyes. “The Duke of Bragança is here to see you.”

  Dagny sighed. So that was the true reason for Hector’s visit with the snake. João Ávila was a young nephew of the Emperor Pedro I who had abdicated back to Portugal, and had been pursuing Dagny since he first arrived a year ago, but Hector didn’t cotton to him. Hector always scraped his feet against the floor when he stood behind João, and called him a “Newgate solicitor,” which seemed to be a questionable sort of lawyer who assisted criminals in getting out of prison. Dagny hadn’t seen João since returning from the Minas Gerais. “Is someone entertaining him in the sala?”

  “Aye.” Hector pouted. “Sal’s in there, and Ramonja is serving caipirinha, but Ávila’s all agog, just about jumping out of his trousers to see you. I don’t know how long I can keep him out of here.”

  Securing the orchid in the pot as well as she could in a hurry, Dagny went to the pump, where she washed her hands. “And have you seen Isabel since we’ve returned from the hinterlands?” She knew that would get Hector to pipe down. He blushed when Isabel’s name was mentioned, because she was his favorite of all the Rio de Janeiro belles who clamored after him.

  “Aye. Did you not miss me at dinner last night?”

  Dagny’s jaw hung open as she paused with water running over her hand. She remembered to close her jaw, and remarked lightly, “Now that I think of it, you weren’t there. When did you come home? I turned in early, around midnight. A touch of cholera.”

  Hector was probably relieved when the duke came running like lightning into the barn, attired in his most resplendent court uniform. He lived just up the mountain at the emperor’s farm in Petropolis where they were engaged in building a summer palace.

  “Countess Balásházy!” João cried, barreling past Hector as though the youth were a lamp-post. “I could not wait to see you.”

  It was true—after many long weeks in the wilderness, the sight of a civilized man in uniform was refreshing to Dagny’s sore eyes. João had never succeeded in impressing her one way or the other, although he was exceedingly handsome by all standards, with long silken girl’s lashes, curling hair that did not need to be set with an iron, and creamy skin of olive-brown velvet. Dagny smiled when João got down on one knee before her—in a puddle no less, where she’d been watering orchids—and kissed her hand.

  “Nocky boy,” Hector muttered behind him. Fortunately, João didn’t understand Hector’s cant definitions for things.

  “João,” Dagny acknowledged. “We were across the Serra da Estrela, searching for plants and animals, and visiting Salvatore’s gold mines.”

  João stood, his limpid chocolate eyes beaming happiness down on Dagny. “Yes, I was just discussing that with Salvatore. But! That is not why I am here.” With purpose, he led Dagny by the hand out to the garden. He held her hand close to his waist and did not tear his eyes from her, though she could hardly have looked inviting, not having had time to remove her muddy apron. “I have missed you so much. I never imagined it was possible to hurt so much in the heart for another. All day and night I worried you would fall into a chasm, or be eaten by a snake.” They sat on a bench under a stand of blooming Cape Honeysuckle Dagny had brought from Africa, and João didn’t give Dagny her hand back. “My precious one. I apologize for talking to you in such an informal way, but my … what is the word?”

  Lust? Dagny wanted to say.

  “… my excitement has overwhelmed me. I know that I cannot bear to be apart from you for so long—not once again may that happen! So I must ask you, right now, before I let you get away from me again, if you would please to do me the honor of becoming my spouse and joining with the House of Bragança.”

  For the second time that day, Dagny’s jaw dropped. She must have resembled an imbecilic chowderhead, the way spittle glistened on her lower lip.

  She didn’t know what to say. She glanced to Hector, who had followed them outside the pavilion, and had stood there with hands clasped behind his back. Hector now paced with fury, having obviously overheard the inflamed duke’s words. “Prinking prig,” Hector muttered, his red face making the etiolated brightness of his hair stand out angrily.

  “Uh,” Dagny said.

  João joyously brushed her face with the backs of his fingers. “We shall be so happy together. My uncle is very fond of you, and has given me his blessing. We may live in the summer palace when it’s completed.”

  Dagny wrenched her hands from his. “But João! I’m no one of nobility! Don’t you have to marry a duchess or something? And I am a widow, no less! Not to mention, I am older than you.”

  João waved away these reservations with a swipe of his hand. “That is unimportant. You are the widow of an Austrian count”—he persisted in mixing up Hungary with Austria—”and you have as yet no children. You are the most gracious, refined, and educated woman in all of Brazil! You have wide fame as a naturalist. That is acceptable in a wife. Portugal was once on the forefront of the age of discovery, and needs people such as you to grow big again.”

  Yes, and you have only kissed me twice, and very boring it was. How are we to know if we truly love each other? He wasn’t a terribly peppery man, and the kisses had felt like those between friends, chaste and dull. Dagny couldn’t pledge her life to a man who might screw … well, like a nocky boy! “I … I … must think about this, João. We must consult with Ezekiel, after all. He’s my eldest brother, and may not give his consent lightly. Look, here comes Salvatore. Have you mentioned this to him?”

  “Yes, yes, just now, and he said the decision was in your hands.”

  Hector intercepted Sal, who came down the pathway rather wobbly, drunk as a wheelbarrow. Perhaps Sal had been compelled to turn to the caipirinha in order to mull over João’s proposal. Hector shook Sal, whispering passionately at him, but Sal’s slack face gave token that he cared not about the proposal, and he didn’t even appear to be listening to Hector. Indeed, Sal must have tipped the elbow in very rapid fashion, for João had only taken his leave of him ten minutes ago, and already the poor geologist staggered so precariously that Hector had to grasp him under the arms and hold him up.

  “What is it, Sal?” Hector asked.

  “I…” was all Sal mustered.

  Leaping to her feet, Dagny skipped to Sal’s side. “Sal, my little duck! What’s wrong? Here, come sit on this bench.”

  João lit a cheroot and stood to give Sal room. He inserted his free hand into his waistcoat and sneered at Sal as Hector placed the weak man on the bench. “He is bêbedo!”

  “He is not drunk!” Hector bellowed at the duke. “He’s sick, or something. Sal, Sal.” Hector and Dagny took seats flanking Sal, patting and shaking him.

  “What’s wrong, little duck?”

  Under her fingers, Dagny felt fine tremors running the length of Sal’s arm, and his heart beat crazily in the pit of his throat. His light sapphire eyes filmed over with cloudiness, so she put a palm on his forehead to check for fever. Yes, he was pallid and clammy.

  “I saw …” Sal started.

  “Yes, yes? What did you see?”

  “Must have been … a dream.”

  “A dream of what?”

  “Yes,” agreed João. “You were just wide awake with me in the parlor,
and you seemed fine then.”

  “Let him talk, you lousy bell swagger!” Hector shouted.

  The yelling seemed to bring Sal back to the present time, for his eyes focused a little, and he gazed around at shadows on the ground. “A dream!” he whispered. Turning to Dagny, his empty eyes frightened her. “A dream that Count Balásházy rode up the driveway on a horse, walked onto the portico, and came to the door.” He looked straight ahead then. “Teofilo let him in the door. I went over to see him, and …”

  Hector and Dagny shared glances. Sal had never exhibited any tendency to calenture affliction; indeed, even his nighttime dreams were oddly dull since he’d stopped having asgina dreams after rounding the Cape of Storms. Now his dreams usually involved the discovery of some rock or mineral.

  Dagny petted his face. “That’s all right, Sal. Let’s go inside, and I’ll get you some cinchona and soda water. Hector, have someone ride out to the coffee farm and fetch Zeke.”

  But as lame as Sal was, his limbs became rigid when they tried to lift him, and he insisted upon continuing his story, even grasping Dagny’s forearms when he whispered urgently, “It was him! He’s in the drawing room, Dagny! I felt him, I shook his hand! Ramonja was there, ask him! He said ‘I am Count Balásházy from Pest-Buda, and I am here to see the Countess Balásházy.”

  “Ah, what merda do touro!” cried João, throwing up his arms in disgust. “My dear friend, you must stop imbibing liquor before noon.”

  Ramonja flailed down the garden path as though he’d just sat on a beehive. “Mademoiselle Dagny! Mademoiselle Dagny! It is razana! Aaaiiiiieeee …” He wailed in a quavering feminine tone and pivoted about on one foot, looking for the quickest route of escape. “Zaleski has brought us a ghost from Madagascar!”

  “Zaleski?”

  “Yes, you see!” Sal cried. “Zaleski is here, too! He’s the one who brought him up here, showed him the way from the anchorage!”

  Dagny leaped to her feet. She’d had enough of this mystery. “Look, Sal,” she said firmly, pointing, “if Zaleski’s behind it, you know it’s some kind of a joke he thinks is funny. He found someone who looks like Tomaj, and thought it would be the height of hilarity if he brought him up here—”