Blood Rose Rebellion

by Rosalyn Eves

  “Prince Miklós—János’s great-uncle—expanded his father’s hunting lodge eighty years ago to rival the palaces of the French princes. People believed he was unwise, pouring his money into a swampland. But he built this.”

  The carriage skirted an empty fountain and drew to a stop before the double staircases. Herr Steinberg leapt out to help us exit. As I emerged, it became clear this estate was not what it at first appeared. Pale gold plaster flaked from the walls, and the trim around the windows needed paint. Weeds pushed their way through cracks in the stonework around the courtyard, and a goat munched a particularly large bush near the steps. My first awed impression faded.

  Herr Steinberg led us to double doors set between the stairs and knocked.

  For a long moment, we waited. Herr Steinberg knocked again. I watched Grandmama with concern, seeing how tightly her hand gripped her cane, how deep the grooves in her cheeks were. I linked my arm through hers. Why was no one answering? Surely they knew to expect us.

  At last, a scuffling sounded behind the door, then it creaked open. A young maid stood in the doorway, not the butler or footman I had expected for such a large estate. Though the girl was pretty, with fair hair and blue eyes, her clothes were extremely untidy. Large streaks of dust marred her once-white apron, and the black dress she wore beneath the apron was tattered at the hem. I could not help thinking Mama would never have tolerated such slovenliness, and was surprised when such a prosaic thought hurt. After a month away, I missed even Mama’s sharpness.

  “Ach, Himmel!” the girl said in German to Grandmama, and I remembered that most of the Hungarian Luminate were bilingual, governed as they were by Austria. This close to the Austrian border, no doubt their servants were bilingual too. The maid continued in German, “You must be Lady Zrínyi.” I watched a blush rise in the fair cheeks. At least the girl had some sense of appropriateness. “Come in, please.”

  We stepped into a large, shadowy room with high, rounding walls and delicate floral reliefs. An arched glass door led into another, larger room beyond. From a nearby corridor came ecstatic barking, followed by the sharp click of canine nails on parquet floor. Then a rusty streak barreled directly into me, and I fell to the floor in a tangle of skirts.

  An exuberant canine stood over me, his forelegs on my shoulders and his hind legs on my skirts, preventing me from rising. The animal breathed gustily into my face. It seemed scarcely possible to feel any lower than I did then, buried underneath a small mountain of dog. I wondered which of my rustic cousins owned him.

  The maid squeaked an appalled “Oroszlán! Nem!” She clapped her hands, and the dog retreated. I sat up cautiously, rubbing my stinging elbow.

  “I am sorry,” the maid said, her face nearly scarlet with embarrassment. “Oroszlán, you see, loves visitors. We do not have many.”

  Herr Steinberg helped me to my feet. Grandmama was laughing, though she tried to hide it in a cough. The dog—Oroszlán?—bounded over to Herr Steinberg and put his paws on the man’s shoulders. Herr Steinberg looked discomposed but said nothing, merely lifting one paw at a time off his person and then excusing himself, saying he would be more comfortable in a nearby csárda, but he would return the following day to see how we got on.

  Grandmama watched him leave, then turned back to the girl. “It is a very handsome animal,” Grandmama said in German. “Is it yours?”

  “Yes.” The maid laughed. “He thinks he is a lion, a king of everything.”

  The serving maid keeps a dog in the house? Mama would never have allowed such a thing. Nor would she have permitted a maid to keep her guests talking in the entryway when they were newly arrived from a long journey.

  I squared my shoulders. I was tired, I was hungry, this palace was both dusty and smelly, and if Grandmama would not say anything, I would.

  “Bitte,” I said, using the German a decade of governesses had drilled in me. “Will you tell the family we are here?”

  The maid turned her blue eyes on me in astonishment, her chin lifting. “Oh! I am sorry. I supposed you knew. I am your cousin Noémi.”

  I stared at the girl. How could this dusty, disheveled creature be my cousin?

  Noémi flung herself around and marched, shoulders stiff, through a doorway and up a twisting staircase fringed by a wrought-iron railing. We trailed behind her. The staircase terminated in a relatively plain hallway: I caught a glimpse of gilt and mirrors in something that might have been a ballroom to my right, but my cousin was already disappearing down the hallway and through a series of high-ceilinged rooms. Many of these stood empty, the plaster of the walls chipped and peeling, only a few chairs remaining from the last century, their woven covers faded and worn.

  I’d stepped into a fairy-tale enchantment—a kingdom waiting for a hero to awaken it from its curse. This house had been beautiful once. Grandmama had told me the entire Viennese court had come here with Empress Maria Theresa to listen to Haydn play. Now it appeared nearly abandoned.

  At last we came to a small parlor, the walls lined in pale green brocade. Unlike many of the rooms we’d passed through, it was well cared for. A ceramic stove dominated one corner, its mock marble finish and gilt flourishes gleaming in the fading light.

  In a corner near the stove, an older gentleman with an impressive mustache puffed away at a pipe, his arms resting on the round bowl of his stomach. A pair of Lumen lights hung in the air beside him. He set his pipe, still smoking, on a side table and greeted Grandmama with an old-fashioned kiss on her hand.

  Grandmama introduced him as her cousin János, and then they began chattering together in the Hungarian of their childhood. As Mama had deemed German sufficient for foreign tongues, I knew only a few homely phrases in Hungarian from Grandmama. I stood awkwardly near the door until Noémi gestured to a high-backed chair near my grandmother. I removed my bonnet and sat, wondering at my cousin’s look. The mulish cast of her lips suggested she was still upset with me, perhaps because of my unintentional slight at the door. But it was a silly thing to take offense at. Anyone might have made that mistake.

  “Noémi,” János said, switching back to German for my benefit, “send word to Cook we want something to eat, now our company has arrived.”

  Noémi cast a quick glance at me, a blush rising up her neck and into her cheeks. “János bácsi, it is Cook’s half day, remember? I will bring some bread and cheese, if you like.”

  “No need. Send the maid for it.”

  Noémi only nodded and disappeared from the room.

  János watched her leave with a bemused expression. “I cannot seem to persuade her that she does not need to do the maid’s work.”

  “Of course she does.” A new figure breezed into the room. “When one of the maids is down with the toothache and the others have gone home to prepare for Pünkösd, what else would my sister do but help?”

  “Mátyás! Dear boy. Come, meet my cousin, Lady Irína Zrínyi, and her granddaughter, Miss Anna Arden.” János smiled, the waxed tips of his mustache quivering. “My grand-nephew, Mátyás Eszterházy.”

  Mátyás turned around to face me, and I got my first good look at my distant cousin. He was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a light wool coat with embroidered seams, and no more than a handful of years older than I. He was not unpleasant-looking, with his high, broad forehead and strong chin, but the slightly rounded cast of his cheeks and his sleepy-looking eyes made him seem somehow childish and unformed, despite the golden mustache he bore. If I had harbored a faint hope that flirting with Mátyás might drive away any lingering longing for Freddy, I was disappointed. This was not a face to haunt my dreams.

  I stifled a sigh.

  Mátyás bowed, loose-limbed and graceless. “Welcome to the heralded family estate,” he said, sitting down at János’s feet. His German was flawless, better far than mine. “How were the roads from Vienna? Interminable? Marshy?”

  I smiled. At least, if not precisely a scintillating wit, my cousin had a sense of humor. Grandmama answered
Mátyás’s question at length, describing our route, the hotels we’d visited, and the lovely time we’d had at Vienna.

  Sometime during Grandmama’s discourse, Noémi returned with a serving platter filled with breads, cheeses, and some dried fruits. She handed me a plate, and I attempted to apologize in careful German. “I am sorry, cousin, if I offended you earlier. I had supposed you were the maid.”

  Another of those unreadable expressions flickered across Noémi’s face. “Please do not apologize. Do not patronize me because you are the fashionable English lady and I am the poor cousin.” She pulled a small packet of letters from her pocket. “These came for you.”

  Then she moved on to János. Watching the stiff line of her back, I marveled I had ever mistaken her for a servant.

  Ginny ran a brush through my snarled dark hair. Her fingers were gentle, the repetitive motion soothing.

  My eyes swept the high arched ceiling with its delicate tracery of roses. The room was grand enough, but the furnishings were sparse. A four-poster bed, a small rug on the floor, a vase of dried lavender on a bedside table. The vanity where I sat was carved with rococo exuberance, but the gold paint was beginning to flake and the wooden legs were battered.

  Ginny set my brush on the vanity and squeezed my shoulder encouragingly. “It will come right, Miss Anna. You’ll see. I have a good feeling about this place.”

  I smiled at her, more from politeness than agreement. Ginny left, and I settled into my bed and picked up the letters, reading them by the fitful light of a small kerosene lamp. How could I shatter Catherine’s spells and yet be incapable of carrying even a Lumen light?

  There were two letters from James, both very short. Another letter, a bit longer, from Papa, adjuring me to enjoy my first glimpse of the world. He described meeting with Lady Berri and Lord Orwell, who asked where I had gone. I returned a vague answer that you had gone into the country, Papa wrote. But be watchful. They might yet come looking for you.

  Gooseflesh prickled up my arms. I was nothing in their world—if I could break spells, I knew neither how nor why.

  So why this continued interest?

  There was rain that night, hammering like a fusillade against the glass panes of my window. I lay on a stiff feather mattress, staring into the darkness. I had passed the point of exhaustion and could not sleep. This room, my room now, smelled strange to me—of sage and lavender and dust.

  Scenes played over and over again before my eyes, like a finely crafted illusion. Freddy, in the garden, leaning in to kiss me. The unraveling spell in my parents’ ballroom. Catherine’s smile when she announced Freddy had kissed her. The red-haired William Skala predicting a Luminate fall in Hyde Park and then confronting me in Vienna. And the last: the hollow-eyed, sharp-toothed woman I’d seen beneath the Lorelei illusion.

  Around and around my head they danced. The familiar faces stretched, becoming monstrous through overexamination until I no longer recognized any of them.

  A wild, unearthly music splintered the air, riding on the echoes of pealing bells.

  I jolted upright in bed, my heart thumping. I was still trying to catch my breath when Ginny nudged open the door with a breakfast tray.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Ginny smiled. “It’s Whitsunday. There are Gypsy musicians in the courtyard, and most of the village has come for breakfast. Your grandmama tells me it is customary.”

  I settled back against my pillows. Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday following Easter. At home there would be fetes and a special sermon. I swallowed down a sting of homesickness and let Ginny help me dress.

  Later, after I drowsed through a Hungarian sermon, the villagers spilled onto the bit of green lawn before the Romanesque church, wearing their holiday finery: the men in brilliant white shirts with dark, embroidered vests and wide trousers, the women in blouses with puffed sleeves, wide skirts, and aprons covered in floral handwork. Some wore kerchiefs over their hair. In my dark green gown, with its pointed waist and moderate sleeves, I stood out among these colorfully dressed folk like a crow among peacocks.

  Wooden trestle tables groaned with food in the sunshine. I scanned the offerings, but they were mostly unfamiliar: rich meat dishes with savory sauces, potatoes with cream and herbs, sausages, miniature dumplings, and so many pastries. I settled on pastries as the least likely to disagree with me. I stripped off a glove and reached for a golden brown morsel. My mouth watered at the sweet smell—until I bit into something with the taste and texture of grit.

  Mátyás watched my face as I tried to chew and swallow. He laughed. “Poppy seeds.”

  When Mátyás was not looking, I rolled the remainder under the trestle table for a bird to find.

  “I wonder why you are here if you are determined to dislike everything,” Noémi said in German beside me. I started a little—I had not seen her approach.

  “I—” I stopped. I doubted my prickly cousin was interested in either Catherine’s broken spells or Papa’s fears for my safety. “Grandmama wished to come.”

  “And did she warn you? About Whitsun night?” The brim of her hat cast her eyes into shadow.

  “There’s nothing to warn of.” Mátyás frowned.

  Noémi ignored him. “Tonight is a night of unrest.” A chill pricked me, as if that word, Unruhe, were enough to rouse the ghosts of the nearby cemetery. “In Germany, evil spirits walk this night. In Bohemia, not so very far away, rusalka are stronger now than at any time, able to leave their watery graves and crouch in trees, or hide in the fields, luring innocent victims to their death. And here the lidérc watch for unwary sleepers.”

  I knew the lidérc from Grandmama’s stories: a midnight lover, hatched from the first egg of a black hen. A demon lover in some tales, a hoarder of gold in others. The rusalka was, perhaps, Slavic—I did not know it.

  Noémi smiled, a stretching of her lips that didn’t reach her eyes. “Did you know our Hungarian word for nightmare is lidércnyomás? That feeling when you wake suddenly from sleep and cannot breathe for the pressure on your chest.” She raised one white hand to her own chest to demonstrate. “That is the lidérc sucking the life from you.”

  “Stop trying to frighten her,” Mátyás said. “Lidérc and rusalka—they’re just stories to scare children.”

  “I’m not frightened,” I said.

  “Very well,” Noémi said. “But I’d not walk alone tonight.”

  I could not seem to shake the uneasy prickling from Noémi’s words, even through an afternoon of games in the fields beyond the churchyard, including a horse race for the Whitsun King crown—a role that brought no kingdom, but a year’s supply of beer and wine at the local kocsma. Mátyás won easily, breezing through the finish line to rowdy cheers. Noémi tossed a poppy chain across his horse’s withers.

  Mátyás dismounted and turned a face full of boyish delight to me. I extended my fingers, meaning simply to shake hands, but Mátyás caught my hand and pulled me into a tight embrace. He smelled of sweat and sun and made me feel hot and cold together.

  Perhaps he felt my rigid surprise, for he released me almost at once. He turned to view the crowd gathering around him and pumped his arm in the air. “Hajrá!”

  The crowd echoed back, “Hajrá!” A few scattered voices added, “Éljen Mátyás úr!” Long live Lord Mátyás!

  A second cry ripped through the crowd, and the cheers died. In the middle of the field, a stocky man snapped his whip down on a young man in the white linen trousers of a servant. A dark horse limped a pace forward and collapsed behind the boy.

  I knew the sound of a whip, of course, the sizzle and sharp crack. But somehow, the sizzle and crack and slap against human flesh was like nothing I’d heard before. My stomach twisted.

  The boy flung both hands over his head. Even at this distance, I could see his white sleeves crisscrossed with blood.

  “Stop!” Mátyás shouted, in German and then in Hungarian, struggling through the crowd. The others whispered and some of the women c
ried, but no one else moved. Mátyás pushed forward until he was next to the two figures.

  He did not, as I expected, shove the stocky man back. Instead, he stood beside him, talking quietly, his hand outstretched. The man with the whip nodded and folded the whip under his arm. He offered the bridle of the lamed horse to Mátyás.

  The boy still knelt huddled between them. Mátyás did not look at him or speak to him. The stocky gentleman backhanded the boy, knocking him into the mud of the churned-up meadow, then stalked off.

  When the man had disappeared, Mátyás finally turned his attention to the boy, helping him stand and escorting him to an older woman wailing nearby.

  My cousin came back to us looking grave. “It is a bad business. The horse will need to be shot, I think.”

  “The horse?” I asked. “What about the boy?”

  “The squire,” Noémi said, her voice tight, “needs a bridle more than this animal.”

  “The horse was injured while the squire’s boy was riding him. The squire had money hanging on the race, and to lose the horse also…Well…he blames the boy.”

  “But to beat him?” My stomach was tight with the lingering horror.

  “The boy belongs to him,” Noémi explained, though her mouth twisted. “He is a serf.”

  A serf was little better than a slave. I swallowed something sour. “Why didn’t anyone stop the squire?”

  “And who should? The Circle excuses him because he is Luminate, and because under Hapsburg law, he is the local magistrate. Here in Hungary, we are entirely subordinate to the Austrian Hapsburgs, just as they are subordinate to the Austrian Circle. And why should they care what becomes of a serf?” Mátyás looked back at the field, where the horse was struggling unsuccessfully to rise. “I must put my horse down.”

  “Your horse?” Noémi echoed in surprise.

  “I bought it from the squire. It was the surest way to stop the beating.”