by Rosalyn Eves
Were he not Gypsy—no, Romani—I thought we might be friends.
Gábor’s eyes lifted to mine. “Not kinder,” he said, a rueful twist to his lips. “I’ve been as quick to judge you as you have me. I’m sorry for that.” He shut his eyes for a moment, as if conceding something, then opened them. “I’ll do it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’ll teach you what you want.”
My heart jumped, beating in my ears.
“But it must be on my terms, when I can arrange for us to meet safely. And your cousin must come with us.”
“Noémi?” I asked, surprised he would consider the proprieties.
“Mátyás. I know him, and I trust him.”
That anyone would trust Mátyás defied nearly everything I knew of him. But I was too relieved at Gábor’s acquiescence to protest.
After my encounter on the Hanság, it was a relief to slip into the familiarity of teatime rituals, to trade the discomfiting role of supplicant for the polish of civilized conversation and the soothing clink of china. János nursed his tea as he worked through a pile of pastries, and Noémi ignored me. Mátyás was conspicuous by his absence. I wondered if he were already drinking.
“How was your outing with Noémi, szívem?” Grandmama asked.
Over the rim of her teacup, Noémi’s china-doll eyes met mine.
“I am so glad to see you are becoming friends,” Grandmama continued.
I swallowed and set down my cup.
Noémi did the same. “What outing is this, Irína néni?”
Confusion marched across Grandmama’s face. “This morning, you…and Anna?”
My heart plummeted. If Grandmama knew I had ridden so far unescorted, she’d never allow me out of the palace alone.
Noémi’s face cleared—and she laughed. “Oh! This morning! Of course. Anna accompanied me on an errand.”
Surprise, then relief, washed over me. Before I could say anything, Mátyás charged into the room. “I’ve brought a guest,” he announced, but there was a note in his voice that meant mischief.
A man stepped through the door behind Mátyás, his confident posture as familiar as his red hair. My hand jerked, and the saucer on my lap clattered against the cup. Mr. Skala was obnoxiously persistent, and I disliked the ease with which he’d found me. Again. Perhaps Eszterháza was not as safe as Papa supposed.
“William,” Noémi said, the smile falling from her face as if she’d been slapped.
My racing heart slowed. Maybe he had not come searching for me after all. Noémi’s curt welcome hinted at some history between them. Noémi would never tell me, but I suspected I could pry the truth from Mátyás.
William bowed. “Miss Noémi. Your radiance puts the sun to shame. As always.”
Mátyás said, “William, this is my great-uncle János, my great-aunt Lady Irína Zrínyi, and my cousin—”
“Anna Arden,” William interrupted. “We’ve met.”
All the eyes in the room turned toward me. William smiled. I winced.
He turned back to Noémi. “It has been a long time.”
“Yes.” Her single syllable was cold, unyielding.
A tense silence settled over the room. William watched Noémi, who smoothed her hands across her lap. Everyone else watched William.
“Mátyás says you have lovely gardens. Will you show them to me, Miss Noémi?” William shot an irritated look at Mátyás, who was trying to smother laughter with a cough.
“If you like your gardens ragged and unkempt,” Mátyás murmured.
Noémi crossed her arms. “I should prefer not to. I have nothing new to say to you. Unless your situation has changed?”
William didn’t answer.
Noémi’s eyes were very bright. “I thought not.” She picked up her teacup and stared fixedly at it. My heart tightened in sympathy at her obvious distress.
William stilled for a moment, then swiveled toward me, his face already taking on his familiar energy. “Well, if Miss Noémi will not show me the gardens, perhaps you would be so kind?”
I shook my head but smiled, to soften my refusal. “I think you should prefer my cousin. In any case, there truly is not much to see.”
The corner of his mouth twisted ruefully. “I suppose I deserved that. Only, I do wish to speak with you.”
Grandmama interrupted her sotto voce conversation with János to say, “You cannot have anything to communicate to my granddaughter in private. You can speak with her here.”
William’s eyes danced. “Very well. I’ve come to ask your granddaughter…” He paused, drawing out the suspense of his announcement. He was enjoying himself too much, the impertinent wretch. Grandmama frowned, and Noémi looked stricken. Did she think he meant a marriage proposal? I knew better. “…to help me win a revolution against the Hapsburgs and the Austrian Circle.”
My stomach flipped. He had said it.
Mátyás laughed. Grandmama looked astounded. “A what?” she asked. “You cannot be serious.”
János frowned at his great-nephew. “A revolution is no laughing matter. The Hapsburgs have been kings of Hungary for generations. I own I should like to see Hungary more forward in the world, but the way to do that is through industry, not rebellion. And to stand against the Circle? You should bring war and devastation on us.”
“Don’t let him bother you, János bácsi; he’s talking nonsense.” I set my cup down and rose, crossing the room to stand closer to William so he needn’t shout his conversation at everyone. “I’ve already made my refusal quite clear.”
William crumpled his hat in his hands, a soft thing with a wide brim. “You have. And I thought I’d made my answer equally clear. I’ve not given up hope.”
I looked out the window at the decaying gardens of the palace, tamping down flickers of anger—and something that might have been hunger. When I had dreamed of changing the world with Freddy, it was always through words, through salons and impassioned letters and parliamentary debates. But I could not deny a flicker of excitement at the idea of rebellion—of fire and passion and blood—even though I knew it was unthinkable. “Well, you should. I’ll not change my mind. I might wish society were more equal, but I’ve no wish to unmake it.”
William switched tactics. “Would you be open to an experiment? There is a place, not far from here, called Sárvár. A very old spell there, connected to the Binding, has gone awry. If you can break that spell, it would confirm what I suspect of you.”
“And what is it you suspect of Anna?” Noémi asked, drifting over to join us. Mátyás followed behind her.
William turned the full light of his enthusiasm on her. Noémi blinked and shifted a step closer, dazzled despite herself. “Your cousin can break spells. I think—hope—she might break the Binding.”
“You’re being irrational,” Noémi said. “The Binding was established to protect everyone, to provide a stable pool of energy and keep untrained Luminate from overtaxing their ability and dying. Think what would happen if you broke it: you would be unleashing all that magic, and who knows how it would settle. Or how it might affect the Luminate.”
“I always did admire your mind,” William said. “But you’re wrong. The Binding was established less for protection and more for Luminate self-aggrandizement. Its sole purpose is to ensure that only Circle-approved nobility have access to magic.”
Noémi’s cheeks burned crimson. “Is this why you’ve come? To foment revolution in Hungary now you’ve failed in Vienna and England?”
“Change is coming,” William said. “Here, Vienna, England—it doesn’t matter. One revolution against the Circle will spark others. Hungary is the strongest of the Austrian states—if she rebels successfully, others will follow. Poland, almost certainly.” A beat too late, he added, “I came to see you too. It was fortuitous that the two women I wanted to see most in the world are currently under the same roof.”
“Me?” Noémi laughed, but her laughter carried a steel edge. “Don’t
make me a party to your madness.”
“What happened at Sárvár?” I asked Mátyás, ignoring Noémi and William’s continued squabbling.
“Countess Báthory—” Mátyás eyed me uncertainly. “That is, nothing that concerns you, because you won’t be going.”
My temper spiked. “I go where I please. You are neither my father nor my grandmother, and I do not think you have any say in this.”
“Oh, do I not? I am far older and wiser—”
“Ha!”
“And I will tell your grandmother to keep you here, by force if necessary.”
My fingers curled against the itch to slap him. “You are insufferable. This is none of your business.”
“Please be civil, children,” Grandmama said.
“It’s not yours either,” Mátyás said, goading me.
“Enough!” Noémi said, pivoting between William and Mátyás. “I am sick to death of both of you. Because you are men, you think your will should bind us too. No matter if you destroy our country, or break our hearts.” Her voice shook, as if she were on the brink of fury or tears. She linked her arm through mine. “I shan’t wish you good day. Anna and I are leaving.”
When we reached the crumbling courtyard, I had recovered my composure enough to ask, “Where are we going?”
“I have somewhere I must be, and you might as well come with me.”
“Why should I?” Perhaps my anger had not entirely run its course after all.
“Because it is better than being trapped in the parlor with two nattering fools.” Noémi’s cross look lifted when she smiled. “Besides, you owe me a favor.”
Noémi led me down the dusty street of the village, to a small hut set some distance from the others. The whitewashed walls were grimy with dirt, the thatched roof bedraggled and thin in spots. Noémi stepped up to the door and knocked. I stood back, eyeing the door and the house with considerable reluctance.
Angry as I was with Mátyás and William, I recoiled from following Noémi as she played Lady Bountiful, dispensing unwanted advice to the poor. I’d seen how our tenants looked at Mama, their expressions of gratitude just masking resentment. But Noémi was right. I owed her a favor for interceding with Grandmama, for hiding that I’d ridden away from the palace alone.
The door opened, and Noémi stepped in without hesitation. When I did not immediately follow, she frowned and beckoned me in.
The inside of the house was as mean as the outside—meaner, perhaps, as the only furniture on the packed clay floor was a pallet in the corner, occupied by a woman who moaned and thrashed in pain. The air in the room was rank and close. A small girl with a dirty face watched me with wide, solemn eyes, one thin finger thrust up her nose. An even smaller child clung, wailing, to the woman in the corner. Noémi scooped up the toddler and thrust it in my arms, where it continued to screech. I bounced it uneasily on my hip, and after a moment the screaming slowed. Instead, the child grabbed fistfuls of hair from the sides of my head and yanked.
Tears smarted in my eyes. I tried to set the child down, but it only resumed screaming and I hastily lifted it up again.
Noémi crouched beside the sick woman, stripped off her gloves, and laid a hand against the woman’s forehead. She fussed at the woman for some time, feeling the pulse in her wrist, urging her to sip something. The older child remained unmoving, her eyes fluttering from Noémi to me and then back again. Her stillness was unnerving.
As I struggled to balance the feral child in my arms, I watched Noémi’s face tighten. At last she bent near the woman, whispering a few words. Her hands flickered.
I set the child down once more. This time, it rocketed on unsteady legs toward its mother, who had ceased thrashing and lay still. Noémi murmured something to the woman, patted the older child on the head, and walked toward the door. I nearly stumbled in my rush to follow her.
“Will she be all right?”
Noémi hunched one shoulder, as if pained by my question. “I don’t know. I think she’s dying.”
“What will happen to her children?” I thought of the small body, so warm in my arms.
“Perhaps a villager will take them when she dies. If they grow up, they will want to remember her.”
“When they grow up,” I said. “If she dies. You must think more positively.” It was a peculiar habit of the Hungarians to say if instead of when: if I grow up, if I go home. Their fatalism was built into their language, just as British optimism was built into ours: when I am rich, when I am married. When I have magic.
Noémi turned eyes full of despair on me. “Mine is only a small gift. It’s not enough. And there is no doctor here. János cannot afford to sponsor one, and the Viennese branch of the Eszterházy family doesn’t care. There is a medical examiner in the county. But like most of our Hapsburg-elected officials, he is poorly trained and mainly concerned with maximizing his profit and minimizing his labor.”
“So you heal them?”
“I do what I can. I wish I could do more.”
Shame filled me. I had misread Noémi on so many counts. “Is all of Hungary like this?”
“There are hard times everywhere,” Noémi said. “But it is harder for the peasants in the country. Hungarian Luminate are exempt from paying taxes, so the burden falls heavily on poor farmers. It would be better if Hungary could govern herself, but with the Austrian Circle all but running the country, there is small chance of that.”
I smiled a little. “You sound like a revolutionary.”
Noémi rounded on me. “Don’t say that! I am nothing like William. He is like a stupid old man who believes you can heal a patient by killing him. William and my brother don’t see that people have to live in a real world, where compromises must be made.”
What compromises, I wondered, had Noémi been forced to make? I took a deep breath. I was not good with friendships. I had never really had a friend, outside of James and sometimes Catherine. Maybe Ginny, though it was scarcely acceptable to be friends with one’s maid. I liked Noémi, despite her prickliness, and something about her face, a wistfulness in her eyes belying her words, made me sense an opening. But I had wounded her pride, which meant I would have to offer her my vulnerability.
“Do you know why I am here?”
Noémi blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “No. János is not a gossip.”
“Except with Grandmama,” I said, and she smiled. “I ruined my sister’s debut. I spoiled her illusions. And I kissed the man she’d hoped to marry.”
Noémi’s mouth fell open. Then, incredibly, she laughed. “You?”
A small, birdlike hope flexed its wings in my heart. “I didn’t mean to do it. I thought I was in love. I was wrong.”
Her eyes softened. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because…because I think I could like you, if you would only talk to me.”
“I do talk to you.”
“Yes. About the weather. And today’s luncheon.”
Noémi laughed again. I had been right—she liked frankness. “Thank you, for coming with me today. It’s not easy to bear hard things alone.”
“No,” I agreed. “It’s not.”
William Skala was gone when we returned to Eszterháza, on to Buda-Pest to stir up bigger and grander revolutions than our quiet estate afforded. I felt only relief, until Mátyás slipped me the note William had left for me.
Think on my offer.
I tore the note into tiny pieces. I had no patience for his games. I had my own plans to execute.
I told Mátyás of Gábor’s offer, and his stipulation.
Mátyás laughed. “Gábor to teach you magic? That’s a rich jest, cousin.”
When I continued to stare at him, he sobered. “You can’t be serious. Do you know what he risks to teach you? Gypsy magic is illegal. Verboten. Gábor could be imprisoned, or worse if the arresting officer wishes to make a point.”
Fear prickled through me. “If he doesn’t mind, why should I?”
Má
tyás’s lips curled. “I knew I liked you. I’ll come.”
Two days later, a village boy brought me a scrap of paper with a message in an incongruous copperplate hand: Meet me at Hangman’s Hedge in the morning.
Gábor’s hands were in constant motion: clenching, straightening, fingers sliding in and out of one another. I wondered if he was as nervous as I was.
“What do you know about magic?” he asked.
A wind shook through the clearing near Hangman’s Hedge, scattering the shadows and sun dapples across our laps. The Hedge was a quiet, sunny spot—Mátyás said a highwayman had been hanged here in the last century, and the locals avoided the spot in the belief it was haunted.
Gábor stilled his hands and waited for my answer, his dark eyes resting on my face. I told him what I knew: the Binding spell served as a reservoir of magic, and Luminate spell-casters called magic from the Binding through rituals. They pushed their magic into spells shaped by word and gesture and will.
Mátyás translated my words into Hungarian for Gábor’s sister, Izidóra, who sat in the shadows beside Gábor and turned smiling lips and eyes on my cousin.
A slight frown settled between Gábor’s eyes. “I have never understood how you gadzhe, with all your supposed education, know so little about your own power. Magic is a by-product of dji, the life-force in every creature. Your Binding may gather that force and hold it, but it is not its source. A reservoir is made up of many small rivulets coming together in streams and then rivers; the Binding simply collects the magic that flows from every living thing. Birth and death feed powerful magic into the Binding as well.”
I began to feel bewildered. In Queen Victoria’s England, children were celebrated and extended mourning indicated one’s virtue—but the actual acts of birthing and dying were sterilized and strange. One did not speak of them. “I don’t understand how you use magic without having Luminate blood.”
“We are Romani,” Gábor said, as if it explained everything.
When I only wrinkled my forehead at him, he continued. “Romani butji. Our work. We glean from things others discard. You Luminate are too quick to assume you know everything about magic, but even your own spells leak sometimes. We gather that surplus. Your Binding spell is not perfect: like a dam made of stones and mortar, there are places where the Binding is weak, where magic seeps through. We find those places. And there are days and nights, old holy days, when the Binding does not seem to pull magic from our world as well. We collect what we can before it’s drawn into the Binding. Sometimes, we can glean magic at birth and at death, when the flow and ebb of life generates excess power. We store the magic in talismans that are enchanted to hold it.”
