Page 71 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

Gáspár holds my gaze, throat bobbing. “I tried.”

“If you mean your pitiful protests at the feast—”

“No,” he says, with a thread of stubborn petulance that I’ve found myself oddly missing. “Before the feast. I begged my father for your life, even though I thought you might be the death of me.”

I remember how Nándor touched me so easily, putting his finger to my lips as if he weren’t afraid that I might threaten his holiness. I wonder what Gáspár would do, if he weren’t afraid. But he hasn’t confessed me like a sin. He hasn’t tried to absolve himself of what he’s done, of what we did, together.

“Did you kneel for him?” I ask perversely.

It is not a question meant to be answered, and I half expect Gáspár to scowl at me and turn away. For a suspended moment, there’s no sound in the church except the harmony of our breathing; even the trickle of water and the king’s footsteps have gone silent. Gáspár stares at me without blinking, for so long that my own eyes are hot and damp by the end of it, by the time he finally says, “Yes.”

Chapter Eighteen

After the first time I spend five straight nights at Zsigmond’s house, tracing letters. It doesn’t seem quite right, to call what I am doing writing, not yet. I can only copy what I see on Zsigmond’s parchments; I can’t conjure any words of my own. Zsigmond watches me over the top of his book, until I am yawning with every other breath and my vision is too glazed to read anything, and then he puts me to sleep in his bed, covering me with a quilt that smells of candle wax and ink and old paper, that smells like him. When pink dawn light filters through the window and lands gridded on my bleary face, I know it is time to return to the castle, to sit dull-eyed at the king’s side like some exceptionally devoted guard dog. Council meetings and banquets and church visits wend past me in an oblivious litany. All day I can think of nothing except returning to Zsigmond that night.

He tells me stories of my mother, only the good ones, when she was rosy-cheeked and alive, still swollen with the distant dream of me. I tell him about Virág and her theatrically grim predictions, careful never to mention anything about lashings, trying to wring the small bits of humor out of a mostly humorless life. Zsigmond is particularly good at that; he has none of Virág’s self-pitying gloom. Even when he speaks of his abuse at Nándor’s hands, he makes me laugh at his depiction of the Woodsmen as sheep newly shorn, embarrassed of their nascent nudity, bleating after their prettier, fluffier master. It is only then that I feel brave enough to recall Count Reményi’s words.

“During the council meeting,” I start, my voice low and uncertain, “there was one count, the count of Akosvár, who said that there was a place for Yehuli where they could have towns and villages of their own. A strip of land in Rodinya that has been set aside for them. He said the other countries in the west are already sending their Yehuli there.”

The lambent humor drains from Zsigmond’s eyes. “They call it the Stake. It is cobbled from the worst bits of land in the Rodinyan empire, scraggly and cold, where not much good can grow. The Yehuli there live in their own towns and villages, it’s true, but there are laws forbidding them from owning land and selling wares, from working on certain days, from sending their children to school. And then Patritians come from the nearby cities, to burn Yehuli houses, to kill. They don’t spare even the women and children.”

A lump rises hard and hot in my throat. “But doesn’t all that happen here? Nándor had you arrested and tortured for working on a Patritian holy day, and now he threatens to visit violence upon the Yehuli . . .”

“My family,” Zsigmond starts, and then clears his throat, amending himself, “our family has lived in Király Szek for six generations. We have served kings and counts. We have done everything from goldsmithing to street sweeping. We watched the city gates fall to King István’s enemies and then be built back up again; we saw his coronation and murmured about it in Old Régyar with the rest of them. This is our home, as much as Keszi is yours.”

“But it’s not my home,” I say, feeling my stomach turn and roil. “Not anymore. They cast me out to die.”

Zsigmond draws a breath. I can tell he regrets his words, but he doesn’t have time to apologize for them before there’s a knock on the door. It’s Batya, hefting two enormously full wicker baskets and a skein of pale silk draped over her arm.

My lips pucker when I see her, like I have bitten into a citrus fruit. By now I have learned enough of the Yehuli tongue to know that the first time we met, she called me chubby.

“Well, I did tell you to invite her, didn’t I?” Batya thrusts the silk at me; as it folds open onto the table, I see that it’s a dress. “And here is your food, as if I don’t cook enough for you all the other days of the year.”

Blinking, I touch the sleeve of the dress, unsure what to say. Zsigmond relieves Batya of the baskets, which are laden with more loaves of sweet bread and sacks of hard biscuits, poppy-speckled.

“Thank you,” he says, kissing her cheek as his own face turns faintly pink. “Have your daughters and their husbands all gone to the temple already?”

“Yes,” she says. “I told them I would make sure you’ve gotten out of bed and dressed yourself, and you did ask me to bring your daughter something to wear.”

“What are the gifts for?” I ask.

Zsigmond opens his mouth, but Batya speaks first. “We’re supposed to give two portions of food to our friends on the holiday, and at least two portions to someone who needs something to fill their bellies. We used to go around to the poorer streets in Király Szek and bring them bread, but they weren’t happy to take charity from Yehuli, and then the king forbid it anyway. Zsigmond, haven’t you told your daughter anything at all? You’re teaching her to read—why don’t you teach her to read the holy book? She looks as baffled as a newborn fawn.”

It’s a kinder characterization than I expected, and for all her gruffness, Batya doesn’t seem to have any compunctions about inviting me to the temple. I feel a pinprick of guilt for comparing her to Virág.

“Aren’t you afraid?” The question bubbles out of me, almost unbidden. “Nándor wants you gone, the counts want you gone . . . don’t you think it’s dangerous, to celebrate anything?”

I wonder if Batya will find my words impolite; if she were really anything like Virág, I might have been struck or scolded. But Batya only laughs.

“If we only celebrated on the days when there was no danger, we’d never have occasion to celebrate at all,” she says. “Come on now, Zsigmond, and bring your daughter. I think she would like to hear this story.”

The temple is nothing like I expect either. In the Yehuli tongue, Zsigmond tells me, it is called a shul. After seeing the gray-washed houses of Yehuli Street, I anticipated a small building, made of wood or crumbling stone, room enough for only a huddle of standing worshippers. But the temple is larger than even the king’s chapel, with its crags and moss and trickling water, and perhaps even grander. The domed ceiling is painted a bright clear blue, like the sky’s broad cheek, freckled with stars. There are rows and rows of polished wooden benches, leading to an altar of carved marble, but there’s no naked statue there—only a lectern with a book lying open upon it. A dozen chandeliers wheel with gauzy candlelight. Volutes of gold clamber up tall ivory pillars, shooting toward the ceiling like hearty, ancient oaks. Even crowded with bodies the temple seems so vast I know that my voice would echo all the way to the lectern, if I were brave enough to speak.

The dress Batya lent me fits surprisingly well, with enough room in the bodice. It buttons all the way to my throat, which is as chaste as I have likely ever been. Most of the other women my age have covered their hair with kerchiefs, which befuddles me until I see them sit down beside their dour husbands, pulling their wriggling children into their laps. A pang of awful loneliness lances through me, and I wonder if Zsigmond aches with it too. Or if he has inured himself to it after so many years, well accustomed to sitting alone in a sea of families. He leads me toward the bench where Batya sits, her three black-haired daughters beside her like ravens on a perch.

The youngest one glares at me sharp-eyed. “Mama, she’s wearing my dress.”

“Enough, Jozefa,” Batya snaps. “You can consider it your act of charity.”