The Countess by Rebecca Johns

István and I were children no longer. What my mother had said long ago was true, that the fate of the family belonged to us now.
    I willed my brother to turn around, to turn and look at me, to smile or speak a word of comfort as he had always done. But his back was straight, his narrow shoulders even. He could not read my thoughts, no matter how much I wished it.
    The pastor was saying that my father was a man of tremendous learning and nobility, a great lord and statesman, that Hungary had lost one of its most valuable treasures and the Báthory family its greatest hero. “His name will ring for a thousand generations,” the pastor said, his face appropriately grave. At one point István looked back at me and rolled his eyes, and for that moment he was still the István I remembered and loved. I had to suppress the laugh that came up, covering my face with my hands as if to hide my tears, my shoulders shaking, and then I was ashamed, because I had loved my father and wanted to mourn him properly. Zsofía crowded in close to comfort me, and I let her. In the front row, next to István, my mother’s back was as straight as a poker and just as unyielding, though I knew she had spent most of the last month prostrate with mourning. When the service was over, István, the new lord of the manor, took her arm and led her back to the sled, the little girls and I following close behind. My mother’s feet left deep prints in the snow, and as I walked I stepped into them one by one, to make the going easier.

6

    A few weeks after my father’s death, Orsolya Kanizsay wrote to my mother asking if I might be sent to her house at Sárvár, where she would welcome me into the family as a daughter and finish my education as I adjusted to life among the Nádasdys. At eleven years old I would be sent away to be raised as a proper young lady, a highborn wife for Countess Nádasdy’s only child. My mother called me into her room one evening to give me Orsolya’s letter to read. The greeting alone took up nearly an entire page:
    My good sister Anna, may the eternal, almighty Lord first strengthen us in the true religion by His holy faithfulness and promise, that all error be kept far from us, that we may be at one with the Christian Holy Mother Church in soul and body, and that we may walk in the true faith and in mutual love; and that He may cause you, my friend, to prosper greatly, for which I hope, and trust and believe that it will be so, and I believe of a certainty that He will wish to raise you up for trust in Him alone, amen
.

    I saw the cramped, uncertain hand of a woman who had come to her education late in life, after her marriage, the awkwardly formal inflections and errors in grammar and thought that even at eleven years old I knew were the mark of an inferior mind. The words seemed kindly at least, thanking my mother in warm tones for the generosity of the dowry and for the honor of joining the house of Báthory to the house of Nádasdy, a union that would benefit both families and the country, and so on and so on. If my mother agreed to the arrangements, she wrote, she would send a carriage for me within the month.
    I handed the letter back to my mother, assuming she would not consider sending me away so soon after my father’s death. Girls in those days usually did not marry until fifteen or sixteen, and I had thought, after the documents were signed at the time of the gypsy ball, I would have at least five or six years at home still with my mother and father, my brother, and my little sisters before my marriage to the Nádasdy boy, in the far western part of the kingdom where I was unlikely to see them often. Though it was not unusual for girls to be sent to their mothers-in-law long before the wedding, I had always assumed that my own mother would not want me so far away from her, that I would be permitted to remain home for a while longer still.
    When I said this to my mother—that I was honored, but preferred to