Free The Countess by Rebecca Johns Page A

countess. The willow trees swayed in the wind as we passed, and a few tears fell onto the lap of my skirt. I vowed to try to love the countess and her son, but I would not let them change me or transform me into someone I was not. The hills and trees moved past me, the green tops of the wheat swaying in the wind. I would not be like the wheat, bending to any little breeze. I would be like the rocks and the hills, firm and unyielding in all things, even if I never saw my mother or my brother or my sisters again, even if I forgot my home, my language, my upbringing, the love of my mother and father, the beating of my own heart. I would live my life among strangers, and I would remember myself. I would never let them alter me.
    There is a saying I learned as a child:
Extra Hungariam non est vita et si est vita, non est ita
, which means, “Beyond Hungary there is no life, and if there is life, it is not the same.” To me, the familiar world of Ecsed was all of Hungary that existed.
    In the carriage I dried my tears. The life I was driving toward would be mine, my own life on my own terms, even if it was not the same as the one I had known.

8

    It took almost two weeks to reach my mother-in-law’s house at Sárvár by carriage, weeks in which we sometimes climbed over mountain passes and had to get out and walk to spare the horses, or through low marshes where the wheels often stuck in the mud and needed to be pulled free, but most often through valleys of cultivated fields—fields of wheat and rye, of grapevines, of hay stacked to dry in the sun in two-legged bundles. We passed through ancient villages where statues of the madonna and child still stood in public squares, their feet strewn with flowers, villages where children came out to watch the procession of carriages wind through the center of town, shouting and chasing us for a little way. Sometimes I leaned out of the window to wave like an empress while they clapped and cheered, despite Megyery’s stern disapproval.
    Because of the possibility of impropriety in sending a man to escort her future daughter to the house at Sárvár, my mother-in-law had in addition sent a woman named Anna Darvulia, a servant, as my chaperone. She was a tiny creature, fearsome despite her simple clothing, with small glittering black eyes and a few white chin whiskers that gave her a fierce, badgerish look. She wore her impressive tangle of thick black hair in a knot bound at the base of her neck and spoke only when spoken to, in a voice as deep as a man’s. On the first day of our journey I asked her how old she was, and she fixed me with those strange animal eyes and said she guessed at least twenty-three. “No one knows for certain,” she said. “My mother never told me.” What had happened to her mother? I was afraid to ask. Perhaps Darvulia was a gypsy or a Turk in disguise, or at the very least a
táltos
, a shaman born with six fingers or a full set of teeth. I kept trying to get a clear look at her hands, but I could see no hint ofextra fingers. She had a way of holding herself, when she chose, that gave the impression of great strength and fortitude, as if she were waiting for the right time to throw off the roughness of her disguise and reveal the spellbound princess trapped within, although I had also seen her on several occasions stoop and deliberately make herself look sickly and old, a useful skill when asking for help from one of the soldiers in lifting a heavy trunk or buying bread from women in a rural village. Unlike Megyery, she seemed not at all interested in what I was reading or wearing or doing. After our first conversation, I worried for a time I had said something to offend her and racked my memory for what it could be, though except for asking her her age, I had said nothing other than hello the day we left on the road to Sárvár. For some reason, I very much wanted her to like me.
    Besides the carriage in which I rode, our entourage included several carts