Betsy spent a day organizing, occasionally looking out at the fat snowflakes that fell outside her window, obscuring the view of Mount Sopris. A heavy dump, she thought. Big wet packing snow, perfect for an early base on the ski mountains.
The bookshelves were already jammed tight. She could at least split the book towers and stow half of them behind the couch where they weren’t so obvious. Betsy dusted the fronts of the leather-bound books on the shelves, not daring to pull them out—she might not be able to wedge them back in again.
She cleaned out the old mahogany bar, one of her father’s favorite possessions. She wiped down the bottles of slivovica, the potent plum brandy her father always served his guests.
And she remembered the first Christmas after her father died. That awful holiday her mother spent with her, getting totally smashed on Slovakian plum brandy.
It had been snowing hard on Christmas Eve. Snow crystals rattled against the windows, the harbinger of an approaching blizzard, the kind that kids prayed for—the schools closed for a snow day.
Grace had arrived the day before. Her face was haggard, carved to the bone with grief. When they hugged, Betsy felt her mother’s ribs sharp against her arms.
“Take a semester off, Mom,” she said. “Come home and take care of yourself. Let me take care of you—”
Grace had pulled back, rigid, lifting her chin.
“I am fine, Betsy. Work is the best therapy for me.”
Grace poured herself a glass of slivovica. She stood glaring at the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. “Your father always loved Christmas,” she said.
“Mom, sit down. Let’s talk.”
“I don’t want to talk,” muttered Grace. She knocked back a gulp of the brandy, grimacing as the alcohol burned its way down her throat.
Oh, shit! Betsy thought. Here it comes.
Betsy knew the look on her mother’s face—a harbinger of a coming storm. Grace’s eyes squinted belligerently as she peered over her glasses, studying Betsy as if she were a curious antiquity in a museum.
“You are too much like your father,” her mother said finally, slurring her words. She slumped back against the wing chair.
Grace had never been fond of slivovica. She took another gulp.
“What do you mean, too much like Dad?” said Betsy.
“Why did you go into psychotherapy? Such a sloppy field. No boundaries, not a proper science. And why did you divorce that great guy you had?”
“Mom! You were livid when you found out we had gotten married. Don’t you remember?” Maybe she’d been right, but Betsy wasn’t going to mention that now.
“John Stonework would have shaped you into something, given you some limits, a clear focus. Not living in this backwater little town—”
“I love Carbondale. Mom, I was brought up here!”
“Over my objections. I would have raised you in Chicago. Given you more polish, more ambition. It was your father’s doing, keeping you here.”
“Well, it’s not like you stuck around much after I was in middle school.”
“I told Ceslav I would go back to the university teaching after you were old enough. He led me to believe he’d do the same.”
“It would have been nice if you’d been around more, not just weekends and summers.”
Why was she doing this? Why have a fight now? Her mother needed her help. But Betsy couldn’t stop. “You could have been there to answer some questions, help me through—”
“Why? Adolescence is a ridiculous time in a person’s life. All we would do is fight. That’s what mothers and daughters do at that age.”
“You weren’t here enough to—”
“Your father mollycoddled you. Damped down the fire in you.”
Betsy swallowed hard. “What? What do you mean, ‘damped down the fire’?”
“Low expectations,” her mother mumbled, staring through the crystal-clear liquid in her glass. “You turned out to be too meek for my taste.”
Betsy knew it was the slivovica talking, but she felt as if she had been punched in the stomach.
“But that John,” said Grace. “If you had stayed with him you would be at MIT.”
“MIT doesn’t have a graduate psychotherapy program, Mother.”
“Teaching at Boston University then,” said Grace, stretching her arm out for the slivovica bottle. She sloshed the liquor into her glass. Sticky liquid spilled over the rim, onto the hooked rug.
“Mom. That’s over fifty percent alcohol—”
“Maybe Harvard. You are smart enough. It’s not smarts you’re lacking.”
“I never wanted to teach at a university—”
“Doing empirical research. Publishing! Making a name for yourself.”
“I help people, Mom. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Like your father. Humpf!” Grace said. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She made clicking sounds. Like a dolphin, Betsy couldn’t help thinking.
“Helping people!” Grace repeated, her tongue finally unsticking. “Like they were little broken toys that he could fix. Glue them here, glue them there. He never wanted to publish his work. Do you know how well respected he was in Vienna, before we married? Then all of a sudden, it was like he wanted to hide under a rug. Disappear.”
“What’s wrong with helping people with their problems?”
“Helping people! That’s for social workers and school teachers! School crossing guards, boy scouts—”
“You know what, Mom? I think you’ve had too much slivovica. And you’re really acting out here because you’re heartbroken over Dad.”
“Don’t you psychoanalyze me, Missy!” Grace said, shaking a bony finger at her daughter. “I don’t need your advice.”
Grace’s face crumpled with grief. She began to cry.
“We could talk about Dad without it being a fight,” said Betsy, softly. “You need to talk to somebody.”
Grace closed her eyes tight, shaking her head, trying to rid herself of the words.
“I want to talk about you, not your father!” she said, tightening her grip around the stem of her glass. Betsy saw the outline of her finger bones, clutching like a perched bird.
“If you had stayed with John, he would have straightened you out. He was a practical young man. No nonsense. He would have been a damn good father, a good provider. I would have had grandchildren by now.”
Betsy suddenly couldn’t breathe. She tried to answer her mother, but no sounds came out of her mouth. She got up, grabbing her parka off the peg. She wrapped her burgundy wool scarf three times around her throat, pulled on her tasseled ski cap and gloves.
“Where are you going?” snapped Grace, leaning forward in her chair. She nearly lost her balance and toppled to the floor. “Betsy! It’s a goddamn blizzard out there!”
“I’d prefer the storm out there than the one here, Mom.”
Betsy slammed the door shut, blinking hot tears. Snowflakes melted against her eyelashes, blinding her.
Chapter 6
ČACHTICE CASTLE
NOVEMBER 28, 1610
After Janos had inspected the horses, he asked if he could be presented to the mistress of the castle.
“The Countess does not hold audience until dusk,” said Guard Kovach. “She will see you after sunset.”
Janos stared back at the gloomy castle where he had seen the shadowy movement.
“I think I may have caught a glimpse of her,” he said. “When I was working with the stallion.”
The guard looked at him, his brow arched.
“I doubt that, Horsemaster Szilvasi. Not in the light of day.”
The guard raised his gloved hand. He beckoned Szilvasi to follow him to the barracks, where guards and stable hands took their rest.
The heavy door creaked open to a common area. A warm breath of cabbage soup greeted the traveler, its sulfurous scent obliterating any other odor, except an occasional whiff of the guards’ unwashed bodies.
“You can lay your blanket near the hearth,” said the guard. “The kitchen boys keep the fire burning throughout the night.”
“You the new horsemaster?” piped a high voice. “It is about time someone cared properly for those miserable animals. They are almost meat for my stewpot.”
The cook was a thin man whose skin stretched tight across his skull. Janos could see the workings of the muscles in his neck and jawbone as he spoke. The only meat on his body was the muscle in his forearms, forged from stirring the massive iron pot. For a cook, his meager flesh did not bode well for the food he prepared, thought Janos.
Janos turned halfway to the guard.
“I would like to get to work on the stables and treating the horses as soon as possible. Cook, do you have some sugar?”
“Ach!” he responded, shaking his skeletal head at Janos. “You think a barracks cook would have sugar? The castle kitchen keeps sugar locked in the pantry under Brona the cook’s shrewd eye. It is imported from Venice and costly—”
“I will need as much as five spoonfuls. Please procure it at once for the horses’ welfare. Better than in the belly of a sweet-toothed nobleman.”
Guard Kovach and the cook eyed each other. They were not certain how to respond to the impudent young horsemaster.
“Guard Kovach, do you use lime in the privy?” asked Janos.
The guard’s forehead creased in anger. “We run a clean barracks here—what are you implying?”
“Good, I will need at least a half bucket of lye. And straw, like the straw used to cover night soil. I want enough clean, fresh straw to fill the stables a foot deep.”
By nightfall, Guard Kovach saw the new horsemaster hard at work, flanked by his ragged crew of stable boys, though Janos had made the feverish Aloyz rest by the fire, covering him with a blanket.
Janos held a bay mare’s back leg on his knee and cocked the stinking flesh of her hoof toward his face.
“See—the triangular part of the hoof is the most sensitive,” he said to the boys. “Never cut it, unless the flesh is dead and hanging. It is live and vulnerable to pain, the same as your finger or toe.”