With a sharp knife, he carved out the muck and embedded stones around the island of soft flesh. Then one of the stable boys sprinkled lye into the rotting hoof. Fingers protected by a rag, Janos pressed the chalky powder deep into the rot.
“Every day you must do this until the flesh is dry and healed,” he said, still holding the mare’s hoof in his hand. He straightened his knee and let go of the hoof. The horse snorted and the stable boys nodded as they accepted the horsemaster’s instruction.
Guard Kovach walked toward the mare and saw white glistening on a festered wound. As he approached, he could see the shiny granules of sugar.
“What is this?” he said. “You have used the Countess’s fine white sugar on horseflesh?”
Szilvasi smiled at the guard, whose face was still contorted in astonishment.
“You will see, Guard Kovach, how quickly the wounds heal with a regular dusting.”
He ran a hand around the mare’s withers, his fingers skipping over the wound. She twitched under his touch.
Guard Kovach scratched his head. “I have come to tell you that the Countess will grant you audience. She sends word to come when the moon has risen.”
Janos arched his eyebrow. “Such strange habits the Countess has in welcoming a faithful servant from Sarvar Castle,” he said, stretching his arms wide over head, hands balled in fists as he yawned. “I am so tired. Perhaps the Countess will agree to see me in the morning, since she has kept me all day awaiting an audience.”
“You will sleep after meeting the Countess.” The guard stood, arms crossed on his chest, taking in Szilvasi’s appearance. “Go see the cook and ask for a bucket of water and a rag to bathe. The Countess is fastidious about cleanliness. She abhors the smell of a man’s sweat or the stench of beast.”
Janos snorted and turned away, massaging his own sore back; he had spent hours bent over horses’ hooves, bearing their weight in his hands.
The guard grabbed the young man’s shoulder, spinning him back around. “Do not take the Countess’s wishes so cavalierly, Horsemaster. She does not endure informality.”
“And I do not endure brutality!” said Janos, shaking free of Guard Kovach’s grasp. “What the devil did she mean sending me that horsewhip?”
Guard Kovach started to answer and then clamped his mouth shut, looking over his shoulder. He saw the stable boys’ eyes grow large with fear as they listened.
“Go bathe, Szilvasi. You stink of horse piss,” said the guard. He turned and walked out of the pool of light cast by the lanterns into the dark of the cobbled courtyard. “You have yet to grasp the ways of Čachtice Castle.”
Chapter 7
ASPEN, COLORADO
NOVEMBER 28, 2010
It’s a few weeks late for Halloween,” Jane said, looking up from her Vogue magazine. She threw a contemptuous look at Daisy’s shredded crepe dress and white Goth makeup.
“Ha, ha,” Daisy said. “That kills, Mother. You should be on Comedy Central.”
“You’ll scare the neighbors,” snapped Jane. “And they’ll think I’m a bad mother, letting my daughter traipse around in a torn dress in a howling blizzard.”
“Screw the neighbors,” Daisy said, fastening the buckles of her boots. “You think too much about other people’s opinions, Mother.”
“And maybe you should think more about what people think. Just a little.”
“Why? Besides I’m not going to walk around this neighborhood anyway. What’s to see but big stupid mansions and greedy men with wives younger than their own daughters. They are disgusting.”
Jane glowered at her daughter.
“What?” Daisy said.
“You know, Daisy, you have gotten awfully bitchy lately,” she said. “I might just call your father to let him know what a pain in the ass you are.”
Daisy’s breath caught, and she coughed.
“Are you all right?” said Jane, anger vanishing from her face. “You shouldn’t be going out—”
Daisy threw on the long black wool coat she had bought at the thrift shop.
“Where are you going?” Jane asked, her hand on her hip.
“Wherever I want.”
Daisy slammed the door, making the snow slide off the porch roof.
She drove the BMW down Red Mountain, sliding around the first corner and nearly crashing into the guardrail. The car stalled and when she got it started again, she crept down the hill in first gear.
She parked at a pull-out at the bottom of Red Mountain Road along the Roaring Fork River. She set off along the river on the Rio Grande trail, earbuds wedged tight in her ears. She smiled, listening to a Doors’ song, over and over again.
People are strange when you’re a stranger…
It was snowing hard, as if it were January. Snow gathered thick on every branch, shaking loose the last yellow leaves from the aspens. She trudged down the snowy path, looking at the river. There was ice along the shore but then the water broke out, running fast and dark between the snow-blanketed rocks.
The snow was falling heavily now, coating her eyelashes, blinding her, despite her hood. Jim Morrison and the Doors were blasting through the earphones.
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange…
Oof!
She hadn’t heard him racing down the path. She sprawled on the ground, cursing in the snow. Her legs were tangled up with a sweaty, cross-country skier who had slammed into her.
T.N.T. oi oi oi!
T.N.T. oi oi oi!
His earphones dangled from his neck, blasting out AC/DC.
I’m Dy-na-mite!
“Oh, shit! Are you OK? I didn’t expect anyone,” he said.
“Couldn’t you see me?”
“It’s a freakin’ blizzard. You were in the middle of the trail.”
“What an idiot!”
“Are you hurt?”
“Get off me!”
The crash had knocked the wool hat off the skier’s curly blond hair.
Daisy recognized him from school. He was a snowboarder. One of those extreme guys who competes in the X-Games, she thought. I had to go to pep rallies for him. There was nothing a Goth despised more than a pep rally.
He crawled off and pulled her up, despite the fact he was still on his skis.
“God damn it!” she said. “Now I’ve lost my earbuds.”
Daisy could still hear his music blasting from his earphones, a final insult. Hard rock. Booming.
“Here they are,” he said, digging them up out the snow. He gave her a crooked smile. “Wow, you are sassy, Goth girl.”
“Go to hell, a**hole!”
He wrinkled his nose, laughing at her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Enough with the drama, OK? Jeez.”
He handed her the wet earbuds and pressed the PAUSE button on his iPod.
“Look, I’m really sorry.”
A hard gust of wind blew the snow sideways. He had to almost shout. Daisy could smell some kind of fruity gum on his breath. A whiff of the tropics in the middle of a snowstorm.
“It’s OK,” she said, mumbling.
“You were hard to see, you know,” he said into her ear.
“What? Because I’m not dressed up in garish colors like some cheerleader?”
“Hey! I didn’t say that. Wear what you want, that’s cool. I just didn’t see you, you know.”
Daisy brushed the snow from her coat, shaking out her hood.
“You want me to walk you to your car or house or something?” he offered. “It’s snowing kinda hard.”
“No, I’m going down to the Slaughterhouse Bridge to catch the bus back to the trailhead. I’ve got my car parked there at the pull-out.”
He looked at her dubiously, swatting the bottoms of his skis with his pole to knock off the ice that had accumulated.
“Sure you’re OK?”
“Yeah, yeah, really.”
Shit, she thought. She didn’t want him to think she was a wuss, just because she wasn’t skiing or doing some kind of hardcore snow sport.
“Look, I used to ride horses and take lots of crashes,” she said. “I’ve cracked ribs, broken my arm twice, and dislocated my shoulder. This is nothing.”
“Yeah?” he said, his face creasing up in a smile. “I know all about bad wipeouts,” he said, cleaning the snow from his goggles. “OK, I’ll see you in Spanish class.”
Was he in her Spanish class?
He waved a pole at her and skied off, disappearing into the swirl of snow.
A long, wet half hour later, she crossed the river and started trudging up the steep Cemetery Lane hill toward town. It was a long hill, but at the top she could catch the bus the rest of the way into town. The street was silent, the houses shut tight against the storm. The only person she saw was a woman sweeping the snow off her car with a broom. She stopped working and stared at Daisy as she walked past.
Daisy could feel the woman’s eyes on her back as she trudged on, stumbling over chunks of ice the snowplow had thrown on the side of the road.
Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven when you’re down…
Cemetery Lane. She came to the black wrought-iron fence around the cemetery, ringing the graves and the massive century-old cottonwoods.
A good Goth never passes a cemetery without paying respects. Even in a blinding snowstorm.
It was peaceful under the branches of the cottonwoods, the trunks of the trees packed white with blowing snow. She wound her way through the cemetery, gazing at the stones, reading the inscriptions. The oldest graves dated back to the 1880s.
She always looked for the children. Sometimes she bought carnations or roses at half off at City Market and placed them on the graves.
She stopped to read a newer stone, speckled with flecks of burnt-orange lichens. Ceslav Path. Loving husband of Grace and father of Elizabeth.
My shrink had a father named Ceslav?
Daisy stood shivering in the snow, feeling a strange vibe. Jim Morrison shouted in her ear.