Debtor's War Pt. 03

The tannery was as I'd left it. Enzo still breathed, and his bandages hadn't soaked through this time.

He roused himself as I knelt beside him. "You left..." Then his eyes followed mine to Eleanor's stoic face. He didn't say another word, but gripped my hand. I squeezed him back.

"Tend the fire, Miss Walder," she said.

I pulled my fingers free and did as she asked.

I chanced a sidelong glance at Enzo as I turned the wood in the grate.

He was transfixed by her cold stare.

"I need a capable herald," she said. "Only one. I have no desire to maintain a whole stable of sycophants. Make your choice," she said. "Will it be yourself or this little Fury of yours?"

A chill prickled on the nape of my neck as the meaning of her words sank into my stupid, trusting brain. I imagined Radu's dead head laughing at me.

Somehow Enzo broke free of her ophidian gaze to glance at me. I saw the wheels turning in his head, remorse fading away to reveal that flint eyed monster I'd forgotten to be afraid of. The addict. Who would cut anyone's throat in a heartbeat, just for one more mouthful of vitae.

"I would keep faith with you, my lady," he said.

She inclined her head, the ghost of a smirk on her lips. "And for the silence of the blood? Your girl knows everything. Everything, Enzo."

"She's no herald," he said, "she's a harlot."

"Will you not plead for her life, as she has for yours?" Eleanor said.

"I would keep faith with you until death, make any sacrifice," he said.

She looked at me. And though her beauty was undiminished, I saw the age and cunning in her eyes. It was a curse. Finally, I believed her. The promise of her blood easily eclipsed whatever twisted love Enzo felt for me.

"I... I just wanted to live in peace with my sister?" I said. "That's all I came begging for in the first place."

"You will see Jan Lugoz through his dotage. You have proved that your interests are my interests." She turned her attention back to Enzo. "I will hear no more talk of sacrifices, Judas. I will take your oath, for all its paltry worth. Take my strength."

I couldn't bear to look at him. I couldn't bear to look away. She held out that ruby drop on her thumb just as she had for me, my mouth watered at the sight of it. I watched Enzo's miracle, my fists tightened in sympathy as his wounds steadily melted away.

She scowled down at him with pitiless satisfaction "Your Lady lives, shameless thrall, yet you kneel at my feet? What are you fit for? What fool would trust you?"

I knew Enzo's strength. I watched him grovel at her feet. "I am your servant."

"Small hope that you might serve anything but yourself. On your feet, the night is short."

Only then did he give me the smallest shrug of an apology before rising to open the door for her.

I watched them disappear together, and sank to my knees, utterly exhausted. Bitter betrayal twisted my belly, laid me low. That's how Claudia and Lugoz found me in the morning, curled up like a dog by the fire.

Winter's first snow fell in those few hours, and the great Ottoman army that had threatened to siege us for months began to disperse after just eighteen days. Liberated, the city of Vienna rejoiced, even as she buried her dead.

I moved like an automaton, pulling my body through the motions. I fetched water, split wood, thanked our neighbours, kissed my sister's worried face. Frau Wasche and her two sons came and broke bread with us, and later that afternoon, Neni and Tamas descended, bringing more meat and beer. Lugoz welcomed them all with open arms, and watched me with a curious mixture of amusement and sympathy as I scowled at shadows. The dog wouldn't come anywhere near me.

There was a grand celebration at St Steven's that night, and in the streets all around. Claudia would have dragged me out there, but Lugoz insisted it was too much for him, and that he needed me at his side.

"Just bloody go!" I told them, the near madness in my voice was no act. "I haven't slept for three days!"

Tamas frowned at that, but promised to take care of her. I watched them go without me, the two neighbour's boys, Tamas, Claudia and Neni.

"Bed. No argument," Lugoz said.

"But the state of the house..."

He smacked the tip of his cane on the boards, "Try an old man's patience! Your Neni has already scrubbed everything within an inch of its life, besides that you'll start hearing angels if you put it off much longer."

I pulled off my veil and dress and flung them haphazardly on the end of the bed. "Angels? Or ghosts?"

"Lend me an arm."

I helped him over to bed, knelt down and took his boots off, lifted his frail body into the centre and crawled in beside him.

We lay in silence for a time. Listened to the revelry outside, which was not so different to the sound of battle.

"I know it feels like you're lost," he said, "but you're not." He caught the tear on my cheek with his calloused finger. "You're so young, I think. Too young for her. But she won't forget you."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Always fretting for somebody else. Even now, you're angry with me, worried for what I might say."

I'd promised to keep all knowledge of The Blood sacred. Promised never to ask Lugoz anything about Lady Eleanor.

"All the things Enzo did to me, and I still love him, Herr Lugoz. He said he loved..."

He hushed my tears. "That 'husband' of yours?"

"You know how much I care for Claudia, I'm sworn to protect her, and I'm so grateful for all you've done for us. But there's still a part of me stuck there with..." Will you not plead for her life as she has for yours... "I'm so tired," I said. "I'm carrying too much I don't know how to put it down."

"You already have." His own eyes grew misty then. "You put it all in the hands of a higher power, and you need to let go. Trust the ground to hold you up. War is over. Make something of yourself."

"I've made a fool of myself."

"Perhaps," he yawned. "But you still have your charter. And your sister. And a good strong roof. Can you imagine better? A dowry for each of you? A future? Children of your own?" He leaned forward and spoke so quietly I could barely hear it. "Prove your worth."

***

I had thought her mind was addled beyond saving, but the Bürgermeisterin recovered surprisingly well, and made no secret of her patronage of us. With her blessing, my sister and I thrived.

Though I could not forget Enzo, there were only rumors of where he might have gone. There was no sign of the blood drinkers either, and with their best commanders missing, what was left of Enzo's hundred licked their wounds and moved on. Meanwhile, the city reordered itself. Food was expensive, but the famine Enzo had been sure of never came.

Strong men drafted from surrounding villages raised the fortifications, and in turn spent their wages in Vienna. Gangs were thrown together like military units, breaking their backs to build the stone mason's vision, but it would be years until that vision was complete. Thousands of lives had been lost, and half the city was a ruin. Madame Gerta had no kin, and both she and her sometime lover were among those missing, presumed dead.

Neni and Tamas borrowed against the value of the far off Halaz homestead, and used it to buy the inn that had been Gerta's brothel from the city. Tamas became a skilled brewer, and ran the place as a clean boarding house for merchants and travelers. Neni's cooking was legendary.

Claudia and I poured our profits back into Lugoz's tannery, traded his leather hide, and our handicrafts alongside spirits and bladed weapons.

We soon came to know the masons and gangmasters by name, and were on good terms with the gate guards. Most were fair, some were not, we made the best of it. Bribes and favours were the cost of doing business.

I never went crying to Lady Barbara. The noble woman had survived worse abuse, I'd seen it with my own eyes. Now that the nightmare of the seige had passed she seemed free of the monsters destructive attention. She took her duties seriously, spent much of her time among us small folk, and was well loved for it.

Christmas eve I lived my dream, the house was full of love, our bellies full of meat and plenty. Many gathered under Lugoz's roof, and at nightfall moved en mass to the church of St Steven. After the vigil, we almost had to carry the poor man home, and he slept for days. We played on the frozen river like crazy mummers, and came home to warm each other the best way we knew how.

My sister and I had almost six months together with Lugoz. We made enough money for dowries, though we had no firm plans to wed that year. Then, in the wet and miserable thaw in March, stagnant flood water filled the muddy streets. Almost a year to the day since our father cast us out, my sister sickened.

My Claudia. Though she was young and fit, she was gone in days. Three days of mortal agony and squalor that took all dignity from her in death. Half my heart died with her. Old Lugoz followed quickly after, his frail body ravaged by the same bloody flux. In his delerium he spoke of things that I will never write, begged me to forgive him. Begged me to spare his dead wife and son.

You cannot trust the ground to hold you up. We are not promised an hour beyond the present moment.

Many times I had dragged myself up from the darkest of places, but this was not such a time. You would call it a breakdown of sorts. If it were not for my friends, waking me, feeding me, standing by me day by day, I would have crawled into the ground after her. I couldn't bear to touch her things for the longest time, Neni saved everything for me until I could face it. Tamas executed the estate of Lugoz and took me into their home.

Weeks passed. Eastertide came and went.

I knew with the certainty of youth that I could never love again. The parts of me that believed in love, the parts that could even recognise it so closely bound me to my twin sister, they had torn away and left me broken. Life, however, and all its flavours tempted me back from the edge of that abyss.

Neni and Tamas were unfailingly kind to me, and to each other. Tamas proposed to Neni, and she accepted. Some people were incensed, less than a year had passed since the awful day she became a widow, but the pair wouldn't wait any longer. I couldn't hold on to my grief in the face of their resilience. They were wed not long after Salmo's funeral, though their union was predictably childless. Enzo showed up at the funeral and at the wedding, though Tamas and avoided being alone with him. He made eyes at me and dropped hints that he was planning to settle down in Lviv. I had the good sense to change the subject.

Poor old General Salm had his hip smashed open in the final assault. He survived the winter so wounded, and didn't succumb until May. He had a grand funeral, the army mourned as did the common folk. There was shared faith that even as a supremely violent and ruthless man, he had earned his place among the saints.

All recollection of the midnight world faded, becoming fragile as a dream. I'm sure Eleanor played her part in that, though she left me with no memory of her meddling. My only obligation was to keep my silence, and I did. In return I was allowed to be myself. Again? Perhaps for the first time... free to grow into my womanhood, free to grant my hand and my generous dowry to a gentler man than Enzo. How I became Frau Miller, and raised three beautiful children, lost just as many.

But that's another story, of interest only to the most dogged historian. Perhaps I'll seek one out someday, they can publish a paper on the utter misery that was my experience of the 1530's, infant mortality rates included. Cap that off with the worst drought in living memory. Then three years of pelting wet summers, sickly and hungry. Not worth the effort of telling, and you're not getting any younger. No. You want blood, I know it. I'm the same.

After my husband died, I used my dowry to buy a home just off the King's Road between Vienna and Tulln. I enjoyed a few dalliances with the Bürgermeister and his men. For a time I grew close to Enzo again. He was bitter, even after all that time we'd spent apart, paid me as though I were nothing but a whore to him. It was humiliating, of course it was, my own love and hate for him were two sides of the same coin. In the end, I think it hurt him more than it hurt me.

***

1550

In the three years that followed my final humiliation at Enzo's feet, I admit, I ate little, slept less, and considered myself old at forty. I was much older than my mother had been when she passed. I rarely saw my own reflection, but I kept myself decent. I kept my head covered even when sleeping, as was expected of a widow. Sometimes my daughter Maggie combed it out for me so very gently and fretted that it was thinner, greyer. I didn't mind. Believe me, I told her, when I came of age, I never imagined I'd live long enough to find a grey hair. Her innocence was my treasure, and I never let her forget it.

As for my two sons, one of our patrons found an apprenticeship for young Peter in Graz, but that took half my savings. John, my older son demanded nothing of me. He went with six of his good friends to the town of Tulln, and I never expected to see him again but he came back with his pregnant wife a year later. I say wife, they came home to make it legal and then it was down to me to visit them at their little apartment, so I did. He had become a tanner's mate, and honestly his new master was just the kind of man I wished his father had been.

Tulln spring market was always the week before Vienna's, and though their purses were lighter, the people of the small town were kinder. I was more than a peddler, less than a tradesmen. I rarely had to sell myself anymore. I would fill my little cart with vegetables from our half acre, and make the day long walk to Tulln on a Friday with Maggie. For protection, Mark Ansell's two boys would walk us there, and then the Saturday morning we would fill our little stall up together so Maggie could sell jars of our salted winter cabbage and medlar butter, and what you might call moonshine. Meanwhile, I filled the cart up again with anything I knew Tulln had too much of and Vienna lacked. Reed baskets of all sizes, home spun flax, ribbons, laces, purses, anything else that caught my eye that I could get ten or twelve for the price of half a dozen.

I could double the money I started with, ending up with around a fifth clean profit after expenses. Simon Ansell grudged along, always wanted more coin than trade, but his brother knocked him back into line. We all took our cut, our share of the profits, and the odd bottle of cottage mead or sour apple cider. It was never worth growing my enterprise beyond that. Never worth drawing unwanted attention or more accurately, unwanted taxation.

Our little scrap of land would have been enough to raise chickens and greens. My efforts were for other necessities. I dressed Maggie well, paid the priest to teach her Latin letters and build her faith. She grew tall and slim even with all the meat I made her eat, and her hair shon in the sunlight like a chestnut pony. My baby girl. As she came of age my plans faltered.

"What are we?" she asked me as we had breakfast one morning.

I pursed my lips and gave the answer more than a little thought.

"We are very lucky," I said at last.

"Mama," she teased me gently, "you know that's not what I mean."

"Poor merchants, my darling. And you are a good girl."

She kissed my cheek, and I thought that was the end of that.

"Karl Halbrecht says I'm just a peasant. But our little farm is yours, isn't it Mama? His daddy says that's just not possible. He says it's a lie."

I was angry and she knew me well enough to stop talking as I tore a crust and chewed it thoughtfully. Halbrecht was a stonemason, his son an able journeyman. His smirking face and superior drawl irritated the hell out of me, but his son had a different character altogether. Where Gerard was bullish and intimidating, the boy, Karl, had a more subtle air of authority about him. He was a good strong lad, slow to anger and slower to judge. Gerrard Halbrecht can kiss my arse, I thought, give him something better to do than run his mouth.

"That troubles me." I said. "His father should have taught him better."

Her face flushed pink. There was a good chance she was no longer ignorant of where that bread came from. And hungry though I was, I could barely stomach it. Did she see that boy as above her? Did she see herself as the fruit of my sins?

"Maggie." I said. "It was a different world twenty years ago. There were no gendermes, we had soldiers marching through like they owned us all, tax collectors that would happily take your right eye. Then the plague and then the famine. I guarantee you Karl Halbrecht's daddy has done some shameful things to keep his sons fed, and a roof over their heads." I put my hand over hers. "Things he would NEVER discuss, even with his last breath. So don't be angry with the young man. He doesn't know any better."

She kissed me again then. Her lips lingered on my cheek and she spoke before she drew away.

"Thank you mama."

"When the time comes, your brother and I will find you a good match in Tulln. I promise. You don't ever worry your head about the past."

Because that was my job, worrying about the past. It was my house, my land. I had earned my fucking freedom, and no pig headed mason could possibly understand what that meant to me.

Enzo was an honest man who called me a whore to my face. Our other patrons were obviously less so. I wondered at each smiling face, each easy kiss on the cheek which Judas had soiled Maggie's reputation with gossip.

It wasn't on my mind too long.

Harvest time is a blessing for everyone. It was easy to make an honest living for those few weeks of the year, but with my sons gone, my daughter and I were a less attractive package. We made the most of it. I was never afraid to journey the king's road, and one job I really enjoyed was walking the wagons down to the barns, and up to the market. You could walk twenty miles a day but I loved every minute. We'd sing and tell tales, the young Ansell boys would inevitably enjoy themselves in other ways but that year I was particularly mindful of appearances.

It was a good year. Every wagon groaned under the weight of the harvest, greasing the axles and balancing the load was thirsty work.

The run up the glacis with the market share of winnowed grain was most precarious, and hardest on the animals. You needed a team of two abreast, but the way was only wide enough for one. You probably don't know what the devil I'm talking about, do you? The glacis surrounded Vienna. As I told you before, in my childhood, the powers that be had ordered the wald and dwellings cleared back as far as artillery could cast, to prevent invaders finding enough cover to siege us. The glacis was a man made sloping mound, a wide flat city sized motte if that's easier to imagine? Slick as a bog in winter, kinder in summer, but the whole point of it was as a fortification to stop the Turks. The road up to each city gate was necessarily narrow as a consequence.

I found myself trying to tempt a sweaty ox to keep pulling a teetering wagon full of grain sacks up the dusty incline. I was adjusting its bracing when the beast in front of us spooked at something.

Our momentum stalled, the beast beside me had nowhere to go under the yoke, and we became entangled. I didn't even have time to shout a warning, but I heard a sickening crack as the brake failed and the wagon lurched back, pinning my shoulder between the iron brace and the wooden yoke. A shadow loomed up behind me and the animal screamed.

I don't remember the wagon falling. I remember being twisted to one side as the men pulled me out, weirdly I remember the sun on my face being too bright, so bright I couldn't see. I remember my daughter howling for me, really howling like an animal, but I couldn't turn my head to comfort her. I remember the pain, as far as anyone can remember such things. My right side felt as though it were steeped in ice water from my shoulder to my hips, and I couldn't feel my arm at all. I remember spitting out teeth and a mouthful of blood. I remember saying a prayer, making the shape of the words, but I couldn't breathe in enough to make a damn sound.