A sparrow was singing in the linden tree outside the window. Csilla could identify the tree by its heart-shaped leaves. Her father had taught her the shapes of all the leaves …But she did not want to think about her father.
Sunlight had dried the rain. The linden was in flower, and its scent filled the room. She was sitting up in bed, leaning against the pillows, listening to the sparrow. How cool the pillows were, how clear the sunlight.
She whistled, a tune like the sparrow’s song, and it stopped to listen to her, then hopped down to the windowsill, and onto the table, and onto the finger she held out for it.
“Like Tu?nde,” said Mrs. Mada’r, standing in the doorway. The sparrow, startled, whistled and flew out the window. “Do you think you can eat some cucumber salad?”
Csilla nodded.
“I made it with just a bit of sour cream.”
“My grandmother always said it was best with sour cream,” said Csilla.
“Well, I’m glad to hear I made it like your grandmother! Here, take these.” Mrs. Mad’r handed her a napkin folded around two slices of brown bread, a wooden bowl filled with cucumber salad, and a wooden spoon. She sat down beside the bed in a carved wooden chair.
When Csilla had eaten the cucumber salad and both slices of bread, Mrs. Mad’r said, “Can you talk about it now?”
Csilla shook the breadcrumbs from her napkin onto the table and whistled. The sparrow flew through the window and landed on the table. He picked up as many of the crumbs as he could, tilted his head to look at her, then flew off again.
“He’ll be back,” said Mrs. Mada’r. “I think he has a family. There’s a nest in the linden tree, and several days ago I saw brown heads poking out of it. I think there’s a Mrs. Sparrow and some young sparrows waiting for him.” She paused, then said, “Csilla—”
“My father sent me away! And I had to lie in the bottom of a car, and that woman only let me out at night, and I thought I was going to die. And then on the airplane and in the train I wished I had died. I wish I were dead now.” Csilla covered her face with her hands. The tears that she had not cried, not since her father had told her, “You have to leave Budapest—as quickly as possible, Csillike,” came now. She shook with them, violently, like a tree in a storm. Then, suddenly, she felt a wave of nausea, and the bread and cucumber salad were no longer sitting quietly in her stomach—
“That’s all right,” said Mrs. Mada’r. “I can wash the blanket. But you have to stay quiet, very quiet for a while. You’re still sick from the metal in the car. Helga tried to protect you as well as she could with blankets, but remember that you breathed in metal for three days. It will be a while before you feel well again.” She took the blanket from the bed and put it in a heap on the floor.
“I could have helped him!” said Csilla, wiping her mouth with the napkin, ashamed of herself. “I was helping him. Why did he have to send me away?”
She could feel Mrs. Mada’r’s hand on her arm. “I’m sure he sent you away because he loved you.”
Csilla turned to look at her, furious. “How do you know! You don’t know anything about him, or me! Who are you, anyway? Who are all of you, you and Helga and that woman who brought me here, who squeaks like a mouse?”
Mrs. Mada’r reached up and unwrapped the turban around her head. Her hair fell down around her. Green as leaves.
“Oh,” said Csilla. For a moment, she could not speak. Then she said, “Not even my grandmother’s hair was as green as yours, and my father says she had more Tu?nde’r blood in her than anyone in Hungary. That’s where it comes from, doesn’t it? From the Daughters of the Moon?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “My hair and yours, although you don’t have quite as much of the T?under blood as your grandmother. Your mother was not one of the T?under, was she?”
“No,” said Csilla. “She died when I was only a baby. And then my grandmother died last year, and now Papa …”
“Hush,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “Remember, you have to stay quiet so you can get well. Let me put this blanket in the tub to soak—and the napkin, while I’m at it. I’ll be back in a moment.”
When she returned, Csilla was still sitting on the bed, staring out the window. “I’ve brought you more water,” she said, handing Csilla the green cup. She paused, then added, “We’ll have to talk about what happened—soon. But for now, why don’t I tell you another story?” She waited for a moment for Csilla to answer, but Csilla was silent. So she began, “The Daughters of the Moon died, eventually. They had mortal blood in them, as well as the blood of the Moon, and they were not eternal. But their children, the Tu?nde’r, lived peacefully among the farms and villages of Hungary, until the church decided that they were children of the Devil …”
Reluctantly, Csilla wiped her eyes with her hands and settled back against the pillows to listen.
“Erzsike!”
“Shhh,” said Erzse’bet, putting one finger to her lips. She leaned closer to the chapel door, which was open just enough to let a sliver of torchlight fall on the stones of the courtyard. “I think it’s the landgravine.”
“You’re supposed to be in bed already,” said M’rta, but her voice was low, and she too leaned closer to hear what the landgravine was saying.
“I have sent for Ludwig. He would prefer to stay at the university, but I’ve told him it’s time he assumed his father’s position. How peaceful the landgrave looks, as though he were sleeping. A pity if, as you tell me, his soul is suffering the torments of hellfire.”
“That, I’m afraid, is the penalty for excommunication.”
Poor old landgrave. Erzse’bet had seen him earlier that day lying in the chapel beneath a pall of crimson velvet, looking more peaceful than he had ever looked while alive. How could the landgravine speak that way about him? And who was that other voice?
“I don’t know who the landgravine’s talking to,” she whispered. “It doesn’t sound like anyone in the castle.”
“For his science, as he called it, he risked his immortal soul,” said the landgravine. “I think you will find me quite different from my husband, Father Conrad. I have no interest in old women who gather weeds by moonlight, and I value an alliance with the church.”
“Then I take it the Inquisition can resume its activities in Thuringia?”
“I don’t think it’s in either of our interests to have Thuringia isolated from the Empire.”
“No,” whispered Ma’rta, “he hasn’t come to the Wartburg for many years. But I’ll remember the sound of his voice until the day I die. That’s the Inquisitor.”
Erzs’bet remembered the landgrave muttering, over his pots of agrimony and rue, about “that damned superstitious nonsense, the Inquisition.” Then he would finish watering his pots, make notes on a sheet of vellum, and sit with her in the sunlight of the herbarium. “Someday,” he would say, “we will understand the properties of plants and draw out their essences. And then, my dear, we will cure the illnesses that have bedeviled mankind since we were banished from Eden.” Finally she would read to him from his Aristotle, while he fell asleep on a bench.
“And when will you celebrate the marriage between Ludwig and Princess Elizabeth?” asked the Inquisitor.
“Perhaps you could marry them yourself, Father Conrad? It would lighten our grief, following the landgrave’s funeral with a wedding. My husband was foolish, delaying her marriage to Herman until he thought she was old enough. We almost lost her dowry, until the king agreed to an engagement with Ludwig. Well, she’s certainly old enough now, older than when I married. And no time should be lost, now that the king has left for Palestine. If he dies, Ludwig will have as good a claim to the throne as anyone else, I think. Oh, my poor Herman! Such a fine boy, Father. You should have seen him riding across the fields, whipping his pony into a lather. What a king of Hungary he would have made!”
“We must never regret the will of God, Landgravine. I remember hearing that the landgrave had some excellent Tokay?”
“They’re coming this way!” said Erzs’bet.
“Hush,” said M’rta, pulling her back by her sleeve, into the shadows beyond the torchlight.
The landgravine emerged from the chapel, followed by a man in a Franciscan habit. She stood in the courtyard,
