“I can make a brace for you,” I say. “Immobilize the hand and let the wrist heal as it should. Your other hand will have to pick up the slack, but it’ll give you reprieve.”
Weaving the brace out of leather cords consumes my free hours for three nights after that, but I yearn for such constructive labor, and I don’t mind a single stitch of it. I instruct Krisztina to wear it all the time, even to bed, and I sit with her each night and rub her shoulder until my own fingers go numb. Her hand improves in a fortnight, and her gratitude is like a salve to my flagging spirits.
It takes me back to who I was before. No grubby scull, but a midwife’s clever daughter, with a leaping mind and nimble, healing fingers.
It reminds me that even amid all this clinging, inescapable muck, I’m still who I’ve always been.
After that, the requests come in droves. Acid stomachs, swollen hands, and itchy rashes abound. Ilona often suffers from headaches that she compares to a mallet splitting walnuts; old Katalin cannot shed the chesty cough that rattles the rafters above her bed. Though I feel for them, I’m also selfishly glad for these complaints—qualms like these, I can address. Tending to them begins to lend substance to my dull days. I slip outside the keep’s confines whenever I can steal a moment to myself, to gather fresh herbs. Fortunately, I also still have the contents of my midwife’s bag, full of ready remedies.
You’d think I was some saint dispensing miracles, so disproportionate is the gratitude I receive for the relief I can give them. But I also understand it. This life is desperately hard, so constantly crushing, that even a brief absence of discomfort seems a remarkable gift.
And just like that, I find these strangers, who toil by my side and sleep around me, growing into friends. I’ve never been so surrounded by women not of my blood; my village peers never took to me this way. But here, everywhere I turn I encounter friendship. An arm flung carelessly over my shoulder; an amiable squeeze of the hand; a shared, silly joke. Krisztina has them calling me Anna the Cunning, but there’s no malice in it—only heartfelt admiration for my talents.
I might be halfway content, had I managed to shed that sense of eerie sentience I’d felt the first night I came to the keep. But if anything, the feeling has intensified with time; the castle now seems to coil around me like something feral and serpentine, as if it’s more dragon than stone. Perhaps it’s the incessant darkness that preys on my mind and whips up such senseless fears, but I’ve come to hate any task that separates me from the safety of our little herd.
As though with one wrong step I might stumble into one of the many pitch-black recesses and lose myself forever.
Consumed by the keep, swallowed by its malign stones.
My constant unease translates into my dreams. Most nights I’m plagued by nightmares of a ravening beetle horde, a glistening flood that skitters over me and gnaws me down to the bone. I know what the dream portends—fear, starvation, death—but understanding does nothing to hold it at bay, not when I know the coin I make will barely scrape my family by when winter comes.
And beyond that, I cannot shake the feeling that this was never meant to be my life.
I know the lady knows it, too, that she saw the potential that teems in me, begging to be released. I need only find a way to remind her of it. But my path never intersects with hers. Why would the lady of the castle ever soil her slippered feet by stepping in the kitchens or the scullery? It leaves me aquiver with tension, ever searching for openings, paths that will lead me to the solar or her chambers. My eyes must always be wide open so I can leap as soon as I spot my chance. With every cauldron I clean, I can feel my teeth gritting, grinding together with resolve.
Because if I cannot see an opportunity, then I must learn to craft one for myself.
Chapter Eight
The Flux and the Tisane
I have been at the keep for three weeks when I learn, from one of the maids tasked with cleaning the countess’s chambers, that the lady herself has taken ill. My heart flutters hopefully at the news, like a moth brushing against a lighted window. Perhaps this is it, my coveted opening.
“What ails her?” I ask the maidservant as I prepare a settling tisane of peppermint, chamomile, and burdock for her. Rumors of my skill have spread beyond the scullery, creeping like fast-growing vines, and now even the higher-ranking servants seek me out for their complaints. This woman has a nervous stomach, aggravated by the spicy foods she favors but staunchly refuses to give up, and I often see her thrice a week. “Do you know?”
“I’m not sure,” Agata says, wariness stealing over her weathered features. “It isn’t my place to know. I only make the lady’s bed, stir her coals, and fill her washbasin—she does not confide in me as she does in the chambermaids.”
“Still,” I push. “You’re there every day. Surely you’ve heard something.”
Her thin lips press together, forehead furrowing with discomfort. “Like I said. It isn’t my place to speak of what passes behind her doors.”
“But perhaps I could help the lady!” I argue, keeping my voice low. The maidservants’ quarters are not so crammed as the cellars, but I don’t know these women, nor do I trust them as I do the sculls. “As I help you. And if I ease her pain because you have told me of it, it would only do you credit, don’t you see?” Of course, this would only be true if I weren’t out of the countess’s favor, but that much I keep to myself.
Agata’s eyes cloud over as she considers it, grappling mightily with the opposing sides. Bless the woman’s good intentions and devotion, but a sharp mind does not count among her talents.
The thought of ingratiating herself finally seems to sway her. She leans toward me, dropping her own voice. “It’s her flux, I think,” she reveals, hushed. “It pains her something awful, worse than I’ve ever seen. Sometimes she writhes in her bed like a worm on a hook, for a week or more. It’s as if the devil himself has sunk his claws into her womb.”
Realizing what she’s said—or rather, how she’s said it—her eyes flare wide and she claps her chapped hand over her mouth, staring at me with mute horror.
“Don’t fret,” I soothe, patting her other hand. “You did right by your lady, telling me. And unless I find that I can help her, what you’ve told me shall remain between us. You have my word.”
She slumps with relief, so overcome that I wonder what the punishment would have been for her loose lips. Krisztina would surely know, I think irritably, and would only be too happy to be asked. Detailing our lady’s alleged misdeeds is her favorite topic of conversation. The latest outlandish tale is that one of the lady’s chambermaids has been dismissed, for having laced the lady’s stays a touch too tightly, enough to leave an unsightly bruise. Apparently the countess had her manservant and the other two chambermaids lace the woman into her own corset so tightly that they broke her ribs. Some even whisper that her lungs were punctured, that she almost died before being sent home to recuperate.
I wouldn’t be inclined to believe this for a moment, were it not for the fact that I haven’t seen the girl about myself. Something clearly befell her, though I doubt it’s what they say—who would mete out a punishment so severe for mere incompetence? But her absence means that the countess is short one chambermaid.