“You know, I’ve often thought the same,” she muses. “What could this ‘khole’ mean, if not excrement? Perhaps I’ll return to the Hippocratic Collection and see if I can find a clearer reference to it.”
I pause in my soaping of her hair, taken aback. “You—you speak Greek, my lady?”
“Certainly,” she replies, nudging my hands with her sopping head to indicate that I should continue. “German and Latin as well. It was part of my studies as a child.” She snorts a little, almost daintily. “Along with less agreeable subjects, such as the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, for which I had very little patience. I was never much given to the study of religion.”
“How wonderful,” I breathe, thinking of the vast multitude of doors that must be open to her, that will forever be closed to me. “I can barely write my name.”
She tilts her head so far back that she’s looking at me upside down, with knitted brow. “And yet you keep such an immaculate store of herbal knowledge,” she marvels. “How is that possible, without record?”
I shrug, failing to see why this would be perplexing. “I simply remember it, my lady. It’s not such a demanding task.”
“So you think,” she remarks a trifle tartly. “Because it’s easy for you, with such a sparking, agile mind that it leaps about like flames. And yet you are unmistakably phlegmatic, with your healer’s heart of stone. So calm, collected, never a misstep or flare of temper. Perhaps even too cool for some tastes.”
“Or maybe, my lady,” I suggest, upending another ewerful of water over her head, “it’s that I’ve never had the luxury of indulging myself with sparks.”
She reaches behind her head and catches my hand, drawing it forward and threading her fingers through mine. A sharp, aching thrill like nothing I have ever felt races through me at her touch. “And would you like to?” she asks, her voice husky with wine. She plays with our tangled fingers, bringing them so close to her lips I can feel the heat of her breath skip over my wet skin. “Have an opportunity for fire? I am decidedly choleric myself, you know. Strong-willed, decisive, vengeful. And always very prone to flames.”
“I should love it, my lady,” I answer, my voice low. “If it will please you.”
Again, she angles her head back so she can look at me, inverted, those red, red lips curving into a languorous smile.
“Oh, it does already, Anna,” she says. “I could not be more pleased that you’ve made your way back to me.”
The following day, she summons me again.
This time, she is pert and refreshed when I arrive. Margareta and Judit are nowhere to be seen.
“Good morning, Anna,” she says in response to my curtsy. “I woke feeling quite myself again, thanks to your ministrations. I’ve dismissed the others, so we can pass some time together. Talk more as we did yesterday, perhaps. I thought you might help me get ready in Judit’s stead—and then we could break fast and occupy ourselves with some pleasurable pursuit.”
She wishes my help to get ready, I think, my heart soaring at the thought. To pass time with me, even! What a miracle, a marvel, an answer to a prayer I never would have thought to utter.
I can scarcely believe my good fortune as I help her dress, gently tucking silk stockings over her finely turned calves, drawing a shift and underdress over her head, slowly—and very carefully, just in case—lacing her into her stays. Finally, I dress her in a gown of plummy brocade, my fingers racing up the row of tiny pearl buttons, like drops of milk, that stitch up the back.
As I finish buttoning the lacy cuffs at her wrists, I notice a bright splotch of blood along the inside hem, which is slightly crooked. How would it have gotten there, I wonder with a pang of misgiving, if there is no stain anywhere else on the garment? Krisztina’s hushed words float to the forefront of my mind, whispering of the seamstress whose fingers were sewn together as a price for clumsy work. Could the poor woman have been forced to correct these inner stitches with her fumbling hands once the dread punishment was done?
I dismiss the macabre fancy with an effort, thrusting it from my mind. The lady embroiders in her spare time, I have seen it. Surely she merely pricked herself and failed to notice a stray drop of blood as it rolled beneath her sleeve.
She watches me in the full-length mirror as I fuss about her, making sure that nothing is out of place. Her scrutiny is so candid and admiring that I struggle not to let it make me clumsy. “How exceptionally beautiful you are,” she comments, “for one with ignoble blood. One would never think, to look at you, that you were born so common. Your jaw, your chin, the way your cheekbones underpin your flesh like tidy little wings. Your bones look noble, just like mine.”
“Oh, surely not, my lady,” I demur. “I’m nothing like you, how could I be?”
“Don’t be silly, just look!” She draws me to her side, brooking no refusal, linking her arm through mine. “Imagine if you were in a gown like this, with your hair dressed to suit you. Where I am dark, you are unwontedly fair, but our skin, see? Almost the same hue.”
I see what she means. Though different, our coloring is equally dramatic, and our features seem to snag and hold the eye. There is nothing unprepossessing about either of us, nothing plain or sturdy to hide behind.
“You are beautiful, my lady, which is as it should be. But sometimes I wish I wasn’t,” I mutter, averting my eyes from where she holds them in the mirror. “It has not been any great boon to me.”
She cocks her head, taken aback. “What do you mean? What greater power could a woman wield than a face and figure that command awe and inspire desire?”
“For one in my position, desire can be . . .” I chuckle a little, wry. “Well. Decidedly undesirable.”
She watches me, silent, jutting her chin to indicate that I should go on.
“It is not just that,” I continue, hesitant. “The other girls in my village . . . they did not find my company pleasing. Not so much because I’m comely—many of them were, as well—but because of the shape my beauty takes. As you said yourself, my coloring is unusual for Magyar blood. They thought me strange, aloof.”
The lady shrugs, pursing her lips dismissively. “Small minds. The fault lies with them, not you.”
“Perhaps, but the end result is the same,” I forge on, gaining in boldness. “And then the first night I came here, I slept in the stables, as I told you. When I woke, the stable boy was atop me. Had I not had a knife to fend him off, he might have forced himself on me. That’s—That is desire, isn’t it?” I shudder convulsively, like a horse twitching flies off its withers. “And I want no part of it.”
She nods slowly, pensively, sinking down into her vanity chair. Without her asking, I come to my knees by her feet. She doesn’t seem perturbed to learn of the stable boy’s advances, I note, nor my possession of a knife. Like me, she knows such things happen far, far more often than they should.
“I see your meaning,” she says thoughtfully. “And I can understand how, given your circumstances, you failed to find that coin’s other side. But I disagree with your gist, which, if I understand aright, is that the liability of your beauty outweighs its worth as an asset.”