“But, Elizabeth,” I argue, “how can he blame you for what isn’t your fault? You can’t help it that you haven’t conceived.”
She casts me such a blisteringly scornful look that I lift a hand to shield my heart, as if she has nocked an actual arrow at me. “Don’t be such a naïf, Anna,” she spits scathingly, pacing away from me. “It doesn’t suit you. Surely you, of all people, know how pennyroyal, rue, and angelica may be used by a woman in need.”
“Pennyroyal . . .” I trail off, blinking stupidly. All the herbs she has named are emmenagogues, used to purge the womb of unwanted get. As the realization descends upon me, I roll my shoulders like a twitching cat, wondering how I could have missed the signs. It had not even occurred to me that the excruciating pain of her flux might have been artificially induced—and yet she was so familiar with the abortifacient’s smell that she sniffed it on me the first time that we met. Which means I should have seen her desperation, understood what she was doing to herself. “Is—is that why he is so furious at you, Elizabeth? Does he know what you have been doing?”
She looks away from me, gritting her teeth so hard her chin juts like a blade. “Ferenc is many things, but not a fool,” she murmurs. “He does not know for sure, but he suspects. Strongly suspects.”
“But why did you not tell me?” I whisper, my stomach clenching with pain. I think of that first conversation I witnessed between them, Ferenc railing at her for failing to provide him with an heir. I had thought it his boorishness and cruelty—not the additional fury of a scorned husband whose wife was intent on scouring her womb clean of him.
She rounds on me again, nostrils flaring. “Because I am no fool,” she snaps. “We barely knew each other then. How could I have known for sure you would not find me monstrous for it? Besides, my reason remains the same. I will not be sucked dry by his foul spawn, nor imperil my son’s future inheritance. My child is perfection; his would be the devil’s own get.”
It is as if she believes she made Gabor wholly of herself, as though he budded off like some replica of her flesh and blood and bone. As far as she is concerned, his father may as well have not existed.
“But—every month, Elizabeth? Since you were married three years ago?” I cannot keep the dismay from my voice. “Such powerful, scourging herbs are not meant to be used thus! You could have killed yourself that way!”
“And I would have, happily,” she retorts. “If it would have spared me this. I cannot suffer myself to live as the mother of his get, and I will do anything it takes to prevent it! Anything, do you hear me?”
I surprise both of us by bursting into tears.
Elizabeth is so taken aback she draws up short, as if bolted in place. I myself am so shocked I press my palms to my cheeks, as if I could ward the weeping off. But it will not be thwarted, boiling up through my fingers, mortifying and irrepressible. The opposite of my usual, painstaking control.
“Anna, are you—are you crying?” She says it so tentatively, with such incredulity—as if my tears are an unheard-of wonder—that a hysterical hiccough of laughter burbles in my throat. “I have never seen you cry before. I—I think I may have believed you could not.”
“Well, I obviously can,” I blubber through tears so thick they slide like a hot wash down my face. “And if you die, Elizabeth, if you kill yourself because of him, I will cry for months, I swear it. Perhaps I will never stop. I love you, Elizabeth. If you, if you die . . . I do not know what I would do with myself.”
Her face softens, melts with concern. “Oh, Anna . . .”
She sweeps over to me, enfolding me in an embrace so tight my head tucks into the perfumed curve of her throat, so close that I can feel her swallow hard. I forget sometimes how much taller she is than I am, but now she rocks me back and forth like a swaddled babe, swaying us in place.
“My little sage,” she croons into my hair. “My sweet, loving dove. You would help me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course!” I gasp against her skin. “Of course I would!”
“Well, there is one way out for us,” she muses thoughtfully, resting her chin against my head. “Only one way that I can think of, at any rate.”
“What?” I gasp, hope flaring so painfully inside me that my chest burns with its force. “Anything, anything I can do—”
“If he were to die, instead of me . . . I would be set free. Liberated by my widow’s weeds.”
“Die?” I twist in her embrace, brow wrinkling as I look up at her. “But Ferenc is hale and healthy, isn’t he? I don’t think I’ve ever heard him so much as clear his throat. Why would he oblige us by dropping dead?”
Her grip loosens, and she steps away from me—but her eyes, so dark and bottomless, with all the star-pricked dimension of the night sky, maintain their hold. “As I have often said, so many things can befall a man,” she says with studied lightness, twitching one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Disease, malfeasance, accident. A fall down the stairs, a tumble from a balking horse, a slim knife speared through an eye under cover of the night.”
Or poison, I can almost hear her saying. The unspoken word echoes in my mind, expanding in volume, like a whisper growing into a shout.
Poison him, Anna, that is what she is truly saying. Poison him for me.
“Are you—” My heart seems to have grown and hardened in my chest, ossified into a rough-skinned stone that bangs against my lungs. “Are you truly asking me to kill him?”
“Anna, mind your words!” she chides, her eyes growing wide with shock—but I can see a hint of an approving smile tugging a corner of her lip. “Who speaks of murder? Have I said any such thing? I am merely saying what might happen, should the world be kind to me. To us.”
“But . . .” My mind races, whirling end over end, as if tumbling pell-mell down a hill. I would give so much, almost anything, to spare her pain. But I am a healer above all else, above even my love for her. As much as I loathed my father and do not mourn his death, I never envisioned killing him. The thought of such violence runs against my grain, hitches up hard against the solid, unyielding, impermeable core of who I am. Against my own inner star.
As I think, Elizabeth watches me avidly, unblinking. She is barely breathing, though the delicate hollow at her throat thrums with the frantic force of her pulse. I can see the glinting ember of her hope catching cautious flame in her eyes.
It pains me sorely to huff it out. “I cannot,” I whisper finally, my own heart cleaving when her face falls. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she says dully, turning away from me as her face caves into itself. Curling into her misery alone. “I did not ask anything of you.”
That night, I accompany Elizabeth to the great hall for dinner, despite my misgivings.
“Apparently my demon of a husband has something special planned for me tonight,” Elizabeth tells me smoothly, having recovered her composure. Though the lurid bruise around her eye cannot be concealed even with my best efforts, the rest of her is impeccably groomed, shiningly coiffed and perfect. Her arm is hooked through mine as we walk the keep’s corridors, and I am so grateful to be forgiven for my lapse in devotion that my feet may as well be feathers, so light is my step. “To atone for his uncouth behavior last night.”