The boy still knelt huddled between them. Mátyás did not look at him or speak to him. The stocky gentleman backhanded the boy, knocking him into the mud of the churned-up meadow, then stalked off.
When the man had disappeared, Mátyás finally turned his attention to the boy, helping him stand and escorting him to an older woman wailing nearby.
My cousin came back to us looking grave. “It is a bad business. The horse will need to be shot, I think.”
“The horse?” I asked. “What about the boy?”
“The squire,” Noémi said, her voice tight, “needs a bridle more than this animal.”
“The horse was injured while the squire’s boy was riding him. The squire had money hanging on the race, and to lose the horse also…Well…he blames the boy.”
“But to beat him?” My stomach was tight with the lingering horror.
“The boy belongs to him,” Noémi explained, though her mouth twisted. “He is a serf.”
A serf was little better than a slave. I swallowed something sour. “Why didn’t anyone stop the squire?”
“And who should? The Circle excuses him because he is Luminate, and because under Hapsburg law, he is the local magistrate. Here in Hungary, we are entirely subordinate to the Austrian Hapsburgs, just as they are subordinate to the Austrian Circle. And why should they care what becomes of a serf?” Mátyás looked back at the field, where the horse was struggling unsuccessfully to rise. “I must put my horse down.”
“Your horse?” Noémi echoed in surprise.
“I bought it from the squire. It was the surest way to stop the beating.”
“But how will you pay for it?” Noémi caught his sleeve as he stepped away from us. “Not gaming. Mátyás, you promised.”
Mátyás shook her off, a frown starting between his brows. He stalked toward the field without looking back.
Dinner that night was quiet and uneasy, all of us sitting at a long, formal table in a room too large for so few. The white walls had been painted in the Chinese style, an elaborate ornamental garden sketched in blue, with warriors and sages in exotic costumes strolling through it. I studied the peaceful, frozen scene and wished I might step into it.
János said, “There are likely to be Gypsy musicians tonight, Miss Anna. You’ll want to keep your distance.”
No one spoke about the beating in the field.
After dinner, Ginny helped me into my favorite new dress, purchased in Vienna: an amber-colored gown with double rows of ruching above the hem and blond Brussels lace falling at the neck and about my wrists. I was dismayed to arrive in the entry hall and discover we were not to drive to some nearby estate but to walk back to the green outside the church. Once there, my heart sank even lower as I studied the assembled dancers.
I had hoped this dance might redeem my failure in Vienna. I knew how to sweep into a ballroom, my skirts held just so. I knew how to curtsy to the appropriate degree—when I chose to. But I did not know how to sweep into a dance conducted outdoors, on a patch of earth. I did not know how to keep my long skirts or fine shoes from getting soiled by the grass and the dirt. The women’s skirts, cut high to show an expanse of ankle, seemed much more practical—if a touch scandalous.
And the dances! I’d expected dances that one might find at any society ball: schottische, polka, quadrille, waltz, Roger de Coverley. Each of these I knew. Mama, for all she doubted my future in polite society, had seen I was properly drilled. And truth was, I loved dancing—the music, the twirl and swish of dresses, the color and energy.
But I did not know these strange round csárdás dances, these whirling dances to energetic but discordant music. So as Noémi and Mátyás were drawn, laughing, into the swirl, I stood alone, watching. Herr Steinberg, who lingered still in the village, asked me to dance, and the two of us tried to fit the steps of a polka to the music playing. It was an ill fit, and I was less than cordial when we parted.
János took center stage during a cessation in the dancing. At his signal, the Gypsy musicians took up a mournful tune, and János flung his hands upward. Water droplets materialized in the air around his head, each lit with a tiny flicker of colored light. They danced through the air, swirling above the entranced crowd. The music crescendoed, and the water droplets coalesced to a horse-shaped wave, galloping across the night sky. A final flourish, and the horse shattered. A fine mist settled over the assembled crowd, a cooling kiss after the exertions of the dance. Three cracks of lightning split the sky, the finale to his Elementalist spell, and János bowed to much applause.
Then it was Mátyás, whistling two high notes in the air. A murder of crows descended from the sky, their wings inky against the gold horizon. They circled above his head before diving toward the crowd, who shrieked and ducked low. Mátyás laughed, and the birds lifted, their raucous cries echoing his laughter. Other birds followed: white egrets with their yellow feet, red-backed shrikes with their grey heads and masks, short-eared owls with banded tails. They swirled through the air in an intricate dance, weaving in and around one another in response to Mátyás’s silent persuasion. He clapped his hands, and the birds vanished as swiftly as they’d come. A tiny piece of my heart went with them, and I coveted my cousin’s gift.
The crowd turned expectantly to Grandmama, who laughed, waved her hand, and protested she was too old. So the crowd turned to me.
I shook my head, anxiety crawling up my throat. The villagers clearly expected some kind of Luminate performance. But what could I do? Ask János to cast another illusion so I could break it, perhaps sending fire through the fields? Unthinkable.
Noémi, Grandmama said, would not be asked to perform. Like Mátyás, she was Animanti, her magic working on living things, but she had focused on healing spells, which were not suitable for display.
With a kind of collective sigh, the musicians struck up again and the crowd returned to dancing. I sat beside Grandmama to watch, but a movement caught the periphery of my vision.
I squinted into the shadows between two houses. Like the other Hungarian villages we’d passed, the village near Eszterháza consisted mostly of houses strung along a rutted main road, like shells on a bit of twine. Behind the houses spread fields, silent and fathomless under the star-bright sky.
There. Something was moving. My first thought was some kind of animal—a cow or horse, perhaps. But no animal would carry that faint nimbus of light.
My heart leapt into my throat. I remembered Noémi’s words: a night of Unruhe, of restless shades and shadows. Who was in the field? Whoever it was moved erratically, the light blinking in and out of sight.