Four.
Nothing happened. The moonlight streamed serenely through the curtains, pooling on the floor. The shadows stayed put, as well-regulated shadows do. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep.
Hours later, I woke with a start. There was a pressure on my breast, as if something heavy weighted me down. I threw the blankets from me, but the pressure did not abate. I sat upright, both hands flying upward to settle on the warm, bare flesh at the base of my neck. Nothing. There was nothing there.
And then I remembered.
In my dream, a creature had crouched on my breast, long, tangled hair framing its face, two burning pits where eyes should be. The feet that pressed so heavily into my chest were goose feet, a mundane detail made all the more terrifying by its incongruity.
Lidércnyomás. Nightmare. The pressure of a lidérc before feeding.
The blood-red lips opened, revealing a mouth of needle-sharp teeth. I cringed, anticipating the creature’s foul breath and the sting of pain. But the breath was sweet, like honey.
And the only thing that came from the creature’s mouth was a word: “eloldozva.”
When I asked Grandmama in the morning, she said the word meant “free.” Or perhaps “unbound.” She wanted to know, where I had heard it.
“I dreamed it.” I stirred some honey into my tea. “I counted the corners of my room.”
Grandmama looked up from a bit of bread and jam, her forehead pinched with concern. “Some say you will dream truth if you do. What did you see?”
A creature out of folklore. A story. “Nothing,” I said.
While my ankle healed, I was confined to the palace and its grounds. I slept most of the first two days, exhausted by the journey across Europe and the terrors of Whitsun night. By the fourth day, my gait had improved noticeably but my temper had not. I was bored.
“Why don’t you show Anna about the place?” János suggested at luncheon, tipping his pipe toward Mátyás.
I should like that. I glanced up at Mátyás with a slight smile.
“It’s tiring,” Mátyás complained, tugging at a small ornamented cross he wore around his neck. “Wouldn’t you rather go into the village for a pint? I’ve a year’s worth of winnings to drink through.”
I wouldn’t—and so we set off to explore the palace. Noémi’s vizsla romped behind us, sniffling at our heels and then bounding off into darkened rooms before darting back. In English, Mátyás told me a little of the history, how the house was expanded in the late eighteenth century and then largely abandoned.
“Do you know why?” I asked.
Mátyás shrugged. “Who can say? Perhaps it was too expensive to keep up—perhaps the family merely decided it was too far from Vienna, too unfashionable. Miklós’s grandson—one of János’s cousins—moved most of the furniture and paintings to Eisenstadt.”
“But you live here.”
Mátyás quirked one eyebrow, the corners of his lips curling. “Yes. For my sins, I live here. János came here perhaps ten years ago, when his pension proved insufficient to Viennese life. I believe he asked to come—he had fond memories of the place as a child.”
I smiled. “Grandmama shares those memories. Do you like it?”
For a moment I worried I had asked too much. A muscle flexed in his cheek, and my hitherto good-humored cousin looked grim. Then his face lightened. “It’s not so bad. János was lonely before, and he enjoys having us. And of course, now you’re here, it’s infinitely better.” He winked at me, and, to my disgust, I found myself blushing.
We followed a curving staircase down and wandered through a small room unaccountably full of the most exquisite china—all of which, he said, was used when Empress Maria Theresa had visited. The shelves were lined with Sèvres vases, Chinese urns, and delicate Dresden figures. The most valuable had been taken to the family’s primary holdings at Eisenstadt, and yet a lord’s ransom remained. On one shelf I discovered something odd: a wooden sculpture of a web-footed boy stuffing a frog into his mouth. He looked wholly feral.
“What is this?”
Mátyás grinned. “Our local legend. He was found in the Hanság and brought to Eszterháza, but he escaped and was never heard from again. Some say he lives in the marsh still.”
More monsters.
We passed out of the china room into the vaulted entryway, and crossed through a pink marble doorway into a large, multiwindowed room. The floors here, like the one above in the Banquet Hall, were of white marble. Painted silver and green flower garlands, only slightly faded, adorned the walls, and cherubs gamboled overhead with roses. Three other doorways, each framed by pink marble, led out into the ruined gardens. The middle set were open, letting a spring breeze into the room.
“Behold the celebrated Sala Terrena,” Mátyás said, gesturing into the room.
Something moved in the far corner. Several somethings. The strong scent of livestock was not, as I had supposed, wafting in through the open windows.
“Those are sheep,” I said faintly. “In the house.” Oroszlán gave a sharp, delighted bark and sprang into the room, chasing the sheep toward the far wall and scattering hay beneath him. Some escaped through the open doorway.
Mátyás grinned at me. “Well, the barns are disreputable, and János never uses this room.”
I wondered if Grandmama knew.
“Keeping sheep in the house is also marvelous tonic for overinflated self-esteem,” Mátyás added, and I choked on a laugh. “Come.” Mátyás took my arm and tugged me toward the set of large doors opening onto the gardens. We dodged the sheep—and sheep droppings!—and found ourselves looking out at the garden that had once been the pride of Hungary. A series of paths branched out from a central fountain, most of them lost into shaggy foliage.
“There, at the end of the garden. Do you see those buildings?”
I nodded. The buildings were a smudge of darkness beyond the green.
“One was an opera house, another a puppet theater. Now they’re mostly decayed, unused. Sometimes vagrants sleep there, though don’t tell my sister that. And yet sixty years ago, Haydn lived here. Operas were performed monthly in the opera house. ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’?” He laughed softly. “Behold how the mighty are fallen.”
“You know Shelley?” I asked, too startled by his familiarity with the English poet to make a witty comment on the fall of modern empires.