“Wait,” I said, borrowing Mama’s imperious tone. It worked. He stopped shifting. “Grandmama, Mr. Kovács is highly intelligent and well educated. He can write letters for you, tally bills, secure a carriage—anything you’d like.”
“He’s Gypsy,” János observed, shaking his head. “He’s as like to steal from you as serve you.”
“Romani,” I said. “And he won’t.”
“A Gypsy!” Grandmama said, dropping her embroidery. “Anna, really, I couldn’t.”
“That’s unfair, János bácsi,” Mátyás said, speaking for the first time. He uncurled himself from the sofa and crossed the room to shake Gábor’s hand. “Hallo, Gábor.” He looked back at Grandmama. “I know him. He’s a good man. Honest too. I trust him.”
I beamed at Mátyás, who colored faintly. I turned to Grandmama. “His being Romani is precisely the point. He’s capable, but who would hire him? He only needs a chance, a good recommendation that might open other doors.”
Lady Berri said, “I’ve found that a good secretary is almost indispensable.”
I could have kissed her.
Grandmama sighed again, a luxurious release of air. She picked up her embroidery. “Very well, Anna. Only do not let me regret this.”
I crossed the room to kiss her cheek. “You won’t, Grandmama. I promise.”
Her voice was very dry when she answered me. “I already do.”
Buda-Pest, late September 1847
On my eighth circuit of the room, Grandmama set down her reading spectacles and rubbed her temples. “Anna, szívem, must you prowl like some caged beast? Have you nothing better to do?”
I stilled obediently, dropping into a chair near the window overlooking a broad thoroughfare in the Pest belváros. From this vantage point, buildings blocked my view of the Buda hills, on the other side of the Duna River dividing the twin cities. But restlessness still crawled through my body, and I tapped an imperceptible rhythm against my skirts. Lady Berri had called again that morning, and I had no answer to give her. For the first time in my life, I knew a lurking sympathy for Hamlet, whom I had once denounced to a governess as a waffling, pudding-hearted excuse for a man. I was not normally indecisive, but I could not make my decision about the Binding lightly. Too many lives were bound up in it.
Still, I must decide someday. And soon, before my prowling wore holes in Grandmama’s carpets.
“You can come with me to the hospital,” Noémi offered, winding up her embroidery thread and stowing it neatly in the basket near her chair. “We can always use more hands.”
“Another time, perhaps.” Most days, Noémi shadowed a nurse-midwife at the hospital, but I did not think I would feel any less restive in the square building on Rókus Street, with its narrow hallways and stench of chlorinated limewater.
Mátyás popped his head into Grandmama’s salon. “I’m on my way out. Can I be of service while I’m gone, Irína néni?”
Grandmama replaced her glasses. “Yes. Take Anna with you.”
Anything was better than staying in Grandmama’s salon, fretting over a decision that could unmake my world’s magic. I ran upstairs to my room for a light wrap and my reticule. When I reached the mouth of the courtyard, Mátyás waited for me with Gábor.
My heart stuttered. Despite my maneuverings, I had seen Gábor only in tiny slivers of time during our weeks in the city: enough to sting with longing, but never enough to satisfy. If Lady Berri was right and breaking the Binding would make magic accessible to everyone, it would undermine the very class structure that supported my family. No doubt Mama would object to that—but if it erased the gulf between Gábor and me, I could only welcome it. I added a small weight to the invisible scale in my head. One more reason to break the Binding.
We emerged through the gates into sharp-bright sunlight. A fine layer of silt scoured down the street before the small baroque palace Grandmama had rented for the season, blowing in from the plains beyond Pest. Only a little larger than a town house, with walls marching against its neighbors, the palace sounds grander than it was. I coughed and held my handkerchief over my mouth and nose. We walked past the fine shops on Váci Street, before veering off onto a narrow side road, our heads lowered and eyes squinted shut against the dust.
“Are you well, Miss Anna?” Gábor asked me. “That is, you do not look like you feel ill—you look very well. I meant, do you feel well? In spirit?”
It was not like Gábor to be tongue-tied. I smiled. “Yes. Thank you.”
Mátyás squinted at me. “I think Anna looks quite ill. Positively dreadful.”
I nearly stopped, to try to see my reflection in a window (I had not paused to look at myself before I left), when Mátyás burst out laughing.
“You are dreadful,” I told him, and he only laughed harder. I turned to find Gábor watching me, a curious expression on his face. “And you, Mr. Kovács?” His full name was stiff on my tongue. “Is my grandmother treating you well?”
“The work is not difficult. It gives me time to study.”
“And your family?”
“I have not seen them.”
Something about his clipped words indicated he would not welcome further questions. We fell into an awkward silence, which Mátyás tried to fill with a series of increasingly terrible jokes.
At last we reached a small building, four arched windows beneath a sign reading CAFé PILVAX. Despite outward appearances, the café was long and airy, scattered tables set up beneath a series of brick archways. All sorts of people crowded inside, despite—or perhaps because of—the winds: Luminate women in their fine lawn dresses, noblemen in their top hats and embroidered dolmans, a soldier or two with their high shako hats and red feather plumes, students, workers, even a dog lying placidly on the parquet floor.
Mátyás found us room at several small tables shoved together. Somehow, I was not surprised to see William there, engaged in heated debate with a curly-haired young man with a luxurious dark mustache. I ordered coffee in the Hungarian style, sweetened with milk and honey, and listened to the young men around me, mostly students, debate everything from natural history to politics to Jókai Mór’s newest play. Though the conversations were mostly Hungarian, I picked up enough to follow, and what I did not understand, Mátyás or Gábor translated.
One of the students asked a waitress for “the tongue of the dog.”
I turned startled eyes on Gábor. “Surely they don’t eat dog’s tongue here!”
He laughed. “No. Wait and see.”
Within moments the waitress returned with a long paper, and the student set to scribbling furiously. The curly-haired man who had been arguing with William broke off to peer over his shoulder.
I grinned. This place—everything about it, from the cozy brick walls to the students’ energy—was delightful.
The curly-haired man clapped the writer on the shoulder. “Bravo! Well done, lad.”
I leaned toward Mátyás. “Who is that?”