"Jakab, I"m sorry, I can"t listen to this now. I really do have to go. I have to feed Carl. I have to cook dinner for my husband."
That word husband wounded him more than anything she had said so far a pair of forge-heated tongs clamping on to his heart. "Then meet me later. Tonight."
"I can"t do that."
"Erna, I insist-"
Her face darkened. "Careful with your tongue, Jakab. You lost the right to insist on anything a long time ago."
He stumbled backwards, holding out his hands, feeling tears welling in his eyes. He looked up at the sky, shaking his head, then back at her. "Please, I didn"t come here to make you angry. I"m making a mess of this. I know it. But I"m half mad from seeing you again. Please, Erna, I beg you, meet me later. Let me explain."
"Jakab, I can"t, don"t you see? I can"t just walk out of the house at night to go and meet someone. I told you, I have a family, responsibilities, a man I love."
"You loved me."
She paused, and he sensed that his tears had softened her. She looked on him more gently, although her expression was so close to pity it wrenched him. "Give me a few days," she said. "To arrange something. Then we"ll talk."
"That"s all I want."
She nodded. "And Jakab that"s all you"ll get. I"ve made a promise to someone. I"ve made vows, and neither you nor I can break them. Our time pa.s.sed. I"m sorry it did. I waited for you for two years. Two years, Jakab. No clue that you were still alive, not a letter nor a message. Do you know how deeply I mourned you? No. You never will. To the northeast, a mile along the sh.o.r.e, there"s an old boat shed with a wooden jetty; you can"t miss it. I"ll meet you there in three days. At dawn."
"I understand."
It was a lie. He did not understand at all.
Erna rearranged her son on her hip and walked away. He watched her until she was consumed by the mist.
Back in the town, he bought a newspaper and studied the date on it: 24th April, 1879.
He sat down on a wall and started working back.
Five years.
He had been away five years.
Jakab dropped the newspaper and moaned, holding his head in his hands. How had he let this happen? How could he have let five whole years go by without even realising, without even considering the consequences for his life back in Keszthely? She had said she waited two years for him. If she had met someone shortly after, and wed within the year, it explained the age of her boy.
Erna had a son. A husband. A life without him.
Despite all of that, despite everything she had said, he refused to believe it was too late. A love as intense as theirs came along only once. He would stake everything upon it. He had killed his own brother so that they could be together. When she discovered that, when she understood the extent of the commitment he had made to her, she would see sense.
It had been a shock, that was all. He could forgive her the harsh words she had spoken. He had handled their reunion badly. Once she accepted his reappearance into her life, she would see how hastily she had rejected him. She would regret her words. It would work itself out.
Jakab arrived, just as she requested, shortly before sunrise. So thick was the mist at this time of day he found it impossible to judge from which direction the sun would appear. He sat on a tree stump next to the wreckage of a rowing boat and waited, stomach tossing in antic.i.p.ation.
The boat shed loomed, a single-storey wooden sh.e.l.l with a sagging roof and two wide doors at its front, one of which had collapsed into the weeds that surrounded it. Paint had peeled from the shed walls, and the suns of countless summers had warped and baked the silvered timbers beneath. Moss and lichen spotted the building"s shaded side like a spreading cancer. The side facing the lake stood open to the elements. Long ago someone had removed the single door that had once slid forth on oiled metal runners. Its opening led to a concrete launch ramp. Next to it, a jetty thrust out into the water.
Erna emerged from the mist, hurrying down the gra.s.sy track from the main road. He jumped up as she approached, opening his mouth to greet her, but she shook her head vigorously and held up her hands. "No, Jakab, there is no time. You have to go. Now. They"re coming for you."
He frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"There"s no time to explain. You have to get out of here right now. Please, Jakab. I"m so sorry, I never meant for this to happen. Your people. They know you are here. They"re coming."
He was finding it difficult to keep up with her. "Is this a trick?"
"A trick? Jakab, do you think I would trick you about something like this?"
He stared, watching her eyes carefully. "You seemed keen enough to get rid of me three days ago."
"For heaven"s sake, what kind of woman do you think I am?" She grabbed him by his coat sleeve. "Come on. Don"t go back to the main road. Follow the sh.o.r.eline northeast to Gyenesdias. You"ll find pa.s.sage from there. Don"t come back to Keszthely. Promise me, Jakab. Do you have money? Look, I brought you this. It"s not much, but it might help."
Erna delved into her skirts and withdrew a handful of coins. As she tried to press them on him, he flung her arm away, suddenly furious. Coins tumbled from her fingers. Crying out, she knelt in the dirt to gather them up.
"Do you think I need your peasant charity?" he snarled. "How do they know? How do you know they"re coming for me?"
She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the scattered coins. "Jakab, please. Please just trust me. Take the money. It"s not a trick, I swear to you. After everything we had, do you think I could betray you? Do you think that badly of me?" She sobbed. "You have no time. They"ll be here any minute."
"Balazs Lukacs! Balazs Jakab!"
At the sound of his given name, Jakab leaped away from her. The condensation in the air was even thicker now, a shifting veil that roiled around them, obscuring their surroundings and making it impossible to tell from which direction the voice came. Moisture clung to Jakab"s coat, licked at his face and cheeks and hair.
"Balazs Lukacs! Balazs Jakab!"
A male voice, jarringly effeminate. Jakab sensed the scorn in its challenge. He heard the accompanying bray of a horse. Twisting on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, he faced the track leading from the boat shed to the main road.
A shadow moved inside the mist. It darkened, coalescing into a horse and rider. The horseman wore a black wide-brimmed hat and a leather overcoat spattered with mud. His mount, an enormous grey stallion, blew steam from its nostrils and clattered great iron-shod hooves on the pebbles.
Raising his head, the rider examined Jakab with eyes that were cold yellow pools. Flecks of ivory and malachite sailed upon them. His skin had the pallor of a forest fungus and his albino hair was oiled and sc.r.a.ped into a ponytail. When he smiled, his face folded into cracks like the bark of a tree. Little humanity resided in his expression.
Fear erupted in Jakab, emptying his lungs and wicking the moisture from his throat. His feet anch.o.r.ed themselves to the ground. He knew who this man was, what he was, even though he had never met him.
The Fnok"s Merenyl.
Every seat of power had a creature like this: a beast sent to complete the distasteful a.s.signments, the unpleasant tasks that were nonetheless vital to the maintenance of that power. The workload of this particular specimen seemed to have corrupted its very flesh.
"And here, then, Balazs," the Merenyl began, in a high-pitched, sing-song voice, "we arrive at the end of your road. You led us a merry dance."
Jakab searched his surroundings, muscles twitching, mouth as dry as sawdust. Scrubland lay to his left, the boat shed and its wooden jetty to his right. More scrub on the far side of the ruined building, leading north along the sh.o.r.e towards Gyenesdias. At his back, the rippling waters of the lake, quickly surrendering to mist.
Erna still knelt before him. She stared up at the rider, her mouth hanging open in dismay.
Jakab motioned to her. "Get up." Then, when she didn"t respond, more urgently: "Erna, get up. Now."
Perhaps she detected the anxiety in his voice, his concern for her, because she scrabbled to her feet, backing away from the rider.
"Touching." The Merenyl chuckled. He pulled a silk handkerchief from the pocket of his coat and dabbed at his upper lip. "I take it you haven"t raped this one yet then, Balazs."
The scrub to his left provided the most promising escape route. The undergrowth was thick, tangled, and while he could pick his way through, a horse and rider would have more difficulty. He only needed twenty yards of distance before the mist swallowed him up. If he could just let Erna know his intention; he would not abandon her here with the Fnok"s a.s.sa.s.sin.
A crack sounded from the scrub, a dead branch snapping, just beyond the patch of ground he had been contemplating. As the bank of mist drifted and thinned, Jakab caught sight of a second rider navigating through the bracken towards him.
The newcomer looked up and grinned. His teeth were brown and rotten, his eyes flat. No hosszu elet, this one. Although from the look of him, almost as dangerous.
The Merenyl eased his heels into the grey"s flanks and the animal took a step towards Jakab, its hooves clacking and sc.r.a.ping on the wet stones. "You want to run. I understand that. I do believe you almost found the courage just then, until cowardice unmanned you." The flecks of ivory in the a.s.sa.s.sin"s eyes had faded, but his smile remained. "I"m not going to stop you, Jakab. Not right away. This has been a long race. Far too long, and far too dull, most of the time. Let"s make a little sport of it, shall we, now we"re at its conclusion? We both know how this ends. I drag you kicking and screaming and bucking and biting all the way back to Buda, and whatever"s left of you once we arrive we"ll string up, eviscerate, boil, shred and feed to the wolves. How do you like the sound of that?"
"Erna. Erna!" A new voice, frantic and disembodied, broke through the mist.
Erna moaned, dropping her head. "Hans, no. Why did you come?"
Out of the pillowy white crashed a young man. He was taller and slimmer than Jakab. Handsome, had his face not been pale and his eyes wide with panic. He skidded to a halt a few yards from the Merenyl, glanced at the riders, at Erna, and finally at Jakab. In his hands he clutched an axe, and now he beckoned with it. "Erna, come here. Come away."
Jakab put a hand on her shoulder. "Don"t move."
Hans turned to the Merenyl, his expression accusatory. "What is this? You said we would be safe. You said we could trust you."
The hosszu elet a.s.sa.s.sin never took his mocking eyes from Jakab"s face. "What I said, woodsman, was that if you both stayed out of the way, you would not see any of us again. Yet here we are and I find first your wife and now you. I must say I hardly describe that as staying out of the way. Do you? Besides, I don"t believe I"ve done anything to risk the safety of either your wife or your good self. I"m simply sitting here, on my horse, pa.s.sing the time of day with a rapist and murderer who doesn"t know he"s dead yet. Why don"t you go into town and spend some of that coin with which we so graciously rewarded you?" The Merenyl"s grin widened, but it never reached his eyes. They burned like twin suns, penetrating Jakab"s mind, antic.i.p.ating him, deriding him.
Jakab felt as if someone had battered him with an iron bar. Blood drained from his stomach. Tightening his grip on Erna"s shoulder, he whispered, "You sold me to them?"
She shook her head, trying to shrug off his hand. "Jakab, no. That"s not how it happened. Don"t listen to him. He-"
"You thought you"d exchange me for a few pitiful handfuls of coin?"
The rush of emotion unbalanced him, his initial outrage eclipsed by an all-consuming grief. How could she have done this? Out of all the people he had ever known, to be betrayed by her . . . it was too shocking, too devastating, to contain in a single thought. He had thought she loved him, truly loved him, yet all this time she had been capable of betrayal as callous as this.
And what next? After all this was done, with him no doubt bound hand and foot and dragged through the mud behind the Merenyl"s horse, what was her plan? To return to her life shared with the simpleton standing beside the hosszu elet a.s.sa.s.sin? To return to her baby and her blood money and her snug little life?
Moving almost without conscious thought, as if his body acted of its own volition, his free hand dropped to his belt. His fingers slid along it, ducked inside and pulled the knife from its sheath inside his trousers. As he lifted the weapon in an arc around the front of Erna"s body, he caught a reflection of her lips in the polished steel of its blade: lips he had waited five years to kiss; lips that had laughed with him, that had talked of future plans with him, that had once caressed his skin.
When Jakab placed the knife against her throat she screamed and thrashed, until the point p.r.i.c.ked her flesh and she stilled.
Hans yelled, terror in his eyes. He lifted a foot, placed it back down. "Please! Whatever you"re thinking, don"t. I"m begging you."
Looking to his right, the only direction he could go, Jakab checked the wooden jetty. Its planks were stained black from the damp air. He sidestepped towards it, pulling Erna along with him. A single bead of blood appeared at her throat. It rolled down her neck.
"Well, this is interesting," the Merenyl announced. "Bizarre, yet interesting nonetheless. I have to admit I hadn"t expected you to do that."
The jetty was right behind him now. Jakab backed on to it, dragging Erna after him.
To his left, the second rider emerged from the scrub, guiding his mount over brambles. The man unsheathed a rapier and brought his horse to a halt, waiting for instructions.
Jakab continued to back down the slippery planks of the jetty.
The Merenyl reached down. When he straightened he was holding a crossbow, a bolt sitting in the channel before the c.o.c.ked and latched bow. "You know, Jakab, I think that"s far enough. I mean, what can you possibly do next? My grubby a.s.sociate here is hungry, and he becomes tiresome on an empty stomach. There"s a place in town that serves the most delectable spiced sausage, and I"ve promised him his fill once we"ve finished here. And we are finished here, Jakab. There"s nowhere left to go."
Erna"s husband dropped his axe. He regarded each of them in turn, eyes pleading.
Erna took a breath, and Jakab felt her press herself against him. She leaned back, her voice low and calm. "Jakab, listen to me. If you do nothing else for the rest of your life, just listen now. You"ve got this wrong. All of it. When you found me a few days ago, I went home and told Hans what had happened. I"ll admit that. But that"s all I did. Hans already knew about you, had known about you for years. My G.o.d, you were the reason he found it so difficult to court me in the first place. I thought for so long you were coming back that I-"
"I did come back," he hissed.
"Five years later, Jakab. Five years. Maybe a blink of an eye for you but not for me. I thought you were dead. I swear it. A few years ago your people came back, asking questions. I told them nothing there was nothing to tell but they explained how we could contact them if you returned."
"And when I showed up, the money was just too much of a temptation."
"No! That"s just it. I told Hans I had to see you one last time, to talk to you. To say goodbye. At first he agreed. But then he contacted them, Jakab. I didn"t know. He was scared and he contacted them. He was scared of you, of the hosszu eletek. Scared he might lose me.
"Jakab, please listen. Hans is a good man. A wonderful man. He loves me and he loves our son, provides for us well. He was just doing what he thought he had to do to protect his family. I"m telling you the truth, Jakab. Five years ago I was in love with you so utterly I thought I might go mad from it. Our time may have pa.s.sed but I still love you. I always will. I could never betray you. Not for money, not for anything."
She looked over her shoulder and when Jakab met her eyes he felt himself floundering in the honesty of her gaze. She was telling the truth. Everything had happened exactly as she had described it; he suddenly had no doubt. At the realisation that she had not sold his freedom, had even risked her safety to give him a chance to escape, his emotions churned anew.
He had never had a chance of winning her back. She was too faithful for that. Even though she had moved on, had married and started to raise a family, her love for him had never deteriorated into bitterness. Even now, she was trying to protect him.
His vision blurred tears of despair, that he would never have the opportunity to share her life. After everything, after all he had done to be here, the cruelty of it was too much to face. "I"m sorry," he choked, voice cracking with the strain. "I mean it. I want you to know that. But if I can"t have you like this-"
"Oh, how long do we have to wait, Balazs?" The Merenyl shook his head. "There are two of us on horse. You"re on foot. Cut the girl"s throat if you must. So what? It"s the same unhappy ending for you whether you kill this fellow"s wife or not. Did I tell you I"m hungry? I don"t think I"ve eaten since last night."
Even in his agony, Jakab noticed the way Erna"s husband reacted to the Merenyl"s words. The man"s eyes widened in outrage. Bending to the earth, he retrieved his axe.
Even though Hans stood just outside the Merenyl"s field of vision, Jakab did not doubt that the a.s.sa.s.sin knew exactly where he was positioned. What the Merenyl might not have antic.i.p.ated was how his casual dismissal of Erna"s life had affected her husband. Hans lifted the axe, rested the haft on his shoulder, and took a silent step closer to the a.s.sa.s.sin"s horse. Then he switched his attention to Jakab.
Jakab returned the stare with loathing. How could this man, this lowly woodsman, have won Erna"s heart? He might have laughed had it not been so tragic. He had sacrificed five years, had taken his own brother"s life, and had returned to Keszthely, prepared to take Erna away with him and lead a far more basic existence than he would have otherwise accepted. In the meantime, this low-bred peasant had happened along and stolen everything Jakab had worked for; worse, he had polluted her with his seed so that she had sp.a.w.ned his child.
Jakab inched his fingers around the handle of the knife, switching his grip. The weapon was Austrian-made, fashioned from a single piece of forged steel, and was balanced so that it could be thrown from either end. He had spent so many hours sharpening its blade he preferred to throw it from the handle. Far less chance of cutting himself that way.
While he could not change the fact that Erna was in love with Hans, he was d.a.m.ned if he was going to stand by and let that peasant imbecile steal his rightful place with her. He studied Hans"s face, his long nose, angular jaw and large, frightened eyes. Such an easy face to remember; such an easy face to become. If Jakab had not been caught by the Fnok"s man, things could still have worked out. He watched the woodsman take another step nearer the a.s.sa.s.sin, fingers flexing on the axe.
The Merenyl shifted in his saddle and turned his attention to Hans. "My boy, please don"t even think of involving yourself in-"
Jakab pulled Erna to his left, drew back his hand and threw the knife. Even as the blade left his fingers he realised he had misread the a.s.sa.s.sin"s focus. The Merenyl was moving before his eyes found the blade"s trajectory. He threw himself back in his saddle as the weapon whickered towards him.
The a.s.sa.s.sin rolled in a fluid arc, the blade spinning through the s.p.a.ce he had just vacated. Rising back up in the saddle, he raised the crossbow as Hans lunged for the reins of the horse.
Jakab watched, paralysed, as the Merenyl pulled the crossbow trigger. He heard a thwick as the sinew bowstring contracted, picked up the bolt and accelerated it down the stock. He felt the impact of the projectile before the pain, the force of it knocking him back a step.
Hans was screaming. The Merenyl dropped the crossbow to the ground and drew the sword sheathed at his waist. The second rider shouted, kicking his heels into the flanks of his mount.
Concentrate on the pain, Jakab urged himself. Grit your teeth and explore its edges. Force the wound to pucker and kiss. Knit the flesh back together.
He hoped the bolt had not lodged in his body. It would make this far more difficult.
Hans loosed a second wrenching scream, swung his axe and buried the bit deep in the Merenyl"s spine. The a.s.sa.s.sin"s eyes bulged.
Erna issued an alien keening.
There"s no pain. None at all.
Jakab turned. The crossbow bolt had buried itself inside Erna"s head, entering her skull just below her right eye. Her cheekbone had imploded from the impact, giving the side of her face an obscene concave look. Her eye was a blood-filled mess, leaking fluid down her cheek.