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  To

  Nicholas Vilag, dear friend,

  who inspired and encouraged me

  to write this book

  From the east came the tribes—the seven tribes—Megyer, Nyek, Kurtgyarmat, Tarjan, Jeno, Ker, and Keszi, and of these the greatest was the tribe of Megyer. And the leaders of the seven tribes chose Almos, chief of the Megyer, to lead them into a new land, a land of mountains and forests and rich plains. The seven opened their veins and mingled their blood and drank it. And thus the Magyar nation was created, out of a brotherhood born of blood. And so it would continue.

  For one thousand years the land was ravaged. The Mongols came to kill, the Crusaders to scavenge on their way to a holy war. Protestant fought Catholic, peasant fought lord. The Turks came to conquer and rule, and the Habsburgs stole the land from the Turks and ruled in their wake. And with each survival they mixed their race a little more—with the Mongols, the Franks and Saxons, the Turks and the peoples of the Holy Roman Empire, with the Jews and the Slavs and the Russians—until at last there was little of the race of the seven tribes left in the new nation; but the tradition of Almos remained, the tradition of a people whose brotherhood was born of blood.

  Part 1

  1

  It was generally agreed that the Ferenc sisters were the prettiest girls in the town. Not only had they a style and poise considerably in excess of their years but also, when they were together—at a party or summer picnic, for example—the effect of the two contrasting beauties produced a most devastating result.

  It was more than just complementing each other in appearance, although that was part of it—Amalia, tall, stately and gentle, and Eva, small, quick and vivacious—it was as though, unconsciously, they played to a public, laying aside the daily irritations and jealousies of one another and demonstrating to everyone just how enchanting and lovely they could be.

  Now, on their way to Cousin Kati’s birthday party, sitting one each side of the coach so that their tulle skirts were able to flow untrammelled over the seats, they began the instinctive transition from sisters who were separated in age by only one year, and who therefore annoyed one another, to sisters who loved one another and were aware that in public they were referred to as “the enchanting Ferenc girls.”

  There was an added test to this particular evening—interposed with terror because of Papa—because they were going to the party alone and unchaperoned. Papa was on one of his long business visits to Budapest, and Mama, irritated because she had forgotten it was Cousin Kati’s birthday party and had arranged to play cards, had said impatiently, “Surely you will not need your mama this evening, my darlings! Uncle Sandor will fetch and carry you, and—after all—you will be in Aunt Gizi’s house.” She had paused, wrinkled her pretty forehead, and added slowly, “I suppose your papa would expect me to go but”—smiling suddenly like an irresponsible child—“Papa won’t be back for three weeks, and by that time no one will remember that you went to Cousin Kati’s party alone.”

  The girls had looked at each other quickly, then looked away. They were both thinking the same thing: how daring and moderne they would appear. The Ferenc girls would be the ones to arrive without a chaperon at Cousin Kati’s birthday party.

  Mama showed a moment’s indecision when seeing them into the coach. “Oh, dear, I suppose it is all right? I just hope Papa doesn’t hear of it I wonder... perhaps I should come?”

  But the girls tumbled hurriedly into the coach, waving their hands out the window and calling, “Good night, Mama! We shall be late if we wait any longer! We will give your love and birthday wishes to Cousin Kati!”

  Mama remained standing, a small hesitant figure in the courtyard, and then the coach turned into the road and she could be seen no more. They faced one another, smiles of excitement and conspiracy breaking out across their smooth faces.

  “Your dress is lovely, Eva,” said Amalia warmly, although earlier, as they were getting ready, she had scolded her younger sister for having the neck cut too low. Eva tweaked her skirt and straightened a cascade of roses. The quarrelsome scene in the bedroom was already forgotten.

  “You don’t think it a little... insipid?” she asked, confident of Amalia’s denial. “I mean, white tulle and pink roses. I don’t want to look dull.”

  Amalia considered, her head tilted to one side a little. Then she laughed. “Oh, Eva! You know very well you couldn’t look dull, even if you tried,” she said, and suddenly they reached their hands towards one another in a gesture that was both spontaneous and affectionate.

  Through the window of the coach came a breeze that was cold but that also had the feel of spring, a wind from the north bringing the freshness of the mountains and the scent of new growth. The winter had been mild and Amalia had overheard the housemaid, a girl from the Matra Mountains, saying that violets had been blossoming in the mountains soon after Christmas—winter violets, without any smell. How sad, Amalia thought, to bloom early but have no smell. She was given to moods of swift sadness—moments of controlled melancholy that, in a sighing, reflective fashion, she quite enjoyed. They never interfered with her common sense or her down-to-earth practicality. Even while she was mourning the scent of the wild flowers and savouring the winds of spring, she was trying to fasten the window of the coach, partly because it was cold but also so that they should not hear Uncle Sandor swearing up on the box.

  “Don’t close it because of me,” Eva said. “I’ve heard everything Uncle Sandor has to say. And anyway, he only swears when the young men try to cut in on him with their horses.”

  Uncle Sandor was a huge, taciturn ex-sergeant of hussars. He had come to the family, along with the coach and two horses, as part of Mama’s dowry—the only part, for the rest had never been paid. Papa had neither asked for nor expected a dowry. The whole point of the Bogozy family allowing their younger daughter to marry a rich banker of Jewish extraction was that Zsigmond Ferenc would assist the Bogozys in their numerous financial predicaments. But the Bogozys—charming, feckless, gay, and irresolute—had felt it incumbent to prove to the world (and to Zsigmond Ferenc) that they were gentry and knew what was expected of them. A dowry was promised, and over the years it was periodically referred to: “The attorneys are settling the deeds this very month” or “Are you still awaiting the papers? We must speak to someone very soon!”

  And then, at some point during the twenty years of Papa and Mama’s marriage, the references to the dowry, although still made just as frequently, changed in character. The Bogozys had either convinced themselves or were in the process of convincing Zsigmond Ferenc that the dowry had been paid—paid in full, splendid, aristocratic munificence. It was constantly referred to, especially when Zsigmond Ferenc was in the process of settling yet another Bogozy financial catastrophe. “Well! And after all, it is right that he should help us. Did we not settle Marta most generously with a dowry?”

  In fact all Papa had ever had was the coach, a pair of horses, and Uncle Sandor, always resplendent in his old hussar uniform. Strictly speaking, Uncle Sandor was not anyone’s to give, but the transfer of employment was considered most expedient at the time. Uncle Sandor (by no means averse to the change as his wages hadn’t been paid for months) departed quite happily, and the Bogozys felt splendid at making the supreme sacrifice of parting with their coachman—a sacrifice which, incidentally, relieved them of the burden of finding 200 korona for his arrears of pay.

  Uncle Sandor rarely spoke
, and when he did it was to his horses. But he knew his duty to the young ladies of the house, who were also granddaughters of the Bogozy. With or without their chaperon, Amalia and Eva would be collected punctually according to instructions. And if they tried to avoid departure, Uncle Sandor would knock on the door and ask a servant to inform the young ladies that it was time to leave.

  As Eva had observed, he swore in front of the girls only when young men on good horses tried to cut in on him. She had a theory that it was because the old ex-hussar really wanted to be on the back of a horse himself instead of driving young women around to parties and balls. Eva had once tried to spur Uncle Sandor into racing the coach against two young officers. For a second she had seen a maniacal glow in the peasant’s tiny black eyes; then his hands had tightened on the reins and he had rumbled something unintelligible about “not fitting for ladies of the Bogozy.” Eva had never been able to rouse him again.

  Amalia, the window closed, settled back into her reverie of spring and mountains. Eva rustled fretfully.

  “Malie. Do you think he’ll be there?”

  Amalia stared at her sister, trying to recall what the subject of their previous conversation had been. “Who? Who’ll be there?”

  “Felix. Felix Kaldy. Do you think Cousin Kati will have invited him?”

  “I expect so.”

  Eva relapsed into silence, staring out of the window although it was too dark to see anything, and Amalia experienced a pang of envy because she knew exactly what Eva was thinking. Eva was planning how to bewitch Felix Kaldy, and undoubtedly she would do it very well. The Ferenc girls could bewitch any man if they so desired. Amalia’s problem was that at eighteen she had not yet met a man she wished to ensnare. Sometimes it worried her. Eva had been in love at least seven times during the last eighteen months. The year they had spent in Vienna had been one long drama of passion for Eva, beginning with the fencing master who taught at the Akademie opposite their school and ending with the leading tenor at the Theater an der Wien. Amalia had waited for the disease to strike her; now, with Eva settling into a new adoration, she was beginning to wonder if she were incapable of falling in love. She sighed again and thought of the scentless violets in the Matra Mountains. Beautiful, but unfulfilled. Perhaps she would write a poem about them....

  “Quick, Malie, we’re here. Oh, look! See what Uncle Alfred has done to the trees! Oh, Malie, did you ever see anything so magical? So like a fairy tale?”

  Uncle Alfred’s house was one of the oldest and grandest in the town. Small baroque balconies ran along beneath the first-floor windows. Every window was lit and the curtains were not yet drawn; a blur of colour and costume shifted across the glass. But what had inspired Eva to joy were the trees that lined the street outside the house. Each one was hung with a multitude of varicoloured lanterns.

  The wooden doors leading into the courtyard were pushed well back, but Uncle Sandor didn’t try to turn the coach. The archway was too narrow in such an old house and he stopped outside and climbed down from the box. In the courtyard a gypsy violinist was playing to welcome the guests. Uncle Alfred had employed him and a full group of players for the dancing upstairs. The gypsy scraped and sawed, encouraged by the promise of a bottle of barack to warm him when the cold spring night made his hands too numb to play.

  The lights in the trees, the gypsy, the glimpses of the party seen through the windows turned the evening into a night of breathless excitement, a magic night when anything could happen. For a moment Eva was completely overwhelmed by the unprecedented splendour of her cousin’s party.

  “How incredible! Fancy wasting all this on poor Cousin Kati!” she said, slightly awed. Amalia giggled, then remembered she was the elder and should set a good example.

  “That’s a cruel, unkind thing to say,” she reproved.

  Eva looked abashed. “Oh, well, I suppose it isn’t a waste really. Uncle Alfred has no one else to spend his money on so he might as well give Kati a good party.”

  Uncle Sandor opened the coach door and they waited for him to put down the steps. Breathless, excited, they remembered who they were—the Ferenc girls—and how they had come—unchaperoned—and they arched their necks like young racehorses, stepped demurely down from the coach and through the archway, and turned towards the door leading to the house.

  They were late. The altercation in the bedroom and Mama’s indecision about whether or not to come had resulted in their arriving when there was no one to receive them at the foot of the stairs. From the big drawing-room above came the sound of music and the shuffle and thump of dancers. Their eyes met. Eva bit her lower lip guiltily, then shrugged. “They’ll forgive us,” she said loftily. “We’re the Ferenc girls! They’ll be so pleased we’ve come they’ll forget that we were late.”

  The music was exciting—a mazurka—and their bodies began moving, heads nodding, eyes shining bright at the thought of all the young men who were waiting to dance with them.

  “Hurry!” said Eva, leading the way out of the hall and up the stairs to Cousin Kati’s bedroom. They thought it would be empty, but when they hustled in they found Kati—poor Cousin Kati—in a white satin dress waiting for them. She was hunched into an awkward, miserable shape at the foot of the bed, but as soon as she saw them she jumped up and hurried forward.

  “You’ve come,” she said anxiously. “I thought you weren’t ever going to come. Why are you so late? I wanted you to help me when everyone came. You know how I hate receiving on my own. I asked you to come early. I especially wanted you early!”

  Amalia put her arms round Cousin Kati and kissed her. “Happy birthday,” she said gently. “We’re sorry, very sorry, but we’re here now—and we have a lovely gift for you.”

  She had wrapped the package beautifully—violet ribbons on pale gray paper. Kati, slightly mollified, unwrapped it, and her face changed immediately from nervous anxiety to gratified pleasure. “It’s beautiful, Malie! A fan—real ivory! It is real ivory, isn’t it?”

  “Mama brought it back from Vienna especially for you.”

  Kati gazed at the fan, and then the mention of their mama made her ask, “Where is Aunt Marta?”

  “Playing cards,” said Eva airily. She too leaned forward and kissed poor Cousin Kati. “Happy birthday, Kati.”

  Kati smelled of soap and attar of roses. The dress smelled the way new satin always does smell, papery and dry. Eva wrinkled her nose and Amalia said quickly, “You look so pretty, Kati. The dress is most becoming.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  Kati’s need for reassurance was genuine—not just a demand for a compliment as Eva’s had been—and Eva, who could be kind enough on the rare occasions when she stopped to think about other people’s feelings, added quickly, “Oh, yes. You look very pretty.”

  It wasn’t true. Kati—poor Cousin Kati—had never looked pretty in her life. If the Ferenc girls were known as the loveliest in the town, then Kati could claim the distinction of being the plainest. She had a large shapeless face and a large shapeless nose that overshadowed everything else. Her hair and eyes were nondescript, her teeth badly spaced and irregularly formed. All this could have been overcome if she had only had some style of carriage and manner, but Kati had nothing, nothing at all, to redeem her drawbacks. She was small in stature, diffident in speech, and completely lacking in presence of any kind. Amalia had once overheard Mama saying to Papa in her thoughtless Bogozy way, “I find it quite impossible to understand why your sister had such an incredibly ugly child. Gizi was a very pretty girl, and Alfred was considered handsome in his time, but poor Kati! It’s as well that she’s the richest girl in the town, for certainly she’s the plainest.” Papa had been very angry and hadn’t spoken to Mama for two days, but even Zsigmond Ferenc, when he looked at his own daughters and then at Kati, was forced to notice the difference.

  Amalia, in addition to feeling sorry for Kati, also rather liked her. Kati was completely without envy, and she never once referred to the fortune
awaiting her on her parents’ death. She should—and could—have been extremely jealous of her two beautiful cousins who completely obliterated her at every gathering, even her own. But Kati’s delight on meeting Amalia and Eva at a ball or supper was always genuine and seemed at times to be tempered with relief, as though in the company of the Ferenc sisters she need not even try to be what she was not.

  “Is Felix here, Felix Kaldy?” Eva asked, and Kati for some unaccountable reason flushed.

  “Of course. Both Felix and his brother, Felix and Adam, both here....”

  Her voice trailed away as Eva removed her wrap and Kati saw the extent to which Eva had goaded the dressmaker in the matter of the neckline.

  “Oh...” she faltered. “Oh, Eva!”

  Eva had not forgotten Amalia’s disapproval and was instantly defensive. “Oh, Eva, what?” she asked aggressively.

  Kati blinked. “How... how moderne you look!” she answered with unfeigned admiration.

  Eva was pleased. “I designed the entire dress myself,” she said complacently. “Every flounce and rose was placed at my instruction!”

  Kati stared, worshipping, adoring, but without envy. As though obeying a silent word of command the three girls turned and stared into the mirror. Kati’s ugliness was emphasized because her dress, like Eva’s, was white. Eva, with her tiny but curved, provocative figure and her thick mass of black curls piled high on her head, made Kati look like a peasant woman dressed up in her mistress’s clothes. Hastily Amalia turned away from the mirror. “I think we all look very nice,” she said firmly. “And if we don’t go in soon there won’t be any partners left for us.” With a final flutter, a plucking of skirts and a smoothing of hair, they moved towards the door, two white dresses and one of pale rose, drawn by the pulsing, sentimental strains of a gypsy orchestra.

  Uncle Alfred had done his best for Kati. After considerable pressure from his wife and with only a little protest he had consented to the outlay of a sum of money that would provide his ugly daughter with a party more suited to the aristocracy than to a middle-class landowner (albeit he was related to the minor nobility). His wife had explained the situation to him, patiently and repetitively, and he had been forced to concede that as he was the richest man in the town, and as Kati was his only child, it behoved him to launch her in a style that ensured a reasonable chance of her securing a husband. His wife, he considered, fussed too much about Kati. There had been dancing lessons, deportment lessons, painting lessons (the only item in an expensive education for which poor Kati had shown any aptitude), visits to Budapest dentists, hairdressers, and beauticians, visits to spas renowned for their effect on the complexion, expensive dresses from Vienna, and at the end Kati had emerged the same shapeless lump as when she began. It seemed to provoke in his wife a frustrated, impotent rage, and he could only attribute it to the fact that poor Gizi felt guilty because she had borne him only the one child and that child a daughter. The fact that he had no son did not bother him at all, any more than the fact that Kati was so plain. Uncle Alfred was very happy with his lot. He had a smart, efficient wife who managed his houses, his land, and his factories with far more perspicacity than he could ever have aspired to. He had his friends, his café circles of mild intellectuals, his penchant for artistic liberalism, and the money to indulge himself in these same stylish hobbies. He was not burning with any dynastic desire to carry on his particular branch of the family, and by and large he was contented as long as he was left alone and not bothered too much.