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  “Eva is... very young, Adam,” she said guardedly. “She is young, even for seventeen.” She was trying to warn him, tell him that Eva would never, not once, consider including him in the circle of gay young men who constantly surrounded her. Adam turned his face towards her and stared. Vaguely surprised, she noticed what fine eyes he had—she had never really looked at Adam, not properly—they were green, a deep hazel green, set well apart, intelligent, and in some strange way very soft and kind.

  “Felix is not good for her,” he said, his tone almost disinterested. “Felix is not good for anyone. He is very gay, a splendid fellow to sit in the cafés with, but he is not good for Eva.”

  Silence descended on the awkward trio, a silence that was emphasized because of the noisy hilarity of the pair in front. Amalia felt a pang of envy because Eva was enjoying herself with a man she adored. She suddenly felt tired of behaving and being grown-up and having to comfort Kati and rebuke Eva. She felt she would like to be walking along with a young man, laughing and flirting, just the way Eva was doing with Felix.

  “Kati,” she said without thinking, “there was a young man at your party, a hussar from the garrison. Karoly Vilaghy, I think he was called. I never saw him before.” She had been unable to ask until now. She didn’t want Kati or Eva to share her idle interest. Kati would look longingly at her, dying to share her beautiful cousin’s innermost dreams, and Eva would want to giggle and plot. Amalia wasn’t sure quite what she thought about the young lieutenant, but whatever she thought—felt—it was private and not to be destroyed by the tongues of her relatives. But now, with Eva prancing along beside Felix and Adam gazing wistfully after her, her usual discretion deserted her. Kati’s reaction nearly ruined everything.

  “Oh, Malie! Do you like him?”

  Malie stiffened. “I don’t know him. How can I say if I like him? I just wondered who he was.”

  Kati’s pale eyes fixed themselves onto Malie’s face. “He’s a cousin of Papa’s,” she said eagerly. “They’re very poor. Papa says they don’t even have enough to eat, and Karoly has nothing but his pay to live on. Their background isn’t all that good either, Mama says; some of the connections on Grandmother’s side are doubtful and the only reason Karoly got a commission was because he passed so high as a cadet. Papa feels sorry for him; he says he won’t achieve anything unless he marries well. Certainly his family would never be able to pay the army’s marriage fee if he married someone poor.”

  “I see.” She stared straight ahead.

  “Would you like me to ask Papa if he can come to the villa for the summer?”

  “Of course not. Don’t be so stupid, Kati.”

  Adam turned and stared at her again; this time the gentle green eyes were disapproving and surprised. She was startled—at herself, not him. How could she have spoken to Kati like that, poor, stupid, irritating Kati?

  “Oh, Kati, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  “That’s all right,” said Kati stolidly, but she was hurt. Both Amalia and Adam could tell she was hurt.

  Adam put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her.

  “Come along, Kati,” he said gruffly. “Let me show you my splendid new seeder that is going to make the fortunes of us all. Felix isn’t interested, and Eva certainly won’t look at a machine when Felix is there. I shall have to hope that you will pretend to be enthusiastic about it.”

  Kati’s face wreathed into a smile at the affection and attention. Kati-like she leaned into his shoulder. “I shan’t have to pretend, Adam,” she said stoutly. “I know I shall love it.” Still with his arm around her shoulder, they turned left, along a track that led to a vast expanse of field where two oxen were drawing a weird contraption of metal tubes and a large wooden box. Eva and Felix didn’t even notice the diversion. They were so absorbed in each other that they continued straight down the path towards the river. Disgruntled and annoyed, Amalia found herself excluded from both parties, left to follow whichever couple she wished.

  “What a perfectly miserable day,” she muttered to herself as, after a moment’s consideration, she stumped after Kati and Adam. “What a horrible spring and summer it is going to be.”

  4

  There was a curious sense of unease at the garrison. Karoly, in referring to his comrades as irresponsible rakes, had in truth given a fairly accurate description of the young aristocrats who gambled, hunted, and acquired debts while in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army. But even the wildest and most dilettante of his brother officers seemed, during the spring of 1914, to be held under a pall of nervous anticipation, as though waiting for something.

  There was no reason—no obvious reason—for the tenseness that possessed them all. Serbia had frightened the Empire over the past two years by daring to prove her strength as a soldier nation. She had succeeded in vanquishing what was left of the mighty Turkish empire and had, indeed, begun to look north and west for an extension of her territories. Karoly, together with his fellows, had been involved in the preparatory moves of the army to keep Serbia from carving out a piece of the Adriatic coastline for herself. It had been prevented, not without distress on the part of the Empire, but it had been prevented. It seemed at last as though everyone’s touchy tempers had been assuaged and possible war averted. There should be no further trouble.

  And yet the sense of waiting continued. Karoly inspected men and horses, conducted manoeuvres, attended parades, and did more than his share of paperwork. And all the time he wondered what it was they were awaiting.

  He had few friends in the regiment—friends meant drinking together, whoring together, hunting together, and he could not afford these pursuits. Neither could his colleagues, but they usually had a family to rescue them at the last moment from the usurers. Those who were not rescued either resigned their commissions or shot themselves. He was not prepared for either of those alternatives. With a few of his brother officers, the more intelligent and moderate ones, he exchanged a form of friendly acquaintanceship. With one, Count Stefan Tilsky, a Pole, he was slightly more intimate. They did not play together (for Stefan played very hard indeed), but their duties often brought them into contact and they worked well, and occasionally—when Stefan was recovering from a surfeit of wild living—they rode together for no more than the pleasure of riding in the open air on their excellent Lipizzan horses.

  It was Stefan he asked about the Ferenc girls, tentatively, feigning a disinterest which didn’t for one moment delude the wily Pole.

  “Ha!” shouted Stefan gleefully as they walked their mounts through a small oak wood on the outskirts of the town. “You too, Vilaghy. You too have fallen prey to the town’s chief antidote to boredom, the enchanting Ferenc sisters.”

  Karoly smiled with good humour. “Ferenc?” he queried.

  Stefan shrugged. “Parvenus, of course, but splendid if you are looking for a wealthy wife and not a pedigree. My father would burst an artery were I to suggest marrying one of them. The father is a Jew—banking, I believe. The mother was a Bogozy—good family but no money.”

  He turned his head and looked at Karoly with narrowed eyes.

  “Could do very well for you, my friend. They’re pretty girls, bright, too. Which one has taken your fancy, the little dark one who flirts or the tall one with the hazel eyes?”

  Karoly smiled again, rather tightly, but determined not to behave foolishly over what was—after all—just a pretty, provincial, middle-class young woman. “I’m not even sure which is which,” he lied. “One is Eva, yes? The other I don’t know—not her name.”

  “Eva’s the little one,” said Stefan jovially. “Great spirit and style, but I think could be something of a handful as a wife. For my money, if you want to treat the matter seriously, you’d take the other one—Amalia. Smiles a lot, but quieter, gentler. I say!” His face began to grow animated as he involved himself in Karoly’s domestic affairs. “Look here, my friend, it could well be the answer for you. Old man Ferenc—bit of a tyrant from all one hears
—would need some handling, but he could afford to pay the marriage fee for you. Oh. Sorry!” He looked suddenly embarrassed at his lapse of manners in referring to Karoly’s financial difficulties. “But—well, I know how it is with you. It would help, wouldn’t it? And then you’ve a great advantage in getting to know the girls; you’ve a head start over the rest of us.”

  “How?” He frowned.

  Stefan guffawed, then patted his horse as the beast shied at the unexpected sound. “She’s a relative of yours, in a manner of speaking. Didn’t you say that Racs-Rassay was a distant cousin?” Karoly nodded. “The Ferenc girls are his nieces. Madame Racs-Rassay was a Ferenc before she married.” Again his eyes narrowed. “That’s another possibility for you, the ugly little Racs-Rassay girl. Excellent family on her father’s side, better than the Bogozys or the—”

  He stopped, flushed very red indeed, and bent forward unncessarily to fumble with the girth, and Karoly knew, without any doubt, that his friend had been going to add the name Vilaghy to the list of families whose backgrounds were tinged with query.

  “Perhaps not,” Stefan said when his embarrassment had subsided. “For all she’s the plainest and dullest creature I ever set eyes on, I imagine her papa will be expecting a good match. She’s something of an heiress. With all that money and the Racs-Rassay name, she has no need to worry about a Jewish mama.”

  Karoly suddenly found Stefan’s conversation in bad taste. He was a kind enough fellow, but his cold-blooded assessment of Karoly’s marriage prospects was slightly offensive.

  “Shall we race?” he asked coolly. “Twenty korona to the winner?”

  A faint spasm of surprise crossed Stefan’s face; then he nodded, realizing why Karoly had felt the need to challenge him and stake money on the outcome. He counted to three, then touched his spurs to his horse. Karoly knew his friend would pay him the respect of not holding back. The race would be a true test of horsemanship.

  When he received the invitation from Cousin Alfred to visit the villa up in the hills for the summer, he went straight to the commanding officer for leave of absence. He had taken no leave for two years and assumed it would be granted without question. He was unprepared for his colonel’s hesitancy.

  “Not too happy,” the senior officer mumbled, picking slightly at his moustache. “Like to keep the garrison intact if possible. Never know what might happen.”

  Karoly’s military instincts, born of years of sensing when a regimental move was imminent, were immediately aroused.

  “Are there orders coming through, sir?” he asked respectfully.

  The elder man shook his head. “No reason to stop you from going. Leave due, most certainly. But there’s a feeling.... Everything’s quiet at the moment—Serbia quiet, Russia quiet—but still, a feeling.”

  “Yes, sir. I know.”

  The old man looked at him sharply. “Do the men feel it, Vilaghy?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “Hmm.” He fiddled with the pen and inkwell. “The General Staff are increasing the intake of recruits. Did you know that?”

  “I had heard so, sir.”

  The colonel grunted again and stared out of the window. A line of hussars were wheeling across the parade-ground in ceremonial display, rehearsing for the regiment’s summer celebrations. They looked smart and efficient; the horses were magnificent and the men in perfect control.

  “You want to visit your cousin, Racs-Rassay, I hear? Up in the mountains?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel put his pen down. “Yes, well, mustn’t behave like old women. Seeing Serbs behind every cautionary move from headquarters. Any trouble and you’ll be recalled at once. Leave granted.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He saluted, clicked heels again, turned, and left the office. He was disconcerted at the degree of informality with which the colonel had spoken to a very junior officer. His leave had been granted and he should have felt pleased and elated. Several weeks in his cousin’s luxurious villa, with the strong possibility of seeing Amalia Ferenc again, should have filled him with gratified satisfaction. Instead he felt, once more, the vague sense of disquiet that hung over the garrison.

  5

  For the little boys it was the best spring and summer they had ever known, and mostly it was because Papa was not there.

  They spent much of their time haunting Roza in the kitchen, waiting for cream bowls to lick, for pieces of strudel to pick up from the floor, for honey cakes to steal straight from the oven. Outside were the dogs, and the new lambs and calves, and the orchard to race in and the river to fall in, and there was no one to punish them or shut them in their room.

  They were with the people they loved most: Mama, who (when Papa was away) let them do just as they pleased provided they didn’t give her a headache; Eva, who was pretty but who, like Mama, didn’t always welcome their presence; and Malie, their beloved Malie, who helped them up into trees, who took off her shoes and stockings and paddled with them, who took them on picnics up in the hills, and who—above all—that summer discovered the Meadow.

  That was the very best day of summer, the day they discovered the Meadow. Mama had announced on the previous evening that, provided her headache was better in the morning, they would all go for a picnic on the following day. Uncle Sandor would drive them into the mountains, and they would cook a meal, just like gypsies, out in the open over a fire. At first they had been excited, shouting and thumping each other, but when Uncle Sandor’s name had been mentioned they had become subdued and silent. They had never confessed, not even to each other, how afraid they were of Uncle Sandor—not in the same way they were afraid of Papa; that was a fear, they sensed, in spite of their years, that was shared by all the family and servants, a fear that had been with them since birth and which they took for granted. No, the fear of Uncle Sandor was more spine-chilling, more supernatural than the fear of Papa. It was like the feeling they had when the housemaid, who came from Transylvania, told them stories about giants and werewolves. Uncle Sandor was huge and black: black boots, black moustache, black eyes, and black hair all over his arms and the backs of his hands. Even the horses he drove were black. And Uncle Sandor rarely spoke; he growled and grunted, and he glared at them when they misbehaved in the coach. Once, when they were very small and were annoying Eva by pulling her curls, she had told them that Uncle Sandor would eat them if they were naughty, and pulling her hair was very naughty. They hadn’t taken any notice at the time—Eva was always saying things like that when she didn’t get her own way—but the next time they were in the coach they had both stared at Uncle Sandor’s huge back beneath the red and black mente of his hussar’s uniform, and a shudder that started in the soles of their shoes had spread rapidly upwards, completely enveloping them. Neither of them had ever seen Uncle Sandor smile, but they had a horrifying notion that if he did the parting of his lips would reveal long, sharp, pointed teeth.

  When Mama suggested the picnic, they were torn between the delight of going into the mountains and living like gypsies and the fear of having Uncle Sandor with them for a whole day. Mama had looked puzzled.

  “Don’t you want to go?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Amalia had grinned and whispered something to Mama, who laughed (how pretty Mama was when she laughed) and said that of course Uncle Sandor would stay with the horses when they arrived and wouldn’t follow them to their picnic spot. That was better. They didn’t mind Uncle Sandor in the distance with the coach and horses. It was just the thought of being alone with him in the mountains.

  They stood on the chairs in Roza’s kitchen and watched her packing up the box: a thick woven red-and-black cloth, a big jar of goulash and a pot to heat it in, a jar of sweet-and-sour green beans and another of stuffed cabbage, two long loaves of white bread still warm from the oven, a crock of nut cakes, milk, cups, plates, spoons, and a wet cloth for wiping sticky hands after eating.

  “Just like gypsies!” gloated Leo, and then, �
�Roza, can we carry the box out into the yard?”

  “Bim bim bim!” cried Roza. “Such impatience! How can two such little men get that heavy box from the table?”

  Puffing and red-faced they tried, determined to punish Roza for calling them little men, and finally by using the chairs (and with a little secret help from Roza) the box was on the floor. “Now,” said Jozsef, assuming the authority of the elder, “out into the yard.” The box was pushed, pulled, and kicked across the floor. At the foot of the steps they paused. Leo looked as though he were going to burst and one of Jozsef’s stockings was hanging round his ankle. “You can rest now, Leo,” he panted graciously, and then they both froze because coming down the steps was a huge pair of black boots. Uncle Sandor didn’t say a word. He just stopped and lifted the box as though it were made of paper, then stumped up into the yard.

  It was glorious outside. They took the track leading from the back of the farm, through yet another acacia wood, and the sun shining through the lace of the young leaves made a dappled pattern on the backs of the moving horses. Then they came to the road where the women from the village curtsied; then, when they had left the village, Uncle Sandor turned the coach onto a track that became steadily steeper and darker, screened on each side by beech and oak trees and with outcroppings of rock hanging over the path.

  Finally the track came to a clearing where sunlight lit a patch of new grass. Uncle Sandor turned into the clearing and stopped.

  “Now,” said Amalia, “we must look for a place to have our picnic. Not too far from the coach, but up a little into the trees.”

  Mama said she would wait until they had found the perfect spot, and the four of them, one small boy to each sister, began to climb up through the forest. And it was Amalia who found the Meadow that was to become so important to them that summer.

  It was a tiny, flat area, hidden from below and surrounded by trees, a secret meadow full of buttercups and with a stream running at one side. Someone had discovered it before because just by the stream a place to light a fire had been built from the grey mountain stone. They raced back to the coach, and Uncle Sandor brought up the box. Then he collected wood, lit the fire, and went to sit at the edge of the meadow on his own.