Other Earths Read online

  “We must never regret the will of God, Landgravine. I remember hearing that the landgrave had some excellent Tokay?”

  “They’re coming this way!” said Erzs’bet.

  “Hush,” said M’rta, pulling her back by her sleeve, into the shadows beyond the torchlight.

  The landgravine emerged from the chapel, followed by a man in a Franciscan habit. She stood in the courtyard, the torchlight from the open door flickering over her yellow hair, which was coiled in elaborate braids on either side of a cap sewn with pearls that had come all the way from Paris. “I’m glad we’ve had this little talk, Father. I think we will be useful to one another.” She smiled as sweetly as the Virgin in the chapel window.

  “I hate her!” said Erzs’bet when the landgravine, followed by the Inquisitor, had disappeared across the courtyard. “I’ve always hated her. I looked out the window and saw her walking across the courtyard, so I thought she was going into the chapel. And I came down to ask her if I could go back to Hungary. She never liked me anyway, and I thought she would send me home, now that the landgrave is dead. But she wants me to marry that stupid son of hers, that Ludwig.” She hit the chapel wall with her hand and felt a cold pain run through her arm. “M’rta, I haven’t even seen him since I was a child! All I remember is that he used to collect bugs. He once put a caterpillar in my hair.”

  “Erzsike!” said M’rta, catching her hand and examining it with care. “Erzsike, you’re speaking too loudly.”

  “You know, I bet he’ll be just like Herman. Did you know that Herman used to call me a witch? He said my face was as white as the moon, and people with moon faces should be burned. M’rta, do you think I’m ugly?”

  “Erzsike, remember the windows.”

  “I don’t care.” Then, looking up at the shuttered windows, darker patches on the dark walls of the castle, Erzs’bet said, “Yes, I do care. M’rta, I’m going to run away, tonight. Don’t tell me not to, because I won’t listen. If I can reach Erfurt, perhaps I can stay at the Abbey and send a letter to the king—” she hesitated, then said, “—I mean, to Papa.” She looked down at the stones of the courtyard. “It’s been so long since he sent me away. Do you think he will recognize me, after all these years?”

  M’rta said, “I won’t try to stop you, Erzsike, because I’m going with you. Do you really think you can run away from the strongest castle in Germany by yourself? Now go to your room and fetch your cloak and your bottle of ointment.”

  “My ointment? Funny M’rta, to care about my complexion at a time like this!” Erzs’bet almost laughed, but she remembered the windows.

  “I’ll pack some food. Meet me in the scullery.” M’rta sighed. “Oh, that I should see this time come again!” Then, more briskly and in her ordinary voice, she said, “Tell me, child, do you have any money?”

  “I know this story,” said Csilla. “My grandmother told it to me. King Andr’s sent Princess Erzs’bet to Thuringia. She was supposed to marry the landgrave’s oldest son, Herman.” She remembered listening, in the kitchen of their apartment in Budapest, while her grandmother rolled the gingerbread dough.

  “Remember this story, Csillike,” her grandmother had said. “It’s one of the most important stories to remember, almost as important as the Daughters of the Moon. That’s why I tell it to you again and again, so you will remember it when you need it most.”

  When the gingerbread was in the oven, her grandmother had said, “Now you tell it back to me.” Csilla had repeated it, again and again. She had named one of the gingerbread men Herman, and while her grandmother had sat by the stove, listening and correcting her if she made any mistakes, she had slowly eaten Herman, starting with the feet.

  “The king thought she would be safer there, especially after what had happened to the queen. But Herman died, so she couldn’t marry him any more. And then . . .”

  “Yes?” said Mrs. Mad’r. “What happened to Princess Erzs’bet?”

  Moonlight glimmered through the branches. Erzs’bet tried to avoid tripping over shadows on the path: rocks, or perhaps roots. In summer, the landgravine would go with her ladies to the forest. They would sit by a stream, gossiping and listening to one of the traveling minstrels that came to the Wartburg during the summer months, strumming his lute and singing about the landgravine’s hair. The landgravine, dressed rather implausibly as Flora, would lean back against her cushions with the satisfied smile that Erzs’bet always found so unsettling. She remembered the forest as a series of sunlit glades. This was not the same forest. There was a constant rustling and scurrying in the bushes around her. She smelled fallen leaves, and mushrooms and the cold smell that meant winter was coming.

  She clutched M’rta’s cloak. “Are you sure this is the right way to Erfurt?”

  The rustling and scurrying stopped, and the forest waited, unaccustomed to this new sound.

  “We can ask the travelers ahead. I see a fire through the trees. Come on, Erszike.”

  “I thought we were trying to avoid other travelers . . .” But M’rta was already ahead of her, walking toward the fire.

  Hurrying to catch up, Erzs’bet stumbled over a shadow that turned out to be a rock. When she found her footing again and looked around her, she was standing in a clearing. The travelers were sitting around a fire at its center.

  Once, Erzs’bet had gone to Erfurt with the landgravine, to a fair celebrating the new windows of the Abbey, which showed the Virgin and Saint Anne. On the road through the forest she had seen merchants, their wagons filled with glass vessels from Venice, brocades and damasks from the weavers of Flanders, holy relics from Rome. As the landgravine’s procession had drawn closer to the town, it had passed farmers carrying dried meat and heads of cabbage in nets. She had seen their wives and daughters walking beside them, their baskets filled with goose eggs, honeycombs dripping with brown honey, walnuts. Often the road ahead of the procession was blocked by travelers and sheep, who must be moved aside to let the landgravine pass.

  These travelers were not like those she had seen going to the fair. On one side of the fire crouched a woman with white hair like a bird’s nest, whose legs were so twisted that she could scarcely have walked along the forest road. Yet surely Erzs’bet had seen her begging in front of the Abbey. And wasn’t that the scullery girl from the castle, still in her apron? Beside the scullery girl sat a man surrounded by children, from a baby to a girl almost as old as Erzs’bet who was holding the baby in her arms. They were dressed in rags, and the baby’s mouth was surrounded by sores. She had seen the man before as well; he had been the Devil in the play at the fair. She had seen him afterward juggling colored balls, while the boy who sat beside him, with the dirty cap on his head, had walked on his hands. The landgravine had forbidden her to watch such a vulgar spectacle.

  “Hello, sister,” said M’rta.

  “Hello yourself,” said a woman who was standing in the shadows beyond the firelight. “I see you’ve brought the girl.”

  Beside the children sat a peddler, who grinned at her without teeth. Out of his sack spilled bottles of ointment and what looked like a mandrake root. And then she noticed that the baby’s curls, which at first had seemed yellow, were the color of spring leaves.

  “Is that the way to talk to a princess? Where are your manners?” M’rta turned to Erzs’bet. “You’ll have to forgive her, Erszike. My sister is a queen in her own right, although her nation does not belong to the Holy Roman Empire.”

  M’rta had a sister? A sister dressed in gray, like the habit of a nun. A sister whose hair cascaded over her shoulders like ivy.

  “Where have you brought me?” She was surprised to hear her voice, so frightened. Her eyes stung from looking around the fire. She rubbed them. The woman’s hair was still green. “Is this a meeting of witches?”

  “The Inquisitor would tell you so,” said the woman in gray. Surely Erzs’bet had seen her before. She remembered the mouth, with lines of laughter around it, and the nose, as thin and sharp as a
knife. But where?

  She felt M’rta’s arms around her, as comforting as when she was a child. “Erszike, these are the T̈nd’r, and my sister Cec’lia is their queen.”

  Later she remembered music, although she was not sure when it had started: the music of a pipe and drum. She remembered a dance, but it was not like any dance she had learned at court—a wild dance in which she bent and turned and spun as though before a great wind. Later there was bread with raisins and walnuts baked in it and a honey wine that warmed her to her toes. All these she remembered, sleepily, when the dancing had stopped and she sat among the roots of an ancient oak, with her head on M’rta’s shoulder, listening to the queen of the T̈nd’r.

  “Let us examine the facts,” said Cec’lia. Erzs’bet touched a strand of her hair, which was curling over a root. It was as green as the moss on the root, and as soft as—well, ordinary hair. “Item primum: that your mother was murdered by Hungarian counts while your father was visiting the emperor’s court. Afterward, they were absolved by the church, since the wound was so slight that it should not have killed an ordinary woman. Item secundum: that your father sent you to Thuringia, whose landgrave considered himself a man of science and forbade the burning of witches. Item tertium: that since your childhood, M’rta has rubbed your face and hands with an ointment whose secret is known only to the T̈nd’r. Aristotle would tell us that the conclusion is inevitable. But the evidence of the eyes is more convincing than logic. Give me your finger.”

  “My finger?” Ersz’bet stared at the thorn that Cec’lia was holding. Was this a meeting of witches after all? Witches stole the blood of baptized children to make their bread. Herman had told her that, when he had called her a witch.

  “Let me do it, Erszike.” And this was strange, because M’rta had never even allowed her to sew, for fear that she would spoil her fingers. Perhaps she should run away from these witches, as she had run away from the landgravine. But she felt so sleepy, leaning her head against the trunk of the tree. How much honey wine had she drunk?

  A drop of blood ran into her palm, leaving a trail behind it, like a snail moving over a stone. It was a clear and shining green. Suddenly the effect of the honey wine left her, and she understood.

  “Then why don’t I have green hair?”

  “Your mother’s hair was as green as mine,” said Cec’lia. “Look around at our company.” The children were sleeping at the edge of the firelight, the oldest girl still holding the baby in her arms. The peddler had made a pillow out of his sack. Only the man who had played the Devil still sat piping, like a plaintive bird. “Some of us are lucky. S’ndor’s hair is brown, and his eyes have enough brown in them that he can pass as an ordinary man. But you see his youngest, little Juli. Some of us must hide in the forest, for fear of being identified as a witch. Although the landgrave ordered that witches cannot be burned, they can be driven away. S’ndor’s wife, the mother of those children, was killed two summers ago by a miller’s dog.”

  S’ndor stopped his piping to throw another branch on the fire. Before he began piping again, he touched the baby’s hair, ruffling it like spring grass. The beggar moved in her sleep, muttering something that sounded like a song M’rta had sung to Ersz’bet when she was a child.

  “You, Ersz’bet, look more like your father than your mother,” Cec’lia continued. “With the help of M’rta’s ointment you can even handle metal, although it could not protect your mother from the prick of a knife. She did not die of her wounds but of poison, since metal is poison to us. How we appear depends on whether both of our parents were T̈nd’r, and both of their parents. But all of us have the blood of the T̈nd’r in us, what the Inquisition calls the witch blood: the blood of the Moon. M’rta’s father was not of the T̈nd’r, but mine was. I could not live at the Wartburg, as she does.” Cec’lia smiled. “Don’t you recognize me, Ersz’bet? We’ve met before.” She reached behind her and picked up a piece of gray cloth, then draped it over her head like a veil. “Now?”

  And suddenly Erzs’bet remembered where she had seen that mouth. It had been praying in the Chapel of Saint Anne at the Abbey. She had watched it because she had been bored, and the alternative was to look at the landgravine. “If they knew that the Abbess of Erfurt . . .”

  “Sit still,” said M’rta, who was still holding a handkerchief to her finger. “I don’t want you to start bleeding again.”

  “Then there would be no one at the Abbey to help the T̈nd’r. Old Ildiko there, who can’t help singing the songs of the T̈nd’r in her sleep, would no longer be able to beg on the Abbey steps or curl beside our kitchen fire. She would be cast into the street, and if the Inquisition found her . . .” The lines around her mouth became lines of anger. “I was born after the witch trials, but M’rta remembers.”

  M’rta looked down at her hands. “I was only a girl when the Inquisitor came to our town. My father was a baker; he had money to send me and my mother to N̈rnberg. For that, he was burned in the marketplace, although his blood was as red as the priest’s.”

  “Like my father sent me away.” Erzs’bet put her face in her hands.

  “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” said Csilla.

  “What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Mad’r.

  “Getting me to tell Erzs’bet’s story because you want me to talk about my father. He sent me away just like King Andr’s send Erzs’bet away. Well, I think he should have kept her in Hungary!”

  Mrs. Mad’r shook her head. She looked, Csilla thought, like the mathematics teacher at her school, when she had hopelessly muddled a multiplication problem. “Then she would have been killed, just as her mother the queen was killed. Csilla, you must understand that the Inquisition was burning anyone identified as a witch. And the easiest way to be a witch was to be one of the T̈nd’r. We have always been hiding, always fleeing, since the days of the Daughters of the Moon. Your father was working to change that. He was writing a book—”

  “I know,” said Csilla. “He worked on it all day long, and sometimes all night long.” She would wake in the darkness and hear the sound of the typewriter. So she would put on the sweater that her grandmother had worn on days when the apartment was cold, walk down the hall to the kitchen, turn on the old stove, and boil the water for tea. When she brought it to him, he would look at her with that tired look in his eyes, her handsome Papa, and say, “Thank you, Csillike. You are my own guardian angel, aren’t you?”

  In the mornings, she would make his lunch so that he would eat something while she was at school, but often when she came home, she would find the bean soup cold, the brown bread gone stale. “You forgot to eat again,” she would say, accusingly. “Have you been typing all day?”

  “I’m so sorry, Csillike,” he would answer. “I seem to have forgotten some of the details of Szent Erzs’bet’s story. Could you sit beside me and tell me if I have the name of the Abbess right? I promise I’ll eat whatever you made me, no matter how cold it is.”

  “It was a book about the T̈nd’r. He was writing down all of my grandmother’s stories. I used to help him with it.”

  “Help him?” said Mrs. Mad’r. “How did you help him, Csilla?”

  Csilla looked at Mrs. Mad’r curiously. She was leaning forward in her chair, no longer the disapproving teacher. Instead, she sounded like an eager child. “Well, not really help. I mean not with the typing or anything. But when he forgot something, or got something wrong, I told him how the stories went. My grandmother told them to me, and she made me tell them to her, so many times! I don’t think I could forget them if I tried.”

  “Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “Don’t you know why your father sent you away? He sent us a message, but messages are so difficult. They have to be—well, not exactly clear, in case the wrong person reads them. He said he was writing down his mother’s stories, the whole history of the T̈nd’r. We’ve never had a history, just stories, Csilla. Stories remembered by the old people, because the young had so many other things
to think about, and when something was forgotten, it was forgotten forever. In Erzs’bet’s time the church burned everything written about the T̈nd’r, and even now in Hungary books about the T̈nd’r are banned. They cannot be published or sold because the state believes that we do not exist. Can you imagine what that means to us? We have been hiding and fleeing so long that the T̈nd’r are scattered now, over Europe and here in America. Without a history, how can we know who we are, or find each other again? Your father was trying to teach us. His message—it was so difficult to understand. First we heard he was sending us a copy of his manuscript. Then Helga said he was sending us his daughter. And then there you were—”

  “In my science class,” said Csilla, “the teacher told us that the T̈nd’r had a genetic defect. That we were . . . sick, not as strong as other people because we had bad genes. She said everything could be explained scientifically.”

  “Do you believe that?” asked Mrs. Mad’r.

  “I don’t know,” said Csilla.”My father believes in the stories, and he’s a professor at the university. But of course, he’s a philosophy professor, and not at all practical. He can’t even keep his socks mended. If the stories are real, what happened to M’rta’s ointment? I mean, there’s nothing like that now.”

  “It’s another thing we’ve lost,” said Mrs. Mad’r. “That’s why the stories are so important.”

  Csilla said, suddenly, “Did you know my name, when you told me about the Daughters of the Moon? Or did you really think I could be named T̈nde”

  “No,” said Mrs. Mad’r, “not exactly. But in his message your father referred to a guiding star—another thing I didn’t understand at the time. Csilla—star. And so I guessed. I thought if I told you about the bravery of another Csilla, you might respond. About your father—you have to understand that he was in great danger, of going to prison or worse. But he was very brave.”