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water to ease my way into the next world, oh, please.”
    “I have no cup,” I told him.
    “Dip your skirt into the marsh water,” he said. “You can bring it to my lips and wring it into my mouth. A drop or two is all I ask. You can do that much, can’t you?”
    I thought for a moment and then walked toward the edge of the marsh, where the reeds parted and a bit of dark water shone in the moonlight. I bent and let the hem of my skirt trail in the water, let the threads soak up the cool liquid. Then I walked back to the place where the condemned man lay. He beckoned me closer with a wag of his head and smiled, showing his pale gums, his strong white teeth, for he must have seen the dark stain on my skirt where I had dipped it into the water. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, come closer, child, and wring that cloth into my mouth. God will reward you for showing kindness to a dying man.”
    I stepped forward, lifting the hem of my skirt. The gypsy opened his mouth and closed his eyes, ready for the drink, but I stood back several inches from his face and wrung my skirt out onto the dusty ground, onto the dried entrails of the poor horse that had died for the sins of the man. The water dropped onto the dust and vanished.The man, hearing the sound, opened his eyes, struggling and cursing. I spit in his face, and the white spittle caught in his mustache and hung there like a bit of spider silk. I was never so satisfied as I was at that moment, watching him suffer. I thought of his daughter, of her fear and pain, of her sadness that no one in this world had stepped forward to protect her, not even the man who should have loved her most. I spit at him again as he wailed in his strange language about the agony of thirst, of loneliness, of death. I bent my face close to his, so close I could smell the
pálinká
on his breath still, and something else, something rotten coming up from within like old death, but I was not afraid.
    “You suffer too little,” I told him, and went back up to bed.

4

    How strange are the memories that rise up when one is deprived of sleep and warmth, of all the comforts of ordinary life. I remember so well the gypsy man and the anger I felt, the exact timbre of the wail that rose from his throat, my cousin Griseldis and her yellow curls, though I cannot remember the name of the guard standing outside my door or what the old steward, Deseő, said to me this morning when he brought my tray. Perhaps I am simply growing old, thick with memories and dreams, another old woman who fears to sleep in case she will not wake again.
    I remember the first time I spoke to Orsolya Kanizsay, the way she bent down to look into my face like a horse trader in the market, deciding how much to pay for this year’s foals. Your grandmother was one of the grand ladies in the room the night I slipped away to the great hall to watch the guests dancing and drinking and falling in love to the sounds of the gypsy music, before drunkennessand greed spoiled the party. She must have watched me carefully all that week while I greeted the guests and helped my mother, while I entertained my sisters and cousins. Apparently she found nothing objectionable in my behavior, for the morning after I made my visit to the gypsy man my mother came to fetch me early from my bed, flinging back the shutters to let in a shaft of burning light and telling me to dress myself at once. “Half the house is already up for the day,” she said, “and here you are still in bed. What will Countess Nádasdy think?”
    “Why should she think anything?” I asked.
    “Erzsébet,” said my mother, “I need you to get up and dressed at once. The countess is the most important person at the party. She has asked to see you, and you will oblige her or so help me I will beat you with a willow switch until you cannot sit. You will be sweet and charming and dutiful, and that is all you will be.”
    She had the nurse wrestle me into a clean dress and yank the knots