Days later, after they had strolled from the fountain, through the square, up to the castle, and onto a secluded rampart, their kisses turned to his promises of marriage, and they made love, “without even so much as his coat for a pillow, and only the night above,” she said, and she never saw him again.
When she discovered that she was with child, her mother confined her to housework and cooking — most of which she did anyway — but away from everyone except the old woman who talked only of the dead. All the while, her mother kept saying that when the child was born, it would go straight to the orphanage in Miskolc.
One night, her favorite brother sneaked in to see her and she told him what had happened, and that she was convinced her prince was alive but couldn’t come to her because he was at the front. A few days later, her brother returned at night and took her to the house of a fortune-teller, who said she could see the young officer clearly, could see that he was stricken with love for his princess, and that he longed in his heart to be reunited with her, if only he could survive the war. Brave men often died in battle, and this man was one of the bravest, the fortune-teller assured her. The girl was beside herself with grief, so much so that her brother began to fear for her and the child. It was then that the fortune-teller added that she could see faintly the young man walking the streets of what looked to her like the old town of Ljubljana, although she couldn’t be certain. He wouldn’t be there long, however, for his orders back to the front for the empire’s final, victorious push were imminent. If the girl could get there before his leave was over, she would find the happiness she desired.
“I must tell you, though,” the fortune-teller moaned from her trance, “the journey is an impossible one. But for love, nothing is impossible.”
Keeping their escape a secret from everyone, including their mother, the girl and her brother borrowed what gold and other dowrylike possessions they could the following day, and then stole out of their village under cover of night.
“Maribor was far behind us,” she said, “and I swelled with the expectation of seeing my prince again, until those soldiers caught us at dusk, when we were tired and off guard. My poor brother fought as bravely as he could, but I knew when I saw them, and smelled them, that the fortune-teller had lied.”
And although we never spoke at length again about that or any other story (she never once wanting to know more about my father, or my mother, only asking me occasionally where it was I — a boy, she kept calling me — learned to do the things only women were allowed to do in her village), we were rarely out of sight of each other, unless I went into the forest to hunt, and when I returned, she would embrace me and scold me for having been gone for too long, before turning back to whatever chores occupied her. After a time, then, she would come to the barn with a pot of tea, call me to a table made from a tree stump (for the weather was breaking in that part of the world and the days were often warm and springlike), take my hand, and insist I sit and drink. And I wished in my heart that we would never have to leave.
IT WAS ABOUT THIS TIME THAT WE FOUND A HORSE GRAZING on grass one morning by the side of the house. It had a bridle with a lead tied to it but was otherwise unmarked and bare. It didn’t appear hurt or lame, and the girl approached it and it shied, but she held out a slice of beet and it nickered and ate and she patted its foreleg and rubbed its neck, holding on to the bridle.
“It belongs to someone,” I said, “or it would have charged out of here before we got close.”
“She belongs to someone,” the girl said. “It’s a mare. And what’s the harm in keeping a horse if she wants to be kept?”
“No harm,” I said, “except that someone might come looking for it.”
The girl pared another slice of beet and the horse ate and licked her hand, so that it was covered in red, as though dyed or bleeding, and she said, sounding like someone weighing odds or options, “Let’s leave her and see what she’ll do.”
I filled a trough with some water and we went about our usual chores the whole day as she grazed on the new grass that was beginning to come through. The next morning, the mare was still sauntering about the grounds, and after breakfast the girl went out and led her into the barn and to a stall that must have held a jennet or a mule at one time, closed the gate behind her, and the mare lay right down on the ground to rest.
For the next few days, we fed and watered her and she came out of the barn for some exercise, which meant I walked her up and down the road, then took her back to the house and let her roam. She didn’t seem to want to go anywhere else. At meals now, the girl and I talked of the horses we had known, and I told her that my father’s fondness for the American general Ulysses S. Grant made me believe that in war horses were treated as well as soldiers, if not better, until I went to war and found that if a horse wasn’t good for pulling, it was good for eating, and shot. And if it wasn’t good for eating, it was good for nothing and was left on the roadside to rot, so that the stench of a dead horse could be smelled for miles as you approached. She shuddered when I said this and told me that the horses of the Roma were as good, and sometimes better, than the horses she had heard they rode in America.
“A horse is clean,” she said “and noble.” And then, as an afterthought of virtues, she added, “And it can work harder than a man.”
Still, I felt in my gut that this horse wasn’t meant to be a blessing to us, and two days later I came out of the woods in the late afternoon after a long day of hunting, during which I netted one hedgehog and a hare, and I saw from a distance that the front door was open but the girl wasn’t about. I picked up my step and looked into the barn, but I found neither the girl nor the horse, and I ran inside the house.
It was ransacked and overturned. In the kitchen, I found cupboards emptied, the table smashed, and, by the back room, the girl lying on the floor, blood on her lip and a welt below her eye where she’d been hit. I picked her up and pushed through the curtain that separated the room she slept in from the kitchen and laid her down on the bed. She was conscious and kept whispering over and over, “Where are you? Where are you?” but she kept her eyes closed, and every now and then she would wince and hold her belly.
“What happened here?” I said, out of breath and anger rising. “Who did this?”
“The boy,” she whispered, “the boy,” and I thought she meant the baby inside her (for she had divined some time ago that she was to deliver a son) and told her that the boy would be just fine if she lay still and slept for a while. I went out to the well and wet a rag, brought it in and laid it across her eye, and told her again to sleep. In the kitchen, I bolted the last round I had into the carbine, noticed the other one we kept with us was gone, and went outside to follow the tracks of the horse and whoever had taken her down the road.
I moved fast, as I knew there wouldn’t be much light left soon, and it didn’t take long before I saw the brown hide of the mare, but no one that I could discern was leading her, and I slowed so as not to spook horse or man, and when I was within fifty yards of them, I shouted at whoever was in front to stop and turn around slow.
As he did, I kept approaching with my rifle shouldered, and I could see as he stood in the road now with his hands raised, one still holding the lead, that it was just a boy, twelve, thirteen years old at the most, and I knew what the girl had meant. The other carbine was slung over his shoulder.