The Lady at the River's Edge

40 - River's End

They couldn't say quite when it was that they crossed into Croatia, for they saw no border stone, and the land bore no mark of ownership. Yet before nightfall they knew all the same, a sense born of countless subtle cues, only confirmed at last when they came to a small hamlet in twilight, and they were met first with the Croatian tongue, and had to mime their needs.

Language aside, they found little difficulty in their passage. At last they could travel in comfort, taking a gentle pace on local roads, having no need to slink about or avoid notice. Provisions too were no trouble, for in addition to the meat which Janos had acquired, they found a store of hard biscuits among Benedek's saddlebags–as well as a sizable purse filled with silver. Thus while they had ample food, they did not balk at splurging on a proper cooked meal when their hosts were kind enough to offer.

The nights were spent in pleasant respite, a drifting ease settling upon the pair. While Erzsebet knew the palatine's men might yet be on their trail, she could not bring herself to fret over it. Their pursuers had neither the connections nor the manpower to search all of Croatia for them. Besides, she liked to think that Benedek would have sent the men off in the wrong direction.

And so she could rest, truly rest, at long last. Not even the question of sleeping arrangements could trouble them: on the first night they shared a single pallet, and yet Janos only gave her the chastest kiss a man could give a woman, bidding her to sleep well. They were so exhausted as to set both lust and trepidation aside, and slept pressed close, entwined, heedless of everything save the comfort of the other. Their second lodging provided separate rooms, their host a godly old woman, and this too was fine, for a night alone was little pain when the morning ensured reunion.

They gathered what news they could from those few who spoke Hungarian and the fewer who spoke Latin, and confirmed that Prince Andras indeed yet resided in Varasd. The route held no trials–she had forgotten how simple it was to travel, when one could simply take the main roads and ask for directions whenever they had doubts.

So it was that on the evening of the third day, they found themselves perhaps an hour out from the city of Varasd. Since waking that morning, Erzsebet had found her comfort ebbing, the triumph of one journey's end losing ground to the prospect of a new beginning. She had hardly given thought to what she would say to the prince, how she might persuade him to come to her family's aid. For all her bluster earlier, the prince's reputation was daunting–this was a man who had rebelled against the king, after all. By any measure, his was a crime far greater than what the palatine had done to her father. Did that not make the prince even worse? She tried to imagine a man more evil than the elder Benedek, but the only image that she could conjure was the palatine himself, with the addition of little horns sprouting from his skull and a forked tongue between his teeth.

She was not alone in her apprehension, for Janos too had been ill at ease since waking. He rode Incitatus with his head tilted down, looking far too much like a prisoner awaiting execution. Erzsebet wondered what so troubled him–it wasn't as if he had to persuade the prince of anything–but something within her pushed back against asking him of it. She had kept to silence much of the day, her mind flitting between the knight at her side and the prince on the horizon. Only the inane did she dare to voice, nothing of gravity, for fear of cutting short their pleasure.

She remarked upon a robin in flight, the first she had seen this spring. She noted a wildflower of bright lemon-yellow, which she did not recognize. The fineness of the weather was a regular refrain. Such were her distractions, her simple songs, sung to keep them both from more troubling thoughts.

"Varasd, final mile," she read, squinting at the weathered waystone. "Good, we'll reach the walls before nightfall." She squeezed her legs, prompting Szog forward, but she only made it a few strides before she pulled a stop and turned.