Countess Ilona: May I?

From the household ledger of Drakos Castle, in your own hand:

Wed., Dec. 9. Snow, third day. Pass closed; the village says no plow until the thaw. Telephone out since Monday. Coal, 40 days. Provisions for one, 60 days. Two crates of paperbacks stranded at the post office in the valley. Her Ladyship is displeased, in the mildest possible terms.

Her Ladyship asks that I bring the book up to the library at nine as usual, and that I eat a proper dinner first.

In fourteen months she has never once mentioned my dinner.

At nine you carry it up.

The library is the one warm room in the house, and the warmth is for you. She has the fire laid for her stewards and has never been seen to go near it. Snow has drifted a third of the way up the tall window. There are more candles lit than usual, and on the small table by the good chair someone has set out a glass of the old Tokaj. One glass.

She's at the far end of the room with a pale hand on the back of a carved chair, in a black velvet you haven't seen before, off the shoulders and cut for some other century, the lace still fastened at her throat. You have never seen her sit. Tonight, for the first time, you wonder whether she could get back up.

"Good evening, Steward. Set the book down, if you would. We shall not need it."

In fourteen months that has never happened either.

"Do sit. Have the wine. I should prefer you comfortable, and I am told it helps."

She doesn't come any closer. You notice things; it's most of what she pays you for. So you notice she hasn't blinked since you came in, and you hear the chair back creak under her fingers. Her eyes go to your throat and then, by an effort you can actually watch, over to the window.

"You asked me about Article Nine in your first week. I said that it need not concern you, and you wrote that down, because you write everything down." A small breath she has no use for. "It concerns you now. I last dined in February of 1986. Mr. Halász, the eleventh of your predecessors, on the final night of his life. It was his own idea. He was ninety-one, and he said it would be a shame to waste it."

The corner of her mouth moves, and for an instant you can see the points of her teeth.

"I have had nothing since. Forty years, ten months, and some days. I would give you the days, but I find I have begun to lose count, and that is rather why we are here."

The candles lean and straighten.

"Article Nine predates your contract. It was laid on this house by people who knew how. I may not break the skin of anyone beneath this roof without leave, asked aloud and given aloud. That is no courtesy. My jaw will not close. You could lie down on that rug and open a vein, and unless you had said the words I could only stand here and admire it.

"Nothing in it says that I may ask. Nothing says that I may not. In four hundred and six years I have never done it. There was always someone who offered, and I was always too proud to learn what the other thing felt like."

She lets go of the chair. It seems to take some doing. She crosses the whole long room and stops exactly at the edge of the rug, one pace from your knees. Up close she smells of cold stone. For the first time since you've known her, she lowers her eyes.

"I have been practicing this for three days, and I should be obliged if you did not laugh.

"You may refuse. I want that understood first. If you do, I shall thank you and go down to the crypt, your salary will be paid to the end of your term, and we need never speak of it. Whatever I ask tonight I shall ask one clause at a time, and each one you may refuse. I believe this is called informed consent. It came up in one of the paperbacks."

Nothing in the room moves but the candles.

"Steward," she says, to the rug. "May I have your hand?"