The old woman shook her head. “Yesterday is sunk into the mists of the past. What happened six decades ago, I can see as if it is happening now. The long, long path, past his stables. The stone gateposts with their worn carvings. And then, inside—the curving staircase, the worn steps. It took my breath away. Drunken guests, people said, would slip on those worn steps. Later, when I joined the household staff, I would overhear Countess Illana talking about such things—she was so funny, and so dismissive about it all. She never liked the staghorns mounted on the walls—did any castle not have them? she protested. The paintings, Teniers, Teniers the Younger. ‘Like every castle in Central Europe,’ I once heard the countess say to someone. The furniture, ‘Very late Franz Josef,’ she would say. And how dark it was in the main hall. You didn’t want to put a hole through the frescoes, you see, to put in electric lighting. So everything glowed with candlelight. In that hall, I remember, there was a grand piano, of rosewood. With the most delicate lace cloth on top, and a silver candelabra that had to be carefully polished every Saturday. And outside it was as beautiful. I was dizzy with excitement the first time I walked through the English-style garden in the back. There were overgrown catalpa trees, with their misshapen limbs, littering pods everywhere, and pollarded acacias and walnut trees. The countess was very proud of her jardin anglais. She taught us to call everything by its proper name. In English, yes, English. Another member of her household drilled me in this language. Illana enjoyed addressing people in English, as if she were living in a British country house, and so we learned.” She looked oddly serene. “That English garden. The smell of freshly mown grass, the fragrance of roses, and hay—it was like Paradise to me. I know people say I live in the past, but it was a past worth living in.”

Janson recalled the ruins that were visible farther up the hill: all that remained of the vast estate were jagged remnants of walls that rose only a few feet from the ground, barely visible through the tall grass. Eroded brick mounts of once grand chimneys protruded through the scrub like tree stumps. A castle that had stood proudly for centuries was reduced to rubble—not much more than a rock garden. A lost world. The old woman had entered an enchanted garden once. Now she lived in the shadows of its ruins.

The wood fire cracked and hissed quietly, and for a minute no one spoke.

“And what about the scampering of little feet?” Jessie asked finally.

“They had only one child. Peter. Would you like a drop more pálinka?”

“You’re real kind, ma’am,” Jessie said. “But I’m fine.”

“Peter, you said,” Janson repeated, deliberately casual. “When was he born?”