Budapest Will Burn, by Jonathan D. Beer

"Budapest Will Burn", Illustration © 2011, Hayley "Faelourn" Millward

Budapest was on the edge of ruin.

To the soldiers that encircled it, the city seemed to be aflame. Dark smoke hung in thick palls, obscuring the churned soil and flickering muzzle fire that marked the siege’s edge. The crash of cannon fire, the scream of shells and rumble of shot striking hard-packed earth and stone shook the city.

The Ottoman army had struck the city with systematic ferocity. Engineers had mapped the fortifications while sweating soldiers had hauled hundreds of cannons into place in shallow trenches. On the tenth day of June a storm had been unleashed against the city, an unending rain of iron shot that crashed through the Hungarian defenses, unseating cannon and shattering stone. Wide-muzzled mortars lobbed shells over the walls to burst in clouds of shrapnel or alchemical fire.

Behind vast fortifications the twin cities of Buda and Pest trembled and tore at themselves in fear. All knew that the city’s end was near. Exhausted artillerymen and bleeding soldiers felt it in the trembling walls they manned. Terrified civilians whispered it to one another. Such slaughter could not be endured; no army, no city, could resist such punishment for long. Hungarian privates and generals alike watched the Ottoman lines in resigned, nerve-deadened fear for the inevitable mas of infantry that would precede an assault.  This would be the attack which would end with the city in flames.

Behind the walls, sheltered from the siege front but no safer for it, Budapest quaked in terror of what was to come.

#

On most days, Margaret Island in the late afternoon was a delight. Broad leaves softened the summer sunlight and cast dappled shadows on the wide avenues of the park. Couples walked arm in arm, happy that the din of the city was barely audible over the Danube’s passage. The worst one had to worry about were the groups of raucous students that terrorized the boulevard, on the lookout for unescorted ladies to make sport with until the evening drew in and the band began to lure folk to the pavilion’s dance floor.

The crash of cannon fire roared between the trees. Anne-Cathleen Béres closed her eyes and wished with every fibre of her being for it to be such a day.

She stood alone in the shadow of Fort Beatrice. Behind her the fort loomed, its ancient stone and crumbling mortar offering little sense of surety or sanctuary. Her husband, Sir Gusztáv Béres, was inside. Gusztáv was the Master of the Royal Armoury, a position of fragile influence and wearying responsibility.

Anne-Cathleen had begged Gusztáv to keep her at his side before he left for the evening’s assembly of the city council, pleading frailty and anxiety that were all too easily feigned. He had acquiesced, as ever, and had dutifully held her hand in a way he thought comforting as their carriage made its way to the ferry that had brought them here.

She glanced around, afraid that she would be seen alone in the park. Before Gusztáv’s carriage had left their house in Buda Anne-Cathleen had dispatched the scullery boy to find Ábel for her, bribed into loyalty with a fistful of silver forints. Now she waited, afraid for the first time of the subterfuge she had embraced so willingly only weeks before.

Anne-Cathleen had met Ábel Valzeck at a dance at the Margaret Island pavilion, and though he had danced terribly he had proved to be an astonishing lover. Although their ages were only a few years apart Anne-Cathleen found Ábel wondrously simple. His attentions thrilled her jaded spirit; his naive, impassioned views challenged her cynicism. With Ábel she glimpsed the care-free youth she had been denied by an early marriage.

For five long, happy weeks they had met in parks and cafés in Pest, secret trysts that flavoured her otherwise meaningless existence. Then the war had come, and with it the fear. Man-made thunder roared through the city, carrying with it echoes of violence and madness. The war had been a far-off thing, the army’s triumphs and tribulations a source of gossip. To see and hear it first-hand terrified Anne-Cathleen to her core, and Ábel’s polemical opinion of the war did not ease her anxiety.

He was a radical and a revolutionary, an anarchist of the highest principle. He and his radical friends, his comrades, would topple the Diet; topple the world given the chance. Ábel believed fervently in the Enlightenment ideals of Equality and Liberty, lost in young dreams that Anne-Cathleen could not conjure, and barely envied.

Her dreams were much more selfish.

The sound of footsteps brushing through grass broke her reverie and she turned. Ábel padded through the short grass, wearing long riding boots and a woolen coat that was torn and muddy. A pistol hung at his hip, and a white cotton bandage was wound around his blonde hair, almost concealing his left eye. She had never seen him look less like himself. Anne-Cathleen ran to him, surprised to feel tears of concern prick her eyes.

“Hush, Anne, hush.” Ábel cooed reassurances, his deep voice momentarily overpowering the distant guns. His arms encircled her tightly, and she felt the weave of his cotton shirt against her cheek.

Anne-Cathleen lifted her face to look into his. He was handsome even with the bandage, possessing a quick smile and thoughtful eyes beneath a broad, furrowed brow. But for his eyes Ábel always put her in mind of a farmhand, proud and content in his naivety. He stared back at her, a reassuring grin failing to hide his anxiety.

Anne-Cathleen squeezed his hand in hers. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing, nothing that will not mend.” They spoke in French, Anne-Cathleen’s native tongue; Ábel took such pleasure in giving her a glimpse of her homeland. She glared at him, and raised her free hand to feel the edge of the bandage. He leaned back, and relented. “I was set upon in the street, but there is nothing to worry about.”

“But you are wounded.”

“It’s a scratch. Really, Anne, I’m fine. Why are you here, you should not be out alone. Why on earth did he bring you here?”

Anne-Cathleen continued to grip Ábel’s hand, pulling him into the shadow of a cypress tree. “Gusztáv brought me because I told him to bring me. I had to see you. The city is panicked; people in the streets have lost all order. The maid told me there have been riots in Pest and that the constabulary house in Józsefváros has been set alight.”

“There is worse,” said Ábel, his good looks marred by a grim expression. “Food is running out. Gangs are taking over the communal wells and pumps. Neighbours are turning on each other for the basics of life.”

“Ábel, you must get me out of the city. I cannot stay here. We must leave, together.” The words tumbled out, fuelled by a desperation that she could see pull at Ábel’s heart.

His frown softened. “Darling, if only we could. But there is nothing I can do. Surely he can get you out?”

“I do not want his help,” she lied. Anne-Cathleen had asked and demanded and finally begged Gusztáv to find her a place aboard one of his steamships heading up the Danube, or to use his influence to find her a berth on one of the few remaining airships that lingered in the skies over the city. He had insisted that she stay with him, refusing to allow any notion that Budapest could fall to enter his mind. “I want to leave with you. Ábel, we can escape together!”

“Or is it that you need my comrades to help you because your husband will not?” demanded Ábel, seeing through her obvious manipulation. Anne-Cathleen felt a roughness in his tone that she had never heard before. Tears, real and unforced, rolled in slow drops down her cheeks.

“I am scared, Ábel. The city is doomed, and we will all die or worse when the Musulmen break in. I cannot die here!”

Ábel grasped her in his arms again, unable to look at the sorrow in her eyes. “You won’t!” All hint of his anger evaporated as suddenly as it had appeared. “I swear it, my love. You will not die here.”

Anne-Cathleen struggled against his grip, but he held her tightly. Panic that she had contained for days burst free, her reserve breaking down before a man she had known for mere weeks.

“I must get out. Please, come with me.” She sobbed into his chest, soaking his shirt with her pent-up emotions. She clung to him, craving the strength of his presence but hating herself for such a self-pitying display.

“It is not up to me,” said Ábel after she had subsided. She let go of him and hastily wiped her eyes.

“But I am asking you.” She drew herself up, although her eyes were barely level with his chin. “Why would they not help us? Why would they refuse you?”

Ábel was silent. Anne-Cathleen said nothing, still embarrassed by her display of fragility. She watched him, confused by his indecision and resistance. He, like Gusztáv, had never denied her anything.

He paced a few steps away from her and looked to the south, towards the sound of cannon fire and death. He looked afraid. It was an emotion which did not sit well with him; Anne-Cathleen had never seen him struggle with indecision. He had always been resolute, unflinching, and forthright.

He turned to her. “I will do what I can. There is an airship leaving the city tomorrow, the Artemis. I, we, have had dealings with her captain. There might be a place on it for you.”

She smiled, and stepped into him. She pulled his face to hers, magnanimous in victory. His kiss was sad and gentle. Anne-Cathleen suddenly felt guilty. “A place for us. You are coming with me.”

He smiled back at her.

#

The sun set, and the Ottoman guns fell silent.

At first none on the Hungarian earthworks noticed, their senses dulled by days of unending assault. Realization slowly dawned. Grins and shouted words were exchanged between soldiers who stood ten metres apart, suddenly able to converse once more.

Darkness came upon the lines in a rush, dusk lasting only moments. The sudden silence from the Ottomans provoked panic amongst the commanders within the city, and the young night was broken by bugle calls for assembly and demands for reports of the enemy massing. There was nothing; no movement in the Ottoman lines, no hint of a reason why they had chosen to halt their systematic bombardment.

As stars began to prick the midnight sky, sentries were stood down and replaced, and reserve battalions dispersed and returned to their billets. Opinions were traded as to the reason for the reprieve. The maudlin assumed the Ottomans were so confident in victory they could take their time. The optimistic prayed the Hungarian field army was returning to relieve the city, and the Ottomans were abandoning their short-lived siege.

All took advantage of the silence to claim a night of unbroken sleep.

#

Anne-Cathleen stood with one hand against the window of her drawing room, her face illuminated by the light of civilization burning.

She was on the top floor of the townhouse, looking out at Buda through a window framed by an arch tall enough for her to stand beneath. A thin bench, upon which sat a large carpet bag filled with clothes and her most treasured possessions, ran the width of the window, but she could not sit. The view held her, fascinating as much as it was terrifying, revolting as it was enthralling.

The window looked to the south, over the deserted streets and the rooftops of Buda. Fires studded the darkness, stark against the vague silhouettes of towers and houses. From her vantage point Anne-Cathleen could see the riverside market square where she occasionally walked. It was full of people, and though night had set in she could see figures clearly, their savage stances lit by burning torches and the lamps of a river steamship moored alongside the dock.

The steamer’s captain was in a dangerous position. A mob had gathered in the square as night fell, evidently demanding passage on the steamer, and the captain was justly refusing. Anne-Cathleen felt she was watching some grotesque parody of her own emotions play out in the square; desperate fear, the instinctive desire to survive, directionless anger.

She was too far away to discern faces, but she clearly saw a man on the quay’s edge draw his pistol. The captain started back, gesturing frantically at his crew. Horrified and utterly impotent, Anne-Cathleen saw the steamer’s men pull weapons from their belts.

The pistol’s muzzle flashed, and a cloud of blood erupted from the back of the captain’s head. She turned away in disgust, fighting nausea.

She looked back. Bright flashes of fire and puffs of powder smoke edged the dock. Many in the crowd were running, fighting against the press to flee the vengeance of the steamer’s crew, but others were shooting or throwing bricks and cobbles.

Anne-Cathleen gripped the back of the bench to keep her hands from shaking. Under the fusillade of bullets and debris, the steamer’s crew cut the ropes holding it against the quay. The riverboat began to drift sluggishly away from the shore, the river’s current slow to take hold. Anne-Cathleen fancied that she could fear the mob’s roar, denied their chance to escape the city. A treacherous part of her sympathized with them; but for the grace of God, and Ábel’s love, went she.

All her sympathy disappeared with a single act of cold-hearted savagery.

A few people had tried to leap the growing gap between the dockside and the steamer’s low gunwale, but had fallen short or were pushed off by the crew as they scrambled for purchase. That alone was a terrible sight, but worse followed. From somewhere within the mob’s press an oil lamp arced through the air and shattered against the steamer’s smoke stack. Burning oil rained down on the steamer’s wooden deck, and the crew turned in an instant from vengeful demons into panicking children.

Anne-Cathleen cried aloud, stunned, as more burning torches and oil were thrown onto the riverboat. Such stupidity! Such violence and malevolence of spirit! Anne-Cathleen watched the crew fight the flames, beating with their jackets despite the heat that scorched their arms and faces. She heard in her mind their screams as they died, and the hateful laughter of the mob that had turned to murder out of spite.

Anne-Cathleen turned from the window, unable to watch anymore. The bounds of society and decency were falling away, and the wicked and lawless were boiling out of their rookeries and slums. Worse, Anne-Cathleen knew in her rational way that it was not just the criminal and the destitute that had killed the rivermen and cavorted in the streets. More terrible were the ordinary people, the clerks and linesmen and housewives that had seen the bonds of discipline fraying and chosen to give vent to their darkest emotions, freed from responsibility and consequence by the city’s impending doom.

The Ottomans had sealed the city and let terror do its work.

Loud blows echoed through the house, making Anne-Cathleen jump. Her gaze jerked towards the study’s door, her mind conjuring a gang of housebreakers and cutthroats hammering at the entrance to her home. A tremor took hold of her hands, and reflexively she cast about herself for a weapon. Her hand brushed against the carpet bag and she spun to look out of the window once more, the thick fabric’s rough touch pulling her senses back to the real. Anne-Cathleen looked down at the street and smiled involuntarily, and her hand grasped the leather handles of her bag.

Ábel stood beside a short two-horse trap, looked up at the face of the house, and his grim, earnest expression brought a surge of relief and happiness to her lips. Anne-Cathleen turned and ran from the drawing room.

The hallway beyond was dark, its lamps unlit. Anne-Cathleen ran unheeding to the staircase, and plunged down. With each step she felt excitement swelling in her breast, the contending pressures of fear and anger and self-pity evaporating as she came closer to the door, closer to the escape she had craved since long before the Ottomans had come.

She reached the bottom of the staircase and leapt the final stair, buoyed by unfamiliar joy. She crossed the parquet floor of the reception hall with quick strides and heaved open the stout oak door. Ábel was beyond, staring up at the townhouse’s face. He wore a long dark coat that fell to his knees, and he clutched a pistol with one hand. A peaked tricorne concealed his bandaged brow.

At the sound of the door’s opening he looked down and saw Anne-Cathleen. Their eyes met, and she smiled.

“Anne?” Her name carried across the hall, uttered by a thin, nasal voice.

Anne-Cathleen looked away from Ábel, and stared at her husband. Gusztáv stood in the archway that led to his wing of the house, a red gown tied loosely about his midriff. He blinked, taking in her bag and coat. “What are you doing?” His tone was curious, not angry, as if her were asking her why she wore blue instead of green to dinner.

Ábel reached out and took her hand. Without a word she stepped over the threshold of the house and ran. If Gusztáv protested, she did not hear him. Their boots kicked up the gravel path as they ran hand in hand to the trap. Ábel leapt aboard and then pulled Anne-Cathleen up beside him. She might have been laughing as Ábel took up the reins, standing up on the board as if he were a Hellenic charioteer, and with a snap of his wrists set the horses into motion. Anne-Cathleen’s bag tumbled from her grasp into the footwell, unheeded. As the street moved past her she really did start to laugh, huge choking laughs that escaped her mouth as sobs. The doors and windows blurred as she saw the world through tears of joy.

#

They drove in silence, Ábel sternly fixed on maneuvering the trap, Anne-Cathleen lost in a world of her own. The gleeful escape from the house, from her husband, replayed over and over in her mind. It was everything she had wished for, and yet it had been so simply done; a single step and she was free. Why had she not done it sooner? Perhaps she was as mad as the crowd at the dock, giving in to abandon and desire with death so close.

Ábel did not intrude on her thoughts, and took the trap south, obliquely climbing Gellért Hill. As they passed the Mohács memorial park the slope reversed, and Ábel eased the horses’ pace as they descended. He worked stiff joints, and sat down in the seat beside her.

Anne-Cathleen slipped a hand into his, and kissed his cheek. “Where are we going?”

“A house we use in Újbuda,” Ábel replied. He took several deep breaths, though he seemed unaffected by the excitement rushing through Anne-Cathleen. He took his eyes from the road for a moment. “I am sorry, Anne.”

”What for?”

“Where we are going, it is not like you are used to. My comrades are not like the men you have known.”

“Are they all like you? Sterling, upright, with principles emblazoned upon their breasts?” Anne-Cathleen grinned girlishly at him.

“No. They are not like me.”

Ábel guided the horses round a corner. On their left, bounded by stone walls topped with iron rails, was a red brick townhouse of a size with Gusztáv’s. Gas-lamps fixed to the brickwork illuminated the darkness, revealing tall windows with veils drawn and ornamental bushes cut back severely against the house. Three men stood in the courtyard, dressed in the same long woollen overcoats as Ábel, all smoking thin cigars and sporting harsh, unshaven faces. Anne-Cathleen’s happiness wavered.

“You will be safe here, Anne,” Ábel said, “but you must do as I say.” Anne-Cathleen bridled, but was confused by the sadness in his voice. Ábel turned the trap off the street and beneath an arched gatehouse that led into the courtyard. Ábel looked over at her. “I did not want to bring you here.”

Gravel crunching underfoot, Ábel and Anne-Cathleen crossed the courtyard towards the townhouse’s open door. Anne-Cathleen noticed Ábel carefully interposed himself between her and the huddle of smoking men as they walked. She fought the urge to grip his hand tighter, and instead held fast the straps of her carpet bag. She was off-balance and uncertain. The house loomed over her, a dark shape silhouetted against the night sky despite the flickering gas lamps.

The receiving hall of the townhouse was much like Anne-Cathleen’s own. Not her own, she thought with a start; like Gusztáv’s. The same parquet floor extended out to the two wings of the house, although it was scuffed and ill-maintained. A double staircase climbed each side of the hall, its carpet pattern hard to make out in the gloom. A simple candelabrum hung from the ceiling, its few candles casting a wan light that served only to reveal the dirt and grime that would have shamed any home of hers. Men and women milled about the hall, all staring at her with the same grim, hostile look. A woman with grey hair sat in a thin rocking chair, holding a long and battered rifle.

Ábel headed towards the nearest wing of the staircase, towing Anne-Cathleen behind him. She started to ask something, but a curt “Be quiet!” from Ábel cowed her. She had never seen him so agitated, and the way he gripped her hand was frightening.

She followed him up the staircase and into a small, featureless room at the summit. As soon as she was inside, Ábel shut the door and leant back against it.

“What is going on, Ábel?” Anne-Cathleen rounded on him, tossing her carpet bag onto an oddly ornate four-poster bed that filled the room. “Why have you brought me here? This place is awful!” She spat the words at him, her uncertainty pouring out as anger.

Ábel, far from being chastised, replied in kind. “What do you want, Anne? Do you think I wanted you to see this?” He paced away from the door and sat down on the edge of the bed. Ábel rubbed his face with his hands. “In this world a man like me, with my convictions, cannot choose his comrades. And if you want to escape from here, from Budapest, you will be polite and silent around them.”

Anne-Cathleen glared at him. Before she could reply, the door swung open and a man of middling age and fine patrician features entered. Ábel sat up straight, and Anne-Cathleen unthinkingly stepped back a few paces to give him space in the small room.

“Ah, Ábel. And good evening, Madam Béres.” He spoke polite, if somewhat accented, French, and spoke in a way that suggested he was familiar with Anne-Cathleen, although she was sure they had never met.

“Rikárd. I did not expect you to be back.” Ábel shifted his weight on the bed, looking anywhere but at Anne-Cathleen or Rikárd.

“Neither did I, but Captain Watson was not in a conversational mood.”

“Is everything arranged?” asked Ábel.

“One berth on the Artemis, as agreed. The fee was extortionate.” His stare bored into Ábel, who did not meet his gaze. Rikárd turned to Anne-Cathleen. “I apologise, Madam, it must seem that we speak in riddles. Ábel spoke of your desire to escape our ill-fated city. Fortunately, we are in a position to help.”

“I am in your debt, sir,” said Anne-Cathleen carefully. “As to the question of payment, I will do what I can to compensate any expense you have gone to.”

“Your husband is famously wealthy, yes, I know.” Anne-Cathleen was taken aback. She tried to summon a response, but the words would not come. “I am afraid Sir Gusztáv’s money is of little use in these troubled times. We are more interested in his more tangible assets.”

Anne-Cathleen’s brow creased. “I do not understand.”

“Your husband is the Master of the Royal Armoury, Madam.” Rikárd said, his tone patronising. “He is the possessor of the city’s weapons, and for a long while we have had designs on his inventory.” Rikárd looked at Ábel, expression blank but eyes wrathful. “I had asked young Ábel to arrange for you to help us. I was very disappointed some weeks ago when he told me that you were… incorruptible.” Anne-Cathleen looked at Ábel, mute horror etched on her face.

“Ábel?”

He could not meet her eyes.

She could not believe it, would not believe it. He had made her love him, manipulating her at the orders of this horrible, silver-tongued anarchist?

“I had no idea he had continued his little fling. When he came to us to ask that we help you, he was most contrite. He really does love you, you know. How does it feel to know that that first kiss was by my arrangement?”

Anne-Cathleen threw herself at Rikárd. Her fingernails caught his cheek, breaking the skin. She screamed obscenities as she flailed at him, hatred drowning out the aching sorrow that burned in her chest. She felt hands pull her away from Rikárd, and she turned on Ábel, whirling with a hand outstretched to land with a whip crack against his face.

He stood still, eyes wet but locked with hers. She started to speak, but all that came out was a low moan.

“Anne, I love-“

“No!” Anne-Cathleen screamed, another hand flashing at his face.

A pair of hands at her back shoved her forward, and she landed on her stomach on the bed. Anne-Cathleen turned over, hugged her chest. Ábel drew a fist back to strike Rikárd, but a venomous look made him stay his hand.

“You would do well to be more civil, Madam.” Rikárd lifted a hand to his cheek. Red stained his fingers. He began to speak again, but then turned suddenly leave. “Good night, Madam Béres.”

Ábel ran around the edge of the bed to lean over her, hands outstretched. Anne-Cathleen knocked them away, and he recoiled as if stung. “Anne, I would have told you…”

“Get out! Get away from me!” She clung to her anger like an anchor. “I trusted you. I left my husband for you! Were you ever going to tell me that it was all a part of your childish politics?”

Ábel said nothing, fighting with his own sadness, but Anne-Cathleen would not relent. “Leave.” She was alone, her marriage abandoned for a lie. Ábel tried to touch her again but she flinched back. “Just get out!”

She hugging her knees to her chest, oblivious to everything but the pain.

#

Dawn was met in fear.

The slumbering defenders had been woken hours before, hastened to order by whispers and kicks passed along the walls. It had been assumed that the Ottoman cease-fire was a ruse to lull the Hungarians into negligence in preparation for a dawn assault. Soldiers greeted the morning in silence, peering out from embrasures and trenches at the lightening landscape, rifles and greatcoats beaded with dew.

The day broke, and with it came the roar of cannon fire, every Hungarian cannon still on its axle bellowing defiance at the Ottoman line.

Which remained resolutely, interminably empty. The Ottoman guns remained hidden behind earth-filled gabions; no assault had come under the last ebb of darkness. Soldiers and civilians dared to hope that they would yet live through another day.

What they saw in the distance, hovering over the southern horizon, promised that they would not.

#

The door’s hinges creaked as Anne-Cathleen gently pushed it open. No lamps were lit on the landing, and the sounds of a slumbering house greeted her. She pushed further, and stepped out of the bedroom. She clutched the handles of her carpet bag, knuckles white around the leather. She crept out on to the landing, and red-rimmed eyes stared around the hall.

Nothing moved. The dusty corners of the hall were pools of shadow, the few slivers of wan morning light slipping through gaps in the thick curtains nailed around the windows, and through the hemisphere of painted glass that crowned the house’s doorway. The rocking chair which had held the grim, rifle-armed woman sat empty on the far side of the hall.

Anne-Cathleen looked back through the door at Ábel asleep in the bed, the sheets typically curled tight about him. He had come back soon after he and Rikárd had left, gushing with apologies and pleading for understanding. Anne-Cathleen had been unrelenting, his pleas breaking on the barrier of her anger. Finally they had both collapsed, exhausted by rage and sorrow and shame. Anne-Cathleen’s wounded pride had made her argue about where Ábel would sleep, but in the end when he had climbed in beside her she had been too tired to stop him.

Anne-Cathleen started down the staircase, jumping at each floorboard’s complaint and the rustling of her dress on the carpet. She tried to look at everything at once, expecting every time she turned to see Ábel standing at the head of the stairs, watching her. Yesterday, or even just a few hours ago, she would have strode boldly, fears masked by a veneer of arrogance and privilege. Now she walked with a whispering tread, starting at shadows.

She crept to the door and bent to the lock, listening for any sign of a sentry without. There was none, but she did not move. Fear had brought her this far; fear of what the morning would bring, of the machinations of Rikárd and his anarchists, of facing Ábel in the light of day. But she stopped short at the doorway. Beyond were other fears, those that had driven her from her husband’s shelter to Ábel’s, ignorant of the lie of his love. Her hand wavered in the air, outstretched toward the tarnished handle, hesitating before the choice it represented. Where would she go if she wrenched open the door and fled into the night? She could not, would not, go back to Gusztáv; the joyous memory of the wind in her face as Ábel’s trap hurtled away from her home was too fresh to betray.

Her hand grasped the handle suddenly. That moment, like all the others, was tainted by Rikárd’s vindictive revelation.

But no-one in the city would take her in, not now. She saw no chance of escaping the city by her own means; if she had, she would have done so long before.

Options dwindling before her scrutiny, Anne-Cathleen looked back up at the room where Ábel slept. Emotions warred within her, and her grip on the handle shook as she did. Slowly she released it, and stood in silence beside the door for long minutes. Then, with the same patience as she had descended, Anne-Cathleen climbed the stairs back to the room.

#

A flock of predators bore down on Budapest. Sleek and lethal, their wooden hulls sheathed in plates of iron that reflected bright morning light from their starboard sides. Slim gas chambers studded tall flanks, keeping the colossal vessels aloft while broad propellers drove them inexorably on. Dark-skinned men in fleece-lined coats stared through telescopes, contemplating the fragile beauty of the Hungarian capital spread out before them.

The airship fleet of the Ottoman Empire drew closer, confident in its superiority, stately in its progression through the clear skies. A northerly wind restrained their speed, but did little more than give the defenceless city more time to contemplate its fate.

The city was helpless. The few Hungarian airships that remained in the city were cutters and couriers, not warships, and the city’s rocket magazines had been depleted countering the enemy siegeworks. Bombardment was the terror of all cities, more horrific than any battlefield for its impersonality, more devastating for the totality of destruction that would scour a city of life. Nations had submitted to occupation and annexation in the face of such a threat.

The Hungarian soldiers fled. Battered, bleeding, deprived of rest and the hope of victory, it was a wonder they had held for as long as they had, but to see death itself unhurriedly approach was too much. They fled in ones and twos, officers doing their best at first to contain the rush but soon joining it. The rout spread along the ramparts, heading not north into the doomed city but east, out toward the sun-baked plains and the hope of surviving the day. Behind the Ottoman siege lines, cavalrymen mounted eager horses and contemplated the sport of the day.

In the skies above them, the airship captains did the same.

#

The blade of light crept along the floor. Anne-Cathleen watched it stretch from one floorboard to the next, marking time in the most primitive way she could imagine. Eventually the sliver would reach across the length of the floor and begin climbing the wall. Anne-Cathleen had told herself that once the light reached the wall she would stand up and leave the room.

There were many floorboards left to cross before that happened.

Anne-Cathleen lay on her side, completely still. Only the occasional blink to clear her eyes betrayed the fact that she was alive at all. She was dully aware of commotion beyond the door of the tiny bedroom, a great deal of clattering, shouted activity, no doubt in preparation for some nefarious purpose. Anne-Cathleen ignored it; it was beyond her concern. She waited for whatever was to come.

Ábel had said he would return shortly, before disappearing out into the melee of the radicals’ hideout. The shaft of light had made its way across three floorboards since then, and Anne-Cathleen had not heard his voice amongst the din. What he planned to do with her, what Rikárd – thinking of the poisonous man almost made Anne-Cathleen shriek, but she remained still – had planned for her, she did not know.

Long minutes passed slowly. The beam of white light inched further, illuminating the dust and dirt lining the deep grooves of the wooden boards.

The noise from the hall subsided all of a sudden, and she dimly raised her head to listen. A shout, louder and angrier than before, made Anne-Cathleen start. A fearsome yell answered the shout, and suddenly the tramp of running feet echoed through the house.

Heavy, hurried footsteps shook the bedroom’s boards and Anne-Cathleen finally moved, lifting herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. She moved back from the door, which burst open to reveal Ábel, sweat-streaked and wide-eyed.

“Anne, we have to leave, now.” The look in his eyes was terrible. Anne-Cathleen drew back.

“No, Anne, we have to go!” Ábel shouted, startling her. He reached out and grasped her wrist, hard. She instinctively pulled back, but he pulled her up off the bed despite her cry of protest.

“Ábel, let me go! My bag!” He towed her out of the room, hauling her bodily. “Wait, my bag, stop!”

“We don’t have time, Anne. Please trust me!” He did not stop in his headlong charge down the stairs, and Anne-Cathleen stumbled behind him. The hall was empty, deserted by Ábel’s comrades at a moment’s panicked notice. The thought that the constabulary had come to arrest the whole nest of them flashed through her mind, and she tried once more to pull away from Ábel, who turned, wrathful. “God damn it, Anne, don’t fight me now! I’ll not die here and neither will you!” He heaved again, drawing another cry of pain as they ran out into the morning’s glare.

“Die? What’s happening?” Anne-Cathleen no longer struggled against his grip. He didn’t reply, but swore instead.

The yard had emptied; a black four-horse cab crowded with radicals disappearing from view as they watched. Ábel and Anne-Cathleen chased after it, the sense of panic within Anne-Cathleen made worse by ignorance of what threatened them.

As they passed through the wrought-iron gates and on to the street, Anne-Cathleen heard an odd noise, a crump, like a sudden intake of breath. She looked around for the source, but was hampered by Ábel’s unyielding grip. The sound grew, or rather it rippled, a series of wet thumps carrying over the houses. They reached the end of the street and emerged into chaos.

People were running from their homes in terror. Men dragged their wives and their wives carried crying children, all of them scared beyond reckoning. Anne-Cathleen felt their fear feed her own, and she recoiled from the crossroads. Some people were carrying bags or boxes, which made Anne-Cathleen think of her carpet-bag; all that remained of her belongings, abandoned.

She and Ábel plunged into the crowd, Ábel leading the way as they were jostled and pushed aside. They headed across the road, running for another row of townhouses on the far side. A single-horse cab sat idle in the street, its driver anxiously looking back at his master’s home.

As they approached Anne-Cathleen realised Ábel meant to steal it, and pulled up short. He finally let go of her and strode on, hailing the driver with an angry yell. The man turned quickly, and his eyes widened. Ábel produced a pistol from his belt, and did not stop walking forwards as he cocked it. The driver’s hand went for the whip slung by his seat, and Anne-Cathleen screamed as Ábel pulled the trigger and put a bullet between the driver’s eyes. The man dropped like a folding puppet onto the cobbles, and she screamed again as dead eyes stared into hers.

Ábel leapt into the cab, and mastered the rearing, panic-stricken horse in its traces. “Anne, come on!” Ábel jerked the reins, kicking the horse into motion. She stepped back, horrified by the casual murder a man she had loved had committed before her. Ábel leant out and caught her roughly around the waist, and hoisted her into the cab. She kicked and fought him, seeing through tears as the world around her collapsed.

Ábel gave the horse its head, and the cab surged out into the road, narrowly missing a man and his wife on the corner as they turned north. They galloped on, past rows and rows of housing and the streams of humanity that poured from each. Those households whose staff had remained through the siege now lost them, every man and woman seeking safety for themselves first and only. Some tried to waylay Ábel, but he brandished the empty pistol at them as they went by. Anne-Cathleen clung to the cab’s board, desperate for an explanation for the chaos that had suddenly erupted around her.

As they left behind the houses of the southern slope, and started to climb towards the summit of Gellért Hill, Anne-Cathleen looked back and got her answer.

Budapest was burning.

Anne-Cathleen knelt in the cab’s seat, and saw a city die in flames. The sweep of the horizon was consumed by fire and black smoke, boiled and churning like a corner of Hell itself. The ruined southern districts of the city were hidden by a wall of choking smoke, but she could see flames racing through the streets of Csepel and gardens of Budafok. Across the river, Pesterzsébet was too bright to look at, an ember glowing with the ferocity of the sun, radiating heat and devastation. Church spires and mosques, factories and villas, all burned and died, collapsing under their weight as the inferno devoured their foundations. Anne-Cathleen saw groups of tiny people running, confused and terrified, and she tried to turn away rather than see the horror of families fleeing nature’s own fury unleashed.

Unleashed by a flotilla of hovering airships, their outlines wavering through the scorching air. The Ottomans had turned man’s primordial fear against Budapest, and Anne-Cathleen suddenly heard herself screaming curses and hate at the vast engines of death that even now rained curtains of liquid flame on as-yet untouched corners of Pest. She spat vows of vengeance and pleas of mercy into the sky, hating them for the destruction they had wrought on her life.

Ábel kept the horse galloping up the hill, and gently moved his hand to Anne-Cathleen’s shoulder and turned her around, away from the scene of a city dying. She slapped away his hand, but slumped into the seat.

Ábel negotiated the cab along the switch-back road that led into the memorial park at the Hill’s summit. Anne-Cathleen looked at him for the first time since he had plucked her kicking from the bedroom. She saw the tears that stung his eyes, and the tortured set of his mouth, clamped shut to keep in the same cries that she had vented. One shaking hand started to reach out to his, but when his hand moved to grasp hers she jerked back, and a fresh wave of tears rolled down Anne-Cathleen’s cheeks.

They turned another corner, and the summit was finally in sight.

“What now?” asked Anne-Cathleen. The words came out as a croak.

“Now,” said Ábel, turning to look at her, “we live.”

Hanging the sky over the memorial park was an airship, its keel almost touching the treetops. Anne-Cathleen almost screamed at the sight of it, but Ábel grasped her hand quickly and stifled her alarm. This airship was different to the ghostly rapiers that were killing Budapest; blunt and narrow, with a pair of squat gas chambers fixed to the fore and rear of each flank. Painted across the shallow curve of its stern was a single word.

Artemis.

“Come on, move yourselves!” The call was urgent, not welcoming. Ábel slowed the trap, and Anne-Cathleen half-jumped, half-fell from the cab’s board. Ábel ran to her side, and she let him help her towards the underside of the Artemis as her limbs suddenly went slack. Over the side of the airship came a pair of ropes, knotted in quick loops about their ends. Anne-Cathleen did not want to speak, for fear of undoing the miracle that Ábel had conjured.

“How?” The word slipped out regardless. Anne-Cathleen’s head swam; too much had happened to her in the last day for her to be certain of anything anymore.

“Later,” said Ábel. “Get in.” Ábel helped her slip the looped rope beneath her arms and around her chest, then did the same to himself. The ground fell away from Anne-Cathleen’s feet, and for a moment she felt dizziness threaten to overtake her.

And then she was aboard the Artemis, a smooth wooden deck beneath her hands and feet. A man was beside her, dark-skinned hands gently moving her up to sit with her back against the gunwale. Despite the sudden urge to fall asleep Anne-Cathleen reached up a hand and was helped to her feet by the airman. Ábel was beside her, embracing the huge tattooed man who had shouted down to them. Still dizzy, Anne-Cathleen stepped away from the gunwale and into the lee of the airship’s quarterdeck. The trembling in her limbs returned again, and she slumped back against the wood.

Ábel walked over to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Anne, get up. We’re safe.”

For a moment Anne-Cathleen contemplated pushing his hand away, remembering the awfulness of the last place Ábel had claimed was safe for her. But instead she reached up and gripped his hand, tired of the hate in her mind, longing only for an end to it all.

Together Ábel and Anne-Cathleen walked to the Artemis’s gunwale. The airship was climbing quickly, putting its stern to the Ottoman airships and the devastation beneath them. To the north, above Buda, she could see a few other airships rising into the sky; the lucky few, like her, escaping the slaughter of a city. She wondered if Gusztáv was aboard one of them.

Ábel put his hand beside hers on the rail, and she did not pull away. She felt like she was back on the bed in the radicals’ den, letting the world move around her. She knew nothing of this ship or its people; even the man she stood beside, not in her heart. Below her the place she had never called home perished in flames.

Anne-Cathleen stood at the Artemis’s railing and watched Budapest burn.