Bathory's Secret: When All The Time In The World Is Not Enough (Affliction Vampires Book 1) (9 page)

That evening, class ended early. The Countess sent the girls to their room to sleep through the night but Oriana didn’t come to Kati’s room to read. She suspected it had something to do with Szuzanna's little outburst in class today.

The next morning the girls got up early on their own. Kati could hear them potter about outside and play excitedly in anticipation of going home, so she got up and went outside to help them dress and finish packing but she never managed to speak to Oriana on her own. Every time she tried Szuzanna would come rushing up to her with some kind of chore that needed doing in order to distract her.

When they were ready they were ushered into the carriage and sent home for the holiday. Returning to the barn Kati felt deflated and alone. Her only friend, with the exception of Miloš whom she rarely saw, had left and she’d been forced to interrupt her studies which devastated her. For the past four months she had intensively studied and read and now this break would no doubt put a dent in her progress.

Inside the now-empty barn she went around all the beds collecting the sheets for washing. Its grand size was further augmented by how quiet it suddenly was. Reaching Oriana’s bed she lifted the pillow and made a discovery. Under it was a neatly folded note over a grammar book. Katalina picked up the note and examined it; it was written in Latin.

It read:

Dear Katalina,

I am sorry I did not come to your room for a lesson last night, but Szuzanna must have seen me sneak out with my books some nights ago, so I couldn’t take the risk of being followed.

If you are able to read this letter, which I know you are, you are doing much better than you think. Last night I was planning on continuing with the future tenses but because I won’t be able to I have left my grammar book for you to study. It is a rare edition so please care for it.

Keep practicing your words, and if you can, have a look in the library for a thesaurus. The Countess has a big collection of Latin books so you won’t have to interrupt your studies while I’m gone. I will be back after the holiday and we can pick up where we left off, though I think as far as Latin is concerned you don’t need me for much more. You’ve shown an exceptional thirst for knowledge and more aptitude for the language than I ever expected of you and it has paid off.

God be with you.

Oriana.

Overjoyed, Kati pushed the letter to her chest and grinned. Here was proof that in a few months she had learned to read in an ancient language.
I can read, I can read!
She told herself again and again as if the months of incessant practice had not convinced her in the slightest.

Looking at the letter again, she folded it and put it inside the book which she placed at the bottom of the laundry basket, piling the dirty clothes on top, and headed for her room to immediately hide it.

Unsure of who had access to her bedroom she thought that under the mattress would be an obvious hiding place for a book, especially if someone other than herself was to change the sheets. Looking around the small sparse room she was stumped. Lying back on her bed wondering what to do, her eyes fell on the exposed ceiling beams. Using the chair in the room she was still too short to reach, and looked around for anything that would help add height.

Seeing the laundry basket, she stuffed it really well with clothes and placed it upside down on two chairs which she arranged to face each other. Tentatively stepping on the bottom of the basket she feared the delicate woven structure was going to give in at any second but to her relief it was stronger than it appeared and the clothes inside gave it support. Quickly she tucked the book between two joining beams and got down to check that it wasn't visible. Relieved that she had stashed it safely away she returned the chairs to their place and went to the yard to continue with her chores.

The sheets all hung in a neat line drying. Mačka was enjoying playing with the frayed corner of one of them, flicking the water off himself every now and again when he got too saturated. When he got bored of getting wet, he sat on the rim of the well and proceeded to wash himself thoroughly, paying particular care to the area behind his ears with his little paws. The days had grown longer and warmer and he enjoyed sleeping in the sun.

The barn having been emptied and cleaned, Kati sat on the entrance step and took a little break. It well past lunchtime, she thought, and judging by the last time the chapel bell had gone off it must have been around three in the afternoon. Returning to her room she found lunch waiting for her as usual and after finishing that she took a nap. The six o’clock bell ring woke her and she sat up feeling fuzzy and disoriented. The irregular hours she kept here at the castle were still playing havoc with her body.

Oriana’s letter playing heavily on her mind, she looked up at the beams feeling relieved that the book was so well hidden. Getting up off the bed she went straight to the Library. The room was empty and cold in contrast to the vivacity the four girls brought to it. Approaching the bookshelf she felt her breathing quicken. The Library was vast and she had no idea where to begin, but she remembered how one of the girls always approached the far right section when they would be reading the “classics,” which, as Oriana had explained to her, were important Roman authors. After passing several books with titles she didn't recognize she came across one that said “Thesaurus”. With trembling hands she opened the cabinet and took it out. Opening it, she was delighted to see that every word she knew in Latin was explained by one or several others also in Latin. Her jaw dropped at this treasure and she flicked page after page refusing to believe her eyes.

“What on earth do you think you are doing?” The voice was unmistakable and Katalina unwittingly held her breath as panic gripped her. She looked up to see the Countess standing at the door in one of her sumptuous charcoal grey velvet evening dresses with silver filigree embroidery, staring furiously at her. She wore a conservatively sized but impeccably starched silk ruff which accented her elaborately braided hair adorned with grey pearls. She looked magnificent save for the ugly talisman round her neck just under the ruff, but Kati had no time to admire her attire. A million thoughts passed through her head and the most prominent one was how she was doomed to punishment for simply being in there. The memory of the bruised cheek and broken nose was all too recent and she felt her eyes begin to tear up, just before a thought came to her.

“I was cleaning up, mistress. Since the girls left this morning, I collected their linens and cleaned the barn, washed the bedclothes and came in here to check if they had left anything behind and to make sure everything was in order.”

“The girls know to leave this room impeccable when they finish with their lessons.” She was looking very suspicious and cast her gaze at the book on the table. Katalina picked it up and put it back on the shelf.

“They left a few books on the table mistress, perhaps in their excitement at going home for Easter, and I put them all back on the shelf. I also cleared the fireplace and wiped down the tabletop.”

Entering the room, the Countess looked at the table with a disgusted expression.

“You clearly didn’t do a good job. The surface is laden with finger marks.”

“My apologies Your Grace, I will go over it again with lemon oil to make sure it gleams.”

The Countess seemed preoccupied so didn’t press the matter further with Katalina.

She turned to leave but hesitated and came back in.

“Katalina, I’ll be going to Vienna for a while, I’m not certain yet, but I may be away for the entire holiday season. Make sure to continue with the binding while I'm gone.”

“I’ll dedicate all my time to it now that I don’t need to care for the girls anymore.”

“And remember to speak with no one and always lock the room. The keys I gave you must always be in your possession. Is that clear?”

“Yes mistress, I always make sure they’re safe,” she assured the Countess by tapping her skirt pocket.

“Good, I expect to have seen significant progress by the time I have returned, understood?”

“Yes Your Grace, I will do my best.” She did a little curtsy.

The Countess stood at the door vacantly staring at Kati for what seemed like a few moments longer than normal, but without saying anything else she turned and left. Kati felt her body relax by having got away with that. She rushed to the window but realized she couldn’t reach to see out. The windows were higher in this room compared to other parts of the castle due to the shelving. Carefully standing up on a chair she looked down on the courtyard and the familiar figure of the coachman brushing the mane of one of the four fresh horses he had secured to the carriage.

The sudden appearance of the Countess in the yard gave the horses a fright and for a moment they fluttered about agitated. Unperturbed she entered the carriage unassisted and closed the door behind her. The coachman grabbed the four horses by the reigns and tried to calm them. Though she couldn’t hear him, Kati imagined his voice going "Whoa lassies” in her head and smiled. When they were finally relaxed, the coachman peered inside the carriage where he exchanged a few brief words with his mistress, before taking his seat and setting off towards the large gate and down the large paved ramp that led away from the castle. She stayed watching as the carriage was no longer in sight and then noticed a young man she had never seen before come out of the main building and close the gate.

Returning to the shelf she retrieved the thesaurus and taking off her apron, carefully wrapped the book with it.

Seven

The following morning Katalina got up at the crack of dawn. Aware that the Countess had gone for what could potentially be a really long time she knew this would be her chance to start reading the books she had been binding all this time and couldn’t contain her excitement and curiosity. Perhaps they all contained boring castle-related business which she wouldn’t understand but the mischievous child in her wanted to have a go at something she had been expressly forbidden to do. Grabbing an apple she had brought in from the yard she bit into it greedily and made her way to the binding room.

When she entered the space it was as if she was looking at it for the first time. She’d spent countless hours in there but this time she felt as if she’d never set eyes on all those books before. During the time she'd been learning to read she never felt confident enough to look at the words on the sheets. Her role had always been manual but today it was going to be scholarly. Oriana had given Kati her blessing and now she felt ready to venture into these secret journals.

Placing the thin apple core on the edge of the table, she grabbed the first tome from the shelf and opened it wide, also quite proud of the excellent binding work she had done. Looking down at the previously codified symbols, they now magically transformed into fully legible words right before her eyes. The first book began with some very simple words:

My name is Theodora Laskari and I was born in Constantinople in 1195 during the reign of the Emperor Alexius III. My father was a Greek, middle class cloth merchant by trade and my mother was a Venetian financier’s daughter with a talent for weaving fine linen cloth. Together with my four brothers we all lived in a small but comfortable home in the city. My parents’ marriage was unusual for its mixed heritage but they were in love and had become pregnant outside of wedlock so were quickly married. Their families had tried repeatedly to separate them but with no success. Marriages between the Orthodox and the Latins were seriously frowned upon at the time so my parents eloped and chose to stay out of the family's way, only having contact with one or two members. My father began his business with very little money after they were forced to move to a part of the city where no one knew them and kept my mother’s past as secret as possible. For many years as I was growing up I remember tensions between the Greek inhabitants of the city and the Latins and this always scared my parents who as part of either community feared rejection by both. In fact some years before I was born there had been a massive massacre of Latins by the Greeks and the dead had numbered in the tens of thousands. The Latin Princess Maria had infuriated the people by her favoritism towards her own kind and that allowed Andronikos Komnenos to rouse mob support against the unpopular Latins and launch a massacre of an unprecedented scale. It was said that approximately 60.000 men, women and children were killed in only one month.

It would be years after the massacre until relations returned to normal and trading slowly resumed with the few remaining and returning Latins. As one would expect, fear, tension and distrust clouded every aspect of people’s minds and seeped into their interactions. Talk was brief and a polite and tense distance was maintained between the two faiths. Disputes and misunderstandings were quick to erupt and sometimes men of the Latin faith would be found dead on the street. I often recalled my mother’s fear, reflected in the grip of her hand, when we would happen to walk the streets and some sort of tension brewed.