House of Bathory (14 page)

Chapter 33

Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 21, 1610

C
ountess Bathory stared at the young horsemaster, a cat watching a bird.

The white stallion had entered the castle gates at a walk, as calm as a king’s horse. Excited by the activity of the crowded courtyard, the steed raised its head and began to trot, but Janos reined him in, commanding obedience. The horse ceased its prancing, walking by the blazing fires, hawking vendors, scattered livestock, and laughing children.

The Countess dropped her gaze and looked at her white hands cuffed in lace, her delicate fingers clasped in her lap. Then she turned her hands palms down and studied the blue veins of age that drew their tributaries across her skin.

She remembered another skilled rider, long since dead. A shiver coursed through her body. He was a stable boy and she was already betrothed to Ferenc Nadasdy. She—the daughter of both the Ecsed and Somlyo Bathorys, an incestuous inbreeding—was a valuable pawn in the union of the most powerful and the most wealthy families of Eastern Europe. Her cousin ruled Transylvania, her uncle was the king of Poland.

A marriage to the Nadasdy clan—not the highest nobility but immensely wealthy—was a propitious alliance. The Countess was betrothed at the age of nine and sent to her future mother-in-law’s castle in the southernmost reaches of Hungary.

So far from home, in the castle of her future in-laws, she had sought comfort with a peasant boy, a stable hand by the name of Ladislav Bende from the village of Sarvar.

Promiscuous and willful, she was also a victim of the falling disease. Her future mother-in-law complained that the Ecsed Bathorys of Transylvania had not warned the Nadasdy family of the brain fevers that seized the young Countess, causing the girl’s eyes to roll back in her
head and making
her soil herself. The fits were preceded by rage—rage that neither the Bathorys nor the Nadasdy family could control. She slapped and scratched her servants, screamed obscenities, and tore at her clothes, leaving them in shreds.

Then came the pregnancy. But the mistress of Nadasdy would not let her potential daughter-in-law’s defects spoil the union, and neither would her Bathory mother. The alliance was too valuable to the two families.

She was sequestered in a remote Bathory castle to wait out her shame. The squalling newborn that issued from the Countess’s fourteen-year-old body was banished forever.

The baby was taken away immediately. Her mother, Anna, could not allow a Bathory’s noble blood to be spilled—even a bastard Bathory. So she gave the red-faced infant girl, wrapped in a woolen shawl, to a peasant woman.

“Never let us hear of this child again,” she said. “Take her far away and raise her as your own. We will provide money to raise her in comfort, for she is of Bathory blood.”

The young Countess heard of her lover’s death a month later. Her father had traveled to Sarvar to kill him, but the plague had already carried the young man away.

The following year she married Ferenc Nadasdy as planned.

The Countess looked from the young rider to her hands. She reached for her silver mirror and studied her face, the flesh of her eyelids drooping despite Zuzana’s tending.

Her mind drifted to the night games, and the girls’ young, flushed skin.

Chapter 34

T
HE
M
EADOWLANDS
B
ELOW
Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 21, 1610

I
t was weeks after arriving at the castle that Janos first caught a glimpse of Zuzana. He rode the white stallion through the meadows below the castle and on beyond
Č
achtice Village to the edge of the dark forest.

Zuzana was digging in the banks of the stream, looking for the special gray clay she used in one of her potions for the Countess’s skin. Her straw-colored hair was covered by a kerchief, but as soon as he saw the pocked skin, he knew who she was.

“Zuzana,” he called, a smile spreading across his face. “Is that you?”

Startled, she screamed, her hand flying to her mouth. The stallion shied, taking a series of jumps sideways. Janos was a superb rider, but the horse was too quick for him and he tumbled to the ground, still holding a rein.

“You devil!” he cursed the horse, groaning as he scrambled to his feet.

“Are you all right?” said Zuzana. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten your horse.”

The horse, sensing his advantage, reared and pulled at the rein in Janos’s hand.

“Quiet, now!” urged Janos, grabbing the other reins. “Quiet.”

The stallion snorted at the girl with muddy hands, eyeing her warily. Instead of retreating in fear, she turned her palm up to his muzzle.

“Easy now, boy. Easy.”

She stood her ground, speaking to the horse in a singsong voice. Janos rubbed his sore ribs.

“It’s not your fault. He is not accustomed to unfamiliar sights and sounds. I am trying to train him, but it’s not an easy task.”

“The Countess thinks it a miracle you can ride him.”

Janos’s face tightened. “She does, does she?”

Zuzana flushed. The mention of the Countess had poisoned the moment.

“Your father told me you were her handmaiden. I was to look for you to give you your family’s love.”

“You could have asked for me,” said Zuzana, looking down at the river.

“If I had asked, everyone would know there was a connection between us. The castle is a nest of spies.” Zuzana looked away, biting her lip. “And I do not trust the Countess with any information.”

Zuzana looked up at him sharply. “You must never speak ill of the Countess!”

“Why?”

“Because—she is too dangerous, too powerful. You must know that!”

“How can you bear to work with such a cruel mistress?”

Zuzana frowned, rubbing her muddy fingertips together.

“I have no choice,” she said, her blue eyes glittering. “She picked me years ago to serve her.”

“Are rumors true about her? Does she torture innocent girls?”

Zuzana stared at him, her eyes filling with tears.

“Does she murder them?” Janos was insistent.

Zuzana closed her eyes. She clapped her hands over her ears. Janos stretched his hand around her shoulders.

“Is it true?” said Janos, shaking her hard.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I have never seen it, but I hear screams in the night.”

Chapter 35

S
OMEWHERE IN
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 21, 2010

T
he Count’s voice resonated in the library. He spoke as if he were addressing a large audience.

“Over the years, we have weeded out the illegitimate descendants of the Bathory line, isolating them. Those bastards of peasant stock who sullied the lineage have been, shall we say, dealt with. In some cases, there have been those so bold as to lay claim to the Bathory fortunes. While they were bothersome, they stood no chance of inheriting. Everything was nicely taken care of—until your husband started meddling.”

Grace’s face creased in defiance.

“My husband?”

“He was tracing the descendants of families whose daughters had been eliminated during the Countess’s reign—and he planned to pay retribution. He had to be stopped.”

Grace looked down at her left hand, at her gold wedding band.

“Ceslav was admitted to the Hungarian State Archives in Budapest. He argued that his Slovak heritage gave him a right to view papers taken from Slovak lands, and his mother was Hungarian. And—”

“And what?”

“And he was presented with hundreds of pages of documents from the early seventeenth century. Record keeping was fastidious in the Nadasdy households. Weekly entries of purchases, salaries, debts.”

“Why would any of that interest him?”

“Apparently among the stacks was a ledger the Countess kept in her own hand—a sort of diary. A diary that allegedly documented her…activities. I think your husband stole that ledger from the Archives. On those pages were the names of six hundred women. Six hundred twelve to be exact. Depositions were also written.”

“Six hundred twelve women. Women that she murdered? My God!”

The Count’s eyes focused coldly on the gray-haired woman.

“Your husband,” said the Count, his nostrils pinched up as if there were an evil smell in the air, “took it upon himself to start the Bathory Reparation Project—to track down the descendants of the families of the women who were…dispatched.”

“I never knew—”

“Of course you did not. You lived in blissful ignorance. Ceslav was ashamed. Instead of being proud of his Hungarian heritage, of having noble blood in his veins from a family that once ruled Eastern Europe for almost a thousand years, he disguised his roots.”

“Ceslav? What ‘noble blood’?”

“Dr. Path—your name should rightly be Dr. Bathory. Even the great Ferenc Nadasdy changed his name to Nadasdy-Bathory when he married the Countess.”

“Bathory? No!”

“Your husband was a direct descendant of the first child of the fourteen-year-old countess. She was a bastard child, but still a true Bathory. Your husband’s grandfather changed the family name from Bathory to Path when he moved from Budapest to Bratislava.”

“I don’t believe you. You are inventing things, just like this insane nonsense of the vampires. You are delusional!”

“The Bathory name is still revered in Hungary and Poland—the surname of kings, palatines, and conquerors. But Slovaks—Slovaks detest the name.”

Grace shook her head vehemently.

“My husband was a psychiatrist in the asylum. He practiced in Vienna before moving to America. Why would he involve himself in this?”

The Count stared at her, a sudden darkness obscuring the light his eyes. She could feel the chill emanating from him.

Just as suddenly, the shadow lifted, as he regained his composure.

“Yes, well, that question is moot. The Bathory Reparations would require all descendants of Erzsebet Bathory to pay retribution to her victims’ families’ descendants. Perhaps ten percent of his income—he called it a ‘tithe’—pledged for five years would not amount to much.”

“What are you talking about? Ten percent of our income?”

“Perhaps it was peanuts, as you Americans say, to someone with the income of a mere psychiatrist. But to those of us with properties—real wealth—it was intolerable. He wished to scrub clean what he was so presumptuous as to consider the stain of blood on the Bathory name. As if that great name needed his help.”

“My husband would have told me if he were involved in anything like you describe. We were—”

The Count held up his hand, brushing her objections aside. “Of course, none of us were obliged to join your husband in his project. But the word spread throughout Slovakia, Hungary, even Austria. It drew attention to those of us who refused to have anything to do with his project.

“And I despise having attention focused on me. I have my own projects that I prefer to keep private,” he said. The cold shadow had returned. “Your husband knew that all too well.”

His eyes flickered in anger—a change that made Grace shiver. She remembered what her husband had told her about the symptoms of psychosis: the swift, radical change in mood, the focused intensity in the eye of a madman.

“I intend to bring back the magic of my ancestors’ reign, returning the once glorious power—and fear.”

The Count looked off through the window at the mountains beyond the walls of the castle. He grimaced.

“Your husband was well aware of that. And the time has come.”

Chapter 36

Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 21, 1610

D
arvulia breathed in the burning sulfur bitterness of the potion. A yellow cat jumped from its perch next to her, hissing and spitting at the smoking powder.

The witch wanted the Countess to sleep tonight, dead to the world. The black-clad stranger had ruined their night games, calling them little girls toying with mice. He had smothered all joy between Darvulia and her mistress, admonishing their “crude, imperfect” pursuits of pleasure.

It was he who had convinced Countess Bathory that the blood would rejuvenate her beauty.

It happened when Zuzana was away collecting special herbs for the Countess’s skin. Another handmaiden was assigned to the Countess’s vanity. The girl—nervous to be so intimate with her mistress—brushed through a tangle in the Countess’s hair, provoking her to scream in rage. She seized the silver brush and struck the girl’s face, opening a wound in her lip.

Drops of blood speckled the Countess’s hand and face. She wiped away the red droplets and stared at her skin.

“You see,” he said, suddenly appearing behind her. She closed her eyes at his voice, her body trembling at his touch. “Do you see the youth restored to your skin?”

His long pale fingers stroked her neck, and she trembled, swooning at his cold touch.

Then he walked out the servants’ door, disappearing into the turret. The click of his heels echoed in the descending tunnel of stone steps.

The Countess felt the warmth of the blood on her face. Her eyes shimmered with astonishment.

The handmaiden trembled in the corner, covering the gash at the corner of her mouth.

“Look, Darvulia! I am transformed!” the Countess cried. She turned her face this way and that, examining her complexion in the looking glass. “My skin is as youthful as a young maiden’s!”

Darvulia bit her tongue. She approached Erzsebet, studying her skin so closely that the Countess felt the brush of the witch’s eyelashes.

The witch stepped back, shaking her head. “No, Countess. I see no difference in your skin.”

Darvulia could see no change in her mistress, except the willingness to believe a new lover’s lie. Jealousy bit deep in Darvulia’s breast, seeing her lover drift away, a fool for the stranger’s twisted hatred.

“You are blind,” spat the Countess. “Look, look!”

Darvulia bowed her head, saying nothing more.

In the hours past midnight, the stranger’s coach arrived in the pouring rain. His footman and driver struggled in the deluge, untying a wrapped package with the vague contours of a human body, but larger by two, even three times. They carried the burden down the stairs into the bowels of the castle, to the dungeon.

“What is that?” asked Darvulia, turning cold at the sight.

The stranger scowled at the witch from beneath the folds of his hood. “Begone, sorceress! You are no longer in the Countess’s favor. It is a man’s seed she hungers for, not the breast of a virgin witch.”

“The Countess loves me. She loves women.”

“Not now, witch. She does not love you or any other woman. She has learnt the ecstasy of a man’s love, of domination.”

The witch murmured a curse, more a growl than a human voice.

The stranger laughed. “You think your curses could affect me? You cannot guess of my power.”

Darvulia retreated, silenced. Since the appearance of the man in the black cape, she had been chased from the Countess’s bed.

“No better than a chambermaid,” she thought. “I sleep in a pallet instead of my head resting on a goose down pillow, sharing Erzsebet’s sweet breath as she dreams. Now her breath smells of blood.”

The stranger had taken her place. When the witch approached the bed to perform the morning incantations, she could smell his sweat and semen—the fetid stink of a man—on the linen sheets. Linens that had only known the scent of women since the death of Ferenc Nadasdy. Lavender and rosemary, and the aroma of the Slovakian winds.

“Who is this man?” she wondered for the hundredth time. “And how does he wield such power over our Countess?”

From the moment of his arrival, the stranger was greeted as a god. The Countess ran to his arms and wept the first night he appeared in the great hall. Darvulia noticed that his dark eyes remained dry, his face smiling in satisfaction at the Countess’s emotional outburst. A cruel pull—a twist—of his crimson lips betrayed triumph more than contentment.

“Who is he?” Darvulia whispered to Ilona Joo.

“I know him not,” she said. “But there is something familiar. I have only seen glimpses of his face. He chastened me when he caught me staring.”

Could he be her lover? Why does he pull his cloak tight, obscuring his countenance?”

“I don’t know. His looks are more Transylvanian than Slovak.”

Darvulia drew in her breath. She could not understand the Hungarian the two spoke. It had no semblance to Polish or Russian or dialects of Bohemia and Moravia. It occurred to Darvulia that the only ones who might understand them were Zuzana and the Hungarian horsemaster.

Ilona Joo whispered to Darvulia. “He wears the crest of the Bathory on his ring. The Countess must have made him a gift.”

Darvulia had not noticed. Her eyes were too weak to see such a detail. Soon they would turn white as milk, rendering her blind.

Who was this stranger who made Erzsebet weep with joy? What power did he possess?