House of Bathory (11 page)

“Right? He should be crowned King of the Goth world,” said Daisy. “Look—”

She turned the page gently.

Another illustration appeared, this one of a boat with a colossal golden orb and a man at the tiller. Below the boat was a giant fish or sea monster with bulldog teeth.

“Wow,” whispered Jo
hn
. “Will you look at that!”

Betsy swallowed, watching her old lover—her ex-husband, the man who was mesmerized only by numbers and mathematical formulas—stroke his open palm over the image.

“What do you see?” Betsy said, kneeling down beside them.

“A huge gold gong and sea monster,” began Jo
hn
.

“He’s not a monster,” said Daisy, offended. She twisted her crucifix cord around her fingers.

“What are you talking about? Look at those fangs,” said Jo
hn
.

“It’s an underbite—the opposite of fangs. The fish has a benevolent look in its eye. It’s not attacking the boat—it’s protecting the voyager.”

“And what do you make of the shipwreck underneath?” asked Jo
hn
.

“What shipwreck?” Betsy said.

“Look, in the depths. There’s a boat that hit the rocks and sank.”

Betsy blinked. Until he said it, she had seen nothing. There it was. A sunken boat. And suddenly a thought shot through her mind as she looked at Jo
hn
and Daisy, their heads close together.

If we had a child when we were first married, she would be Daisy’s age by now.

“Wow, Jo
hn
. You are right, the wreckage of a ship!” said Daisy, tracing the dark green swirls. She looked up at her analyst.

“Come on, Betsy. What do you see?”

Betsy hesitated. She thought of the visit Morgan had paid her. She thought of her mother lost in Slovakia.

And from the hundreds of books on the crowded shelves, Daisy had pulled down
The Red Book
, the birthday present her mother had sent just last month.

Fuck the patient-therapist relationship.

“I see eyes. Eyes in the sea, eyes in the sky. Watching,” Betsy said.

Daisy nodded her head slowly.

“Yeah. I see them, too.”

Chapter 23

Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 17, 1610

V
ida dreamed of eyes, glowing cats’ eyes, watching from the darkness.

Everywhere she turned, the eyes followed, unblinking.

She woke with a start, a sudden cold draft curling under her throat. The door had been opened to the dungeon.

Vida buried her hands deep inside the woolen cloak she wore as a blanket. Her fingertips traced the outline of her ribs, skin stretched tight over bones.

She sensed an absence, a silence in the corridor. Sometimes the other girls, including the favorite Hedvika, left their servant chambers to accompany the Countess in what was referred to in whispers as “night games.” Tonight must be one of those nights.

Her stomach groaned. She could stand it no longer.

Vida pulled herself slowly to her feet, taking care not to make a sound. Her soft leather shoes made little noise on the stone floor and even less on the thick Turkish carpets, looted from Ottoman war camps.

She descended the winding stairway, not daring to light a torch. In the dark, she might step on a skulking rat. But she was too hungry to care.

Before she reached the door of the larder, she could smell the pungent aromas of the treasures within. Brona set rat traps next to the clay-lidded bowls, ringed around the vessels like a standing infantry.

Vida pushed aside the beeswax-sealed pots of preserved fruits, the small kegs of honey. She stood on a wooden cask, her hands searching for the goose fat.

At last, behind a crate of bacon packed in coarse grains of salt, she saw it. Brown crockery beaded with cold grease. For a moment her head spun. She gasped for breath to keep from fainting.

One hand seized the small pot, the other sunk knuckle-deep into the yellow fat. She plunged her hand into her mouth, sucking and licking at her fingers.

Then she heard the buzz of flies and she turned her head.

A pale-skinned man stared at her. He was dressed all in black velvets and satins, appearing from nowhere. He held an ivory cane aloft and with a sudden sharp movement brought it down and smashed the crock in her hands into bits.

Her scream echoed through the stony corridors of
Č
achtice.

He looked at her hands, embedded with shards of crockery, speckled with blood.

He met her eyes and smiled, his teeth gleaming in the candlelight.

Chapter 24

C
ARBONDALE,
C
OLORADO
D
ECEMBER 17, 2010

Y
ou shouldn’t be here,” Betsy said. “It’s getting late and your mother must be wondering where you are.”

“It’s not that late. And she doesn’t care.”

“You still have to go, Daisy,” Betsy said.

Daisy closed the book and pulled herself to her feet. She made a couple of attempts to speak, but no words came. Only a hoarse rasping rattle. Her hand flew to her throat, her eyes widening like a frightened animal.

Betsy dropped her arms.

“It’s all right, Daisy. Look at me,” she said, her hands cupping the girl’s shoulders. “Look at me! Stay calm. Follow your breath in and out of your nose, like you were tracing it with a bright light. See it move in, move out.”

Jo
hn
pulled out a chair for the choking girl to sit. He put his hand on her arm, guiding her down into the seat.

Betsy took her hand, coaching. “Stay with it, Daisy. Pull in, breathe out. Think of nothing else. In…out. In…out.”

The girl’s mouth sucked at the air, desperate to breathe. Her eyes sought her psychologist’s, looking to be rescued. Betsy had seen a child nearly drown in a swimming pool years ago, and when she plunged into the water to save the struggling girl, the eyes, wide in terror, had been identical to Daisy’s.

Betsy moved her face closer to Daisy’s, locking eyes.

Jo
hn
brought water in a paper cup, offering it to Daisy.

Betsy shook her head. “Not yet.”

Betsy looked down at
The Red Book
, still open on the floor.

Five minutes later, Daisy was breathing freely, her chest moving rhythmically.

“It has passed, hasn’t it?” said Betsy. “Do you feel better?”

Daisy nodded, still concentrating on her breath.

“We should get you home,” said Betsy. “We’ll drive you.”

“NO!” gasped Daisy. “Not yet! No!”

“OK, OK.” Betsy took the girl’s hand again. “Not yet. Keep calm. Daisy, did you want to talk to me about something?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“OK. When you feel up to it, we’ll go into the—”

“Betsy, it’s a bad time for you to stop seeing me. The dreams are super intense—”

“Intensity is good, Daisy. Write them down, everything. We’ll discuss them when I get back—”

“You can’t leave me now!” she screamed. “You just can’t!”

Betsy sighed. She could feel the girl’s hand sweating in her own, feel the panic in her ragged breath.

Of course, patients think everything is always about them because analysts convince them it is. All they experience, dream, or think is fodder for analysis.

Then Betsy allowed herself a selfish thought.

Now it’s about me. Not about my patients. It’s my mother, who disappeared in Slovakia. This is my nightmare
.

Betsy had to disengage herself from her patient, but gently.

“I am going to be leaving town for a few weeks. But I’ll be back, I promise—”

“A few weeks? Wait. You said two weeks. That was bad enough,” she gasped.

“Daisy. It’s a family emergency.”

“What is it?”

“It’s something I must take care of,” Betsy said, gently. “I have no choice in the matter. I have to go.”

“Maybe we should throw an I-Ching just in case. I have this awful feeling,” Daisy said. “There is danger, I’m sure of it.”

Chapter 25

T
HE
G
REAT
H
ALL
Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 18, 1610

T
he addled dwarf brought the coins. As he approached, the spittle on his open mouth glistened in the flickering torchlight. He breathed noisily, a grounded fish.

To Darvulia, the witch, he was exactly that: a fish. His eyes registered only movement, not sentiments. There was no compassion, joy, or sadness that touched him as he did the Countess’s bidding. Yet that was no fault of his own. Unlike the dark hooded stranger who taught the Countess new “games” in the dungeon below, Fizko was born what he was, a fool.

The Countess chose three silver thalers.

“Ilona Joo—put these into the fire,” she commanded. “Dorka and Hedvika, fetch the thief. She shall receive her punishment before she steals again.”

Ilona Joo, wet nurse to the Countess’s children—all grown and married now—did as she was bidden. The orange coals sputtered as the three coins eclipsed their glow.

Dorka brought the soot-faced skeleton of a girl toward the Countess. Vida had been locked in a dungeon in the depths of the castle. She had been given a few sticks of wood charcoal, more to drive away the rats than to provide heat. She had kept her pale face next to the heat, blistering her lips.

As she was escorted past the pressing crowd of servants, Zuzana grasped her hand, kissing her fingers. “May God bless you, Vida!”

Dorka yanked Vida away and shoved her hard, sending her sprawling on the ground at the Countess’s feet.

“You have been accused of stealing,” said Countess Bathory, eyeing the girl on the floor. “What do you say?”

“It is true. I tasted the goose fat—but I am starving, good mistress.”

“I have given you food, shelter, and money to take to your mother, and you repay me with your thievery.”

“I am dying of hunger!”

The Countess nodded to the nursemaid by the fire. “Bring me money, coins for our little thief.”

Vida spun around to see Ilona Joo take the tongs from the hearth, pick the thalers out of the coals, and drop them on a metal tray.

Fizko pulled the girl to her feet.

“Give me your hand, thief,” commanded the Countess.

Vida’s eyes flew open in horror. “No, Countess! No!”

Darvulia stepped forward to wrestle the girl’s hand open, calling to the idiot Fizko to help restrain her. Ilona Joo approached with the tray.

“You are lucky she does not burn your mouth,” whispered Darvulia in the girl’s ear. “Take your punishment well or she may invent another.”

One by one, Ilona Joo lifted the coins with the tongs and pressed them into Vida’s right hand.

The girl howled and then fainted with pain. The coins clattered to the floor and Ilona Joo picked them up, smoking, from the stones. The room smelled of seared flesh.

The dwarf idiot licked his lips, thinking it was venison on Brona’s spit that brought the aroma to the air.

Chapter 26

Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 18, 1610

T
he stallion reared when the cinch was tightened. The stable boy jumped away and fell backward into the straw. The horse pulled hard at the rope, black hooves slashing.

The boy scrambled away from the murderous forelegs, hands and knees in the scattered straw.

“I will handle him,” said Janos.

The white stallion snorted, his nostrils flaring red-pink. He roared, an outraged neigh, a murderous high note that made the stable boys tremble.

“Easy, boy, easy,” Janos began.

Again the screaming neigh, ringing through the air. The other horses jumped back, tugging at the common line tying them the length of the stable.

Aloyz brought a leather bridle, a heavy iron bit suspended from the two thick leather cheek pieces.

Janos touched his fingers to the cold, curved metal of the bit.

“No,” he said. “Bring me a bitless bridle. I will ride him with just the reins so he feels my hands instead of the taste of metal.”

Aloyz ducked his head and ran back to the locked tack chest—a precaution against the gnawing rats—to find a hackamore.

By the time Aloyz had returned to the stall, Janos had managed to calm the horse enough to rest his hand on the thick muscle of his upper leg and chest.

It would be another two hours of patience and coaxing before the horsemaster could slip the hackamore over the stallion’s ears and nose.

Vida stumbled, reeling in pain, from the Countess’s chamber. Her servant friends dared not help, though they interlaced their fingers in prayer, so tight their knuckles shone white in the dim light of the corridors.

“God bless you, Vida,” one whispered as the girl rushed forward, her charred hands stretched open to the cold air like a blind woman.

“Run to the well and soak your wounds,” screamed Zuzana, watching her only friend’s torture. “Plunge them into the snow until the fire is quenched!”

“Silence!” hissed Darvulia, following Vida down the hall. “She should suffer in full, the dirty thief! If you console her, may you suffer the same,
Slecna
Zuzana.”

Darvulia made certain that Vida did not stop at the well.

“You have been shown mercy,” she said, shoving the girl through the gate of the castle. “The Countess’s punishment could have been far worse.”

Vida’s mouth twisted in a howl as she ran from the shrouded darkness of
Č
achtice Castle into the light of day. She knew Darvulia was right. Muffled cries of tortured pain had reached her ears many nights as she lay curled on the rough mat outside the Countess’s door.

The stallion reared, despite the calming words and gentle hands of Janos Szilvasi. The young horsemaster’s legs were strong and his balance keen, but still he strung his fingers through the long mane of his mount to keep his seat.

“Open the gates,” he shouted, the leather reins chafing his hands.

The stable boys ran across the courtyard, breathlessly reaching the guards.

“Unbolt the main gate, let down the drawbridge!” cried Aloyz. “Master Szilvasi takes out the stallion!”

The guards waited for the confirmation from Erno Kovach, who nodded. “Open!”

The horse reared back on its haunches as the gates opened, revealing the steep hill and winding road down toward the village.

“Stand away,” shouted Janos, “I cannot hold him back!”

The rider knotted one hand into the horse’s mane and drove his heels into the steed’s belly. If he was going to bolt, it was better the horse sensed the rider’s will driving him.

The slick paving stones leading to the castle gate made the horse slip, but he was sure-footed and quickly gained his balance. As rider and stallion emerged into the cold wind blowing from the peaks of the Little Carpathians, the village of
Č
achtice came into view, a toy miniature of thatched-roof houses below them. The road was wet and thick spatters of mud from the horse’s churning hooves soon covered the boots of his rider. Janos narrowed his eyes, stinging with tears, against the biting mountain wind.

The stallion pinned back his ears, racing down into the barren fields below, where Janos knew the flat plain would allow him to gallop the horse in ever-decreasing circles.

At first the stallion ignored the rider’s signals—the hackamore was not strong enough to restrain the beast. His legs wrapped around the barrel of the horse like tight bands, Janos rode without exerting his will, his body accepting the surging wave of motion under him.

The mud sucked at the horse’s hoofs, and the hard gallop brought a lather of briny foam that worked down the stallion’s flanks and legs. Janos felt the horse’s lungs heaving, the labored rhythm of breath in time to the three-count beat of the gallop.

As the horse slowed, if only a little, Janos put subtle pressure on the reins, a suggestion rather than a command. The stallion turned his head as Janos guided the rein, slowly working the horse into a wide circle, still at a gallop.

An hour later, Janos had slowed the stallion to a walk. He patted the horse’s slick wet neck, grainy with salt. A smile came to his lips as he sniffed in the good scent of cold air and hot horse.

Then the smile vanished.

Stumbling down the castle road was a small figure, hands outstretched. A blind child?

The wind delivered her howling cries. A girl. No, a young woman, her face twisted in anguish.

Janos urged the horse closer with his legs.

“Who goes there? Maiden, what is your trouble?”

Vida thrust her hands out to the drizzling sleet. Janos saw the blistered hands, charred black and oozing.

“My God!” he cried. He dismounted the exhausted horse and held the girl’s wrists. “How?”

“The Countess,” sobbed the girl. “I stole a taste of goose fat.”

Janos looked at the thin whisper of a girl, her oozing wounds. His eyes scanned the horizon where the towering castle loomed, blocking the weak sunlight. The horse whinnied shrilly, the high-pitched cry filling the air.

“We must get you help,” Janos said. “I will take you home. Are you from
Č
achtice?”

“Yes,” whimpered the girl. “A woman in the village makes healing balms.”

Janos mounted and steadied the horse. He grabbed the girl by her bony forearm, swinging her light body in front of him on the saddle. The horse broke into a trot down the road, carrying the two riders toward the village of
Č
achtice.

Janos rode through the muddy streets of
Č
achtice. The sewers ran along the sides of the road, clogged with stinking waste. A woman flung open her shutter and emptied her clay chamber pot.

Janos raised his eyes at the sound.

“Agh!” he shouted, the filth just missing him, Vida, and the stallion.

The woman drew back into the house, slamming her shutters in consternation.

Vida was barely conscious, but she directed him in whispers and moans to a simple hovel with gray straw thatch and bundles of herbs and roots dangling on pegs in the cold winter air.

“Cunning woman,” she gasped. “Care for me.”

Janos helped her to the ground. She sagged against him.

Several of the townspeople gathered around, their mouths open in astonishment.

“Help her!” said Janos. “Take her to the witch!’

“I am not flattered to be called a witch,” said a voice, aged and stern. “I am a cunning woman, a healer.”

The woman inspected Vida’s injured hands, nodding her head grimly.

“The Countess?”

The girl nodded her head.

“Take her inside. I will see what I can do.”

Two men carried the girl over the threshold, disappearing into the cottage.

“And thank you, stranger,” said the cunning woman.

“Janos Szilvasi. Horsemaster at Bathory Castle.”

“May God defend you then. And do not mention you have given succor to this poor girl or you will suffer the worse. The Countess does not tolerate interference in her affairs.”

Then the old woman disappeared into the darkness of her hovel, shutting the door on the stranger from
Č
achtice Castle.