House of Bathory (12 page)

Chapter 27

Č
ACHTICE
L
UTHERAN
C
HURCH
D
ECEMBER 19, 1610

T
he Lutheran minister Jakub Ponikenusz laid his Bible on the rough-hewn table by the hearth. He took care to put it far from the inkwell, for when he wrote his sermons he often took on a feverish intensity and his arms flailed, as if he were fighting the demons he had denounced.

His letters to the King had not been acknowledged until last Sunday, when an elegant man, dressed in silk and a finely tailored wool coat, had entered the Protestant church in
Č
achtice, standing at the back of the congregation.

The pews were packed full, as usual, and there was nowhere to sit in the little stone church. Still, seeing the finely dressed stranger standing by the baptismal font, Pastor Ponikenusz suspected he had not come to worship.

From the pulpit, the minister thundered, “The Countess feeds on our innocence, devouring our children, sisters, and even young mothers. How long will we wait in numbed silence as this witch snatches our loved daughters, tortures them, and ushers them to an early, unmarked grave?”

“You, sir, slander the name of Bathory!” answered the voice of the stranger at the back of the church.

All heads, young and old, twisted to see the nobleman.

“I speak the truth!” said Pastor Ponikenusz, his voice resonating. “And in the House of the Lord, the truth will be spoken in the name of Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace and Mercy!”

The wooden pulpit shook. Ponikenusz felt the power of a righteous God guiding his words.

The nobleman scowled. The thick-skinned peasants stared at the stone floor of the church rather than look so powerful a lord in the eye.

“I will speak to you after the service,” he growled, pinching his aquiline nose against the smell of wet wool, boiled cabbage, and sour beer in the cramped church. “He is a Bathory for sure,” hissed the cooper. “He will string up our good parson for blasphemy.”

“I know the man,” said a midwife, whistling through the gap in her remaining teeth. “He is the Count Thurzo, the Countess’s cousin.”

“The Palatine? Surely he has come to execute our pastor.”

But the minister stood even straighter, his chin lifting with conviction.

“God respects the word of truth, and protects those of faith!”

Count Thurzo waited by his carriage. His face wrinkled in disgust as he watched the peasant congregation pour out of the church door.

When the minister had finished bidding each worshipper a good afternoon, he walked over to the Count, looking sternly at the nobleman. “How dare you interrupt my sermon, sir!”

Count Thurzo’s mouth dropped open in amazement. “Your sermon? You fool! Your words could end your miserable life.”

“I speak the truth, with God as my witness.”

“You have chosen a powerful adversary,” said the Count, flicking his eyes to a cluster of ragged peasants who stood watching from the careful distance, and back again to the minister’s face. “Does that not occur to you?”

“I guide my flock and confront evil wherever it may be. I have no fear of men’s politics or gold. Do you come here to imprison me?”

“No, though if your allegations prove wrong, that will be the case. I will see to it personally.”

“I am not afraid of the dungeons,” said the minister. “God knows the truth and so shall the King.”

Count Thurzo straightened his posture and pressed his lips tightly together. “I come as an emissary of our King Matthias. He has sent me to hear your complaint against the Countess.”

The minister paused for a moment. “I believe you are her cousin. Does this not present a conflict for you?”

The Count’s gloved hand clenched.
You wretched little church-worm,
he thought
. How dare you!

“We are related through marriage, on my wife’s side. I serve my Habsburg king faithfully.”

“Despite the Bathory name?”

The Count drew a quick breath, his face souring.
What impudence!
“Speak, sir. What evidence do you have against the Countess?”

The minister looked around the churchyard. Knots of his congregation stood nearby, their necks swiveling toward the Count and their minister.

“Perhaps you would like to take a walk in our cemetery, Count Thurzo,” suggested the minister. “We can talk with more privacy among the dead.”

Chapter 28

S
OMEWHERE IN
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 19, 2010

G
race studied the anemic jailers—with wild colored hair—who attended her day and night. Their heads drooped from their scrawny necks. They stared at her with feral eyes.

For days she pleaded for help. They remained silent, unblinking. Inhuman.

Their wolfish looks wore on her nerves. She turned on them finally, in a rage, tendons standing out on her thin neck.

“What is wrong with you? Have you no manners? Stop staring at me!”

The women exchanged looks and dropped their eyes to the carpet.

“Really. Pasty white faces and neon-colored hair hanging in your eyes. Go out in the fresh air, get some color into your cheeks. Eat some goose and dumplings. Drink a beer, for God’s sake.”

A shadow crept over their faces as the women exchanged looks. They did not meet their captive’s eyes.

Grace pursed her lips and settled back in her chair. She was accustomed to young men and women of precisely this age in her lectures at the university. Her lectures were filled with serious historical detail of the Holy Roman Empire, but she was not above scolding a student for slovenly appearance or a disrespectful attitude.

“Surely you have something better to do than to skulk around here like a bunch of vampires,” she snapped.

Their eyes flew open and the women breathed noisily, almost grunting.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Grace said. “Is that the Count’s game?
Really?
Vampires?” She gave a bitter laugh.

The girls’ thin hands raked their wild hair—all but the youngest of the trio, a girl with blue hair, no more than fourteen, whose eyes had looked as if she could see the savory goose and steaming dumplings on a plate in front of her. She looked on in terror.

Grace played a hunch. “So the crazy Count has convinced you that you are vampires. He’s starving you to death, isn’t he? Well, you truly are a pack of fools.”

The two women growled and hissed.

“What? Vampires?” she said, teasing them with the word. “You can’t believe that, can you? That you are creatures of the night? Really! Do you feast on human blood? Really, I—”

The women snapped at each other, like a pair of frenzied pit bulls. The fuchsia-haired woman growled, catching the emerald-haired woman by the wrist.

She drew her lips back, exposing her ugly, yellowed teeth. As her mouth darted down to fasten on the skin of her prey, her eyes rolled back in ecstasy.

A howling scream pierced the air as her bite drew blood.

Grace recoiled in her chair, horrified, as the attacker sucked at the bloody wound and her victim growled.

“You are all mad!” she whispered.

She locked eyes with the blue-haired girl, who looked as terrified as Grace and who ran down the corridor screaming for the Count.

The Count bounded in with an energy that belied his apparent age. His lips were red and moist.

“Get back, Ona!” he commanded the fuchsia-haired demon. He struck her hard across the cheek, sending her reeling, her face streaked with the blood of her victim.

The green-haired girl cowered in the corner, licking the wound on her arm like a dog.

“What kind of lunatic asylum is this?” screamed Grace, still tied to the chair. “Don’t you dare leave me alone with these psychopaths again!”

The Count gathered his composure, still heaving with exertion.

“How dare you disobey me?” he said to the groveling girl, her mouth stained red with blood.

“But, Master—she knows the secret!”

The Count’s eyes widened, a graying brow arching. “What?”

“She called us—our name.”

The Count whirled around. He stared at his prisoner.

“What did you say to them?”

Grace swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and when they reopened, ferocity glimmered there.

“I told them they needed to go eat a decent meal. They are crazy with hunger, can’t you see that?”

“I will decide when it is time for a feeding.”

“A
feeding
?”

“What did you say to them?”

“That they should eat, take in the sun. Young people shouldn’t look like they do. They are patently unhealthy.”

The Count laughed and cut it off with a snarl. His lips twisted cruelly. “What concern is that of yours, Dr. Path?”

“Don’t you dare leave them with me. If the girl hadn’t run to find you, they both could have turned on me.”

The Count’s face twitched with fury.

“OUT!” he roared at the young women. “Do not enter this room again.” He pointed a long, shaking finger at the fuchsia-haired woman. “And Ona, I shall deal with you later.”

The women flattened their thin backs to the wall, feeling their way toward the door without taking their eyes off the Count.

The Count’s long fingers dipped into a vest pocket. He pulled out a knife and unfolded a thin blade.

Grace straightened in the chair. “You can torture me all you want, you psychopath, but I am not telling you anything about my daughter.”

The Count smiled slowly. He waved the gleaming blade near her eyes, and traced a line down her neck with its point. He let the knife trail lower, across her shoulder, down her arm—when he reached her wrists, he made a violent thrust.

Grace closed her eyes tight, wincing.

Then she felt the blood return to her wrists and the sensation of cool air on her skin. He had cut her ropes.

“I will try to offer you the courtesy due a professor of Eastern European history. Come, peruse my library. You may find something worth reading.”

The Count walked to his desk, tucked away in a far corner of the room. He pressed an intercom by the computer.

“Send in Almos,” he said into the intercom. “I am going to try to find a way to keep you occupied, Dr. Path.”

A boy, perhaps eighteen, came in. He bobbed a greeting and adjusted his glasses on his nose. Almos was clearly the Slovakian version of a teenage techie nerd.

“
Dobre den
,” he said, his voice courteous.

“Forgive him, he doesn’t speak a word of English,” said the Count. “I find that useful.” He smiled and went on, “Before you were exposed to such a despicable display by my servant girls, I was planning to give you a surprise.”

He nodded to Almos, who flicked on the computer. It hummed to life, blinking blue shadows across the boy’s face.

“Naturally you will not be able to use the internet—Almos is disabling it now—but you will see that I have downloaded many educational programs. History, psychology, physics. Courses and lectures I have selected from various institutions. I thought they might keep you engaged while you are here with us.”

“Thank you,” Grace whispered, still shaking
. How do you feign gratitude to a madman?

“
And please, help yourself to the books in my library here. You may find some interesting reading while we wait.”

“Wait for what?” she asked.

The Count didn’t answer, staring straight ahead.

Chapter 29

Č
ACHTICE
V
ILLAGE
C
HURCHYARD
D
ECEMBER 19, 1610

T
he rattling of the wagon drew the gravedigger’s attention.

“Here comes another,” he called down to the man below, who heaved another shovel of earth up to the surface.

“
Ne
, Havel! Cannot be,” the man in the open grave shouted back. “We have not finished this one.”

The gravedigger above shook his shaggy head, scratching his neck. “ ’Tis truth,” he insisted. “They’ve come to dump another.”

He set down his shovel and wiped the dirty sweat from his face. Despite the cold air, his body was warm from the hard work of digging in the freezing ground.

Ales scowled up from below. “Does the carriage bear the emblem of the Countess?”

The first gravedigger squinted. “The damned teeth of the wolf.” He spat viciously, his spittle soaking into the freshly turned soil.

Havel watched as the driver stopped and waited for the footman to fetch the pastor.

“Will you look at that?” he said, leaning against his shovel, watching, open-mouthed. Pastor Jakub Ponikenusz strode from the church, followed by another man, clearly a noble. The pastor
stopped,
arms folded, legs set wide, immoveable, and shook his head vehemently as the footman gestured toward the spiked iron gate of the cemetery. Standing beside him the gentleman listened, staring at the wagon’s load.

“The pastor is not letting them in!” said the gravedigger, throwing down his shovel. “He stands against the Countess!”

“You take me for a fool,” said the man in the hole. “Help me out!”

Havel reached down into the newly dug grave and hauled up his muddy-faced partner. “Look for yourself!” he said.

The driver had descended now and together with the footman gestured insistently at their covered load. The two gravediggers edged closer, so they could hear.

“No more of her evil shall find its way into sanctified land of the Church!” the pastor declared.

The driver protested. “But the girls are innocent! Surely they should have the blessings and comfort of the Church! They were baptized in the Church by Reverend Berthoni himself, God bless his soul.”

“Yes, and it was Andras Berthoni who warned me of the Countess before his death! His letters are filled with damning evidence against that monster.”

The driver and footman hung their heads.

“Come, Lord Thurzo,” said the pastor. “See what innocent souls our Countess sends us day after day!”

The nobleman approached the wagon, his gait stiff and reluctant. Ponikenusz threw back the coarse blanket with a violent tug.

“Behold!” he said.

Thurzo gasped and raised a gloved hand to his face as he looked into the wagon.

A young woman lay on the bare boards of the wagon. Her face was contorted in agony, dark blood stains soiling her dress. There were small puncture wounds on her neck.

“What is this?” murmured Count Thurzo. The dried leaves crunched under his boot heel as he turned away from the sight.

“The Countess reports a rabid dog attacked her,” said the driver. He, too, glanced away from the girl, his right hand making the sign of the cross.

Thurzo looked again at the girl’s body. Then he stared at the pastor, saying nothing.

“I will bless those unfortunate girls, with all power instilled in me by the Church,” Ponikenusz said, his voice softening. “Wherever their bodies are buried, God has already taken their innocent souls to his bosom.”

The gravediggers looked at each other in disbelief.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” the pastor began, bowing his head.

The gravediggers pulled off their sweat-stained caps, loose dirt tumbling to the ground.

“So you see the graves—thirty-two in all. Graves of girls who had ‘accidents’ at the castle,” said the pastor, his tone acid. “When the ground freezes too hard in the winter months, we stack the bodies in a root cellar to bury in the spring.”

He led Count Thurzo through the graveyard to a row of fresh mounds of dirt.

“This one. Albina Holub. Born here in
Č
achtice. A knife slipped and cut her wrist when she was slicing vegetables. Cut it so badly that she bled to death. Clumsy girl, it seems. Serves her right, they said, for mishandling the Countess’s fine cutlery.”

Thurzo tightened his lips, pale as slivers of cheese.

“And this one, Barbora Mokry. It seems she slipped and knocked her head against the well, only a week after Albina had her mishap with the knife. An unfortunate coincidence. Gashed her head so badly that she bled to death. Nothing, it seems, could be done.

“And over here is the first maiden who brought me fresh bread and butter when I arrived at the parish. She called me Sir, and bowed as if I were a king. She was devoted to the scriptures, and would sit in rapt attention in Mass. Of course the poor girl could not read, but God’s holy word resonated in her soul.”

“What happened to her?” asked Thurzo.

“It seems that she attended to the Countess’s bath when her regular attendant was ill with a fever. The water was too cool, sending the Countess into a rage. The Countess screamed at the girl, and beat her about the head and shoulders until she bled.”

“And then what?”

“We do not know. There was a cut on her neck where the Countess scratched her in fury. And a savage bite, ripping the flesh from her breast. She—” the pastor’s voice cracked. He clenched his eyes shut, his face pinched with emotion.

Then he looked into the Count’s eyes. “The Countess simply wrote she bled to death.”