House of Bathory (20 page)

Chapter 57

S
OMEWHERE IN
S
LOVAKIA
D
ECEMBER 24, 2010

T
here was a light rap on the door of the study.

“Come in, Heinrich. Tell me. What have you found in the Path house?”

“Nothing, Count Bathory,” said a blond man. The pupils of his eyes were pinpoints, the irises sparkled an iridescent blue, a glacial lake. “We tore the house apart, looking,” he said. “We could not return after the police were called.”

“And the grave? Did his widow bury the ledger with him, Heinrich? That would indicate she wants no part of the proposed project.”

“There was no sign of the ledger,” said Heinrich, his voice barely concealing his disgust. Heinrich flexed his knuckles, remembering the cold night at the cemetery. The Count had sent him on this mad errand, digging at the frozen ground with an ice axe and shovel. When the red-and-blue police car lights illuminated the cemetery, Heinrich and his men had run.

“I think she knows nothing of this, yes?” said Heinrich. “The ledger?”

The Count lifted his glass of cognac to his lips. “It appears so. But she is an intelligent woman. Perhaps she knows very well where it is. She may be lying to me.”

“So you think the daughter has the ledger?”

“I believe that is more likely. I understand that the father and daughter were very close,” said the Count. His right eyelid began to twitch.

Heinrich fixed his eyes on the Count, watching.

“So you have nothing at all to report?” the Count said.

Heinrich shrugged. He did not like the Count’s dismissive tone. “One observation. There is a girl, an adolescent. She is a Goth, dressed in black with a crucifix around her neck. We saw her enter the house the night we left.”

“Enter the Path house?”

“Yes. She opened a cellar door, buried under the snow. She spent about a half hour inside. We were going to follow her but were wary of the police. The Path house is right on Main Street. The police already had a description of us.”

“Did she find anything?”

“We could not tell. She wore a long coat, down to her ankles—she could have hidden the book. She walked to a bar. When she left, she walked down Main Street again accompanied by a very big boy, Mexican-looking. He waited with her for a bus to Aspen.”

The Count puckered his lips, as if tasting something sour.

“She would have no idea what importance the ledger plays,” he said. “I wonder what she was looking for?”

“Perhaps her own records. We have seen her on other occasions enter the Path house for appointments. She is often accompanied by her mother.”

The Count took a long draught of cognac, musing this idea.

“You might be right. Psychiatric records hold an enormous fascination for the patient. She most likely wanted to read what her therapist had written about her.”

The Count pressed his fingertips together, forming a temple. He pressed it against his forehead.

“I want you to find out who she is,” he said at last. “What connection she has to Betsy Path. I want to know everything about her. Find out her name and trace her phone, her e-mail—”

“Why do you think she is so important?” said Heinrich. “To use so much effort to trace her.”

“I do not want anything to thwart our forthcoming night games,” said the Count.

“She is just a teenage girl.”

“I have believe she is more,” said the Count. “This girl was at the Path house. Too much synchronicity. There is a connection.”

“A lot of hours will go into this search, Count. It will not be easy—”

“Did you hear me, Heinrich? Do it!”

Heinrich lowered his eyes to the floor.

“This week marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Countess Bathory’s arrest,” said the Count. “I will not have anything go wrong.”

“Yes, Count.”

“We shall have all our—guests—participate in the night games, to honor my illustrious ancestor. While the rest of the world keeps spinning through its mediocre course, we will celebrate with passion. We will feel the pulse of life, consecrate ourselves with it.”

Heinrich watched the Count’s eye twitch.

“We shall wait for the Countess to return!”

The Count felt his servant’s cold stare fixed on him. “What, Heinrich?”

“I said nothing.”

“It is not your words. I feel a sense of discontent. Am I right?”

“I serve you and only you, Master.”

The Count plunged his head into his open hands.

“Count Bathory. Are you well?”

“Leave me, Heinrich,” he said, his face still buried in his hands. “I feel a spell coming on.”

Chapter 58

Č
ACHTICE
C
ASTLE
D
ECEMBER 24, 1610

C
ountess Bathory lay on her bed, her lips foamed with spittle, her breath rattling in her lungs. She did not note the presence of Hedvika, who attended her throughout the night, or the chambermaids who regularly sponged her body, keeping their mistress clean and presentable as befitted her nobility.

Erzsebet Bathory’s mind was filled with sights and sounds from long before, when she was a nine-year-old child and a gypsy band had presented themselves at Castle Ecsed.

“They are performers,” explained her young nurse as she brushed Erzsebet’s long auburn hair with a boar-bristled brush. The nurse had a gentle hand, for she had been warned of the little girl’s temper.

“They beg to entertain your noble parents this evening. There is a dwarf and men who juggle. A minstrel sings and there is a shadow puppet show.”

The little girl Erzsebet clapped her hands, her lace cuffs fluttering. She turned to her nurse, her face bright with childish joy.

“Will my father allow them to entertain us?” she asked. “He is so solemn and stern.”

“I think your mother is so weary with sadness, he will engage them,” said the nurse. The servant turned away from her young charge, hiding her face.

Erzsebet knew the nurse was crying, thinking of how Erzsebet’s two older sisters had been murdered in the peasant riots. Erzsebet and the old nurse had hidden high in a tree and watched her sisters being raped and murdered.

Later, when peace was restored, her father had taken the young girl to see the peasants tortured and killed. Her mother was too ill with grief to attend.

“Watch them suffer, Erzsebet. Watch your sisters’ murderers suffer,” her father said, through his clenched teeth. “They shall suffer on earth before they burn in eternal hell.”

Erzsebet stared hard at the men: so terrifying before, so fearful and harmless now. She fingered the stiff fabric of her father’s coat sleeve.

“Rejoice in their suffering, my daughter,” he said, his face cold as stone. “Rejoice!”

As the men’s private parts were torn off with white-hot tongs, the little girl opened her legs and urinated. Then she fell to the ground, writhing, her body contorting.

When she came back to the world, her mother stroked her head.

“You have the Bathory disease,” she murmured, stroking her child’s hair away from her damp temples. “Your noble blood carries both honor and curse.”

Erzsebet had pushed the memory away. Now there was to be juggling and dancing, puppet shows and bawdy jokes that made the adults laugh. There would be wild boar and wine, sweet cakes and honey.

The puppet show was the best. Erzsebet sat with her older brother Istavan, watching the antics of a woodcutter and his donkey. The donkey brayed and the woodcutter kicked him. But the donkey was stubborn and soon got the best of the woodcutter, spilling his load of sticks and kicking his master in the arse.

Erzsebet loved the puppets and begged for more. Istavan declared he was too old for children’s stories and stomped off to brood and drink wine.

“Ask your mother for a penny,” whispered the woodcutter’s voice, when Istavan had left. “Then we will entertain you all night long without tiring.”

“I cannot touch money,” said Erzsebet. “My father will pay you.”

“This is for me and the donkey,” said the gypsy behind the screen. “Or tell me where your mother hides her money.”

“My mother leaves no money in the castle but for the cook to buy food and wine on market days.”

“So in the kitchen?”

“Play more. I want to hear the donkey bray.”

“First I must rest,” said the gypsy, climbing out from behind the screen. “I am fatigued from the long journey to Ecsed. May I have a jug of water?”

“Ask a maid,” sniffed the young aristocrat. “I am not a servant.”

“Forgive me, young Countess. I will go to the kitchen and find a jug of water. Then I will return with more tales of braying donkey.”

But the gypsy did not return. Erzsebet swiveled her head at the commotion coming from the kitchen.

“Red-handed! The gypsy stole a thaler from the kitchen jug!” cried the cook. She chased the scoundrel out of her kitchen, all the time pounding his back with a stick of firewood.

“Help, help! Catch the thief,” she shrieked.

Erzsebet heard no more stories of the donkey and the woodcutter. The next day, the gypsy puppeteer was sewn inside a dead horse, the man’s filthy head gasping, tongue fat with thirst. He cried for water as flies accumulated on his bloody wounds, laying their eggs.

Erzsebet’s father took her by the hand, and led her to watch the dying gypsy. Above the roaring buzz of flies, Count Bathory pointed his chin in disgust to the half-dead thief.

“Water,” mumbled the puppeteer. “Have mercy!”

Count Bathory scowled, pushing his daughter closer to the wretched man.

“Behold, daughter, what becomes anyone who betrays a Bathory.”

Within two days the puppeteer was dead, rotting inside the maggot-laden guts of the horse.

Chapter 59

P
IESTANY,
R
OYAL
H
UNGARY
D
ECEMBER 24, 1610

T
he letter from his father that Janos had received at
Č
achtice Castle contained news about more than just the knighthood.

The Palatine Count Gyorgy Thurzo wishes to meet with you. He asks you to wait at the Plow tavern the afternoon of the twenty-fourth. A messenger will meet you there. Make sure that you are not followed, my son. Count Thurzo wishes to discuss serious matters of the Crown.

Janos told Guard Kovach that a cousin from Sarvar Castle was stopping briefly at the thermal springs of Piestany to water and rest his horse. He said he was going to visit and would be back in the evening.

At the Plow, the stable boy, scratching fleabites on his ankles, took Janos’s horse to the corral behind the stone building.

A mist of sour beer and cheap wine enveloped Janos as he entered the tavern. That sour embrace battled the rich aroma of a savory goose roasting over the spit.

“What drink you?” asked the tavern keeper.

“Medovino,” said Janos.

The big man grunted and nodded to a maid, who scurried about, tucking back a stray lock of hair under her kerchief. She ladled a good portion of the honey wine into a crockery jar and handed it to Janos.

She looked at his face and took a quick sip of air.

“What is it?”

“I know you,” she said. “You are the horsemaster at the castle. I work there sometimes, helping with the laundry.”

Janos nodded.

“So we are both in the employ of the Countess,” he said.

“Ah, but I will not spend a night there,” whispered the girl, moving close to his ear. “You are the rider who brought Vida back to the village to the cunning woman!”

Janos looked around the tavern. He saw no one watching them. “Do you know Vida?”

“Yes. The poor girl still suffers from her wounds.”

“She was poorly treated by the Countess,” said Janos cautiously.

The girl looked over her shoulder before she spoke. “The Countess is a witch with the devil’s own pastimes. Village girls have disappeared forever into the bowels of the castle.”

Janos whispered to her over the rim of his mug. “Why do the girls work for her?”

The maid’s eyes narrowed. “There is no other work for them. My uncle owns the tavern. He gives me food, I have a roof over my head. Not all are as fortunate as I.”

Her eyes darted around the tavern. She bent close to Szilvasi’s ear. “There is an iron maiden in the dungeon.”

“What?”

“A brass coffin cast in the form of a woman. Filled with spikes. The Countess orders a servant girl to polish it. One of her witches opens it and then the others slam it shut with the girl inside, impaled. The ugly ones, Ilona Joo, Dorka, and the dwarf bring pans to collect the blood for the Countess’s bath.”

“Her bath?”

“It is the blood of virgins that keeps her skin so white and youthful. The dark stranger has encouraged her to—”

“Daneka!” shouted the innkeeper.

“I must go,” she whispered.

Janos pressed his lips to the rough rim of the crockery jar. The wine was heavy and sweet, warming his throat and belly.

Other customers nodded to him, and he watched the diners tear into their portions of goose. They mopped up the yellow fat with chunks of coarse bread, and laughed into their jars of wine. Their laughter clashed with the image the tavern girl had just burned into his mind.

“Janos Szilvasi?” said a quiet voice.

Janos turned to see a young squire, dressed in the livery of a courtier. He wore a puffed cap of satin and leggings of thick black wool. His jacket was slashed with pleats, winking white silk against charcoal gray.

“Is your horse stabled near?” the squire said.

Janos nodded and looked for the servant girl. Instead, her uncle approached, his voice gruff. He asked for payment thrice as much as Janos expected.

As the tavern owner eyed the coin in his hand, he jerked his head for Janos to approach him.

“Forget you ever saw my niece,” he warned, his eyes sliding to the courtier. “And pay no heed to whatever she may have said to you.”