Blood Countess (Lady Slayers)

by Lana Popovic

  “Come, pet,” Elizabeth calls, snapping her fingers as if my sister is a dog. Klara breaks away from me before I can snatch her back, pelting straight into the murderess’s arms. “That’s right, come to me! Very good! Yes, Anna, she is rather younger than is ideal—but perhaps that’s for the best. She will take so quickly to service, with fewer bad habits to unlearn.”

  She winds a hand around Klara’s thin neck and draws her close, stroking my sister’s collarbone. Klara allows herself to be enfolded, lets the countess press their cheeks together. “We shall have a very lovely time, shan’t we?” the wicked bitch murmurs into my sister’s hair. “I will feed you cherry bonbons and stuffed partridges, and barely watered wine. Would you like that, pet?”

  “Yes!” Klara exclaims giddily, overcome with the lavish attention, the sheer, bludgeoning force of Elizabeth’s personality. And who would not be swayed by the thought of rich food and drink, and even more by the beckoning grasp of those eyes?

  “Oh, you would? Truly?” Elizabeth tickles her delicately, pinching at her sides and cheeks until Klara is helpless with laughter, so limp she allows herself to be drawn onto my enemy’s lap. “I am delighted to hear it, pet. And I think we shall get on very well indeed.” She gazes at me pointedly over my sister’s shoulder, tipping me a wink. “Perhaps even better than your big sister and I ever did.”

  The wings inside me buffet ever harder, raining feathers as my sight continues to blacken. Curling at the edges like a scroll.

  She will kill her.

  She will kill her.

  She will kill her.

  It does not stop tolling in my head even once I hit the floor, darkness stitching itself closed around me like a winding cloth.

  The last thing I hear is my sister’s voice calling my name—drowned out by the bright peals of Elizabeth’s mocking laughter.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Flight and the Sentence

  I awake from the faint as if someone has doused me with icy water.

  “Klara,” I gasp, bolting upright and looking wildly around before I realize where I am. I’m no longer in the great hall but in the solar, deposited clumsily on my bed. Whoever carried me here clearly paid no great mind to my state. I might have choked on my own vomit, for all they cared to arrange me comfortably. One of my legs dangles so awkwardly off the edge that it has gone corpse-numb, shattering into agonizing pins and needles when I try to move it.

  As soon as I can stand, I begin to pace.

  I have been oblivious through the night, waking just before dawn. There is no sound of music, nor, blessedly, of screams or pleas. Elizabeth must be holding back for once, practicing restraint. I have no doubt that she will kill these girls, noble or no, just as she did the servants. But perhaps she means to take her time, knowing that more won’t be procured quite so easily once this crop is gone.

  And if I know her at all, she will save Klara for last. Milking my torment until the very last drop, supping on my tears.

  Which means I have a chance to make Elizabeth’s crimes known to the world.

  To save my sister, if not myself.

  I steal Elizabeth’s black journal. And then I steal a horse.

  Both are easier feats than expected. In her haste to take up with Thorko, Elizabeth didn’t bother to hide the book in which she recorded her macabre results. Once she was done with her murderous experiments, I doubt she ever even gave it a second thought; my former mistress is nothing if not mercurial, given to passions that burn off like early-morning mist. I find it after an only cursory search of the solar, which I never bothered to properly clean after her last outburst. The book had been swept into one of the corners, in a pile of shattered glass and other debris.

  I tuck it into the small satchel I plan to take with me, then set out for the stables.

  The castle is quiet, nothing but silent stone and dusty air swirling in the pallid, early light. In the absence of sculls, it has been a long while since anything has been thoroughly cleaned; cobwebs cling to every rafter, reminding me of the one I trod through the day my father died. As I creep through the halls I maintain my vigilance, watching for servants, but there are so few left that our paths are not likely to cross. I see none of the new arrivals, either. Untroubled by Elizabeth’s dark diversions, the new girls must be sleeping off the excitement of the previous day, my sister among them. Every time I think of her in the castle, sick wells up my throat, until I’m forced to banish thoughts of her to keep myself steady.

  When I reach the stables, I unsheathe my trusty little knife and prod the stable boy, curled up in the backmost corner, awake with my foot. He opens his eyes groggily, fairly leaping to his feet when he finds me looming over him, grim-faced as a banshee.

  “Saddle a horse for me,” I order once he’s upright, barely recognizing the terse steeliness of my voice. This time, I don’t even have to strive to intimidate. It comes naturally. “The fleetest one you have. Or I swear I will send you straight to hell, with a death curse dogging your heels.”

  “Y-yes, mistress,” he stammers without hesitation, bolting to carry out my command. I almost wish he had resisted, even if nominally. But the way he looked at me was just as we all look at Elizabeth. Like peering into the jeering face of death itself.

  Ten minutes later, I am riding hell-for-leather down the path. I slipped by the gatekeeper readily, as I had hoped I would, unbolting the great doors for myself. No one has chanced to flee from the castle in months, and the man likes his drink well; even back in Sarvar, where we had many more visitors, he was often deep in his cups soon after midnight.

  By the time the sentries rouse themselves and think to scramble for their horses, I am already well past the most winding of the road’s hairpin curves, disappearing into the woods that surround the foot of the hill—where I can conceal myself easily behind a hanging tapestry of vines and shrubs. I nicker under my breath to keep the horse quiet when Elizabeth’s men thunder past, calling to each other. Though my heart swells at the base of my throat, their bleary eyes barely graze over our hiding place. I doubt they’ve ever had to chase after anyone fortunate enough to be on horseback; they must think I am long gone already.

  Once I’m sure they’ve moved on, I spur my horse into a brisk canter, returning to the main road. For the remainder of the morning I ride from village to village, sweltering under the summer heat, searching for one large enough to house a magistrate. I know where one was to be found in Sarvar, but this place is strange to me, and more sprawling. By the time I plod into a modest township, complete with a sizable church, central square, and meeting hall, the horse has worked up a lather and the sun marks nearly noon.

  “I’ll take care of you as soon as I’m done,” I soothe the horse as I tie him to one of the stakes outside the hall. One of his eyes rolls dubiously at me; he must be parched as well as hungry. “I promise.”

  Inside, one of the scurrying clerks points me to the magistrate’s chambers, casting a supercilious eye over my flushed cheeks and sweaty hair.

  “Master Horvath is busy with another complainant,” he informs me, pulling a sour face. “You will have to wait, over by the benches.”

  “I don’t mind waiting,” I assure him hastily. “I have time.”

  I collapse gratefully on a bench, tilting my head back against the wall. The hall, though well kept, is nowhere near as grand as Nadasdy Castle, but I am reminded of the day I waited for an audience with Master Aurel. My eagerness to enter Elizabeth’s service feels like it must have happened to someone else, a different Anna I’ve long since abandoned. My patience deserts me much more quickly this time, and my feet tap spastically against the floorboards, beating out my fear and nervousness. I cannot stop thinking of Klara, left to Elizabeth’s mercy. Surely the countess knows by now that I have deserted her, is already seething. I can only imagine the fearsome expanse of her rage.

  At least, in my absence, Elizabeth has no audience—less of a reason to torment my sister when I cannot see it.
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  Fortunately, no one else is waiting for Master Horvath’s attention. When the polished mahogany door swings open and a couple hurries out, the woman in tears with the man’s arm slung around her shoulders, I scramble to my feet and slip past them.

  “Master Horvath?” I call out, knocking on the frame. “May I come in?”

  A long-suffering sigh billows out, followed by a begrudging “Go on, then.” I step gingerly into his chambers, musty and windowless, the walls lined with towering shelves of books. The magistrate sits behind an imposing desk, massaging the wattle beneath his chin and peering at me narrowly through lopsided spectacles. He has gray hair in kinky curls, clumsily clubbed back, and the florid look of someone given to gout.

  “But you’re only a girl!” he half bellows incredulously, gawping at me. “Have you no father with you? No chaperone?”

  I shake my head stiffly, dipping into a quick curtsy. “No, master. It’s just me.”

  A bushy eyebrow shoots up over the spectacles’ frame, and he twists his lips from side to the side. “And what grievance have you to report?”

  “Murder, sir,” I say, taking a deep, shaking breath. “More than one. And torture, and witchcraft. I . . . I have a great deal to tell.”

  His face blanches into a grayish pallor, like a decomposing mushroom. “More than one, you say,” he replies faintly, gesturing me to the chair across from his desk. “In that case, I suppose you’d better sit.”

  Half an hour later, I finally catch my first proper breath. Master Horvath hunches over Elizabeth’s black journal, running his stubby thumb down the pages. He listened impassively, barely twitching his tufty brows, while I described Elizabeth’s atrocities, all the deaths I witnessed at her hand. I told him of the demonic banquet before Ferenc died, the girls that succumbed to arsenic, and the ones she bled dry for her rituals.

  The ominous blandness of his regard makes me feel like a vole scurrying across a field, with the shadow of a bird of prey circling above.

  “To recap,” he says crisply, smacking his lips with obvious skepticism. “You claim the countess—that is the Lady Báthory, so that we are clear—is not only a poisoner, sadist, the devil’s own consort, and an adulteress who bore a peasant’s child, but that she murdered her own husband as well?”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply, swallowing hard. I left out my own part in Ferenc’s death, fearing to muddy the waters by implicating myself. “She, she had him poisoned.”

  “And these entries . . .” He looks up at me, fixing me with a gimlet gaze. “According to you, they are somehow proof of your outlandish claims? The records of some unnatural experiment?”

  “The countess wishes to preserve her youth and beauty at any price,” I explain, moistening my lips. “She was testing an elixir on these women, one that she wished to eventually take herself. What you are reading is the record of her failures, the pain she inflicted in pursuit of that folly.”

  “The folly of a poisonous elixir you helped her devise,” he rumbles, eyes narrowing even further. “By your own admission.”

  “I had no choice in the matter,” I protest. “She was my mistress. And I’m a midwife’s daughter, with some knowledge of herbs and medicine. That was why she enlisted my help in that endeavor.”

  “A midwife’s daughter,” he repeats, his eyes sharpening into twin bores. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Anna Darvulia, sir,” I supply, heart suddenly knocking against my ribs. Shouldn’t my name be of the least interest, in comparison to everything else I’ve told him?

  “Anna Darvulia,” he mutters. “Not a common name, yet a familiar one. Tell me, what cause would I have to know it?”

  “I’m—I’m not sure, sir,” I stumble, taken aback. “I have been the lady’s chambermaid for nearly a year, both here and back home in Sarvar. Always by her side. Everything that she has done, I have witnessed. And she . . .” My courage deserts me, and suddenly I feel like no more than what I am. Just a sixteen-year-old girl without anyone to help her. “Sir, she has my sister. Unless you do something, she plans to kill her—along with the daughters of nobles, a dozen girls she has lured to the keep. She is a monster, a black-hearted devil, she must be stopped—”

  “Yes, yes, I think I have the gist,” he says abruptly, rising and maneuvering his ungainly bulk around the desk. “Why don’t you wait here? I must consult . . . one of my colleagues on the protocol, see how justice might best be served. The countess is a powerful woman. This matter is sure to be a delicate one.”

  A clamor of hope rises up inside me like a belling chorus, and I clutch the chair arms with bloodless fingers. “Oh, thank you, sir! I am so grateful, I—”

  He waves off my thanks irritably, bustling out the door behind me. I am so engorged with the possibility of Klara’s freedom and Elizabeth’s demise that it takes a few moments for the metallic rattle behind me to sink in.

  “What . . .” I whisper to myself, rising and rushing to the door. The handle will not give under my hand, and when I tug at it the door does not budge an inch.

  Despair cinches my throat like a drawstring purse. The bastard of a magistrate has locked me in.

  I fall upon the door, beating it with my fists. “Let me out, God damn you,” I sob, pressing my cheek against the wood. “Let me go, I have done nothing . . .”

  Though I pound and beg until I exhaust myself, my entreaties are met by nothing but echoing silence. When the door finally opens some time later, it reveals the magistrate, flanked by two grim-faced men. And I understand at once what is happening. I can practically hear Elizabeth’s derisive laughter, swooping about some hidden belfry in my mind, flapping and squeaking like a horde of maddened bats.

  The magistrate knew my name. Which means that this trap, too, she has devised for me. Perhaps this is what Thorko meant, when he stayed her hand from killing me, cautioning her that she might need me even beyond my skill for herbs. And she has been calling me a witch where others could hear since I tended to her son—could she truly have been plotting even then to cast the blame for her misdeeds on me?

  Of course she could have.

  Of course she has.

  “No,” I whisper, shying back. “Please . . .”

  “Anna Darvulia,” he intones as the men surge forward and wrest me between them, dragging me out into the hall while the magistrate keeps pace. “Also known as Anna the Cunning, the witch of Sarvar. You are hereby under arrest, for the foul, unnatural murder of Lord Ferenc Nadasdy.”

  “Please,” I cry as they drag me down the hall. “Please, at least go see for yourself! Ask the remaining servants, search the orchards! There are bodies everywhere!”

  “Do not presume to tell us our work, you murderess!” he roars at me, spittle flying. “You shall await your trial in gaol with the rest of the scum, and we will investigate in due course—as we see fit.”

  They will find nothing, I think bitterly as I am dragged along, so violently that my toes barely graze the floor. Because they will hardly bother to look.

  Why investigate a highborn lady, one of the most powerful nobles in the land, when you can burn a common witch in her stead?

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Gaol and the Stratagem

  By the time Peter comes to visit me, I have been moldering in my gaol cell for nearly a month.

  It feels like much longer, here where natural light does not exist and even torchlight is mean and scarce, but I have been marking my imprisonment by the frequency of the meager meals they give me. The food is putrid, so rank I can barely choke it down, and my ribs stand stark beneath my skin. The water is befouled as well. When I first arrived, I spent several days violently emptying my guts out in the corner, but what I drink tastes somewhat fresher now. The grizzled turnkey who tends to me either took pity on my misery, or grew tired of the constant stench of my pooled vomit.

  Given the way he looks at me, with dour suspicion, spitting over his shoulder and crossing himself every time he nears the bars, I
suspect it was the latter.

  At least it isn’t cold down here, I tell myself. Though perhaps the reek would be less in winter, and my cell not so rife with fleas. I often wake myself from fitful sleep by scratching so hard I draw blood.

  If nothing else, my captivity has given me plenty of time to think. At first, I dwelled incessantly on Klara’s fate, sometimes growing so helplessly furious that I would tear my own hair just as Elizabeth once did, wailing and pounding the walls until my knuckles seeped with blood. The reservoir of rage inside me never seemed to empty, nor did my rumination on other possibilities. Other lives my sister and I might have lived. If only I had never found that kitten, nor caught Elizabeth’s eye with my accursed face and healer’s hands. If only I had been unwilling or unable to save her son. If only I had been accosted on my way to her, and now lay rotting in some ditch along the road with buzzards picking at my bones. If only I had not killed Ferenc.

  If only, if only, if only. If only I had died before I met that twisted bitch, my sister would be safe.

  The turnkey did not approve of my displays. After a particularly impassioned bout of cursing my lot, he conquered his fear of me long enough to venture into my cell and beat me so brutally I feared a splinter of rib might have pierced my lung. I quieted after that, allowed my wrath to fester into a seething rage instead.

  When Peter arrives, I have begun thinking of something else.

  I can hear him coming long before I see him. The abiding dark has sharpened my ears, and I recognize the steady tone of his voice even before he draws close enough to my cell that I can see his anguished face. At the welcome sight of him, tears surge up in an instant, and I strain against my shackles, scrabbling to come closer to the bars. Beside him, the turnkey casts me a grim look.

  “Careful not to touch the witch, nor give her nothing,” he cautions Peter. “Anything you leave with her, she can use to ensorcell you or harm herself. And the magistrate would be wroth were she found hanged before her trial.”