House of Bathory

by Linda Lafferty

  “Daisy, I think I may be getting the flu. I’m sorry. I think—I think I’m going to have to cancel our session.”

  “Oh.”

  Betsy watched as the girl pulled back, rigid. She looked frightened.

  “I’m sorry. Really. But I—I think I’m getting a fever.”

  “Oh. Can I—can I get you some soup? I can run down to the Village Smithy and get your some of their homemade—”

  “That’s sweet. I don’t. No, I don’t think so. I’ll call you later, when I feel better. OK?”

  “Right. OK,” Daisy said, nodding her head like a wooden puppet. “If you’re sick, I can run errands for you.”

  “No. No. I’ll call you. It’s probably just a twenty-four-hour bug.”

  “Sure,” said Daisy, not moving.

  “Let me walk you out,” said Betsy, rising from her chair.

  As soon as she closed the door, Betsy rummaged through her desk. The tarot card with the sobbing girl lay in the shadows of the drawer.

  Chapter 19

  ČACHTICE CASTLE

  DECEMBER 12, 1610

  The Countess did not summon the horsemaster again for many days. Janos Szilvasi spent his days focused on his work, waking before dawn when the kitchen boys dragged in dry logs and kindling from the woodshed and stoked the fire to prepare the morning breakfast.

  Often the predawn meal consisted of leftover root-vegetable soup and doughy dumplings from the smoke-black cauldron. Broken loaves of stale bread accompanied the meal, smeared with fat drippings: tasty or rancid, it did not matter to the cook. It was stodgy food to fill a workingman’s belly. At least the morning beer was good: dark, bitter ale, surprisingly better than the breweries in Sarvar produced.

  The Countess’s horses thrived under Janos’s hand. Their wounds healed, their lameness diminished as new flesh grew in the deep hollow of their hooves. Szilvasi procured grain for the most starved and, with the help of the stable boys, filed the horses’ teeth smooth to help them chew and digest their feed.

  The boys learned to rub the horses with coarse sacks until their coats shone. They collected pine resin from the forest and dabbed it into the cracks in the horses’ hooves. Their backs ached with carrying fresh water in buckets from the courtyard well.

  Janos took a deep breath. After a fortnight and half, the smell of the stables had changed entirely. He drew in a lungful of the essence of sweet straw, pinesap, and the intoxicating scent of warm horse—healthy and content. Wholesome.

  The next challenge would be to ride the white stallion.

  Zuzana spied from the tower on the strong young Hungarian, the friend of her childhood, now a man. She pressed her cheek against the rough stone, and blinked until her eyes teared with the blustery cold that threaded through the narrow opening in the castle wall. She remained immobile for long minutes, her gaze focused below, an ear listening for the tinkling bell of her mistress.

  When she pulled her face away from the stone, there was an imprint of the rough granite on her poxed face.

  She rubbed her cheek to return the blood to her skin. She knew she could stare all day at Janos and never tire of him.

  His manner was efficient but kind, and he quickly won the confidence of not only the horses, but of the stable boys and guards as well. And he had earned the grudging respect of Erno Kovach, who put an arm around the young horsemaster’s shoulder one day, drawing Szilvasi near as he shared a joke. It had been many months since Zuzana had seen the head guard—or any of the men—laugh; she considered the sight a minor miracle.

  Zuzana was not the only pair of eyes spying on Janos Szilvasi. Small groups of handmaidens and scullery maids clustered around the edges of curtained windows throughout the castle, whispering and laughing.

  “He will be mine by New Year’s!” swore Hedvika.

  The other girls tittered and the whispering began again.

  “Perhaps he prefers black tresses strewn across his chest,” challenged Zora, her fingers playing with her long black braid. “After all, he means to tame the wild stallion—he has dark passion pulsing in his veins.”

  “Ack, with your flat bosom, what could you offer a man like that?” said Hedvika.

  Zuzana had often overheard the women, their pecking and clucking no different from the speckled hens that squawked in the castle courtyard. The horsemaster was no more than a tasty grub wedged between the paving stones to them.

  She had a bitter taste in her mouth, and swallowed, remembering. This was the boy who had called her lucky. She had never forgotten him.

  Chapter 20

  CARBONDALE, COLORADO

  DECEMBER 13, 2010

  Betsy knew she had one more patient appointment to cancel. She had procrastinated long enough.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Daisy?”

  “Betsy? Hi, what’s up?”

  “I’m going to have to cancel our session tomorrow. In fact, I have to cancel our sessions for the next two weeks. An emergency has come up.”

  She could hear a constricted whistling and a muted gagging sound.

  “Daisy? Are you there?”

  “Yeah,” her voice thin and high-pitched. “What’s the emergency?”

  “It’s a personal family matter. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t cancel if it weren’t absolutely necessary.”

  There was a pause.

  “There is some danger,” said Daisy, her voice monotone. “I can sense it.”

  Just stop that, Betsy thought. Stay out of my business. “No, just—I have to travel to help out my mother.”

  “Travel where? Is this like a Christmas break or something?”

  No more details about her private life, Betsy told herself. Absolutely none. “Daisy, is your mother home?”

  “She’s out shopping.”

  “Would you tell her I called?”

  “Yeah. But why won’t you tell me more about the emergency? I can feel something is wrong, I just know it.”

  “I’ve got to go. Good-bye, Daisy.”

  “Wait! What’s your e-mail?”

  “Why do you want my e-mail?”

  “To stay in touch. Maybe I can help.”

  This was ridiculous, but Betsy did maintain a professional e-mail account for clients who wanted to verbalize their problems when she wasn’t there to hear them. Sometimes it helped them to write out their fears, and then Betsy would have a journal of their emotional state when she returned to her practice.

  Betsy gave her the address but added, “I may not have e-mail access every day while I am away. We will discuss your concerns in therapy when I return.”

  “Take care of yourself, Betsy. ’Cause I’ve got a weird feeling.”

  As Betsy got off the phone, she heard the wind whistling through the wooden shutters. What was she going to do with this patient who had so clearly transferred her fears to her therapist?

  Chapter 21

  ČACHTICE CASTLE

  DECEMBER 15, 1610

  For weeks now, Cook Brona had given Vida only the weakest broth. Occasionally the big-boned cook took pity and included a bit of boiled turnip, though this elicited a scowl from the ever-watchful Hedvika, her plump lips greasy with meat from her own full plate.

  Vida pleaded for more, her stomach grumbling. Brona’s eyes, set like raisins pressed deep in dough, glistened in sympathy. Food was all there was to Brona, and it tortured her to see a starving soul. But the Countess’s orders were clear and disobedience was unthinkable. The cook turned her back to the girl.

  “But Cook, look at me!” Vida cried. She held out a bony hand, her fingers like winter twigs.

  Brona blinked her heavy-lidded eyes. Vida had been a beauty when she had arrived in June, the rose blooming on her plump cheeks, her hair shining like a raven’s wing. The Countess had selected her personally to carry the train of her gown from the dressing room to the vanity, where the pox-faced Zuzana performed her sorcery with lotions and unguents.

  Now Vida looked as if someone had sucked the ver
y lifeblood from her. Her breasts had withered flat against her chest, her face was gaunt, cheekbones pushing through her translucent skin. In the hollows of her eye sockets, her cornflower eyes, once so merry with spirit, had receded in the plummy darkness. Never very big, she seemed to have shrunk to the size of a child.

  The other girls had secretly given her scraps from their own meager portions. A bit of meat or a piece of coarse bread would travel from lap to lap under the table until it reached starving Vida, hidden from the eyes of Hedvika, who would have stung their faces with a slap, and, far worse, informed the Countess of their treachery.

  One day, when Hedvika lingered with the Countess in her chambers, hunger forced Vida to leave the table. The other handmaidens spoke not a word as she rose and walked to the cold larder at the kitchen’s portal. It was stocked with hanging fowl, smoked bacon, fresh eggs, cheeses, and wooden buckets of cream and churns of fresh butter. But most tantalizing of all was a large clay crock, filled with yellow goose fat, slick with translucent grease, creamier but more substantial than butter.

  Her starving body shuddered with desire. Her thin hands flew toward the crock like birds to a perch.

  “If you touch that, you will be severely punished,” said a gravelly voice.

  Vida whirled around to see Brona watching her, in her hand a soup ladle, steaming in the cold air of the room. A few rich drops fell from the ladle to the granite floor and Vida dropped to her knees, her fingers sweeping up the meaty broth and plunging knuckle-deep into her mouth.

  “I am starving,” Vida cried. Her shoulders began to shake and tears sprung to her sunken eyes.

  “It is not my choice,” said the cook. “Come away from my larder.”

  Brona extended her hand, scented with the smells of rich food, and pulled the starving girl to her feet. The cook’s fingers immediately met bone, the flesh on the girl’s arm emaciated. The old woman’s heart skipped a beat.

  Brona led Vida into the kitchen where the pungent smells of cooking made her knees buckle.

  “Sit there, by the fire,” she said. “It will warm your thin bones.”

  Vida slumped onto a three-legged stool by the hearth. Her face crumpled, tears stained her reddening cheeks.

  “But why would the Countess starve me?” she cried. “I have served her faithfully.”

  The cook lifted a wooden spoon and beat it hard against the iron cauldron of soup.

  “Your allegiance has nothing to do with this,” said the stout woman, shaking her head so the greasy wattles on her neck quivered. She leaned close and lowered her voice. “It’s your beauty that she hates. That is your curse.” Her meaty breath was torture to the starving girl.

  “My beauty?”

  “She chose you for it and now she will destroy it. And if you die, that is no concern of hers.”

  “What can I do?”

  Old Brona looked around and even up to the rafters, as if a spy might be perched above them.

  “Flee, Slecna Vida. Leave Čachtice Castle and never look back,” she whispered quickly.

  Vida’s eyes filled with tears.

  “My mother is sick. The pennies I bring back keep her alive. There is no work for me in Čachtice, except as a prostitute.”

  “Better to starve or sell your body than face the anger of the Countess.”

  Hedvika strode in, demanding an extra rasher of bacon. She saw Vida and her face soured.

  “What are you doing? Begging for food?”

  “She has been given nothing,” said the cook. “What concern is it of yours, Hedvika? You eat more than a force-fed goose.”

  “The Countess likes me plump,” said Hedvika, glowering. “But this one—I know what the Countess has prescribed for her. She has no business here.”

  “This is my domain, harlot,” growled Cook. She shook the spoon in Hedvika’s face. “You think I do not know what goes on at night. Now get out!”

  “Vida comes with me,” snapped Hedvika.

  The cook thrust out her lower lip like a ledge and pulled Vida to her so quickly the weak girl almost fell.

  “Heed my words,” the cook whispered.

  “The Countess will hear of your treachery, Cook,” said Hedvika.

  The cook lost her scowl, a look of cold fear crawling over her face.

  Hedvika’s hand, slick with bacon grease, clutched Vida’s bony arm, pulling her away from the kitchen. The girl almost fainted from the rich pork aroma. She would lick the grease off her sleeve as soon as she had a private moment.

  Vida spent most nights on the cold stone floor of the castle outside the Countess’s door, curled up like a dog on a mat woven of coarse wool. Bits of dried grass and burrs embedded in the yarn poked at her tender skin, and woke her to the muffled wail of cold drafts, winding their way through the dark corridors of the castle.

  Often she would wake to see Darvulia holding a torch overhead, guiding the Countess down into the lower levels of the castle, toward the dungeon. “Sleep,” the witch would command, her breath a ring of vapor. “This errand does not concern you.”

  Only in the broad daylight could Vida leave the castle, when the Countess did not require her services. She walked home, unsteady on her thin legs and worn leather shoes, to her mother’s hovel in the village of Čachtice. Her few pennies bought soup bones and root vegetables and a few lumps of hard coal to keep a small fire burning for her sick mother, paying a neighbor child a portion of soup to stay with the ailing woman at night. And for all her bitter hunger, Vida knew she could not take even a drop of that soup for herself without endangering her mother’s flickering life.

  Then one night Vida was awakened by a murmuring in the Countess’s chamber. Perhaps the Countess was dreaming. What would she dream of? Her many lovers, her dead husband? Her coffers of gold and her castles? Her palatial home in Vienna, near the great Cathedral of St. Stephan?

  Then Vida saw the fine leather boots just in front of her head. A tall man stood above her, all in black, with a wide traveling cape around his shoulders.

  How could such a man have climbed the stairs without waking her?

  Without knocking, he opened the Countess’s door, gliding through soundlessly.

  Vida shivered. She recalled the village tales of a tall stranger, dressed in black, who frequented Čachtice Castle years ago, before Ferenc Nadasdy’s death. It was said that the Countess had run away with the mysterious stranger for months. One day she returned to her husband. The servants sucked in their breath, waiting for the beatings, for Count Nadasdy was known for his wrath and cruel ways.

  But the Countess had not been beaten or chastened in any way. Ferenc Nadasdy had taken her back and nothing was ever said. No bruise appeared on her face. The village people were shocked.

  Was this the same stranger in black, come back to reclaim her?

  Vida’s stomach pinched up in a spasm. It felt as if her stomach was eating away at itself, folding over its emptiness, searching for nourishment.

  She remembered the crock of goose fat and licked her lips.

  Chapter 22

  CARBONDALE, COLORADO

  DECEMBER 17, 2010

  John’s plane was delayed in Denver.

  It had been snowing hard since just after midnight. The big wet flakes would make an excellent early snowpack on the ski slopes but obscured visibility and made it nearly impossible to land on Aspen’s notoriously difficult runway, which was short and hemmed in by high mountains.

  Waiting at the airport, Betsy looked out at the falling snow. Fat flakes swirled, playing tag in the wind. She wandered toward the small airport café to have a cup of coffee.

  Why had she finally said yes to him? They had worked hard since their divorce to stay away from each other, to admit that it was a youthful folly, marrying while they were still undergraduates. Now he was an associate professor at MIT with research grants. Betsy had her own practice.

  They had come so far.

  Damn it! Betsy gritted her teeth, wondering what had possessed
her.

  The divorce had taken such a toll on her, she could barely stand to visit Boulder anymore. She couldn’t walk across the campus without thinking of their college days, when they would lie beneath the towering oak trees on a blanket in the springtime, drunk on young love.

  At weak moments, Betsy still remembered the touch of his fingertips as he traced the line of her jaw, the contours of her shoulders. She felt his warm breath lingering on her neck, intoxicating. He smelled of pine needles and warm, sunny hikes in the mountains.

  They kissed tenderly as only the young can, staring candidly into each other’s eyes. Athletic students in cut-offs threw Frisbees and bandana-collared dogs raced to catch them. In the distance rose the Flatiron crags, red rock against a bluebird Colorado sky. When they rolled and faced the other direction to shade their eyes from the bright sun, they looked at the sandstone façade of Norlin Library. Kids with backpacks full of books entered through the turnstile, turning their back on sunshine, Frisbees, and young love.

  In towering letters Cicero’s words were engraved over the library entrance. Who knows only his own generation remains always a child. Now those words haunted Betsy.

  We were just children, she thought, waiting for John’s plane to arrive. And foolish ones at that.

  “May I help you?” said the café clerk.

  “A cappuccino, two percent milk,” she said.

  The local paper, The Aspen Times, lay rumpled and open on the café table. The last person had scrawled a telephone number in the margin and her eyes focused on an item right below:

  HARD ROCK, GOTHS, AND DIE-HARD PUNKS. GET IT ON TONIGHT AT THE BELLY UP. BLACK METAL BAND VENOM PLAYS A TRIBUTE TO BATHORY.

  Bathory?

  Her heart thumped and she stared at the ad.

  “There you are!”

  John set down his bag and scooped her up in his arms, his skin smelling of piney soap despite his long plane ride. He held Betsy for longer than was comfortable, and she was sure he could feel the sudden stiffening in her back.

  He released her and stared at her face.

  “You’ve lost some weight. I can feel your ribs.”