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
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 18, 1610
The 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 Čachtice 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 Čachtice 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 Čachtice?”
“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 Čachtice.
Janos rode through the muddy streets of Čachtice. 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 h
elped 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 Čachtice Castle.
Chapter 27
ČACHTICE LUTHERAN CHURCH
DECEMBER 19, 1610
The 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 Čachtice, 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
SOMEWHERE IN SLOVAKIA
DECEMBER 19, 2010
Grace 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.”
House of Bathory Page 12
