House of Bathory

by Linda Lafferty

  “The Countess’s mad aunt, Klara, practiced the black arts and sought lovers in the streets and alleys of Vienna. Woman or man, rich or poor, it made no difference. She had hundreds of lovers. But her fate was dark—she was raped by an entire garrison of Turks, and then smothered with a pillow.”

  “Good riddance.”

  Zuzana looked over her shoulder. “One more,” she whispered. “The Countess boasts of an ancestor from two hundred years ago. Vlad the Impaler.”

  Janos narrowed his eyes. “The Impaler?”

  Zuzana nodded. “The Countess is quite proud of him. She calls him the bloody defender of Transylvania. They say he impaled his enemies on spikes, to terrify the Ottomans, his enemies, and any of his servants who displeased him. A spike piercing their buttocks, emerging through the head.”

  “Why would she be proud of such an ancestor?”

  Zuzana shook her head.

  Janos rubbed his hands together, stroking the side of his left hand with his right thumb. “It is uncanny how Countess Bathory emulates her ancestor,” he mused.

  Zuzana focused on a milky scar at the root of his little finger.

  “My father told me the family has been mad for centuries,” she said. “Az alma nem esik messze a fájától.”

  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  Chapter 48

  HOTEL ARCADIA

  BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA

  DECEMBER 23, 2010

  Betsy and John filed a report with the police in Bratislava and contacted the American Embassy one more time before it closed for the Christmas holiday. But after that, they were too tired to do anything more than to go back to the hotel. They sat in her room, both a little dazed.

  “I’m too exhausted even to sleep,” Betsy said.

  “I hear you,” John said yawning. “Try to read a bit. I bet you’ll nod off.”

  “Might as well check my e-mail,” she said, grateful for the hotel internet access. She opened her computer and let it whir into consciousness.

  She checked her e-mail. Nothing new. Then she Googled Daisy’s blog.

  After a while, John came and looked over her shoulder. “Does she talk about analysis on the blog?” he asked.

  “It’s weird,” Betsy said. “It’s as if she was doing her own self-analysis…using The Red Book illustrations as a stimulus.”

  “Kind of like you would do.”

  “I have never used The Red Book with any of my patients. Why would I?”

  “Seems like one of your intuitive methods, that’s all,” said John shrugging. “Don’t get all defensive. It sounded ingenious.”

  Her back stiffened. “What do you mean ‘defensive’?”

  “I just meant that you were always searching for innovative—unique?—ways to reach your patients. I meant it as a compliment.”

  She pushed her chair back, screeching on the tile floor, and folded her arms across her stomach.

  “I didn’t bring out The Red Book. She did.”

  “Maybe she had a flash of intuition herself.”

  Betsy frowned and looked at him standing there—palms turned out wide, the body language of a man who had nothing to hide.

  She drew in a deep breath and forced herself to relax. Her face, her shoulders…her back. “Sorry, I am just on the edge. Would you mind if I slept through dinner?”

  John studied her.

  “Betsy, is there something—anything you want to tell me?”

  Betsy looked out the window at the snow falling on the slate rooftops of Old Town.

  “When I went to New York to see The Red Book display—you know, ‘The Red Book Dialogues.’ And—”

  “And what?”

  “There was a tarot card reader. Everyone in the audience pulled a card—I—well, this is stupid.”

  “No, come on. Tell me. I want to know.”

  “I drew a really disturbing card. The Nine of Swords. It had a picture of a young woman, a girl really, sitting up in bed crying. Over her head hung nine swords that continued off the card, so you couldn’t see their points.”

  “What did the tarot card reader say?”

  “She said that there were family secrets, things that I was about to discover. A tragedy—and—”

  Betsy stopped, cupping her face in her hands.

  “I’m afraid, John. My mother—is she the tragedy? Is that what it meant? And what family secrets?”

  “Oh, Betsy—” said John, kneeling beside her chair. He pulled her to his shoulder. “Shh,” he said, stroking her head.

  “But—”

  “You know how I feel about all this psychic stuff. It’s a bunch of baloney. Somebody else must have pulled the same card in the audience, and his or her mother didn’t disappear. It’s all chance. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “A woman came up to me and said the Nine of Swords was known as the Lord of Cruelty.”

  “So what? It’s all baloney, you know that! Look, I think you’re overwrought. You have jet lag, you’re worried about your mother. And then that English detective told you about the killer vampire, it fueled your imagination. It doesn’t have anything to do with your mother.”

  Betsy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “OK. You’re right. I think I’m going to take a sleeping pill. I’ve been having nightmares. Vampires. And a woman made of stone. They’re Jungian archetypes, but still—they’re so real. It seemed like a memory more than a dream.”

  “Hey, Bets, it’s OK,” he said, pulling her close. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot. You want me to stay the night with you?”

  Betsy sniffed back her tears. She kissed him on the lips. Tenderly, but not lingering.

  “Sometimes I do. But we both know it would be a mistake.”

  “I didn’t mean that—I meant to watch over you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, getting up from the chair. She hugged him close, then let him go.

  Chapter 49

  SOMEWHERE IN SLOVAKIA

  DECEMBER 23, 2010

  Grace slept on a rollaway bed—more than reasonably comfortable, it was made up each night and folded up each morning by a silent chambermaid. She tried rudimentary Slovak with the woman, but the maid did not register even a flicker of comprehension. She just nodded courteously and went about her business, tucking in the sheets and fluffing up the down pillows.

  Night was when Grace fell apart. She pulled the lavender-scented sheets close to her face, breathing in the clean scent. There was something about the incongruous luxury that made her sob uncon trollably.

  One night she thought she heard an echo of her sobs. She stopped herself in midgasp and listened. The ebbing silence of the great hall and many empty corridors of the castle was all she heard.

  Then came another cry—from outside the castle. She stumbled out of bed, the sheet wrapping around her leg and tripping her. She grabbed her glasses and settled them on her nose.

  In the glare of the outside floodlight, she saw three figures.

  A girl, this one dark-haired, screamed and sobbed as she struggled against two men dragging her toward the building and then out of sight.

  Later that night, Grace woke to find herself sobbing, her pillow wet with tears. She had dreamed about her dead husband.

  Grace hadn’t dreamed since the night before Betsy was born.

  In her dream, Ceslav was sitting beside her, his hand on her cheek, telling her something. His eyes were desperate, wanting her to comprehend.

  What was it? Something about a patient. In Vienna, years ago, when he worked at some exclusive institution for lunatics.

  The most frightening terror in the world was not ghosts, or monsters, not vampires, or any of that nonsense. The most terrifying creature in the world is a madman.

  In her dream her husband shook her, saying, Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember?

  She started crying because she didn’t know what she was supposed to remember. And the kind man who had never said a harsh word to her
when he was alive had seized her shoulders in her dream, making her head rock.

  A far-off scream carried in on a gust of wind, and then was swallowed in the silence of the castle.

  Chapter 50

  HOFBURG PALACE

  VIENNA

  DECEMBER 23, 1610

  The cold winds of December roared through Vienna, tearing slate shingles from the roofs, smashing them on the ice-glistened cobblestones.

  King Matthias strode the halls of the Hofburg Palace, a caged lion. The click of his boots ricocheted off the vaulted ceilings and the stone walls lined with portraits of the King’s Habsburg an cestors.

  Matthias had received a letter from Cluj, seat of the Diet of Transylvania.

  “Your Majesty, I beg leave to speak,” said Bishop Melchior Klesl, entering the hall.

  “Speak!”

  “Your people should see you in church worshipping during the advent season,” the bishop pleaded.

  “Which people? The blood-thirsty Catholics or the rebelling Protestants?”

  Melchior Klesl sighed. “Habsburgs have always been Catholic, your Majesty. The Mother Church holds the Crown in great esteem as defender of the Faith.”

  “My father refused last rites from the Catholic Church. I think I shall do the same,” said the King bitterly. “Most of my subjects are Protestants in the Hungarian Lands.”

  Melchior Klesl looked at the scroll of vellum in King Matthias’s hand.

  “Bad news, Your Majesty?”

  Matthias exhaled noisily, flapping the letter in the air.

  “The swine Gabor Bathory is plotting against me with the Sultan. He has invaded Wallachia, expanding his kingdom. Fool!”

  “Wallachia! What claim could he possibly have to those lands?”

  “Bathory claims Wallachia is part of Transylvania and under the ancient Order of the Dragon,” spat the King. “Groundless nonsense. Treason! He claims Vlad Tepes as a distant cousin.”

  “Vlad Tepes! The order of Dracula?” Melchior Klesl shook his head, as a draft blew in through the leaded glass. He drew his robes tighter around him. “The Bathorys have spawned a viper’s nest of villains and cold-blooded murderers. It is easy to imagine Gabor is actually proud of his ancestry, rather than ashamed of it.”

  “Bah!” said the King. “The Ottomans will play with Gabor like a cat enjoys a mouse’s scurrying. Then they will strike him down, installing an infidel of their choice as Voivode. They will knock once more on the gates of Vienna.”

  “Your Majesty, surely Gabor doesn’t think he can hold Wallachia?”

  Matthias swept up the parchment letter from Transylvania. He flapped it in the air with a vengeance.

  “Gabor has executed his general, Boldizsár Kornis, in the public square to show his absolute power. My sources tell me there was a plot to assassinate Bathory in his bed, but the assassin lost heart.”

  “General Kornis’s plan?”

  King Matthias raised his chin, affirming. Tense ropes of muscle stood out in his neck.

  “Bathory took the general’s wife to his bed, as he had done with any number of other loyal officers’ wives, making cuckolds of his loyal men. Komis had had enough of the despotic fool.”

  Melchior Klesl scowled.

  “Barbaric Transylvanian, who gives his own sister bastards.”

  “His rutting does not concern me nearly as much as his political ambition,” said Matthias. “He means to rule all Europe, under the Bathory banner. The man who penned this letter tells me that Gabor sent a delegation to Constantinople to confer with the Sultan. He is planning on invading Poland, to secure it for the Ottomans. The scurrilous swine!”

  The bishop scowled, twisting the jeweled rings on his big-knuckled hands. “In hopes that the Sultan will name him Voivode of all the Eastern lands?”

  “Of course. And he has assured the Calvinists that their religion shall be propagated throughout the Eastern empire.”

  The bishop balked. “Surely your report must be mistaken. The Bathorys wouldn’t risk their fortunes for religion!”

  “Domination is Gabor’s religion. The whole cursed family is mad with power. Power and lust. Even the Sultan calls Gabor the ‘Deli,’ the madman.” King Matthias clenched his hand in a fist. “Gabor Bathory means to unite Moldavia, Wallachia, Poland, and Transylvania in opposition to the Habsburg Crown.”

  The King stopped. He hunched his shoulders.

  “Bathory’s empire will be larger than our own if he succeeds. He will be as powerful as Vlad Tepes once was.”

  Chapter 51

  ČACHTICE CASTLE

  DECEMBER 23, 1610

  The Countess ordered Brona the cook to prepare special meals for Countess Zichy.

  “She is painfully thin and pale,” said the Countess. “She has no flesh on her bones, her body is nothing but sticks covered in skin.”

  “They do not know good nourishment in the Eastern lands.”

  The Countess’s face tightened in rage. She slapped the cook hard across the face. “What do you know of my country, you thick-headed idiot!”

  “Yes, Madam. Forgive me, Countess,” said Brona, managing a clumsy curtsey that made her bones creak. The imprint of Countess Bathory’s hand blossomed red on her cheek and chin.

  “Bah, you ignorant peasant! Heed me, Cook. Prepare tasty treats that will whet her appetite. Feed her butter cakes and meat, the choicest cuts. Give her cheeses and thick cream, pastries and jams.”

  “Yes, Countess.”

  “Your cuisine must be like a magic spell—she must be coaxed to eat, then eat more and more.”

  “Yes, of course, Countess. It will be a pleasure to turn out special dainties for your guest. I will try my best.”

  “And Cook, never dare speak ill of the Eastern frontiers and Transylvania again,” said the Countess, her voice ominous. “Do you understand?”

  When Brona was dismissed, Countess Bathory muttered, “If the girl has no vitality in her veins, she is no use at all to me.”

  She glanced in her mirror and saw Zuzana waiting silently.

  “Why are you skulking about like a thief? Brush my hair!”

  Chapter 52

  CARBONDALE, COLORADO

  DECEMBER 23, 2010

  Nightfall comes early in the Rockies in December. It was pitch black by the time Daisy reached Carbondale.

  Her mother had forced her to eat dinner before she left.

  She still had the taste of sun-dried tomato brioche and watermelon chutney in her mouth when she knocked on the lavender door of the little Victorian on Main Street.

  “All right, Funeral Girl,” said Luis, opening the door. Ringo nudged past Luis’s trunk-like leg, rushing to Daisy. He spun in circles barking and wagging his tail furiously.

  Daisy knelt down to pet him and he licked her face over and over again.

  “Good to see you before midnight, even if you are still dressed in black,” Luis said, yawning. “Why don’t you give up that witch look and wear some color? My mom can find you a nice fiesta dress—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Enough, Luis,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I wanted to meet you here for another reason.”

  “Entra,” he said. “Come in and tell me.”

  Ringo clung to her side as she walked into the living room of the Victorian house.

  “So what do you want?”

  “You know that burglar? I don’t think he was looking for money.”

  “So?”

  She told him about what had happened in the cemetery. “Those guys were looking for something in the coffin. No chance there was any money in there. They were looking for something else.”

  Luis crossed his thick arms across his chest. “That’s Doctora Betsy’s business.”

  “Yeah, but Betsy isn’t here. What if we could help her somehow?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if we could find whatever those guys were looking for? And like—hide it away some place else, where they could never find it.
Because chances are, they’ll be back.”

  Luis grunted. “If they do, I have my cuchillo.”

  “Yeah, but Luis! Even with a knife, you could get hurt. What if these guys have guns? And what if all three of them come at once?”

  “Ringo and I can take ’em.”

  Ringo wagged his tail.

  “Be realistic—”

  “Hey! Look at who is telling me to be realistic. You dress like a witch every day. You more real than I am?”

  Daisy squinted at him. “You are not being helpful, Luis.”

  “I’m here to protect this house from anyone who wants to take something from Betsy. Even you.”

  “But it’s not to hurt her, don’t you see! It’s to protect her—”

  “No. You leave her stuff alone. Come have a cerveza with me, witch girl. I know a place they don’t ask for ID.”

  “You don’t have to spend more than an hour with him,” Daisy pleaded into her cell phone. Someone flushed the toilet next to her, nearly drowning out the voice on the line.

  “It’s like a colossal fav for me—yes, you can take The Red Book home for the weekend, I promise. Yes, I will interview you on my blog. Just—”

  A silence.

  “Jaz! You are terrific. Yes, we’re there now. See you in about forty minutes?”

  Daisy snapped her cell phone shut and left the ladies’ room. She imagined the sensation Jaz would make when she entered. She was a Latina Goth, but she wore tight-fitting red clothes—slinky and sexy. She always had high heels with her in her bag, even in the winter, taking off her snow boots and putting on the black dagger stilettos once she got inside.

  Luis would go crazy over her. The thought made Daisy smile, her tooth glinting.

  The bar was dark, and the sour smell of old beer permeated the air. There were little linoleum-topped tables set in front of two musicians with electric guitars. A Latina waitress, with big hoop earrings and a flouncy orange blouse, sauntered up to their table. Her silver bracelets jangled as she placed two cans of Coke in front of them.

  “Tu especialidad, Luison,” she said, eyeing Daisy. “Hey—it’s Christmas! You still celebrating Halloween?”