Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory

by Craft, Kimberly

  The court at Csejthe was considerably smaller and less distinguished than that of Sárvár or Kerezstúr. Approximately twenty to thirty people cared for the fields and vineyards, and records indicate that matters related to agriculture and livestock were exceptionally well-organized. For the local families, raising their daughters to hold a position as a court seamstress, maid, or household assistant was a great honor. Each applicant had to be personally recommended for her skill.

  The household staff at Castle Csejthe was considerably smaller than that of Sárvár, as well. History records the names of the Countess’ administrative staff there: her court master who oversaw all of the estates was a man named Benedikt Deseö (or Benedek Deszo). The Countess knew Deseö from Castle Sárvár and brought him with her to head up Csejthe. In addition to the staff at the other properties, Deseö oversaw a number of assistants at Csejthe: Castellans Michael Horwath and Janós Andachy; Dániel Vas, the stable master; Provisor, Michael Herwoyth; Cellar Master, Mátyás Sakathyartho; and Steward Jakob Szilvassy, who also administered castles Leka and Keresztúr. István Vagy also assisted the main staff, as did Balthizar (Baldisar) Poby, both from Sárvár, and another man by the name of Kozma.

  Deseö supervised what is known as the “Lord’s Staff” of men who maintained castle security, ran the house and stables, and provided accounting and administrative services for the Countess. Meanwhile, the Countess maintained her small, personal retinue of accomplices that headed up the “Lady’s Staff” of female servants, including kitchen staff, seamstresses, maids, washerwomen and female attendants. Of course, the majority of tortured and murdered servants would be taken from this female staff. Anna Darvolya and Dorottya Szentes supervised the Lady’s Staff, in addition to János Újváry (Ficzkó), Ilona Jó Nagy; and Katalin Beneczky. In time, all but the deceased Anna Darvolya would be brought in chains to Bytča to defend themselves on criminal charges of torture and murder, while the Countess remained under house arrest awaiting her own fate.

  Court Master Benedikt Deseö is an interesting character. Of the 306 depositions gathered during the proceedings against Countess Báthory, we learn that only eight people had access to actually witness her torturing sessions: her accomplices (Anna, Fizckó, Dorottya, Ilona Jó, and Katalin) certainly, a lady-in-waiting named Ilona Zalay, and then Benedikt Deseö and Jakob Szilvassy. Deseö had an additional connection to the Countess: he was one of eleven trusted men who witnessed and signed her Will in 1610. Janós Ficzkó claimed that Deseö knew the most of anyone regarding what went on behind closed doors; and yet, he never spoke of it to anyone.

  Years later, when Benedikt Deseö finally admitted to what he knew, it must have shocked the court.

  . . . . .

  Having entered the Lady’s private chamber to report on castle business, Deseö was somewhat startled to see the Countess with one of her young maids in hand. He knew the girl, a child named Ilonka, who was the daughter of the local shoemaker. The child was crying, evidently terrified. Somewhat embarrassed, he immediately turned back toward the door, when the Countess called out to him.

  “Don’t leave us, Benedikt. I want you to watch this.”

  He stopped and turned back around slowly.

  “This girl,” the Countess said testily, “needs a lesson in discipline.”

  The Lady suddenly began tearing the clothing from the girl until she was stripped completely naked. Screaming now, the child huddled on her knees, begging and crying, while the Countess retrieved a dagger.

  “She is so clumsy with her hands,” the Countess went on. “She can’t do anything right at all.”

  The Lady grabbed first the right hand of the girl and then stuck the blade into each of her fingers, one at a time: “She can’t seem—to use—her—fingers—properly!”

  As the girl continued screaming and crying, the Countess grabbed her other hand and again began stabbing each finger in turn: “Maybe this—will—help—loosen—your fingers, dear.”

  The girl fell to the floor, clutching her bleeding hands as the Countess slowly swirled around her. Deseö found himself inching back toward the door.

  “Mmm,” the Countess mused, “Maybe it’s not your fingers, after all, is it, dear. Maybe it’s your arms.”

  She appeared to study the sobbing girl for a moment, and then suddenly reached out and grabbed the child’s right arm. She began plunging the knife in repeatedly, straight up the arm. Blood pooled around each wound as the girl struggled to get away. The Countess grabbed her hair, jerking her head back, and then began knifing her way up the other arm.

  Huddled on the floor now, the girl struggled to rise on her bleeding hands.

  “Maybe it’s not your arms, after all,” the Countess mused, again pretending to study her.

  She then went and secured a long crop. She stood over the girl for a moment and suddenly began lashing her violently and repeatedly on the back.

  “Maybe the problem is right here!” she screamed, “on the back of the lazy, good-for-nothing little whore that you are!”

  Each time the girl tried to crawl away, the terrible pain in her arms and hands caused her to stumble forward. The Countess grabbed her by the hair and began thrashing her again, this time on her legs, thighs, belly and breasts—wherever the crop happened to land in the bloody assault. She also leveled the blows directly into the wounds on the girl’s arms and hands, causing her to scream until she lost her voice. Blood, including chunks of flesh, splattered the floor and walls.

  Hair disheveled, eyes flashing white behind black pupils, the Countess went and retrieved a burning candle next. The girl was lying on the floor moaning now and on the verge of passing out.

  “Don’t go into shock yet, dear,” she said. “We’re not done with you.”

  The Countess put the flaming candle directly into her hands, causing her to revive momentarily in a new wave of screams. When the eyes rolled back in the head, the Countess held the flame to the hands again until they were burned black.

  Deseö watched the torturing continue in this manner until the girl finally died.

  . . . . .

  Deseö saw other incidents, as well. He also saw how a girl’s lips were pierced on two sides with needles, thus fastening her mouth shut; when she moved her tongue between her lips to let it extend out, the tongue was also perforated with a needle. In fact, the Court Master said that he had seen “countless cases in which girls were made to stand naked before Lady Bathory as she beat them.”

  The scene repeated over and over, as follows:

  The girl accused of sewing too slowly or making long or clumsy stitches was stripped naked and made to stand before the Countess. The Countess held either an iron bar or a heavy cudgel in her hands as she paraded past the shivering, sobbing servant.

  “Hold out your hand,” she commanded.

  Wincing, the girl obeyed, only to have the hand struck hard.

  If she screamed and pulled the hand back, the Countess would demand, “Hold out your hand and keep it out!”

  If the girl shook her head or begged for mercy, the Countess would go into a rage and pummel her. In any case, the hands and fingernails would be smashed and beaten repeatedly until they became swollen, infected, and broken. The Lady then threw needle, thread and fabric at the girl.

  “Sew, you whore!”

  Unable to raise her hand or move the broken fingers, the sobbing girl cried for mercy.

  The Countess now turned to Deseö and her attendants who were standing by.

  “What a useless, spoiled whore she is. She can’t even sew!”

  And then, in a rage, she began shoving the needle into the girl’s arm repeatedly, straight up to her shoulder. When the girl tried to wriggle away, the Countess immediately went for her whip or crop, flogging her over and over.

  . . . . .

  “She withheld water from many of them until they became very thirsty,” Deseö told the court reporter. “When she eventually and finally—on on my honor!—brought them water, each o
ne standing naked before her, the hand was held underneath and then used to drink from.”

  When asked by the court officials what else he knew, Deseö said that he heard how the wide fire iron was heated; the girls’ arms were “burned to smoke and ash.”

  “The smaller, round fire iron was also heated,” he added, “until very hot and—on on my honor!--, shoved into their vaginas.”

  One can only imagine the look on the notary’s face as he took down this information.

  “On one occasion,” Deseö continued, “while traveling in the direction of Bratislava [along with two female attendants in her coach], Ferenc Zemptey gave Lady Báthory two potato pogácsa (Pogatsche in German; a type of sweet appetizer) to take along. The mistress gave these to the German girl to hold. The girl ate one and could therefore no longer present it. As a result, the mistress heated the other until it was very hot, and then shoved it, nearly flaming, into the girl’s mouth. She subjected these two girls to all sorts of different torments until they finally breathed their last.”

  . . . . .

  It is no surprise that Benedikt Deseö gave the longest and most elaborate testimony of all the witnesses, and he expressed remorse over what had happened. Deseö was also close enough to the Countess to try to pursuade her away from her actions. He said that he had begged her to stop the killings for fear that she would be arrested; her reply, essentially, was that she was above the law. By late 1610, he had reached a breaking point. At fifty years of age, Deseö had seen enough and was ready to resign. It was Imre Megyeri, however, who urged him to stay on for just a few more weeks until the Countess was arrested. Megyeri evidently knew of the plan to apprehend her after some time after Christmas.

  Countess Báthory also hired local tradesmen and practitioners, including carpenter Nicolaus Krestyan, craftsman Adam Pollio, doctor and plaster/paver craftsman Ambrosius Borbély, and the apothecary known as Martinus. Although well-educated and versed in the sciences of the time, Erzsébet Báthory had always been fascinated by the occult, often seeking out the services of local peasant women trained in folk medicine and the black arts. Some of these occult arts were quite legitimate: many of these Slovak peasant women, so-called “forest witches,” were trained herbalists who could offer effective, healing medications in a time when doctoring, or barbering, consisted only of battlefield medicine, leeching, amputations, and extractions with iron tools. Other forest witches or town alchemists, however, provided drugs, poisons, magical spells, incantations, oracles and divining devices that fascinated the Countess.

  Servant Janós Zluha was ordered to go into the town of Tirnau and visit the apothecary shop of Doctor Martinus, the local pharmacist. He was given orders from the administrator of Castle Csejthe, on behalf of the Countess, to pick up an order of antimony. In small doses, antimony was used to make cosmetics and also valued as a medicinal folk remedy; in large doses, however, it was highly poisonous.

  When Doctor Martinus learned of how much antimony was desired, he refused to fill the order. János Zluha now had to provide the letter of authority from the castle administrator, and only then would the pharmicist comply. He did so grudgingly, however: “Tell your mistress,” he warned, “that one in possession of such a drug could kill a hundred people if he wanted to!”

  Erzsébet believed in black magic as much as she did diplomacy. István Vagy (Waghy), on staff at her court at Csejthe and Sárvár, confirmed that the Lady “possessed a cake of gray color,[ braided] like a pretzel, which she was obsessed with.” A communion wafer was placed in the middle of the cake. The Lady looked into the wafer to see the image of a person whom she either wished to curse or bless. According to Vagy, “She prayed both against the Palatine, as well as against our King, and also against the judge of the county.” She repeated the following incantation over and over: “Herein show me (the name against whom she prayed), so that I cannot be seen by you, so that you cannot cause any harm against me.” This went on, according to Vagy, for up to an hour and, according to Janós Ficzko, over two.

  Accordingly, Erzsébet Báthory used the cake and wafer to recite curses again the Palatine, the county judge (in some versions, naming Mózes Cziráky personally), and King Mátyás II. Vagy’s description of this simple, ritual-magic ceremony is typical of the period. János Újváry, one of the lead suspects in the murder trial, also alleged witchcraft on the part of the Ladyship, including a plot to poison her enemies. According to him, the Countess would do her conjuring with the assistance of a small box, while seated before the braided mirror cake.

  Rev. Ponikenusz, the pastor at Csejthe, wrote to his superior to advise him that the Countess engaged in the black arts. He claimed that she received assistance not only from a Slovak forest witch called the Mistress of Miava (Erzsi Majorova) but also from “a wicked woman named Torkoss (also Thorko) who resides miles beyond Sárvár,” who once gave her the following advice: “Find a black cat (or hen), kill it with a white stick, keep the blood, and smear it on your enemies. And if not their body, then at least the clothes—and not so stained with blood that your enemy can hurt you more.”

  As girls died and the clergy increasingly resisted or refused proper burials, the castle staff sought to hide the bodies by burying them in secret, and often at night—frequently in the local cemetery, but in other places as well, including gardens, drainage ditches, grain bins, and fruit pits. Of course, this caused even more rumors of witchcraft and black magic to circulate.

  The witnesses, including clergymen, testified uniformly that Anna Darvulia (or Darvolya) was particularly evil. She, in fact, had taught the other servants how to torture girls. János Újváry claimed that she would bind the girls’ arms and hands behind them so tightly that the hands would turn deathly pale. The victims would then be beaten repeatedly—up to 500 times, in some cases—until they died. Dorottya Szentes was also particularly cruel, cutting off girls’ hands or fingers with scissors. It was also claimed that Ilona Jó was so cruel herself that she had specifically been brought from Sárvár to Csejthe to continue her “work” there.

  Any misdeed of duty was an excuse to brutalize or murder the young servant girls. If brushwood was not bundled or the Countess’ garments not properly ironed, if the fire was not set for the night or obligatory sewing and mending not completed by 10:00 p.m., if aprons were not set straight or head coverings out of place, the offending girl would immediately be taken out for torturing. In some cases, girls could be tortured ten times in one day. Benedek Bicsérdy spoke of torturing sessions that went on for over six hours.

  It is clear that the domestic supervisors of female servants, including Anna Darvolya and Dorottya Szentes, performed a great deal of heavy disciplining and that Ilona Jó and János Újvary assisted in the later years. As for how much torturing Countess Erzsébet Báthory herself performed, the witnesses’ responses are interesting. In their initial testimony, the primary accomplices tended to blame each other or, in some cases, Anna Darvolya (who, by then, had died). As they warmed up to the interrogation, however, they began to implicate the Countess directly. They stated that she either commanded them to perform the beatings or would perform them herself.

  For example, Szentes and Ilona Jó stated that, when a girl was reported as having stolen a gold piece, the Countess had the piece heated until red hot and then had it pressed into the girl’s hand. The Countess would stick pins and needles into the girls’ lips or under their fingernails. If the girls cried from the pain, she allegedly said, “Well, if it hurts the whore, then she can pull it out,” but if any of the girls dared remove the needle, the Countess would immediately beat them and cut off the fingers in a rage.

  Once, when Katalin Beneczky had tired from administering an uninterrupted beating, Dorottya and Ilona Jó, who had been watching, started shouting, “Hit her! Hit her again! Harder! Hit her harder!” The victim, already half dead, was finished off when the Countess herself took up a cudgel, supposedly the width of an armchair, and continued with the beating herself. She
would actually have to change her shirts, as they became too blood-soaked to wear.

  Her accomplices stated that she would order János Újváry to strike the girls in the face over and over and would then order them locked up in the coalhouse to be starved for a week. Katalin Beneczky testified seeing Erzsébet take a candle to the private area of one of the girls. Although the majority of torturing took place in the washhouse or kitchen at Csejthe (no doubt, since the blood could be washed away more easily there), Szentes added that once, when the Countess was indisposed in bed, she ordered the offending girl to be brought directly to her bedchamber. There, she grabbed the girl from her bed, biting her on the face and shoulder.

  As mentioned, the Countess also ordered girls to be submerged in freezing water or doused with water in the winter weather. Most died from this treatment.

  Katalin Beneczky recounted another bizarre story that probably took place in October of 1610. When Erzsébet’s daughter, Anna (now Mrs. Zrínyi), was visiting Csejthe, the entire female staff was sent upstairs and ordered to remain there. It may be that the Countess merely wanted them out of sight or out of the way, for the mistreatment that followed appeared to be the sole doing of Dorottya Szentes. Beneczky states that Szentes held the girls “in strict captivity like criminals.” Those who objected received a cold-water dousing and were made to stand naked outside, overnight. Szentes then watched over them carefully, assuring that they be starved as further punishment. When the male servants became aware of this, they tried to sneak food to the girls. Szentes, however, prevented this, watching over the girls so carefully that no one could help: “May the thunder slay anyone who gives them something to eat!”