Blood Ritual

by Sarah Rayne

  It was some years since he had entered CrnPrag – ‘Closing your eyes to what is within,’ Stefan had said, sneering – but Franz-Josef had always believed it safer for the Family, apart from Stefan, to have as little to do with CrnPrag as possible. There should be no connections made between Varanno and Csejthe or between Csejthe and CrnPrag.

  Finding CrnPrag had been a piece of marvellous good fortune. The first time Franz-Josef had seen it: stark, isolated, surrounded by its own wooded acres and the high walls, he had known instantly that this was the place. At all costs they must have it.

  He could remember the negotiations with CrnPrag’s owner very clearly indeed, although he could not at this distance remember the man’s name. He had been the last scion of some once-rich, once-powerful House, of course. Probably his family had served the Hapsburgs, as most noble families out here had, and probably they had lost money and sons in the wars with the Turks and Prussians. But in the end, all that had been left was the ageing, sad-faced man and the huge old mansion with its rotting panelling and whole walls marbled with fungoid growths from the encroaching damp. The roof had sagged in several places, and there was the unmistakable dank grey stench of dry rot when you entered. A huge liability. The owner had been living in two of the ground-floor rooms, defiant and still arrogant, but for all that he had driven a hard bargain.

  When they went over the house they found that several ceilings had collapsed from the weight of water from the leaking roof, and in some of the rooms windows had fallen out. There were rat droppings everywhere. The sadness of it had gripped Franz-Josef’s vitals.

  People talked volubly about the nouveau riche, but what about the nouveau poor? What about the struggling landowners forced to live in corners of great crumbling houses, seeing decay overcome what had once been splendour, moving from room to room to keep one step ahead of the decay.

  The purchase of CrnPrag had taken place long before the days of welfare states in any country, but Franz-Josef thought that, even today, CrnPrag’s sad proud owner would have been given no help. He had belonged to the strange half-world of impoverished nobility, where income from rents had dwindled to virtually nothing as tenants bought their own land. You could not live off an ancient title any more than you could live off bricks and mortar, and CrnPrag’s owner had long since reached the last ditch: sending to the auction houses paintings and silver and tapestries and, in the end, finally and inevitably trying to sell an impractical, half-ruined house that no one could afford and no one wanted. It was every man’s right to own his house and his piece of land if he wished – Franz-Josef knew himself to have been ahead of his time in supporting this view – but tenant purchase bore hardly on the great landowners. It bore hardly on European heritage as well, when private collections must perforce be broken up to be sold, and when the great houses of Hungary and Romania rotted where they stood for lack of money to maintain them.

  CrnPrag’s owner had signed the Deed of Conveyance with tears streaming down his face, and when Franz-Josef had held out his hand in the age-old gesture of sealing a deal with a handshake, the man had been unable to reciprocate. Stefan had shrugged and turned away, saying afterwards that the creature should have been thankful for such an easy, profitable sale of his rat-infested hulk, but Franz-Josef had found it difficult to put the man’s distress from his mind. He had wanted to visit him in the small, characterless house several miles distant where the man would be living, but he had never done so.

  The Family had restored CrnPrag in secrecy, rebuilding and renewing it with care. They had not used local labour because local people would talk, and for CrnPrag to work it must be feared by those in its shadow. It must be shrouded in dark legend and sinister myth, so that even the most curious would not dare approach it. And so they had brought in teams of artisans from beyond the mountains: bricklayers and stonemasons and carpenters from Moldavia and the land then called Wallachia in the South. They had been sworn to secrecy; hints of an anonymous house being made ready for royalty had been made. Preserve the secrecy and you will be well rewarded.

  It had worked very well. The workers had been permitted to bring their wives, and a small, completely contained community had sprung up. It had been an easy matter to house them all in the cluster of rather tumbledown but weatherproof cottages in the grounds. No one in the surrounding villages had known or guessed what was being done; CrnPrag stood behind high walls, at the centre of its own wooded acres, and there had been no mingling of the workmen with the locals. In any case, they spoke different languages, and in any case, they had their own people. There was even a pair of village fools with them: brothers, perhaps twins, small, stunted creatures with thick doughy skins and a fund of half-childish, half-malicious tricks and songs and sly, capering dances.

  And when the work was completed and CrnPrag had risen phoenix-like, there had been a celebration, rather in the manner of farmers celebrating a harvest home, or vintners a vendange. Food and wine for everyone. Music and dancing. One of the dwarf-creatures had played the fiddle and there had been raucous laughter at the antics of the other one. CrnPrag had echoed with laughter and music and the scent of roasting meats and spiced wine had mingled with the pine scents of the mountain forests.

  And all the while, the Family had been outside, concealed in the shadows, listening and waiting, peering through the half-open doors. They had known that there would come a moment when the carefully doctored wine would overcome the revellers, when they would sink, exhausted and dizzy, on to the floor.

  When the moment came, they had pounced, going into the centre of the candlelit hall, falling on the befuddled workers and plying the knives and the razors.

  Franz-Josef, driving through the overcast afternoon, felt his mind go back across the years, until he was in the great central hall of CrnPrag on that remarkable night, with the candles flickering wildly, and the frightened faces of the workmen. They had fought only briefly, their senses blunted, the suddenness of the attack overpowering them. But there had been a brief space when the women had screamed and the men had pushed them into a corner in a pitiful attempt to protect them.

  We overcame their feeble resistance, of course, thought Franz-Josef. We had the advantage of surprise and the ease born of long practice in murder. And the poor peasant creatures had been bred to feudalism. They were too much in awe of us to fight properly.

  Blood had poured and puddled on to the stone floor and dripped from the edges of the long banqueting table. Here and there the walls had been splashed. As the terrified workers began to die, Franz-Josef had heard his own people begin to sing Elizabeth’s strange, tuneless chant, handed down over the centuries:

  ‘The blood never failed me yet . . . Never failed me yet . . .

  It lifts me from the dead.

  Never failed me yet . . . Never failed me yet . . .

  Though I die, I shall live . . .’

  The most vivid memory of all was of Bianca. She had sprung on to one of the tables, among the spilled debris of food and wine, completely naked, catlike and sensuous and beautiful. Her white limbs were already glistening with fresh blood, and her eyes blazed with sexual ecstasy. She had lifted one of the old earthenware pots – one of Elizabeth’s own – and poured the fresh warm blood down over her body, turning slightly so that the candlelight cast its eerie glow on her. Franz-Josef could remember how he had paused and stared and thought: that is exactly how Elizabeth would have looked.

  The only ones to escape had been the stunted fool-creatures, Ficzko and his brother, Janos. They had found them the next day, crouching at the bottom of a cupboard together, trembling like animals; they had taken them back to Varanno as servants. Bianca had let them take part in some of the rituals. Enough to give them a little of their own longevity. Enough to keep them grateful. It was the only way to get and keep loyal servants.

  Over the decades, CrnPrag had woven its own cocoon. It had been absurdly easy to spread the rumours that would keep people from prying. In the nineteenth centu
ry, the villagers around CrnPrag had been simple and unsophisticated, and Romania and Hungary had ever been steeped in legend and lore. The villagers had listened, round-eyed, to the whispers of the devil Ordog walking again; of black cats who served him; of the goddess Mielliki, and of half-human creatures who could be summoned at full moon. There had grown up a belief that CrnPrag was a doorway to a dark world inhabited by ancient forest gods.

  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the madnesses and suicides and the morganatic marriages that rocked the Hapsburg Empire had made the task even easier. They had spread rumours of bastards and pretenders born in secrecy. Romantic, Dumas-type legends that had been believed. Even poor imbecilic monarchs hidden away for their own and their country’s good.

  It had been this last that had given Stefan the idea of turning a small part of the house into an asylum for the incurably insane. The modern layer of their armour, he had said, his lips curved in a smile but his eyes cold. And so the notion of the dark old madhouse behind the iron gates had grown up, almost of its own accord. People avoided CrnPrag; they averted their eyes when they spoke of it. No one had ever questioned what lay beyond the iron gates and behind the high walls.

  But it had not been until the beginning of the present century that Tranz had been conceived.

  The creation of Tranz had been a stroke of genius. Even now, ninety or so years after its conception, Franz-Josef felt a shiver of awe, because Tranz had needed no adapting or shaping. It had been there, ready-tailored, the edges neatly trimmed, the surfaces buffed smooth, as if it had lain dormant somewhere for a very long time, moulding and polishing itself ready for their exact purpose.

  An organisation, not so very large, apparently dedicated to giving sanctuary to those fleeing from violence or invasion. Actually doing just that for much of the time. It was a marvellous disguise, and it was a true one; from the first, Tranz had employed a small team of people to bring to CrnPrag the victims of war and revolution. There had been servants of the Romanovs after the revolution in Russia: not the Tsars themselves, of course, but many of their court. Later there had been Jews fleeing from Hitlerite Germany and Poland. People were more aware of world events by then and travel was becoming easier. There was wireless and there were newspapers and it had been necessary to strengthen CrnPrag’s latest mask. The carefully chosen group of men and women had continued Tranz’s work, and the Family had kept a close eye on them, never allowing too many of the group to meet, using mostly volunteers, people of widely differing backgrounds and nationalities. There was a strict watch kept on the families and the friends of the workers, and there was a private rule that workers must not get together on a social level. There must be no cosy meetings where notes might be compared and dangerous conclusions drawn. Divide and rule.

  In the nineteen thirties and forties, Stefan Bathory had let it be believed that Himmler’s Gestapo had requisitioned CrnPrag. A place where Mengele practised his gruesome experiments. A place where Adolf Hitler’s mad vision of a Super Race might be realised. Franz-Josef had once or twice wondered whether Stefan had in truth made some kind of deal with Mengele. More recently they had let slip whispers of a wing dedicated to caring for those mutilated or diseased from atomic accidents. It was a believable story; Chernobyl was not far distant. Tranz and CrnPrag were chameleons, both of them adapting easily to world events.

  At present CrnPrag housed homeless Bosnians, forced out of their countries by ruthless warlords. Tranz was diligent in helping the fleeing families and in bringing them through the war-torn areas of Hercegovina and across Hungary.

  ‘But anonymously,’ Stefan Bathory always told the handful of dedicated workers. ‘The head of Tranz is someone very well known, very prominent on the world stage. It would not do for him – perhaps it might be a her – to be seen to have any political affinities. It might have far-reaching consequences. It is essential that you work in as much secrecy as possible. Anyone found speaking to the media will be dealt with very severely.’

  Another master-stroke. Tranz’s workers had instantly assumed that Tranz was headed and funded by a world leader or a member of royalty. Exactly as Stefan had intended. In the days when news reports on the activities of Amnesty and the International Red Cross were commonplace, Tranz went unnoticed.

  And so now it was Bosnians who were kept inside CrnPrag, grateful for food and shelter and warmth, too shocked and distressed to question who their rescuers were; sometimes even too bewildered to know which country they had been brought to.

  Franz-Josef frowned as he drove down the mountain road. There must be no sentiment. Tranz took what it could, trawling the war-torn countries over the years. There was always something somewhere, and Tranz was just big enough to be able to bring them all out of their war-torn lands, but just small enough to escape the eye of the media. It worked extraordinarily well.

  And in reality CrnPrag was what it had always been: a storehouse, a vast blood reservoir. Tranz was a gigantic fishing net, bringing to the Family the one thing it must have to survive. Living blood for the rituals.

  Night had fallen on Varanno when Bianca Bathory woke, stretched like a cat in the bed, and turned to regard her still-slumbering companion. Like most young men, Ladislas’s performance had fallen a bit short of his promise, but it had been fun to seduce him. Beneath his suavity, Ladislas had been discernibly awed at being beckoned to by Franz-Josef’s lady. Bianca had rather enjoyed this.

  He had come like a lamb to her bed. He would never equal Franz-Josef because no one ever would, but he had made an amusing diversion for a few nights and it was always fun to intrigue.

  Ladislas stirred and half opened his eyes. Beneath the sheets, he was hardening into arousal against her thigh again. It was a pity that young men tended to give you short sharp love-making three or four times over, instead of containing themselves for one or two beautifully lengthy episodes, which Bianca would have preferred, but people’s attention-span for everything was short these days. Bianca could remember when love-making – the real thing – had ranked very highly in the social arts. Young men of good family were tactfully introduced to older women – frequently high-class courtesans or their fathers’ discarded mistresses – and taught to make love in the same way they were taught to ride a horse and dance gracefully and make polite conversation. Courteous manners and considerate behaviour had been expected to extend to the bedchamber, and it had been considered very discourteous indeed to reach a climax before your partner. It was a pity that the world had adopted other manners now. The trouble with the young now was that they did not think there was anything to learn about love-making: they thought you just did it.

  At her side, Ladislas murmured something and slid his hand over her breasts and down between her thighs. He had achieved a full arousal at last, instead of the half-mast affair of their earlier encounter, and he was hard and insistent. With any luck he would remember what she had taught him about control.

  He did remember it, and afterwards Bianca lay waiting for him to drift into half sleep, because this would be the moment to find out about Pietro; this would be the moment when Ladislas would be off his guard. She would introduce the matter lightly and casually, her voice deliberately blurred with sleep. A count of twenty should she make it? One, two, three—

  But as she reached twelve he forestalled her. He said, ‘Bianca, my father believes that Franz-Josef is failing,’ and Bianca, who had been expecting anything other than this, turned to stare at him in horror.

  She had thought that no one had known. She had not even been sure if Franz-Josef himself knew.

  To begin with she had dismissed it, because it was unthinkable and unbearable that Franz-Josef, the cool, enigmatic aristocrat she had married so very many years ago, should succumb to the slow erosion, the metamorphosis. What he himself had once called the disenchanting. Oh God, how shall I bear seeing it happen? But the signs were unmistakable. The faint fastidious disgust at the rituals in Csejthe; the waning of sexual excitement at th
ose rituals. The blood is turning against him, Bianca had thought and, almost without conscious thought, had begun to draw attention away from him and on to herself. She had heard the whispers of exhibitionism and vulgarity and laced mutton – that last was an eighteenth-century expression of course, but astonishingly explicit. And none of it had mattered, because all that mattered was to protect Franz-Josef for as long as possible.

  You have had more lovers than you can count, my dear, he had said to her once, the faint, amused tolerance in his eyes, and it was true. She had taken and discarded more lovers than she could remember over the decades. Just as he had.

  But never one to match you, my love. . . There would never be anyone quite like him. He had dazzled her from the very first, and she had stayed dazzled. She had never failed to experience a surge of almost indecent triumph at entering the Family’s banqueting halls on his arm; at hearing the sudden hush and seeing the Family turn respectfully to watch his leisured progress to the place set for him at the head of the table. He never failed in the small courtesies to her, especially in public. The unfolding of her napkin, the adjusting of her chair, the pouring of wine into her glass. They were tricks, of course; beneath it he was as wild and as rapacious as his ancestress had been. But he possessed a veneer of quite remarkable urbanity which you sensed rather than actually saw. Silk over iron. It was an extraordinarily alluring mixture.

  But for all his allure, for all his strength, he was failing, he was succumbing to the disenchanting. Elizabeth, you never lived to discover the true power of the blood, thought Bianca. But we discovered it, and your legacy was more remarkable than ever you knew. Immortality. But after a time, even immortality betrays us.

  Soon the signs would become visible: the shrivelling of skin, the dulling of eyes and hair. And once that happened, the Family would fling Franz-Josef out like the wolvish creatures they were. They would throw him into Csejthe with the other gerons, and they would snarl at one another’s throats over his successor before even the door had closed. I don’t think I shall bear it.