Blood Ritual

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Here! Michael. I’m over here – on your left! Oh hurry—’ The guards who had been holding her let go without warning, and ran across the hall, hitting out at the surging frenzied creatures, making for the cowering gerons at the far side. Hilary sped across the hall, dodging the ragged, mad-eyed creatures as she went, and tumbled into Michael’s arms, sobbing and gasping.

  ‘You’re safe, lady, it’s all right— I’ve got you.’

  Nothing had ever been so safe, so familiar, so utterly and absolutely right as the feeling of his arms closing around her. Even in the midst of the maelstrom of noise and confusion and rocketing terror, Hilary thought: oh yes, this is where I’m supposed to be. There was the remembered feel of his skin, rough and a bit unshaven, and the clean masculine scent all round her. Hilary wanted to run out with him into the safe dark night beyond Csejthe, but she said, ‘There’s no time to explain any of it, but Catherine’s here, she’s chained up, and we must get her out. And Pietro— Oh God, Michael, Pietro’s in Elizabeth’s cage—’

  ‘Yes. All right. If they can be got out we’ll do it.’ He took her hand firmly and held out the stick with his other hand as if he could see with it. ‘What’s happening? Are the CrnPrag people fighting them?’

  ‘What?’ Hilary found his sudden understanding of what was happening bewildering. But she scanned the hall hastily, and said, ‘Yes, they’re falling on the corpse-things – Pál and Anna and the others. It’s – oh Michael, it’s rather horrible. They’re crouching in a corner, terrified— one of them’s screaming – I think it’s Anna.’

  ‘Serve them right,’ said Michael callously. ‘Jesus, yes I can hear her. Where’s Catherine exactly? Can we get to her without going across the centre?’ He frowned, as if painting himself a mind-picture of the hall. ‘What about going round the edges? Against the wall?’

  ‘Yes, we could do that. Couldn’t we, Tobias?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Right. Hold on to me for grim death as we go,’ he said. ‘Tobias?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Good man.’ Michael put out his free hand for Tobias. ‘Now: all for one and one for all. Hilary, for the love of every saint in heaven, don’t let go of me!’ The familiar grin flashed out, and Hilary stared at him and felt a wild surge of joy. ‘We’re simply going to walk round the sides of this godforsaken hole and grab Catherine and carry her out. Bodily if we have to. Pietro as well if we can get him out of – what did you say he was in?’

  ‘He’s in a cage,’ said Hilary, knowing it sounded absurd.

  ‘In a cage? Dear God,’ said Michael. ‘All right. Take my hand, lady. And if you want to take it for the rest of your life, it’s yours. But we’ll talk about that afterwards. Ready? Now then!’

  Elizabeth’s song was filling up the hall, and the CrnPrag lunatics were streaming everywhere. Catherine, torn between agony for Pietro and anguish about what would happen, thought there were easily sixty or seventy of them. CrnPrag’s inmates? All mad, thought Catherine, staring at them. And Orsolya the maddest of them all. She taught them Elizabeth’s song, and I believe she taught them Elizabeth’s hungers, as well. That’s how Elizabeth would have looked, thought Catherine, staring at Orsolya. Her eyes went involuntarily to the dead enigmatic thing in the coffin and she shivered. It was eerie beyond imagining to crouch in a corner of Csejthe Castle, watching Elizabeth’s blood ritual acted out, with the dead Countess herself presiding over it.

  Catherine shuddered and turned back to the hall. The lunatics were falling on the guards and advancing on Stefan and the rest of the Family. Catherine could see her mother and Franz-Josef near to the silver coffin, both of them trying to find a way through the screaming whirling mass of people. Franz-Josef looked across at Catherine, and she thought he was trying to shout something to her and gesture at Pietro, but the shrieking of the lunatics blotted out almost every other sound.

  Bianca brought them here, thought Catherine, tearing her nails into bloodied ribbons in her struggle to break free, uncaring and unfeeling of the pain. Somehow she got them out of CrnPrag and led them up the mountain path. Did Michael Devlin help her to do that? It’s a rescue, thought Catherine, wildly. But is it enough? Are there enough of them? Oh God, if ever I prayed to You, I’m praying now. Let Orsolya’s people be strong enough to fight Stefan and Ladislas and the rest. Let them be sane enough . . . And then with sudden understanding: no! Let them be mad enough. Because this is the superhuman strength of real madness, this is the unearthly strength of dementia, the strength that bows only to straight-jackets and barred cells . . . If they were never mad before, please let them be so now, prayed Catherine.

  Orsolya bounded to the centre of the hall and stood there for a moment, clad in the rough, no-colour CrnPrag shift, her stance that of an animal ready to pounce, her feet slightly apart, the muscles quivering, her shoulders hunched. Her fingers had curled into predator’s talons and her eyes darted incessantly from side to side. Which way to spring? Which one to pounce on? Which one to take first? She was like an insect ready to dart at its prey, an animal quivering before the final spring . . .

  Stefan and Ladislas turned to meet the onslaught, and the Family moved to stand with them. They don’t believe what is happening, but they’ll fight it all the same, thought Catherine. She wanted to scream with the frustration of not being able to reach Pietro.

  Orsolya, her eyes red and feral, leapt straight at Stefan, knocking him backwards. There was a sickening crunch as the back of his head hit the ground, and Orsolya gave a wild, triumphant screech and crouched on him, tearing at this throat with her nails. Bright red arterial blood spurted out, and Catherine knew that Orsolya had clawed open the jugular vein, and that Stefan would die almost instantly.

  ‘The blood—’ shrieked Orsolya, lifting her head. ‘Take the blood!’ At once the lunatics bounded forward, tumbling on to the horrified Family, cutting and slashing at them with their makeshift weapons: their knives and trowels and scissors. They sang Elizabeth’s song as they went, and the sound lifted the hairs on Catherine’s scalp. The hall was becoming fetid with terror and madness and hideous with the screams of the gerons. As Orsolya’s lunatics slashed and stabbed, the stench of blood rose on the air in thick, coppery waves.

  Orsolya was still crouching over the unconscious Stefan, her face in his neck, but as Catherine watched, Orsolya lifted her head. Her mouth and her jaw were smothered in fresh, warm blood; it dripped from her lips and she threw back her head and smeared her hands over her face, and ran her flattened palms down over her body.

  ‘The blood . . . Never failed us yet . . .

  Never failed us yet, sisters . . .

  Though we die, we can live . . .’

  Skirting the edges of the heaving screaming mass of blood and pain and fear was like walking along the shores of a boiling spitting sea. Hilary was very frightened indeed. But Michael was with her, and Tobias, and it had to be done. She took a deep breath and felt Michael’s hand tighten about hers.

  The stench of the spilled blood was like a solid wall in the hot crowded hall and Hilary felt her mouth fill with bile, the prelude to actual sickness. Her stomach lurched.

  ‘Are we reaching Catherine?’ shouted Michael above the screaming and the singing. ‘Hilary, where are we? I need to know exactly where we are. Keep talking.’

  Hilary gulped and forced her mind to concentrate. If you concentrated fiercely on something vital your mind would not let your body betray you. She said, ‘We’re nearly there.’

  ‘How far? Hilary, how far?’

  He might be doing it to stop her from throwing up there and then or he might not. Whatever his reasons, Hilary was feeling better. She swallowed hard and the nausea receded. ‘Twenty feet or so. No one’s taking any notice of us.’ Yes, this was better. Narrow your mind to the task in hand.

  Michael said, ‘Good girl! Keep going, my love! Ever onwards and upwards!’ Again there was the grin. She was not going to be sick after all.

  Catherine wa
s still chained to the wall and as the three of them went warily forward, Hilary saw with delight that Bremner and Burghen had broken free as well. Bremner’s cheek had been laid open by someone’s knife and blood was soaking into his jacket, and Burghen looked as if he had been punched several times, but they were both free. There appeared to be some kind of hasty consultation, and then Burghen made off towards the door that led to the dungeons, and Bremner began pushing his way towards Catherine.

  The lunatics paid them no attention. They had surrounded the Family and they were slashing and cutting wildly, leaping on to the nearest and bringing down knives and razors until the blood flowed. Hilary spared them a glance, and thought that although there did not seem to be very much method about what they were doing, they were being astonishingly effective. Blood was pouring from dozens of stab wounds, here and there spurting in a gruesome fountain as a main artery was cut.

  And then as if a signal had been given, the lunatics linked hands and began to dance in a circle about the wounded Family, forming a mad crazed pattern, going round and round. Most of the Family were injured and blood smeared the floor and lay in puddles everywhere. Bianca and Franz-Josef were still on the other side, and Hilary thought that neither of them had been injured, but she could not be sure. She found herself hoping very strenuously that they would both escape.

  Every few minutes, the lunatics stopped abruptly in their leaping flying dance and crouched to scoop up the blood, wiping it over their skins, the women thrusting bloodied fingers into their hair.

  ‘We shall live for ever and ever and ever and ever—’

  ‘The blood, the blood—’

  ‘Feel it, feel the blood’s kiss—’

  They paid Hilary and the two men no attention at all.

  Bremner reached Catherine first and Hilary saw him deal the nearest guard a mighty punch to the jaw. The man staggered and fell back and Bremner bent over him, snatching up the bunch of keys at the man’s waist. As Hilary and Tobias knelt to help, Bremner said brusquely. ‘The keys – here—’ He threw them into her hands. ‘Unlock her and get her out. I’ll try to reach her brother—’

  ‘Pray God one of them fits,’ said Michael. ‘Tobias—?’

  ‘I’ll help Bremner,’ said Tobias.

  ‘Will you? Come on, then. Burghen’s gone down to the dungeons to see if he can find the chief.’

  ‘Oh God yes, Wagner—’ said Hilary, who was fumbling with the keys, trying one after the other. Oh God, why are there so many?

  Bremner had straightened up and was scanning the hall to find the safest path across it, but Catherine grabbed Hilary’s arm, and pointed. ‘Pietro! Hilary, he’s over there! He’s free! Help him!’

  ‘Dear God, yes! Bremner, can you reach him? While I free Catherine, can you reach him? Oh, why are there so many keys to this thing!’

  Pietro’s face was white; his eyes were dazed and he was bleeding from a dozen different lacerations. But he had somehow fought his way out of the terrible cage, and he was struggling to get across the hall.

  To Catherine, thought Hilary, staring at him, I don’t believe he even sees anyone else. She turned back to the keys, trying one after the other, her hands shaking with panic and the need for speed.

  As Bremner and Tobias started forward to Pietro, Orsolya leapt on to the oaken table, chanting Elizabeth’s song and holding out her arms. Her eyes were rinsed of any sanity they might once have possessed, and she whirled into the mad flying dance of the others, knocking aside the silver platters and chalices that had been set out for the ceremony.

  Her flying feet caught the branched candlesticks and sent them tumbling straight into the dry dusty swathes of the wall hangings.

  The fire burned up instantly, catching the centuries-old fabric of the castle, flaring the tapestries into blazing life, and reaching up to lick the ceiling rafters. Within minutes, the great hall was a conflagration.

  The lunatics were screaming wildly, clawing at one another in panic, and the Family were crawling and dragging themselves to the door, leaving sticky slimed trails of blood as they went. Hilary saw Ladislas make for the little door that led to the sculleries, but even as he did so, a new path of fire sprang up and barred his way. He flinched and turned back, stark terror in his eyes.

  Black smoke was filling the hall, and the flames had reached the ceiling beams: burning chunks of wood were falling everywhere.

  With a prayer of relief, Hilary felt the next key turn in the locks of Catherine’s gyves, and as the chains slithered open, Catherine bounded forward towards Pietro.

  Hilary caught her arm and pulled her back. ‘No! We can get out through the courtyard! Come this way—’

  Catherine shook off her arm furiously, her eyes blazing.

  ‘Pietro!’ she cried. ‘I must reach Pietro!’

  ‘No!’ cried Michael, reaching out instinctively. ‘Hell and the devil. I can’t see! Hilary, stop her!’

  Hilary had already grabbed both of Catherine’s arms, but Catherine shook her off and turned to plunge straight into the raging fire. Hilary took a deep breath and made to go after her and felt Michael drag her back at once.

  ‘No! You’ll be burned to a crisp! We’ll all be burned! That’s a raging torment in there – I can hear it and I can feel it! Come out!’

  ‘But Catherine . . .’ She stopped, seeing that Catherine was already beyond her reach, understanding for the first time that Catherine would have gone to Pietro through worse dangers than fire.

  A face you would go to the stake for . . .

  As Catherine ran across the hall, Elizabeth Bathory’s coffin, dislodged by the heat and the furious fighting, began to topple slowly forward. Hilary felt the breath catch her throat, because Catherine seemed to be going straight into its path.

  And then a cascading shower of sparks from overhead fell on to the coffin, and there was the sudden crackling of dry, old linen catching fire. The thing that had once terrorised the countryside for miles around, the creature that had laid dormant in its shroud for four and a half centuries, blazed up in a single blinding sheet of flame.

  Pietro flinched from the sudden heat, throwing up his hands to shield his face, and then ran forward again.

  As Catherine fell into his arms, the silver coffin, the ancient grisly casket with the blazing remains of Elizabeth Bathory inside, toppled forward, crushing them both.

  Michael and Tobias half dragged, half carried Hilary across the courtyard, and although she could hear the fire roaring up behind them, devouring the old castle, and although she could smell the heat and the burning timbers, she could no longer see for the tears, the stupid senseless tears that were streaming down her face.

  They paused for a moment, gulping in huge breaths of the cool clean mountain air, while behind them the castle was lit to blazing life against the night sky.

  Hilary stopped and brushed the back of her hand angrily against her eyes, and forced herself to look back.

  Csejthe could never be saved now. It would be razed to the ground and within its walls were Catherine and Pietro, and Franz-Josef and Bianca. The flames were shooting up into the night sky, illuminating the countryside for miles around. Would the villagers and the hill farmers huddle in their houses as they had done once before, and tell each other that the legend was dead at last?

  Because tonight Csejthe was dying; it was burning and within its heart, burned the Blood Countess’s descendants.

  And the body of Elizabeth herself burned with them.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Hilary sat with Michael, Armand Wagner and Tobias in Reverend Mother’s study. One of the scullery nuns had built up the fire, and Sister Margaret, beaming, had brought in a platter of sandwiches, because there were to be Men present, and Men had to be fed. There was a tray with a coffee pot and cups on it, together with a pair of very beautiful cut-glass Venetian decanters holding brandy and whisky.

  ‘A small gift that I brought with me when I came to St Luke’s,’ Reverend Mother said tra
nquilly, pouring brandy into exquisite goblets. ‘Mr Devlin you will take a little brandy?’

  ‘I will indeed.’ Michael held out his hand, not fumblingly or impatiently, but sharply and cleanly, waiting for her to place the glass in his hand. Hilary watched. Three more days until he entered Istvan’s clinic for the operation. He might almost have forgotten about it. He had already begun dictating everything that had happened on to the small dictaphone. ‘A book,’ he had said, with one of his sudden grins. ‘Or at the very least, a good long TV documentary. This is much too rich to waste on a single article. They’re all dead, so no one’s going to be hurt.’

  Armand Wagner sat next to Michael; he was pale and there was still an ugly bruise on his temple where Janos had struck him and raw patches of skin on his arms where Burghen had dragged him out of Csejthe’s dungeons, but he accepted the brandy appreciatively and sat back. Hilary was very glad indeed that Burghen had got him out.

  Tobias was entirely at ease. He had shaken hands with Reverend Mother and appeared to be finding his surroundings of immense interest. ‘A very beautiful place, your convent,’ he had said solemnly. ‘Much history.’

  ‘Some of it rather violent, I am afraid,’ said Reverend Mother, but Tobias had replied seriously that history was a mixture anyway; that was what made it so interesting. He sat in a wide chair by the fire, sipping his brandy with evident enjoyment, a look of pleased expectancy on his round face.

  Reverend Mother took charge in her own way, saying composedly that the Convent had commenced a series of Masses for the repose of the souls who had died at Csejthe, and Michael said, ‘Of course,’ as if this were an everyday thing and to be expected. ‘Tell me, was the castle completely burned?’ he said, and Wagner paused, marshalling his thoughts before answering.

  ‘There is very little left,’ he said at last. ‘We sent people in as soon as we could, and some of the ground floor rooms are still intact. The sculleries at the rear and the stable block. But everything else perished.’

  ‘Including the people inside,’ said Michael, half to himself, and Wagner made a quick gesture as if to say it had been inevitable.