Look how cold my hands are.
– Last reported words of Báthory Erzsébet
8 August 1560 – 21 August 1614.
Erzsébet was at her desk. “Have you tallied the day’s costs? The fence around the village paddock, the church fees.”
Church fees again.
Costs were relentless for the Báthory estate. And a relentless aggravation.
“Yes, Countess.” The simpleton, Fickó, crinkled his face into a frown. He sat sprawled on the floor with the parchment between his knees.
Erzsébet rubbed at her temple. “And then incomings?”
There were always fewer of those.
She picked at the cold roast lamb on the tray at her elbow and calculated the monies for collection. “Payments owed on our castle at Beckov. Sales from the hemp crops. Use the coarser parchment for your workings, Fickó.”
“Yes, Countess.”
She pulled a quill from the quiver of ink and wiped it on the cloth at her elbow. Then she trimmed the candle wick and returned to her letter.
To Ferenc Batthyány, December 30, 1610
May God bless you in all your endeavours. We are arrived at Csejte manor this eve, not yet advancing to the castle.
In the depth of winter, the castle took longer to warm. Erzsébet would save on firewood if she could.
We saw many of the poor by the roads. But all follow loyally our King and saviour.
She grunted when she wrote that about the king. The Slovak witch, Erzsi Majorova, had taught her many curses. She cursed the king now.
By God’s grace, my health improves. The headaches and visitations of which I wrote previously have lessened.
It was mostly true, though the pain in her left eye was almost constant these days.
I trust it is your considerate words and the careful ministrations of my healer, Anna Darvulia—
“Another letter, Countess?’
Erzsébet jumped. “Anna! I didn’t hear you come in.”
Anna gestured. “I see you write to Batthyány again. Does he write back? Or has his young wife stopped him?”
“Business about our adjoining property.” Erzsébet put a hand across her letter. “And I may write to whomever I please. I am the Countess Báthory. My husband was the greatest war hero in the Kingdom of Hungary. My uncle was King of Poland. I am descended from princes in Transylvania! My daughters’ husbands—”
“You are the most powerful woman in Christendom,” Anna supplied.
“Don’t interrupt!” Erzsébet snapped.
She would punish that impudence in anyone else. But she had never punished Anna. They were closer than sisters.
“Which jewels will you wear, Countess?” Anna asked, as if Erzsébet hadn’t spoken. “You never go anywhere without your jewellery.”
“Go? We only just reached the manor—”
But then she heard the heavy footfall of visitors across the stone floors downstairs.
“Who’s here?”
Some superstition shook her. She slipped a wristlet of emeralds and diamonds over her hand, almost by instinct. As if it might protect her.
“That’s what I came to tell you,” Anna replied with a smile. “It’s the Lord Palatine.”
Erzsébet rose to her full height. “The king’s fool! And you let him into my manor without my permission?”
Anna’s smile was cold. It was always cold. “He is the Palatine.”
Second only to the king in Hungary. If the Palatine were here again so soon, it meant the witch’s curse had failed.
Erzsébet checked the impulse to take out her rage on Anna. To hit her hard across the face and leave a grubby stain of ink and blood.
Anna stood unblinking. She was no more afraid of Erzsébet than a stone is afraid of the sky.
Perhaps that explained why Erzsébet couldn’t hit her. Anna was the only one who didn’t fear the wrath of the Countess of Báthory.
“Light a fire in the drawing room,” Erzsébet commanded.
She crossed to her dresser to check her reflection in the copper mirror. Her dark gown was unbuttoned, her pale undergarments stained with sweat and dust. The ride to Csejte had left her skin pinched and red from icy winds.
She smoothed her hands across her face. “They come at midnight? And on Christmas Eve? Parliament is not in session. Can it even be the king’s business they attend?”
Anna moved behind her. “Perhaps they are charged to deploy the king’s debt to your title, Countess?”
Unlikely. The king had owed the seat of Báthory since before Erzsébet’s husband had died.
But it was unusual for the Palatine to be on the roads so late in the year. She hoped it was only about the fighting, some border breach by the unchristian Turks.
She hoped it wasn’t about the allegations against her. Surely she had convinced Thurzó an investigation was unwarranted.
She reached for the powders below her mirror and smoothed a pale tincture across her cheeks. She looked old. It had been a hard year and the king’s debt weighed heavily.
“With what the king owes the seat of Báthory, I could buy nineteen castles. Nineteen!”
“Or you could afford to keep the castles you have,” Anna said. “No more begging Batthyány for assistance.”
“That is not what I was doing!” Erzsébet snapped.
But it was true, she relied on her neighbours more than she wanted to. There were recurring bills for the Nádasdy-Báthory lands, including villages and churches. Her husband, Ferenc, was dead these six years and it was up to her to ensure her children’s futures. Her daughters were provided for, but Pál was the only surviving Nádasdy son, and he was still too young for leadership.
The king must pay his debts.
The king must pay his debts.
“Who hosts the Palatine? Is my son arrived?”
“Not yet. Lord Palatine requested Szuzanna accompany him.”
Erzsébet froze.
Szuzanna had come from the Lord Palatine’s own household. Consequently, Erzsébet had never trusted her.
“You left him with that idiot maid? She’s not even nine.”
“She seemed safe enough,” Anna said. “They asked only to view the manor.”
“To view it?” Erzsébet frowned. “What have they seen so far?”
Anna smiled that cold, empty smile again. “I believe they have seen everything.”
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
Anna was irresponsible, not alerting Erzsébet immediately to the intrusion of the Palatine.
And then to leave him in the presence of young Szuzanna. He would take that as disrespect. The lady of the house should greet him properly.
Erzsébet may be close to broke, but her lands and assets meant she was still one of the richest women in the world. Her peers were the Protestant ranks of Hungarian nobility. Even Palatine Thurzó himself was a cousin.
She reached the drawing room. Empty, the fire unlit.
“Anna! Where is he?” She moved from the seating area to the long dining hall. “Where is he? Where is he!”
Tabitha appeared in a doorway. Tiny, porcelain-skinned Tabitha. Her eyes were shadowed from some winter sickness. It made her only slightly less beautiful, but her beauty came mainly from youth. All the young were beautiful for a time.
“The Lord Palatine is in the basements, lady,” Tabitha offered.
“You idiot girl!” Erzsébet shoved her.
There was a hard thud as Tabitha collided with the wall. By then Erzsébet was already out of the room.
She hurried down the slippery steps without a candle, holding tight to the stone wall. Below, she could see the glow of lights and hear the murmur of men’s voices.
She hesitated on the threshold, getting her breath. She was not used to creeping through her own home.
Through a doorway she glimpsed Palatine Thurzó with eight armed men, lit by tallow candles. Probably sourced from her own supplies. She quashed a moment of rage at whoever had furnished them with light.
Pál’s tutor was also there, Imre Megyeri, a look of sly triumph on his face. Duplicitous meddler! Reverend Ponikenusz was with them, of course. Grasping, accusing Ponikenusz. The man who had called her out during Sunday service and accused her of all sorts of sins. And in front of her own people!
Hadn’t Erzsébet provided for the church? Hadn’t she paid burial fees for every one of her dead girls?
Szuzanna saw her first. Fear pimpled the girl’s grimy skin. She raised a hand to point.
Erzsébet swept into the room. The men turned to her as one. Even from here, she could smell the road on their filthy clothes. Their beards glittered with ice. Under a dusting of frost they wore heavy travelling cloaks. Where their cloaks were shouldered, the embroidered vests and coats of office showed.
Official business, then.
Too late she realised her sons-in-law were also there. Anna’s husband, Count Nikolaus Zrínyi, and Katalin’s husband, Count György Drugeth de Homonnay. Zrínyi at least had the decency to look away but de Homonnay met her glare with his own.
The guards held three of her serving women. Dorotya Semtész, Ilona Jó Nagy, and Katarína Benická. They looked at Erzsébet with defeat and pleading.
“My lady—” Dorotya sobbed.
Erzsébet silenced her with a hand.
She bowed once to the Palatine. Curtly, to let him know how he shamed her with his unannounced arrival.
“Lord Palatine Thurzó. What brings you to this lowly room?”
“We followed the sounds of screaming, Lady Widow Nádasdy.”
Thurzó looked grim. He gestured once at the floor as if she had not noticed. Two girls lay there, naked, their wounds exposed. One was already dead, her bloodied hair lying across her dry eyes. Three fingers were missing and there were stab marks on her arms. Her corpse had fallen across the pliers that had been used to gouge her face and chest.
The other girl had burns on her palms and feet. Her face was purple with bruises. Ilona must have taken the whip to her. Erzsébet recognised the deep welts across the girl’s neck and ribs.
“See to the girl,” Thurzó said to the armed men. “Take this one’s statement and administer to her wounds. If it’s possible.”
“And if it’s not, Lord Palatine?”
Thurzó glared. “If you can’t ease her suffering medicinally, at least dispatch her with humanity. It’s certainly more than the good Lady Nádasdy was willing to do.”
There was an expression of disgust on his face.
Erzsébet stood tall, staring back fiercely. Only two girls, she reminded herself. Only two. She was the Countess Báthory. They would not make her account for the wounds of just two girls.
So long as the Palatine remained Lutheran enough to avoid the disruption of graves, there would be only two.
“Seize her,” Thurzó said.
De Homonnay complied. He stepped forward and took hold of Erzsébet’s wrist, but she wrenched away.
“How dare you!”
Her wristlet snapped, spewing emeralds and diamonds to the floor. Some fell into the congealing blood of the dead and dying girls. Under that oily sheen the emeralds turned black, but the diamonds were lost like so much grit.
“Chain the three serving women,” Thurzó said to the guards. “Then follow me to the Castle. We’ll search it in its entirety.”
“By what authority—” Erzsébet began.
Palatine Thurzó lurched towards her. He sank his fingers into her hair, wrenching her out of de Homonnay’s grasp so hard and fast her knees buckled. In her shock she clung to his wrist with both hands.
She let out a cry of rage and Thurzó shook her until her vision blurred.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
“Unhand me! Unhand me!”
Thurzó ignored her.
Her scalp was raw where he pulled her forward by the hair.
He dragged her through the manor and out into the winter night where the cold bit into her neck and hands.
Erzsébet stumbled. Thinking to pull herself free, she let her feet go out from under her. But Thurzó hauled her half-upright.
“Is this how you want your villagers to remember you?” he seethed.
At least thirty people from Csejte had braved the cold on Christmas eve to watch her shame. Erzsébet tried to stand tall, but Thurzó pushed her instead into a low bow.
“Help me!” she cried out to the villagers.
No one moved.
Thurzó began to drag her up the hill towards the castle. She could hear the murmurs and curses of the crowd. Curses! And no one stepped forward to save their lady’s honour.
They would all pay for that later. When she was freed.
There was the clink of armour just behind her, and the snorts of horses forced to follow in a slow procession.
“Go on ahead!” Thurzó shouted. “Open the castle. Search the keep for more victims.”
Erzsébet’s throat went dry. “No.”
By the time they breached the hill and crossed the drawbridge, her skirts were drenched with mud and snow. Her legs were frozen up to her thighs. Her knees were shaking. Her scalp burned and throbbed as Thurzó let her go.
She put her bare hands to the ice-cold wall of the castle to hold herself upright. She was gasping.
Thurzó grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her through the castle to her own drawing room.
No fire had been lit, of course. The stone walls seemed to trap the snow and ice and concentrate it more deeply here.
The only light was from a candle lit from one of the men’s lanterns. Thurzó fixed the candle to the sideboard, letting it drip onto the polished wood. The weak light turned the space into monstrous shadows.
This room was stuffed with furniture, tapestries and carpets plundered from the war—blunt shapes in the gloom. The whole castle used to be like this, but over the years she had been forced to sell many pieces to cover bills.
Once, a room like this would have made her feel safe. Victorious. Now she felt hemmed in and crushed.
She hid her hands in her sleeves to hide their shaking.
“Leave us,” Thurzó said to the men who followed them. “I’m sure the Lady Nádasdy poses no such threat to me as she did to those young women.”
Erzsébet took a seat in the shadows. She waited until she was alone with Thurzó. “I should welcome you formally, my Lord Palatine. This castle was my wedding gift from the Nádasdy family.”
“You know where the liquor is kept, then? By all that’s holy, Erzsébet!” he snarled. “We’ve had reports. Six hundred dead. Six hundred?”
“Preposterous,” she said calmly. “Who would claim such a thing?”
Thurzó was at the cabinet beside the empty fireplace, his thick cloak joining him to the shadows. “Szuzanna, for one.”
“Who’s going to believe a nine-year-old girl?”
“A good many people, I should think. She has an angelic little face. And you know the saying. Fools, children and drunken men will always tell the truth. People of Hungary still believe that.”
He poured a generous shot of dark wine into a crystal glass. Then he reached under his cloak and pulled out a bloodstained cloth. He tossed it to her lap. Erzsébet made no move to withdraw her hands from her sleeves.
“Recognise that?” he asked. “The undershirt you wore on my last visit. After my entourage left, I understand you slew three serving girls in a rage while wearing that shirt.”
Erzsébet kept her face blank.
“Szuzanna also tells me she has seen a register you keep on your desk. A list of the dead, written in your own hand.”
“Was Szuzanna intended as your spy?”
Thurzó ignored her. “I’ve sent a man for the register—”
“Into my private chambers?” Erzsébet snapped.
But Anna would hide the register. Anna would do that for her.
Besides, Anna was too far implicated not to.
“What would you put the death count at?” he asked. “Four hundred? Two hundred?”
“None.”
“Fifty?” Thurzó continued, almost to himself. “Thirty? How many is enough?”
He sounded calm. Perhaps, if he was calm, she had a chance. Perhaps he was only acting on orders from their greedy king.
She shivered. Thurzó must have seen the movement, because he leaned forward with the glass. When she made to wave it away, he snatched her hand and pressed the glass to her palm so hard the crystal dug into her cold skin.
“Take it,” he said. “The good Lord knows there’ll be few enough drinks for you after tonight.”
He rose and returned to the sideboard. Erzsébet sipped at the wine. It had turned bitter in the frozen room.
“You’ll want sustenance after your ride, Lord Palatine. Perhaps—”
“If you think I’ll consume any foodstuffs served by you, Erzsébet Nádasdy, you’re deluded.” Thurzó said without turning.
“I meant only to be hospitable. You are my guest.”
She emphasised the last word. Thurzó slouched back to the lounge, shaking dried mud into the fine weave of her furniture. “I heard what you did to Reverend Ponikenusz. You and your mad woman from the village. Erzsi, was it? You poisoned cake and then called out the evil spirits of—what was it? —cats to attack him. Of all things!”
“Ridiculous!”
“Isn’t it?” Thurzó agreed with equanimity. “And yet, your sister was a witch and your mother-in-law was a witch. And so, I suppose, are you.”
“We are all witches when you want to destroy us. All women.”
Thurzó raised his glass in a kind of salute. “The priest refuses all contact with you. He trembled as much as that frightened girl, Szuzanna, when I called for him.”
“You made a promise to my husband—”
“Ah, the Black Knight of Hungary! I wondered how long it would take you to mention him.”
“—on his deathbed,” she continued, enraged by his casual disregard, “that you would protect me from the king!”
“And I am!” he roared. “The king wants you hanged, naked, from a gallows in the centre of court. The whole village knows about you, Erzsébet. In fact, the whole country! The Lutheran pastors at Sárvár, the ones your husband silenced eight years ago with his extravagant and absurd donations, even they would speak against you now, I think.”
“They would not!”
“And the Catholic brethren at the Viennese cathedral on Augustinerstrasse. They used to throw their pots at the wall to cover the noise of your girls crying out for mercy. They will make for convincing witnesses, too, when it comes to that.”
“Convincing for a Catholic king,” she replied bitterly.
“Yes, a Catholic king. One rumoured to be the next Holy Emperor of Rome.”
“A Habsburg Emperor?” she spat. “Their ambition is as limitless as the Turks’! So the King sends you, good Lord Palatine, to ensure I cause no embarrassment in this ridiculous crusade of his. If this is about the crown’s debt to me—”
“Oh, it’s far too late for that.”
“My husband held the Turks from our borders when King Matthias did nothing. The armies were starving and dying in their beds, and the king did nothing. No soldiers, no roads, no medicine. No schools! We did that. All of it. The nobility of Hungary has been protecting its people for decades.”
Thurzó grunted. His face was in darkness.
She rose and he leaned forward to stop her leaving.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To ask for someone to light the fire,” she replied.
“Light it yourself. You have no servants, not anymore. After tonight, you won’t even have a title.”
Erzsébet hesitated. “What are you saying?”
“It’s over for you, Erzsébet.” His voice was almost gentle.
She resumed her chair slowly. “Impossible.”
“Your people hate you. They are poor—”
“We are all poor. That’s why they mock the nobles now, calling us Lord of Five Apple Trees and Mistress of Nine Pigs. We were impoverished fighting the king’s wars for him. And yet, the king leaves our fine capital of Buda in the hands of the Ottomans.”
“The capital is Pozsony now,” Thurzó reminded her. He leaned back into the lounge where the shadows ate at him. “You complain of poverty, Erzsébet, but my wife tells me your jewels are the finest in the country. Plundered from the Turks, I understand.”
“Gifts from my husband,” Erzsébet replied. “I will give some to your good lady wife if you let me rally my cousins in Transylvania—”
“I shall do no such thing,” Thurzó replied. “Did you really kill all the girls in your gynaecium?”
“No.”
“You did, Erzsébet. After what I’ve seen tonight, I know the truth of it,” Thurzó said sadly. “It’s the complaints of their noble families that forced me back here.”
She should have cursed all of them.
“They are only lesser nobles, György,” Erzsébet said. “Not like you or I.”
“Don’t call me that, as if we are friends. Don’t call me by my given name.”
She tried to soften her voice. “It’s all lies, Lord Palatine. I have enemies—”
“Easily three hundred people will testify to finding bodies in shallow graves around your grounds.”
“Lies.”
“I heard about the handmaid you killed in Predmier on the way home from my own daughter’s wedding.”
“An accident. The girl complained she was too warm in the carriage.”
“So you stripped her, stood her naked in a barrel and poured icy water over her until she died. In the middle of winter. In the middle of the village square, for all to see. You call that an accident?”
Her hands were clenched around the glass he’d given her. She downed the rest of the contents in a gulp. “I have seen many maids corrected by my noble peers.”
“And killed?”
Erzsébet replied quietly, “Even killed, if it was needful.”
“Needful? Needful?”
“I gave those girls shelter and honest work! I am lady and mother to all my staff.”
Thurzó stood restlessly. He rubbed his temple and stared at the empty glass that hung from his hand. “To think, I once told my daughter to be more pious and responsible. Like the virtuous Countess of Báthory, I said. I find your crimes hard to even comprehend.”
“Because none of it is true. ”
“Stop lying!”
He threw his glass at the wall by the candle. The glass shattered. Broken shards flew through the air like a diamond rain, lit by the candle.
“Three dead on the way to your brother’s funeral at Ecsed!”
“I was unwell,” she offered. “The stress. The grief.”
“Is that all it takes? My God! You have been unwell as long as I’ve known you. Always with a headache or a fit, or one of your strange little trances where you tremble and writhe in your bed.”
“There is nothing little about my suffering!” Erzsébet snapped.
He looked at her with a kind of grim satisfaction. As if he had been proven right in some way.
“Was it Ferenc corrupted you?” he asked. “I would believe that. He was a vicious man.”
“He was a war hero,” she corrected him.
Thurzó grunted. “Is that why you refuse to take the widow’s path, to retire and mourn your husband quietly? You hope to bask in the reflection of his so-called heroism?”
“How dare you,” she said quietly. “I’m kept in the king’s court by the strain of his debt—”
“Don’t try to pin this on King Matthias, Erzsébet. Would you rather adopt the religious beliefs of the Turks than take up with your own king?”
“The king owes me.”
“That’s the very thing. He doesn’t want to owe you.”
“Then he should pay his debts!”
“And that’s the other thing. He doesn’t want to pay you.”
“Then what does he propose?” Erzsébet asked.
“To take everything you own.” Thurzó resumed his seat. “To impress the mighty Empire of Rome.”
He said it with sarcasm. Thurzó was not Catholic, either.
Erzsébet felt the blood drain from her face. “He’ll never get his hands on my lands.”
“He will. He’s the king. ”
“No! I’ve already bequeathed all my lands. Didn’t your friends the counts, my sons-in-law, mention that? My daughters and son own the properties now.”
Thurzó looked at her thoughtfully. Then he rose and moved to the cabinet, already unsteady on her liquor.
The candle needed trimming. It guttered, its light low, its oily smell edged with smoke. Its shadows made a mask of his face as he reached for another glass.
“No wonder they call you the Beast of Csejte,” he said. “You are inhuman.”
She pushed the rage down. She felt the pulse in her temple. She felt the tightness of her face, the itch of blood filling her skin.
“They call me many things, most of them unflattering,” she said, lifting her chin. “I like to think you know me better, my good Lord Palatine.”
He grunted, pouring more bitter wine. “I’m not sure I know you at all. Why kill girls, Erzsébet? You were seen as a champion of women. But I suppose they were easier for your old crones to subdue.”
He returned to his seat. But where he’d been standing, she saw a kind of fire erupt, dancing along his outline as if the air still held the shape of him.
“I never killed any girls,” she murmured.
“Are you going to lie to me like you lied to Reverend Ponikenusz? Are you going to blame the cholera?”
“It was not me that killed those girls.”
“Ah! So who do you blame, if it wasn’t you?” He raised his glass.
“The maids.”
“The…?”
“Anna Darvulia and the others. Dorotya Semtész and Katarína Benická. Ilona Jó Nagy was the worst. I could not stop them. I was afraid for my life.”
Thurzó’s face went blank. He was quiet a long time.
Then he put back his head and roared with laughter. “Merciful Mother, that’s rich! You blame the Darvulia woman?”
Thurzó laughed some more, spilling wine across the lounge he sprawled on. “Oh, Erzsébet! Whoever digs a hole for someone else will fall in it themselves.”
“You mock me, Lord Palatine? When I confess my greatest fear?”
“Please. You? Afraid! Hungary’s mightiest noblewoman?” His laughter died. “I grant you, the Darvulia woman had an evil reputation. A wild beast in woman’s skin. You might have had a chance, blaming her.”
“Had?”
Thurzó chuckled softly.
“Had?” Erzsébet insisted.
“Before she died,” Thurzó replied. “But who do you blame for the deaths that have piled up since? The girls keep disappearing, their bodies—”
“Anna has not died.”
Thurzó’s smile dropped. “Gods, it’s true. You’re mad.”
“She is not dead,” Erzsébet insisted. “She attended me in my bed chamber this evening.”
“Stop it, Erzsébet,” Thurzó said.
“Why do you say she is dead? Why do you say that?”
“That’s enough! The fish stinks from the head. You are the Countess of Báthory. You are responsible for the actions of your people. Even those who died. Especially those, as it happens.”
“She is. Not. Dead!”
Thurzó blanched. “She’s been dead two years.”
One of the guards entered the room unannounced. Erzsébet turned by habit to reprimand him.
“We’ve found more,” the man said simply, not even looking at her. “Count de Homonnay asked me to collect you.”
“Any alive?”
The man nodded gravely. “The old woman the villagers spoke of. The one who was taken for hiding her daughter from the…lady. But over a dozen found dead so far.”
The man dared to glance at Erzsébet.
Thurzó dismissed the man at the door and got to his feet. “Come with me, Lady Nádasdy.”
Erzsébet rose before he could manhandle her again.
Her head was spinning. A needlepoint of pain had bloomed behind her eye. Her hands began to jerk against her sides. There was a sharp, unpleasant feeling as if her skin was peeling off. White sparks of light danced in her vision.
She pressed her fingers to her temple, trying to stop the tingling. Trying to hold herself in. She felt stripped from her body.
Anna could not be dead.
She heard Thurzó from far away. “Don’t play games with me, Erzsébet. Ferenc might have believed in your trances, but I don’t.”
When she was a girl, a healing woman told her the trances were the result of demons arguing under her skin. The arguments brought terrible headaches and pain.
Only Anna had taught her not to be afraid of them. That the demons were merely spirits, passing through her. She said Erzsébet should be glad for the pain. It proved the spirits had not abandoned her and never would.
“Hungary will not stand for your treatment of me,” she murmured. She could feel the sweat on her face, despite the cold. “After all my husband has done! All I have done.”
“Your husband was a sadistic soldier ill-suited for courtly life. As are you.”
“How dare you! I demand the right to defend my name,” she replied.
Thurzó’s glare hardened. “You fool. That’s exactly what the king wants. He knows what you fail to admit. No one is coming to your aid, Erzsébet. No one could withstand the embarrassment. Your uncle has practically disowned you. Your peers look the other way. Even that little neighbour of yours that you’re so fond of—Batthyány?—he won’t stand up for you. Because to defend you would be to deny the King, the entire Habsburg family and soon, the might of Rome.”
“You cannot deny my rights. It would shame the kingdom. It would imperil every noble of this country.”
For a moment she felt like a countess again.
Thurzó held out a hand in summons.
“I will go nowhere with you, not until my son arrives and the seat of Báthory is safe in his hands.”
“Pál isn’t coming, not tonight. When we passed his retinue on the road, I suggested other lodgings this evening.” He would not meet her gaze. “I will protect your children, Erzsébet. But alas, you are lost.”
“Thurzó,” she said, pleading. “György. Please. I’ll give you land.”
“You have no land, remember?” Thurzó said. “Besides, land is worthless now. No one can afford to maintain it. Perhaps you could offer it instead to the Turks?”
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
They reached the keep.
Erzsébet had not been there in months. The stink of death was strong even for her. They had lit all the oil lamps they could find and hung them from hooks on the walls. But even their sooty stink did nothing to dampen the smell.
The armed guards were there with her sons-in-law, hands covering their noses. The fool priest was bent to the floor, murmuring prayers.
She hesitated on the threshold, blinking to clear her vision of the dancing, oily lights after the dark drawing room. “A cloth, if you will. Something for the odour.”
No one moved to assist her. They barely looked at her. Their gazes were fixed on the mess on the floor.
The bodies had so disintegrated they barely resembled the girls they had been. They were blackened and icy, but at least the marks of torture were harder to discern.
Fickó was meant to bury these bodies in the forest.
Thurzó strode grimly to the centre of the room. “Lady Widow Nádasdy, I came here intending to place you in a convent—”
“A Catholic convent, Lord Palatine?” she spat. “For our king’s sake? I am Protestant, as you know.”
“—but having seen your crimes for myself, I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to be free. If even the priests fear you…” He looked to where Reverend Ponikenusz kneeled. “We treated even the Turks better than this.”
“I demand a trial,” Erzsébet said quietly.
“I won’t let you dishonour your family’s name with a public trial,” Thurzó replied. He sounded tired. “I exercise my right as Palatine, second only to the King in Hungary, to sentence you privately. You will be walled up in this hellish castle for the rest of your life.”
“You would have me starve?”
“We will leave some little space for ministrations. We will feed you, clean your pots.”
“You took an oath to my husband.”
“Your life will be spared, Widow Nádasdy, for your family’s sake. But you will be declared legally dead. Your journals and letters will be destroyed. Your fortune stripped from you and granted to the crown.”
“You dishonour me!”
“Your honour is already lost. It is your family’s honour I protect now.” Thurzó was calm.
“See reason, György. You cannot imprison a noblewoman. It would be the shame of Hungary!”
“By court order, your name shall never be uttered in public again. You will disappear from the world, Erzsébet.”
“This is unheard of!”
“So are your crimes.” Thurzó told her. “Be grateful I don’t do worse. The women, your accomplices, will be tortured for their statements and their bodies burned. Even that young simpleton, Fickó, if I have my way.”
The fire in her vision danced.
“I shall write to my cousins,” she said. “To my neighbours, to my peers in the nobility, to all the Protestants everywhere. If the Catholic king takes my land, all of us are at risk, György. Even you.”
Thurzó nodded. She saw he knew the truth of it. “But your letters shall go undelivered. You will die inside the walls of this castle. And your soul will forever burn in Hell.”
“No!” Erzsébet lurched backward.
The guard beside her stepped back as if afraid to touch her.
Thurzó grimaced. “Still enough childhood Calvinism to fear Hell, Erzsébet? After everything you’ve done, did you really believe you could escape eternal damnation?”
Erzsébet felt more sharply aware than she had in a long time. She could see and feel and taste everything. Every filthy thing. No bright flickers of light danced in her eyes. No pain troubled her. She could hear the blood rush through her body. She could feel the thick, tainted air on her skin.
Perhaps Anna had been wrong. It was demons after all.
And at the end, perhaps even the demons would abandon her.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
The air was full of smoke and the stink of burning flesh the day she stepped into what would become her catacomb.
If she cared to look again from the narrow window by her bed, she would see the gallows where Ilona and the others still hung.
She listened to the scrape of rock as the stonemasons walled her in.
“I need parchment,” Erzsébet told them. “The fine parchment. For letter writing.”
“There is some on the floor, Lady,” the guard said from outside the wall.
“This isn’t enough.” She leaned down and fingered it. “And this is too coarse for my noble family.”
“It’s all you’re allowed, Lady.”
“If you will not bring me parchment, I shall write my message on the very walls! Báthory is not dead!”
“As you will, Lady.”
She was afraid Anna would not visit her behind the walls.
“Do you hear that?” Erzsébet asked.
One of the stonemasons hesitated. He glanced at his fellow but the other man kept working. The guard continued to stare at her dully.
“The demons,” Erzsébet said. “Do you hear them? They sing to me. They sing.”
And so, the Lady Widow Nádasdy, last Countess of Báthory—Erzsébet of Ecsed and later Csejte and numerous other holdings in Hungary—began to sing to her demons.
It took her four years to die.
“Look How Cold My Hands Are” by Deborah Biancotti