House of Bathory(15)

“I think I may have caught a glimpse of her,” he said. “When I was working with the stallion.”

The guard looked at him, his brow arched.

“I doubt that, Horsemaster Szilvasi. Not in the light of day.”

The guard raised his gloved hand. He beckoned Szilvasi to follow him to the barracks, where guards and stable hands took their rest.

The heavy door creaked open to a common area. A warm breath of cabbage soup greeted the traveler, its sulfurous scent obliterating any other odor, except an occasional whiff of the guards’ unwashed bodies.

“You can lay your blanket near the hearth,” said the guard. “The kitchen boys keep the fire burning throughout the night.”

“You the new horsemaster?” piped a high voice. “It is about time someone cared properly for those miserable animals. They are almost meat for my stewpot.”

The cook was a thin man whose skin stretched tight across his skull. Janos could see the workings of the muscles in his neck and jawbone as he spoke. The only meat on his body was the muscle in his forearms, forged from stirring the massive iron pot. For a cook, his meager flesh did not bode well for the food he prepared, thought Janos.

Janos turned halfway to the guard.

“I would like to get to work on the stables and treating the horses as soon as possible. Cook, do you have some sugar?”

“Ach!” he responded, shaking his skeletal head at Janos. “You think a barracks cook would have sugar? The castle kitchen keeps sugar locked in the pantry under Brona the cook’s shrewd eye. It is imported from Venice and costly—”

“I will need as much as five spoonfuls. Please procure it at once for the horses’ welfare. Better than in the belly of a sweet-toothed nobleman.”

Guard Kovach and the cook eyed each other. They were not certain how to respond to the impudent young horsemaster.

“Guard Kovach, do you use lime in the privy?” asked Janos.

The guard’s forehead creased in anger. “We run a clean barracks here—what are you implying?”

“Good, I will need at least a half bucket of lye. And straw, like the straw used to cover night soil. I want enough clean, fresh straw to fill the stables a foot deep.”





By nightfall, Guard Kovach saw the new horsemaster hard at work, flanked by his ragged crew of stable boys, though Janos had made the feverish Aloyz rest by the fire, covering him with a blanket.

Janos held a bay mare’s back leg on his knee and cocked the stinking flesh of her hoof toward his face.

“See—the triangular part of the hoof is the most sensitive,” he said to the boys. “Never cut it, unless the flesh is dead and hanging. It is live and vulnerable to pain, the same as your finger or toe.”

With a sharp knife, he carved out the muck and embedded stones around the island of soft flesh. Then one of the stable boys sprinkled lye into the rotting hoof. Fingers protected by a rag, Janos pressed the chalky powder deep into the rot.

“Every day you must do this until the flesh is dry and healed,” he said, still holding the mare’s hoof in his hand. He straightened his knee and let go of the hoof. The horse snorted and the stable boys nodded as they accepted the horsemaster’s instruction.

Guard Kovach walked toward the mare and saw white glistening on a festered wound. As he approached, he could see the shiny granules of sugar.

“What is this?” he said. “You have used the Countess’s fine white sugar on horseflesh?”

Szilvasi smiled at the guard, whose face was still contorted in astonishment.

“You will see, Guard Kovach, how quickly the wounds heal with a regular dusting.”

He ran a hand around the mare’s withers, his fingers skipping over the wound. She twitched under his touch.

Guard Kovach scratched his head. “I have come to tell you that the Countess will grant you audience. She sends word to come when the moon has risen.”

Janos arched his eyebrow. “Such strange habits the Countess has in welcoming a faithful servant from Sarvar Castle,” he said, stretching his arms wide over head, hands balled in fists as he yawned. “I am so tired. Perhaps the Countess will agree to see me in the morning, since she has kept me all day awaiting an audience.”

“You will sleep after meeting the Countess.” The guard stood, arms crossed on his chest, taking in Szilvasi’s appearance. “Go see the cook and ask for a bucket of water and a rag to bathe. The Countess is fastidious about cleanliness. She abhors the smell of a man’s sweat or the stench of beast.”

Janos snorted and turned away, massaging his own sore back; he had spent hours bent over horses’ hooves, bearing their weight in his hands.