“What are you talking about? Ten percent of our income?”
“Perhaps it was peanuts, as you Americans say, to someone with the income of a mere psychiatrist. But to those of us with properties—real wealth—it was intolerable. He wished to scrub clean what he was so presumptuous as to consider the stain of blood on the Bathory name. As if that great name needed his help.”
“My husband would have told me if he were involved in anything like you describe. We were—”
The Count held up his hand, brushing her objections aside. “Of course, none of us were obliged to join your husband in his project. But the word spread throughout Slovakia, Hungary, even Austria. It drew attention to those of us who refused to have anything to do with his project.
“And I despise having attention focused on me. I have my own projects that I prefer to keep private,” he said. The cold shadow had returned. “Your husband knew that all too well.”
His eyes flickered in anger—a change that made Grace shiver. She remembered what her husband had told her about the symptoms of psychosis: the swift, radical change in mood, the focused intensity in the eye of a madman.
“I intend to bring back the magic of my ancestors’ reign, returning the once glorious power—and fear.”
The Count looked off through the window at the mountains beyond the walls of the castle. He grimaced.
“Your husband was well aware of that. And the time has come.”
Chapter 36
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 21, 1610
Darvulia breathed in the burning sulfur bitterness of the potion. A yellow cat jumped from its perch next to her, hissing and spitting at the smoking powder.
The witch wanted the Countess to sleep tonight, dead to the world. The black-clad stranger had ruined their night games, calling them little girls toying with mice. He had smothered all joy between Darvulia and her mistress, admonishing their “crude, imperfect” pursuits of pleasure.
It was he who had convinced Countess Bathory that the blood would rejuvenate her beauty.
It happened when Zuzana was away collecting special herbs for the Countess’s skin. Another handmaiden was assigned to the Countess’s vanity. The girl—nervous to be so intimate with her mistress—brushed through a tangle in the Countess’s hair, provoking her to scream in rage. She seized the silver brush and struck the girl’s face, opening a wound in her lip.
Drops of blood speckled the Countess’s hand and face. She wiped away the red droplets and stared at her skin.
“You see,” he said, suddenly appearing behind her. She closed her eyes at his voice, her body trembling at his touch. “Do you see the youth restored to your skin?”
His long pale fingers stroked her neck, and she trembled, swooning at his cold touch.
Then he walked out the servants’ door, disappearing into the turret. The click of his heels echoed in the descending tunnel of stone steps.
The Countess felt the warmth of the blood on her face. Her eyes shimmered with astonishment.
The handmaiden trembled in the corner, covering the gash at the corner of her mouth.
“Look, Darvulia! I am transformed!” the Countess cried. She turned her face this way and that, examining her complexion in the looking glass. “My skin is as youthful as a young maiden’s!”
Darvulia bit her tongue. She approached Erzsebet, studying her skin so closely that the Countess felt the brush of the witch’s eyelashes.
The witch stepped back, shaking her head. “No, Countess. I see no difference in your skin.”
Darvulia could see no change in her mistress, except the willingness to believe a new lover’s lie. Jealousy bit deep in Darvulia’s breast, seeing her lover drift away, a fool for the stranger’s twisted hatred.
“You are blind,” spat the Countess. “Look, look!”
Darvulia bowed her head, saying nothing more.
In the hours past midnight, the stranger’s coach arrived in the pouring rain. His footman and driver struggled in the deluge, untying a wrapped package with the vague contours of a human body, but larger by two, even three times. They carried the burden down the stairs into the bowels of the castle, to the dungeon.
“What is that?” asked Darvulia, turning cold at the sight.
The stranger scowled at the witch from beneath the folds of his hood. “Begone, sorceress! You are no longer in the Countess’s favor. It is a man’s seed she hungers for, not the breast of a virgin witch.”
“The Countess loves me. She loves women.”
“Not now, witch. She does not love you or any other woman. She has learnt the ecstasy of a man’s love, of domination.”
The witch murmured a curse, more a growl than a human voice.