The Count pressed his fingertips together, forming a temple. He pressed it against his forehead.
“I want you to find out who she is,” he said at last. “What connection she has to Betsy Path. I want to know everything about her. Find out her name and trace her phone, her e-mail—”
“Why do you think she is so important?” said Heinrich. “To use so much effort to trace her.”
“I do not want anything to thwart our forthcoming night games,” said the Count.
“She is just a teenage girl.”
“I have believe she is more,” said the Count. “This girl was at the Path house. Too much synchronicity. There is a connection.”
“A lot of hours will go into this search, Count. It will not be easy—”
“Did you hear me, Heinrich? Do it!”
Heinrich lowered his eyes to the floor.
“This week marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Countess Bathory’s arrest,” said the Count. “I will not have anything go wrong.”
“Yes, Count.”
“We shall have all our—guests—participate in the night games, to honor my illustrious ancestor. While the rest of the world keeps spinning through its mediocre course, we will celebrate with passion. We will feel the pulse of life, consecrate ourselves with it.”
Heinrich watched the Count’s eye twitch.
“We shall wait for the Countess to return!”
The Count felt his servant’s cold stare fixed on him. “What, Heinrich?”
“I said nothing.”
“It is not your words. I feel a sense of discontent. Am I right?”
“I serve you and only you, Master.”
The Count plunged his head into his open hands.
“Count Bathory. Are you well?”
“Leave me, Heinrich,” he said, his face still buried in his hands. “I feel a spell coming on.”
Chapter 58
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 24, 1610
Countess Bathory lay on her bed, her lips foamed with spittle, her breath rattling in her lungs. She did not note the presence of Hedvika, who attended her throughout the night, or the chambermaids who regularly sponged her body, keeping their mistress clean and presentable as befitted her nobility.
Erzsebet Bathory’s mind was filled with sights and sounds from long before, when she was a nine-year-old child and a gypsy band had presented themselves at Castle Ecsed.
“They are performers,” explained her young nurse as she brushed Erzsebet’s long auburn hair with a boar-bristled brush. The nurse had a gentle hand, for she had been warned of the little girl’s temper.
“They beg to entertain your noble parents this evening. There is a dwarf and men who juggle. A minstrel sings and there is a shadow puppet show.”
The little girl Erzsebet clapped her hands, her lace cuffs fluttering. She turned to her nurse, her face bright with childish joy.
“Will my father allow them to entertain us?” she asked. “He is so solemn and stern.”
“I think your mother is so weary with sadness, he will engage them,” said the nurse. The servant turned away from her young charge, hiding her face.
Erzsebet knew the nurse was crying, thinking of how Erzsebet’s two older sisters had been murdered in the peasant riots. Erzsebet and the old nurse had hidden high in a tree and watched her sisters being raped and murdered.
Later, when peace was restored, her father had taken the young girl to see the peasants tortured and killed. Her mother was too ill with grief to attend.
“Watch them suffer, Erzsebet. Watch your sisters’ murderers suffer,” her father said, through his clenched teeth. “They shall suffer on earth before they burn in eternal hell.”
Erzsebet stared hard at the men: so terrifying before, so fearful and harmless now. She fingered the stiff fabric of her father’s coat sleeve.
“Rejoice in their suffering, my daughter,” he said, his face cold as stone. “Rejoice!”
As the men’s private parts were torn off with white-hot tongs, the little girl opened her legs and urinated. Then she fell to the ground, writhing, her body contorting.
When she came back to the world, her mother stroked her head.
“You have the Bathory disease,” she murmured, stroking her child’s hair away from her damp temples. “Your noble blood carries both honor and curse.”
Erzsebet had pushed the memory away. Now there was to be juggling and dancing, puppet shows and bawdy jokes that made the adults laugh. There would be wild boar and wine, sweet cakes and honey.
The puppet show was the best. Erzsebet sat with her older brother Istavan, watching the antics of a woodcutter and his donkey. The donkey brayed and the woodcutter kicked him. But the donkey was stubborn and soon got the best of the woodcutter, spilling his load of sticks and kicking his master in the arse.