Ilona Joo, wet nurse to the Countess’s children—all grown and married now—did as she was bidden. The orange coals sputtered as the three coins eclipsed their glow.
Dorka brought the soot-faced skeleton of a girl toward the Countess. Vida had been locked in a dungeon in the depths of the castle. She had been given a few sticks of wood charcoal, more to drive away the rats than to provide heat. She had kept her pale face next to the heat, blistering her lips.
As she was escorted past the pressing crowd of servants, Zuzana grasped her hand, kissing her fingers. “May God bless you, Vida!”
Dorka yanked Vida away and shoved her hard, sending her sprawling on the ground at the Countess’s feet.
“You have been accused of stealing,” said Countess Bathory, eyeing the girl on the floor. “What do you say?”
“It is true. I tasted the goose fat—but I am starving, good mistress.”
“I have given you food, shelter, and money to take to your mother, and you repay me with your thievery.”
“I am dying of hunger!”
The Countess nodded to the nursemaid by the fire. “Bring me money, coins for our little thief.”
Vida spun around to see Ilona Joo take the tongs from the hearth, pick the thalers out of the coals, and drop them on a metal tray.
Fizko pulled the girl to her feet.
“Give me your hand, thief,” commanded the Countess.
Vida’s eyes flew open in horror. “No, Countess! No!”
Darvulia stepped forward to wrestle the girl’s hand open, calling to the idiot Fizko to help restrain her. Ilona Joo approached with the tray.
“You are lucky she does not burn your mouth,” whispered Darvulia in the girl’s ear. “Take your punishment well or she may invent another.”
One by one, Ilona Joo lifted the coins with the tongs and pressed them into Vida’s right hand.
The girl howled and then fainted with pain. The coins clattered to the floor and Ilona Joo picked them up, smoking, from the stones. The room smelled of seared flesh.
The dwarf idiot licked his lips, thinking it was venison on Brona’s spit that brought the aroma to the air.
Chapter 26
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 18, 1610
The stallion reared when the cinch was tightened. The stable boy jumped away and fell backward into the straw. The horse pulled hard at the rope, black hooves slashing.
The boy scrambled away from the murderous forelegs, hands and knees in the scattered straw.
“I will handle him,” said Janos.
The white stallion snorted, his nostrils flaring red-pink. He roared, an outraged neigh, a murderous high note that made the stable boys tremble.
“Easy, boy, easy,” Janos began.
Again the screaming neigh, ringing through the air. The other horses jumped back, tugging at the common line tying them the length of the stable.
Aloyz brought a leather bridle, a heavy iron bit suspended from the two thick leather cheek pieces.
Janos touched his fingers to the cold, curved metal of the bit.
“No,” he said. “Bring me a bitless bridle. I will ride him with just the reins so he feels my hands instead of the taste of metal.”
Aloyz ducked his head and ran back to the locked tack chest—a precaution against the gnawing rats—to find a hackamore.
By the time Aloyz had returned to the stall, Janos had managed to calm the horse enough to rest his hand on the thick muscle of his upper leg and chest.
It would be another two hours of patience and coaxing before the horsemaster could slip the hackamore over the stallion’s ears and nose.
Vida stumbled, reeling in pain, from the Countess’s chamber. Her servant friends dared not help, though they interlaced their fingers in prayer, so tight their knuckles shone white in the dim light of the corridors.
“God bless you, Vida,” one whispered as the girl rushed forward, her charred hands stretched open to the cold air like a blind woman.
“Run to the well and soak your wounds,” screamed Zuzana, watching her only friend’s torture. “Plunge them into the snow until the fire is quenched!”
“Silence!” hissed Darvulia, following Vida down the hall. “She should suffer in full, the dirty thief! If you console her, may you suffer the same, Slecna Zuzana.”
Darvulia made certain that Vida did not stop at the well.
“You have been shown mercy,” she said, shoving the girl through the gate of the castle. “The Countess’s punishment could have been far worse.”
Vida’s mouth twisted in a howl as she ran from the shrouded darkness of Čachtice Castle into the light of day. She knew Darvulia was right. Muffled cries of tortured pain had reached her ears many nights as she lay curled on the rough mat outside the Countess’s door.
The stallion reared, despite the calming words and gentle hands of Janos Szilvasi. The young horsemaster’s legs were strong and his balance keen, but still he strung his fingers through the long mane of his mount to keep his seat.
“Open the gates,” he shouted, the leather reins chafing his hands.
The stable boys ran across the courtyard, breathlessly reaching the guards.
“Unbolt the main gate, let down the drawbridge!” cried Aloyz. “Master Szilvasi takes out the stallion!”
The guards waited for the confirmation from Erno Kovach, who nodded. “Open!”
The horse reared back on its haunches as the gates opened, revealing the steep hill and winding road down toward the village.
“Stand away,” shouted Janos, “I cannot hold him back!”
The rider knotted one hand into the horse’s mane and drove his heels into the steed’s belly. If he was going to bolt, it was better the horse sensed the rider’s will driving him.
The slick paving stones leading to the castle gate made the horse slip, but he was sure-footed and quickly gained his balance. As rider and stallion emerged into the cold wind blowing from the peaks of the Little Carpathians, the village of Čachtice came into view, a toy miniature of thatched-roof houses below them. The road was wet and thick spatters of mud from the horse’s churning hooves soon covered the boots of his rider. Janos narrowed his eyes, stinging with tears, against the biting mountain wind.
The stallion pinned back his ears, racing down into the barren fields below, where Janos knew the flat plain would allow him to gallop the horse in ever-decreasing circles.
At first the stallion ignored the rider’s signals—the hackamore was not strong enough to restrain the beast. His legs wrapped around the barrel of the horse like tight bands, Janos rode without exerting his will, his body accepting the surging wave of motion under him.
The mud sucked at the horse’s hoofs, and the hard gallop brought a lather of briny foam that worked down the stallion’s flanks and legs. Janos felt the horse’s lungs heaving, the labored rhythm of breath in time to the three-count beat of the gallop.
As the horse slowed, if only a little, Janos put subtle pressure on the reins, a suggestion rather than a command. The stallion turned his head as Janos guided the rein, slowly working the horse into a wide circle, still at a gallop.
An hour later, Janos had slowed the stallion to a walk. He patted the horse’s slick wet neck, grainy with salt. A smile came to his lips as he sniffed in the good scent of cold air and hot horse.
Then the smile vanished.
Stumbling down the castle road was a small figure, hands outstretched. A blind child?
The wind delivered her howling cries. A girl. No, a young woman, her face twisted in anguish.
Janos urged the horse closer with his legs.
“Who goes there? Maiden, what is your trouble?”
Vida thrust her hands out to the drizzling sleet. Janos saw the blistered hands, charred black and oozing.
“My God!” he cried. He dismounted the exhausted horse and held the girl’s wrists. “How?”
“The Countess,” sobbed the girl. “I stole a taste of goose fat.”
Janos looked at the thin whisper of a girl, her oozing wounds. His eyes scanned the horizon where the towering castle loomed, blocking the weak sunlight. The horse whinnied shrilly, the high-pitched cry filling the air.
“We must get you help,” Janos said. “I will take you home. Are you from Čachtice?”
“Yes,” whimpered the girl. “A woman in the village makes healing balms.”
Janos mounted and steadied the horse. He grabbed the girl by her bony forearm, swinging her light body in front of him on the saddle. The horse broke into a trot down the road, carrying the two riders toward the village of Čachtice.
Janos rode through the muddy streets of Čachtice. The sewers ran along the sides of the road, clogged with stinking waste. A woman flung open her shutter and emptied her clay chamber pot.
Janos raised his eyes at the sound.
“Agh!” he shouted, the filth just missing him, Vida, and the stallion.
The woman drew back into the house, slamming her shutters in consternation.
Vida was barely conscious, but she directed him in whispers and moans to a simple hovel with gray straw thatch and bundles of herbs and roots dangling on pegs in the cold winter air.
“Cunning woman,” she gasped. “Care for me.”
Janos helped her to the ground. She sagged against him.
Several of the townspeople gathered around, their mouths open in astonishment.
“Help her!” said Janos. “Take her to the witch!’
“I am not flattered to be called a witch,” said a voice, aged and stern. “I am a cunning woman, a healer.”
The woman inspected Vida’s injured hands, nodding her head grimly.
“The Countess?”
The girl nodded her head.
“Take her inside. I will see what I can do.”
Two men carried the girl over the threshold, disappearing into the cottage.
“And thank you, stranger,” said the cunning woman.
“Janos Szilvasi. Horsemaster at Bathory Castle.”
“May God defend you then. And do not mention you have given succor to this poor girl or you will suffer the worse. The Countess does not tolerate interference in her affairs.”