Then the old woman disappeared into the darkness of her hovel, shutting the door on the stranger from Čachtice Castle.
Chapter 27
ČACHTICE LUTHERAN CHURCH
DECEMBER 19, 1610
The Lutheran minister Jakub Ponikenusz laid his Bible on the rough-hewn table by the hearth. He took care to put it far from the inkwell, for when he wrote his sermons he often took on a feverish intensity and his arms flailed, as if he were fighting the demons he had denounced.
His letters to the King had not been acknowledged until last Sunday, when an elegant man, dressed in silk and a finely tailored wool coat, had entered the Protestant church in Čachtice, standing at the back of the congregation.
The pews were packed full, as usual, and there was nowhere to sit in the little stone church. Still, seeing the finely dressed stranger standing by the baptismal font, Pastor Ponikenusz suspected he had not come to worship.
From the pulpit, the minister thundered, “The Countess feeds on our innocence, devouring our children, sisters, and even young mothers. How long will we wait in numbed silence as this witch snatches our loved daughters, tortures them, and ushers them to an early, unmarked grave?”
“You, sir, slander the name of Bathory!” answered the voice of the stranger at the back of the church.
All heads, young and old, twisted to see the nobleman.
“I speak the truth!” said Pastor Ponikenusz, his voice resonating. “And in the House of the Lord, the truth will be spoken in the name of Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace and Mercy!”
The wooden pulpit shook. Ponikenusz felt the power of a righteous God guiding his words.
The nobleman scowled. The thick-skinned peasants stared at the stone floor of the church rather than look so powerful a lord in the eye.
“I will speak to you after the service,” he growled, pinching his aquiline nose against the smell of wet wool, boiled cabbage, and sour beer in the cramped church. “He is a Bathory for sure,” hissed the cooper. “He will string up our good parson for blasphemy.”
“I know the man,” said a midwife, whistling through the gap in her remaining teeth. “He is the Count Thurzo, the Countess’s cousin.”
“The Palatine? Surely he has come to execute our pastor.”
But the minister stood even straighter, his chin lifting with conviction.
“God respects the word of truth, and protects those of faith!”
Count Thurzo waited by his carriage. His face wrinkled in disgust as he watched the peasant congregation pour out of the church door.
When the minister had finished bidding each worshipper a good afternoon, he walked over to the Count, looking sternly at the nobleman. “How dare you interrupt my sermon, sir!”
Count Thurzo’s mouth dropped open in amazement. “Your sermon? You fool! Your words could end your miserable life.”
“I speak the truth, with God as my witness.”
“You have chosen a powerful adversary,” said the Count, flicking his eyes to a cluster of ragged peasants who stood watching from the careful distance, and back again to the minister’s face. “Does that not occur to you?”
“I guide my flock and confront evil wherever it may be. I have no fear of men’s politics or gold. Do you come here to imprison me?”
“No, though if your allegations prove wrong, that will be the case. I will see to it personally.”
“I am not afraid of the dungeons,” said the minister. “God knows the truth and so shall the King.”
Count Thurzo straightened his posture and pressed his lips tightly together. “I come as an emissary of our King Matthias. He has sent me to hear your complaint against the Countess.”
The minister paused for a moment. “I believe you are her cousin. Does this not present a conflict for you?”
The Count’s gloved hand clenched. You wretched little church-worm, he thought. How dare you!
“We are related through marriage, on my wife’s side. I serve my Habsburg king faithfully.”
“Despite the Bathory name?”
The Count drew a quick breath, his face souring. What impudence! “Speak, sir. What evidence do you have against the Countess?”
The minister looked around the churchyard. Knots of his congregation stood nearby, their necks swiveling toward the Count and their minister.
“Perhaps you would like to take a walk in our cemetery, Count Thurzo,” suggested the minister. “We can talk with more privacy among the dead.”
Chapter 28
SOMEWHERE IN SLOVAKIA
DECEMBER 19, 2010
Grace studied the anemic jailers—with wild colored hair—who attended her day and night. Their heads drooped from their scrawny necks. They stared at her with feral eyes.
For days she pleaded for help. They remained silent, unblinking. Inhuman.
Their wolfish looks wore on her nerves. She turned on them finally, in a rage, tendons standing out on her thin neck.
“What is wrong with you? Have you no manners? Stop staring at me!”
The women exchanged looks and dropped their eyes to the carpet.
“Really. Pasty white faces and neon-colored hair hanging in your eyes. Go out in the fresh air, get some color into your cheeks. Eat some goose and dumplings. Drink a beer, for God’s sake.”
A shadow crept over their faces as the women exchanged looks. They did not meet their captive’s eyes.
Grace pursed her lips and settled back in her chair. She was accustomed to young men and women of precisely this age in her lectures at the university. Her lectures were filled with serious historical detail of the Holy Roman Empire, but she was not above scolding a student for slovenly appearance or a disrespectful attitude.
“Surely you have something better to do than to skulk around here like a bunch of vampires,” she snapped.
Their eyes flew open and the women breathed noisily, almost grunting.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Grace said. “Is that the Count’s game? Really? Vampires?” She gave a bitter laugh.
The girls’ thin hands raked their wild hair—all but the youngest of the trio, a girl with blue hair, no more than fourteen, whose eyes had looked as if she could see the savory goose and steaming dumplings on a plate in front of her. She looked on in terror.
Grace played a hunch. “So the crazy Count has convinced you that you are vampires. He’s starving you to death, isn’t he? Well, you truly are a pack of fools.”
The two women growled and hissed.
“What? Vampires?” she said, teasing them with the word. “You can’t believe that, can you? That you are creatures of the night? Really! Do you feast on human blood? Really, I—”
The women snapped at each other, like a pair of frenzied pit bulls. The fuchsia-haired woman growled, catching the emerald-haired woman by the wrist.
She drew her lips back, exposing her ugly, yellowed teeth. As her mouth darted down to fasten on the skin of her prey, her eyes rolled back in ecstasy.
A howling scream pierced the air as her bite drew blood.
Grace recoiled in her chair, horrified, as the attacker sucked at the bloody wound and her victim growled.
“You are all mad!” she whispered.
She locked eyes with the blue-haired girl, who looked as terrified as Grace and who ran down the corridor screaming for the Count.
The Count bounded in with an energy that belied his apparent age. His lips were red and moist.
“Get back, Ona!” he commanded the fuchsia-haired demon. He struck her hard across the cheek, sending her reeling, her face streaked with the blood of her victim.
The green-haired girl cowered in the corner, licking the wound on her arm like a dog.
“What kind of lunatic asylum is this?” screamed Grace, still tied to the chair. “Don’t you dare leave me alone with these psychopaths again!”
The Count gathered his composure, still heaving with exertion.
“How dare you disobey me?” he said to the groveling girl, her mouth stained red with blood.
“But, Master—she knows the secret!”
The Count’s eyes widened, a graying brow arching. “What?”
“She called us—our name.”
The Count whirled around. He stared at his prisoner.
“What did you say to them?”
Grace swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and when they reopened, ferocity glimmered there.
“I told them they needed to go eat a decent meal. They are crazy with hunger, can’t you see that?”
“I will decide when it is time for a feeding.”
“A feeding?”
“What did you say to them?”
“That they should eat, take in the sun. Young people shouldn’t look like they do. They are patently unhealthy.”
The Count laughed and cut it off with a snarl. His lips twisted cruelly. “What concern is that of yours, Dr. Path?”
“Don’t you dare leave them with me. If the girl hadn’t run to find you, they both could have turned on me.”
The Count’s face twitched with fury.
“OUT!” he roared at the young women. “Do not enter this room again.” He pointed a long, shaking finger at the fuchsia-haired woman. “And Ona, I shall deal with you later.”
The women flattened their thin backs to the wall, feeling their way toward the door without taking their eyes off the Count.
The Count’s long fingers dipped into a vest pocket. He pulled out a knife and unfolded a thin blade.
Grace straightened in the chair. “You can torture me all you want, you psychopath, but I am not telling you anything about my daughter.”
The Count smiled slowly. He waved the gleaming blade near her eyes, and traced a line down her neck with its point. He let the knife trail lower, across her shoulder, down her arm—when he reached her wrists, he made a violent thrust.
Grace closed her eyes tight, wincing.
Then she felt the blood return to her wrists and the sensation of cool air on her skin. He had cut her ropes.
“I will try to offer you the courtesy due a professor of Eastern European history. Come, peruse my library. You may find something worth reading.”