“Come on, Betsy! I always leave a margin of error,” he said one night, defending himself in the middle of an argument.
Margin of error. For John instinct, intuition—the element of humanity and surprise—boiled down to nothing but a margin for error. Betsy had wanted to smother him with a pillow.
Now, as she watched him print out their boarding passes, hotel reservation, and train schedules and then put their passports and her mother’s e-mails into a travel folder, she sighed with relief.
“Relax a little, Betsy,” he said, gentleness in his smile. “Get some sleep.”
“I will,” she said, gratitude washing over her. “Do you need anything in the guest bathroom?”
“I’m all set, Bets. Everything’s fine.”
“OK,” she said. She looked up at him and managed a smile. “And, John—thank you.”
“No problem.”
She brushed her teeth, her mind reviewing last minute details for the early departure. Toothbrush still in her mouth, she walked out into the den and checked her e-mail one more time.
“Always multitasking, Dr. Path,” John said, yawning. “Some things never change.”
But Betsy didn’t hear him. She stood frozen, staring at the e-mail she had just opened.
Dear Dr. Path,
The review board of Psychology Today is interested in your proposed article on the use of Carl Jung’s The Red Book as a method of treatment with borderline schizophrenics. We find the work you have done in Jungian analysis quite pro vocative. (We cite specifically the interpretation of the jeweled mandala. True, per your suggestion, the second mandala of hard, flinty stone—the more Gothic representation—would seem to be more suitable as a stimulus presented to a delusional patient, especially one who has aggressive or even murderous tendencies.)
We are most impressed with your treatise vis-à-vis Jung’s illustration of a snake climbing toward heaven, as if it is scaling a wall to beseech the gods for help. A clue to the mental state of the patient? Returning to the father’s homeland?
Perhaps you might continue to send us updates on your work. We are leaning toward publication but must review your final results and conclusion. We want to make sure we understand one another (your third ear, as it were) and that your therapy is heading in the right direction.
We look forward to hearing from you soon. We encourage your work, though you should be aware that if we do not write consistently it is because we have been intercepted by publishing demands here at the magazine.
It was hard to get us all on board to compose this letter, though we admire your groundbreaking work!
Edmund S.K. Dangerfield, PhD
Jane Highwall, MD
Morris S.W. Castle, PhD
Betsy sat down at the computer, foaming toothpaste leaking from the corners of her mouth.
“Ohmgow—” she mouthed, spewing the keyboard with white pasty gobs.
John looked up. “What is it?”
Betsy ran to the sink to spit.
“Read this e-mail.”
John looked down at the screen and scanned it.
“Congratulations. But since when do you treat schizophrenic patients?”
“I don’t! My father did. That’s just it. And I haven’t written a treatise.”
“Huh?”
Betsy typed a search on Google.
“So what’s this all about? A hoax?”
“Look. None of those names are on the masthead of Psychology Today. Who are these people? Dangerfield, Castle, or Highwall. Someone is trying to give me information. In a way that wouldn’t alert a hacker! A hacker, John, who would be on the look out for communication from my mother. John, someone is hacking my e-mail, I know it!”
“Calm down, Betsy. You are not making a lot of sense.”
“My mother sent me The Red Book for my birthday. This message is code. Someone is trying to lead me to Mom!”
Chapter 33
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 21, 1610
Countess Bathory stared at the young horsemaster, a cat watching a bird.
The white stallion had entered the castle gates at a walk, as calm as a king’s horse. Excited by the activity of the crowded courtyard, the steed raised its head and began to trot, but Janos reined him in, commanding obedience. The horse ceased its prancing, walking by the blazing fires, hawking vendors, scattered livestock, and laughing children.
The Countess dropped her gaze and looked at her white hands cuffed in lace, her delicate fingers clasped in her lap. Then she turned her hands palms down and studied the blue veins of age that drew their tributaries across her skin.
She remembered another skilled rider, long since dead. A shiver coursed through her body. He was a stable boy and she was already betrothed to Ferenc Nadasdy. She—the daughter of both the Ecsed and Somlyo Bathorys, an incestuous inbreeding—was a valuable pawn in the union of the most powerful and the most wealthy families of Eastern Europe. Her cousin ruled Transylvania, her uncle was the king of Poland.
A marriage to the Nadasdy clan—not the highest nobility but immensely wealthy—was a propitious alliance. The Countess was betrothed at the age of nine and sent to her future mother-in-law’s castle in the southernmost reaches of Hungary.
So far from home, in the castle of her future in-laws, she had sought comfort with a peasant boy, a stable hand by the name of Ladislav Bende from the village of Sarvar.
Promiscuous and willful, she was also a victim of the falling disease. Her future mother-in-law complained that the Ecsed Bathorys of Transylvania had not warned the Nadasdy family of the brain fevers that seized the young Countess, causing the girl’s eyes to roll back in her head and making her soil herself. The fits were preceded by rage—rage that neither the Bathorys nor the Nadasdy family could control. She slapped and scratched her servants, screamed obscenities, and tore at her clothes, leaving them in shreds.
Then came the pregnancy. But the mistress of Nadasdy would not let her potential daughter-in-law’s defects spoil the union, and neither would her Bathory mother. The alliance was too valuable to the two families.
She was sequestered in a remote Bathory castle to wait out her shame. The squalling newborn that issued from the Countess’s fourteen-year-old body was banished forever.
The baby was taken away immediately. Her mother, Anna, could not allow a Bathory’s noble blood to be spilled—even a bastard Bathory. So she gave the red-faced infant girl, wrapped in a woolen shawl, to a peasant woman.
“Never let us hear of this child again,” she said. “Take her far away and raise her as your own. We will provide money to raise her in comfort, for she is of Bathory blood.”
The young Countess heard of her lover’s death a month later. Her father had traveled to Sarvar to kill him, but the plague had already carried the young man away.
The following year she married Ferenc Nadasdy as planned.
The Countess looked from the young rider to her hands. She reached for her silver mirror and studied her face, the flesh of her eyelids drooping despite Zuzana’s tending.
Her mind drifted to the night games, and the girls’ young, flushed skin.
Chapter 34
THE MEADOWLANDS BELOW
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 21, 1610
It was weeks after arriving at the castle that Janos first caught a glimpse of Zuzana. He rode the white stallion through the meadows below the castle and on beyond Čachtice Village to the edge of the dark forest.
Zuzana was digging in the banks of the stream, looking for the special gray clay she used in one of her potions for the Countess’s skin. Her straw-colored hair was covered by a kerchief, but as soon as he saw the pocked skin, he knew who she was.
“Zuzana,” he called, a smile spreading across his face. “Is that you?”
Startled, she screamed, her hand flying to her mouth. The stallion shied, taking a series of jumps sideways. Janos was a superb rider, but the horse was too quick for him and he tumbled to the ground, still holding a rein.
“You devil!” he cursed the horse, groaning as he scrambled to his feet.
“Are you all right?” said Zuzana. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten your horse.”
The horse, sensing his advantage, reared and pulled at the rein in Janos’s hand.
“Quiet, now!” urged Janos, grabbing the other reins. “Quiet.”
The stallion snorted at the girl with muddy hands, eyeing her warily. Instead of retreating in fear, she turned her palm up to his muzzle.
“Easy now, boy. Easy.”
She stood her ground, speaking to the horse in a singsong voice. Janos rubbed his sore ribs.
“It’s not your fault. He is not accustomed to unfamiliar sights and sounds. I am trying to train him, but it’s not an easy task.”
“The Countess thinks it a miracle you can ride him.”
Janos’s face tightened. “She does, does she?”
Zuzana flushed. The mention of the Countess had poisoned the moment.
“Your father told me you were her handmaiden. I was to look for you to give you your family’s love.”
“You could have asked for me,” said Zuzana, looking down at the river.
“If I had asked, everyone would know there was a connection between us. The castle is a nest of spies.” Zuzana looked away, biting her lip. “And I do not trust the Countess with any information.”
Zuzana looked up at him sharply. “You must never speak ill of the Countess!”
“Why?”
“Because—she is too dangerous, too powerful. You must know that!”
“How can you bear to work with such a cruel mistress?”
Zuzana frowned, rubbing her muddy fingertips together.
“I have no choice,” she said, her blue eyes glittering. “She picked me years ago to serve her.”
“Are rumors true about her? Does she torture innocent girls?”
Zuzana stared at him, her eyes filling with tears.
“Does she murder them?” Janos was insistent.
Zuzana closed her eyes. She clapped her hands over her ears. Janos stretched his hand around her shoulders.