House of Bathory Read online

  Betsy quietly moved closer to the window to listen in as Jane argued fiercely with her daughter. Discourse between a mother and a patient was a powerful tool in analysis. Besides, this was the first time she had ever heard her patient speak more than monosyllables. Daisy fingered a gold cross around her neck as she shook her head stubbornly.

  “I don’t need to see a shrink,” she said. “I’m not crazy. I’m tired of this shit!”

  “I’m not saying you’re crazy. But you have a problem, and it’s damned lucky you didn’t choke to death last weekend.”

  “Would that have made you happy?”

  Jane ignored that. “And look how you’re dressed! And that crap on your lips. It looks like smeared chocolate.”

  Daisy tossed her jet-black hair in defiance, the scowl on her matte-black lips setting deep creases in her white makeup.

  “You think I should wear some kind of peachy-fake, come-fuck-me lipstick like yours?”

  Jane’s body went rigid, her hands curled into bony fists.

  “I’m calling your father,” she snapped. She pulled a ruby-red cell phone from her purse.

  “Dad has nothing to do with this!”

  Betsy noticed the crack in the girl’s voice, registering a jolt of fear.

  Her mother pressed speed dial. “I want him to know exactly how you are behaving.”

  Daisy snatched the phone from her mother’s hand and threw it into the street. “Fuck it, Mother. I’ll go, OK? Just leave Dad out of this!”

  The girl stalked toward the front door, leaving her mother to scramble after the phone and then follow.

  “Bitch!” Daisy muttered.

  Betsy straightened the papers on her desk and prepared to greet her patient.

  “Betsy,” began Jane, brushing past her daughter into the little Victorian house, “things have gotten worse, not better since Daisy started with you!”

  Betsy did not answer at once. She caught Daisy, still poised on the threshold—not in, not out, that was Daisy all right—watching from the corner of her eye. Now that her analyst was the object of Daisy’s mother’s anger, she was worthy of interest.

  “How are you helping her?” Jane demanded. “And look at all the papers and clutter in your office! I don’t get the impression you are professional—”

  “How have things gotten worse?” Betsy finally said, answering Jane’s question with one of her own.

  Betsy watched mother and daughter stare at each other, fury in their eyes. Neither one of them blinked.

  “What happened?” Betsy asked.

  Again neither answered. The autumn air was suddenly filled with an animated conversation in Spanish from the Mexican grocery next door to the office.

  “¿Quiere algo más, Señora?” said a singsong voice.

  Betsy beckoned Daisy to step into the office, closing the door quietly behind her. The cheerful Mexican voices were shut out, the resulting silence ominous.

  “Well? What do you think, Daisy? How have I failed?” Betsy asked.

  Daisy shook her dark hair, obscuring her eyes.

  The psychologist turned. “Jane?

  Jane began picking at her manicured nails. Betsy caught a whiff of expensive perfume.

  “I don’t know why she won’t tell you,” she said. “It happened again, damn it!”

  “What happened?”

  Jane looked at the door, as if contemplating a quick exit. Then she set her lips firmly deciding to answer.

  “She almost choked to death over the weekend. She was strangling on her own spit—”

  “That’s NOT what the doctor said!” interrupted Daisy. “You always get everything so freaking wrong!”

  Betsy kept her expression neutral. Something had finally provoked her patient to speak with true emotion. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  Jane looked at Betsy, exasperated, but with a flash of terror in her eyes. The psychologist interpreted it as real fear, not an affectation.

  “I had to take her to the emergency room. They gave her a muscle relaxant so she would stop choking. She couldn’t breathe!”

  “What was the drug?”

  “I don’t remember. I can find out.”

  Betsy turned to Daisy.

  “Did it work?”

  The girl snorted in derision.

  “And they found no obstruction in your throat?” Betsy wanted to provoke an answer. Anything. “Any irritant? Hot peppers or vinegar? Any cleaning fluids? Ammonia?”

  Daisy just stared, playing ferociously with the charm bracelet on her wrist.

  “Daisy—don’t be rude. Answer her! There was nothing,” said Jane. “You know that. That’s what this is all about.”

  “So what did they decide was the cause?” Betsy asked.

  Jane looked down at her nails again. This time she managed to chip off a fleck of the polish.

  “Nerves, they said. A psychological problem. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, bullshit Mother!” shouted Daisy, stomping her heavy boot on the wood floor. “The only reason we’re here is because you think I’m weird. You hate me and you hate the Goth world.”

  This girl could talk, thought Betsy. And what a mouth.

  Jane sucked in a breath and expelled it, her finely chiseled nostrils flaring. She glared at Daisy and turned to Betsy.

  “Before we moved to Aspen, she was a perfectly normal child. She was an accomplished equestrian, red-cheeked and healthy. Absolutely normal. And lots of friends. Of her same…social class.”

  Betsy looked back at Daisy’s mother. “Jane, what do you define as normal?”

  “Not—not this! Look at her! The black lipstick, the shredded dress, the white makeup as if she’s a corpse. She should have color from hiking in the mountains, be out with friends—normal friends.”

  “Mother!”

  “She shouldn’t look like a freaking vampire! There, I’ve said it!”

  “I am NOT a freaking vampire. I’m Goth!”

  “Whatever. Vampire, Goth…in Aspen, of all places. It’s weird. And so—so outré!”

  Daisy’s eyes burned. Betsy heard the slight tinkle of the silver bracelet as the charms trembled on her wrist.

  “Damn it, I should be able to take her out to lunch without cringing!”

  “All right,” Betsy took over. “We have established that Jane thinks you have a problem. And what about you, Daisy? This therapy is about you, no one else. What do you want to accomplish here?”

  Daisy looked at her mother and then again at her analyst. She pushed her hair behind her ears.

  Betsy was ready for Daisy to tell her that this was all a waste of time, that she didn’t want to accomplish anything, that there was nothing to “accomplish,” that she was happy the way she was, maybe tell her to go to hell. And after that, Betsy expected the girl never to utter another syllable in her presence.

  But she was wrong.

  Daisy’s gaze settled on her analyst. The doctor and patient looked each other in the shifting, golden light of the low autumnal sun.

  Then the girl closed her eyes tight and swallowed.

  “The choking freaked me out.”

  The psychologist saw the one misaligned canine tooth glint and disappear as she spoke. The girl opened her eyes and looked down at her pale hands. When she raised her gaze again, there were long black smudges under her eyes. Betsy had to strain to hear what Daisy said next.

  “I don’t want to die,” Daisy whispered. “Help me.”

  When the sound of Jane’s Audi had faded away, Betsy noticed how Daisy’s shoulders relaxed.

  “I want you to get a notebook,” Betsy said, “and keep it beside your bed. So you can write down your dreams.” Her patient was talking, now it was time to move ahead.

  “What for?”

  “Dreams are the bridge to your unconscious mind. Your strongest urges, hopes, and fears often make an appearance while your conscious mind sleeps. I mentioned this at our first session, but…”

  “
But what?”

  “You were so—nonresponsive. Now it’s time to start working in earnest. The progress we make starts with your wanting to communicate. You’re ready now.”

  The girl shrugged her bony shoulders and studied the toe of her boot.

  “Whatever,” she mumbled.

  Betsy asked her to write down any previous dreams that she could remember. “And particularly epic dreams. The ones that seem to go on and on like a movie, rather than just short scenes.”

  “Why? Why are dreams so important?”

  “Dream interpretation is a basic principle of Jungian psychology. Your dreams provide clues to your unconscious mind.”

  Daisy nodded her head. The canine tooth suddenly flashed in a smile.

  “And nightmares?” she asked, her voice low. “You want me to write about those, too?”

  “Especially nightmares, Daisy.”

  The girl ran her tongue under her lip. “This Jung guy sounds interesting. Dreams, nightmares? Creepy.”

  The psychologist nodded. “Dreams are an open portal to your unconscious mind.”

  “And—how about your soul?”

  “Well, yes. Jung believed that. But my goal is to help you discover mental health.”

  “And what haunts me, right?”

  “Your unconscious struggles, yes.”

  Daisy nodded slowly, her hair obscuring her face.

  “Cool,” she whispered.

  Chapter 2

  ČACHTICE CASTLE

  SLOVAK BORDER OF ROYAL HUNGARY

  OCTOBER 31, 1610

  Only the palest wash of light seeped through the arrow loopholes in the stone fortress. Winding her way up the turret stairs, Zuzana carried a candle, lighting the torches along the icy walls. The sudden flames sent rats slinking into the dark, their mean chatter echoing in the frigid air.

  A cat pounced, seizing a rat by its neck. Zuzana’s startled gasp cast a cloud of vapor that slowly faded above her head. The cat gave a low growl, dragging its squeaking prey into the shadows.

  Cats everywhere. A plague of cats! But all the cats the witch Darvulia brought could never rid the castle of vermin. What matter? Zuzana was late in the preparations for her mistress’s morning toilette. The girl shivered in the cold Slovak dawn. She hugged her coarse wool shawl closer to her body, her fingers chilled raw and aching.

  The servants’ door to the Countess’s dressing room opened grudgingly. Zuzana heard the stirring of the bedcovers and linens in the bedroom beyond. She cursed herself for falling back asleep after the horrid dream that had left her choking and gasping for breath like a carp on dry land. Even as her eyes snapped open, she still saw the castle walls awash in blood. She had struggled to regain her breath, the red gore slowly fading to gray stone once more.

  She kissed the tiny crucifix around her neck. Her chapped lips moved silently in prayer.

  Zuzana was the only handmaiden Countess Erzsebet Bathory had brought from Sarvar Castle in Lower Hungary, but she was never allowed to enter the inner bedchamber. She was obliged to keep to the frigid corridor and the dressing room. For Zuzana that was a blessing, God’s intercession that spared her from crossing the evil threshold, and every night she whispered a prayer of thanks.

  Some of the Slovak women teased her about her exclusion from the bedchamber with its plastered walls and silk tapestries. Zuzana could not enter, they said, because the Countess could not bear to see the handmaiden’s scarred face upon waking.

  “A nocny in the morning light, when the sun should chase away the demons of darkness!” mocked the big-bosomed Hedvika.

  Nocny. Nightmare. The village handmaidens called her “nightmare” in their poor and heavily accented German. They spoke only Slovak, not a word of Hungarian, but the Countess suffered them. The ones who did not sleep on straw pallets in the castle made the long walk up from the village before dawn, their cloaks pulled tight against the winter snows, wary of the amber-eyed wolves that lurked in the darkness.

  Čachtice Castle perched high on a rocky mountainside, surrounded by the wild borderlands of embattled Royal Habsburg Hungary, hard against the Ottoman territories to the east. Too often the acrid smell of gunpowder and scorched land scented the morning air, carried from the battlefields beyond.

  Zuzana stirred the embers in the fireplace and added twigs to resurrect the flames. The warped panes of the windows distorted the light, casting irregular coins of pale brightness. A bird beat its wings, launching into the dawn from its roost. The maid raised her eyes to watch it flutter away.

  She yelped, her fingers singed by the newborn flames.

  Zuzana could hear the creak of the wooden bed and the rustle of sheets. A servant would be massaging the mistress’s small white feet with ambergris oil and scenting them with lavender before she eased them into the kidskin slippers. And Darvulia would be giving the Countess a morning potion, chanting spells to protect her.

  Zuzana hurried about her chores, knowing any moment Countess Bathory would demand her full attention.

  The silver brushes, ivory combs, and filigreed hand mirror were laid out on starched linen. The perfume vials and tins of powders lined the vanity table. Zuzana pulled the stopper from the crystal flask of Hungarian water—aqua vitae, rosemary tops, and ambergris. Her pale lips curved up in pleasure, the smell was divine and she knew it would please her mistress. The handmaiden took sat isfaction in Countess Bathory’s legendary beauty, due in part to Zuzana’s work in maintaining the creamy perfection of the Countess’s porcelain-white skin. Zuzana created her own potions from the rendered fat of peacocks and minerals from the banks of the River Vah.

  The Countess took a fierce pride in her complexion. She never exposed her skin to the rays of the sun. The stingy light that crept through the arrow slits and slipped around the velvet edges of the curtains was the only sun she could abide.

  It was said that the Countess had a mortal dread of the sun.

  That is where the foolish folklore lies, thought Zuzana. While the village people of Čachtice whispered legends of demons, Zuzana knew better. It was the Countess’s vanity that made her hide from the light.

  Night was Bathory’s time for excursions in her black lacquered coach or for entertaining guests in the great hall of the castle. And just now, at this early hour, the exact parting of night and day, was when the Countess insisted on making her toilette, when daylight was the weakest and she could inspect her skin in the looking glass, without fear of the sun’s harsh rays.

  The Countess’s voice murmured in her bedchamber, and Zuzana’s chest tightened. She still had one chore to perform: the most difficult part of the morning, polishing the looking glass.

  Clutching a soft rag, the maid’s fists churned furious circles over her reflection, as if she could erase herself. The shining glass reflected the pale morning light, teasing the girl with her own image.

  Zuzana frowned and blocked the heartless glass, playing hide-and-seek with her reflection. She finally closed her eyes, smarting with tears, and turned away.

  Zuzana was not fair of face.

  The pox had scarred her once-perfect skin, though she had slipped the malady’s embrace with her life, unlike her handsome older brother, who had died in an earlier wave of the Hungarian scourge, years before she was born. The plague had carried him away, his skin blue, his rattling breath surrendering his soul into the other world. Even so, death had been kind—the peasant boy was in his winding cloth before the Bathorys fully understood his involvement with their adored daughter. Zuzana shuddered to think of what hideous torture would have befallen him had he survived the fever.

  Indeed the pox had been a blessing in disguise for both brother and sister. Ladislav had died before he could be tortured; and Zuzana, who was born beautiful as the sunrise, was scarred so badly that the villagers turned away from the sight of her. Strangers scowled and made a sign to ward off evil if they encountered her along the road. The town idiot threw stones at her, jeering. But her affliction had captured the at
tention of the powerful Countess Bathory, who had taken mercy on the scarred girl, as one might take mercy on a mongrel puppy.

  Still, the Slovak maids teased her mercilessly. When their mistress was not in earshot, Zuzana endured their taunts, especially the cruelest from Hedvika.

  “Only the devil could sear thumbprints so deep in your skin.”

  Was she really so ugly? Her bright blue eyes still shone from under thick black lashes, her hair gleamed a flaxen yellow, but the pox scars on her skin were the only feature the maids noticed—and scorned.

  Zuzana heard the creak of the hinges. She stuffed the cleaning rag into her apron pocket.

  The entourage of handmaidens accompanied the Countess only as far as the doorway. They were forbidden to enter the dressing room and Zuzana knew why: Erzsebet Bathory could not abide the sight of a fair maiden beside her in the looking glass.

  Only one trusted girl, the pretty dark-haired Vida, accompanied the Countess. She helped seat her mistress upon the cushion and then spread the heavy train of her red velvet dressing gown along the carpeted floor. The maiden kept her head bowed and did not lift her face.

  The Countess glanced at the silver-backed brushes and flasks of oils and potions. Her bejeweled hand ran over the ivory comb, caressing the handheld mirror, the silver pot of lip stain. Her lips curved in satisfaction.

  Zuzana watched as Vida kneeled to smooth the hem of the velvet train on the floor and then backed silently out the door.

  The Countess settled back into the chair. Zuzana curtsied, her head low and tight in respect.

  The Countess lifted Zuzana’s chin with her cold, white hand and studied her maid’s face. The girl trembled in her mistress’s grasp.

  The Countess laughed, her white teeth gleaming in the blazing light of the torches.