Authors: Romina Nicolaides
“Kati, where’s Margaréta? The other servant wouldn’t tell us,” asked Alena, a jeweler’s daughter, a chubby girl of only ten.
“She’s feeling a little unwell and had to be sequestered into the castle lest she contaminate all of you too.”
“She tried to escape last night, you know.”
“I know that, and for her troubles she caught a chill. Let that be a lesson to all of you who feel home sick. No going home until the Countess says so. Besides, you need to appreciate what a great opportunity this is for you all to become real educated ladies,” she said caressing the child’s hair, her conscience weighing on her for what she was telling them. She wanted to tell them the truth, but knew that this might expedite their deaths as they would all panic and want to go home. “Now go in, do your homework and then straight to bed. There will be another early wake up call for you in the morning.”
Before reaching the door Alena ran to her holding out a folded sheet of paper.
“Kati could you please put this with the other mail you were going to send out today? It’s to my nurse.”
“The Countess’s secretary has made sure that they’ve all gone out already but I’ll see if I can send this one tomorrow,” said Katalina taking the letter. A thought was forming in her head,
what if I send for help with this in the morning?
Kati returned to Margaréta’s room and peeked in through the door. The girl was sleeping so she locked the door and seized the chance to go do some chores. When she returned a while later though, the lock had been picked, Margaréta was nowhere to be found and her clothes and cloak were gone.
Not again?
How does she manage to pick every lock she comes across?
I’m dead for certain this time
.
She touched the bed and it was still warm. “She can’t have left too long ago.”
Kati’s heart was beating like crazy as she rushed down the secret stairs to make her way out. In her anxiety they felt never ending, almost as if they weren’t letting her go. At least she had escaped at night time again. She ran into the forest but the girl was nowhere to be found and she couldn’t pick up her scent at all.
“Margaréta? Margaréta where are you? Please come back!” Kati was growing desperate now and didn’t care if anyone else heard her. Suddenly out of nowhere she saw the Countess gallop towards her on a powerful horse kicking up dust and leaves as it raced. She approached with significant speed and it seemed as if she was looking to mow Kati down.
“Give me your hand,” she shouted as she approached and without stopping she pulled Kati onto the back of the horse. The girl had never been on one before so she landed somewhat ungracefully and tried to hold onto anything that was attached to it for dear life. After several minutes of riding east they reached a stream and in the middle of it was Margaréta trying unsuccessfully to cross to the other side. The stream was quite deep and powerful and her heavy clothing was soaking up water making it even harder for her. Wading the horse into the water the Countess grabbed the girl by the hair and dragged her to the shore. Exhausted, Margaréta fell to the ground and struggled to catch her breath. The Countess dismounted quickly as Kati tried to do the same, only with less grace.
“I don’t like disobedience,” she stated walking circles around the girl. “I don’t like it in my staff, and I like it even less from my guests. Guests to which I am trying to impart the full breadth of my knowledge and breeding.” She pulled her up from her hair again and she shouted, “Do you hear me girl?” into her ears. To her credit Margaréta remained stoic, not answering the taunts, trying to maintain her composure. The Countess proceeded to tear off the girl’s clothing and tie her to the nearest tree.
“You don’t run away from someone who gives you food and shelter and who’s trying to help you to improve your standing! Otherwise you're no better than the vermin servants you despise so much!” She was in a frenzy now. The girl was shivering naked and wet in the cool evening, her otherwise beautiful hair in clustered knots covered in dead leaves. The Countess struck her breasts with the riding crop and the wounds immediately swelled up. She approached slowly and languorously smelled Margareta’s skin before biting into her left shoulder without severing the surface, leaving the deep red outline of her jaws on the soft flesh. Margareta screamed dropping her cool façade.
“Just let me go home, I don’t want to be taught. Please let me go,” she said starting to cry like they all did.
“You know Katalina, the one thing I liked about you when I first turned you was that you never cried during torture.” She said this while circling the tree and never taking her eyes off Margaréta. “That girl over there might be otherwise useless as a maid but at least she has some guts!” She said pointing at Kati. “All you others always give up and cry like little babies no matter your pedigree, begging for your lives, pleading for the pain to stop. You know nothing of real pain……You’re all so disappointing.”
She grabbed the girl’s face and kissed her, sinking her fangs into her lips and tongue until blood began to trickle from the sides and the girls eyes bulged as she was unable to scream in pain. When the Countess eventually came up for air Margaréta began to scream uncontrollably with whatever use of her tongue she had left. Losing patience Báthory slit her throat with her thumb claw, silencing her at once and lapping up the thick blanket of blood oozing and spurting from the gash. Turning to Kati covered in blood, she glared at her with the full intensity of her luminous green eyes, “Now clean that up and come back to the castle right away!” Kati nodded in agreement as the Countess mounted the horse again and headed back to Csejthe.
Shivering with cold and shock, Kati was left in the forest to deal with Margaréta’s body. No one was immune to this woman’s rage. This vibrant girl, who only minutes earlier had been living and breathing, now hung limply from the tree with her throat cut. The blood seeping from the wound smelled so nice and inviting and in her hunger Kati timidly lapped up whatever the Countess had left behind. She untied her from the tree and took her deep into the forest where she knew wolves congregated. She said a brief prayer, left her on the ground outside their nest and retreated to a safe distance. She wrung out her skirt from the remaining water and remembered Alena’s letter. She fished it out of her pocket and was devastated to see nothing had remained of it but a pulpy mess. Defeated yet again, she made her way back to the castle to face the music. The Countess was at her desk writing.
“Come in Katalina,” she said without turning. Kati approached and waited, breathing faster and faster, her sweaty hands beginning to clam.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you. You always fail me.”
“No amount of apologizing can make up for my error, Your Grace.”
“Indeed.”
“But to my defense she was pig-headed, Your Grace,” she twiddled her fingers nervously.
“Who do you think is stronger willed my dear? Her or
me
?”
“You of course, Your Grace.”
“And who do you fear more, her or me?”
“You, Your Grace.”
“Did you forget this in your dealings with her?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“
No, Your Grace
she says…
no, Your Grace,
” she mocked Kati’s tone. Then, without saying anything else she grabbed the cast iron candle holder that was illuminating her desk and whacked it into Kati’s face shattering her cheekbone and dislocating and cracking her lower jaw, splattering blood and molten candle all over the floor. Kati lost her senses and fell to the ground. The Countess wiped the blood on her fine apron, repositioned the candle holder where it previously stood on the desk and relit it before going back to her writing.
Kati woke to find herself strapped to the floor in the dungeon while the Countess was going to work on one of her former students. The Gynaeceum charade had not lasted long, barely a few weeks as autumn moved towards winter. The girl was hoisted up by her arms and the Countess was working on her. She kept a low profile, trying to avoid looking at whatever was happening and trying not to crave the blood.
After she was done torturing the girl, who’d stopped making noises for some time now, the Countess proceeded to cut a line from her throat to her navel, pushed the skin aside and carefully but swiftly removed three of four ribs which were then followed by her barely beating heart. With delicate movements she placed it into a fine glass container which seemed specifically designed to hold a heart in place upright while somebody worked on it. Next to her on the floor was a tall book stand with a small red book with foreign writing in and next to that an equally sized one filled with the Countess’s writing. Kati recognized the small red book as the one given to the Countess in Vienna by the Läuse. "Wake up you useless little shit!” she said while nudging Kati with her foot. “I expect you are restored after your little beauty sleep?” She asked sardonically.
“Yes mistress,” confirmed Kati without showing that she was still in some pain after the beating she’d received earlier. Thankfully because of Margaréta's blood she’d almost healed.
“Then come help me.” Kati stood up and approached the table.
“Do exactly as I say, and be quick about it, time is of the essence here.”
“Yes mistress.” The Countess was wearing thin leather gloves and was cutting with the fine set of silver knives.
“Hold the heart still while I do this.”
She uses the hearts like the Priest wanted to do to her boy.
Over the years Erzsébet had merged a series of writings and belief systems in order to create a cure for her aging body but she was failing miserably in her haze of madness and desperation.
Kati took hold of the slippery warm heart from the vessels at the top while the Countess tried to pull the outer lining off and empty its contents into another glass container. The sparse liquid that was extracted was sprinkled with a foul smelling powder before the Countess mumbled some unfamiliar words in Latin and Slovak and then proceeded to drink the concoction. She stood silent for a few seconds while the potion made its way down her throat and then opened her eyes as if completely refreshed. She ran to the closest mirror and with her bloodied leather gloves she ran her hands over her skin. Her shift dress was completely saturated in blood as was her loose hair.
“Good, very good!” She kept repeating to herself with that glazed look in her eye. Then she suddenly turned to Kati, “Clean all this up, and then come sleep in my room when you are done, I don’t want you wandering.” Kati looked around at the by now familiar scene that was the dungeon and got to cleaning the carnage like always. Sometime around 3:00 pm she was done and went to Countess’s chambers like she’d been instructed and slept on the ground by the bed utterly exhausted. At dusk the Countess woke still in her blood soaked shift which had now congealed into a solid mess. She stood up immediately and ran to the mirror to examine her skin in the fading light that came in from the amber glass. Without warning she let out a blood curdling scream and knocked off all the jewels and bottles that stood on her dresser before starting to cry with her face buried in her hands terrifying Kati in the process.
“I don’t understand! I did everything right this time! I didn’t cut the pouch, I saved all the liquid, I said the incantation and I used the powder just like the witches instructed! I did everything right!” She paced up and down the room for a good while, talking to herself and trying to understand what had gone wrong. She was mumbling and was clearly beside herself. From the nonsensical mutterings of this woman and by all she’d read in her journals Kati realized that in recent years the Countess had merged a series of items and experiences to a formula, that only made sense in her now unstable mind. She was using the priest’s knives on the heart because she thought they wielded some sort of power and was reading the book from the Americas for technique while sprinkling local herbs given to her by her mindless cohorts. She was constantly wearing pagan talismans and carried many little pouches of hideous herbs and spices that Darvulia said were good for something or other. This woman had clearly lost her way and there was no coming back. Each day that passed where she remained old and dying was another little push towards the cliff of insanity for her already jaded psyche, and each new breath she took was a reminder of the distance that was being put between her and her precious boy.
The Countess ran to her bed and pulled out a hard leather box from under it that Kati had never noticed before. She lifted the lid to reveal a rich velvet piece of fabric that was covering something. She lifted that too and at first Kati couldn’t make out what the box contained but after a few moments it dawned on her. It was a
mummified severed head. Erzsébet leaned into the box and whispered something to it, and tears began to flow from her eyes. “Tell me what to do Vyktor please, please! Guide me! There isn’t much time, please?" Realizing that she’d been holding her breath Kati exhaled slowly and walked towards the Countess who was now crying slouched over the box. She knelt down and caressed her hair hoping to stem the flood of potential violence that would come her way after this outburst.