Читать книгу Bathed In Blood - Alex Archer - Страница 7

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Csejte Castle Present day Slovakia

Annja Creed eyed the camera for a moment, and then stepped forward to adjust the angle of the lens an inch or so to the left. Satisfied, she nodded to herself, moved back to her former position and keyed the remote in her left hand.

“As you can see, behind me lies the ruins of Csejte Castle, home to one of the most beautiful, and most villainous, women who ever lived—the Blood Countess herself, Elizabeth Báthory.”

A shake of her head, a double click of the remote to stop and restart the recording, and then she tried again.

“The crumbling walls you see behind me are the ruins of Csejte Castle, once home to Elizabeth Báthory, a woman some consider one of history’s greatest monst... Gah!”

She stopped the recording and turned away in frustration. Creating the opening to the show should have been a piece of cake. She’d done hundreds of such takes during her time as cohost of Chasing History’s Monsters, the cable television show she’d worked for these past few years. Yes, normally she would’ve worked with a cameraman and wouldn’t have to worry about framing and proper exposure, but she was a steady hand at this by now and probably could have shot, edited and produced the entire show on her own.

Which was exactly what she was intending to do for this one.

The whole thing was a bit of a lark, she had to admit. She’d been with her regular crew in the Czech Republic, filming an episode on Faust and the mysterious creatures that still supposedly haunt his house, but the shoot had wrapped early. With a few extra days suddenly on hand, Annja decided to make the jaunt across the border into Slovakia to do some rock climbing and maybe even visit Báthory’s legendary castle.

She’d caught a flight into Bratislava, took a train northeast into Košice and drove the short distance to the small village of Višňové. Annja could see the castle’s ruins on the hill above the village as she’d driven in, and that was when the idea had struck. She’d checked into her hotel, fired up her laptop and searched the database.

For some strange reason, Chasing History’s Monsters had never done an episode on the world’s most notorious serial killer, Countess Báthory herself.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Annja, she’d reminded herself, and decided then and there to see what she could put together on her own. Selling a complete episode—shot, cut and edited—to her producer, Doug Morrell, would net her some extra cash and give him an episode he could deliver to his own bosses seemingly overnight. That would make him look good, and he could even hold on to it for an emergency situation when some other episode’s filming went south. It was a win-win situation.

She was pretty certain Doug would take the show; the subject matter was right up his alley. It would make a great episode.

If she could get the opening right, that was.

Annja turned and surveyed the ruin of the castle. There really wasn’t much to look at, truth be told. A few sets of crumbling walls, an extended tower or two, but not much more than that. The castle had been sacked and plundered by Ferenc II Rákóczi in 1708 as part of the Hungarian uprising against the Hapsburgs. It had been left to fall into ruin, and a ruin it had become.

And yet something still drew people here.

She knew what it was, of course.

The lure of history.

Annja understood that; she’d felt that same thrill, that same connection to the past, every single time she’d started an expedition or been involved in an archaeological dig. It was the reason she’d pursued her chosen career—as an archaeologist, not as a television host—in the first place. To reach out and touch something from the past, to hold a piece of history in your hands and wonder about the person who’d last held that object hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years before... Yes, archaeology had a way of getting down deep into a person’s soul.

But in this case it was more than that.

It wasn’t just the lure of history.

It was the legend of the Blood Countess.

The idea of standing on the same stones where the notorious serial killer had once lived held a kind of eerie fascination for many people. The fact that it all happened back in the 1600s didn’t make any difference; as with Vlad Dracul, the Wallachian prince who was generally recognized as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the legend of Elizabeth Báthory had grown over the ages.

However, Annja wanted to expose the history behind it all. No doubt Doug would prefer her to ignore the high road and feature reenactments of the beautiful Báthory climbing naked out of a pool of blood. But that simply wasn’t Annja’s style.

If she was going to do a show about Báthory, she was going to tell the truth.

Or at least as much of the truth as anyone knew.

Annja stepped to the edge of the escarpment and looked out across the forested hills and rocky crags. The late-afternoon sun lit everything with a patina of gold as it sank toward the horizon. She imagined the countess had done the same thing many times, though with her own deeply tanned skin, long auburn hair and amber-green eyes, there was little chance of anyone mistaking Annja for the pale, dark-haired woman who had terrorized this land for nearly two decades.

Never mind my baseball cap, Annja thought with a laugh as she reached up and adjusted the brim to keep the sun out of her eyes. It was a nice day, warm and clear, and she could see for miles. It would get colder later that night, but for now she was perfectly comfortable in her long-sleeved shirt, shorts and hiking boots. It was her usual dig attire, and fans of the show expected to see her outfitted in the same. She didn’t mind; it was what she would have worn anyway, show or not.

As she turned away from the overlook, she reviewed what she knew about the countess.

Báthory had been born in Hungary in 1560. Both an uncle on her father’s side and her maternal grandfather had been princes of Transylvania. She was also cousin to Stefan Báthory, the king of Poland and duke of Transylvania. Elizabeth was raised on the family estate in Nyírbátor and taught to speak multiple languages, including Hungarian, Latin and Greek.

By all evidence an extremely intelligent woman.

Engaged to Ferenc Nádasdy, a Hungarian nobleman, at age twelve, Elizabeth became pregnant after an affair with one of the palace servants the following year. She gave birth in secret, but not before Nádasdy had the servant castrated and thrown to the dogs. The child, a daughter, was quickly disowned, and Ferenc and Elizabeth were married in May of 1575 when she was fourteen and a half years old. His wedding gift to his young bride was Csejte Castle and the territory surrounding it.

Fourteen and a half? Annja couldn’t imagine getting married now, in her midtwenties, never mind a decade or so ago. She knew it was the custom of the time, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Especially given what happened next.

In 1578 Báthory’s husband was appointed head of the Hungarian troops and led them to war against the Ottomans. In his absence, Elizabeth was responsible for the care and upkeep of the castle and its environs, including the country house of the same name and the seventeen villages nearby.

Fertile hunting grounds for appetites that grew harsher as the years went by.

Annja knew the countess had gotten bored with castle life. She and her husband wrote letters back and forth, as any married couple might do, but Elizabeth and Ferenc talked about methods of torture to be used on the Turkish prisoners. She would suggest new techniques and her husband would report the results back to her; some of those letters were still stored among the Nádasdy family documents in the National Archives of Hungary.

Soon the countess was trying out techniques of her own on her staff, all peasants—and therefore of no consequence in her view—from the surrounding villages. Severe whippings and beatings were frequent, often for the slightest infractions.

As time went on, more girls were lured to the castle under pretense of working for the countess, and then those girls started to disappear. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much the people could do about it. Báthory not only controlled the land they lived on but was related to the very authorities the villagers would’ve brought their concerns to.

What a terrible situation. Parents forced to watch as their daughters were taken from them with impunity. One of history’s monsters, indeed.

Báthory had finally paid for her crimes. The countess was imprisoned inside this very castle. She’d lived alone for four long years before dying from some unknown illness. Even the date of her death was conjecture; several plates of food had sat untouched just inside her chambers, so there was no way of knowing if she’d been dead for a few minutes or a few days when she’d been found.

That’s it! she thought. That’s the opening!

Annja rushed over to the camera, snatched up the remote and got into position. She took a few deep breaths and then stared directly at the lens as she pressed Record.

“Four hundred years ago, a woman was walled up inside the castle that now stands behind me. Her crimes were so terrible she would earn a reputation as the world’s foremost serial killer. Her name? Countess Elizabeth Báthory. Her rumored victims, six hundred and fifty in number, were all young women, and the savage way in which they were killed earned Báthory the nickname by which she is more commonly known—the Blood Countess. But was Elizabeth Báthory a monster? Or was she also a victim, caught between two sides of a titanic struggle for power that reverberates through this region today?

“Join me as we examine the reality and the myth surrounding the Blood Countess, Elizabeth Báthory, here on Chasing History’s Monsters.”