“Don’t you psychoanalyze me, Missy!” Grace said, shaking a bony finger at her daughter. “I don’t need your advice.”
Grace’s face crumpled with grief. She began to cry.
“We could talk about Dad without it being a fight,” said Betsy, softly. “You need to talk to somebody.”
Grace closed her eyes tight, shaking her head, trying to rid herself of the words.
“I want to talk about you, not your father!” she said, tightening her grip around the stem of her glass. Betsy saw the outline of her finger bones, clutching like a perched bird.
“If you had stayed with John, he would have straightened you out. He was a practical young man. No nonsense. He would have been a damn good father, a good provider. I would have had grandchildren by now.”
Betsy suddenly couldn’t breathe. She tried to answer her mother, but no sounds came out of her mouth. She got up, grabbing her parka off the peg. She wrapped her burgundy wool scarf three times around her throat, pulled on her tasseled ski cap and gloves.
“Where are you going?” snapped Grace, leaning forward in her chair. She nearly lost her balance and toppled to the floor. “Betsy! It’s a goddamn blizzard out there!”
“I’d prefer the storm out there than the one here, Mom.”
Betsy slammed the door shut, blinking hot tears. Snowflakes melted against her eyelashes, blinding her.
Chapter 6
ČACHTICE CASTLE
NOVEMBER 28, 1610
After Janos had inspected the horses, he asked if he could be presented to the mistress of the castle.
“The Countess does not hold audience until dusk,” said Guard Kovach. “She will see you after sunset.”
Janos stared back at the gloomy castle where he had seen the shadowy movement.
“I think I may have caught a glimpse of her,” he said. “When I was working with the stallion.”
The guard looked at him, his brow arched.
“I doubt that, Horsemaster Szilvasi. Not in the light of day.”
The guard raised his gloved hand. He beckoned Szilvasi to follow him to the barracks, where guards and stable hands took their rest.
The heavy door creaked open to a common area. A warm breath of cabbage soup greeted the traveler, its sulfurous scent obliterating any other odor, except an occasional whiff of the guards’ unwashed bodies.
“You can lay your blanket near the hearth,” said the guard. “The kitchen boys keep the fire burning throughout the night.”
“You the new horsemaster?” piped a high voice. “It is about time someone cared properly for those miserable animals. They are almost meat for my stewpot.”
The cook was a thin man whose skin stretched tight across his skull. Janos could see the workings of the muscles in his neck and jawbone as he spoke. The only meat on his body was the muscle in his forearms, forged from stirring the massive iron pot. For a cook, his meager flesh did not bode well for the food he prepared, thought Janos.
Janos turned halfway to the guard.
“I would like to get to work on the stables and treating the horses as soon as possible. Cook, do you have some sugar?”
“Ach!” he responded, shaking his skeletal head at Janos. “You think a barracks cook would have sugar? The castle kitchen keeps sugar locked in the pantry under Brona the cook’s shrewd eye. It is imported from Venice and costly—”
“I will need as much as five spoonfuls. Please procure it at once for the horses’ welfare. Better than in the belly of a sweet-toothed nobleman.”
Guard Kovach and the cook eyed each other. They were not certain how to respond to the impudent young horsemaster.
“Guard Kovach, do you use lime in the privy?” asked Janos.
The guard’s forehead creased in anger. “We run a clean barracks here—what are you implying?”
“Good, I will need at least a half bucket of lye. And straw, like the straw used to cover night soil. I want enough clean, fresh straw to fill the stables a foot deep.”
By nightfall, Guard Kovach saw the new horsemaster hard at work, flanked by his ragged crew of stable boys, though Janos had made the feverish Aloyz rest by the fire, covering him with a blanket.
Janos held a bay mare’s back leg on his knee and cocked the stinking flesh of her hoof toward his face.
“See—the triangular part of the hoof is the most sensitive,” he said to the boys. “Never cut it, unless the flesh is dead and hanging. It is live and vulnerable to pain, the same as your finger or toe.”
With a sharp knife, he carved out the muck and embedded stones around the island of soft flesh. Then one of the stable boys sprinkled lye into the rotting hoof. Fingers protected by a rag, Janos pressed the chalky powder deep into the rot.
“Every day you must do this until the flesh is dry and healed,” he said, still holding the mare’s hoof in his hand. He straightened his knee and let go of the hoof. The horse snorted and the stable boys nodded as they accepted the horsemaster’s instruction.
Guard Kovach walked toward the mare and saw white glistening on a festered wound. As he approached, he could see the shiny granules of sugar.
“What is this?” he said. “You have used the Countess’s fine white sugar on horseflesh?”
Szilvasi smiled at the guard, whose face was still contorted in astonishment.
“You will see, Guard Kovach, how quickly the wounds heal with a regular dusting.”
He ran a hand around the mare’s withers, his fingers skipping over the wound. She twitched under his touch.
Guard Kovach scratched his head. “I have come to tell you that the Countess will grant you audience. She sends word to come when the moon has risen.”
Janos arched his eyebrow. “Such strange habits the Countess has in welcoming a faithful servant from Sarvar Castle,” he said, stretching his arms wide over head, hands balled in fists as he yawned. “I am so tired. Perhaps the Countess will agree to see me in the morning, since she has kept me all day awaiting an audience.”
“You will sleep after meeting the Countess.” The guard stood, arms crossed on his chest, taking in Szilvasi’s appearance. “Go see the cook and ask for a bucket of water and a rag to bathe. The Countess is fastidious about cleanliness. She abhors the smell of a man’s sweat or the stench of beast.”
Janos snorted and turned away, massaging his own sore back; he had spent hours bent over horses’ hooves, bearing their weight in his hands.
The guard grabbed the young man’s shoulder, spinning him back around. “Do not take the Countess’s wishes so cavalierly, Horsemaster. She does not endure informality.”
“And I do not endure brutality!” said Janos, shaking free of Guard Kovach’s grasp. “What the devil did she mean sending me that horsewhip?”
Guard Kovach started to answer and then clamped his mouth shut, looking over his shoulder. He saw the stable boys’ eyes grow large with fear as they listened.
“Go bathe, Szilvasi. You stink of horse piss,” said the guard. He turned and walked out of the pool of light cast by the lanterns into the dark of the cobbled courtyard. “You have yet to grasp the ways of Čachtice Castle.”
Chapter 7
ASPEN, COLORADO
NOVEMBER 28, 2010
It’s a few weeks late for Halloween,” Jane said, looking up from her Vogue magazine. She threw a contemptuous look at Daisy’s shredded crepe dress and white Goth makeup.
“Ha, ha,” Daisy said. “That kills, Mother. You should be on Comedy Central.”
“You’ll scare the neighbors,” snapped Jane. “And they’ll think I’m a bad mother, letting my daughter traipse around in a torn dress in a howling blizzard.”
“Screw the neighbors,” Daisy said, fastening the buckles of her boots. “You think too much about other people’s opinions, Mother.”
“And maybe you should think more about what people think. Just a little.”
“Why? Besides I’m not going to walk around this neighborhood anyway. What’s to see but bi
g stupid mansions and greedy men with wives younger than their own daughters. They are disgusting.”
Jane glowered at her daughter.
“What?” Daisy said.
“You know, Daisy, you have gotten awfully bitchy lately,” she said. “I might just call your father to let him know what a pain in the ass you are.”
Daisy’s breath caught, and she coughed.
“Are you all right?” said Jane, anger vanishing from her face. “You shouldn’t be going out—”
Daisy threw on the long black wool coat she had bought at the thrift shop.
“Where are you going?” Jane asked, her hand on her hip.
“Wherever I want.”
Daisy slammed the door, making the snow slide off the porch roof.
She drove the BMW down Red Mountain, sliding around the first corner and nearly crashing into the guardrail. The car stalled and when she got it started again, she crept down the hill in first gear.
She parked at a pullout at the bottom of Red Mountain Road along the Roaring Fork River. She set off along the river on the Rio Grande trail, earbuds wedged tight in her ears. She smiled, listening to a Doors’ song, over and over again.
People are strange when you’re a stranger…
It was snowing hard, as if it were January. Snow gathered thick on every branch, shaking loose the last yellow leaves from the aspens. She trudged down the snowy path, looking at the river. There was ice along the shore but then the water broke out, running fast and dark between the snow-blanketed rocks.
The snow was falling heavily now, coating her eyelashes, blinding her, despite her hood. Jim Morrison and the Doors were blasting through the earphones.
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange…
Oof!
She hadn’t heard him racing down the path. She sprawled on the ground, cursing in the snow. Her legs were tangled up with a sweaty, cross-country skier who had slammed into her.
T.N.T. oi oi oi!
T.N.T. oi oi oi!
His earphones dangled from his neck, blasting out AC/DC.
I’m Dy-na-mite!
“Oh, shit! Are you OK? I didn’t expect anyone,” he said.
“Couldn’t you see me?”
“It’s a freakin’ blizzard. You were in the middle of the trail.”
“What an idiot!”
“Are you hurt?”
“Get off me!”
The crash had knocked the wool hat off the skier’s curly blond hair.
Daisy recognized him from school. He was a snowboarder. One of those extreme guys who competes in the X-Games, she thought. I had to go to pep rallies for him. There was nothing a Goth despised more than a pep rally.
He crawled off and pulled her up, despite the fact he was still on his skis.
“God damn it!” she said. “Now I’ve lost my earbuds.”
Daisy could still hear his music blasting from his earphones, a final insult. Hard rock. Booming.
“Here they are,” he said, digging them up out the snow. He gave her a crooked smile. “Wow, you are sassy, Goth girl.”
“Go to hell, asshole!”
He wrinkled his nose, laughing at her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Enough with the drama, OK? Jeez.”
He handed her the wet earbuds and pressed the PAUSE button on his iPod.
“Look, I’m really sorry.”
A hard gust of wind blew the snow sideways. He had to almost shout. Daisy could smell some kind of fruity gum on his breath. A whiff of the tropics in the middle of a snowstorm.
“It’s OK,” she said, mumbling.
“You were hard to see, you know,” he said into her ear.
“What? Because I’m not dressed up in garish colors like some cheerleader?”
“Hey! I didn’t say that. Wear what you want, that’s cool. I just didn’t see you, you know.”
Daisy brushed the snow from her coat, shaking out her hood.
“You want me to walk you to your car or house or something?” he offered. “It’s snowing kinda hard.”
“No, I’m going down to the Slaughterhouse Bridge to catch the bus back to the trailhead. I’ve got my car parked there at the pullout.”
He looked at her dubiously, swatting the bottoms of his skis with his pole to knock off the ice that had accumulated.
“Sure you’re OK?”
“Yeah, yeah, really.”
Shit, she thought. She didn’t want him to think she was a wuss, just because she wasn’t skiing or doing some kind of hardcore snow sport.
“Look, I used to ride horses and take lots of crashes,” she said. “I’ve cracked ribs, broken my arm twice, and dislocated my shoulder. This is nothing.”
“Yeah?” he said, his face creasing up in a smile. “I know all about bad wipeouts,” he said, cleaning the snow from his goggles. “OK, I’ll see you in Spanish class.”
Was he in her Spanish class?
He waved a pole at her and skied off, disappearing into the swirl of snow.
A long, wet half hour later, she crossed the river and started trudging up the steep Cemetery Lane hill toward town. It was a long hill, but at the top she could catch the bus the rest of the way into town. The street was silent, the houses shut tight against the storm. The only person she saw was a woman sweeping the snow off her car with a broom. She stopped working and stared at Daisy as she walked past.
Daisy could feel the woman’s eyes on her back as she trudged on, stumbling over chunks of ice the snowplow had thrown on the side of the road.
Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven when you’re down…
Cemetery Lane. She came to the black wrought-iron fence around the cemetery, ringing the graves and the massive century-old cottonwoods.
A good Goth never passes a cemetery without paying respects. Even in a blinding snowstorm.
It was peaceful under the branches of the cottonwoods, the trunks of the trees packed white with blowing snow. She wound her way through the cemetery, gazing at the stones, reading the inscriptions. The oldest graves dated back to the 1880s.
She always looked for the children. Sometimes she bought carnations or roses at half off at City Market and placed them on the graves.
She stopped to read a newer stone, speckled with flecks of burnt-orange lichens. Ceslav Path. Loving husband of Grace and father of Elizabeth.
My shrink had a father named Ceslav?
Daisy stood shivering in the snow, feeling a strange vibe. Jim Morrison shouted in her ear.
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name…
Daisy pulled out the earbuds and pressed the PAUSE button. She kneeled in the snow, touching the tombstone with her gloved hand in the silence.
And she wondered: What kind of name was Ceslav?
Chapter 8
ČACHTICE CASTLE
NOVEMBER 28, 1610
At dusk, the courtyard of Čachtice Castle slipped into silence. The butchers who stained the cobblestones red with their slaughters had gone home, the geese were locked away in their coops, the clang of the smith’s hammer was silenced. The dairyman’s wagon had creaked down the long rutted road to the village. The sausage maker’s cast-offs had long been consumed by the ravens and dogs, and the last of the blood licked clean by the cats. The soap-maker’s shavings had been mixed with water to make a lather and rinse off the remains of the day, leaving the stones wet and polished, the moon’s reflection dappling the gleaming courtyard. The torches cast shifting waves of brightness across the walls of the castle, and sentries stood watch in the moonlight.
A thin servant with nervous eyes came to summon Horsemaster Szilvasi to the castle.
Janos wore an open-neck white linen tunic over his dark breeches. It was the kind of shirt a wealthy farmer might wear to a horse fair or tavern. He wore no coat, only a boiled-wool riding jacket, threadbare with age.
The servant surveyed him, mois
tening his dry lips.
“Sir, forgive me. Do you have anything more suitable to wear before the Countess?”
Janos narrowed his eyes at the servant, clad in black velvet, the silver hooks of his fine cloak gleaming in the torchlight. The horsemaster dropped his eyes to scan his own clean white shirt.
“No, this will do,” he said, testily. “I am a horseman, not a castle servant.”
“Very good, sir. It is just that—”
“What?”
“The Countess is…fastidious.”
“I wish she were more fastidious with the care of her horses,” answered Janos. “And in welcoming a weary traveler from Sarvar Castle.”
The servant took a step back. His eyes were ringed in white, much as the horses’ had been.
“I beg you, sir!” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Do not criticize the Countess in my presence.” The servant looked about the empty courtyard, searching the shadows for spies.
“You are scared of your own shadow, man! Take me to the Countess,” said Janos, dismissing his concerns with a wave of his hand. “I am losing patience. And I am weary for my bed.”
The courtyard was treacherous, the water on the cobblestones already beginning to freeze. The servant worked his way around the edge of the yard, placing his feet carefully. Janos followed, the click of his riding boots sounding a steady beat on the stone.
The guards opened the massive door of the castle, hinges creaking despite regular coats of pork grease. A servant took Janos aside and patted him roughly, searching for weapons.
“There are enemies of the Bathorys,” he said as way of explanation.
The tapestry-hung halls were illuminated by wrought-iron candelabras. Ornately carved furniture—chairs, chests, and long tables—shone darkly with thick coats of beeswax. The walls—where not covered by tapestries—were hung with oil portraits of Nadasdy and Bathory ancestors, men in gleaming armor, their hands on bejeweled swords, ready to kill the Islamic invaders. One portrait showed the Countess’s husband, Ferenc Nadasdy, triumphantly seated atop a pile of slain Ottoman warriors, their blood coating his boots.
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