‘“She caused, in all, the death of six hundred and fifty girls, some in Tscheita, on the neutral ground, where she had a cellar constructed for the purpose; others in different localities, for murder and bloodshed became with her a necessity.
‘“When at last the parents of the lost children could no longer be cajoled, the castle was seized, and the traces of the murders were discovered. Her accomplices were executed, and she was imprisoned for life.”
‘What a horrible story,’ exclaimed Anne-Marie. ‘It is hard to believe a human being could be capable of such things.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Ambrose. ‘She makes Gilles de Retz — the original Bluebeard — look a mere amateur, yet he got all the publicity. Because of her aristocratic connections Elizabeth was never actually brought to trial and the details of her crimes were suppressed as much as possible. Wagener, writing nearly a century later, was afraid to mention her illustrious family name. However, truth will out, and if you look in Chambers Biographical Dictionary, you can find the following entry, and again I quote:
“‘Bathori, Elizabeth, niece of Stephan, King of Poland, and wife of the Hungarian Count Nádasdy, was discovered in 1610 to have murdered six hundred and fifty young girls, that she might renew her own youth by bathing in their warm blood, but she was shut up for life in her fortress at Csej.’”
The dessert came and Peter ordered Zambucca on the rocks. He recommended this house speciality to Anne-Marie, while Ambrose settled for a cognac.
‘What happened to the vampire lady in the end?’ asked Anne-Marie.
‘She was walled up in a small room within her castle,’ said Ambrose, ‘with only a small space left for food to be passed to her. Four gibbets were erected on the ramparts to show that justice had been done unofficially.’
‘Why unofficially?’ asked Peter.
‘Count Pal Nádasdy, the eldest son of Elizabeth (she had four children), wrote to the Lord Palatine in an endeavour to save his mother from punishment, and this saved her from the headsman’s axe. Her accomplices were executed in ways that I will not describe while Anne-Marie is having her crème caramel.
‘But, deprived of her supply of blood, Elizabeth did not survive long. A contemporary historian called Krapinai wrote of her, “Elizabeth Bathori, widow of Count Ferencz Nádasdy, His Majesty’s Chief Master of Horse, who was notorious for her murders, died imprisoned at Csejthe castle on August 14, 1614, suddenly and without crucifix and without light”’
Ambrose put away his notebook.
‘I’m afraid I got rather carried away by the Countess,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a newspaper cutting I found which might be of interest to you, Peter, but don’t bother with it now.’
‘Thanks for the research, Dad,’ Peter said. ‘I was hoping that something would emerge out of the superstition. It’s such an old and universal myth and yet, when I come up against it in one of the world’s best equipped hospitals, I find I’m utterly lost.’
Ambrose swirled his brandy round in the balloon glass thoughtfully and said: ‘We’re in a strange patch of human history. In this last century we have become drunk with power — and by power I mean energy. Until the oil crisis, each member of the world’s population on average had at his disposal the equivalent of power supplied by twelve human slaves. In the United States the ratio has been a hundred slave-power to each citizen. Each time a jet crosses the Atlantic it burns up a swimming-pool of irreplaceable fuel and ten tons of oxygen … we have spent our resources with the abandon of drunken sailors in a brothel … ’
‘That’s a good literary phrase,’ Anne-Marie chuckled.
‘We have the illusion that nature has few secrets left because men have driven on the moon and, in less than a lifetime, we have replaced the crystal set with colour television. Now our energy resources are getting low, our lights are just beginning to dim, and who knows what will come creeping back from the shadows? Who knows what old taints will return to our blood … ?’
The Capannina guests looked up startled as Peter’s fist suddenly crashed down on the table.
‘Good God!’ he breathed as the milky Zambucca from his overturned glass soaked into the tablecloth. ‘Why didn’t I think of it before? Infected blood! What a blind idiot I’ve been. Infected blood!’
* * *
The London Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System loomed vast against the mauve evening sky as Peter Pilgrim emerged from a narrow alley into Trinity Square. Already the old gas lamps — converted to take electric bulbs — were casting yellow haloes. Passing a statue of a long-deceased general on a charger, he glanced at the parallels of bright windows which marked the wards. Like all doctors he was familiar with human suffering, yet the quintessence of pain concentrated in the great brick edifice struck him morbidly.
Inside he took the lift up to Fleming Ward.
‘How are my sleepers today?’ he asked Sister.
‘No changes. Jeremy has been restless. He’s awake now.’ She smiled sympathetically at the young doctor, which depressed him further, knowing it was because he was having no success with his patients.
He walked into the sub-ward and to a corner bed where a twelve-y ear-old boy gazed dreamily at the ceiling.
‘Jeremy, how are you this evening?’ he said, sitting on the bed, to Sister’s private disapproval.
‘All right,’ the boy answered. ‘Have you found out what’s wrong with me yet?’
‘We know that. You sleep too much.’
‘Will I get better?’
‘I hope so. That’s why you’re here, for us to make you well.’
Jeremy mused for a moment ‘I wonder what happens while I’m asleep; perhaps I’m awake somewhere else and when I go to sleep there I wake up here.’
‘That’s an interesting thought. The Australian Aborigines believe there is a Dream Time. Everything comes from the Dream Time; not only people but kangaroos and plants and stones. When people go to sleep they go to the Dream Time. The Aborigines say the Dream Time is the real life and we’re on a sort of holiday from it while we’re on earth.’
‘I like that,’ said the child. ‘Since I’ve been in hospital I must go to the Dream Time a lot and … ’ His voice trailed off and his eyelids closed. Once more he was in the unnatural slumber of narcolepsy.
The doctor straightened up and glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll look in later, Sister,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go to Sir Henry’s bun-fight now.’
He was the last to arrive in the common-room where Sir Henry Beresford had arranged a cocktail party to welcome Dr Axel Stromberg, the distinguished neurologist from Sweden who had come to the London to study a newly-introduced surgical technique. The party was a victory celebration for Sir Henry, underlining die fact that a consultant of Stromberg’s standing considered he had something to learn from him.
Sir Henry Beresford was one of the two chief neurosurgeons at the London; the other was Mr Robert Harvey. Each had his own ‘school’ of juniors, and it amused Peter Pilgrim to note the way the young men aped the mannerisms of their mentors.
The Beresford faction were given to flamboyant gestures, a supercilious attitude to the nursing staff and a complete disregard for the notion a patient might have a personality.
While Sir Henry had his black Rolls Royce whisk him to his Surrey estate each evening, Mr Robert Harvey modestly drove a grimy Cortina to a self-effacing house in a North London suburb. Sir Henry came from a distinguished line of medical men who on more than one occasion had taken a royal pulse; Mr Robert Harvey was a miner’s son.
On the operating table Sir Henry performed with histrionics as well as great skill, amusing his fellow doctors with a flow of cultured anecdote and reducing theatre sisters to near hysteria at the slightest hesitation in following his crisp commands. Mr Robert Harvey approached his patients nervously, like a village clockmaker suddenly called upon to take a Piaget watch apart Yet once the first incision was made he operated with quiet precision, speaking softly and kindly to the staff about him. His ‘school’ was e
qually humble and quiet-spoken.
As Peter Pilgrim took a glass of sherry he saw Sir Henry was standing possessively beside Dr Stromberg, a tall, equally elegant figure with glossy black hair curling over his forehead. His face was long with prominent cheekbones and a narrow nose such as once characterized certain elite families in central Europe. His skin was pale, with a bluish shadow on the finely shaved jowls. In contrast his dark red lips were full and had a downward curve. His deep brown eyes expressed lively intelligence.
‘So that’s old Beresford’s latest catch,’ said Tudor Owens. ‘He’s got a hell of a record, boy -o. As a kid he was in a DP camp, then a Swedish orphanage. Now he’s got his own clinic financed by his own foundation.’
‘Ah, Pilgrim,’ Sir Henry interrupted. ‘Dr Stromberg was particularly anxious to meet you after I told him of your research project.’
Peter shook hands with the tall man and found that despite his long, fragile-looking fingers he had, like many surgeons, tendons of steel.
‘Dr Pilgrim, I am pleased to meet you,’ he said in carefully modulated English. ‘Already I have heard of your work with narcoleptics. This interests me very much because I have some such cases in my clinic. With them I have not progressed as I would have wished.’
‘Neither have I,’ Peter admitted. ‘So far I have just eliminated some theoretical angles. In the past too much a phasis has been placed on the hyperthalamus … ’
‘Ah, I am very interested to hear you say that. I have re with great interest your report in which you hypothesize t effect of blood factors on nervous centres. Perhaps tomorrow I could see your patients.’
Sir Henry was delighted that Dr Stromberg continued talk for a long time to Dr Pilgrim — it kept him away from Mr Robert Harvey.
Chapter 8
A tap at the door.
In her small room Mrs Kiss struggled out of her chair to get into a position to use her aluminium walking frame.
The tap was repeated.
‘I am coming,’ she called. ‘Ai, ai. I come as fast as I can.’ Her hands gripped die top of the frame. The upper part of her broad peasant body was still strong, only her legs had betrayed her. Foot by excruciating foot she moved towards the brown peeling door. Behind her ribs her heart fluttered like a trapped bird. Who could be calling on her? The welfare visitor was not due for another couple of hours. Could it be a postman? Would he go away before she could reach the door?
‘Wait, wait, I come,’ she shouted.
From behind the door came a muffled voice, deep with a slight foreign intonation (but not to Mrs Kiss whose English was deeply accented): ‘Take your time. I shall wait.’
She achieved the door, turned the key and peered through the space permitted by the safety chain. The gloom of the landing baffled her eyes after the glare of her unshaded bulb which burned night and day, but she was aware of a tail figure in a black Continental raincoat. His face was a blur of white with two dark holes where the eyes ought to be. In panic she began to push the door against his foot.
‘Are you Mrs Kiss — Elizabeth Kiss — who came to this country about twenty years ago?’
She paused, then asked: ‘Are you from the Embassy?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Ai, you do not understand.’
Like other East European refugees in Netting Hill Gate, Mrs Kiss lived in fear of the sinister ‘men from the Embassy. Mysterious officials in sunglasses, they visited e’migre’s to remind them that although they had escaped from their homelands, the People’s Governments of those homelands had not forgotten them, nor forgiven.
‘I am not from any embassy,’ reassured the stranger. ‘I am a lawyer. I am looking for a Mrs Kiss who once resided in the Csejthe district in north Hungary.’
‘A lawyer, you say,’ she muttered as she slipped the safety chain. ‘You had better come in.’ Painfully she moved to one side and the tall man entered.
‘Sit please,’ and she gestured to the chair used by the welfare visitor. Her mind was whirling and as she returned to her seat her hands trembled on the frame. In the light of the room she saw the stranger’s eyes had appeared odd because he wore green-tinted glasses.
‘It was because of die glasses I thought you were from the Embassy,’ she explained with a nervous laugh as she surveyed the stranger. She saw a strong thin face behind the spectacles, glossy black hair carefully curled down over me forehead, a firm but mobile mouth. His shoes and clothes were expensive, and he had very clean hands with nicely trimmed nails. He looked to be a real gentleman.
‘I take it you are Mrs Kiss then?’
‘I am Elizabeth Kiss.’
‘That is good,’ he said with a smile which revealed white teeth. ‘It has taken me a long time to find you. You might be surprised to know I have been making enquiries for you all over West Europe, but perhaps you wouldn’t.’
‘Perhaps not,’ she muttered, secretly wishing her hands would stop trembling, that her heart would cease bumping so. ‘Somehow, I thought someday … ’
He patted his heavy German briefcase.
‘I am here on behalf of a client. Please understand that for a few minutes I cannot mention names, not until I have established your identity beyond doubt.’
‘I have my pension book.’
‘I need more than that,’ he said, taking cream papers from his case. ‘Please answer these questions. Take your time, it goes back a long way.’
‘Ai,’ she sighed in agreement, not taking her eyes from his face.
‘Take your mind back to the winter of 1944. Can you tell me what you were doing?’
‘My husband and I were refugees. In some ways it seems like yesterday, yesterday I tell you. The cold … ai I What cold! Once I heard wolves.’
‘You had left your home village and were travelling through the forest?’
‘It was the partisans, you see,’ she explained. ‘A German truck stopped at our farm and an officer came and asked the way to Csejthe. That was enough. Someone in the village — perhaps with a grudge against my father because he was well off — saw the Germans and told the partisans that we were collaborators. One morning my husband and I and our little Kattie — what a happy child she was, God rest her — went to market. When we got back the bam was in flames, the beasts had been driven off and my old father was dead. Ai, ai! The blood … ’ She crossed herself, making the sign right to left.
‘But it must have been God’s will. We knew the partisans might return so we left the farm at once, and because of this we escaped a big battle which destroyed the village the next day. We went west towards my brother-in-law’s village, a long distance away. It was dangerous to travel by road so we went through the forest. Sometimes we were lost and sometimes snow fell. Whenever it stopped falling we could hear he boom boom of the guns. The cold was so bad it seemed to burn.
‘One day we were going through the trees when we came to a little village which had been destroyed. Even God’s church was in mins.’
‘Do you know its name?’ asked the stranger, his dark eyes gleaming with interest.
She shook her head.
“‘We must go on,” my husband said. “This is a bad place”. In the distance we could hear the noise of tanks, and we ran back into the forest, and then I saw him … ’
She paused as visual memory swept her back in time.
‘Night was coming on, you must understand,’ she continued. ‘He was watching us from under a tree. "Stop, Lazio," I said to my husband. And the little boy came towards us. He must have come from the ruined village because there was dried blood on his face. Perhaps it had come from his mother — God be with her if it was — because I could find no hurt on him. But he was cold, and just wearing an old cloth wrapped round him.
‘Lazio said we must hurry because the tanks were getting closer.
“‘We must take him,” I said. For a moment I believe Lazio did not want to, perhaps because we had so little food. But I said: “Lazio, in memory of our son who was born d
ead we must take him.” So he agreed. And I called him Gyorgy, after our first baby, and I thought: “Perhaps God has given me a son after all.”
‘I wrapped him up in one of Kattie’s coats and he took my hand, but he never spoke. Do you know? He never spoke. But that was not unusual after the bombs.’
Mrs Kiss relapsed into silence. Her memories had become so vivid she almost forgot the stranger leaning forward.
‘How long we went through the forest I forget,’ she resumed at length. ‘It seemed like for ever. And all the time Gyorgy held my hand. He was so thin, and y et he had strength. But my Kattie, who had been such a plump child, seemed to waste away with the hardship. Each morning she was weaker. Then one morning we woke up in a deserted house and she was dead. The same day we reached a DP camp. I carried Kattie’s body to it because I could not leave her for the rats in that house.
‘At that camp they took Gyorgy away from me — like a stupid, I told the Red Cross he was not my son and they took him away. Perhaps at the time they thought I was dying and would not be able to look after him. But it was Lazio who died, not I. I lived in camps for a long time. When the Communists would not allow the refugees to return, I was allowed to come to this country where I worked as a helper in a hospital kitchen and learned English. I worked in hospitals until I got to be too old. But someday I shall meet Gyorgy again. God tells me that he is looking for me. Perhaps he was taken to America and became a rich man … ’
The stranger showed his teeth in an encouraging smile.
‘You must understand, Mrs Kiss, that it is very important — very important for you — if you can show me some proof of what you have been telling me.’ He waved his documents. ‘My client must be absolutely sure that it was you who found the child and that you are not telling something which you heard from some other woman. Did this boy have anything with him?’
‘Rags.’
‘But did he have anything else — a toy, a doll, anything like that?’
‘No plaything, but in his hand he held a piece of metal … ’
‘Metal!’ The stranger’s voice held a new note of eagerness. His glasses flashed virescent. ‘Tell me about this metal.’
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