VROLOK

by Nolene-Patricia Dougan

  Isabella had two concerns. She was obligated to save Katalin and she wanted to make sure that no one ever found out about her own involvement, limited though it would be. To achieve this she needed help; she couldn’t do it alone. She needed Vlad, she concluded. Isabella once more made the trip home.

  She had never asked for Vlad’s help before. He was flattered and would have done anything she wanted. For the first time he felt that Isabella needed him and this was a good feeling to him. Erzsébet and her conspirators were being held at Bytča. The pair travelled to the makeshift prison in grand style. They planned to pose as Hungarian nobility. They could gain access to the trial disguised this way.

  The night before the trial Isabella sneaked into see Katalin, who had been imprisoned in the lower chamber of the castle at Bytča. Two guards were playing cards by the entrance to Katalin’s cell. Isabella approached them and they immediately spotted her. “Ignore me,” she whispered. The two guards continued their game as if they had never seen her.

  Isabella entered the room where Katalin was being held. Katalin was sitting on the floor in the corner weeping like a child who had just been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

  “Stop your tears. They are of no use to you.” Despite Isabella’s unsympathetic remarks, Katalin was glad to see the Vampire.

  “Thank God, you have come to help me escape… Isabella, I am so sorry,” Katalin continued.

  “Quiet! You are not sorry for what you have done, you are only sorry that you got caught,” snapped Isabella. “I have not come to help you escape. You must stand trial.”

  “I will be executed!” cried Katalin. “You will be in violation of your promise to my family. You promised Katya,” Katalin said hysterically.

  “I am well aware of my promise to Katya and I will not have you sully her family name. If you escape, Matthias’ soldiers will hunt you down and kill you and it will only confirm your guilt. If you get home to your mother’s she would inevitably take you in and she would be shown no mercy when you were both caught. Trust me, this is the best way. Now you must tell me everything and I will see that you live through this. You have to confide in me. We can possibly even paint you as another victim of Erzsébet’s. Tell me everything.” Isabella sat down while Katalin recited her story.

  “Erzsébet first saw you over thirty years ago when I too was just a young girl. She was fascinated by you even then and the allure you held over the people that surrounded you. Even before her youth had started to fade she was obsessed with her appearance. Her mother had slowly gone insane as she had aged and this same madness was inherent in Erzsébet. I was just a servant then. She didn’t notice me at all, but when she saw me talking to you years later, then she noticed me. She remarked how your appearance had remained as perfect as it was before. She quizzed me about it and at first I resisted telling her.”

  Isabella knew this to be a lie but she let Katalin continue.

  “I told her that you bathed in blood.”

  “That was a ridiculous thing to have told her.”

  “Would you rather I had told her that you were a Vampire?” Katalin answered back.

  “I would rather you had come and told me what was happening.”

  “Yes, I should have done that because you have always been so approachable.” Katalin was gathering courage as the conversation progressed.

  “Just tell me the rest,” Isabella interrupted. She didn‘t have any time for insolence.

  “I then realised that this was too vague and that I could have been endangering my own life. So I reiterated that it was the blood of young girls, maids. By saying it was young girls I was ensuring that my own family would be safe, as I have only sons. I told her that adolescence was the key. I suggested that their youthful blood contained an invigorator, an elixir vitae that only they possessed and to bathe in their blood was to replenish the body with its youth.”

  “And she believed you?”

  “Not at first. But she wanted to believe me. She considered it for awhile and then one night when her maid was combing her hair she stared at her reflection in the mirror. She was only thirty-five but her eyes had dulled slightly, her skin was losing its glow and her face was developing tiny lines at her temples. She was desperate; she looked at her servant’s smooth, flawless skin and decided to test my theory. She slashed the girl’s arm with a knife and squeezed blood out of the wound. She let the blood drip on to her skin.

  “The maid screamed out in pain trying to get away from her but Erzsébet was too strong for her. Erzsébet rubbed the blood into her skin. Erzsébet, tainted by her mother’s madness, believed that it had worked, such was her desperation. The servant who had managed to free herself was now shaking uncontrollably in the corner, wondering what was to be her fate. Erzsébet killed her without a moment’s hesitation and drained as much blood from the body as she possibly could. The girl struggled and kicked as she died. Erzsébet realised that the next time that she had to have help. She needed people to help her kill and that is when we were all recruited.

  “I was the obvious choice. She presumed I had killed for you. Dorottya, Ficzkó Ilona and Anna were her trusted servants. It was just a few girls at first. Erzsébet was happy with that. She was convinced that she wasn’t aging, but as the years passed she grew older and her blood lust grew more and more consuming. She and the others devised a cage made with sharp spikes, which closed in on the girls, piercing their skin where the most blood would flow. The blood would fall on Erzsébet’s skin like a shower, completely covering her. The girls were dead in minutes; they didn’t suffer.” Katalin added, trying in some small way to rationalise her actions.

  “How would you know what they felt? The girl I caught you with certainly seemed to be suffering!” Isabella retorted. Isabella was repulsed by these revelations. “Tell me the rest,” Isabella demanded, for Katalin had stopped telling her story.

  “Erzsébet again saw herself aging,” Katalin continued. “She now resolved that it might be the quality of the blood that she was using and so she set upon getting a higher calibre of victim. Erzsébet started to kill the daughters of nobility. If you had not have found us, I am sure the killings would have ended soon.”

  “And yet you did not leave or try to stop her?” Isabella asked.

  “How could I? She would have killed me.”

  “I suspect you enjoyed it too much to leave?”

  “That’s not true. It is as you said; I am a victim in this too.”

  “Don’t believe your lie. I will save you but I will not tolerate hypocrisy. What have you told them about me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re sure?” Isabella knew she was telling the truth. Katalin would not implicate the only person who was capable of saving her. “You have to look like the victim in this,” Isabella continued. “You have to look pale and half-starved. You also have to be seen to be suffering from blood loss yourself.”

  “How can I do that?” asked Katalin.

  Isabella answered Katalin’s question without making a sound. Isabella caught Katalin’s arm and pulled her close into her. Isabella bit down hard into Katalin’s neck and drained as much blood as she possibly could without killing her. When she let go Katalin fell back exhausted, hardly capable of moving without assistance. Katalin for the first time in her life looked like a victim.

  On the first day of the trial everything was in place, Katalin looked as close to death as Isabella could safely take her. Dorottya and the others would be the last victims in this sorry tale. Isabella was unsure what would happen to Erzsébet. She knew she would not be executed, but Isabella would ensure that she had a just punishment for what she had done, no matter what the outcome of the trial was.

  As Vlad and Isabella approached the castle on the day of the trial, Isabella looked outside at the crowds of people who had gathered along the road to Bytča. Peasants and nobles alike lined the paths that lead to the castle. Isabella could not help but notice the mothers weeping for their
lost daughters. There were hundreds of distraught families and a lot of them were Slovak.

  Isabella was sickened but her righteous indignation was to be short-lived. When she got out of the coach in front of the castle she recognised one of the weeping women. She was a German woman who Isabella couldn’t help but remember; she had killed her daughter, not Erzsébet. As Isabella went inside she wondered how many others she had been responsible for. How many had Vlad been responsible for? She didn’t know and couldn’t remember. She didn’t want to remember and somehow it made the task ahead of her a little bit easier. She could easily save Katalin now, because she realised that she was indeed just as guilty.

  Vlad and Isabella entered the makeshift court. Katalin, Erzsébet Ilona, Ficzkó and Dorottya were all lined up together. Isabella had decided to wear a veil just in case she was recognised by any of them. The highest judge in the land presided over the trial. This was to ensure that King Matthias knew exactly what was going on. Vlad placed himself at one side of the court and Isabella was at the other.

  Vlad and Isabella stared at each other from across the room and smiled. They were about to put their plan into action. The first person to testify was Csaba. He brushed passed Vlad as he went to the stand. Vlad whispered in his ear, “Forget the woman who talked to you when you found your sister.” Csaba nodded and went to the stand. He made his testimony without any mention of Isabella.

  The next important testimony was Ficzkó; he pushed his way through the crowd in the courtroom. Isabella caught hold of his coat and said, “You have never seen me before and Katalin did nothing to hurt these girls. It was the others only.” Ficzkó as directed did not mention Isabella and told the crowd that Katalin was innocent of any of the crimes.

  The next witnesses who were called were family members of the girls who had disappeared. They related stories about their grief and the abhorrent crimes to which they suspected their daughters had fallen foul. There were so many of them.

  While these testimonies were being given, Vlad and Isabella moved among the crowd, whispering randomly into the ears of the onlookers, “Look at Katalin, how ill she looks,” Isabella was repeating. “Dorottya, Ilona and Ficzkó, they are the guilty ones. They should be punished; Katalin is just a victim in this.” The pair spent all day whispering similar sentiments to each person with whom they came in contact and by the end of the first day it was working. Sympathy was growing for Katalin, but Isabella had one final trick up her sleeve for that day. Katalin was called up to the stand and as she slowly climbed the stairs to take her place. Isabella whispered.

  “Faint, Katalin, faint.”

  Katalin was compelled to act. She fell against the front of the crowd that filled the room, and the crowd gasped. Several gentlemen rushed to help her to her feet. Vlad and Isabella held back as they heard the crowd whispering among themselves. Voices murmured “poor Katalin” and similar sentiments echoed throughout the crowd. The Vampires’ plan was working. Weeks later Dorottya, Ilona and Erzsébet were to testify.

  Dorottya and Erzsébet had stronger wills than the others. A whisper of influence would not ensure their compliance. The night before they were to testify, Isabella visited Dorottya’s and Ilona’s prison cell, while Vlad visited Erzsébet’s. Isabella entered their cell and found Dorottya sitting in the corner petrified. Ilona was too naive to be terrified and was sleeping soundly. Ilona was not much more than a child herself. Isabella decided not to wake her; she sensed that the young girl would do anything Dorottya told her to do. Dorottya, on seeing Isabella, pleaded for her life.

  “You are both going to die,” Isabella replied to her pleading.

  “No,” shouted Dorottya, rocking back and forth in a nervous state. “We were coerced, we are the victims here,” Dorottya said “Erzsébet and Katalin forced us to do these things.”

  Isabella actually believed Dorottya. There was sincerity in her voice that was missing from Katalin’s. Isabella had heard all these people blame the rest, but not themselves. Dorottya, however, was the first one she had heard that she was even tempted to believe, and she was not just speaking for herself, she was speaking for Ilona. None of the others had shown any compassion for anyone else. But Isabella knew that they both could not be spared.

  “Dorottya, you witnessed terrible acts. Why did you not do anything?” Isabella asked.

  “I couldn’t do anything about it! I was being held against my will.” This Isabella did not believe. She knew that Dorottya’s crimes were at their worst playing a full part in the torture of the girls and at their best she had been guilty of nothing more than standing idly by and letting them die. Dorottya, unlike Katalin, would have to pay her debt to the victims. The mob needed blood and retribution. And she and Ilona were the women who probably had the least role in these events, but they too would have to pay the ultimate price.

  “I cannot save you, Dorottya, nor Ilona,” Isabella continued.

  “Oh, please,” Dorottya pleaded.

  “I can’t,” Isabella confirmed. “But what I can do is ensure that you and Ilona do not suffer. You have seen the mob outside. You know you are both going to die. I can ensure that your deaths are as painless as possible. That is all I can possibly offer you.”

  “No, help us!” wept Dorottya in anguish.

  “You have to have courage, because that is what is going to happen,” Isabella said. She was losing patience. “You know that you will be burned if no one interferes on your behalf. You couldn’t imagine what that pain feels like,” she said. One of Isabella’s many aptitudes was borrowing pain. She remembered Vincente’s pain. She touched Dorottya’s head and Dorottya felt her skin burning for just a few seconds, but it was enough. Isabella let her go and she reeled back in pain.

  “I cannot go through that!” Dorottya exclaimed.

  “If you do not do exactly as I say, you and Ilona will feel every moment of it. I will make sure you do,” Isabella warned.

  Dorottya was still shaking; she looked up at Isabella, tears streaming down her face, still trembling from the pain she had felt. “What do you want me to do?” she said.

  “Firstly, you must never admit to having ever seen me, and you must convince Ilona of the same. If you betray me, you will be burned.”

  Dorottya nodded in compliance and asked, “What else?”

  “You must confess to everything; you must state that you Ilona and Erzsébet are solely responsible and that you kept Katalin as your prisoner. You continually tortured her… Katalin is blameless.”

  “Why are you saving Katalin?” Dorottya asked.

  “That is not your concern. Will you do as I ask?” Dorottya hesitated. So Isabella let her feel Vicente’s pain one more time. Isabella held the back of Dorottya’s hair so that she was pulling her head upwards. “Will you do what I ask?” Isabella reaffirmed.

  “Yes!” shouted Dorottya in anguish.

  “Good… I promise that if you follow my instructions you will feel no more pain.”

  Isabella left Dorottya’s cell and could not resist going to Erzsébet’s to see how Vlad was convincing her to confess. She crept down the hall and looked in. Isabella listened to what Vlad was saying.

  Vlad had entered Erzsébet’s cell and at first she did not recognise him but when he spoke she instantly remembered.

  “Erzsébet,” Vlad began.

  “My love,” Erzsébet began she was as dramatic as ever. “Why didn’t you follow me all those years ago? You have left me alone for twenty years, why?”

  “It is the hardest thing I ever had to do,” Vlad lied, telling Erzsébet exactly what she wanted to hear.

  “It was?”

  Vlad by this time realised Isabella was listening.

  “Yes, Erzsébet.”

  “Then why do it? I would have left my husband for you in an instant.”

  “I know, but I could not condemn you to live as I do.”

  “I wanted to! I loved you.”

  “I know you did, but I didn’t want condemn you to
a life of living off the blood of others… but now I see it may not have been such a hardship,” Vlad said dryly. “I am going to tell you the secret. You don’t bathe in blood. You must feed on blood, but first you have to drink the blood of a Vampire.”

  “Are you a Vampire?”

  “I am.” Erzsébet leaped forward and tried to break Vlad’s skin with her teeth. Vlad caught her before she could touch him. Vlad and Isabella both realised that this woman was completely insane.

  “Not yet, be patient. I want you to do something for me first and then I will give you your youth, and when I give someone youth they never lose it again.”

  “What do you want me to do? I will do anything; I just want to be young and beautiful again.”

  “You will be, but first you have to confess to the killings of the girls. I want you to say Katalin is innocent.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Katalin is my brother’s descendant, I have an obligation to her and my family, and it is my wish. After the trial I will make you young again, but you must do this for me.”

  “I will do anything you say.” Erzsébet crawled over to Vlad and rested her head on his chest. Vlad lifted up his hand and started to stroke her hair. Isabella who was still watching was struck by pangs of jealousy. Erzsébet looked up into Vlad’s eyes and moved herself up to kiss him. Vlad leaned down to greet her lips but Isabella was sickened; she had seen enough of this tainted love scene. She ran back to the guards and whispered to them.

  “I think there is an intruder in Erzsébet’s cell.”

  “Who are you?” shouted one of the guards.

  “Never mind who I am, go arrest the intruder,” Isabella demanded. Erzsébet and Vlad were disturbed by the sound of the guards running up the corridor.