by Sarah Rayne
Ladislas was leaning back on the pillows, watching her. At length he said, ‘Well? Is it true? Is our august leader failing?’
The tone and the words flicked Bianca on the raw, and anger surged up in her at this upstart, this impertinent Bathory child who dared to sneer at Franz-Josef. But she forced her voice to calm, and when she spoke it was as if she was considering the matter for the first time. ‘I was not aware of it. And as the one closest to him I should surely have seen . . .’ She stopped and allowed her expression to become calculating and thoughtful, as if she might be remembering and interpreting small signs. When she looked back at Ladislas, her eyes were hard and shining.
‘You believe Franz-Josef to be failing,’ said Bianca softly. ‘And Stefan is going to take his place. That’s it, isn’t it?’
There was a brief pause, and then Ladislas said, ‘Astute as ever, my dear. But why should it be Stefan? Why not me?’ And then, his eyes never leaving her face, ‘Why not you and I together?’ he said.
Bianca stared at him, her mind seething with a dozen different ideas. At last she said, ‘You’re going to kill them. Both of them.’
‘Immortality was never proof against murder,’ said Ladislas, and Elizabeth’s secret smile curved his lips. ‘Well, Bianca?’ he said. ‘Shall we do it?’
There was a pause, the count of five. ‘Kill Franz-Josef and Stefan,’ said Bianca, thoughtfully.
‘Yes. Two murders.’
Two murders . . . Because even Elizabeth’s legacy, even the Bathory ritual could not withstand the poisoner’s cup or the butcher’s knife . . .
Bianca said, ‘And Pietro?’
‘Pietro will be dealt with also,’ said Ladislas, and his eyes held hers unwaveringly.
‘How?’
‘Pietro ran away,’ said Ladislas. ‘As a renegade he could be brought to the exemplum. Openly and honestly, with all the Family present to witness it.’
‘But the exemplum has never—’
‘Yes?’
‘Never before been invoked,’ finished Bianca, staring at him.
‘Nevertheless, it is there. The rules were drawn up for us.’
The rules were drawn up for us . . . Franz-Josef had used almost the exact words. But Franz-Josef was failing . . .
Bianca turned round in the bed, and reached between Ladislas’s strong young thighs, holding him in a velvet caress, feeling his arousal swell against her cupped hands. When she spoke, her voice was filled with purring sexual greed.
‘Two murders,’ she said. ‘Two murders and the exemplum. And then you and I to rule? You and I to take and keep Varanno and Csejthe . . .’
The power and the glory and the wealth . . .
‘How shall we do it?’ said Bianca.
Chapter Twenty
Catherine waited until the great house had settled into complete silence before inching open the door and stepping into the corridor. One a.m. The quiet time, the dead time, the time when all of CrnPrag slept and nothing stirred. She was cold and cramped from the hours in hiding, but she was strung up to a pitch of pulsating anticipation. I am going to find Pietro.
But once outside it did not feel as if CrnPrag slept at all. Stealing along the narrow, coldly lit corridor with the cells on each side, Catherine began to have the feeling that there was someone very close by, and that the someone was watching and rubbing its hands together gleefully.
I am still with you, Cat . . .
This was clearly absurd, because if anyone had followed her on that mad midnight flight from Varanno she would have long since been caught. And although her parents would guess where she was, they would understand. Would they? Her father would certainly understand. Catherine had never forgotten how he had said, ‘You must do what you must do, Cat.’ Pietro had said of him, ‘He understands a great many things . . .’ If anyone was following her, it would not be Franz-Josef who had understood far more than people guessed. But no one was following her. It was simply wrought-up nerves.
It was easy enough to steal along the narrow coldly-lit corridor with the cells on each side. Several times she thought there was a scuffling from inside the cells, and several times there was the feeling that eyes watched from the shadows. Elizabeth? But there was no stirring of her senses, no cruel claws raking at her mind. If anything was really stalking her through CrnPrag’s dark halls it was not Elizabeth.
No one could be following her, but she was beginning to think that somebody was following her.
I am very close to you, Cat . . . The eerie whisper brushed her senses again and she whipped round, unsure whether the words had been spoken or whether they were only the product of jangled nerves.
Did I hear that whisper? Because if I did, it means that whoever is creeping along after me, it’s somebody who knows me as ‘Cat’ and it’s somebody who has been waiting, biding his time until it’s dark and quiet . . .
She was aware of other sounds behind her as well now: the creaking of a floorboard as if somebody had trodden on it, and the faint rustle of cloth as if a cloak or a jacket might have brushed against a wall. Twice she whipped round, her heart racing, but each time there were only the shadows and the deserted corridor. But as she went deeper into the house, the imprisoned creatures behind the locked doors stirred and without warning, several of them began to laugh: not with the earlier mindless laughter, but with a quiet clotted chuckling, so evil, so scarcely human that the hairs began to prickle on the back of her neck.
Catherine shuddered but went doggedly on. Maniacs laughed for no reason and it was absurd to think that they were laughing at her because they knew she was walking into a trap.
And then the laughter came again, closer, and with it the sound of footsteps. Catherine turned, and standing behind her was Ficzko, his thick brutal arms folded in a pose of malevolent complacency, his ugly face creased with evil mirth.
At his side was Stefan Bathory and behind Stefan stood six of the dark-clad guards.
There was no point in running away. The guards would have reached her and overpowered her within seconds. Ficzko would certainly have reached her. With the thought he darted towards her, chuckling as he came. His hard, horny nails dug into her wrists as he twisted them behind her back, and his stale body-smell was in her nostrils.
Stefan said in his soft, courteous voice, ‘So I was right, Cat my dear. I thought you would come in search of your precious Pietro, and I was right.’ He studied her. ‘You see how devotedly Ficzko serves me?’ he said, and the dwarf chuckled thickly.
‘I serve whoever pays me best,’ he said, and his small eyes in their cushions of swollen-looking flesh swivelled round to Stefan. ‘Madame LaBianca thinks I serve her, but I go to who pays the best.’ He looked up at Stefan. ‘I do well for you. I followed this one. I hid in the car and then came to tell you.’ He appeared to wait for approval, and Stefan said in the impatient manner of one dealing with a recalcitrant child, ‘You did well, Ficzko.’
‘I shall be rewarded.’
‘Yes.’
‘The blood . . . You promised I should have some of the next blood,’ said Ficzko, and Catherine felt him twist her imprisoned wrists suddenly and painfully tighter.
‘You shall have it,’ said Stefan, and Catherine felt the obscene excitement course through Ficzko. He pressed closer to her.
‘You never guessed,’ he said, his voice damp and whispery in her ear. ‘I was in the car with you – hiding on the back seat, and you never guessed.’ He was pushing his repulsive thick body against her, chuckling glottally, and Catherine felt a huge surge of anger course through her and knew it for Elizabeth’s fierce imperious rage. How dare this creature spy on her! How dare he touch her! I shall claw his eyes out and stamp on them! I shall roast the flesh from his miserable arms and force it down his throat!
Stefan was watching her, and Catherine saw his eyes slant with cruel pleasure. Whatever he is going to do to me, he is going to enjoy it. And this is CrnPrag, this is Stefan’s domain where his word is law.
&
nbsp; Yes, and where madmen prowl and childhood nightmares come alive. Catherine took a deep breath and sought and touched Elizabeth’s anger again.
But when Stefan spoke, he only said quite gently, ‘It’s all a very great pity, Cat, but the Family’s rule is that all rebels and all traitors are brought here.’
Rebels and traitors . . . Pietro? thought Catherine. Does he mean that Pietro was brought here because he ran away? Aloud she said, ‘I’m not a traitor.’
‘But,’ said Stefan, standing in front of her, his eyes cold and hard, ‘for the safety of us all, my dear, it is unwise for you to be so far beyond the Family’s protection.’ A pause. ‘As it was unwise for Pietro,’ he said, and Catherine’s heart leapt.
But she stared at him coldly, and said, ‘My father will come to rescue us,’ and amusement flickered in Stefan’s eyes.
‘Do you think so?’ he said. ‘Franz-Josef here in the place he has always disdained? Now that would be immensely interesting. That would mean that my little ploy has worked.’ The amusement deepened. ‘All three of you together inside CrnPrag,’ said Stefan, and then looked back at the guards. ‘Lock her up,’ he said, and they sprang forward.
There was no point in fighting, but Catherine fought anyway, biting and scratching and screaming although she had no idea if anyone could hear her or if anyone would even care. They overpowered her easily, tying her hands behind her back and half carried, half dragged her back along the cheerless corridors.
‘You’ll see a little more of CrnPrag,’ said one, grinning sneeringly at her.
‘You’ll make some friends,’ said another as they pulled her down the corridors. ‘Over there’s what we call the Men’s Ward . . .’ He nodded to a locked door further along the passage, and Catherine’s heart leapt. Could Pietro be in there? She tried to mark the situation of the room.
‘And this one’s the Women’s Ward,’ said the guard, stopping before a second door and glancing to the leader as if waiting for permission to enter.
The leader nodded. ‘Take her in,’ he said, and the man bent to unbolt the door.
The Women’s Ward was a long, high-ceilinged room with several small barred windows high up. Light would slant in through them and lie across the bare scrubbed boards of the floor. It would be a warm golden light in the afternoons, but at night it would be moonlight, cold and eerie, raking at senses and feelings that were better left unawakened.
As soon as they passed through the door, Catherine was strongly aware of the sick taint she had noticed before. But in here it was stronger and more solid, as if the madness and the despair of the inhabitants had soaked into the walls and the floors. Iron beds were ranged along the sides of the long sad room – twenty-five or thirty of them – and each one was occupied.
I believed I was damned, thought Catherine, staring around. I believed that Elizabeth had damned me and perhaps I was right. But I think these are the real damned.
In not one of the faces could she detect any spark of sanity or intelligence. The women did not look up or look round to welcome or commiserate with another inmate; they did not seem at all curious about this small disruption in their monotonous lives. The pity of it – the lassitude and the uncomprehending despair of them closed about Catherine’s throat, and a dozen superstitions flooded her mind.
The moonstruck mad who woke to snarling ferocity when the moon slid cold fingers across the bare floorboards . . . The piteous witless ones who seldom emerged into the real world, but dwelled instead in a world where gibbering phantoms and gobbling demons walked unchecked, and where the wings of insanity beat ceaselessly . . . Things that were invisible and inaudible to everyone else. But it does not mean they may not be there, thought Catherine, cold horror creeping over her.
As if to heighten the image, several of the women were huddled in foetal positions, knees drawn up to their chests, hands clapped over ears or eyes, rocking to and fro. Shutting out the sound and the sight of what . . .?
‘Take a good look,’ said the guard. ‘Take a good look at the lunatics.’
‘Once they could be viewed,’ said the second one, grinning. ‘Like a peep show. You’d have to pay to see them.’
‘A grand show that used to be, so they say.’
‘But nobody comes to see these ones,’ said the leader, contemptuously. ‘Their people were glad to get rid of them.’ He thrust his plump face close to her again, and Catherine saw the faint slick of grease on his skin, as if he ate too greedily of oily food and the oil had seeped through.
Most of the ward’s occupants lay supine on the beds, apparently hardly aware of their surroundings. And for all that their faces are vacant and that some of them drool and dribble and pluck ceaselessly at the bedclothes or mumble to themselves, a purist could not say they look ill-treated, thought Catherine. They are clean and clothed, nourished-looking. In one corner was a pot-bellied stove with iron pipes leading into the wall and, although the room was warm, it was not stiflingly so. Clever Stefan to observe the rules of the land and the rules of the twentieth century. There was no nineteenth-century scurvy here, no lice. There was no overt cruelty. If cruelty existed, it would be sly and underhand; the cruelty of the strong to the weak.
The women wore what looked to be a kind of uniform: blue-grey overalls or plain buttoned dresses. Their hair had been cut exactly alike in a roughish short crop. It was practical and tidy, but there was a stealing of identity about it that caught at Catherine’s heart. I chose the coif and the veil and the shorn hair voluntarily, but these women were given no choice.
In the bed nearest to her was a young woman, perhaps a few years older than Catherine, dressed exactly the same as the others, but with such a degree of intensity about her that Catherine’s attention was caught. The woman was kneeling on the bed, peering unblinkingly at a particular spot on the wall directly over the bars of the bedhead, her eyes barely six inches from its surface. Catherine thought she had never before seen such fierce concentration in anyone.
‘That’s Madame Collector,’ said the guard, and chuckled. ‘You’ll get to know her,’ he said, and sniggered.
The woman ignored the guards, and Catherine thought she had not even heard them come in. She put out a finger and traced a slow pattern down the wall just above her bed, her nails scraping over its rough surface with a sound that made Catherine wince. And then she pounced at something black and scuttling on the wall and snatched it up triumphantly. She opened her clenched fist and inspected what she had caught, nodding with a sly, idiot grin, and then crouched on the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, staring down at the small wriggling thing in her hands.
‘It’s considered polite to pretend not to notice the Collector’s hoard,’ said the guard in Catherine’s ear, and Catherine jumped.
‘Or any new acquisitions she makes,’ said the second, grinning.
‘What . . .?’ said Catherine, and stopped. The guards regarded her with leering, spiteful amusement showing in their eyes.
‘No one knows why she does it,’ said the leader. ‘There’s no logic with lunatics, see.’
‘She started with midges last summer,’ said the second guard. ‘The tiny black specks that fly in at night in the summer sometimes.’ He gestured to the barred windows, and Catherine saw that they were covered in mesh but they could be opened to let in air if it was hot.
‘After that it was flies,’ said the third guard.
‘After the flies it was blow-flies,’ said the greasy-faced one, a lick of relish in his voice. ‘The fat, buzzing ones.’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in horrid suggestiveness, and Catherine received the impression of something being juicily squashed.
‘Now it’s spiders,’ said the leader. He leaned over and spoke in her ear again, his breath laden with stale food. ‘Very small spiders at the moment,’ he said.
‘She used the flies to attract them.’
‘Next month it will be bigger spiders,’ said the plump guard. ‘Fat hairy ones.’
‘An
d then maybe cockroaches.’
‘She progresses, you see,’ said the leader.
‘She’ll crawl into the corners and lay traps. Crumbs of food maybe. We’ll enjoy watching that,’ said the plump one, and Catherine knew she had been right. These men enjoyed laughing at the strangeness and the compulsions of their charges. The fact that the women did not know they were being laughed at did not make it any better.
The guard who had talked about spiders moved to stand over the woman they had called the Collector, his hands on his hips, surveying her. The others watched, as if ready to enjoy a brief entertainment.
‘What’s today’s feast, Madame Collector?’ said the guard, and for the first time the woman looked round. Her cropped hair was unkempt, and her eyes were ringed with brown, unhealthy-looking skin. But the eyes themselves were huge and so dark as to be almost black, and her lips were unexpectedly full and red and sensual. She did not look unintelligent or uninterested as the others did, and Catherine’s attention was caught properly now, because this was surely not a woman who should be in here. And then she saw that there was a furtiveness, and that the woman’s eyes flickered constantly from left to right, as if searching the corners of the room for an enemy. She scuttled to the far end of the bed, watching the guards, a rim of white showing under her eyelids.
‘What’s today’s catch?’ demanded the guard, leaning forward. ‘Caviare, is it? Rocs’ eggs?’ He glanced back over his shoulder as if grinningly asking for approval and, without warning, the woman made a sudden vicious clawing movement and the guard leapt back with a grunt of pain, one hand clapped to his cheek. Blood trickled between his fingers and he brought his hand away and stared at it.
‘Cunt,’ he said. ‘You’ll be punished for that, you bitch.’
He made to lift his hand to strike her, and the leader at once said, ‘No marks! We’ll think of another way to punish her.’