Blood Ritual

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘One day your hell-given beauty will fade, Madam Countess!’ she had shrieked. ‘And what shall you do then! What shall you do when the blood fails you, and when you are old and shrunken and withered! I shall wait for that day and I shall rejoice, black-hearted monster, I shall dance and laugh with delight!’

  The bitch had been demented of course, but such behaviour could not be allowed. Elizabeth made an impatient gesture to the coachman and the horses leapt forward. The insolent creature was knocked down by the carriage’s sudden swift rush; there was a satisfying moment when Elizabeth felt a wet crunch and heard the scream of agony as the woman’s legs were crushed beneath the wheels. A good feeling!

  But: what shall you do when the blood fails you . . .?

  It would not happen; the blood had never failed her. The forest sorceresses had promised it and Elizabeth believed it. But the woman’s words lodged in her mind like rank weeds, and back at Csejthe she flung out of the carriage, and stormed into her private chamber, her black cloak billowing out behind her like unfurling wings, scrabbling frenziedly in her room for the bloodied fragment of caul, with the ancient Serbian incantation to the god:

  ‘Isten give me help, and ye also, O all powerful cloud . . . Protect Erzsebet and grant me a long life . . .’

  At once she felt calmer. The chant was filled with such power that she almost saw it materialise on the air. For the space of a wingbeat, there was the impression that the shadows clotted and formed the silhouette of a dark, horned figure with clutching hands and a slavering, dripping maw . . .

  ‘Isten protect me . . .’

  The shadows shivered and dissolved and Elizabeth smiled and folded the caul back into its small leather pouch. It would be all right. The blood had never failed her and it never would fail her.

  There were about a dozen pretty young things at Csejthe just now, gathered from the farms and the surrounding villages. Dorko and Illona were having to go further afield these days; the people who lived in Csejthe’s shadow were becoming cunning and evasive. They hid when the Countess’s carriage swept down from the castle; they took to gathering together in one another’s cottages after their day’s work, or in the little tavern. They double-locked their doors and sent their daughters across the mountains into Moldavia and Transylvania where there were many great houses where a good girl could be taken into the kitchens to work honestly and safely.

  Elizabeth did not care. Dorko and Illona and the two faithful coachmen could drive further out in search of prey; Elizabeth herself could always find girls in Vienna who were dazzled at the notion of serving in a Countess’s household.

  She had let the clutch of pretty, doomed creatures play freely for several weeks inside Csejthe, hearing them singing in their little sweet voices as they went about their duties in the castle, giggling together over the small events of their day. Pigeons, white doves, fluttering in a coop. It was a source of immense erotic pleasure to watch them, to brood over them, and to plan how they should die and in what order. It was a game that could be prolonged almost indefinitely, and it sweetened the nights to lie awake and anticipate the blood and the pain.

  The arrival of Anna and Miklos ended the game. When the messenger presented himself bearing the polite missive, Elizabeth stormed about the castle, screaming orders and then retracting them the next minute. Dorko and Illona exchanged glances. If the Lady carried on like this, her tantrums would end in a fit, and then where would her precious life-giving blood be! But at length, she fell into the chill calm that sometimes descended about her like an icy cloak, and said the girls must be herded into the dungeons. They must be out of sight and beyond hearing of the expected guests. The deepest dungeons and the thickest walls. Miklos Zrinyi would certainly bring his wretched long-snouted greyhounds with him, and the creatures would run all over the castle, sniffing out secrets. The girls were to be behind locks and underground. And when Illona, always practical, said that the creatures would scream and bang on the iron doors of the dungeons and the guests would hear, Elizabeth turned her black, smouldering eyes on to the woman.

  ‘Then starve them,’ she said. ‘Do not kill them, or you will answer to me! But see to it that they are too weak to do more than mew. And that their mewlings are not heard by my guests.’

  Dorko and Illona agreed afterwards that the visit of the Lady’s daughter and son-in-law had been ill-starred, although Dorko could not see that Illona had had very much to complain about.

  The girls had been put firmly below ground: there was a small, seldom-used dungeon room deep in the castle’s bowels, very nearly in the foundations themselves, and it was here that Dorko and Illona pushed the bewildered creatures.

  To begin with, the girls thought it part of a joke, foolish, witless things that they were. They had asked if it was some kind of test that the Countess was setting them. Was she testing their endurance or their intelligence? they asked Dorko when she brought the sparse food to them each day, and the jugful of cold water which allowed them a cupful each.

  Dorko and Illona were amused to find that to begin with, the silly creatures whiled away the time by holding what they called a priadky: keeping one another awake and entertained by singing songs and telling stories, turn and turn about. They thought to drive away the shadows and the creeping cold, they said. They were frightened to sleep down here.

  They begged for more food and water and for some warmth. Two of them had the monthly flux, they said: could they not be given linen for that at least? They were tiresome and Dorko said and Illona agreed that they would be very glad indeed when Miklos Zrinyi and the Lady’s daughter had left Csejthe and these witless pigeons could be used for the purpose for which they were intended.

  It was even more tiresome when one died the next day, from cold and exhaustion and lack of food and water. It was all very well for the Lady to say, Get rid of the thing, and then dismiss it from her mind; dead bodies were not so easily disposed of when guests were all over the castle. In the end, Dorko stuffed the corpse under her own bed, covering it with furs and cloaks. It would not be for very long, and they were entering the coldest quarter of the year. She sprinkled scented rushes on the floor.

  But the Lady’s guests stayed longer than any of them had expected – ‘Overstaying their welcome,’ said Dorko, who was beginning to find it difficult to sleep by this time – and two more of the girls died. Illona, who liked to pretend she was above helot work, was of no help, and at last, Dorko conceived the idea of weighting sacks and throwing them into the moat. But either the weights were not heavy enough or the corpses became too distended, because the next morning they came to the surface, and lay there accusingly like monstrous bloated dead fish.

  Most fortuitously, the guests went off on a hunting expedition that morning, and Dorko was able to wade unseen into the moat and drag the wretched bodies out. They were sodden with the slimy moat-water and it all took a long time, and clearly the only sensible thing to do with dead bodies was to bury them and to do it under cover of night.

  Another had died by this time – Dorko would make very sure that the next batch of prisoners included only good, healthy stock – which meant four graves to dig altogether. Dawn was streaking the Eastern skies over the Carpathians when she finally straightened up from her task, her brow smeared with the rich, loamy soil of the land, the hem of her skirts muddied and draggled. The Lady would not be best pleased to find that almost half of her precious store had died, but she would be even less pleased if the bodies were not got rid of.

  It was unfortunate for everyone that before the soil could settle, Madame Anna’s husband. Count Miklos Zrinyi, should take it into his head to let his accursed greyhounds off the leash. It was nothing anybody could have foreseen that two should bound into the kitchen gardens, and burrow their long, prying snouts into the freshly dug earth.

  The soil crumbled and the hounds yelped in a frenzy of discovery, and scrabbled deeper with their strong clawed feet.

  Bodies exposed to the air and then
immersed in dank foul water shred all too easily. The greyhounds went racing back to their master with grinning jaws and unmistakable fragments of rotting flesh and mouldering skin trailing from their snouts.

  Miklos Zrinyi bent to pat them, and then straightened up, staring at his wife’s mother with dawning horror in his eyes.

  Sister Clothilde went briskly about her nightly task of locking up. As the convent’s prioress it was part of her responsibility, and it was not one to be taken lightly. One heard of the terrible things that went on in the world: desperate criminals breaking into the houses of ordinary men and women and demanding money and valuables. Innocent girls being raped and savaged. Terrible.

  She rather enjoyed her little vigil; she enjoyed the silence and the sounds of the old rafters creaking in the roof void. That was simply contraction of the beams as the night’s cool air touched them, of course, but Sister Clothilde liked to think that it was the old house arranging itself for slumber.

  She walked through the nuns’ wing, where each sister had her own room, not lavish or luxurious, which would not have been in accordance with the Rule, but furnished adequately and private enough for individual devotions. Each room had a bed and a chair and a press for outdoor clothes. There was a shelf for books and a small, plain prie-dieu which could also be used as a writing desk, although most of the sisters preferred to use the big, sunny recreation room for the monthly letters they wrote to their families. It was curious that the library was so seldom used when you thought about it. It was smaller than the recreation room, of course, and despite its facing south and getting the midday sun, for some reason it always felt rather repellent.

  Sister Clothilde called out a goodnight as she went past each nun’s door. This was not quite in the Rule, but all the nuns liked it. It was a last exchange of blessings before sleep.

  ‘Goodnight to you, Sister Margaret . . . Sister Thérèse . . .’

  ‘God’s blessing, Sister.’

  ‘God keep you, Sister.’

  St Stephen’s great cathedral clock chimed the hour as she moved through the convent and, almost at once, as if in answer, came the thin, sweet sound of the convent’s own clock.

  Sister Clothilde nodded to herself. Ten o’clock to the tick. All was well. The locks had turned and the bolts had all slid firmly home. The world and its dangers were shut out for the night.

  Above the sisters, in his dark airless eyrie, Ladislas Bathory waited patiently for night to fall.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Hilary rather liked the custom of the locking-up round and Sister Clothilde’s brusque but kindly goodnight blessing. It rounded off the day and it made you feel that people were nearby.

  There was no reason to want to feel people nearby: you were always alone really, until in the end you were with God. That was one of the Church’s main tenets. Hilary understood it completely; if you were giving your life to God, you could not afford to be burdened with friendships and relationships that might distract you and dilute what you were giving. That was why the nuns could only write to their families once a month, and why long visits to and from homes were discouraged. Hilary had been grateful for it in the beginning: after Sarah was killed, she had wanted to cut herself off completely. No letters, no visits. Nothing that would ever bring anyone close to her again. After Sarah’s death she had not wanted to love anyone who could be taken from her. She sent Christmas and Easter cards to the aunt that she and Sarah had lived with, but she always wrote only the most conventional of greetings. How selfish that had been. I could have been warmer towards them, she thought. I could have written letters, asked for their news. The cousins had married and there were children she had never seen.

  Lying wakeful in her narrow bed, Hilary felt lonelier than she had ever felt in her life. The truly devout were able to feel themselves directly in touch with God, which was the result of years of prayer and contemplation and study. It was not arrogance, it was simply that their innate goodness and holiness had drawn them near to the centre of something great and good. Hilary supposed that it was what somebody – Swedenborg? – had called the Divine Essence. She wished she could have experienced it.

  The convent was filled with creakings and rustlings tonight. Hilary stared up at the ceiling, wide awake, tracing the patterns in the cracks. This house was very old, of course and it was to be expected that plasterwork would be cracked, and panelling crumbly and aged. She began to trace faces and maps and creatures in the crazed ceiling. Elephants and clouds and the shape of Italy kicking Sicily into the Mediterranean Sea. Slouch-hatted mysterious figures and rearing dragons. Near to the door a trapdoor had been cut into the ceiling. Hilary supposed that it was to give access into part of the roof space. It was vaguely disquieting to think of the dark gusty attic on the other side of that square of wood. Attics were storehouses and there were memories in them, all neatly folded away inside old furniture and discarded trunks. If you had a spell to release them, you could bring them alive and see them tumbling out into the world again. What would it be like to bring to life the memories of this old, old house?

  Michael seemed a very long way away. Had he and Tobias gone to CrnPrag yet? Hilary had no idea how soon they would go, or whether it would be at night or in the daytime. Daytime would surely be better. But there had been no time to hear any of the plans because of catching the train back to Vienna.

  Hilary searched her mind drowsily, trying to think if there was anything she could do from here. Could she possibly tell Reverend Mother what had happened? Should she do so? Perhaps in the morning after breakfast she could request an interview. But what could she say and where could she begin? The thoughts went round and round, rats on a treadmill, scuttering and clawing.

  Scuttering and clawing. Hilary could hear her thoughts. They were scrabbling about above her head, beyond the trapdoor. Thoughts trying to get out. Memories sneaking out of their neatly ordered layers and walking about . . . It was a bit eerie to think of it.

  Hilary’s eyelids closed and sleep folded around her.

  Ladislas had moved very quietly about the attics, looking through each of the tiny skylight windows and making what he thought was a rough but fairly accurate sketch layout of the rooms beneath, using paper and pencil first, and then pacing out the dimensions in the dust with his feet. There was electricity up here: several naked bulbs dangled from long wires, but he had not risked switching them on and was using a small torch. It was easy enough to see what he was doing. It was astonishingly easy to make his map of the rooms beneath. Was Elizabeth helping him again? Or was it simply the tramps’ knowledge, gleaned earlier? In the three or four days he had allotted, he had managed to prise a surprising amount of knowledge from the tramps who had talked freely about Sister Clothilde’s habit of asking the men to help with various tasks inside the convent, and about the convent’s interior. They had been pleased to trot out their small store of information and they had not realised what a prize they had handed him.

  The refectory and the common rooms and the library were all on the ground floor of this central section, but directly beneath the attics was the floor housing the chapel and the nuns’ sleeping quarters. Hilary . . .

  It was then that he encountered his first problem. Pacing out what he thought were the nuns’ sleeping quarters, he came up against a network of thick, vertical struts, set at irregular intervals, but spanning the entire space from floor to roof. A forest of kingpins and huge load-bearing mainstays, quite obviously part of the roof structure’s support.

  Ladislas considered them, shining the torch carefully, seeing that the struts effectively shut off quite a large part of the attics. There was a similar arrangement at the other end, where he had calculated the chapel to be. He was not interested in the chapel, but he was very interested in the area where Hilary was.

  It was going to be very difficult to squeeze through the struts and check this part. Was there any point in checking it at all? He shone the torch again. Beyond the timbers was a long, s
hadowy area, thickly swathed in dust and cobwebs. As far as he could make out, about a third of the house lay under that part of the roof. Worth checking, certainly. He dared not miscalculate. He squeezed partway between the front struts, grazing his hands and partly tearing his jacket, but eventually standing on the other side of the struts. The space was very confined here, and he had to bend to avoid hitting his head on the underside of the roof itself, but he could move about. He brushed impatiently at the cobwebs and shone the torch.

  And there, ahead of him, in a neat line, sunk into the floor, were six or eight small square trapdoors. For access? There was certainly piping here: some of it copper, but some old lead pipes which would probably need maintenance. But the space up here was restricted; it was difficult to stand upright or move about, and maintenance from below would be much easier.

  Ladislas crawled back to his plans, a tiny pulse of excitement beating at the base of his throat. Was it possible that Hilary’s room might lie beneath one of those trapdoors? Could he be so fortunate?

  He switched off the torch and, after listening intently for a moment, went silently down the attic stairs.

  His stockinged feet made no sound, and his breathing was light and even. Excitement coursed through him, very nearly sexual in quality. Elizabeth’s house. Elizabeth’s dark old house, already soaked in the bloody legend of the butchered Knights Templar when she came to it. She added her own layer, thought Ladislas. Am I about to add another one? Stay with me, Elizabeth.

  He thought that she did stay with him as he stole down the moonlit corridors, and past the library door. I am walking where she once walked. The excitement increased, throbbing in his loins.

  And it was all precisely as he had thought. The little rooms where the nuns slept were directly beneath the row of trapdoors. There would not be one trapdoor to one room, of course; the original rooms, the rooms that Elizabeth would have known, had long since been divided. But if he was very quiet and very stealthy, it might be possible to raise each hatch to see who slept in the room below.