Blood Ritual
Author: Sarah Rayne
Date: 2012-09-01 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: The descendants of Elizabeth Bathory, a bloodthirsty Hungarian countess who terrorized the Carpathian countryside in the 16th century, are determined that her line shall not die. Only Catherine, a paternal descendant, has tried to escape the terrible legacy that she has grown up fearing and detesting. Eventually, she enters a convent, hoping to find the peace she has long desired. But when she meets journalist Michael Devlin, she is drawn back to the ancient castle in the Carpathian mountains. For Michael, who is haunted by the last thing he saw before losing his sight, is determined to discov
Publisher: Severn House

Table of Contents

A selection of titles by Sarah Rayne

Title Page

Copyright

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Epilogue

A selection of titles by Sarah Rayne

DEVIL’S PIPER*

THORN: AN IMMORTAL TALE*

THE BURNING ALTAR*

CHANGELING: AN IMMORTAL TALE*

WILDWOOD: AN IMMORTAL TALE*

PROPERTY OF A LADY

THE SIN EATER

*Originally published under the pseudonym of Frances Gordon

BLOOD RITUAL

Sarah Rayne

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First published in 1994 by

HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING
a division of Hodder Headline PLC

338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH
eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 1994 Bridget Wood

The right of Bridget Wood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0066-2 (epub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This eBook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

Author’s Note

The remarkable story of the Hungarian countess, Elizabeth Bathory, who lived at the end of the sixteenth century in the territories bordering Transylvania, is as blood-drenched as -if less well known than – the famous Dracula myth. But it exists nonetheless.

I did not invent Elizabeth. She lived and died precisely as I have set out in the sixteenth-century sections of this book. Her story has come down to the present day in fragments: mostly from the archives of the Court of Vienna where, because of their horrendous content, the documents relating to her life and death were kept under lock and key for more than a century. It was not until the early part of the eighteenth century that these documents were discovered by a Jesuit Father, who pieced together much of her story.

Elizabeth Bathory came of a wild and lawless lineage, sprinkled here and there with unmistakable insanity, but it is impossible to know at this distance whether she was mad – a psychopath or sexual sadist in today’s terms – or whether she was one of the genuinely evil people who litter the pages of history.

During her life, Elizabeth Bathory terrorised the country-side surrounding her bleak remote castles, and her hunting ground was close to that of Bram Stoker’s famous blood-quaffing villain. She was dazzlingly beautiful, prodigiously cruel and possessed of a consuming vanity which drove her to worship strange and dark gods. Her acts of barbarism and the accounts of the torture chambers she set up to commit her butchery read like the most extreme kind of horror fiction.

But I have not exaggerated any one of them.

Acknowledgements

Source books make tedious reading for what is primarily intended as a work of fiction and entertainment, and research for a book of this nature is necessarily diverse. However, I should wish to pay particular tribute to the following, all of which have been of immense help and enlightenment in uncovering a little of Elizabeth Bathory’s strange life:

THE BLOODY COUNTESS (Calder & Boyars), by Valentine Penrose, translated from the French by Alexander Trocchi, which in its turn acknowledges the work of the Jesuit Father, Laszlo Turoczki, who discovered the minutes of Elizabeth Bathory’s trial, and published his monograph on her in 1744.

THE BOOK OF WEREWOLVES (Causeway Books), by Sabine Baring-Gould.

WITCHCRAFT (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.), by William Seabrook.

My grateful thanks are also due to:

My brother, Tony Duggan, for ‘Tranz’.

Medical friends for their valuable contributions.

For G.F
from F.G

Chapter One

If Michael could have been sure that the nightmare scene he had glimpsed before he was blinded had been nothing more than a grotesque illusion, he might never have returned to Romania.

But the vision had stayed stubbornly with him: the ruined castle deep in the Carpathian mountains; the long table set for a feast, with the eerily beautiful creatures, some of them like living corpses propped up around it; the flickering candles reflecting in the smoky, smeary mirrors . . .

He had not yet grown accustomed to the loss of his sight and he thought he never would become accustomed. He would certainly be damned if he would accept as a dream the sinister vision that had printed itself on his mind with such remarkable clarity. Dr Forbes, with his kindly, faintly impersonal voice, said that the mind was a strange thing. There could be no vision, of course, but there was what the medical profession called ‘phantom limb syndrome’. Pain or irritation in an amputated foot or leg. Perhaps this was a little like that?

Whatever had struck Michael on the head, resulting in severe retinal detachment, had not been a phantom. Probably it had been a Serb mercenary a bit off-course. Maybe the small camera crew had even been followed across Hungary and into Romania, though that was rather a sinister idea. Probably it had only been a tramp. Ruins in Romania were as full of tramps and gypsies as anywhere else in the world. Michael had not been expecting to be attacked; he had not even been thinking about it, although they had all grown accustomed to watching for snipers. He had been trying to get footage of some of the refugee settlements which were springing up, and which people in England would watch on Channel Four’s seven o’clock news, eating their suppers and saying, How terrible; wasn’t it Hitler marching into Poland all over again? There was nothing new in the world.

And it was a hard thing if, out of all of the marvellous, shining things he had seen in thirty-five years, he had to be left with a horror film-flash, a hammed-up Sixties Bram Stoker story. He supposed it served him right. You read the books and you saw the films and enjoyed the frisson. But it was a cruel joke if this was all he would have left of the world.

It was Hammer horror at its tackiest. Michael had seen the films at Oxford: there had been a revival, and it had been the thing to do, that autumn term. It had usually been a good way of getting the girl of the evening into bed.

But he did not want to remember sex any more than he wanted to remember horrors. He supposed that sex was a thing of the past for him – who would want to make love to a blind man? – and as for horrors, hadn’t there been horrors to spare during the weeks in Romania and what was left of Bosnia? Anyone who had seen the refugees pouring out of the towns in droves, keening and dragging their tragic carts and bundles of belongings, or the soul-searing pictures of Romanian orphanages and Serb baby farms had plenty of stored-up memories without resorting to candlelit banquets in ruined castles. Michael would never have done so, even in the days when he had all of his sight and most of his wits . . . In the days when he could drive cars and watch sunsets and look at paintings and read Proust if he wanted to.

He would never drive cars or watch sunsets now, although some of the good things were left: Mozart was left. And Bach and Schubert. He could thank some kind of Providence for that. He supposed that Braille books were left as well. But everything else was gone.

Zoe was certainly gone.

He had not expected her to stay faithful. He had not wanted it. You could not offer much when you had lost your sight in a ruined castle, never mind who it was who had smashed you over the head.

Zoe had been entirely charming about abandoning him to his fate because Zoe was entirely charming about everything. She had held his hand and said, with nicely judged regret, that it was the greatest tragedy ever, poorest Michael, but there was talk of a winter in Switzerland – someone had rented a house there, and then they might all go to Istanbul for a few weeks which was not an opportunity to miss. And Jamie and Alex were restoring an old farmhouse in the Loire country and had asked her to visit them, immense fun.

He had been able to feel the light butterfly mind far more vividly than when he could see, and he had made one of those angry dismissive gestures because he had wanted her to be gone; he had wanted them all to be gone.

‘Intolerant and impatient,’ Sister Hilary said, coming in later.

‘Me or her?’ It still felt odd to speak into the darkness. Forbes had said that Michael would begin to hear resonances in his own voice that he had not heard before. The power of hearing would become heightened. A compensation for the blindness. Michael had found this unbelievably depressing, because it prophesied a permanency. But now he said, ‘Me or her?’ and waited for Sister Hilary to take his hand, which was something they all did in here before they spoke to you. Hilary’s hands were not soft and looked-after as Zoe’s were; they were strong and scrubbed and capable.

‘You, of course,’ said Hilary. ‘Intolerant of your lady.’

‘She isn’t my lady any longer. It’s stretching it a bit to call her a lady anyway.’

‘Were you to be married?’

‘Good God, what a dreadful idea!’ said Michael savagely. ‘Being married to Zoe would be fifty different kinds of hell.’

He waited to see what she would say, but she only said, ‘Impatient of everyone, still.’ She smelt of the plain hospital soap when she leaned over him, but there was a light drift of something else. Michael, considering, thought it was something old-fashioned like lavender or gillyflower essence. What the hell did gillyflower essence smell of anyway?

What was somebody who had such a warm, ironical sense of humour and such held-in-check rebelliousness doing inside a convent?

Hilary listened carefully to the discussion in Dr Forbes’s room about Michael Devlin. It had been unexpected to be included like this: Sister Veronica was not given to including the younger nuns in consultations, especially when it was Dr Forbes, who fluttered her. When Hilary had first come to St Luke’s, she had not expected to find that nuns were fluttered by men.

But she sat quietly and listened to Dr Forbes telling them how there was nothing more they could do for Mr Devlin.

‘All of the usual treatments for bilateral detachment have been tried,’ he said. ‘And after so long – a year, is it?’

‘A year, Doctor.’

‘Well, after a year, I’m inclined to think the damage won’t be reversed.’ He paused, frowning. ‘But there’s something he might consider.’

‘Yes?’

‘Laszlo Istvan in Austria has had some remarkable successes with this degree of retinal damage. It’s rather a long shot, of course. It’s rather a long way for him to go, as well.’

‘Austrian?’ said Sister Veronica, a bit suspiciously.

‘Viennese, actually.’

‘That would mean travelling.’

‘Devlin is not a poor man,’ said Dr Forbes.

Mr Devlin was quite wealthy by the Order’s standards, but Hilary thought that by many worldly standards his means were probably no more than modest.

‘And unfortunately,’ said Dr Forbes, ‘there is no employer who could help. In so many cases, there are compensation payments. But Mr Devlin was a freelance. He was working on a documentary programme telling how widespread the Yugoslav conflict had become. How far-reaching its effects were, and tracing how far some of the Bosnian homeless had managed to travel.’

‘“Stone in a Pool”,’ said Hilary, without thinking.

‘Ah, you know.’

‘He was preparing it when he was blinded.’

‘Yes. Well, there’s no reason to suppose he couldn’t pay Istvan’s fees,’ said Dr Forbes. ‘And there’s no medical reason why he can’t travel. He has his wits and his strength.’

‘He could not travel alone.’

‘No, not yet,’ said Dr Forbes, and then, shooting one of his sudden, penetrating looks at Sister Veronica from beneath his thick grey eyebrows, ‘But he could stay in your Viennese House perhaps. For the consultation with Istvan, and for recuperation afterwards. It would be a kind of halfway house until he can cope properly with the world again. Sighted or blind.’

Sister Veronica got ready to say that St Luke’s was not a charity but Dr Forbes said, ‘Of course, the Order would render its usual account. You aren’t a charity, Sister.’ Hilary suppressed a grin.

‘Would he stay in a religious house? He is not,’ said Sister Veronica, a touch acerbically, ‘especially devout.’ This was plainly a reference to the afternoon when Michael had been trying to master the intricacies of Braille with Hilary, and had lost his temper and hurled the cards across the room and given vent to a string of curses just as Sister Veronica was making her stately rounds.

‘He was recommended to us by the monks of Glenstal,’ said Dr Forbes, and Sister Veronica at once said, ‘Oh, then he’s Irish,’ as if this accounted for a good deal.

‘His parents were Irish, although he was born in this country, I believe,’ said Dr Forbes, and Hilary thought: yes, of course he is Irish. And wondered why she had not realised it before. It accounted for the untidy black hair and the wide, mobile mouth. It accounted for the hot temper and the impatience, and the flashes of quite disgraceful charm that occasionally surfaced. And his eyes were the clear blue of the tempestuous western sea that lashed Ireland’s wild beautiful coast . . . His eyes . . .

‘And I thought,’ said Dr Forbes, carefully, ‘that since Sister Hilary has been tutoring him, and since he seems to respond better to her than to anyone, she should accompany him to Vienna.

‘If,’ he said urbanely, ‘you would permit.’

Michael listened carefully to the suggestion. Not something to become too optimistic about, said Forbes, seating himself in the narrow canvas-seat chair so that it creaked in the heavier way it creaked for large people. Not something to pin too many hopes on, he said, and Michael heard the frown. With such a severe degree of retinal detachment the prognosis was not good.

‘But in your case, I would be inclined to try,’ he said.

‘What would it mean?’

‘More or less the same procedures we’ve tried here. Laser surgery of course. And Laszlo Istvan has had some remarkable successes with your particular condition.’ He paused. ‘You do know that it was a very severe degree of damage,’ he said.

‘And therefore,’ said Michael, sardonically, ‘whatever is done now can hardly make matters worse.’

‘You were lucky in many ways,’ said Forbes after a moment. ‘Such a severe blow to the head could have resulted in worse things than blindness. Brain damage. Amnesia or personality change. Visible trauma to skull or cheekbones . . .’ He paused. ‘You are unmarked.’

‘Is that intended to make me feel better?’

‘It might in time.’ Forbes rustled his papers. ‘The sisters thought you could stay in their Viennese House,’ he said. ‘It’s a similar set-up to this one and it would be quite a sensible arrangement. In a conventional hospital or an hotel there would be a number of difficulties for you. Laszlo Istvan has his own clinic, of course, where there could certainly be a room—’

‘But it would be expensive,’ finished Michael.

‘Yes. I don’t know your exact circumstances—’

‘I’m not sure I have any,’ said Michael angrily. ‘I daresay the State has to look after cripples of all kinds. I suppose I qualify as a cripple.’

‘To allow yourself to become a dependant of the State would be a great waste,’ said Forbes severely. ‘You have been spoken of to me as highly gifted. There must be a great many fields still open to you.’

‘I can scarcely be gifted without my sight.’

‘I believe that the Viennese convent is an ancient and rather lovely place,’ said Forbes, gently. ‘It would be as good a place for you to learn the world again as any.’

‘If Istvan’s treatment fails?’

‘Yes.’

Michael relapsed into silence, frowning. After a moment, he said, ‘Very well.’

‘You’ll try it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ This time the grin was that of a gambler. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘I would. And the Viennese convent? Will you stay with the sisters?’ Forbes thought that Michael hesitated very slightly, and he said, ‘Sister Hilary is prepared to go with you.’

Sister Hilary. That warm, faintly mocking amusement. The rebel, held in check beneath the surface.

Michael said slowly, ‘Yes. Then I will go.’

Hilary stood obediently in front of Sister Veronica’s neat desk.

‘The Reverend Mother in Vienna will expect you on 29 September,’ said Sister Veronica. ‘St Michael’s own feast day.’

‘Michaelmas,’ said Hilary, thoughtfully.

‘Yes.’ Sister Veronica pursed her lips. ‘We’ll hope that it is an auspicious date. Dr Forbes’s secretary has made the travel arrangements. A passport will be issued to you – Mr Devlin has his own, of course. A taxi will take you both to the airport, and one of the sisters – Sister Catherine – will meet you at the other end.’

‘Yes, I see.’ Hilary supposed that Sister Veronica knew, as they all knew, about planes and passports and fast travel. There was a small television set in the sisters’ recreation room, and viewing of news programmes was permitted to those whose recreation hour coincided with the television schedules. They could sometimes watch religious discussions, although Sister Veronica did not approve of some of the guests who appeared on them.

‘Worldly rebels,’ she said, drawing her mouth down. ‘The Church is not to be questioned.’

‘No, Sister,’ said Hilary obediently.

Jack Field sat on the canvas chair next to Michael’s bed, emitting a faint drift of stale cigarette smoke and sounding enthusiastic.

‘It’s heaven sent. Jesus God, Michael, it’s the opportunity you’ll never get again.’ He leaned forward, Michael heard the chair creak, and felt the ruffle of air as Field stabbed the air with a didactic finger.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you’d got enough for a full-length documentary as it was. Even a whole book. And very nice too. You’d have sold the documentary, of course – we’d certainly have bought it.’ ‘We’ was Carlyon TV, Field’s own network and one of the few remaining independently owned television companies, operating in the south-east. ‘But think of it now,’ he said. ‘Think of the publicity. Journalist blinded while looking for refugees. Journalist returns to site of trauma. You’d have every news editor and every paperback house falling over themselves.’

‘The books have been done.’ Michael did not bother to say: How would I write a book without my sight, because Field would have an answer. Dictate to a secretary, dear boy. Use a Braille typewriter.

‘I know the books have been done,’ said Field pouncing. ‘They all do it. Kate Adie, Tim Sebastian. That one from ITN who was shot . . . But you’d have news value. It’s very tragic, but you could turn a negative into a positive. You could make money from it.’

‘What a ghoulish idea,’ said Michael distastefully.

‘What a money spinner,’ said Field cynically. He felt in his pockets for tobacco, and then remembered regretfully where he was. Michael heard the progress of his thoughts perfectly; the sigh of impatience and the twitching fingers that were restless without a cigar. He said, ‘You hadn’t finished the original story, had you? Weren’t you on the track of the Bosnian refugees? Seeing how far they’d fled?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where was the base?’

‘Just outside of Debreczen – on the Hungarian outskirts. Close to the Romanian border. The embassy and Reuter’s managed to get visas for us and—’

Field said, ‘Isn’t that a bit far for the Bosnians to have travelled?’

‘A bit.’ Michael thought he should have guessed that Field, wily old newsman, would have picked this up.

‘How did they get there?’

‘I don’t know. I was looking for their camp when I was wounded.’

Field said, shrewdly, ‘Bosnian refugees never got that far without help, Michael. Has somebody opened an escape route that the Serbs haven’t cottoned on to? That the media haven’t found?’

‘It’s possible.’ Michael was not going to discuss the feeling he had had that there was something very curious indeed in the village just outside Debreczen.

‘It’d make a good story.’ Field leaned back expansively, creaking the chair again. ‘Of course you’ve got to go back. You’ve got to live and so you’ve got to work. You have to return to . . . the place outside Debreczen. The ruined castle – what did you say it was called?’

‘I didn’t.’ Field waited and Michael sighed. ‘It was called Csejthe.’

‘Csejthe revisited. That’s what you have to do.’

Michael said, ‘I don’t want to go back.’

He did not want to go back to any of those places. He repeated this to himself several times after Field had left.

But to travel to Vienna would not mean going back to those strange, untouched-by-time villages in the shadow of the mountains. It would not mean experiencing again the eerie feeling that somebody was using the war for some deep and grim purpose: manipulating the helpless and exhausted Bosnians for some dark and sinister purpose.

Drawing them into the spider’s lair . . .

Michael pushed the thoughts away, and thought instead about Vienna. It might mean the restoring of his sight. And Vienna was one of the world’s most beautiful cities. It was somewhere he had never been. It meant Mozart and Strauss and Haydn; the State Opera House and the Danube, and Wiener schnitzel. The seat of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, the thrones of the Hapsburgs. Drenched in the dark, romantic history of the strange, mountainous lands and the myth-laden, haunted forests.

But you wouldn’t see any of it! cried his mind in silent anguish, and again the silvery voice, several layers down, made itself heard again.

But Hilary would see it for you. She would describe it all.

To write Field’s ghoulish book? To go back?

The documentary had nearly been complete. He had been going to call it ‘Stone in a Pool’: a report by Michael Devlin on the ripples spreading outwards from Yugoslavia. It would have made a good programme. Maybe even ‘World in Action’ stuff. Field’s network had already agreed to take it, and he would probably have sold a two-page feature to one of the Sundays.

He could still see the road they had taken. Innsbruck and Salzburg, skirting the war-ravaged Slovenia; through Graz and Budapest, and on into Debreczen, that strange cramped city clustered about an ancient fortress. They had used as their base a small, surprisingly comfortable inn, twelve or fifteen kilometres west of Debreczen, littering the dark panelled rooms with recording equipment. There had been a church nearby where the deposition of the Hapsburgs had been proclaimed somewhere around 1850. It had seemed odd to find such strong traces of the Hapsburgs after all this time. It was the stuff that dreams were made of and that legends were woven from, and Michael had found it beautiful and disturbing and just very faintly cruel. A shadow-land. He had found himself wondering whether there was a story here: nothing to do with wars or conflicts or aggressors, but something that had its roots far, far back in history.

Above them, in a fold of the mountains, had been the little mountain town with the ruined castle. Csejthe. And it had been just outside Csejthe that they had found the shivering refugees – four or five families – hiding out in the castle’s shadow. The interpreter had prised a little of their story from them.

Fled from the Serbian aggressors, they had said, glancing over their shoulders as if fearful of pursuit. Their homes burned, their children in danger. They did not like to run, for that was the coward’s way. But there had been no other choice open.

They had come further than most in their flight from their ravaged homeland. They had tried to stay within the shelter of the Sacred Crown of Hungary – yes, they had actually said that, even after the Sacred Crown had long since gone the way of all the other hollow crowns, even though the word ‘sacred’ meant so little now. But they had come too far: Csejthe was a bad place; a place of phantoms and voices. The castle itself was haunted. There were tales of ancient forest gods and witches. Memories for such things were long out here. Michael had started to ask how they had got here, who had helped them. How had the journey through the Serb-controlled lands to the east of Bosnia been achieved? How had they crossed Romania?

They would not talk. Their eyes had slid away and they had stared westwards, to the lowering, jagged peaks silhouetted against the sky: the black, crescent-shaped Carpathian mountains that formed the natural division between Romania and that strange table land now also called Romania, but once known by another name.

The Land Beyond the Forest. Transylvania.

Chapter Two

It was difficult not be overwhelmed by the size and the noise and the bustle of Gatwick. To one accustomed to the tranquillity of the cloister, and to the soft-voiced nuns and the convalescing patients, it was a huge, bewildering assault on every sense.

Eight years, thought Hilary, walking at Michael’s side, his hand on her arm. Eight years since I was properly out in the world; since I dealt with travelling and machines and cars. Memory stirred her mind. Driving . . . The exhilaration of accelerating along a stretch of open road. Fear and delight mingled in equal parts. Not to be remembered, not even for a moment. She would concentrate on what lay ahead. She had never flown before and she would enjoy the journey.

And although it was undoubtedly vanity to pretend she was accustomed to airports and customs and walking through the arch to detect sinister metal objects, she pretended anyway.

She did not pretend with Michael. It still felt strange and a bit impolite to call him Michael, but he had been very firm about it.

‘We’ll be together in some degree of intimacy, Sister,’ he had said, the disturbing eyes looking not at her, but somehow through her. ‘You’ll have to guide me into the men’s loo when I need it, and you’ll have to help me with my seat-belt.’ The grin slid out. ‘I’ll hold your hand during take-off,’ he said. ‘So wouldn’t it be the maddest thing ever to call me Mister Devlin?’ There it was for the first time, the faintest Irish intonation.

She thought they were managing quite well. They had sat together in the international lounge, waiting for the flight to be called. Hilary discovered that, once you had surrendered your luggage, it was a simple enough procedure: you found your flight number on a huge screen and then listened for it to be announced by an electronic voice. She had fetched two cups of coffee for them to drink while they waited, unfamiliar with the self-service routine, but listening carefully to how the other travellers ordered, and copying them. Sister Veronica had given her a zipped leather purse with fifty pounds: a mixture of ordinary English coins and notes and Austrian schillings. It seemed an enormous amount, but the coffee had been over a pound for each cup.

She had deliberately walked alongside the gentlemen’s wash-room, one hand lightly on Michael’s arm to guide him, and she had tried to anticipate any need by saying, ‘If you walk six feet ahead – say four steps – on your left is a washroom. You’ll maybe like to go in before we set off. I’ll wait outside, and come up to you.’

‘Tactful Sister Hilary,’ said Michael, and slid the white stick out so that it rasped the wall. The doorway was there, just as she had said, and once inside, it was an easy enough task to feel his way to the urinals.

The procedure of air travel was too familiar for Michael to feel anything other than impatience. He detected, not for the first time, a stridency about people, and an over-emphatic haste. See how busy we are. See how important and fulfilled our lives are. Being blind heightened your responses.

But waiting for the flight to be called, and then moving to the gate, Michael was strongly aware of a dark disquiet that had nothing to do with the off-balance claustrophobia of blindness. He had almost come to terms with that now, with the feeling that if you took a step forward you might topple off a cliff, or that a brick wall might rear up to smack you in the face. There had been the suggestion of a guide dog, which he had rather liked. But he had not yet accepted his blindness as permanent, and he would wait to see if Dr Istvan’s treatment worked.

The feeling was a dark uncoiling, a lure.

I am going back . . .

There was a sense of unease deep within his mind, as if something was blowing noisome breath across a still pool.

I am going back . . .

Nightmare creatures seated around a candlelit banquet, with night descending on the mountains outside . . .

He pushed the memory aside in the pleasure he was deriving from Hilary’s enjoyment of the flight. He thought she was managing very creditably; she had plainly never flown before, but she was neither embarrassingly childlike or what Field called hayseed-gape-mouthed, nor did she try to be falsely blasé. She thanked the stewardess who helped them to their seats and asked about the stowing of their hand-luggage. Michael, reaching for his seat-belt almost without thinking about it, felt a ruffle of content from her.

‘All serene, Sister?’

‘I was only thinking how wonderful this is. I had never expected to travel.’

‘Did you want to?’

‘Yes, I did,’ she said. ‘But at nineteen one doesn’t always understand . . .’ She paused, and Michael said, ‘Have you been in the – Order for very long?’

‘Eight years.’ There was the slightest edge of defiance in her voice. Michael suddenly wished very strongly that he could see her.

When the stewardess asked about drinks, Hilary hesitated, unsure whether they were required to pay, but Michael said, in a disinterested-sounding voice, ‘I daresay we could take a drink since Austrian Airlines are so hospitable, don’t you, Sister?’ and Hilary understood that it was his way of telling her that drinks were included in their tickets. She asked for a glass of mineral water, which came in a plastic cup, but with a cube of ice and a wafer-thin slice of fresh lime. At her side, Michael drank a chilled Chablis with pleasure.

‘Is it good, your wine?’

‘Very. You wouldn’t be used to wine, I daresay.’

‘Only communion wine,’ she said, deadpan. ‘Sister Veronica buys – is it called off the wood?’

‘Dear God,’ said Michael, feelingly, and felt the becoming-familiar ruffle of amusement. He said, ‘Tell me about this convent we are going to.’

‘It’s near to the centre of the city, I believe. But in one of the older parts.’

‘Of your own House?’

‘Yes, the Order of St Luke. There are about a dozen Houses in Europe, and, quite recently, one in America.’

It was unexpectedly refreshing to hear somebody say ‘America’, simply and unfrilled, rather than ‘the U S of A’, or the ‘Big Apple’.

‘Luke the Gospeller?’ asked Michael.

‘Yes, but he was also a physician. That is why our Houses are dedicated to helping people regain health.’ Hilary glanced at him and saw that his expression held the interested, absorbed look. She said, ‘As you know, they aren’t hospitals, precisely, but places where people can recover from severe illnesses or injuries. Perhaps the illnesses are not always physical,’ said Hilary. ‘Sometimes, it is only a period of tranquillity that is needed. What is called a retreat is sometimes helpful then.’

‘Yes.’ Michael knew about retreats, where you spent two or three days in silence, praying and meditating; attending various services and liturgical readings, sometimes receiving counselling from priests. ‘Have you to be given special training?’ he said.

‘Yes. Things like massage and physiotherapy which is especially useful for those who have suffered a stroke. We have many very good successes there. Lip-reading for the deaf. In your case there is Braille, which I teach, and the new skills to live in the world without sight.’

‘How to boil a kettle without scalding your hands, how to walk across a room without falling over, how to get dressed, tie shoelaces, run a bath, eat spaghetti—’

‘All of those,’ she said, and he heard the smile in her voice again. But then she said, ‘It is a worthwhile thing to do.’

‘Certainly.’ Michael thought the words were just a little too emphatic, but he said, ‘And the Vienna House does the same kind of work?’

‘Yes, I believe,’ said Hilary, ‘that the convent itself is in a rather sinister quarter of the city.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s in a place called the Singerstrasse, behind the Cathedral of St Stephen, close to where the Knights Templar had their sanctuary.’ Michael felt her send him a sideways glance, as if waiting for his quick nod of comprehension.

He said, ‘The Order of St John of Jerusalem. Rich in secrets and in worldly chattels also. And . . . slaughtered wholesale by one of the popes of the day, weren’t they? Yes, I know a little about it.’ He finished his wine and felt for the slot in the table to set it down. ‘We’re going to a place stiff with rather grisly legend, it seems.’ And then, with a mental shake, ‘We’re coming in to land.’

Hilary thought fleetingly that it might have been nice to have done the classic line, ‘For the first time I set foot on foreign soil.’ But she was not here for pleasure. It was important to keep remembering it. She was here to help Michael. It was extraordinary how easy it was becoming to think of him as Michael.

Sister Catherine was waiting in the passengers’ lounge, a small, slender figure, wearing the plain navy high-necked dress of their Order. Her face, framed by the white coif and dark veil was pale, and she had huge dark eyes and high slanting cheekbones. A triangular face. An inverted triangle. Slav ancestry? Magyar? Certainly a lineage immeasurably older than the present-day mix of Czech and German. It was not a face you would expect to find in a twentieth-century convent in the depths of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Greetings were exchanged. Michael’s German turned out to be good but Sister Catherine spoke fairly fluent English with only a slight, rather attractive accent. She and Hilary exchanged the pax, the kiss of peace, and Sister Catherine reached for Michael’s hand and clasped it, bidding him welcome, and hoping the journey had been comfortable.

‘You are Austrian, Sister?’ said Michael, as the little car – probably a small Fiat by the feel and the bounce – drew away from the airport car-park.

‘Hungarian.’ Her voice was soft and gentle, but Hilary caught a hint of ruthlessness beneath. Like a gloved cat. An absurd thought. But her name is Catherine. A Cat in velvet gloves . . . Silk mittens on little vicious claws . . . Hilary pushed the thought down at once. As they drew into the stream of traffic, she was aware that Sister Catherine drove fast but competently. That is how I drove once. Confident and heedless of all danger. Another thought to be pushed down. Think instead of the safety of the cloister walls.

She said, ‘How long have you been in the Order, Sister?’

‘Three years now. I do not have so much dealings with the patients at the moment; I am – you would call it the librarian. It is interesting work because the convent is very old.’ As the Fiat bounced across the city, she pointed out various landmarks.

The former Imperial Palace. The Castle of Schonbrunn. Coffee houses and art galleries. There was a drifting scent of good coffee and croissants and of exhaust fumes and jostling humanity. Michael, tilting his head to catch every nuance, every layer of feeling, thought that the air almost thrummed with music.

Vienna, the City of Music . . . And I cannot see it.

‘The convent is in the Innere Stadt,’ said Sister Catherine, and Hilary noticed that she said ‘the convent’ and not ‘our convent’.

‘Innere Stadt – that is, Inner City?’

‘Inner State,’ said Sister Catherine. ‘It dates back to almost a thousand years. Parts were built on the plague graves of the Middle Ages.’

‘It’s all very beautiful,’ said Hilary, leaning forward to see the crowded streets, trying to describe them to Michael.

‘And that is – oh, surely, the State Opera House! Is it, Sister? An immense building, with equestrian statues and a kind of cloistered walk. I cannot quite see the posters – yes I can, Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte.’

Michael said, ‘I should like very much to attend.’ And thought: but not Zauberflöte with its light-hearted froth and fantasy. Zauberflöte was for the sighted, for happiness and flippancy. If he went to the Vienna State Opera, it should be to hear the dark, haunted Don Giovanni, Mozart’s ravaged creation, arguably his most sombre work, but unquestionably one of his finest.

‘You are fond of music, Mr Devlin?’

‘Very.’

‘A visit to the Opera House could perhaps be arranged.’

‘I should be indebted to you if it could, Sister,’ said Michael, and it was then that Sister Catherine swung the car into a turning off the Karntnerstrasse with its fashionable shops and bustling shoppers, and said, ‘Ahead of us are the spires of St Stephen’s Cathedral. The Convent of St Luke is in the cathedral’s lee.’

Michael felt the darkness of the ancient streets close about them the minute they entered the cathedral’s shadow. It was as if a curtain had come down, or as if they had passed through a dark, low door.

Sister Catherine manoeuvred smoothly down a narrow street with tall buildings on each side, each one huddling closely to its neighbour, most of them with jutting first floors that overhung the street. The road was fairly smooth, maintained by the efficient Viennese, but the pavements were cobbled and uneven. Gothic stone arches spanned the street over their heads, and between the buildings, Hilary glimpsed dark alleys and courtyards with rusting iron lamps hanging over doors. Stone steps led down to cellar doors and gargoyles leered from the stonework. Several of the buildings still bore the strange Ophidian cross which the Knights Templar had taken for their emblem. Hilary received the chill impression of beliefs and worship older than Christianity by far, and of grisly pagan rituals. These ancient buildings had seen murder and martyrdom; their stones were soaked in intrigues and terror and butchery. This is the real Vienna, thought Hilary, looking through the car windows. That other, the lighthearted, music-drenched city is grafted on, it is a thin veil over the true face of the city.

Ahead of them a massive stone arch framed the entrance into the Singerstrasse, and beneath the arch were thick, wrought-iron gates. Hilary caught sight of the convent itself; a massive grey stone building set behind a high wall.

Behind them the sun was setting, bathing the twelfth-century cathedral in rose and pink splendour, but as they passed through the gates, it slid below the horizon and the shadows uncoiled.

Catherine had felt the English journalist’s recoil at the dark narrow streets and the alleys that twisted around the cathedral. He had felt the darkness in the streets of the Innere Stadt and Catherine thought he had felt the darkness within Catherine herself. It had been in the way he had tilted his head to listen when she spoke, and in the sudden stillness that had descended on him. Was he more sensitive because he had lost his sight? Yes, almost certainly.

Something very close to despair threatened her at the knowledge, because she had striven so hard; at times she thought she had wearied Heaven with her pleas. Help me to quench this secret, evil self . . .

She thought she had been four – perhaps she had been younger – when she had become aware of the other little girl, the dark, hungry little girl who lay coiled in her mind.

The little girl was a person of claws and teeth. She liked to hurt people. She liked to make them bleed, and then – this was truly dreadful – she liked to smear the blood into her skin. Just when you least expected it, she would whisper into your ear that wouldn’t it be marvellous, wouldn’t it be exciting to stick a knife into one of the cousins, to see how much they bled; wouldn’t it be thrilling to hear them squeal with pain.

This dark, cruel little girl could be shut out for pretty much most of the time, but it meant you had to concentrate very hard on something else. You had to study a difficult lesson with your hands clapped over your ears, or you had to go running as hard as you could across the gardens at Varanno, which was where Catherine had lived with her parents and her brother Pietro; you had to go running round and round, so fast and so long that at last you flopped down exhausted, and you were too tired to hear anything.

The only time that Catherine never heard or sensed the little girl’s presence was when Pietro came home, because when Pietro was in the house nothing else mattered in the world. All the demons and all the phantoms in Hungary might have gibbered at her bedside and she would not have cared. When Pietro was there nothing bad could happen.

The sisters of St Luke’s Viennese House were looking forward to the arrival of the distinguished English journalist. Reverend Mother had said he was not to be given any special treatment; a room in the small hospice wing and meals served in the guest dining room. Exactly as all of the patients who could walk and feed themselves. But it was very interesting to think that Mr Devlin, who had been at the centre of some of the terrible events in Yugoslavia, was to be with them for a time. Perhaps he might tell them a little of his work? Reverend Mother did not believe in shutting yourself away from the world: how could they pray to the good God for the poor suffering souls fleeing from Bosnia, blessed innocent children made orphans, or Iraqi gunmen killing in the name of their barbaric religion, if they did not know about them? she said. There was no reason why Mr Devlin could not be asked to give them a little talk one evening after Compline.

The convent would make a special intention at Mass for Mr Devlin: Reverend Mother would write it in the little leather-bound diary which was kept in the presbytery for the purpose. It did not do to leave such things to the memory, not when you were no longer as young as you had once been. They would allot the Mass for the day of Mr Devlin’s arrival, which was the Feast of St Michael the Archangel and very suitable too.

When she was ten, Catherine discovered the word ‘possession’. It was not a word that people used any longer: ‘Superstition,’ Pietro said when Catherine asked him. ‘There is no such thing, Katerina.’ He regarded her with the dark eyes that could bum with such fervour that you felt as if you were tumbling down and down into his mind. Only then he would smile, and the eyes would become brimful of delight and mischief so that you forgot about falling into minds and remembered about life being fun.

Possession meant the taking over of a soul by a malignant intelligence. It was unthinkable to Catherine that Pietro should ever be wrong about anything, but he was wrong about possession not existing. The Catholic Church knew about possession, and Catherine, fighting the cruel, cold little girl in her mind, knew about it as well.

As she grew up, she understood that she was actually very privileged. Father said so quite often. Mother and the aunts said so even more often. It was only Pietro who had said, ‘Try to escape them, Katerina. Try to leave Varanno as soon as you can.’

But she understood that she had been born into a warm, safe world which she did not have to leave, not even to go away to school, because of the Family being so very wealthy, There was schooling from their own people – ‘Very good schooling,’ Mother once said, rather wistfully, as if she would have liked Catherine’s opportunities. It appeared that when Mother had been a child, learning for girls had not been thought very necessary, although Mother was so beautiful that it probably had not mattered. Catherine did not think she was beautiful, or at least not as beautiful as Mother, but she enjoyed her lessons and she was quite good at them. By the time she entered St Luke’s she could speak and write several languages, including Latin.

The other little girl was very learned indeed. She could speak more languages than Catherine, and she knew about things like alchemy and philosophy and about herbs which you gathered when the moon was full, and about prowling forest creatures. She knew about wars and invasions, although she called the countries by names that Catherine thought were no longer used. She had uncles who went to war and killed their enemies by hacking them to pieces, bellowing with delight as they did it. Sometimes they sewed their victims’ severed heads back on and paraded them before the people, roaring with mirth. There were aunts who took what seemed to be dozens of lovers and sometimes murdered them while they slept. Catherine could taste the blood and the cruelty and the barbarism. She could feel the girl’s greedy enjoyment of it all.

It became harder to shut the girl out. Catherine began to know what she looked like: there was not a sudden flare of illumination like when you switched on a light, but there was a slow wiping away of a smoky, smeary looking-glass, so that after a while, the face watching you from the silvery depths got clearer and clearer.

The girl was small and pale with huge burnt-pitch eyes that could smoulder with hunger. She liked being pale – she tried all kinds of things that made Catherine shudder to make her skin even paler. There were experiments with animals: the nerves and livers and hearts pounded into a paste, moistened with blood. There were plants gathered beneath a gibbous moon. She went into the forests by night and squatted in horrid dark log cabins with withered crones who chanted strange rituals and burned belladonna leaves and datura. There was one wizened old creature called Darvulia, whom the little girl listened to particularly. Catherine heard the chanting and smelt the blood and the smoke and sometimes it made her so ill that she had to leap out of bed and run to the basin on the dressing table to be sick. Several times she did not get up in time and was sick in the bed, but she always mopped it up and put on fresh sheets and burned the sicked ones in the old wash-house, so nobody ever knew.

The girl liked to dress in white. When she went on visits, she sometimes wore a scarlet velvet cloak over her white gowns. She was going to be married to a rich man – Catherine thought the word intended was either prince or count. It would mean riches and castles. The man had already been selected, and the girl did not know the man very well, but it did not matter. He was a great warrior, which was important, and he was very wealthy, which was even more important.

As Catherine grew up, the girl grew up as well. Varanno was filled with parties of Catherine’s cousins who came to stay; there were picnics and expeditions in the surrounding countryside. The hunting of foxes or the occasional stray wolf. Long winter nights when they would bank up the fires in the stone hall and dance and drink wine, or tell stories and play word games. Catherine was to understand later how narrow and how stifling it had all been, but from within it had been safe and warm.

The girl was with her all along. It got harder to shut her out. She jeered at the boy cousins who fumbled at Catherine’s breasts when they tried to kiss her, and whispered how much more fun it was to touch ladies than men which Catherine found vaguely disturbing. If you were a lady yourself, you did not want to kiss and touch other ladies. That was not what happened.

Oh yes it is, my poor innocent Cat, oh yes it is . . .

In the study, which was Catherine’s father’s especial province, hung a small, rather dark portrait, not very skilfully executed – Catherine had been taught about Masters such as Titian and Tintoretto and about Raphael and she knew that this unknown painter’s talent had been only modest. She had never particularly looked at the portrait, in the way that you did not particularly look at things you grew up with.

But when she was fourteen, she suddenly saw that the subject was the girl – her girl. Her girl who dressed in white and liked to hear about blood and pain, and who whispered that it was more exciting to prowl the moonlit forests and talk with the ancient learned women than to play at amateur theatricals; more fun to touch breasts and stroke smooth pale thighs than be mauled by horrid boys with their coarse skins and the bulging swellings in their trousers. The cloven was more exciting by far than the crested. For a long time Catherine did not understand this.

The portrait showed, in one corner, the single letter ‘E’ constructed out of three cruel teeth embedded in a vertical jawbone and encircled with a coiling dragon. It was no odder, no grislier than a great many emblems and escutcheons that belonged to any one of the once-noble families who lived out here. But to Catherine it was disquieting.

The girl in the portrait was young and slender, with extraordinary white skin and huge, burnt-pitch eyes. Her hair was drawn back beneath what Catherine thought was called a jewelled snood, but it looked to be silky black. There was a rich full mouth – was it sensual or sensuous? Catherine thought later that at fourteen one did not know the difference. There was the stiff white coif and the full sleeves and tight jewelled bodice of the sixteenth century.

She spent hours standing beneath the portrait, looking into the dark eyes, trying to decide whether there was cruelty or passion in them, both of which she thought might have been understandable emotions, or whether there was simply a dark, cold void, which was somehow the eeriest thing of all.

The portrait was anonymous, but the lady had a name: she had been called Elizabeth.

But Catherine’s father, asked a carefully casual question, said she had been known in her day as Die Blutgräfin.

The Blood Countess.

Chapter Three

Hilary was horrified to discover a seething jealousy when Reverend Mother said that Sister Catherine would go with Michael to Herr Istvan’s clinic. It was plainly a sensible course of action; Hilary did not know Vienna and she had only a thin smattering of German. Sister Catherine could drive Michael to the clinic on the eastern outskirts of the city and, if necessary, act as interpreter.

The instinctive response, ‘Michael is my responsibility!’ could not be uttered. Hilary bit her lip and said that it was a practical plan, and in the meantime it would be a happiness to accede to Reverend Mother’s request to give a little talk to the sisters about the English House and their methods. Perhaps she might use the library to make her notes? She understood that it was a library of great excellence, she said in her careful but rather rusty French, which was Reverend Mother’s native language and which Hilary was trying to use as much as possible from courtesy and to polish up the rustiness.

Sister Catherine was friendly but quiet on the brief journey to Istvan’s clinic, and Michael realised with surprise that he was comparing her with Hilary. Hilary would have enjoyed this journey; she would have liked seeing more of Vienna. Michael would have enjoyed her pleasure.

Laszlo Istvan’s clinic gave the impression of great cleanliness and efficiency, and Michael remembered that the Austrians had more than a dash of Teuton in their blood. The examination on Istvan’s curved couch was no better and no worse than those he had undergone in London. You could not see the glinting instruments that peered into your eyes and your brain, and so you ought not to flinch from them.

But Michael did flinch; he felt the brush of the cold steel instruments and he felt Istvan’s breath brush his cheek as the man bent over him. Clean and fresh and spearminty, as if he might have eaten something strongly flavoured for lunch and had brushed his teeth to remove any lingering offensiveness, or at the least sucked a peppermint. The small courtesy pleased Michael. Dentists and doctors and hairdressers ought never to have halitosis. A surprising number did.

Michael’s German was good, although he was unfamiliar with medical terms, but Istvan turned out to have a working knowledge of English. What he said was clear in any language.

A very small chance of restoring some sight. Istvan would not lift Mr Devlin’s hopes, and in fact the process he had in mind was little different to the English methods.

Laser surgery would be used, of course, as it always was with this type of injury. Herr Istvan explained the course the operation would take, becoming a little technical in his explanation about the prolongations of brain tissue into the eyes, so that Michael lost him once or twice. But the message was clear: only a very small chance of success. But worth the attempt. Herr Istvan did not, it was to be understood, urge hopeless cases into his clinic purely for the money—

‘Of course not.’

But if Mr Devlin was prepared to take a gamble, Herr Istvan was prepared to take it with him. ‘I promise to do all I can for you,’ he said. ‘You are a casualty of war.’

‘Not even my own war,’ said Michael, and then, at once, ‘No, that’s wrong. All war is everyone’s business.’

The operation would, it appeared, be performed under a full anaesthetic, as the earlier ones in England had been.

‘Just as well.’ Michael did not ask if the eyes would be removed from their sockets for the process, as he had not asked in England. There was something quite inexpressibly horrible about imagining your eyes dangling over your cheeks.

‘And then,’ said Istvan, ‘perhaps a week, perhaps ten days with dressings. You understand?’

‘Yes. And you could perform the operation, when?’

There was the sound of pages being turned; a diary or a rota, Michael supposed. Istvan made a brief telephone call, questions in his voice. At length, there was the sound of the receiver being replaced.

‘In one week,’ said Istvan, spinning his leather chair around again. ‘You present yourself here and a room will be available. The operation, it will take place on the morning following.’ He paused, and Michael felt him searching for words. ‘The fee, that is presented upon your going out.’

‘Yes.’ Michael drew a deep breath. ‘And the fee itself?’ he said, and heard the figures fall on his consciousness.

A large sum. A very large sum. He frowned, calculating rapidly. It would take a great deal of his savings. Should he mortgage the Hampstead flat? No, he would be damned if he would. It had been too hard-won, and a mortgage would be a millstone. The flat would be the last thing to go.

It would have to be Field’s book, may he rot in a teetotal hell. Csejthe revisited.

He turned his head to where he sensed Istvan sat, and said in a voice that surprised him with its coolness, ‘It is all acceptable. I shall see you in a week.’

Reverend Mother always found it startling how people from the outside world could talk with such facility on the telephone. One might, at times, almost imagine they were seated on the other side of one’s carefully ordered desk. It was certainly astonishingly easy to imagine Sister Catherine’s father seated opposite her now. He had a cultered, silken-sounding voice and he phrased his request in terms of the utmost courtesy.

And even a lifetime in God’s service did not render one wholly immune to charm of this strength, even while one was hearing and feeling a curious, not wholly pleasant undertone.

But the request seemed genuine enough. Sister Catherine’s brother was ill, said the cultured voice; severely so, it was feared, although the cause was not yet discovered. But it would be a very great kindness if Reverend Mother – the title was given with careful accuracy – it would be a very great kindness if Catherine – Sister Catherine – could be permitted to return to her family for a few days.

It was not unreasonable; nuns had families, and at times the families had need of them. Reverend Mother always tried to give such requests a sympathetic hearing.

And there was no reason to refuse. Sister Catherine’s father was apologetic and polite. Reverend Mother, whose distant youth had included a romantic adventure or two before the greatest of all lovers beckoned, thought that this gentleman had the assured manners of a courtier and the faint imperiousness of one accustomed to being obeyed.

She thought she was not a fanciful woman – a lifetime in God’s service honed any lingering romanticism from any soul – but she believed that Sister Catherine’s father had precisely the silk-over-bared-teeth caress to his voice that you would expect from a gentleman of an ancien régime. Arrogant and charming and probably highly unscrupulous. She dug a fingernail into her palm to warn herself against day-dreaming and said into the telephone that it would be an easy matter to grant Sister Catherine a small dispensation. A few days would be enough? Perhaps they should say a week.

‘A week will certainly be sufficient,’ said the cool voice in her ear.

‘There is a small matter . . .’ Annoyingly a note of apology crept into her voice. ‘It is our rule that our sisters are not permitted to travel alone,’ said Reverend Mother. ‘You could perhaps come to Vienna to collect her?’ She waited, and annoyingly her heart quickened its beat perceptibly.

At the other end, there was a pause; infinitesimal, but long enough to be noticeable. ‘I regret that would not be possible,’ said the courteous voice at last. ‘My wife is distrait. I could not leave her.’

‘Then perhaps you would not find it an imposition to offer hospitality to one of our other sisters? One who could accompany Sister Catherine?’

Another of the pauses, almost as if he might be consulting with someone. Then, ‘It would be our pleasure,’ said the cultured voice. ‘Our house, Varanno, is so large that we can always welcome our friends, and those of our children also. My wife and I will be happy to welcome Catherine’s travelling companion.’

Reverend Mother thought that this was a very smooth, very astute gentleman indeed. She frowned and shook her head to clear the images, and looked into the corridor outside her study where Sister Margaret was diligently polishing the oak floor, but delighted to abandon it to go in search of Catherine.

The silver-haired gentleman with the cultured voice, replaced the telephone and sat back in the high wing-chair beneath the small portrait of the pale-skinned, dark-eyed woman in sixteenth-century dress.

On the other side of the desk, a young man with the same hungry eyes and sensuous mouth as the portrait said smoothly, ‘Well done, Franz-Josef. Very convincing.’ He poured a glass of wine from the decanter. ‘There is a saying within the Family that you could charm an abbess into bed. Well?’

‘Cat is coming back,’ said Franz-Josef, softly. For a moment the reflection cast by the crimson velvet drapes across the window touched his face, showing up the beautiful bone structure and the high cheekbones. ‘She is coming back,’ he said again, half to himself, and there was a sadness in his voice. ‘Back into the cage.’

Ladislas Bathory lounged back in his chair, the glow from the wine casting a red shadow across his face. ‘She should never have been allowed to leave the cage,’ he said. ‘You should not have let her go.’

‘It was her wish.’

‘You were the one who said that individual wishes couldn’t count. And you were the one who paid Cat’s dowry. I don’t suppose St Luke’s would have taken her empty-handed.’ Ladislas leaned forward. ‘Are we safe? Has she talked?’

‘No. She does not know that there is anything to talk of.’

‘You can’t be sure. And inside that place – the lure of the confessional . . .’ Ladislas looked back at the portrait. ‘Cat was very fascinated by the Lady,’ he said, thoughtfully.

‘It’s a very fascinating face. She was a very alluring creature,’ said Franz-Josef. ‘At least, the legend says so. But Cat never knew the truth about her.’

‘Supposing Pietro told her.’

‘No.’

‘You can’t be sure about that. Cat and Pietro were very close,’ said Ladislas, and Franz-Josef looked up sharply.

‘You always resented that,’ he said, softly. ‘Cat and Pietro. But Pietro told Cat nothing. And even if he had and even if Cat had talked, Reverend Mother couldn’t have hidden it from me.’ A brief smile. ‘You were the one who said I could charm an abbess into bed,’ said Franz-Josef silkily.

‘The Church is accustomed to keeping secrets,’ said Ladislas, stubbornly. ‘As it kept this Family’s secret four hundred years ago.’

‘Oh yes. It dared not do otherwise. And we have had four hundred years of living in stealth ever since. Four centuries of safeguarding the secret. Watching every action and every word . . .’ He leaned back in his chair, his fingers curled about the stem of his wine-glass. ‘Where did you find Pietro?’ he said and his voice was suddenly sharper.

‘In Paris.’

‘Living – comfortably?’

‘Oh yes. Pietro would never live other than in luxury,’ said Ladislas, bitterly, and Franz-Josef smiled.

‘You hate him very much,’ he said, softly.

‘Quite as much as he hates me, I daresay.’

‘Pietro never hated you, Ladislas.’ The smile thinned and became faintly cruel. ‘There was no need for him to expend his energy on hating you,’ said Franz-Josef, gently. ‘You never posed any kind of threat to him, you see.’

‘When I confronted him, he came with me like a lamb,’ said Ladislas, defensively.

‘Did he indeed?’ Franz-Josef regarded the younger man thoughtfully. ‘Do you know, Ladislas, I find it very difficult to imagine Pietro doing anything docilely. I find it even more difficult to imagine him trusting you.’

‘I told him Cat was ill,’ said Ladislas in the triumphant voice of one who believes he has brought off a coup. ‘I told him Cat was ill, just as you told Cat that Pietro was ill.’ He stared defiantly at Franz-Josef, and after a moment, said, ‘I suppose you are thinking I stole your little ruse, are you?’

‘No, I am thinking how very young you are. You do know that I am aware of your little machinations, I suppose?’

‘Machinations?’

‘Dear me,’ said Franz-Josef, sounding amused. ‘What a lot of practice you need before you can sound properly bewildered. I mean, my dear, your plan to remove me and rule the Family in my stead. I am perfectly aware of all your childish, greedy games, Ladislas,’ he said, leaning forward, so that the light caught his eyes. ‘And I am really rather tolerant of them. But unfortunately for you, I am Elizabeth’s direct descendant and I am her hereditary heir.’

‘Direct descendants and hereditary heirs have been toppled before now,’ said Ladislas, softly. ‘The Lady herself was toppled,’ he said, looking back at the portrait. ‘She overreached and underestimated, and—’

‘And she permitted her lusts to cloud her judgement,’ said Franz-Josef sharply. ‘There is a salutary lesson in that. Remember it.’ He paused. ‘Her death is not one I would wish for anyone,’ he said.

‘But they dared not let the truth about her be known.’

‘No. Any more than we dare let the truth be known about us.’ He frowned and, after a moment, said, ‘It’s enough of the past. Cat is coming back. She will hate it, of course. She will fight us all.’

‘I hated searching Europe for Pietro,’ said Ladislas, coldly. ‘And you hate the fact that I am using him to bargain with you. We can’t have it all ways, Franz-Josef. When does Cat arrive?’

‘In a day or so. She will be accompanied by another nun. It’s their rule,’ said Franz-Josef. ‘I couldn’t sidestep it.’

Ladislas’s lips curved upwards in the thin crescent that heightened his resemblance to the portrait. ‘A nun,’ he said. ‘Virgin blood almost certainly. A rarity these days. How extremely interesting.’

‘And now – you will let Pietro go?’ Franz-Josef’s voice was perfectly steady, but a muscle jumped in one cheek. ‘That was the bargain,’ he said. ‘If I would bring Cat back, if I would persuade her into the ritual at Csejthe, you would free Pietro. Well?’

Ladislas spoke softly, but the calculation was back in his voice. ‘I will let Pietro go after Cat has attended the ritual,’ he said. ‘Until she has been offered Elizabeth’s legacy, as she should have been offered it two years ago. Until then, Pietro will remain my prisoner.’

Catherine turned so white when she was given the news of Pietro’s illness, that, for a moment, Reverend Mother feared the child would faint. She said carefully, ‘You have a particular affection for your brother?’

‘I have – he is very special to me,’ said Catherine, in a whisper, and for a moment her dark eyes were filled with such remarkable beauty that Reverend Mother was taken aback.

But she said they had already entered Pietro Bathory’s name in the Mass book so that they could offer a Mass for his recovery. And there would be prayers for Sister Catherine’s family, asking that they might bear their trial with fortitude.

Catherine said, ‘I see. Thank you.’ It tore at her heart to think of them all praying for Pietro whom none of them had met. Pietro, with his astonishing looks and his remarkable charm would be amused to think of a houseful of nuns praying for him. Please God let him be well enough to be amused. It was scarcely bearable to think of Pietro’s eyes dulled with sickness, his skin harsh and dry with fever . . . The memories came tumbling out, painful, too near the surface.

The night when Pietro had climbed through her window at Varanno – had she been twelve and Pietro sixteen then? He had been running from a pair of infuriated brothers from one of the farms whose sister he had seduced, and his hair had been tumbled and his eyes brilliant with mischief. Catherine had sat up in bed, hugging her knees, wanting to know what was happening, happy beyond relief that he should run here for help.

‘Hide me, Katerina,’ he had said, torn between fear and laughter. ‘And for the love of all the saints in Heaven, don’t let them into the house.’

‘Would they hurt you?’ It was like a French farce only miles better because it was Pietro and it was fun.

‘They’d castrate me on the spot,’ said Pietro and grinned, wholly unrepentant and in the best tradition of French farces had vanished into the deep old wardrobe at the side of the chimney breast until the alarum was over. And of course Catherine had lied for him, and of course the irate brothers had not caught him. And of course he had gone back to the village, either to the same girl or to others. At twelve, it had been wholly dazzling to have a brother who behaved with such extravagant wildness and had such forbidden adventures.

‘All an act,’ he had said to her once, his mouth a guileless curve, but mischief shining in his dark eyes. ‘Why won’t anyone believe that I’m actually a rather quiet, rather serious person?’

‘Are you?’ Catherine had tried to sound severe, and Pietro had smiled and said, ‘Of course I’m not, Katerina.’

But he could be very serious indeed and in ways you least expected. Catherine had sometimes come upon him curled into one of the wing-chairs in their father’s library, the fire turning his hair to burnished copper, a glass of wine at his side, so absorbed in whatever he was reading that the wine had been ignored and her own quiet entrance scarcely noticed.

‘Are you reading something very fascinating?’ she had said to him once on one of these occasions.

‘Our family, Katerina,’ he said, closing the book and returning it to its place on the shelves. ‘And it’s very fascinating indeed. I’ll tell you about it all someday.’ And then he had led her from the library and the subject had been dropped.

No matter how hard you clamped the lid down on the memories, at times they forced their way up, scalding and hurting. Catherine brought her mind back to the present and said, ‘Do you know what . . . Did my father give you any details?’

‘Only that the cause was not yet known. But I fear it must be serious for them to send for you, my dear.’

‘I understand.’ Reverend Mother had an old-fashioned belief in mannerly reticence and she never probed. Catherine said ‘Shall I travel to Varanno with a companion?’

Reverend Mother made an uncharacteristic spur-of-the-moment decision. She said, ‘I thought the English Sister Hilary could go with you. She has some experience of nursing, and she could perhaps be of help to your parents.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ Catherine was rather comforted at the thought of having Hilary with her at Varanno. It ought not to matter who accompanied her, of course, but once inside Varanno she would be grateful for a sympathetic companion. She was going to have to withstand them again, she was going to have to be strong, and she was going to have to be strongest of all when she saw Pietro again. Four years. Fours years since that night when he left Varanno . . .

Her cousins had never understood Pietro. You either loved Pietro almost to the edge of idolatry or you hated him. Ladislas had hated him. Catherine could remember how he had fought Pietro when they were both quite young; not openly and honestly with fists as cousins often did, but furtively and nastily: hiding in Pietro’s bedroom and creeping out to pounce on him. Pietro had always believed that it had been Ladislas who had set the two villagers on to him that night.

‘Because he hates you?’ Catherine had said, thinking that this was a reasonable explanation.

‘Because he would have liked the lady for himself,’ Pietro had said.

Ladislas had been jealous of Pietro, of course; he had said that Catherine saw Pietro as a god. ‘Such devotion,’ he had said, sneeringly. ‘Cat’s dazzled by her own brother, poor simple creature.’ It was true. Even at six, at eight, Catherine had been dazzled by Pietro and she had felt black, burning anger well up at Ladislas’s derision. Elizabeth had been with her then, urging her to leap on to the jeering Ladislas and gouge out his eyes and exult as he screamed. Perhaps one day . . . He was only a stupid boy cousin and boys were ugly and ridiculous . . .

But Elizabeth had never understood about Pietro either.

Reverend Mother thought that on the whole she had managed rather well. She was not precisely uneasy about Catherine’s return to her family, but it would be good to think that the child had someone with her. She had taken a liking to Sister Hilary, and they had all listened with interest to the talk she had given about the nursing methods used in the English House. Hilary had spoken well, absorbed in her subject.

But it might be in Hilary’s best interests to separate her from Mr Devlin for a time. Closeness between a patient and his nurse was unavoidable and even desirable, but Reverend Mother had the impression that the closeness between Hilary and Michael Devlin was beginning to be the kind that God might find unacceptable. She could not precisely order Hilary to go to Varanno with Catherine, but she could couch the request in terms that Hilary would find difficult to refuse.

She had had many years of practice.

Chapter Four

Michael listened carefully to Hilary’s explanation of the unexpected journey. Sister Catherine’s brother taken suddenly ill, and the need for her to return to her home in Romania for a time. The convent’s rule that a nun must not travel alone. Michael caught the faintest hint of rebelliousness in Hilary’s voice and knew she was disliking having to submit to the request which had probably been tantamount to an order to travel with Catherine.

‘Do you mind going with her?’

‘It might be difficult to refuse. And you’ll be in the clinic. You don’t need me, not really.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘No.’ A flat denial. Michael changed tack.

‘Romania’s a long and awkward journey by rail. Even with the correct papers, you’ll almost certainly be subjected to delays by the rail authorities. It would be far easier to drive there.’ He stopped, because at the mention of driving, there had been a bolt of panic from her. Why? He waited, and when she spoke, her voice held a note of defensiveness.

‘I should perhaps explain—’

‘That you don’t drive?’ There was surely nothing wrong about not driving: she had entered St Luke’s at a very early age, after all. And there would be nothing unusual about not wanting to drive such a long distance in a foreign country.

He waited, but Hilary only said, ‘I have not driven for – not for many years.’

‘Fair enough. But a car would be easier from all points of view. The checkpoint guards are strict but they aren’t unreasonable. And Sister Catherine drives.’

‘But we couldn’t take the convent car,’ said Hilary. ‘Reverend Mother’s already said that they couldn’t be without it for so long a time. It’s the only car they’ve got.’

‘A poor thing but their own. It’s probably not equal to such a long journey,’ said Michael. ‘But cars can be hired.’

‘So you see, Reverend Mother,’ said Michael, seated in her study, enjoying the scents of old leather and beeswax and woodsmoke, ‘you see, the matter could arrange itself very easily.’ He paused, trying to gauge her reactions. ‘They don’t need to trouble with railways – tiring and perhaps distressing for them. Expensive for the convent. If Sister Catherine feels able to drive us, I will hire a car and travel with them.’

Reverend Mother had the feeling of being outmanoeuvred. She suspected that Michael Devlin was aware of this and rather amused by it. But one must be practical and his offer was not to be lightly declined. She said, ‘Why should you go to so much trouble, Mr Devlin?’

‘For one thing I must return to the area,’ said Michael. ‘I always intended to. And if I can hire a car – possibly through Reuter’s – I can be dropped at the place we stayed at before, the Red Angel. It was several kilometres outside Debreczen, almost on the Romanian border, as I recall. It would be a good halfway mark. We can break the journey there, and then Hil . . . Sister Hilary and Sister Catherine can go on to Varanno.’

‘It is a fairly long journey, Mr Devlin.’ Michael thought that the elderly nun had not missed the fact that he had almost omitted Hilary’s religious title, but she did not refer to it. She said, ‘Sister Catherine’s home is on the edge of the Carpathian Mountains. A matter of some three hundred miles from here. Perhaps a little more than that.’

‘Yes. But Debreczen can’t be much above half a day’s journey from Vienna in a fast car. Four to five hours.’ The sudden grin flashed. ‘Half a day to Debreczen: a rest and a meal for the sisters – they would be my guests for that, of course. Even an overnight stay if necessary. And then another half-day’s journey for them to Varanno. I can stay at the Red Angel and begin some preliminary work. I should have several uninterrupted days.’

‘A book?’

The grin flashed again. ‘A series of articles to begin with,’ said Michael. ‘Never predict.’

‘And to discuss a literary project too soon is to risk aborting it.’

‘Yes.’ Michael turned his head. ‘You understand that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, there ought to be people in and around Debreczen I can talk with. Local people who might know of the channels being used for bringing out the refugees from Bosnia. That was what seemed to be happening when I was there before. That’s why I’m going back.’ He caught a flare of interest, and remembered that the elderly nun was French. ‘On the surface it seemed very much akin to the French Resistance Movement in the last war,’ he said.

‘Yes, I understand. But Debreczen is a long way from Bosnia and Hercegovina, Mr Devlin. It seems to me quite remarkable that you should have found refugees in a place so far from the theatres of war.’

‘It was remarkable to me, as well,’ said Michael. ‘But that’s the interest, of course. The distances they had travelled.’

‘From Bosnia?’

‘That’s the odd thing,’ said Michael slowly. ‘We found several families from Bosnia, certainly, but there were also some from Ceauşescu’s Romania – from the troubles in the late Eighties. We didn’t manage to find out how any of them had got so far – we hadn’t a Russian-speaking interpreter – and then I was wounded.’ He felt his fists clench. ‘But I want to know how they managed to get so far,’ he said. ‘It was hundreds of miles. How did they do it? The Bosnian people were in a state of siege, they were half starving. And the refugees we found were pitiful, ragged creatures . . .’ He felt the remembered anger flood his mind, seeing again the frightened families hiding on the mountainside in the shadow of the old castle. ‘There was some kind of channel open,’ said Michael. ‘It’s the only answer. Somebody was getting them out in immense secrecy. And I want to know more. Also, I want to know why I was hit to stop me finding out more.’

‘You were – actually attacked?’

‘Yes. It’s how I was blinded.’

‘Would it not – forgive me – but to publicise this, would it not risk closing the . . . the channel for others? Deprive others of a safe passage? Because,’ said Reverend Mother, ‘the war is still going on, Mr Devlin.’

Michael said, ‘Blow the cover? No, of course I won’t do that. But it depends who is bringing them out, Reverend Mother. And why.’ He made as if to lean forward, his enthusiasm flaring, and as he did so, felt the blank black wall rear up. Damn! I can’t see! He said, ‘I can accept Romanian refugees in Debreczen fairly easily. I can accept Bosnian refugees there, although with difficulty. But—’

‘But to find both is far beyond the realms of coincidence,’ said Reverend Mother.

‘Precisely. You are an astute lady, Reverend Mother,’ said Michael with a sudden grin.

‘God has blessed me with a modicum of ordinary common sense,’ rejoined Reverend Mother composedly. And then, her voice serious, ‘Might it be a hostage situation of some kind?’

Michael said, ‘If I had my sight, I should be staring at you in awe.’

‘It is a possibility?’

‘It might be. But I recall . . . oh, damn, if only I could see!’ The cry was torn from him, and for a moment he covered his face with both hands. Absurd to make the gesture of shutting out the light when there was no light for him to shut out, but he did it. After a moment, he said, ‘So smothering. So frustrating. At times I want to tear at the blackness as if I could simply rip it aside like a curtain.’

‘We are keeping you in our prayers, Mr Devlin.’

‘It’s more than I deserve.’ Michael fought for calmness, and after a moment said, ‘You will forgive the damn, I daresay.’

‘I have heard very much worse. Go on with what you were saying.’

‘I recall,’ said Michael, ‘that there was the impression of people being brought together for a specific purpose. But that the nationality did not matter.’

For a moment there was silence. Michael could hear the ticking of a tiny clock somewhere in the room. He could hear the expanding of old oak. Then Reverend Mother said, softly, ‘A collecting.’

‘Rather say a trawling.’

‘People being brought to one place for – perhaps for a sinister purpose. Siegfried blowing the magic horn to his followers?’

Michael said, ‘Not just astute, but also imaginative. I wonder how many people would use Wagnerian opera to illustrate a point.’

‘Once I was extremely fond of good music. But I have understood accurately?’

‘Oh yes. An assembling,’ said Michael. ‘A herding together of human cattle so that they could be slaughtered. Perhaps even culled.’

He felt Reverend Mother’s shock and, after a moment, she said, ‘I had not realised – this is a very terrible thing that is taking place—’

‘Someone gathering together a collection of humanity,’ said Michael. ‘Yes; if so, it would be truly terrible.’

‘Someone extremely powerful and very wealthy,’ said Reverend Mother, half to herself.

‘Yes.’

‘But for what purpose?’

‘That,’ said Michael, ‘is what I have to discover.’

Michael had rather enjoyed the brief discussion with the severe-sounding but obviously scholarly Reverend Mother. He had been entirely sincere when he had called her astute and imaginative. Not for the first time he thought that God, when he chose, chose only the cream. Hilary was cream. In fact Hilary was vintage champagne and Mozartian opera and Beluga caviare.

Which was a very treacherous way to think.

An imp of mischief had reared its head when he had told Reverend Mother, coolly and as if there was no question about it, that he would assume the cost of the hire-car. But he would do it anyway and worry about the cost later.

It felt reassuringly familiar to telephone Reuter’s, feeling his way about the old-fashioned dial-telephone in Reverend Mother’s study, and it was strongly morale-boosting to hear the smooth-skinned, dark-haired Annalise answer the phone and express delight at hearing the English Mr Devlin after so long an absence.

‘I do not forget you, Michael.’

There had been an extremely pleasant interlude with Annalise when she was in Reuter’s Berlin office and Michael had been there shortly after the wall came down, interviewing the East Germans. She spoke excellent English, cooked like an angel and made love like a devil. Michael smiled, remembering, and explained that he would be requiring a car for a matter of a little over a week. It must have a good tape-deck . . .

‘Ah, the music,’ said Annalise, and her voice slid into its furriest, sexiest note. ‘Everywhere you were there must be music,’ she said. ‘Everywhere. I remember it.’ Michael remembered it as well: Annalise’s bed with the evening summer sun streaming in, both of them wine-flown from a long decadent lunch, both of them riotously trying to time orgasms to the swelling crescendos of Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture. Glasnost and perestroika rolled up into one absurd, hugely sexy adventure.

Annalise said, ‘I remember it all so very well, Michael,’ and Michael smiled.

He said, ‘A good car? For old times’ sake, Annalise?’

‘For old times’ sake, Michael.’

Chapter Five

Michael thought he had managed rather well in the matter of packing. There was a way of folding shirts that he had not quite mastered, although he thought he had not done so badly. And he would not be wearing shirts very much. Sweaters and cords would be sufficient. Maybe a shirt and tie for dinner. He remembered that the Red Angel had had a small, rather nicely furnished dining room with chintzes and oak-panelling. The food had been very good. Panic threatened as he remembered that Hilary would be a hundred and fifty miles away, and he would have to find his way about the inn single-handed. He would have to cope with ordering food, finding it on the plate, eating it . . . But it would have to be done at some stage. At least this was not Italy, where he might have to struggle with spaghetti.

He packed the shirts and added the tapes and the portable cassette-player with its headphones. Once it would have been books: the ragged collection that usually accompanied him when he was travelling. Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey; Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited; Mansfield Park. Maybe a couple of Agatha Christie whodunnits. Now it was Mozart and Schubert and Haydn. Would they become as familiar, as welcome travelling companions as Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, or Fanny Price and her Edmund?

He accompanied Hilary to the convent’s early Mass before they set out, aware of her surprise, amusedly aware that it was many years since he had listened to the rise and fall of the liturgy.

‘I shan’t remember the responses,’ he said.

‘I don’t suppose you will,’ she said, apparently unworried.

The first thing to assail him in the convent’s small chapel was the incense, and so sharply evocative was it that for a moment he put out a hand for balance.

Incense . . . The sweet pungency of the burning oil, companion of his schooldays with the monks, as evocative as pot-pourri, as potent as Noel Coward had once avowed cheap music to be.

But Noel had never sat in a Viennese chapel and listened to the rise and fall of the nuns’ plainchant, or, at least, one assumed he had not. The Bach fugue that followed closed about Michael like a warm bath. The intelligentsia condemned fugues as nothing more than skeletons, frameworks, childishly easy to write, but Michael rather enjoyed the predictable patterns. It was a little like listening to a sonnet instead of poetry. And whoever the organist was – one of the nuns? – she was very gifted. God taking the cream again.

There was breakfast after Mass in the nuns’ long, sunny-feeling refectory. Michael was beginning to find his way about the convent now – ‘Remember to count the steps and note any landmarks along the way,’ Hilary had said early on – and Michael, using the stick he hated, found he could make a cautious way to the refectory unaided. Through the door that closed off the guests’ wing, hear it swish to, then turn right, fifty paces exactly, feel the carved panelling just above what the estate agents called dado level.

Three steps down, and right again, the draught from the small window stirring the air, and the refectory door was at his hand. Six paces forward and there was the long polished oak table, with the faint drift of lavender from an open window. One or another of the nuns always put out a hand to guide him to a chair, doing it automatically and even absently, rather in the way you might pass the salt if asked, not pausing in your conversation, but complying politely with a request. This always pleased Michael.

Today he arrived as the crisp new croissants baked in the convent’s own kitchens were being set down. There was coffee, hot and strong, and apricot or strawberry preserve. Thin slivers of ham were wrapped about smoked cheese. Michael always found cheese an odd thing to eat for breakfast, but he ate it anyway. There was something remarkably satisfying about having made your peace with God. A huge well-being enveloped him. It will be all right. He would trace the strange, far-flung Bosnian refugees; he would find out who was financing the secret escape route, and he would write the articles, or even Field’s accursed book. He would be able to pay for Istvan’s grisly operation, and he would regain his sight. He amended this: with God’s help he would regain his sight. And grinned inwardly because the ambience of the convent was already getting to him. Strange how powerful religion is.

‘You drew strength from the Mass?’ said Hilary at his side, and Michael jumped because her words were exactly in tune with his thoughts. But he said, composedly, ‘Yes. And the music.’

‘I thought you would,’ she said.

Debreczen felt precisely as it had done eighteen months earlier. Ancient, a little secretive. Cramped, but cool and shadowy because the buildings were of thick old stone. Fragrant with the scents of potentilla and gentian and with the pine forests from the east; heavy with the intrigues and the plots of the last century, and with all the blood-soaked lore of Romania and the darkling forests of the lands beyond. Transylvania, the Land Beyond the Forest . . . Was this the road that Stoker’s Jonathan Harker might have taken?

But the journey in the swift comfortable BMW provided by Reuter’s was smooth, and Sister Catherine appeared untroubled by the distance.

‘Driving is something I have missed,’ she said, tranquilly. ‘This is a pleasure for me.’

No other vehicles hooted at them on the Karntnerstrasse and, once on the open roads, no sinister carriages with the horses wearing black plumes and oblong boxes wedged on to the roof appeared to be giving chase. The BMW gathered speed with contemptuous ease. It was a pity Harker had not been able to call on Teuton technology.

Once beyond the city-confines proper, Michael asked if music would be acceptable.

‘Very acceptable,’ said Hilary at once.

‘Sister Catherine?’

‘Yes – it would be very pleasant. You have brought tapes? Where does . . . Oh yes, I see.’

The powerful car ate up the miles, and the soaring notes of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 went with them. Michael, leaning back, able to feel that this was the open countryside, surrendered to the music. Schumann was said to have composed this when emerging from a spell of madness and, for the first time, Michael could identify with Schumann’s emotions; hearing the triumph as the madness sloughed away from the tortured composer, feeling the delight at breasting the dark waves of his insanity. It was like surfacing in a huge sunlit ocean after half drowning; it was like coming up into the light after being shut away underground. A paean. An excelsior. A dark agony rolling back. I shall play this if Istvan restores my sight. I shall feel like writing this if Istvan restores my sight.

And then they were driving through Debreczen with its ancient fortresses, and out on to the road that wound into the brooding Carpathian Mountains. Michael thought that an early twilight had fallen by now. Had it? Yes, there were the scents and the sounds of twilight everywhere. The good things of day beginning to droop and drowse . . . Strange how potent Elizabethan iambic verse was . . . Michael felt the light close off and the dusk-laden coolness brush his skin.

‘We are here?’

‘We are here, Mr Devlin.’

The fourteenth-century Red Angel was not so fourteenth century that it did not provide a courteous welcome. Tobias, the owner, remembered – or said he remembered – Michael, and expressed himself as pleased to welcome him back, although not in such tragic circumstances, they were to understand. It was a truly terrible thing to lose one’s sight, but they would hope that matters could be put to rights. In the meantime, Mr Devlin was very welcome, said Tobias, and was helpful about registering and explaining the times of meals in the small dining room. Michael asked if it was too late for a meal to be served, and felt Tobias beam with delight. It seemed nothing could be easier; there was a side of beef only waiting to be carved, and several side dishes. To follow, Tobias could recommend his wife’s plum dumplings. And then coffee and cheese?

‘It sounds very good,’ said Hilary.

‘It sounds hugely fattening,’ said Michael, and grinned. ‘Carve away, Tobias. Afterwards, the ladies will go on to Varanno, while I remain here. Sister Hilary will telephone here to confirm their safe arrival. That is all right?’

‘That is very all right, Herr Devlin. I or my wife will take the call and tell you.’

‘Then,’ said Michael, ‘shall we find the beef and plum dumplings?’

The BMW approached Varanno as night was stealing across the plains, veiling the Carpathian Mountains in a purple haze.

There were no sun-splashed childhood memories for Catherine at Varanno, only great pools of despair and cold desolation. You found yourself stepping into them without warning, plunging fathoms deep into icy blackness. The cousins always spoke of Varanno with affection and pleasure, but for Catherine Varanno was a shadow place, dark and sad, and the shadows were not the purple and violet shadows of twilight: they were garnet-coloured, crimson and black . . .

It had not always been dark. When Pietro was at home, Varanno was filled with light, as if the whole house shone for him. He was at the centre of everything, not because he tried to be, but because he was there. The Family liked to visit Varanno when Pietro was at home; Ladislas and Stefan came, and the banker uncles and the beautifully dressed aunts who hosted large, glittering parties and talked about their acquaintance with politicians and diplomats. There were cousins who discussed off-shore investments.

‘It would be nice to think that some of them come to see you or me, Franz-Josef,’ Catherine’s mother often said, half amused, half not.

‘They do,’ said Franz-Josef, untroubled.

Pietro talked easily with the uncles – many of them distinguished people in their own fields – entering effortlessly into their conversation, joining in the masculine laughter, but somehow keeping an edge of deference. He could flirt with the elderly aunts without once stepping over the line of what was acceptable to them, which Catherine found intriguing. There was this line with most people: no matter how well you got to know them, there was always a point beyond which you knew you must not go. The difficulty was knowing where the line was, because it was in a different place for everyone. But Pietro always knew to a hair’s breadth how far to go and he never once got it wrong.

‘It’s sleight of hand,’ he said once, when Catherine asked about it. ‘A trick. Easily acquired.’

‘Could I acquire it?’

‘Of course. I could teach you. But you have your own tricks, Katerina.’

A trick, but a shining trick, all the same. Pietro could light up the entire house simply by being in it. Catherine could never sleep when Pietro was at home. She could not sleep on the night that Stefan and Ladislas were there, listening to Pietro’s stories, drinking wine and laughing. Occasionally Ladislas lowered his guard and the jealousy boiled over. Did the others realise?

Catherine remembered how Ladislas had once deliberately plied Pietro with wine and whisky, and how Pietro had simply become more incandescent than before: his eyes like huge dark pools, fingers of colour limning his slanting cheekbones. The wine had made him shine more brilliantly, and it had been Ladislas who had become flushed and inarticulate and eventually rushed out to be sick. Pietro had only laughed and raised his glass and sent Catherine a wink across the room.

Sleep was impossible. Even with the casement windows flung open to the sweet cool night air, it was beyond reach. Pietro was at home, and for Catherine the house vibrated and thrummed with life. At length she got up and, pulling on a thin robe, stole out through the house, going beneath the old stone arch and through to the old walled garden. The roses were here, the rioting blooms of ancient Persia and Isphahan. Had Elizabeth walked in this garden and felt her senses become intoxicated by the perfume? The roses were furled against the night, but their scent lay on the air, heady and drowsy, like mandragora, the sleep-juice, the love-syrup of the poets . . .

And of course he was there. He had known she was coming, as he had always known.

As I always will know, my love . . .

He moved out of the shadows, part of the night, somehow mingled with the scents and the twilight, as insubstantial as the soft beating of wings overhead. And there is no one to see us out here, no one to know what we do . . . The moonlight showed up the passion and agony in his eyes – so he, too had suffered – and they were dark and broodingly intense eyes: suddenly, frighteningly, they were the eyes of Elizabeth’s portrait . . . And there is something else there, something that is hungry, something that is tinged with ancient evil . . . Why did I never see how much he resembled Elizabeth until now?

‘Couldn’t you sleep, Katerina?’ It was no longer the gentle, charming voice of the deferential nephew and cousin; it was the soft, intimate tone of the lover.

‘No,’ said Catherine, staring at him.

‘Nor could I,’ he said, and as his arms went round her, the moon slid behind a cloud.

It was worlds and light years away from Elizabeth’s strange, barely understood desires, and it was aeons and galaxies away from the fumblings of the boy cousins and the darting dabbing kisses that were all Catherine had so far experienced.

If it had to happen, it had been inevitable that it should happen here, in Elizabeth’s rose garden, behind the ancient stone walls, with the perfumed twilight enclosing them and the soft beating of wings overhead. I never meant it. I never schemed for it.

But let me have just this one night, whispered Catherine, her mind spiralling between ecstasy and fear. Let me have this night, just this one, and I will never sin in this way again. On the other side of tonight lies cold emptiness and aching loneliness – I know it does – but just let me have this. Because if I can have this, I would go barefoot, I would make pilgrimages, suffer pain . . .

One did not make bargains with God, but Catherine made one then with Pietro’s arms about her, with Pietro’s hands reaching for her.

His lips against her cheek were soft and sinless and unbearably sweet, and his hands on her body were like velvet.

His touch was raking at senses so deeply buried that Catherine had not known she possessed them, and his lips were stirring into awareness such a ravening desire that the twilit garden blurred and spun around her. His hands were burning her skin through the thin robe and there was the taste of fresh, masculine sweat and clean hair against her bare shoulders. She wanted to feel every part of him: eyes, skin, lips, hair, and she was conscious of every single bone beneath the smooth skin and of every shred of nerve and muscle . . . Learn it all, commit every fragment to memory, even the flickering dark inner persona, for there will never be another night, this will be all you will ever have, this will be all you will ever dare have . . .

There was nothing ugly or alien about his body pressing against hers; about the hard, lean thighs, the pulsating heat between, hard and strong and demanding . . .

Cloven is far more exciting than crested, my dear. . .

Understanding exploded in a sunburst of delight, and Catherine thought: oh no, Elizabeth, you poor creature, you are wrong . . . There was a sudden surge of superiority over Elizabeth, who had preferred women to men, the cloven to the crested . . . Yes, now I understand. But Elizabeth had been wrong.

Catherine’s hands were unbuttoning Pietro’s shirt, sliding inside of their own volition so that it was like watching somebody else do it. She could feel the light sprinkling of hair on his skin against her palms, faintly rough. Desire cleaved her body.

There must have been a moment when he straightened up to undress but Catherine never remembered it. She only remembered the moment when the soft sweet grass was beneath her, and when Pietro’s skin was against hers . . . She could feel every line, she could feel the hard insistence against her thighs. Would there be pain? The cousins giggled that there was, that you bled, and that people screamed with agony at the first time.

Pietro’s body entering her was like polished silk and a myriad of tiny shooting stars began to explode within her. There was a kind of helpless violence about his every movement that clawed at Catherine’s heart and she sobbed and pulled him closer, feeling the pounding of her heart exactly in step with his. And then her senses, every glittering strand of love she was feeling, every shining thread of desire, spun and coiled into a huge, incandescent sphere, refractive with every colour of the spectrum, and exploded in a starburst of fiery iridescence. There was a long, velvet silence.

At length, he broke it, sitting back, looking down at her, his expression one of such love and such anguish, that Catherine felt her heart splinter and ice form.

‘Katerina . . .’ The absurd, fanciful name that no one else ever used. Tears stung her eyes. He is going away. He is going away and I shall never be warm or happy again.

Pietro said softly, ‘I cannot trust myself to stay, Katerina.’ He turned his head, so that the upper half was in shadow. But pinpoints of light showed in his eyes, making him a masked devil, a creature of the night . . .

Without Pietro there would be nothing, anywhere, ever. But Catherine forced calm into her voice, and said, ‘Where will you go?’

‘France, I think. Paris.’

He would fit well into Parisian Society. He had the charm and the intelligence. Catherine supposed he would have sufficient money to live comfortably, to enter some kind of social circle. He had always had the ability to slip effortlessly into whatever role was required of him – as he had done tonight? Please, no. Let it have meant as much to him as it did to me.

He caught that, of course. He bent over her and brushed her skin with his lips and took her face between his hands as if he was printing her features on his mind. ‘So that I shall never truly be without something of you, my love.’

My love . . . There was such helpless longing that Catherine’s senses spun and the night blurred into a dizzying confusion of love and hopelessness and the scent of the roses and the twilight.

And then, in a sudden hard voice, he said, ‘Katerina, is there any way that you could leave Varanno?’

‘Leave Varanno?’ said Catherine, stupidly, staring at him. ‘Why?’ Was he asking her to come to him? Pietro and I in Paris . . .

But he said, ‘This is a strange Family, Katerina. I don’t have any right to ask this, but I do ask it.’

‘What . . .?’

Pietro took her hands suddenly, holding so tightly that it hurt. ‘Leave them,’ he said. ‘Not now, not tonight. But soon. Before—’

‘Yes?’

For a moment he was looking at her with the soft, gentle eyes she had seen earlier. Love-filled eyes . . . Oh God, how am I going to get through the rest of my life never seeing that look again? And then, without warning, the darkness filled his eyes again, so that Catherine thought: Elizabeth . . . and stared at him. When he spoke, she could feel that he had set her beyond a barrier.

‘It’s a narrow life here for you,’ said Pietro. ‘Stifling.’ He touched her face again. ‘It would please me to think of you seeing more of the world. Before . . .’

That word again. Catherine waited.

‘Before you become fossilised,’ he said, and grinned. ‘Caught like a fly in amber. Like a chrysalid.’

‘Nothing more than that?’

For a moment she thought the darkness receded and that something haunted and tormented looked from his eyes. But then Pietro said, ‘Nothing more, Katerina.’

And then he was gone, before she could say anything, he was gone and she was alone again – I awoke and found me here on the cold hillside. . . There was a thin smear of blood between her thighs, and the sensation of rich moisture within her body so that she understood that there had not been time or self-control for what was sometimes called Nature’s cheat. But there was nothing else to tell that it had ever happened.

Only that the colour has gone from the world and the light has drained, and I shall never be warm or safe or happy again. She stayed where she was, hugging her knees, trying to infuse the warmth back into her body. Heart-cold. Bone-cold. A tiny wind ruffled the surface of the night, and, as the clouds scudded across the moon, a dark shadow fell across Catherine’s mind like a caress.

Elizabeth.

Chapter Six

Elizabeth had never crouched in dry-eyed agony in a garden, aching for a man. She disliked men; she had hated her wedding night with the warrior count, Ferencz Nádasdy, to whom she had been betrothed as a child. She had been fifteen, and she had found the whole business repulsive.

The marriage ceremonies had been dazzling, for it had been the joining of two ancient and illustrious names. The Emperor sent his blessing from Prague, together with jars of wine and two hundred thalers in gold as wedding gifts. The Empress sent goblets of beaten gold. Songs were written praising the bride’s beauty and the bridegroom’s bravery and there was music from gypsy orchestras. Elizabeth had been unutterably bored by it all, although she had enjoyed the feasting and she had enjoyed dressing for the celebrations. When Ferencz came to her bed she was perfumed and powdered; her hands were pomaded and her hair was brushed into a shining coil, threaded with rubies. She was gowned in her favourite white, and her eyes were burning pits in her little pointed face. She knew what had to be done and she would submit to Ferencz, but he would have to do it swiftly. They would get the tedious charade over as quickly as possible.

Ferencz had been a little afraid of her; as she lay in the huge bed waiting for him, he had paused in the doorway and he had sketched the sign of the cross in the air. He had knelt down at the side of the bed and asked God’s blessing on the union and God’s protection against demons. His eyes had flickered to her when he had said that and Elizabeth had laughed silently. And then he had got into bed and pulled up his nightshirt and pressed his thick hairy body against her, forcing his ugliness inside her. He had jerked and bellowed like a bull, throwing his head back in crude triumph when his repulsive seed spurted into her body.

It had been tedious and uncomfortable: like being poked with a thick, slimy stick, but Elizabeth was remembering that quick scared look he had given her. So Ferencz, with his ugly protruberances and his messy emissions, thought she was a demon, did he? So much to the good if it kept him away from her. If he became a nuisance, she would get rid of him. Poison? Poison was slow and eroding. She could watch him dying by agonised inches. The thought was far more exciting than anything Ferencz Nádasdy could do to her.

In any event, it was only after the man had gone from your bed that you could get up and wash away the disgusting stickiness deposited inside you, and that you could go out to slake your real hungers . . .

Your real hungers . . .

Catherine had stayed in the rose garden for a long time after Pietro went, but at length she pulled the thin robe about her and went back into the house by a side door. Hungers to satisfy . . . Desires to slake . . . As she stole through the sleeping house, Elizabeth was with her, slinking catlike in the shadows. Catherine went cautiously into the kitchens, into the familiar, comfortable scents of baking and herbs and fresh-ground coffee. As she took the large electric torch from the shelf and then the glinting butcher’s knife from the wooden chopping block, Elizabeth watched approvingly.

Once you have felt the thrust of the cloven, little sister, the other hunger awakes . . . And the blood never fails. . .

Elizabeth had discovered it by accident. It had been an ordinary morning, with her maidservants gowning her for a midday banquet to welcome Ferencz and a party of huntsmen back. She would have to listen to them boasting about the animals they had killed, and she would have to admire their prowess. They would smell of stale sweat and unwashed leather and Ferencz would certainly come to her bedchamber that night, his body swollen and throbbing from the ardour of the hunt. He would grunt and poke at her and then fall into snorting slumber and the bedroom would smell of his wine-tainted breath and his farting. It was all too revolting to bear.

It was as they were brushing her hair, preparatory to coiling it into a jewelled snood, that one of the maidservants pulled too hard at one silken strand. Elizabeth lashed out at once, knocking the stupid, clumsy creature to the floor because she would not endure such fumbling, and if the wench sported a bruise for a week it would be no more than she deserved.

But the girl was not just bruised, she was cut. The ornate rings from Elizabeth’s hand had torn her cheek and blood spurted from the wound, splashing on to Elizabeth’s uncovered arm.

The women surrounded their mistress instantly, clucking and exclaiming, reaching for clean linen squares to mop away the stains, but Elizabeth pushed them away, staring down at her arm. White. Where the blood had smeared it, the skin that had been white already was whiter still. And the feel – it felt like silk, like spun gold.

She raised her eyes to the servant who was cowering in a corner, and a slow smile curved her lips.

Catherine reached down a dark mackintosh that somebody had left hanging in the small, stone-flagged flower room, and stole out into the gardens again. It was still full night, which was surprising; she had lived through an entire lifetime since those sweet, sinful moments with Pietro, and she had thought that dawn would long since be streaking the skies to the east.

‘Oh no, little sister, not yet; midnight’s arch is still rearing above us . . . This is the time when the incantations of the woodland sorceresses work best of all . . . This is the time when only lovers and witches are abroad . . .’

Catherine thought she was not really being urged on by Elizabeth. This strange nocturnal walk was only because she was restless. It was because of what had happened. I am in love with my own brother . . . It was small wonder she could not sleep, it was small wonder she was out here, savouring the night –

‘– prowling the darkness like a she-wolf. . .’

The night had changed; it was huge and filled with scuttlings and rustlings and there was the sound of wings beating overhead. It might have been frightening if you had not known there were things you could do to protect yourself. With the thought, Elizabeth’s consciousness trickled into her mind. Things you could do . . . Things you had found only after long consultations with the forest crones and things you had bargained and coaxed and threatened to get. The greatest prize of them all was the strange, ancient incantation, written in the blood of moles and the juice of hoopoes and hemlock, and inscribed on to the shrivelled caul of a newborn child, murdered as it emerged from the womb . . .

Catherine went across the gardens like a shadow, Elizabeth with her so strongly and so closely that she was almost aware of a second dark silhouette scudding across the ground at her feet.

She could hear the fall and rise of the caul incantation, and she recognised the language as a mixture of Czech and Serbian. But whoever was whispering it into the night spoke in a different cadence and used different pronunciations to any that Catherine had ever heard.

However it is said, the power is there, little sister . . . Nothing can touch me and nothing will touch you either . . . The shadows stirred. And if you listen closely and if you listen with your mind not your hearing, you will understand the incantation as I understand it . . .

For a moment, the words shivered on the air, and Catherine frowned, because there had been a fleeting instant of understanding. And then the moment vanished, and the soft, rhythmic chanting vanished as well.

Varanno would have looked to Elizabeth very much as it looked now. The purple garden laid out in the last century would not have been there, of course, but everything else would have been the same.

There would have been a carriageway leading up to the front door, probably the exact curve of gravel they used for the cars today, but then it would have been rutted from the hoofs of the horses and the wheels of the carriages. Catherine thought there had only just begun to be carriages then, and that they had been cumbersome and not very comfortable. She paused, drinking in the night air, her mind tumbling between two worlds.

Elizabeth would have come up this carriageway many times. She had frequently travelled from one castle to another, always in immense style, preceded by outriders: haiduks, mounted and armed against roving brigands. There had been an awesome cortége: coaches filled with trunkfuls of gowns and furs and jewels, presents for her host and hostess: lace and embroidery and jars of wine and casks of spices and flagons of perfumed oils from the eastern lands beyond the Carpathians.

During the journeys, which were often long and wearisome, Elizabeth liked to recline behind the drawn curtains of her carriage, listening to her two body servants, Dorko and Illona, reciting the minor transgressions of the girls of her household. They were ugly and coarse, these two, but it was fun to frame yourself with ugliness. And they were both immensely loyal and they vied for her approval. Dorko found new incantations from the forest crones which she laid before her mistress like an absurd panting dog; Illona had been Elizabeth’s wet nurse.

Elizabeth always pretended not to listen to these two gabbling about the small, silly sins of servants. She pretended not to understand their thick, clumsy accents. But when the cortége halted she would lean forward, one slender white hand reaching out between the thick curtains of the coach, and she would beckon the miscreant to come to her.

They always came. That was part of the satisfaction. They feared her, but they could not resist her. The story of the girl who had inadvertently pulled the Countess’s hair had spread; the story of what had afterwards been done to that girl had spread also. Beaten to death. Dragged to the castle dungeons, and flayed with whips by Dorko and Illona while the Lady watched. It was whispered that she had become one huge dripping wound by the end. And then the poor thing’s blood smeared into the Lady’s skin. If that was what you got for disobeying the Countess, no one was going to risk the smallest piece of disobedience.

The wretched girls sat trembling on the edges of the padded velvet seats while Elizabeth held an inquisition, lounging back on the silk cushions, her hands tucked inside her fur muff, but the fingers curving in anticipation. Soon, soon, the blood would run and she would coat her skin with it. Thick, moist excitement pulsed between her thighs at the thought.

Punishment could be extorted at once. In the thick, perfumed gloom of the enclosed coach, it was secret and exciting to see the blood run and to feel it taint the airless space. There were brass-headed hairpins that could be plunged into creamy white skin, so that the blood ran slowly and sluggishly; there were needles that could be inserted under fingernails. The coach became a world of its own, reeking with blood and fear.

To begin with, Elizabeth had knelt at the victim’s feet, catching the dripping blood in her cupped hands, but later, Dorko or Illona brought little earthenware pots which stood on the carriage floor. The sound of the blood dripping into the pots was immensely arousing.

Peasant blood was the most effective; she had discovered that at the beginning. The clumsy servant who had pulled her hair that first morning had paid very thoroughly indeed for her fumbling, but Elizabeth had almost loved the creature as the blood poured out of her. It was a pity she had died so quickly, but servants were expendable. Where there was one, there were a dozen, and who bothered to count them? Who cared if a foolish, feckless kitchen-girl was not in her bed when dawn broke? There were plenty of pretty plump creatures who would come skipping up the mountain road, thrilled to their naïve little souls to enter the service of the Countess. She would be waiting for them.

The blood would not fail her.

Varanno had not the huge retinue of servants in Catherine’s day that it had had in Elizabeth’s: people no longer cared to go into domestic service – degrading and poorly paid – and so there was only a cook with two village girls to assist her, and a gardener and a young boy for the grounds. Women came from the village to clean, paid by the hour, and were usually pleased to work in the evening if there was a party. But servants were no longer expendable.

Lone travellers, however, were a different matter.

It was immensely exciting to crouch by the roadside, the wet, earthy scents of the pine forests that fringed the road all about her. The dark, anonymous raincoat enveloped her, so that she melted into the shadows.

Catherine held the torch firmly, her head tilted like a listening animal. Was there the purr of a car coming now? The road was a lonely road and there were few night travellers, but she could feel the anticipation thrumming on the air all about her.

Other desires . . .

And then the headlights of a small car were slicing through the darkness, and there was the growl of the engine coming closer.

She stood in the centre of the road, waving the torch, directing its beam into the car’s path. There was the squeal of brakes and the screech of tyres as the car drew to an abrupt halt.

It was ridiculously easy. A breathlessly told story of a breakdown – carburettor trouble of some kind. Her own wretched car had simply died on her, out here miles from anywhere. Would a lift to the nearest town or the first telephone kiosk be possible?

The driver was a woman, not young, but still on the right side of thirty-five. She was rather coarsely spoken – peasant blood, my dear! – and she was instantly helpful and sympathetic. Catherine climbed into the passenger seat, the knife in her pocket.

Chapter Seven

As the BMW passed through the great, iron-sheeted gates of Varanno, Hilary heard them close with a silken whisper of well-oiled machinery. Ahead was a long drive, curving to the left, fringed by a tangled darkness of rhododendron and laurel and briar.

She sat quietly next to Catherine and thought: I suppose this is all real. I suppose I am here in this remarkable land, and I suppose ordinary people do live out here. She sent a sidelong glance to Sister Catherine, sitting silently beside her. Catherine Bathory was not ordinary in the least and she had lived here: presumably she had grown up here. In the thickening light, Catherine’s eyes looked larger and darker, and the planes of her face looked sharper and crueller.

Had Catherine never wanted to marry? With her looks there must have been opportunities. Hilary thought Catherine had not the unmistakable unawakened look of a virgin, but nor had she the smouldering banked-down fire of one who has struggled against sensuality. Either she took her vow of chastity lightly, or the question did not bother her. And with those eyes, with that mouth, I cannot believe it! thought Hilary.

The house came into view, the shadows twisting eerily about it, the crimson-tinged dusk lying thickly across the dark grey stone. It was a great brooding mansion, built of some dark, rough stone, the windows tall and narrow, trellised with thin strips of lead. At the centre was a porch, as deep as a church’s, and Hilary glimpsed a huge black oak door with an iron ring-handle. She shivered and involuntarily touched the crucifix at her waist.

Thick mats of dark ivy grew over parts of the walls, and in places obscured the windows. Those rooms would be dark, even on the sunniest of afternoons. The ivy would tap at the windows in the night, like thin, bony fingers scratching to get in.

The drive was shadowy from the tangle of thickthorn and briar hedges. Had it been growing up for a hundred years while something slept at its centre?

But Varanno was no enchanted castle, no slumbering citadel waiting for the Prince to hack his way through the brambles. This was a darker mansion altogether: it belonged to the Brothers Grimm, Perrault, Andersen. It was the Doubting Castle of Giant Despair that Christian approached with such trepidation, or the ogreish Dark Tower of Childe Rowland; it was Glamis with the monster prowling the halls . . . It was Castle Dracula . . .

And on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains was the Land Beyond the Forest.

‘There are a few lights still on,’ said Catherine. ‘Do come in. I expect they’ll have left us something to eat.’ Hilary came abruptly back to the normal prosaic world where people left lights to welcome you if you arrived late at night, and made sure you would have something to eat. But, despite Catherine’s apparent lack of emotion and her concerns about lights and food, Hilary felt the desperate anxiety beneath.

She took a deep breath and followed Catherine into the house.

The large central hall was filled with flickering firelight, and Hilary stood for a moment in the doorway, looking about her. It was absurd to feel nervous. Entering Catherine’s home would be no better and no worse than facing the entire chapter of St Luke’s at the Professing of her Solemn Vows, which she had done two years earlier in a panic in case they threw her out into the world again. She drew a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.

At each end of the huge stone-flagged hall beyond the door, somebody had lit fires, which was rather a nice welcome. The hearths were set at each end of the great hall; they were big enough to roast whole oxen and had probably done so many times. There was presumably electric light here: Hilary did not think there was anywhere in the so-called civilised world that did not have electricity now, although you might except the poorer parts of India and Africa, of course.

But there were no signs that electricity had penetrated Varanno. Iron wall-brackets – would they once have been called sconces? – protruded from the walls, and in each one a thick, faintly-fragrant candle burned, casting pools of light directly beneath. Branched candlesticks were set before the oval mirrors with tapering candles set in them, and the tiny pinpoints of flame reflected over and over in the smoky depths of the mirrors. Through a glass darkly . . . I am seeing Varanno through a darkling glass . . . Is that better or worse than seeing it face to face? Thick crimson draperies covered parts of the walls, and the thick-paned trellised windows were set into the ancient stone on each side of the black oak door which lead directly outside. Purple-tinged dusk slanted in through the windows.

Hilary had the feeling of stepping backwards; of slicing through the skin enclosing the safe, hygienic twentieth century. As if she might be entering a time where there would be no instant hot water gushing from taps, no glad flares of yellow light when you pressed a switch, no Germanically efficient cars that sped you along mountain passes. This was a world of flickering candlelight and of ruined castle keeps; a world where children and virgins were taken for their blood and where mandragora was still torn shrieking from the ground at midnight under a gibbous moon. Where Grand Guignol characters stalked, cloaked and slouch-hatted, brandishing blood-dripping knives . . .

All quite absurdly fanciful. But Catherine’s family appeared to be accustomed to the kind of decadent luxury that Hilary thought had vanished with bustles and Edward VII. How on earth did people manage to live like this? Inherited wealth, shrewdly invested? Underworld art robberies? Wild visions of the Mafia and Al Capone dynasties tumbled through Hilary’s mind.

But for all the richness, there was the impression of a threatening decay just beneath the surface. These were the ancestral halls of the melancholy Roderick Usher, but it was Usher before the putrescence overtook it. Had Catherine lived like this before entering the Order of St Luke? How had she adjusted to five o’clock rising and Lenten fasting and monastic simplicity?

As they began to ascend the wide, sweeping stair, a thick, lumpish shadow coalesced, and something moved out from the shadowy recess of a half-curtained alcove on their left. Hilary gasped, one hand going involuntarily to her throat; the shadow moved forward. Her eyes went too high, and then fell.

Not Christian’s despairing Giant, after all, but Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s gnome magician: the sly, stunted creature who helped the miller’s daughter to spin straw into gold . . .

A dwarf, squat and hunchbacked and with the thick muscular shoulders and tiny arms and the distorted features reminiscent of a dozen dark fairy tales. It was ugly and misshapen, but it was one of God’s creations, and Hilary said in her sparse German, ‘Good evening.’

Catherine said, ‘Hilary, this is Ficzko. He has been with my family for as long as I can remember.’

The hunchback regarded Hilary levelly, his eyes flickering over her. When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly deep and gravelly, and Hilary, who had been expecting a high-pitched, childlike timbre, jumped. There was a vaguely asthmatic wheeze overlaying his voice – weren’t hunchbacks prone to lung complaints? Or perhaps the gravelly wheezing was simply because the hunchback was a heavy smoker. You could easily imagine him having a rather revolting cough first thing in the morning.

‘You are the Sister from England,’ said Ficzko, and without warning, something gloating and suggestive gleamed in his eyes. He looked her up and down, rather as if he might be saying: and very tasty too. ‘Cat’s companion,’ he said, in his wet, rasping voice, and then, as if adhering to tradition, ‘You are expected.’

Catherine said, ‘Ficzko, my father?’

‘In the study,’ said Ficzko.

‘Thank you.’

Hilary felt the hunchback’s eyes on them as they climbed the stair and remembered afresh all the dark, gloomy castles where dwarfish creatures scuttled to do their Master’s bidding and doors swung silently open, and where the traveller was forever expected.

The velvet-hung bedchamber with the huge tester bed was scented with drifting pot-pourri, and with beeswax and old timbers.

‘One of our nicer guest rooms,’ Catherine said. ‘I think you will be comfortable here.’ She opened the deep wardrobe built into one side of the fireplace. ‘My cousins left a few things behind, but there should be room for your belongings.’

There was room to spare. Nuns did not travel so very much, but when they did, they travelled light. Hilary had brought only fresh underthings, toothbrush, sponge and flannel, and her missal. There was her long navy raincoat, standard St Luke’s Order issue, which hung in a corner of the deep, lavender-scented wardrobe.

A silvered oval mirror stood in one corner, reflecting the room dimly so that looking into it was like seeing through water or through rippled, ancient glass . . .

The darkling glass again. Hilary washed and unpacked her few night-things and read the Office for the Day, but the familiar phrases which most of the other nuns considered soothing skimmed her consciousness. The tap at the door made her jump and as she crossed the room to open the door, her heart was thumping. Nerves. But in this house anything might come creeping along to tap at your door . . .

The light was behind him, and for a moment, Hilary had the impression of a dark silhouette standing against the lampglow from the corridor. And then he moved, and she saw that he was smiling at her with Catherine’s eyes, and that he had Catherine’s slanting cheekbones. Catherine’s father.

‘You will forgive me if I intrude,’ he said, using careful, slightly stilted English, and glancing to the hastily laid down missal. ‘I am Franz-Josef Bathory. And I wished to assure myself that my daughter’s friend is properly looked after.’ The dark eyes scanned the room. ‘You have everything you need, Sister?’

Hilary said, ‘Everything is very comfortable.’ Was it ridiculous to invite him into his own room? She did so anyway.

‘Thank you. For a moment only since it is so late. My wife sends her apologies – she will meet you tomorrow. She is resting.’

‘Yes, of course. Is there – can I ask if there is better news of Catherine’s brother?’

‘His condition is unchanged,’ said Franz-Josef. ‘But he is strong.’

Hilary could not stop looking at him. This was a face that might have served equally well for the model of an early Christian martyr or a seventeenth-century libertine. Fanaticism and sensualist. It was a disturbing combination. As he came into the room, she saw that he was older than she had at first thought; his hair was silver and there were lines that the deceiving lamplight had not shown. As a young man he must have been astonishing. Hilary tried to guess his age and at once felt impertinent for doing so.

‘Your journey was not too tiring?’

‘Not at all,’ said Hilary. ‘And I was glad to be of help to Sister Catherine.’

‘You have not visited our country before?’

‘No. It’s very interesting. And this is a wonderful house.’

‘It has many memories. Much history.’ In a minute, thought Hilary, he will lean forward and say softly: and I should enjoy showing it to you, my dear. He’s a grandee of Vienna in the nineteenth century, or Russia before the revolution. He ought to be wearing a dark red velvet smoking jacket and sipping vintage port or old French brandy.

‘In England we would regard Varanno as a national treasure,’ she said, and saw the smile touch his lips.

‘That is a courtesy. Perhaps . . .’ He stopped and looked towards the half-open door. ‘But here is your supper tray,’ he said, and Hilary caught the lurching shadow cast by the hunchback, Ficzko. ‘I shall wish you goodnight. We will meet tomorrow,’ said Franz-Josef, in his careful English. ‘And then perhaps I may show you more of Varanno,’ he said.

Hilary grinned inwardly. I knew he’d say it.

Catherine went warily down to the small panelled room off the hall, which the Family used as a sitting room. This would be difficult and it might be painful but it had to be got through.

‘We will be waiting for you,’ Franz-Josef had said earlier on, when Catherine had gone cautiously into his study after taking Hilary to her room.

‘Come down as soon as you can.’ That was her mother. ‘Make sure that your friend has all she needs,’ Bianca had said, ‘and then come down again.’ Catherine had not expected any particular warmth from her, but there had been one of Bianca’s swift, scented embraces. Catherine felt with a shock, how thin her mother had grown. Did I do that? she had thought, and then, in the same instant: of course I did not! Vanity, Sister Catherine. If Bianca had grown thin from worry for anyone, it would be for Pietro. And then her mother had surprised her again, reaching for her hand and saying, ‘I’m glad you are here, Cat.’

Cat . . . It was that she was afraid of. All the time they were drawing nearer to Varanno, she had been afraid that the minute she entered the house again, Sister Catherine, the good, hardworking nun, would fade and Cat, Elizabeth’s Catspaw would return. And beyond Cat, so well hidden that nobody had ever suspected her existence, was the third self: Katerina, Pietro’s Katerina . . . If Pietro was dying, what will happen to Katerina? I don’t control any of my selves, she thought in sudden panic. Even Sister Catherine is owned by Reverend Mother. And in another minute I shall know how ill Pietro is. This is the moment.

Franz-Josef was standing before the fire, and even though her senses were strung almost to snapping, Catherine felt a small tremor of amusement. The famous negligent-hand-on-the-mantel stance. Graceful and elegant. He might be posing for Portrait of a Sybaritic Gentleman. It looked studied but it was entirely unconscious, of course.

Bianca was curled into the deep old armchair, her dark hair lit to coppery life by the fire. Catherine saw faint lines of strain about her mother’s eyes which she had not noticed on her arrival, although Bianca was so beautiful that it did not matter. Thin and ravaged she was beautiful. She would be beautiful at eighty.

On the other side of the fire sat her cousin Ladislas and his father, Stefan. Did this mean they believed Pietro to be dying; was Ladislas already plotting? Ladislas had always coveted everything that was Pietro’s. Catherine studied him and thought he had not changed very much. Greedy and insolent. He did not rise as she came in, but lounged in his chair, looking at her with faint, slightly amused contempt. Catherine bit down a spurt of anger.

Stefan stood up as she entered, and held out his hand. Stefan had all the courtesy that Ladislas disdained – but he is no better than Franz-Josef’s copyist! thought Catherine. But she took his hand and smiled a brief greeting. She had always been a little afraid of Stefan, although Pietro had said Stefan was no worse than weak and that it was Ladislas who was the ruthless one. Ladislas would stop at very little to get Varanno, said Pietro. Catherine took a huge breath, because she had arrived at the moment now. She said, ‘Where is Pietro?’

There was the space of a heartbeat, and she was aware of Franz-Josef and Bianca both turning to look at Ladislas and Stefan.

Bianca said, ‘I believe that Ladislas is about to tell us,’ and Franz-Josef said, ‘Well, Ladislas? Stefan? I have kept my promise. Cat is back. Now it is your turn. Where is Pietro?’

There was a sudden silence, and Catherine, not understanding, looked from one to another. Why had Pietro’s whereabouts anything to do with her returning to Varanno? She waited, and saw Stefan hesitate and then look across to Ladislas. As if he is bowing out, thought Catherine. As if he is letting Ladislas take up the reins. He’s cold and cruel, and he’s rather weak. Yes, it’s in his mouth, I never saw it before. Pietro was right.

And then Ladislas said, ‘This is going to be rather painful.’

‘Well?’ It was the sharp, authoritative voice of one who has never encountered disobedience in any form, and Catherine sat up a little straighter and was overwhelmingly grateful to her father for being what he was. Brimful of charm, but with iron authority beneath. He could be far more ruthless than any of them; he would slap Ladislas down at once if Ladislas were insolent, and he would do it with that remarkable polite cruelty that was so devastating. The sharp mind in the velvet scabbard. No one will ever hold a candle to him, thought Catherine, looking at her father. Not even Pietro – shining, brilliant Pietro – had ever quite matched Franz-Josef.

‘As you know,’ said Ladislas, speaking as if he was measuring each word, ‘Pietro was living in Paris. I don’t know what his reasons for leaving the Family were—’

‘And you don’t need to know them,’ said Bianca sharply.

‘He was living in one of the poorer quarters,’ said Ladislas, after a moment, and although he had tried to sound regretful, the regret was unmistakably false.

‘There was no reason for Pietro to live in any kind of poverty,’ said Bianca.

‘Was there not?’ said Ladislas, eyeing her.

‘His share in the banking concerns were made over to him when he left us,’ said Franz-Josef and Catherine looked up, because she had not known about this, and it almost sounded as if her father had helped Pietro to leave. Was that possible? Had Pietro perhaps spun some kind of story about wanting to leave the Family’s houses, which Catherine thought would have been entirely believable to anyone who knew Pietro. ‘Because money is so dull unless it’s mine,’ he had once said.

‘Properly invested the shares would have brought a rich income for many years.’ The steel was in Franz-Josef’s voice, and Catherine thought: so they still finish one another’s thoughts, my parents.

‘And,’ said Bianca, ‘he was retained in a consultancy capacity in the Paris House.’

Ladislas said, ‘I was always taught that it was rather vulgar to refer to money in public.’

‘I was always taught that it was the height of ill-breeding to show discourtesy to one’s host,’ said Franz-Josef instantly, and the hot colour flooded Ladislas’s cheeks.

Bianca stretched out a hand to Ladislas and said, ‘Oh, the child is both vulgar and ill-mannered, Franz-Josef,’ and Catherine heard the tolerant affection in her voice and saw her father register the gesture through narrowed eyes. Ladislas and Bianca? I wouldn’t put it past her, thought Catherine. For all her devotion to my father, I wouldn’t put a small fling with Ladislas past her.

Franz-Josef said, ‘Go on, if you please.’

Ladislas withdrew his hand from Bianca’s and smiled, as if he might have gained an unexpected ally. ‘Poor Pietro,’ he said, softly. ‘He had sought solace in strange places by the time I found him. He was drinking too much and he was talking too much. There were women . . .’ Ladislas spread his hands. ‘Where Pietro is, there will always be women, of course,’ he said dismissively, and Catherine thought: and that is one of the reasons you hated him so much! But she waited and Bianca laughed.

‘“Solace in strange places . . .”! My dear boy, what have you been reading?’

‘And,’ said Franz-Josef, tranquilly, ‘Pietro’s womanising and drinking were never particularly excessive.’ He crossed the room and poured brandy into his glass from the square-necked decanter and then turned back to Ladislas. Giving himself a stance of even more authority, thought Catherine, appreciatively.

‘Also,’ said Franz-Josef, ‘your motives for actually seeking Pietro out were questionable, to say the least. But do go on.’

Ladislas glanced at Stefan who said, ‘It depends, you know, on what he was drinking, and on whom he was drinking it with.’

There was a rather nasty pause. Then Bianca said, in a light, amused voice, ‘Meths and diseased prostitutes, Stefan? Cocaine and crack? Pietro? My dears!’ One of Bianca’s extravagant amused shrugs. ‘How absurd!’ She leaned forward, her eyes shining in the fireglow. ‘It was a reasonable try, Stefan, but it wasn’t quite good enough,’ she said.

‘But by all means try again,’ said Franz-Josef, politely, and Catherine, sitting quietly in her corner, heard the amusement in his voice and experienced a surge of delighted triumph, because whatever Stefan and Ladislas were up to, verbally at least they were no match for Franz-Josef and Bianca.

Ladislas sat back in his chair, and looked across at Stefan as if saying: well? Your turn now?

Stefan leaned forward and the planes of his face suddenly seemed sharper and crueller. When Bianca said, ‘A medical opinion now, Stefan?’ he looked at her levelly enough.

‘Ladislas was trying to wrap it up a little,’ he said, ‘to make the truth more acceptable.’ A quick gesture. ‘But if you must have it without the frills . . .’

‘Oh I think we must, my dear.’

‘It is very tragic, what has happened to Pietro,’ said Stefan, slowly. ‘But you should be grateful that I am able to help him.’

Franz-Josef stared at him, and after a moment he said, in a voice devoid of all expression, ‘Where is Pietro?’

Stefan said, ‘I am afraid, Franz-Josef, Bianca, Cat . . .’ One of the polite inclinations of his head to Catherine. ‘It is his mind,’ he said. ‘Pietro’s mind has failed.’

There was a sudden silence. Then Franz-Josef said, ‘He is – you are saying he is insane? Mad? Pietro?’

‘There is a degree of – personality disorder,’ said Stefan. ‘An – absence of reality.’

‘And?’

‘There is only one thing to do,’ said Stefan. ‘When Ladislas brought him back, I put him at once in – a place where he could be given care.’

‘You should be grateful for my father’s background,’ said Ladislas.

‘Certainly we should,’ said Bianca, in a silken purr. She looked across at Franz-Josef. ‘Remember how Stefan has made a study of these things.’ She rearranged her skirts, and curled her feet under her. ‘“The study of the human mind as it disintegrates is the most fascinating thing in the world.” Have I quoted you correctly, Stefan?’ She smiled, catlike. ‘Stefan enjoys his poor moonstruck madmen,’ said Bianca. ‘He will enjoy Pietro if we let him.’ She looked back at Stefan and Ladislas. ‘You have put him in your own private asylum?’ she said. ‘Yes, I thought that was what you meant. How remarkably Machiavellian of you both.’

Stefan started to speak, but Franz-Josef forestalled him, and for the first time that night, Catherine heard his voice stripped of its normal urbanity.

‘There?’ he said. ‘You have put Pietro there?’

‘Yes.’ Stefan sat back.

‘Pietro is inside CrnPrag,’ he said.

The silence closed down, complete and terrible.

Chapter Eight

Catherine lay in her familiar bed on Varanno’s eastern side, and stared up at the ceiling.

Pietro is inside CrnPrag.

CrnPrag, the bleak, lonely stronghold on the Romanian borders, was neither quite of Romania or Hungary, but straddled the two. It was a dark old mansion, standing in its wooded acres, walled in by a high stone wall with spikes on the top so that no one could look in and no one could look out.

CrnPrag, roughly translated, meant the threshold of darkness; when they were all younger, Catherine’s cousins had made up stories about it: splendid, terrifying stories, the kind that you told seated about a huge fire in the depths of winter, with the shutters closed against the howling night and chestnuts roasting on the hearth and mulled wine fragrant with cinnamon and nutmeg. Sometimes she thought they had forgotten she was there, curled into the chimney corner of the huge schoolroom.

CrnPrag was a mystery place; there was some secret about it. Parents and uncles stopped talking if it was mentioned and glanced uneasily over their shoulders. Perhaps it was a place of monsters and demons said the cousins, with delighted terror. A place where grisly experiments were carried out and where strange, half-human creatures lived a nightmare existence.

The fire would burn lower and the shadows would creep across the floor, and there would be the scent of the half-burnt chestnuts and a sprinkling of shells and salt in the hearth. The tales would become wilder. Eerie lights sometimes burned in the dungeons; howls were heard when the moon was full. Mutant creatures walked the mountainside by night. None of the cousins believed any of this, or only a very little, but it was fun to tell the stories.

But in Catherine’s mind, CrnPrag was forever entangled with fear and lurching monsters and gothic legends; with winter fires that burned with the blue flame that meant hoar frost tomorrow. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by the banks of Lake Geneva, vying with Byron and her husband to tell the best ghost story, weaving her eerie tale about the modern Prometheus.

In the end, it had been Pietro himself, hearing Catherine cry out one night from a nightmare, who had told her the truth about CrnPrag.

It was a private mental asylum, he said, having listened to the nightmare. It was nothing more than a place for poor sick-minded people: Stefan Bathory’s own realm where he cared for and studied the incurably insane. It was not frightening, but on the contrary, rather pitiful that people had to be shut away like animals, said Pietro, fluffing up the pillows and straightening the sheets, and then turning away to cover the bedside lamp with a thin silk scarf so that it cast a warm soft pool of light. But mental illness still carried a stigma, even today, which was why CrnPrag had to be surrounded by secrecy and a degree of furtiveness. All right now? he said, standing up and looking down at her, and Catherine had smiled sleepily and said, ‘All right.’

CrnPrag, high up in its strange borderlands, was nothing more sinister than a place where those who were beyond help or an embarrassment to their families and society, could be placed. There was nothing in the least supernatural about CrnPrag, only what the cousins had whispered, only what imagination conjured up. There was always something a bit fearsome about asylums, of course. The dark old madhouse in the mountains, maniacs glaring through the bars of their cages and sometimes escaping to terrorise the countryside . . . Yes, it was the stuff that legends were made on.

And now Pietro was inside that dark old madhouse. He was locked away with the poor tormented souls that Stefan had in his care. Pietro with his fine-boned beauty. Pietro who had always made Catherine feel safe, and who could chase away nightmares with reason and silk-draped lamplight. And whose mouth tasted of wine and sinless ecstasy.

He was shut inside the stark, legend-drenched madhouse with Stefan Bathory’s pitiful moonstruck madmen.

It was an easy enough matter to wait until the house was wrapped in sleep and then steal out of her bedroom.

It felt strange, but not unduly so to reach into the large wardrobe at the side of the room and feel her hands close about the clothes she had worn when she lived here. French silk and Italian wool. Donna Karan and Yves St Laurent and Armani. Gucci shoes and bags. There was a drift of expensive perfume clinging to the carefully hung clothes. The thick cloaks she had worn for the snow-bound months; the boots and riding things. The designer clothes for supper parties with the cousins. People did not dress up so very much these days, but the Family dressed up. It had been part of the fun.

And with the putting on of those clothes, Cat is pushing up to the surface again . . .

Catherine shook her head angrily, and pulled on dark corduroy trousers and a thick woollen sweater. She glanced in the mirror, and saw that her hair, although cut short as required by the Order, was not unbecoming. It curved about her head in a dark, glossy cap. It ought not to matter how one looked – the nuns had instilled this into her – but it mattered to Catherine now. It mattered because she was going to Pietro, after nearly four years of cloistered calm, after nearly fifty months of prayer and fasting and the ever-turning wheel of the religious year. After all those days and months and hours, she was going to Pietro.

Because, even if a hundred learned men and women swore on the Bible, Catherine would never believe that Pietro was mad. And even if he was, she would never leave him to the mercy of Stefan Bathory’s dark old madhouse, not if Armageddon was at hand and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were riding into the world.

She hesitated about waking her parents, but she had become accustomed to keeping her own counsel. She would do so now; she would find out the truth, and only then would she ask for their help. This gave her unexpected confidence; it was a definite plan to follow, it was something to shape and dictate her actions. I’ll do it, thought Catherine, stealing silently through Varanno, feeling how the house was not quite asleep, in the way that most old houses never quite sleep. There were soft creakings everywhere, heart-stoppingly like a stealthy footfall, and there were little rustlings in the eaves, which would be no more than a night wind, or perhaps house martins. There was the creak of contracting timbers from somewhere. Halfway down she paused, scanning the shadows. Had that been a furtive movement behind her? She waited, her heart pounding.

But the shadows were quiescent, and the only sound was her own heart, beating furiously.

This was how it had felt before. When she had stolen through the house, Elizabeth’s presence all about her, the feel of Pietro’s body against hers still imprinted on her senses. She had come this way then, through the shadowy stone hall, with purple-tinted night slanting in and dust motes dancing in and out of the pouring swathes of darkness. For a moment, the two worlds blurred, and Catherine paused, one hand going to her throat. Had something stirred in the shadows behind her? Something that scuttled in her wake, and kept just out of sight? She stopped, scanning the moonlit gallery. Something following her? Something watching?

But the sound, whatever it had been, faded, and she moved onwards. A mouse scurrying to its home behind the wainscoting. Perhaps even a bat scraping papery wings against a window, or the ivy tapping at the walls.

She reached up for the lever that operated the gates and drew back the huge iron bolts, slowly, cautiously, and slipped outside.

Behind her, the shadows thickened, and a stunted, misshapen figure padded after her.

The cars were housed in the old stable block, and, as Catherine slipped inside, she saw with thankfulness that the keys hung where they had always hung, just inside the door. She would leave the large BMW that Michael Devlin had hired for them, and take the small Renault that Bianca usually drove, because it would be lighter and easier to drive on the winding mountain roads. The keys felt reassuringly familiar in her hand.

The car fired at once – trust Bianca to keep everything in silken, oiled condition! – and Catherine drove out gingerly, using as little acceleration as possible and switching the engine off while she went back to close the doors. Probably no one would actually try to prevent her from leaving, but she preferred no one to know she had gone until it was too late. She scooped up a coiled rope that someone had left in a corner of the garage and which might be helpful if she had to climb over the walls that enclosed CrnPrag. She dropped it onto the passenger seat where it would be easily accessible and took off the Renault’s handbrake, letting it roll silently down the drive, keeping her eyes fixed on the driving mirror. At any minute squares of light might show in the windows of the great dark mansion behind her, and she would see hurrying figures going from room to room, calling to one another that Catherine was escaping, she was going to Pietro. What had Pietro said, all those years ago?

‘If you can leave Varanno, then you should do so . . .’

Her hands were gripping the steering wheel painfully and her heart was pounding against her rib-cage. Let me escape. Let them not wake and hear me. Let me reach Pietro and get him out.

She began to play games in her mind. If I can reach the curve in the drive, it will be all right. And then, as the curve was reached: if I can get beyond the stretch where the trees meet overhead and make a dark tunnel, I shan’t be heard.

The Renault rolled silently into the tunnel. Catherine had wound down the window, and the sweet night air flooded in. She could hear little patterings and scurryings from the undergrowth; small, nocturnal creatures going about their strange lives.

And then the gates were before her, and she was through them. She was outside Varanno, and firing the engine and slamming her foot hard down on the accelerator. She would have to drive all night, and it would be dawn before she reached CrnPrag and she would be half dead with exhaustion.

None of this mattered. She was going to Pietro. Somehow she must get him out of CrnPrag. Beyond that she could not, for the moment, think.

As she swung the car on to the high road, she did not hear the little breath of satisfaction from the curled-up shape in the dark void of the Renault’s interior.

At first, Hilary thought hazily that it was the Waking Bell that had disturbed her, and she reached sleepily for the Day’s Office before sitting up.

But the thing that met her questing hand was not the small plain deal table that normally stood by her bed, but the smooth surface of the rosewood cabinet where she had last night put her missal and where Catherine had left a small night-clock and a bedside lamp.

Varanno. She was in Varanno.

And something had woken her.

The luminous face of the little clock showed an uncompromising two o’clock. Two a.m. The smallest of the small hours. The time when everything should surely be asleep.

Hilary slid her legs cautiously over the side of the bed and padded across to the window. The thick drapes shut out any moonlight there might be, but she reached up and drew them open a chink.

Thin light slid through and lay in silver bars across the floor, and Hilary stood looking down into the silent gardens below and the long low stable block just beyond.

A small shadow detached itself from the main house and stole across the gardens, and Hilary, leaning as far forward as she could, her breath making little circles of mist on the cold glass, saw the shadow hesitate and look round. Hilary rubbed the glass clear impatiently and, as she did so, the dark shape reached the stable block, and folded back the large hinged doors.

Who was going so stealthily in to the stable block at two a.m.? Why would anyone do such a thing? Was Catherine’s brother perhaps suddenly worse and were they summoned to his bedside? Or was he being driven to some hospital? But if some kind of crisis had occurred, there would have been sounds from inside the house: people scurrying about, telephones ringing, voices raised in concern and organisation.

Hilary frowned, recalling that curious reticence to discuss Pietro Bathory’s illness. It might be due to simple embarrassment, of course. He might be an alcoholic or even a drug user. He might have Aids. Any one of those would account for reluctance to discuss his condition with a stranger.

But none of them accounted for somebody stealing through the house and doing it furtively – yes, there was no other word for it! – and creeping into the stable block to the cars.

Hilary was torn between a wish not to pry into what might be a genuine private tragedy, and a very human desire to want to know what was going on.

She inched the window open cautiously, wincing as the hinges shrieked in protest, and leaned as far forward over the sill as she dared. From within the stable block came the sound of a car’s engine being fired.

In the same moment, a second figure loped across the gardens, and stood concealed in the deep shadow cast by the garage. A figure small enough to be taken for a child, but thick and hunched over.

Ficzko.

The hatchback shape of a small car nosed its way out of the stables, and the driver switched off the engine, and emerged from the car to go back to close the doors. Hilary recognised her this time. Catherine. Catherine Bathory, whom her family called Cat; the strange, out-of-this-century creature with the haunted eyes and the remarkable Magyar beauty, taking a car and driving away from Varanno. Doing so stealthily.

Catherine was occupied with the doors, sliding bolts across, and her back was to the parked car. Hilary saw Ficzko scuttle out from the shadows and run to the car with a low, crouching run. The back of the car would not have been large enough for a full-grown man to conceal himself very easily, but Ficzko crouched low as if the back seats had been folded down. There was the flurry of something dark – a rug? – being pulled over him. Catherine turned back and slipped behind the driving wheel.

The small car began to slide silently forward. Hilary understood that wherever Catherine was going, she did not want anyone to know. She had simply released the handbrake and was letting the car roll forward without switching on the engine.

But Hilary knew, as well, that Catherine had no idea that Ficzko was hiding in the back of the car.

There were two things that could be done, and either or both had to be done very quickly indeed. She could rouse the household; she could find her way to the central wing where presumably the family slept, and she could knock on doors and wake people and pour out the extraordinary story. It would be complicated and she might not be believed, but it was the sensible, the logical thing to do. But it would all take far too long.

What would be neither sensible nor logical would be to go after Catherine.

Hilary did not stop to think that she could never catch Catherine up. She did not think back to the last time she had driven a car, eight years ago, or how that drive had ended. She did not think, either, that the cars in the stable block would be unfamiliar, awkward, left-hand drive, or that the keys would probably not be there.

She was across the room and dragging a tumble of clothes from the huge wardrobe. ‘Things left by my cousins,’ Catherine had said.

Hanging in the back of the wardrobe were plain dark trousers and several thick sweaters and scarves. Hilary tore a pair of navy corduroy trousers off a hanger and dragged them on, and followed them with one of the sweaters, pulling it over her thin cotton night shirt. The cousin, whoever she was, had been roughly Hilary’s build, and the things fitted reasonably well. Shoes? Yes, her own were there. Leather and soft-soled. She could be as silent as she liked. She thrust her bare feet into the shoes, and grabbed the navy raincoat.

Nothing stirred as she went softly through the dark house and across the stone hall. There was a drift of woodsmoke from the deep old fireplace and, as she reached up to unlatch the door and eased it open, the night air rushed in, cool and clean. So far so good. But she must be quick, she must somehow catch Catherine up.

She felt suddenly vulnerable to be out of the house with her head uncovered. And then the night wind lifted her hair, and there was a sudden marvellous upsurge of freedom. The wind in your hair; yes, of course, I had forgotten how it feels. She had forgotten, as well, how it felt to stride out with no hampering skirts clinging to her legs. The trousers felt unexpectedly good. Suddenly she was equal to anything. But she must hurry, she must not lose a minute.

No one challenged her as she ran towards the stable block, her heart racing. As she went into the old stables, the sharp pungency of petrol and oil and chromium hit her.

It was only then that eight years of banked-down horror and guilt reared up and she realised what she was doing. She wasted precious seconds fighting the memories that were pushing up the lid she had clamped down on them so tightly.

But the trouble with fastening a lid on memories was that they could not fade. You ought always to take memories out from time to time and shake them in the fresh air, because, if you did not, they sprang up at you when you least expected it, and they were as vivid and as painful as the day you had locked them away.

They sprang up now, as vivid and painful as the day she had run away. To hide inside the convent.

There were six cars in the stable-garage, and one of them was the BMW hire car. Hilary’s eyes fell on it and, in the same instant, her mind rejected it.

I can’t. I vowed never to drive again. Her mind sought frenziedly for a way out. A foreign car: left-hand drive. Unfamiliar gear changes. She could never cope with that as well as driving on the right, finding her way through strange roads with signs in a foreign language. There was the justification.

But somewhere on the road was Catherine, and hiding in the back of Catherine’s car was Ficzko.

Hilary could not stand back and let Catherine go down that long dark road with Ficzko hiding in the back. She looked at the BMW.

The keys were all hanging from hooks on a square board, neatly labelled. Hilary drew in a deep breath and her fingers closed about the disc of metal. As she pulled open the door the first thing she saw was the gearstick. The car had automatic transmission. No clutch. If you tucked one foot under the seat, automatics were the easiest cars in the world to drive.

She would have to do it. There was no way out.

The powerful engine fired as soon as she turned the ignition, purring with a low, feline sound. Hilary slid the gearstick cautiously. How was it marked. D for drive? What was the German for drive? For heaven’s sake, there were only three to choose from. Wasn’t one drive and one neutral or park or something like that? And one for reversing. One could hardly go far wrong.

The car responded before she was ready, jerking forward, and Hilary sought and found the brake. It felt odd, but not unduly so not to have a clutch. She eased through the doors and, as Catherine had done, switched off the engine once outside. The BMW thrust forward like a silent panther and Hilary resettled herself in her seat. Ahead were the gates – had Catherine left them open? – yes! Hilary sent up a prayer of thanks that Catherine had not stopped to close the gates.

The road stretched out on both sides like a dark ribbon. Which way? Left or right? She hesitated. And then, away over to the left, she saw the twin pinpoints of light, double beams raking the darkness. Headlights! That had to be Catherine. It was stretching coincidence way beyond credibility to think that another car would be on this lonely road at two a.m. Thank you again, God. She turned the ignition key and the car snarled into life.

As she went down the mountain road, the memories went with her, painful, vivid. The day seven years ago when the lorry had pulled out of the side road straight into her path. The squeal of brakes and the bursting of tyres as Hilary had swerved frantically to avoid it.

And the huge screaming of tearing metal as the lorry slammed into the side of her Mini . . .

She took a firmer grip on the BMW’s steering wheel, remembered about keeping on the right-hand side of the road, and accelerated after Catherine.

Chapter Nine

Catherine was not aware of being followed. She was certainly not aware of the coiled figure of Ficzko in the back of the car.

She was concentrating on driving, on keeping to the narrow curving road that led back to Debreczen – the road they had taken with Michael Devlin, and that would pass the turning to CrnPrag. Her heart was leaping forward to Pietro, and deep within her something she had thought long-since quenched was stirring.

Quenched, but never dead, my dear, forbidden love.

The Renault was creakier than she remembered. The rear suspension sounded a bit worn, or perhaps a tyre was slightly low. It made the car feel as if it was full of unseen passengers. So long as she reached CrnPrag she did not care. She glanced at the petrol gauge. Three-quarters full.

She stopped to stretch her legs in the valley that was a gorge of one of the Vag’s smaller tributaries. To her left she caught the glint of the river itself, silver and remote in the moonlight. There were vineyards hereabouts producing a red wine, a little like Bordeaux. She turned her head to the east, to the sharp scents of the pine-trees.

Somewhere in the distance, was the low growl purr of a car. Another night traveller.

There had been many night travellers since that first one. There had been many nights when Catherine had slipped out of the house and crouched on the edges of the lonely road that lay beneath Varanno, the large torch gripped in her hands, ready to signal, ready with her story about a puncture, a car run out of petrol, a car run off the road. She was plausible and because she was small and wholly unthreatening it was easy to fool her victims. She developed an instinct for cars driven by lone women.

Elizabeth would never have had to crouch on the edge of a roadside like this, sometimes for hours. Elizabeth had had the pick of the pretty dazzled servant girls who came so willingly and so unsuspectingly into service in the castle. ‘See what a nice room you shall have, what light duties you will be given, what a warm cloak and hood to wear . . .’ And the ancient, almost ritualistic invitation of all greedy-intentioned villainesses in a dozen different fairy tales: ‘Come inside, my dear . . .’

Catherine, living four hundred years later, had had to obey different standards. She certainly could not beckon, as Elizabeth had beckoned, and see her prey come running. There were laws that had to be upheld; people were also more suspicious than they had been in Elizabeth’s day. Catherine, her mind lurching from appalled self-disgust to the roaring hunger of her ancestress’s grisly passions, grew cunning and clever.

The driver of the small car that first night had been garrulous and rather coarse. As Catherine had climbed into the passenger seat there had been the faint smell of flesh that was not bathed quite as often as it should be; of clothes that were not laundered as frequently as they needed to be. Cooking smells and faintly stale sweat.

But peasant blood is by far the richest, my dear . . . Elizabeth had been with her to see that she did what had to be done. Catherine had sat quietly in the small car, watching her opportunity, waiting until the car passed into the thick patch of blackness cast by the pine-trees that fringed the highway. Her hand, thrust deep into her pocket, was curled about the handle of the knife.

It had been absurdly easy to produce the knife and force the woman to draw in to the roadside. She had offered money, thinking Catherine a vulgar thief; Catherine had laughed, and leapt on to the ridiculous, puling woman, pushing her back in the seat.

The knife had slid into the woman’s throat before she understood what was happening. It was smooth and easy, like cutting butter. It was like jagged lightning cleaving your mind so that you saw beyond, you saw what lay beyond the barriers.

Pouring blood . . . Rivers of it, cascading over your skin . . . The silken kiss . . . The sensuous, velvet feel . . .

Immortal beauty . . . And peasant blood was ever the best. . .

Elizabeth had urged her on, and the inside of the small car had filled up with the thick stench of fear and blood and sexual excitement. For a brief space of time, Catherine had the impression that it was not a present-day machine with an engine that enclosed them, but a jolting travelling coach with padded velvet seats and velvet curtains that shut out the prying world . . .

Sobbing, Catherine had twisted the knife into the soft white flesh of the woman’s throat, feeling the blood begin to spurt, wetting her skin, soaking into the nightgown she still wore beneath the hastily donned coat. She let it trickle over her hands, between her fingers, so that it ran down her wrists and arms. Beautiful.

The woman was struggling feebly, flailing with her hands, scrabbling to get out of the car. She sprawled across the ground, her feet still jammed beneath the dashboard, but the upper half of her body dangling out, so that her head banged against the roadside.

Catherine was out of the car and on to her at once, forcing her to the ground, using the knife again. Veins here and here . . . Arms and wrists and thighs. Pulsing, blood-rich flesh . . . Warm ichor-filled sacs. The wetness spurted against her skin again . . .

There was the feel of soft breasts crushing against her, beautiful, exciting – cloven not crested, my dear; now you see – and there was the feeling of lungs collapsing for lack of air and the soft exhaling of breath. As the woman died, Catherine had felt a surge of love for her.

The blood flowed slower and more coolly after that – she died too quickly! thought Catherine. It was too quick. Yes, but you will know better next time.

There were no faithful servants for Catherine, no loyal attendants as there had been for Elizabeth. When the desire was slaked, when the splintered tear in her mind had scabbed over, she was forced to go shivering and nauseated into the depths of the forest, dragging the poor drained corpses across the ground. She buried her own dead deep in the woods, covering them with leaves, shuddering to know that, for all her care, they would be quickly uncovered by prowling weasels and stoats. She always murmured a prayer over the corpses.

She burned her blood-stained garments in the old copper boiler in the dilapidated shed that had once been Varanno’s wash-house. Later, she took to partly stunning her victims with the heavy torch and dragging them into the concealment of the forest. Then she simply stripped and went about her grisly task naked. Her skin gleamed white, but the sliding moonlight turned the blood black. She washed her hair every morning and cleaned her nails meticulously, but she thought that the stench of the dried blood clung to her, and at times her nails were dark where the blood had caked and congealed beneath them.

Elizabeth had never had to bother about disposing of her victims. Csejthe’s Lady would have curled her beautiful lip at the idea. Illona and Dorko took the drained carcasses away and washed the floors so that the castle gulleys ran with red-streaked fluids. They buried the corpses beneath the castle dungeons by night, and in time they both began to carry with them the reek of old dried blood and the stench of decaying flesh.

It was a good day for them all when Illona discovered the neglected stone crypt beneath Csejthe Church and asked why they should not make use of it. Supposing they were to tell the ageing pastor some story of a plague necessitating speedy and secret burial? If anyone could deceive the old fool, you could, Madame, suggested Illona, cunningly.

The failing, devout old man, who had in his care Csejthe and the small scattering of villages surrounding it, was properly shocked to be told that a number of the Countess’s waiting women had succumbed to a virulent form of ague, and innocently grateful for the benefices sent down by the Lady herself. Christian burial, said Illona, handing over the benefices, having counted them first and cannily subtracted a judicious amount by way of payment for herself and Dorko beforehand. Christian burial for them all, but a degree of secrecy to be maintained. People panicked, said Illona wilily, and the Lady did not wish to start an alarm in the village. Was it perhaps possible that they could make use of the crypt?

The old pastor was touched to hear of the young Countess’s concern. And while it was not altogether in keeping with the solemnity which should attend the dead to commit them to their last resting places so furtively, the circumstances were unusual and God would surely understand. As for the disused crypt – well, the pastor could not remember when anyone had given it a second thought. There was no reason why the poor bodies could not be put there, and the proper burial service pronounced that very night.

The pastor thought that it warmed a man’s heart to come across such benevolence. When you had reached the three score and ten prophesied for you, you tended to be a little cynical of the world. But the Countess’s gift had been generous and God’s Church would benefit and there was still goodness in the world. The pastor, being of an orderly turn of mind, even at seventy-three, knotted his kerchief as a reminder to pray not only for the souls of the poor young women but also for the continued well-being of the Countess herself.

He made a second knot so that he would not forget to explain the exact circumstances to the alert young man who was to replace him next month. The good Ponikenus was a devout soul, but sometimes a trifle over-eager. It would not do for him to get the wrong idea about the freshly buried bodies.

It certainly would not do for him to harbour any suspicions against the Countess.

The road that led to CrnPrag was narrow and, although it was negotiable, two cars would not have been able to pass. Catherine saw that the forest was ahead of her: a sprawling black and silver mass, filled with the eerie secret life of all forests. Forests and looking-glasses and mountains were all just a little bit sinister.

She drove on, the Renault’s headlights slicing through the darkness, tiny nocturnal creatures with blurred, transparent wings darting in and out of the beams of light. Thin, creeping fog clung to the ground, and Catherine shivered and turned up the car’s heater. Ahead of me is the place my cousins called the threshold of darkness.

The tiny illuminated clock on the Renault’s dashboard showed four forty-five a.m. The hour before dawn. At this time of the year it would probably not begin to grow light until almost seven. Could she reach CrnPrag and get inside before people were about? Could she find Pietro before CrnPrag’s day began?

The forest was all about her. The undergrowth grew to the very edges of the narrow road, and overhead the branches interlaced so that it was like driving along a dark tunnel.

And then, without warning, the walls were in front of her, and the massive iron gates, lead-lined, were barring her way. Catherine parked the Renault in the trees as far off the road as possible and switched off the engine. For a few moments there was no sound except the ticking of the cooling metal, and the dry rustling of the wind in the trees. Somewhere behind her, she caught the faint screech of an owl as it swooped across the night in search of prey.

She slipped from behind the wheel and stood looking up at the walls of CrnPrag. The trees had grown up to the walls, the branches thrusting against them, and the forest was filled with rustlings and murmurings; and what almost sounded like scuttling feet . . . Was something following her, creeping through the forest towards her? Catherine shook her head angrily. She would not let the old stories, the cousins’ half-serious, half-teasing tales into her mind now.

The walls stretched up and up, faintly glassy in the moonlight and with black, glinting spikes, wickedly sharp on the top. Could she hook the rope over one of them and haul herself up? She would have to be very careful of them. Perhaps she could fold her jacket over the spikes. But she needed to get up there first . . .

She looked back to the half-hidden Renault and an idea formed.

It was difficult, but not as difficult as she had feared to manoeuvre the car through the trees until it was standing against the wall. She would not think about how subtle CrnPrag’s defences might be. You could not electrically charge a wall, could you? She thought you could not. In any case, this was the ghost-ridden black mansion in the forest, and CrnPrag’s own legends would be sufficient to keep intruders out. CrnPrag did not need electronic defences.

She reached inside for the coil of rope, and it occurred to her that there might be something stored in the back that would be of use. Didn’t Bianca always say, half joking, half serious, that she kept a kind of contingency kit in the back in case of a breakdown on a lonely road. ‘My dear, you never know when you might be glad of a weapon to ward off an importune hitch-hiker, or a torch and a rug and a pair of gumboots,’ she said. Her mother’s boots would not fit her, but a torch might be useful later. Catherine opened the passenger door and flipped forward the seat, but as she pushed the door wider, preparatory to climbing into the back, it activated the inside light that garages called the ‘courtesy light’. Catherine sprang out at once, shutting the door. It was a dim light but in the dark forest the car’s interior would have been as bright as a floodlit stage. She walked round to try the boot. Locked. Damn. Had she the key? Yes. She fished it out and inserted it in the boot lock, and at once felt resistance. Something stuck behind the lock? Damn again. She jiggled the key, but the lock refused to give. Lack of oil, of course, although there had been a moment when it had seemed to give, and then stuck. You could almost imagine a hand had clamped down, holding the inner catch in place.

Well, she could not waste any more time on recalcitrant boot locks. The torch was probably out of a battery anyway.

She wound the rope around her waist and clambered carefully on to the car’s bonnet, feeling it give beneath her weight, and then stepped on to the roof. The low branches were within her grasp: she reached up and swung herself into the tree. So far so good.

It was easier than she had expected to loop and knot the rope about one of the spikes, and then fold her jacket over the adjoining ones. She looked down. The drop was not actually as deep on this side. Ten feet? Twelve? Just over twice her own height. Catherine climbed carefully over, holding on to two of the spikes for ballast, looping the rope three times about her wrists. Her hands took the strain and the rope held. Catherine walked backwards down the wall, like an abseiler, and landed easily and silently on the springy grass below.

I am inside CrnPrag.

The trees thinned out on this side of the wall, and she was standing in a small coppice. Bracken and dead leaves carpeted the ground, and there was a drifting scent of wet earth and vegetation.

Catherine left the rope dangling, noting that it was a little to the left of the great gates, directly behind an ivy-covered oak. It would be easy enough to locate it for the return. There was a bad moment when she thought she heard the click of the Renault’s door opening and then closing, but nothing happened, and she thought it was probably only the ticking of the metal cooling. But just for a second it had sounded heart-stoppingly loud. She moved through the undergrowth, melting with the shadows.

Beyond the trees she could see the house itself. In this light it was a black bulk with flat lawns surrounding it. Catherine made out pale windows on the ground floor, and rows of tiny apertures above. There was a central portion and a couple of jutting two-storeyed wings which were probably kitchens or servants’ quarters.

CrnPrag had been modernised and adapted to its present use; even at this distance Catherine could make out telephone and electric cables. The chimneys were cowled and there were vents for the wash-houses. But the house still bore the print of its earlier life, when it would have been some nobleman’s mansion, built in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, bastioned and fortified against the Turks and the pashas who coveted the wild and beautiful Romanian countryside. The crenellations and the battlements that would have adorned its roofline had vanished, but it was possible to make out where they had been.

Five a.m. Catherine thought it was as good a time as any to try to get in. There were no signs of life and there would surely still be an hour or so before most of the occupants began to stir. There might be night staff of some kind, of course, even guards to patrol the grounds. Would this be about the time when they might be expected to check in to some central control? If so, the sound of a door being opened or closed ought not to attract the attention it might attract at two or three o’clock in the morning. She would risk it.

She began to move cautiously through the coppice, grateful for the cover of the trees. The night was filled with slithering shadows and rustlings, and several times she stopped and looked back, sure that something was following her, sure that something was creeping after her through the undergrowth, crouching low as it came . . . Had that been a twig snapping beneath someone’s foot then? Or was it only the wind in the trees? Was it only the pounding of her own heart? But the shadows were silent and still and Catherine moved on.

The trees were becoming sparser and she was nearing the house now. She paused, considering. It would be better not to approach it from the front. She would try to find a side door.

She found it almost without looking: a small, plain door that looked out over what Catherine thought was a kitchen garden. It swung open to her touch, softly and with only a whisper of sound.

Come inside, my dear . . .

Catherine hesitated, because surely it could not be this easy? Surely CrnPrag was guarded more closely than this? Or did they rely on the house’s eerie reputation to keep out prowlers? I don’t know, thought Catherine. I can’t judge. But I’ll have to risk it. If I’m to find Pietro, I’ll have to go in.

She stepped inside and the darkness of CrnPrag closed about her.

Chapter Ten

Hilary found it fairly easy to keep the small Renault in sight. The BMW purred effortlessly through the darkness, the headlights picking out the road. It was also unexpectedly easy to adapt to driving on the right, and to disregard the clutch. Hilary thought she was managing well. And she was keeping the memories at bay.

They were going down the narrow mountain road she remembered rather enjoying on the way to Varanno. Was Catherine returning to Vienna, then? On the left was a sprawling mass of forest, dropping sharply down with only the smallest of parapets for a crash barrier, and on the right the mountains rose steeply up, forming a hard rock wall. It was necessary to keep close to the sheer rock-face, but the BMW hugged the corners. There were no abrupt side turnings from which rumbling lorries might suddenly come roaring out, the jagged-toothed grille filling your windscreen like a nightmare monster belching heat . . . She frowned and shook off the vision and concentrated on the task in hand.

Catherine was driving fairly fast, but Hilary was keeping her well in sight. She was forming and discarding plans as she went; thinking that as soon as Catherine stopped, she would drive straight up and stop alongside. If Ficzko pounced on Catherine the two of them would surely be able to overcome him. How strong were dwarves? Ficzko wouldn’t try to attack Catherine as she was driving would he? It was rather frightening to think of him coiled in the back of the car like that. Hilary found herself glancing nervously into the BMW’s rear.

She had just reached this point in her mind when, without the least warning, something darted across the road and was caught for a moment in the headlights. Something that ran low and crouching and that turned its head to look straight at her. In the glare of the headlights there was the brief, shocking impression of a thick pale face with features like warm, runny tallow. A blurred face. As if it had somehow slipped before it had set. There were two glaring eyes.

Hilary slammed down on the brake and the BMW’s rear end curtseyed. The car skittered wildly across the road, the steering wheel tearing itself out of her hands. The front wing smashed against the sheer rock-face and there was the sickening crunch of metal and the squeal of rubber tearing. The front right-hand corner sagged abruptly. Hilary felt the seat-belt clinch, stopping her from going through the windscreen but smacking against her ribs. The engine stalled and there was a rather dreadful silence.

It was important to keep calm, to discover if she was injured. It was even more important to remember that she was nearly a decade away from that other crash. The winding mountain road was not the road in Hereford with the sleety rain making it shiny and wet, with Sarah at her side chattering about the school play and the Christmas holidays ahead. Eight years since the snarling iron-and-steel lorry monster had lurched out in front of the Mini.

Hilary’s thoughts ran chaotically in and out, like trickles of different coloured liquid, and it was several minutes before she could force her mind to concentrate.

She thought she was not hurt. She was certainly bruised from the snapping-into-place of the seat-belt, but she thought there would have been far more pain if a rib had broken or cracked. I’ve survived again, just as I did before. I’ll hold on to that thought. But I’ve certainly put the car out of commission.

She hit the steering wheel with clenched fists in silent anger and frustration, and winced as the pain from her ribs caught her. But there was no point in sitting here giving way to anger, and she forced her shaking self to unfasten the seat-belt and get out.

She surveyed the damage ruefully. The front tyre had burst when it tore into the rock-face, and the wing was buckled.

I’ve lost Catherine and I’ve crashed the car, and I can’t remember how to change a wheel, even if I ever knew in the first place. And even if I could, the wing’s jammed up against the rock.

And I have no idea where I am, or what that creature was that darted across the road. For a rather dreadful instant it had almost looked human, although probably it had not been. Probably it had been some kind of large, pale animal. You might get all kinds of odd creatures out here. It was important to remain calm and sensible.

Hilary looked about her, her eyes tired and gritty from the unaccustomed long drive, and her limbs cramped.

The countryside was shrouded in darkness – if she had not rushed out of Varanno in such a flurry, she might have thought to bring a torch or even matches – but when she walked a little way along the road, around the sharp blind curve, she saw that high above her, somewhere beyond the sheer rock, were lights.

Lights would mean people and people might mean assistance.

Could she do it? Could she go up to a house in the middle of the night and knock on the door and ask for help?

But I can’t just do nothing, thought Hilary. I’ll have to try.

The lights were higher up than she had thought. Beyond the bend where she had crashed, the rock-face opened up and a narrow track wound upwards. Hilary hesitated. She could still see the lights and they were warm, rather friendly looking lights, as if the people who had made them liked to send out a beacon to lost travellers.

Tramps camping out in ruins somewhere on the mountain? Or some kind of commune, living close to the land? Hilary knew that such things were quite prevalent these days. Greenpeace and back-to-nature movements and New Age travellers. People who grew organic vegetables and ate brown rice and protested against various injustices. They were usually very sincere and rather admirable. But Hilary thought she had better remember that she was in an unknown country and that eight years inside St Luke’s might have blunted her alarm signals. She must not forget that there were cruel, desperate men in the world. Probably there always had been, but probably they were given more publicity these days. She looked back to the dark, lonely road, trying to calculate how long it would take her to run back down the track if the lights turned out to belong to something unpleasant.

The track was fringed by trees and it was unexpectedly easy to climb, rather as if somebody maintained it in a roughish fashion. The night was not quite silent; it was filled with scurryings and patterings, and the occasional beating of wings on the air. It was cold up here and, although there was a faint drift of something sweet – hawthorn? no, not in autumn, you fool – a dank, tomblike odour lay just beneath. Hilary found this faintly sinister.

And then she rounded the last curve in the track and there before her was not the house or the shepherds’ huts or even the gypsy camp she had been half expecting, but something so wholly surprising that a gasp broke from her.

Ahead of her was the crouching bulk of a ruined castle, black and jagged against the night sky.

And within its depths, flickering lights.

Of course it was the stuff of every Gothic horror story ever written or read or remembered. A ruined castle deep in the mountains, in the hinterlands between Romania and the land once known as Transylvania.

Transylvania, the Land Beyond the Forest . . . It was the backdrop of every horror writer’s imagination, every film-maker’s dream. Matthew Lewis’s mad Regency monk. The woman in white who stalked the pages of Wilkie Collins’s novel. And what about the most famous and the most apt of them all: the dark mountain road and the mishap to the car or the carriage, and all those foolish young ladies who knocked on the door of the friendly neighbourhood vampire centre for help?

Am I really doing this? thought Hilary, torn between wry amusement and burgeoning fear. Am I really about to go up to a ruined castle on the borders of Transylvania at three o’clock in the morning and ask for help?

She could see the castle more clearly now and she could see moving lights inside it, rather as if somebody might be going from one room to another, carrying a torch. This seemed to be such an ordinary, everyday thing to do that she felt instantly braver.

The castle was an immense place, set half into the mountainside, its upper sections long-since crumbled, but the lower portions still standing. Black, jagged walls, with the narrow slitted windows of the Middle Ages, jutted upwards like fangs, and on the left was a rearing tower, black and stark, tapering as it reached its zenith, studded with tiny square windows. At the castle centre was a massive square stone entrance, with an iron portcullis.

The nearer Hilary got, the more sinister the castle looked. It was not hard to imagine that all kinds of strange creatures prowled in its cavernous depths: things that peered out and watched your approach and grinned slyly to one another and rubbed their bony hands, and said: oho, a juicy victim approaching . . .

A small narrow wooden bridge led across a deep dark depression that girdled the entire castle. A moat? Yes, but long-since dried. Did that make it less or more sinister? Hilary trod across the rough-and-ready drawbridge warily.

The castle was not as ruined as it had seemed from below. It looked as if there might still be whole rooms that were roofed and habitable. On each side of the portcullis were immense iron brackets that once would surely have held flaming torches to light the path of those who crossed the drawbridge. Thick twists of wood had been thrust into the brackets and, as the dry, cold wind rustled again, it stirred the wood twists into glowing life. Tiny cinders lit and a scent of burning drifted on the air. Then flaring torches had burned here a short while ago.

And the portcullis was raised.

Fear closed about her. What was up here? What was inside the ancient moated castle that was drenched in such menace? What was going from room to room, lighting its way as it went?

She looked behind her to the desolate hillside. The castle’s isolation was complete. From within the shadowy depths, she could hear little scuttlings and patterings and the beating of dry, papery wings. Bats. Did that mean it was nearing dawn? Bats fled from the rising sun, didn’t they? Hilary repressed a shudder. But bats were harmless. Bram Stoker had simply used them as a – what did the novelists call it? – a vehicle for his horror tale.

As Hilary moved forward and passed under the ancient portcullis, the shadow of the ruined castle fell over her.

The walls were charred as if an immense fire had at some time swept the castle, but Hilary saw that her earlier impression had been right: it was not nearly as devastated as it looked from below.

A thin mist was drifting from the mountainside, touching her face with cold, damp fingers, and Hilary shivered and drew the raincoat more closely about her shoulders.

Beyond the portcullis was what would certainly once have been the banqueting hall: a long, stone-floored chamber, barely touched by the fire or even by time. The roof was still in place, and at the far end was a deep old fireplace, the lintel above it cracked and pitted, but otherwise untouched. Huge tapestries hung over stone walls, their colours dim, and at the centre was a long, oaken table.

Hilary moved warily forwards. The flickering lights seemed to have vanished, but at the far end of the hall, partly obscured by a swathe of dusty velvet, a dull red glow emanated from beyond a half-hidden archway. Hilary stood very still. To investigate? To take a chance that the lights were made by nothing more menacing than the Romanian equivalent of New Age travellers? Or to risk it being something else altogether? She thought she was not going to have got this far to run away now. In any case, prowling maniacs and serial killers did not lie in ruined castles waiting for victims to walk up the mountainside to them. They went out into the villages and the towns and took them, though this was not really a good thought to pursue.

As Hilary started to cross to the door, from somewhere behind her she heard the slither of stones as if a soft footfall had disturbed the rubble. She spun round at once, her eyes raking the moonlit hall. Was there something creeping after her? Was there someone – something? – standing watching from the deep shadow at the side of the hearth? She stood motionless, the perspiration cooling between her shoulder-blades. And of course there was no one there; of course there was nothing creeping through the ruins towards her. The hall was deserted.

She crossed resolutely to the archway.

Narrow stairs led almost immediately down, twisting as they went, enclosed by stone walls. The steps were slippery and steep, and worn away a little at the centre, and there was the scent of dust and age.

Hilary did not like underground rooms, even in ordinary-sized houses. She hated cellars and basements, even if they had been made into laundries or games rooms or places for developing photos. But she could still see the lights, a thick, smeary glow that seeped upwards, and so she took a deep breath and began to descend, holding on to the thin rope that was looped into iron staves in the wall.

She could almost feel the great castle crouching over her. Above her head were thick stone buttresses and groynes. Did the castle rest on those? The light trickled across the stair, showing up leering gargoyles on some of the stonework, and Hilary remembered the medieval superstition that gargoyles had once been demons who had walked the world, but had been petrified into stone. This was not at all the sort of thing to remember down here.

She reached the last stair unexpectedly, stumbling and half missing her footing and, as she did so, the light flickered wildly casting fantastical shadows. For a terrible minute, nightmare silhouettes leapt out and gibbered from the darkness, and Hilary felt her heart lurch painfully, and then resume a too-fast beating. The shadows receded. Firelight on the walls, nothing more. And people who lit fires did so to keep themselves warm. Fires were comforting, friendly things.

She moved forward and there before her were the castle dungeons.

They were long and cavernous and they must surely stretch for the entire length and width of the castle. Whoever had built this place had created low stone archways at its depths, partly separating the dungeons from one another, but not quite closing them off. Hilary, who had not really known what she would see but who had been vaguely expecting the classic stone passage with barred cells opening off it, stared in surprise.

The dungeons were a series of echoing crypts, strung out under the castle and, to Hilary’s astonished eyes, they seemed to go on for miles. Velvet and silk cushions had been flung down rather haphazardly in the first cavern, and Eastern rugs were strewn on the stone floors, their once-glowing colours faded and dim. Tapestries similar to the ones upstairs but less faded, lined the walls.

Fires burned in each of the caverns: small glowing cores of light and warmth set in tiny hearths. You might light one fire if you were camping down here, but you would surely not light half a dozen. And no tramp or New Age traveller ever possessed silk rugs or velvet cushions. Hilary moved forward and the wall-hangings stirred in the small current of air. The fire burned up as if a gentle breath had blown on it, and there before her was the most horrific sight she had ever seen.

At the dungeon’s centre was a long table with chairs drawn up to it and the remains of a meal set out. There was a platter of bread and wedges of cheese and cold meat. There were dishes of fruit and flagons of wine and jugs of milk at intervals. The very homeliness of it should have been reassuring.

But Hilary’s mind reeled because this must be a nightmare. Please God, let it be a nightmare.

Seated at the table were creatures so impossibly thin and dried out that for a moment she thought they were not human. They were some kind of mutant insect: wingless stick-things, disproportionately large, gigantica-something.

And then the shadows shivered and she saw that they were unmistakably human. Human bodies, dried out corpses, juiceless. Yellowed skin like thin leather, like old parchment, stretched over their bones, and tufts of sparse dry hair sprouted from nearly bald skulls. Their eyes were open and staring. Dried corpses, thought Hilary wildly. Fossilised human bodies.

There were easily a dozen of them – perhaps eighteen or so – all sitting up to the table as if they had just partaken of a meal. As if they dined and drank and then died where they sat, thought Hilary, appalled and uncomprehending. As if, after they died, they were left for a hundred years.

It was important to remain very calm indeed. There was nothing frightening about poor dead bodies, even like this. Dead bodies were not very nice but they could not hurt you. Hilary thought she ought to be thankful that the poor things had avoided the rotting putrefaction and the decay . . .

She would go back up the stone stairs at once. There was no one here; she would simply have to spend what remained of the night in the ruined castle. That would be better – that would be safer – than sitting on the edge of the dark roadside in the crashed car. In the morning, she could go along the road in search of help. It might be a longish walk, but it would be possible in daylight. She might be able to flag down a passing car. It was absurd and pointless to stand here, staring at the eerie scene in front of her, seeing the fire flickering on the dried-out bodies, so that it lent them a semblance of life. It was only the play of the leaping flames, of course, that was all it could possibly be. But the open eyes were disconcerting. You imagined sight there. And just for an instant, there had been a flicker of movement on the rim of her vision. As if the corpse-creatures might have followed her with their eyes, and as if the firelight had caught the movement. This was so patently impossible as to be ridiculous.

But somebody had lit those fires and somebody had set the table and, by the look of it, it had been quite recent.

Hilary knew that if she was going to spend what was left of the night in the castle she would have to search all the dungeons. They said that people who lived alone, returning home late at night, quite often glanced into each of their rooms as a matter of course. You did not really think you were going to come upon anyone hiding, ready to leap out at you, but it was a sensible thing to do. She would do it now so that she would be sure that no one was hiding, ready to pounce on her. And then she would go back up the stairs and find a warm, dry corner where she could wait until it was light.

Actually walking past the table was nastier than she had expected. In almost all of the corpses, the lips had curled back from the teeth, making the teeth look longer and sharper than they had probably been in life. It was only contraction of the face muscles, of course; Hilary knew this perfectly well. Shrinkage. It would be ridiculous to think they were snarling. It would be even more ridiculous to think they were watching her.

Snarling corpses, propped up around a table . . . Watching her. Several of them were hunched over in the chairs, as if they had fallen, and some of the heads flopped to one side as if the neck stems had snapped, giving them a sinister, crouching appearance. Hanged men, thought Hilary. Wasn’t that how people looked when they had been hanged? Hanged men looking up at me beneath their brows.

They were all dressed more or less normally, although Hilary, trying not to look absolutely directly at them, received the impression that some had a vaguely old-fashioned appearance. Nineteenth century? Even Regency? Most of the women wore jewels that caught the flickering firelight. Probably it was this that had created that fleeting impression of movement earlier. The men wore jackets that looked to be velvet or brocade, although one or two had relatively modern dinner jackets.

Hilary walked forward, trying not to make a sound. She would just glance into the other caverns and then she would leave this grotesque, rather sad place. It was a huge mausoleum, nothing more. Some kind of air-exclusion had preserved the poor, withered bodies. The castle might be owned by anyone, and this might be some eccentric family practice. Vague thoughts of Hapsburg dynasties, of fleeing Russian tsars and of weird shrine-cults darted across her mind.

It might all be some kind of research project. This was a far likelier solution. Scientists working on something innovative and secret. Governmental money – maybe Soviet money or Chinese. Even with the Iron Curtain torn down you never quite knew what the Chinese might be up to.

To turn her back on the strange, silent banquet and go through the second cavern was one of the hardest things Hilary had ever had to do. But it was important to do it. Someone had made those lights she had glimpsed earlier, and someone had lit these fires.

The second cavern was partly hidden by another of the thick velvet curtains, drawn across the archway. Hilary put up a hand to pull it aside and, as she did so, there was a sound from behind her that made her blood turn cold.

The scraping of a chair being pushed back from a table.

Chapter Eleven

Hilary whipped round at once, her hands clenching, ice and fire chasing down her spine.

There, before her, between her and the shadowy stair that led to freedom, were the corpses. On their feet and walking towards her.

They held out their skeletal hands and their eyes were staring and avid.

‘Another one for our feast,’ they said, and their voices were the ugly cracked voices of extreme age. ‘Another one to dine with us and serve us.’

‘Another one for the ritual . . .’

Their heads rolled on their necks and their drawn-back lips stretched in terrible smiles.

‘To the cage with her . . .’

They reached for her, their gait stiff and puppet-like. Hilary backed away, pressing a clenched fist into her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Could she somehow get past them to the stair? How strong were they?

She took a deep breath and, lowering her head, ran straight at them. At once they closed in, their cold, dry hands clutching. Hilary shuddered and pushed out wildly, sending several of them tumbling to the ground, hearing the sickening crunch of brittle bones, hating herself for doing it, but almost beyond feeling.

‘Hold her, hold the fair-skinned one!’ cried the creatures.

‘To the cage with her!’

They were shrieking in her ears, and their shrunken, mummified faces were pressing close to her. Hilary’s senses swam, so that for several dizzying minutes the firelit dungeon tilted and spun.

And then there was a soft padding step behind her and something struck her on the head and the entire grisly scene exploded in a kaleidoscope of starbursts and sky rockets.

A thick, silent blackness descended, and Hilary fell fathoms deep into unconsciousness.

Somebody was screaming, high-pitched, terrified screams that penetrated the black curtain shrouding Hilary’s mind. Above the screaming and beyond it was another sound: a metal, rhythmic clanking. Something menacing. Something inexorable. Machinery?

Hilary frowned and, through a spinning tunnel of semiawareness, heard terse orders being given.

‘Nail the lips!’ someone was shouting. ‘Nail the lips up before the gerons arrive!’

Nail the lips . . .? Hilary struggled against the sick dizziness and heard the machinery again: clanking nightmare winches and cogs grinding and meshing. Somewhere close by was a huge machine that would gobble you up, something relentless that possessed a terrible intelligence so that it would grind your flesh and your bone and grin as it did so . . . All the better to eat you, my dear. . .

The screaming stopped abruptly and, as the sick waves rolled back, memory returned in jagged splinters.

A ribbon of road unwinding endlessly in front of her.

The screech of tyres and the sound of metal crumpling.

Was Sarah beside her again, trapped in the passenger seat . . .?

Hilary opened her eyes and, as her senses steadied, memory filtered back. The misshapen creature darting into the headlights and the spinning swerve across the road to avoid hitting it. The nightmare things in the dungeons.

Not the wet icy road she had driven down eight years ago, but the treacherous mountain highway with the steep rock-face.

I am inside the ruined castle.

She sat up cautiously, and winced as a spear of pain spiked through her temple.

She was in the stone banqueting hall, lying on the floor, half propped against the wall opposite the huge old hearth. Her wrists and ankles were tied and her head was throbbing and she felt rather sick. But she was alive.

The hall was lit by dozens of candles, all of them set in silver holders and branched candlesticks which were placed along the table and in alcoves and on the floor. A nimbus of light haloed each tiny flame, so that a soft radiance lay everywhere. Someone had lit a fire in the deep old hearth and the flames washed the old stones with warmth. For a moment, Hilary saw the banqueting hall as it must once have been: gracious and lovely and strong.

Night still shrouded the mountain outside. Then not very much time can have passed, thought Hilary. Unless I am in tomorrow night? How Lewis Carroll that sounds. I think I would feel much worse if I had been unconscious for twenty-four hours. She wondered who had knocked her out? One of the corpse-things, could it have been? It was extremely nasty to think of those creatures handling her while she was unconscious, tying her and carrying her up here. Surely they would have to have servants or attendants of some kind? And, even as the thought formed, she saw that four or five severe-faced, dark-clad men and women were moving about the hall at the far end, tipping baskets of logs on to the fire, carrying flagons of wine to the long table. The scent of woodsmoke drifted across the hall.

More servants stood grouped at the far end of the hall, half in and half out of the flickering firelight. Several of them had an olive-skinned look, as if they might have come from further east and further south, but some had the unmistakable high slanting cheekbones of Eastern Europe.

Without warning, the door that led to the dungeons was pushed open, and the dark-clad servants stood up, as if to attention.

Through the door, with an almost soundless tread, came the slow-moving corpse-creatures, in what Hilary could only think of as solemn procession, each carrying a single candle. One by one they came, their faces absorbed and intent, chanting something in a tongue Hilary did not recognise, but that sounded so dark and so ancient that she felt an atavistic fear scud across her skin. Every alarm signal, every fragilely preserved instinct inherited from primordial man – who had perforce to know what prowled after him – sprang into quivering life within her.

Because I am hearing something immensely old and hugely powerful and dreadfully evil.

It was like a travesty of every religious procession Hilary had ever watched or joined: Corpus Christi and Midnight Mass. The heart-breaking walks by cripples to the Lourdes’ shrine. But this was the underside of those strong, light-filled ceremonies and rituals; this was something dredged up out of the old pagan world, when dark hungers and greedy lusts stalked the land.

The faces of the corpse-creatures were lit from below by the candles they carried; the scent of the burning candles, mingling with the woodsmoke, might almost have been incense.

The leaping firelight showed up the withered skins, the sticklike arms and legs, the fleshless lips and the tremulous hands. They are crawling up into the light, thought Hilary, twisting round to see better, wincing from a fresh stab of pain in her head. Something is about to happen and they are fumbling their way up to witness it and take part in it, and perhaps even to preside over it. Am I about to be ritually killed in front of them? I don’t think I could bear it. If only I could work these wretched ropes loose! I will not be sacrificed in some disgusting pagan ceremony!

But the ropes held firm and the knots were thick and strong. Whoever had tied her up had been thorough.

As the corpse-creatures took their seats, the candlelight illuminated them more strongly, and unexpectedly they were no longer quite so pitiful. Their eyes were dark and shining with intelligence, and in all of them a high-cheekboned beauty was discernible. The dreamlike quality of everything increased. Am I still concussed from that blow to the head?

At the far end of the table, the silent attendants stood as if awaiting orders; with them was what Hilary first took to be Ficzko. Her heart leapt with new fear – was I decoyed here by Catherine? – and then she saw that it was not Ficzko, but a small, stunted creature clearly from the same root: ugly and swart, but recognisably masculine. The face was scooped out of thick tallow, the features lopsided as if someone had smeared a hand over the tallow before it had set. It was the face that the BMW’s headlights had picked out; the hunched-over creature that had darted across the road and caused her to crash.

The corpse-creatures were seated now, and the one at the table’s head gestured imperiously to the two servants. And, although his hand was withered and the skin was crumpled and age-spotted, it was a slender, patrician hand. It was a hand used to making arrogant, I-will-be-obeyed gestures, or to curling with indolent grace about the slender stem of a crystal wine chalice . . . Hilary blinked and clutched at the fast-vanishing remnants of reality.

The attendants and the dwarf moved in instant obedience to the man’s wordless command, and the corpse-creatures turned and, as one, looked towards the far end of the hall.

High above the long table, suspended from a winch, hung a huge, cylindrical cage, a device created by a nightmarish intelligence: an oval structure, perhaps four feet in height, perhaps eighteen inches across, so that an ordinary-sized human would just manage to squeeze inside. It was made of gleaming iron blades secured by metal hoops, and the metal spikes were so arranged that, in the flickering light, they grinned. It was the disembodied face of an iron monster hovering in the shadows, its iron teeth grinning, waiting to snap you up . . . The door hung open, but when it was slammed the spikes would pierce whatever was inside. I’m still in a nightmare, thought Hilary in horror. I’m still unconscious and everything’s distorted.

Something was moving behind the iron bars. Something that heaved and scrabbled at the cage, and something that was impossibly white fleshed . . . As the evil device swayed a little in the warmth from below, the chains that held it grating, Hilary, still straining to see properly, received the fleeting image of something not human; something that beat helplessly against the bars in terrible silence.

‘Nail the lips together. . .’ Had someone said that, or had it been part of the nightmare?

Because whatever is in the cage, whether it is human or not, its mouth has been nailed shut to prevent it from screaming, only it has tried to scream anyway, tearing its lips to bloody tatters . . .

Hilary’s heart began to race as the impassive servants reached up to wind the contraption along the pulleys over the table. Inside the cage was the outline of a slender, barely developed female shape covered in a short, sleeveless white robe. A fall of pale hair.

The dwarf said in a thick, guttural voice, ‘A good capture, masters. One to use well.’

He sounds exactly like Ficzko, thought Hilary wildly. A brother, a cousin? Is that German he’s speaking. She had just about understood the dwarf’s words, but she thought he was using a kind of patois.

‘A good capture,’ said the one who had gestured to the servants, leaning forward and studying the cage intently. Yes, they were speaking what was probably Austrian-German. Hilary thought she could manage to follow it enough to guess fairly accurately what was happening, and then wondered whether it might be better not to know.

The man said, ‘Where did you get this one, Janos?’ His eyes were still on the caged girl, and Hilary could see that he was wearing a crimson velvet jacket – a smoking jacket, could it be? When did men last wear smoking jackets? I don’t believe any of this is happening, thought Hilary. I was concussed when I crashed the car. And then struck on the head. This is all a delusion. Please God, let it be a delusion.

‘Yes where did you get her, Janos?’ put in another. ‘You know the rule. Nothing that will draw attention to us.’

The dwarf, Janos, grinned, showing stumplike teeth. ‘A runaway, this one,’ he said. ‘A discontented pretty bird who wanted bright lights and rich living. I take the pretty bird for you.’ His speech was slow and stumbling, as if he were unused to speaking much, or as if he might be a bit retarded. ‘I let her sing,’ he said, with sudden slurry mirth. ‘I let her sing, and I hear her scream until her throat bursts.’

‘If she is a runaway, she is unlikely to be missed,’ said the man who had spoken first, and a little rustle of satisfaction went through the corpse-creatures.

‘What about this one?’ said the woman, indicating Hilary.

‘A traveller. English. Pretty.’

‘She is a long way from home. Was she alone?’

‘Alone,’ nodded Janos.

‘Very well.’ They dismissed Hilary and turned back to the cage.

The wall-torches were burning up more strongly now, and Hilary saw for the first time the glint of steel embedded in the swollen bruised flesh of the girl’s mouth – yes, she had been right, it was a girl, barely sixteen or so. And her lips had been stapled together with steel slivers, each one at least an inch in length. Wild visions of medieval tortures – the scold, the brank – flooded Hilary’s mind, and she could see now that the girl’s jaws and neck were spattered with blood and saliva, and that the once-red flesh of her lips was bruised and blackened and crusted with dried blood. Dear God, there must be something I can do to rescue her! And then, with cold fear: and once they have dealt with her, it will be me!

She thought she gasped; she certainly struggled against the bonds, and at once the nearest of the corpse-creatures turned to regard her. He had a narrow, high forehead and the slightly aquiline nose of a patrician. His lips were thin and cruel, and he was studying her from smouldering dark eyes. But inside the dark red velvet jacket, his body was thin and shrivelled and the hands resting on the table were barely more than finger-bones and knuckles, thinly veiled with skin. He is a travesty, thought Hilary, torn between enormous pity and a churning revulsion. He is sapless, husked dry.

But when the man spoke, she heard for the first time the once-beautiful musical tones under the cracked note of age.

‘You are thinking it will soon be your turn in the cage, my dear,’ he said, and Hilary heard with a start that he spoke in English. He smiled. ‘Is it not courteous to use the native language of one’s guest?’ he said and, without waiting for her response, ‘You are, of course, right to think we shall put you in the cage,’ he said.

‘But we like our prisoners to understand why they are caught,’ said a second.

‘And Janos picks well,’ said one of the women, studying Hilary. ‘He has developed the art of luring travellers up here. And he has an instinct for females who travel alone.’

‘All our family have that instinct,’ said the first.

‘But particularly the females,’ said the woman sharply.

Hilary said, firmly, ‘Why have you imprisoned me? Why have you put that girl in a cage?’ And was pleased to hear that she sounded calm and very nearly unafraid. At least she was not trembling and begging them to let her go. Not yet.

The nearer of the men regarded her. His eyes were the coldest that Hilary had ever seen. She shivered, and the man said, ‘We take prisoners so that we can survive.’

‘We take them for the blood,’ said the woman. She was as frail and shrunken as the men, but incredibly there were traces of cosmetics on her face: rouged lips and cheekbones. Her hair, which must once have been thick and glossy, was caught up into an elaborate coil and threaded with what Hilary thought were seed-pearls. She wore a rich dark velvet robe, laced with silver and, as she spoke, she leaned forward, resting her chin on her little clawlike hands. Hilary shuddered.

‘The blood is necessary,’ said the woman. ‘The Lady knew that and we know it as well. But it was the Lady who discovered it.’

‘“The Lady”?’ said Hilary, wild notions of some unsuspected Maryan sect flickering on her mind.

‘Our ancestress,’ rejoined the man.

‘Sometimes called Our Lady of Pain,’ said the woman, and Hilary jumped all over again at the warped mirror-image of her thoughts.

‘You are inside Csejthe you know, my dear,’ said the first man, softly and, as Hilary stared, not understanding, he said, ‘This is the Lady’s castle.’

‘Where she immersed her body in the fresh warm blood of young girls in order to preserve her beauty,’ said the woman. ‘That was why she sought the help of the ancient gods. So that she would be forever young and lovely.’

‘Is that what you are doing now? You are – you take prisoners for – for their blood?’ Even as her lips framed the words, her mind was already rejecting them. But the first man said:

‘Yes,’ and the affirmative was cold and detached.

Hilary felt revulsion crawl over her skin. I don’t believe any of this. She said, carefully, ‘But – surely that is impossible.’

‘Impossible, is it?’ said the man and, and in the candlelight, his eyes were dark and penetrating. ‘To you perhaps it is. But the Lady had the secret,’ he said. ‘Beauty that never faded . . .’

He paused and, at his side, the woman said, ‘She was the most beautiful creature you would ever see. And even at the end, they never got the secret out of her.’

‘She was betrayed,’ said another of the men. ‘We all know it. Her own pastor, Ponikenus, the pastor of Csejthe itself, betrayed her. He was young and eager and he carried tales of her to the Grand Palatine of Upper Hungary.’

‘Ponikenus hated her,’ said the woman. ‘From the moment he arrived at Csejthe, he saw her as evil and he vowed to be rid of her. He never understood, of course. None of them understood.’ There was a pause, as if the creatures were sharing some secret knowledge.

Hilary said, carefully, ‘Why are telling me all this?’

‘Because you should understand why you must die,’ said the man with faint surprise, rather as if she were questioning some long-established piece of chivalry. He leaned forward again. ‘Four hundred and fifty years ago, our ancestress lived here. It was here that she discovered the ancient secret that became our legacy.’

‘Legacy?’

The man smiled. ‘Immortality,’ he said softly, and a listening silence fell about the table.

Hilary stared at them. After a moment, she said, ‘But – that’s impossible. Immortality . . . It’s medieval superstition.’

‘Is it?’ said the man, and in the soft light his eyes were dark and penetrating. ‘Are you so sure?’ He lifted a hand to indicate the creatures grouped about the table. ‘You see us. How old do you suppose we are?’

At his side the woman laughed. ‘We have the legacy,’ she said. ‘The legacy of Elizabeth Bathory.’

Elizabeth Bathory. Bathory. Catherine’s people.

‘The immortality of the Blood Countess of Csejthe,’ said their leader. And now, my dear, you shall see it for yourself.’ He nodded to the waiting attendants. ‘Proceed.’

If Hilary could have done anything to save the imprisoned girl, she would have done it. Her mind was reeling and her head was spinning with disbelief and fear, but she thought she would have tried to save the girl if there had been a way. You did not just stand by and see another human being slaughtered. There was nothing she could do. She was too tightly bound and there were too many of them. There were the servants as well, six or eight of them, although it was difficult to be sure because they moved to and fro all the time: replenishing the wine, relighting candles that flickered out, or throwing more logs on to the fire.

Three of them were lowering the cage, using a clanking pulley system that grated on Hilary’s ears. At last it hung just above the corpse-creatures’ heads, and Hilary saw them shiver in anticipation and heard the low murmur.

‘The incantation . . .’

‘Elizabeth’s incantation . . .’

The cage was swinging frenziedly as the girl inside writhed and beat her hands against the sides and there was the cold scrape of metal. Hilary saw that thin chains bound her wrists and ankles.

The corpse-creatures’ voices were swelling in a pulsating chant, and their voices shivered and spun and filled the stone hall. The firelight leapt and pranced across the ceiling, twisting about the terrible cage, showering the girl with a crimson cloak.

‘Isten took nine stems of glory

And he killed the serpent which split into nine pieces;

Since then the nine herbs have had power against the nine evil spirits,

Against the nine poisons and the nine infections,

Against the red poison, against the disgusting poison,

Against the white poison, against the purple poison,

Against the yellow poison, against the green poison,

Against the black poison, against the blue poison,

Against the brown poison, against the crimson poison,

Against the prick of the serpent, against swelling by water,

Against the thorn and that of the thistle,

Against swelling from ice and against that from poison.’

And then, in a single terrible cry that filled the ancient hall, ‘Pierce the skin!’ They stumbled and jostled one another, clawing their way along the sides of the table until they were standing beneath the cage, holding their hands up with a supplicatory gesture that made the hairs prickle on Hilary’s skin.

‘Now!’ they cried, and their voices shivered with hunger and anticipation. ‘Do it now!’

The servants reached up with a long heavy iron stave and slammed the cage door shut. The door spikes rammed home and there was a terrible wet squelching sound, and the girl jerked and shuddered, blood spouting from her in a dozen different places. It cascaded on to the waiting creatures and Hilary saw with horror that they held up their cupped hands to catch it, smearing their skins. Their eyes were glowing with ecstasy and their lips were drawn back from their teeth. Warm fresh blood. Dear God, this is unbelievable. Make them stop. Let me get free.

Ugly sounds were filling the hall, wet glottal gruntings, and the girl jerked and writhed, bloodied foam covering her face. The watching creatures were shrieking with inhuman excitement, their faces turned up to the cage in the way that an animal turns its face up to the sun. Seeking the blood.

The girl was not quite dead. She was still struggling feebly, her hands in bloodied tatters as she beat against the bars. Hilary began to pray that she would die quickly. She could see the dark thick blood of internal wounding, and guessed that the spikes had pierced the girl’s liver and stomach. It was a dreadful way to die.

Blood was still dripping from the floor of the cage, but it was a thin watery flow now. Then she is dying or already dead, thought Hilary and, as if in echo of this, the corpse-creatures set up a high-pitched keening.

‘Dying! Cooling! Bring it down! Bring it down!’

‘All done!’

‘A weakling to die so quickly!’

‘The servants have missed their mark!’ cried the woman who had spoken to Hilary, and Hilary saw the dark-clad attendants glance uneasily at one another.

The corpse-creatures fell upon the cage as it was hauled down by the servants, scrabbling at the door and wrenching it open. The girl half fell out, her limbs streaked with her own blood. The iron bars were darkened and shiny-wet, and Hilary saw that she had been right: there was the dark thick blood of internal bleeding on the dead girl’s white gown. The corpse-creatures were mauling over the drained body, pawing it this way and that, lifting blood-smeared hands to their faces and necks, intent on extracting the last few drops. They turned to look back to where Hilary lay, their jowls dripping with gore.

And then, as if a command had been given, they stood up and moved back from the drained body, and the indefinable air of patricians descended about them again. They stood up straighter, and their skin was softer and smoother. Their eyes shone.

When their leader spoke again, his voice held the silken purr that Hilary had caught earlier on and, when he smiled, for the first time it was uncannily Franz-Josef’s smile.

He said, softly, ‘You see, my dear.’ He spread his hands to indicate his companions. ‘Elizabeth Bathory’s legacy works.’ And then, looking at the waiting servants, ‘And now that she knows what is ahead of her, you may take her down to the dungeons.’

Chapter Twelve

Michael had rather enjoyed his day. He had remembered the inn and Tobias, its companionable owner, and he thought he was coping rather well with the practicalities of being on his own for the first time.

There had been a sense of achievement in showering and changing before dinner on the night of his arrival: in finding and putting on a fresh shirt and a corduroy jacket that he remembered as being dark brown, and in knotting a tie which Hilary had labelled with a square velcro tab, which meant it was tan or beige or something that would go with brown. Square velcro meant toning browns and creams. Round was all shades of blue and diamond-shaped was maroons and reds.

‘Vanity, Sister Hilary,’ he had said when she explained the small arrangement, but she had said there was no point in wearing clashing colours or putting on a dinner jacket by mistake when you were only going into Sainsbury’s for a loaf of bread. The velcro shapes would make life easier. Michael was going to make a grand ceremony of ripping them all off after Istvan restored his sight.

He had found his way unaided to the small coffee room where dinner was served, and he had asked Tobias what could be ordered.

‘There is our version of the Russian beef stroganoff,’ said Tobias, apparently happy to wait on the pleasure of his guest. ‘Or there is a local dish called galuska which is very good. Smoked pork, tomatoes, wild mushrooms and soured cream.’

Michael had the galuska, which was wholly delicious. Tobias regretted that he did not keep what the English gentleman would call an extensive wine cellar, but the grapes of Hungary itself were very good, and he had a very reasonable Merlot which he could recommend.

‘Recommend away, Tobias. I’m in a very reasonable mood.’

The wine was excellent and to follow it there was a creamily ripe Stilton. Michael found it unexpectedly pleasant to sit at his table in the coffee room, sipping brandy, half listening to the desultory talk of the locals drinking in the adjoining bar. Tomorrow he would begin work. There would be people to talk to here: people who might remember the Bosnian refugees of a year ago. A year was not so very long, and it might be possible to trace them. And Tobias himself might be of some help in identifying the castle where Michael had glimpsed that strange, grisly feast. Castles out here were two-a-penny, and ruined castles were a farthing each, but Michael thought he could describe it fairly accurately.

After breakfast the next morning, he made his way to the bar: a short walk along a carpeted passage, two steps down and reach for the door handle. I’m coping, he thought, pleased. And in the same breathspace: I don’t want to cope; I want to see again.

The bar smelt of woodsmoke and old seasoned panelling. Michael found this not unpleasant. He had brought from his room the small battery-operated dictaphone which he always used for interviews.

Tobias, approached at the inn’s somnolent hour of ten-thirty in the morning, expressed himself delighted to talk with the English journalist. He himself had come to Debreczen over forty years ago; he had had this inn which was perhaps fifteen kilometres from the town for almost twenty-five. There was the inevitable hopeful pause and Michael responded with automatic politeness.

‘That surprises me. You have the voice of a young man, Tobias.’ He felt the small pleased ruffle of acknowledgement; the slight expansion, the deprecatory huffing out of breath.

But yes, Tobias had been here since his people had been driven out of their homes in a war which Herr Devlin would be too young to remember. It had been a war filled with atrocities of the worst possible kind, and Tobias did not forget it. Because of it he had an immense sympathy with other beleaguered peoples fleeing from warlords.

Warlords. Michael had always found it an evocative word. It smacked of J.R.R. Tolkien. But he set the tape, feeling for the triangular-shaped record button, and explained that this was only an informal discussion; he had returned to Austria primarily to consult a famous Viennese eye-specialist, but he was also hoping to inquire into the plight of refugees fleeing from the Serbian aggressors. It might be that there was a story of interest to be written about how far the exiled people were able to travel, and how they coped with such things as checkpoints and barriers and the lack of papers. Stories of human interest. But for these few days he was doing nothing more specific than gathering general background. Tobias would not be worried by the recording machine?

It appeared that Tobias would not be worried at all. He knew of such things, naturally; his two granddaughters had many machines for recording and playing music, most of it far too loud, but it was what all the young people did these days. In Tobias’s day there had not been such things, but the world was a remarkable place now. It would be a happiness to tell what he could. His wife was engaged in preparing the food for the evening’s consumption and they would not be interrupted. They would take a measure of slivovitz each and Herr Devlin would perhaps not find it a discourtesy if Tobias applied himself to the polishing of the glasses while they talked?

‘Of course not.’

And yes, of a surety, the war in Yugoslavia was a terrible thing, as was all war, said Tobias sombrely. To be driven from a homeland was the deepest sadness.

Michael, who had nearly choked on the fiery slivovitz at first encounter, and was now sipping it with respectful caution, said, ‘You have perhaps come across refugees here? Debreczen itself is very far from the centre of fighting, but when I was here last I came across several Bosnian families on the eastern outskirts—’

‘That is entirely possible,’ said Tobias. ‘We have known refugees here, not once, but many times. Many of the villages surrounding Debreczen are places of sanctuary. As long as I have been here, refugees have come. No, I do not know why it should be so. In the 1950s there were the Hungarians who had tried to break the Soviet Union’s dictatorship and failed. There were Czechoslovakians who attempted the same thing in the late 1960s. More recently there have been Romanians . . .’

‘Well, you’re within pretty easy reach of all those countries,’ said Michael, although this was more than he had bargained for.

‘The Romanians were fleeing from Ceauşescu,’ said Tobias, ‘in 1989 or so. And then lately there are Bosnians.’

Michael said, thoughtfully, ‘And all of them come here.’

‘Yes.’ Tobias set down the glasses and Michael felt him lean forward. ‘You are thinking it is strange to have so many – what would you put it . . .?’

‘Diverse nations.’

‘Thank you, diverse nations, yes. Over the years – many years – all to come to a place that is off the made-up road.’

‘Beaten track,’ said Michael automatically. ‘Yes. You will allow, Tobias, that it is odd. Why here?’

‘This has been a place of sanctuary ever since I am here. Perhaps before. There are groups of people who help the homeless—’

‘Charitable associations?’

‘Thank you, charitable associations to bring people out of war.’

‘Red Cross, Amnesty International, Liberty—’ began Michael.

‘Yes, all of those. But also,’ said Tobias, and it seemed to Michael that he lowered his voice, ‘also there is Tranz.’

Tranz. Something deep within Michael’s mind sprang to attention. There was no logical reason why the single word should drop into his mind like a stone into a deep black pool, but it did.

Tranz. Meaning to bring across. Meaning to cross barriers. Is it this that I have been searching for? Is this the key?

He set down his glass. ‘Tell me about Tranz,’ he said.

To begin with it was not very much. As Tobias talked, that first prickle of awareness faded, and Michael was able to listen properly, each layer of his mind registering facts. The tape recorder whirred.

‘Tranz exists for very many years,’ said Tobias. ‘It is known as a private concern, a family concern – that is so far as anyone knows anything about it at all, you understand. As the father or the grandfather dies, so the next takes up. Or so we believe. But it is nearly fifty years since Tranz brought some of my own people out of Poland, and now it is others who flee from greedy madmen. Tranz brings them all here.’

Tranz brings them all here . . . There it was, the suggestion, very faintly, of someone manipulating the homeless, drawing into a net the wounded and the vulnerable. Michael’s mind argued that it was quite possible that some kind of private charity existed, something that was passed down within a family, generation to generation. If so, it was rather admirable. But why have I never heard of it?

He was aware of his journalist’s instincts working overtime, and also of something else: something ancient and deeply buried spiking across his mind.

There is something more here than a refugee organisation. There is something much more than that. I can feel that there is!

Rubbish! said his logical side. This group, this Tranz is simply a minor, little-publicised organisation.

But why have I never heard of them? In my work I could not have failed to do so.

Tranz. To go beyond the barriers.

He leaned forward, and felt instantly the black, blank wall that enclosed him. Damn! If only I could see! But he fought for balance; he said, ‘Tobias, what is Tranz? Who is behind it?’

‘That I do not know. Nobody knows. Only that it is very charitable, very wealthy. It is said that within it are doctors, bankers . . . Private money to bring the helpless out of wars.’

‘And take them – where?’

‘Who can say?’ There was an unmistakable withdrawal now. Why? Fear? Michael changed gear smoothly and imperceptibly.

‘Tobias, you fled from Poland: you understand about exile.’

‘Exile. Yes. You are too young to remember,’ said Tobias, and Michael heard him pause in his polishing of the glasses. ‘But you are intelligent and widely travelled. You will know the stories. All of us fleeing – Poles, Jews. There were many Jews with us. And, casting that long black shadow over us all, the Austrian dictator. That was true living evil. Perhaps not at the start. Perhaps not when he spoke of having a dream.’

‘I have a dream . . .’ Evocative words. Sometimes the dream was genuine and good and sometimes it was dark and warped. History’s evil underside. For every Martin Luther King there was a Saddam Hussein. For every Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela there was a Rasputin. History was littered with the names of the cruel greedy madmen in whom the dream had distorted.

‘The Austrian dictator,’ said Michael, softly. ‘Adolf Hitler.’

‘My family took a vow never to speak his name. But he had the force, he could sway the crowds who came to listen to him. I saw him once speaking at Nuremburg. The crowd was ready to worship him. It was as if he was casting a spell.’ The squeaking of the polishing cloth against the glasses continued.

‘I have seen news footage of him,’ said Michael. ‘I understand.’

Tobias said, ‘It is a long time ago, but I do not forget. So many of us – children, old people – we believed we were running from the atrocities—’

‘But in fact you were running towards them,’ finished Michael. ‘Of course. You came to Hungary, but Hungary was to be occupied by the Nazis, just as Poland had been. Almost all of Europe fell.’

‘Yes. We came here, as many were to come after us. My parents had heard of an organisation that would give help: shelter, food. We thought we would be safe.’ He paused. ‘The organisation was Tranz,’ he said, and there was a brief silence so that the only sound in the room was the hissing of the tape. This had not been quite what Michael had been angling for, but his journalist’s instincts were guiding him. He waited, and presently, Tobias said:

‘We came to this place from my home, which was near to Silesia. A place called Oświęcim. You do not know of it?’

‘No.’ But the name brushed Michael’s consciousness with a faint breath of unease.

‘Perhaps you would not. We came here, and we found that on the border between Hungary and Romania was being created one of the greatest epicentres of the Nazis’ evil. My family escaped it, but there were many who came with us who did not. Tranz brought us into the centre of the monster’s net, Mr Devlin.’

‘Deliberately?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can you tell me about it?’ said Michael. ‘About Tranz?’

‘It is not good to speak, but I will tell what I know.’ Tobias’s voice faded a little, as if he might have turned away from Michael for a moment, to check that the door was properly closed. Then he began to speak again.

‘A little way from here, perhaps an hour’s drive, deep in the mountains, there is a house. I am unsure whether it is in Hungary or Romania. Perhaps it is in neither. Once it was the house of aristocrats, but it passed out of their hands many many years ago. It has a strange history, that house.’ He paused again. ‘The legends about it are many and some are plainly fiction. But there is one that is believed to be true.’

‘Yes?’

‘Early in 1941,’ said Tobias, ‘the house came under the sway of the Austrian dictator. It was not known to the world outside, but in the villages hereabouts, everyone came to hear the stories. Little by little, they leaked out.’ He paused and Michael waited. ‘It was the Nazis’ most secret place,’ said Tobias. He was speaking softly now and Michael touched the volume control of the tape.

‘My family were more fortunate than most; we had a little money which we managed to bring with us, and we found people to help us. My parents acquired this inn – I do not know the details, but my grandfather had been a wine merchant and perhaps he had connections. In the end we did not need Tranz. But many of those who came out of Poland with us were not so fortunate. They had nothing. They were wholly dependent on Tranz.’ Michael heard his voice drop again. ‘Mr Devlin, whole families vanished. Young girls—’

‘What happened?’ said Michael.

‘They were taken to the old house in the mountains. To Tranz’s headquarters. They believed they were going to a sanctuary, to a place where they could have shelter until they could begin to rebuild their lives.’

‘But – they were not?’

‘None of them was seen again,’ said Tobias. The bar counter creaked a little as he leaned forward. ‘Memories out here are long,’ he said, ‘and even today, you will find people here, old men and women, who heard screams or saw inexplicable things, creatures—’

Inexplicable creatures . . .

The embers of memory that had eluded Michael earlier stirred into grisly life. He said, in a whisper, ‘You referred to Oświȩcim earlier and I had not heard of it. But that was because it was known to the world by another name, Tobias?’

‘Yes. It is not as Oświȩcim that it is remembered today.’

Michael felt the horror prickling his skin. He heard his voice say, ‘Auschwitz.’

‘I was a child at the time, and so I can only give you what is called hearsay,’ said Tobias. ‘But my family believed – everyone believed that the old mansion became a death camp in the way that Auschwitz did. It was the only explanation for the disappearances.’

‘Why the only explanation . . .’ Michael stopped, knowing what Tobias was going to say.

‘Those who vanished were all Jews,’ said Tobias. ‘In Poland at that time there were many Jews.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘There was much secrecy, but it was whispered that Himmler visited the house many times.’ He resumed his polishing. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘even though it is many years since Himmler and his Gestapo died, the stories have not quite died with them. The people in the countryside surrounding the mansion will tell you that they see strange lights burning, and that creatures not quite human are occasionally glimpsed. Tradesmen, people delivering bread or milk, have seen odd things; such people gossip. And because people have long memories out here, they remember that other time, half a century ago now. When people disappeared and in particular when young girls disappeared.’

Tobias paused again, and then said, ‘The mansion was directly under the control of Himmler. And under Himmler worked one of the most ruthless, cruellest of all the Nazis . . .’

He stopped, and Michael said, softly, ‘Mengele.’

‘Yes.’

Michael said, abruptly, ‘This mansion . . . what is it called?’

Tobias hesitated. And then he said, in a voice so low that Michael nearly missed it:

‘CrnPrag.’

CrnPrag. The threshold of darkness. Michael had sufficient knowledge of the language to make a rough translation. And within CrnPrag’s walls had been created this oddly secret organisation that gave sanctuary to the exiled and the homeless and the wounded. To the very ones whose disappearance could not be questioned . . .

CrnPrag, allegedly the lair of Nazis. Could Tranz have been created to serve Mengele’s grisly experiments? The experiments on twins, the infecting of healthy people with cancer, syphilis . . .

The people in the countryside surrounding the mansion will tell you that at times strange lights burn there, and that creatures not quite human are occasionally glimpsed. Was a grisly chapter in history being recreated?

It could not be possible. Gossip was always suspect, and people inevitably embroidered a tale. It was important to remember that.

But something was happening. Something dark and evil, and something that had its roots in the past. I can feel it! cried Michael silently. A secret, apparently charitable organisation bringing refugees from such far-apart places as Czechoslovakia and Poland and Bosnia and taking them to a house in the mountains. Young girls. Baby farms?

It was the stuff of every modem horror story. It was entirely incredible. Such things could surely not happen today?

But what about the grisly feast Michael himself had witnessed? What about the strange, shrivelled beings propped up around the long table in the ruined castle? And how near had that ruined castle been to CrnPrag?

Creatures not quite human dwelling near to a place where Mengele had practised the grisliest, the most feared of all the Nazis’ atrocities: genetic engineering.

The creation of Adolf Hitler’s Super Race.

Chapter Thirteen

Hilary lay on a stone floor, her mind tumbling with panic and disbelief. None of this is happening. Eternal beauty, immortal life . . . Have those corpse-creatures really lived longer than the normal span? The eternal beauty had faded a bit, but in the candlelight there had been an unmistakable awakening, a flicker of something that Hilary could not entirely explain. A rejuvenating.

She was lying on a layer of straw in a small cell and there was a sour stench of ingrained dirt and stale blood. They had brought her down here after they had finished with the girl in the terrible cage; the smear-featured Janos had lifted her and there had been a brief space when she had smelt the stench of him: unwashed flesh and greasy hair and stale sweat. She thought she had not entirely fainted, but her head was still pounding from the blow earlier, and her senses were spinning. She was angry at fainting, because she had wanted to see all she could and discover whether there was any chink in these people’s armour.

She had floated in and out of consciousness as Janos carried her; there was a dim memory of stone stairs winding to a smaller, colder part of the castle. Two of the impassive servants had gone ahead of them. She thought they had not passed through the stone crypts again, but she was not absolutely sure about this.

She considered her surroundings. There was a feeling of black, bitter agony down here, and sick despair, but it was important not to notice this. At her back was a hard cold stone wall with a jutting shelf, and straw spread on it. In front of her were thick iron bars, embedded into the floor and the rock ceiling. A dungeon. A prison cell, a small room roughly eight feet square, hewn out of the thick, solid rock of the castle’s bowels, so that three of its walls were hard cold rock, but the fourth was of iron bars. A small gate was fashioned out of the bars and fitted with an immense padlock. Hilary crawled forward and curled her hands about the bars. Locked. Of course it would be locked. Beyond the cell was a passageway, and directly outside were burning torches thrust into iron wall-brackets. The flickering light cast eerie shadows on the walls, but Hilary was inexpressibly grateful to whoever had lit the torches.

A small jug of water had been left on the rock shelf, along with a bowl containing a wedge of bread and cubes of meat and cheese. In the other corner stood a metal bucket. Hilary glanced at it and grimaced. But the water in the jug was cold and fresh, and she sipped it gratefully. The sick feeling began to recede a little, and she moistened a small piece of the bread in the water and pressed it to her temples. Better. And I am still alive and more or less undamaged. What now? The thought: I wish Michael was here, slid unbidden into her mind.

For an unmeasurable space of time she fought despair. Despair was the worst sin of all: worse even than murder. Despair was a giving up of hope, a distrust of God. There would be a way of escape; she would believe that there would.

Janos brought food to her again, at what she thought might be midday. There was a bowl of a thick, rather coarse substance, neither quite porridge nor quite soup, but something between the two. There was a pitcher of milk. Hilary ate and drank because it was important to take sustenance if she was to escape. The food was not very nice, but it was more or less edible.

She thought she was quite alone down here. There was no sense of other prisoners nearby, which would have been a comfort. She might have managed to communicate and perhaps some kind of plan could have been made. Did the corpse-creatures keep their other prisoners down here? A larder until they needed blood? It was a grisly thought.

She would have to escape before night fell again. She would have to get out before they crammed her into the cage and slammed the door.

Was there any way in which she could overpower Janos, or whoever next brought a meal or a drink, or came down to check on her? If there had been anywhere in the cell to hide, she might have hidden and then leapt out. Was there a weapon she could use? The water jug? Strangling with her rosary beads? Don’t be absurd, said Hilary to Hilary. If it’s Janos, he’d fell you with one hand. And the rosary beads would snap, never mind the desecration . . . But at least I’m hanging on to a sense of humour, she thought wryly.

And then, as she sat curled in the straw, occasionally touching a prayer for comfort, she remembered that the girl inside the cage had been alive: they had stapled her lips to prevent her from screaming, but they had kept her alive and aware. They had needed to keep her alive and aware for the blood to flow.

The glimmering of an idea began to form.

As the day wore on, the tugging unease generated by Tobias’s sinister little story became mingled with a different unease in Michael’s mind. Hilary. Why had Hilary not telephoned as arranged to report their safe arrival at Varanno?

Lunch came and went: a huge salad with smoked chicken livers, dressed with pumpkin-seed oil. There was fresh, crusty bread, and strong, fragrant coffee. Michael ate and drank without tasting. At intervals he touched the small Braille watch on his wrist. Three o’clock. Four.

It was absurd to want this assurance that Hilary had arrived at Varanno safely. It was entirely ridiculous not to be able to get her out of his mind. He was acting like an adolescent. He could have no part in Hilary’s life – in Sister Hilary’s life – nor she in his. He would miss her – that wry irony – but only in the way he sometimes missed other good friends. She had become a good friend. And Michael would feel more comfortable if he could know that she had reached Catherine Bathory’s house safely, and been made welcome. It was nothing more than that.

Something absurdly simple might have delayed them. A mechanical problem might have developed miles from anywhere which could have resulted in a long, frustrating walk to a garage or a phone. A tyre might have punctured. It might be something as ridiculously simple as the phone at Varanno being out of order. But it might not. Supposing there had been a crash, or the car had been hijacked by a covetous hitch-hiker? Supposing one of them had been taken suddenly ill?

Five-fifteen. Michael drank a cup of tea and lay on his bed trying to listen to Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto on the Walkman. Impossible. The first movement was a prowling, creeping, following-through-a-dark-forest pattern. To Michael’s mind it was the classic fear-theme, plundered and plagiarised for the opening to a dozen horror films. Would Mozart have spun in his pauper’s grave at the idea? No, of course he would not; he had been a man of the people; he had adored vulgarity and he would have loved Hammer and Spielberg and Vincent Price.

His music was conjuring up a dark, brooding mansion, peopled by lurching monsters, a botched Super Race, all of it ruled by the faceless beings of Tranz. Was this an inevitable consequence of blindness? Because you could not see, you began to imagine that fantastical creatures, demons and ogres and leering ghouls were stalking you? He flung himself off the bed.

Tranz. The name was becoming more and more sinister.

Supposing Hilary had never reached Varanno? Would they have driven past this place, CrnPrag? The eastern road, wasn’t it? Michael would have given his soul for the use of his sight for half an hour to study a map.

He thought it must have been the eastern road they had taken. Straight past CrnPrag, where strange beings were sometimes seen by men delivering milk and provisions.

He swore aloud, switched off Mozart and felt his way out of the room and down the stairs to the reception desk.

It was difficult but not as difficult as he had thought to get the number of Varanno.

Beyond caring now, Michael simply said tersely, ‘I am blind, and unable to dial a number for myself. Please will you connect me? It is of the greatest importance.’

‘Certainly, Herr. And the number you call from?’

Hell and the devil, I can’t see! He said, ‘The Red Angel. Twelve or fifteen kilometres east of Debreczen.’

The minutes ticked away as the number was found and the connection made. Michael heard the ringing tone at the other end; a hollow echoing sound. He imagined a large, dark house with strange people – Damn Tobias and his surreal Salvador Dali word-pictures!

The phone was lifted and a courteous voice in soft Hungarian said, ‘Varanno.’

Michael launched into his smoothest German.

Franz-Josef replaced the receiver and said, thoughtfully, ‘It appears that Sister Hilary has a boyfriend who is worried about her.’ He paused and Bianca said:

‘Has she indeed? What did you tell him?’

‘That she left early this morning, taking the hire car.’

‘But that wasn’t the arrangement. Hilary was to remain here and return to Vienna with Cat at the end of the week.’

‘Michael Devlin may not have known the exact arrangements,’ said Franz-Josef. He frowned. ‘It would be awkward if he turned up here,’ he said. ‘We don’t even know where Hilary is.’

‘It’s my view she went with Cat,’ said Bianca.

‘To CrnPrag?’

‘It’s a reasonable supposition. And can you think where else Cat would have gone?’

‘She’s gone to Pietro,’ said Franz-Josef, half to himself.

‘Of course she has. Did you head this Devlin off? Because,’ said Bianca, in her most practical voice, ‘we don’t really want people out here asking awkward questions.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Franz-Josef. ‘He sounded remarkably perceptive.’

Bianca curled herself into a more comfortable position on the sofa and refilled their wine-glasses. ‘And Cat?’ she said, and for the first time, there was a note of urgency in her voice. ‘Franz-Josef, what about Cat? What about Pietro? You didn’t believe that ridiculous story last night?’

‘Pietro mad? Of course not. Pietro’s no more mad than I am. It’s a sleazy little plot to get Varanno. I don’t trust either of them from here to that door. I never did.’

‘Was that why you primed Ficzko to follow Cat if she went?’ said Bianca.

‘So you found out about that, did you? Of course I did.’

‘Machiavellian as always,’ murmured Bianca. ‘I thought you didn’t trust Ficzko.’

‘I don’t. But he can be made use of.’ To himself, Franz-Josef thought: and I believe I would make use of a grubbier tool than Ficzko where Cat and Pietro are concerned. He said, suavely, ‘Ficzko will at least keep a watch on her.’

‘He might cheat you.’

‘He won’t dare,’ said Franz-Josef. ‘He knows what will happen if he does.’ He stopped and Bianca glanced at him. But she reached for the wine again and the sudden, mischievous smile lifted her lips. ‘Stefan might run CrnPrag and care for the gerons in Csejthe, but I wouldn’t give much for his chances if he ever really tried to challenge you.’

‘Oh, Stefan could never head the Family,’ said Franz-Josef.

‘And neither could his brat,’ said Bianca.

There was a sudden silence, and then Franz-Josef said, ‘So you know about Ladislas’s little intrigues, do you?’ He regarded his lady, thoughtfully. ‘A bedroom secret, is it? Yes, I thought so. Oh Bianca, you are incorrigible. Would you prefer me to preserve a discreet ignorance, or shall I play the heavy husband?’

‘And beat me? That might be fun.’ Bianca grinned again. ‘But you have your own adventures,’ she said. ‘You always have had.’

‘So I have.’

‘And Ladislas is a child.’

‘Twenty years your junior.’

Bianca laughed and reached for his hand. ‘After you, all the young men are children. You know it and I know it.’

You, who could charm an abbess into bed. . .

‘But it’s fun to amuse myself for a night or two,’ she said, and a soft, remembering smile curved her lips.

‘And it keeps it within the Family,’ said Franz-Josef with gentle irony.

‘Within the proscribed distance,’ said Bianca defensively. ‘Cousins.’

‘Very close cousins, my love. Most cultures would look askance at it. We permit it only because we must inter-marry to preserve the secret. We dare do nothing else.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘You are a rapacious bitch,’ he said. ‘And I do not trust you an inch.’

The words were silky and the tone was unemotional, but Bianca looked up. After a moment, she said, very gently, ‘You can trust me. There has never really been anyone other than you. As you know perfectly well. These young men . . .’ One of her shrugs. ‘Affairs of the body only.’ She looked at him. ‘I was dazzled by you the first time I saw you,’ said Bianca, in a low voice. ‘I have never ceased to be dazzled by you, for all that it was an arranged match. We were cousins.’

‘The Rules had already been set for us.’

‘Oh yes.’ She leaned forward. ‘But I was eager for the match,’ she said. ‘To me you were the brightest of all the brilliant ones in the Family.’

The shining one. Franz-Josef knew they had said the same of Pietro. They would have said it of Cat as well, because Cat could have shone, as Pietro had shone. She could have lit up a room just as Pietro had. What would Ladislas and Stefan do to Pietro in CrnPrag? Could he be rescued?

Bianca said, thoughtfully, ‘Dare we call in the police to get Pietro out of CrnPrag?’ and Franz-Josef felt a little prickle of disquiet, because Bianca, of them all, had always been able to follow his thoughts.

But he said, ‘Risk police inside CrnPrag?’

‘I suppose we can’t.’

‘We do what we have to do as humanely as possible,’ said Franz-Josef. ‘The hopeless, the homeless: Stefan promised he would use CrnPrag only for those.’

‘When were the Bathorys ever humane?’ said Bianca at once, and there was the note of self-mockery in her voice which Franz-Josef knew so well.

But he only said, lightly, ‘Oh never, of course.’

‘Then – you’ll go alone to CrnPrag?’ Bianca leaned forward, her eyes suddenly anxious and pleading.

‘Yes. We can’t chance bringing in the police. CrnPrag houses too many things that mustn’t see the light of day.’

Franz-Josef knew that if Pietro was to be got out of CrnPrag, and if Ladislas – greedy, insolent child – was to be outwitted, he must show no weakness. He must rule as he had always ruled: not lightly and casually in the way of the modem world, with its royal princes of the people, and its princesses and duchesses who shopped in department stores and allowed the gutter press to make free with their privacy.

In the old way. The harsh, unbending way, when transgressors could be flung into windowless dungeons, and when rebels and mutineers could be impaled on spikes in courtyards . . . Elizabeth’s torture chambers were still unimpaired, even after so many years. The fire that had swept Csejthe Castle in the middle of the last century – the fire started by the superstitious villagers – had ravaged the castle’s upper floors, but the Blood Countess’s instruments of agony had been untouched. The clamps and pincers had survived, and the braziers. The oval cage with the spiked door that she had coaxed or threatened out of the village blacksmith was still intact.

No one would claim Csejthe now, and no one would approach it. It was too thickly armoured in its legends and it was too strongly soaked in the bloodied memories of the Lady and her reign of terror. But it had been restored from within: the ruined façade was preserved, but the creatures that the Family called gerons lived comfortably and safely inside. Csejthe kept its secrets as it had once kept Elizabeth’s. Immortality . . . Only sometimes the legacy reverses, Elizabeth. That was what you never lived to discover, my dear. Sometimes the blood takes back what it once gave . . . The reversal, the rough magic wound up . . . And I am so tired! cried his mind in silent agony.

Somehow he must find the strength to go on. He must ignore the tiredness, the frightening fits of exhaustion. The blood taking back what once it gave. . . – please, not yet. Not until he could be sure that Pietro was safe. Not until Pietro was in Varanno, ready to step into the place that was his by right. Until then, he must keep about his shoulders the mantle of authority, the charisma, the power . . .

As Elizabeth had done. As his forebears had done. And as he had been brought up to do.

Elizabeth Bathory condemning disobedient serving girls to the torture chambers below Csejthe . . . Licking her beautiful lips as she trod down the narrow dungeon steps by night . . . Striking fear into the hearts of the villagers.

But ruling.

It had been important to keep the village people in Csejthe continually afraid of her. Elizabeth rather enjoyed seeing their cringing faces and their frightened scuttlings when she went down from the castle, riding in the fur-covered sled in the depths of winter, using the crested carriage at other times. After the snooping Ponikenus came to Csejthe, it was even more important to keep them subdued and fearful, because Ponikenus with his long, prying nose and his righteous, jowly face was poking into things that were nothing to do with him. He was asking questions about the disappearance of village girls, and he was spreading stories that Csejthe’s Lady had unnatural appetites. She stole children to feed her warped desires. Perhaps she sacrificed them to dark gods, said Ponikenus, who was not without some learning. It was Ponikenus who coined the phrase ‘donning the scarlet cloak’, which made Elizabeth laugh when she heard it, because the puling pastor thought she killed purely for sexual gratification. The nuisance-creature had almost found the truth, but he had completely missed the real core.

Immortality. Beautiful for ever . . .

It was irritating when the credulous villagers became so frightened that they sent away their daughters as soon as they were of an age to be interesting, but it was not a huge tragedy. Dorko and Illona could be ordered to scour the countryside further afield; girls could be found in the teeming Vienna Streets, where life was less narrow. ‘Come with me to my castle, my dears . . . Come inside and see what I can give you . . .’

In the meantime, there was no reason not to make use of the villagers’ fear.

The Csejthe villagers agreed that it was a grief to lose their daughters, but it would have been a far worse grief to know that their innocent lovely girls had been dragged into the Lady’s torture chambers so that she might don her scarlet cloak. That was a very nasty thought indeed.

They had learned to live in the Lady’s shadow by this time, and in the main she did not trouble them. The great Count was away at war for most of the time, and the villagers were left to their own devices so that they could go quietly about their work, farming their small pieces of land, tending their modest vineyards or spinning the wool from the soft fleeces of the mountain sheep.

But for all that, the Lady owned them and not one of them would have dared to disobey her. Not one would have dared refuse an order, no matter how sinister it might seem.

The blacksmith who had his forge at the village centre, did not refuse the request made of him that winter’s afternoon. He had been working happily and absorbedly at his forge, which was a good thing for a man to do on such a cold day, and he had not heard the carriage or even the horses’ hooves outside. It seemed to him that at one minute his forge had been its normal homely place – smelling pleasantly of hot iron and good honest sweat and echoing with the rhythmic ring of the hammer on metal – and the next it had been a place of twisted crimson shadows and hungry evil. And although he could see that outside was the black carriage with the Nádasdy arms emblazoned on its panels, and that the horses were ordinary flesh and blood and bone creatures with vapour blowing from their nostrils into the cold air, still he had the feeling that something inhuman had stepped across his threshold.

Seen close to, she was much smaller than he had imagined, and possessed of a startling, fragile beauty. When she said, ‘You know who I am, Master Smith?’ her voice was soft and gentle and wholly unthreatening.

He stared wordlessly at her for a moment, because of course he knew who she was, and although he knew the tales, he had not expected her to be quite so frail or quite so small and fine-boned. You could snap her wristbones in your hands if you had a mind to do so. A frail little thing, thought the blacksmith, and then reminded himself very sharply that this was Elizabeth Bathory; this was the Beast of Csejthe who was reputed to bathe in the blood of virgins. The blacksmith was a devout soul, and he had listened, round-eyed, to the warnings of their good pastor. It was on Ponikenus’s advice that he and his wife had sent away their two daughters – lovely girls both of them, and the youngest the apple of his eye; but it had had to be done if the children were to live to grow up.

Her skin was the palest he had ever seen, and the blacksmith flinched inwardly, remembering the legend. But her eyes were remarkable; great swirling black lakes that you could not help looking into, and that once you had looked into, transfixed you. A tiny part of his mind wondered whether she might not even be bewitching him just a little, and another part of his mind sketched the sign of the cross on his inner vision, because hadn’t Master Ponikenus told how the Lady trafficked with the sorceresses, and how she prowled the night forests and the mountains like the she-wolf many people believed her to be.

As she stood there, the gathering winter afternoon was behind her and the fires of the smithy twisted eerie shadows about her. The scarlet cloak . . . The blacksmith had never entirely believed the grisly expression, but now, staring at his unexpected guest, he did believe it. A mantle of wet blood cascading about her bare shoulders . . . Yes, it was credible. He drew a deep breath and forced himself to listen to the soft voice.

A cage, she said, her voice still light and gentle. A cage for which she would pay very well indeed, and which he was to fashion in a cylindrical shape, banded with strong metal hoops.

The blacksmith listened carefully and asked the dimensions that would be required, because you could not fashion such a thing unless you had the correct information, and the Lady regarded him unblinkingly. After a moment, she said, ‘It is to be no more than four feet from tip to base.’

An odd measurement. Large for an animal-trap, but a bit small for a man-trap. Warning fear pricked his skin, but he said, ‘Anything else?’ And waited.

Elizabeth said, ‘A door,’ and between one heartbeat and the next, her eyes took on the cold cruelty of a predator. ‘A door that is just sufficient to permit the caging of a large animal,’ she said, and there was the merest tilt to her sensual lips. The wolfsmile, thought the blacksmith staring. Something else I never believed, but there it is. And in the same instant, the Lady said, very softly, ‘A door that would allow for the capture of a large wolf,’ and the blacksmith jumped.

‘A wolf or a bear,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on him. ‘I wish to protect my land and you will know that such – predatory creatures roam at will hereabouts, Master Smith.’

Yes, the blacksmith knew about the wolves and the bears that roamed the Carpathian Mountains, and he knew, as well, about the other creatures that prowled through the darkness. She-wolves with human faces . . . But he nodded and made a note of the requirements carefully because, if you could write, which the blacksmith could, it did not hurt to let people see it.

Elizabeth said in her most honeyed voice. ‘The inside of the door is to have fixed to it jutting metal spikes. Horizontal.’

‘How many?’

Again the thoughtful pause. Again the curving wolfsmile. ‘As many as you can fit,’ she said.

It was not possible to refuse, and so the blacksmith set to with a heavy heart, working by night, so that no one should know what he was doing. Ponikenus had preached an earnest sermon that very week, telling how they should not allow fear of reprisal to deter them from delivering wickedness up to justice. God would protect the right-minded, said Ponikenus, the sweat glistening pinkly on his face, his brows furrowed with the seriousness of his message. Every single soul in Csejthe Church had known that Ponikenus referred to the Lady, and every single soul thought: denounce Elizabeth Bathory? Not me! If you want to risk the Lady’s wrath, then you do it, Pastor! You call in the Grand Palatine and the magistrates! The more acid-minded of the congregation had mentally added: and see if God saves you from the castle torture dungeons! The blacksmith, working on the terrible cage in secrecy, pushed Ponikenus’s words from his mind and concentrated instead on the very large sum of money the Lady was paying him.

As the sinister instrument took shape, he found himself continually glancing over his shoulder in case something was crouching in the shadows watching him. Something that had the glossy sable pelt of a wolf, but the small pale face of Csejthe’s Lady . . .

He worked precisely and methodically, fashioning the cage exactly as she had specified, hating it more with every hour. At length it stood at the centre of the smithy, a fearsome, grinning contraption, the iron hoops washed with the glowing crimson light from the forge, the points of the metal spikes glinting. The door swung open with a little rasp of sound, and if you were at all fanciful, which the blacksmith hoped he was not, you might almost imagine it was chuckling to itself at the thought of its prey.

Come inside, my dears . . . Come inside and be skewered for your blood . . .

It was a terrible device, but the blacksmith did as he had been bidden: he conveyed the ugly, cumbersome thing up to the castle under cover of dusk, using a small wheeled cart, plodding up the mountain path, casting scared looks about him as he went. Once in the shadow of the great fortress, he rang the huge twisted iron rope and delivered his work into the hands of the ugly Illona who seemed to be expecting him.

He made a vow never to speak of what he had done, and after a time he almost erased from his mind the memory of the grinning cage.

But he did not manage to wipe Elizabeth Bathory’s dark, smouldering eyes from his inner vision, and she haunted his dreams, often wearing only the wet pouring cloak of blood.

Curiously the effect of these dreams was always strongly aphrodisiacal.

Elizabeth had been pleased with the fashioning of the great cylindrical cage, and it had been fun to bemuse the peasant smith and have him almost salivating at her feet. It was so very easy to dazzle these people, using their fear of her and her own allure.

The cage was taken to the dungeons until she decided how she would use it.

The half-dazzled, half-menaced blacksmith was put into a corner of her mind, until she might need him again.

Chapter Fourteen

There was no way of measuring time in the dungeon, but Hilary thought that several hours had passed since the porridge-soup had been brought. Assuming that had represented lunch, it was reasonable to suppose there would be an evening meal. Or did they not bother if you were going to be slaughtered for your blood? Childhood memories of every evil creature who had ever stalked the pages of Grimm or Andersen, putting children and maidens into cages and fattening them for the ovens, began to fill her mind.

The scuttling footsteps of Janos coming down the steps to the dungeons alerted her, and she saw the bobbing light of the box lantern enclosing the thick stubby candle which was what he had brought last time. Would it be evening now? Evening would make her plan easier.

She lay huddled on the straw, facing the iron gate, her eyes open only by a thin sliver. Through her lashes she saw Janos set the lantern down and unlock the gate. He was grinning to himself.

‘Supper for the white bird,’ he said in the harsh guttural voice that bore only the smallest resemblance to the cultured accents of the corpse-creatures.

She felt him pause as he registered her slumped position. He set the food down – there was the rasp of the metal dish against the stone shelf – and came to stand over her. Hilary forced herself to remain absolutely still and keep her eyes shut. She could sense Janos bending down, and there was the same stench of old blood and sour breath there had been when he had carried her here.

Janos’s hand came out to touch her hair, the calloused skin snagging against it. He was beginning to breathe harshly, raggedly, and Hilary felt revulsion crawl over her skin. Dear God, he is stroking me. He is caressing me. And it’s arousing him. She fought for control. Remember the plan. Live it. I’m unconscious, thought Hilary. I’m unwell from that blow to the head and from fear.

Janos was sliding his hand over her neck and her shoulders and Hilary forced herself to remain motionless. This was unspeakably terrible. Would the creature actually ravish her, here in the cell?

Janos was crouching over her, mumbling to himself. ‘Pretty white bird . . . Sleeping white bird. Like this can’t resist me. Can’t fight.’ Both hands came out, cupping her breasts, and Hilary flinched, and then moaned, as if half-conscious, as if in pain.

‘Sick,’ whispered Janos. ‘But Janos will make it better. Janos will love the pretty bird.’ And then – ‘But first to take away from here,’ he said. ‘Take to make better. Must keep alive. Must keep alive for the Masters’ feast.’ Hilary felt his hands sliding beneath her shoulders and her thighs, lifting her with a swift, easy movement. His muscles were like iron.

As he walked out of the cell, Hilary had to fight not to struggle. The plan was working: she had feigned illness so that she would be taken out of the dungeons. She had gambled on them needing to keep her alive and aware for their grisly banquet, and she had thought that, once beyond the locked cell, with her gaolers believing her unconscious, there would be a better chance of eluding them.

It seemed to be working. Janos was carrying her out of the cell; she could feel that he was treading up a steep, winding stair: his booted feet rang out on the stones and there was the feeling of dank walls closing about them. The dwarf’s hot, fetid breath gusted into her face, and then there was the sensation of being out in the open again, of smelling damp autumn scents: bracken and woodsmoke and the distant pine forests.

Hilary risked a quick, furtive glance between her lashes. As she had thought, they had come up a flight of steps, and they were on the edge of a small inner quadrangle surrounded by low, rather mean-looking buildings. She thought they would have been servants’ quarters; they were built of the same stone as the castle but they were clearly of lesser importance. And the shadows that slid across the cracked stone flags were touched with the purple and turquoise of dusk. Dusk . . . Night’s harbinger, when fugitives could slink in the shadows and be swallowed up by the darkness. Thank you, God.

The great bulk of the castle reared up before them. Janos crossed the quadrangle and went through a low door – had it been a wash-house? He threw her on to a narrow bed and there was the sound of a match striking, and the scrape of a glass funnel being adjusted over a lamp of some kind. Hilary risked another cautious look.

She had been right about the lamp: it was a heavy, old-fashioned thing of brass and copper, burning up brightly; in its spurious warmth, the dwarf’s room was very nearly cosy. It was small and low-ceilinged, and there were two narrow windows looking over the courtyard. A rocking chair was drawn up to the hearth, and there was a small table and hard chair. Hilary darted another look about her. Rag rugs were arranged on the floor, softening the cold stone and, as Janos stooped to fire the stack of logs in the hearth, trickles of flame leapt up, washing the cold walls to warmth.

But there was a sour, brackish smell to the room, just as there was a sour, brackish smell to Janos. The bed he had thrown her on reeked of his body-stench, and Hilary repressed a shudder. Surely now he would summon help – one of the rather hard-faced attendants, perhaps. Had she guessed wrongly after all?

It was at this minute that Janos turned back to the bed.

He leapt on to her like an animal, and Hilary gasped as the breath was knocked from her, and then fell back, still feigning weakness.

The dwarf was crouching over her, snuffling and panting, a slick of saliva dribbling from his partly open mouth. His eyes glittered, and his small stunted legs straddled her, the knees digging into her thighs. He thrust his body against her, and through his clothes she felt the hard stalk of arousal between his thick thighs. Panic engulfed Hilary and she fought for control.

Janos’s hands were sliding between her legs, rubbing and pinching, and Hilary, accustomed for nearly eight years to the privacy and the reticence of the convent, felt her stomach lurch with nausea. Would she have to endure being raped? She thought she could not possibly pretend to be unconscious for much longer.

Janos was dragging her trousers down over her hips, his hands eager and coarse, and the nails scraped her bare skin in unbearable intimacy. He had curled one hand about her wrists, holding them above her head, but Hilary thought this was only an automatic gesture. He still believed her to be barely conscious.

He was fumbling at the fastening of his breeches, panting and grunting. ‘Janos do it,’ he said, thickly. ‘No one know.’ He pushed his body against her suddenly, and there was the feeling of hard masculinity, warm and thrusting. The warmth of his swollen flesh was the most repulsive thing yet.

Hilary drew in a huge breath, and brought her left knee up with every ounce of her strength. The dwarf gave a squeal of agony and fell back, clutching his groin with both hands, rolling on to the floor, cursing and spitting.

‘Bitch! I stuff your cunt with lit candles for this! I fill your mouth with me so that you vomit! Bitchcunt! You pretend and you fool Janos! I make you bleed and beg for mercy! You see what happens to those who cheat the Lady!’ He was rolling on the floor, his eyes bulging in pain and fury, spittle flecking his lips.

Hilary did not hesitate. She bounded up from the bed and grabbed the bedside jug, bringing it down on Janos’s thick mat of hair. The creature gave an animal grunt and fell prone.

Dear God, have I killed him? thought Hilary, hesitating. Please don’t let me have killed him. Self-defence, Sister Hilary? Was that last blow necessary? I can’t wait to decide. I’ll confess it all later. I’ll thrash it out with Reverend Mother, with the bishop, with the Pope if necessary, but please God, please Mary and all the Saints, let me get away!

She dragged her clothes back into place and was across the room in three steps. The dwarf lay where he had fallen, and Hilary saw with a surge of triumph that the creature’s trousers still gaped open, and that his genitals were hanging out, already an angry dull crimson where she had kicked him. Good! thought Hilary viciously, and in the same breath: self-defence.

She slipped through the door, closing it quietly behind her and went out into the quadrangle.

This was the dangerous part, because if she met anyone now she would certainly be captured again. But if she could reach the far side of the castle, she would be able to melt into the mountainside. She sent up another prayer of thanks for the darkness.

She stood for a moment, trying to get her bearings, seeing that the bulk of the castle was directly ahead of her, knowing she must somehow get beyond it and down the mountain track to the road. And then what? I can’t think. I might have to walk for hours until I find a farmhouse or a village or somewhere I can raise help. The word Debreczen dropped into her mind. Debreczen and Michael. What had the inn been called – The Red Angel, was it? Could I find it? Oh dear God, could I possibly get to Debreczen and Michael? Or could I find a telephone and ring him? What about money? Could she reverse the charges? What did they call that out here? Was her sparse German up to asking for a reverse-charge call?

The thought of Michael was so enormously warming that Hilary thought she would not care if she had to walk until she dropped from exhaustion if it meant reaching him.

She went across the courtyard and under the curving stones of one of the arches, the soft-soled shoes making no sound at all.

And then she was at the side of the castle, and she was in the deep shadow it cast. There was a kind of narrow passage between the blackened wall of Csejthe and a long, low building. Stable block? Yes, quite possibly. There was a rather weatherbeaten door, wide enough to admit a car, and it was partly open.

Beyond the half-open door, in the thick shadows of the place that once had housed horses, was the dented BMW.

And someone had changed the punctured wheel.

It was another of those moments when you suspended logic and when you went by blind instinct. Hilary was distantly aware of thinking that one of the servants must have changed the wheel and driven the car up here. They would not have dared to leave it on the road where it might have attracted attention.

Her heart was thudding painfully as she sped down the narrow walkway and reached for the driver’s door, and tiny beads of sweat were trickling between her shoulder-blades. The keys? Please God, if ever I prayed to You, I am praying now. Let the keys be here. Let whoever drove it up here have left the keys inside.

She opened the door gently, wincing at the click it made. There was the sudden reassuring scent of good leather. German technology. Please God, the keys . . .

And there, swinging from the ignition with an air that was almost jaunty, were the keys.

As Hilary gunned the engine and drove out of the stable block and straight down the mountain path, she was murmuring aloud the words of the Deo gratias.

Chapter Fifteen

Michael was seated on his own in the coffee room, rather morosely drinking brandy and turning over various plans, when he heard the purr of the BMW.

Hilary.

He was out of the coffee room at once; grasping at the wall for ballast, and then snatching at the fastening of the outside door. Cold night air streamed in, mingling with the petrol fumes of the car. Michael had a brief, vivid vision of how the exhaust fumes would look: smoke like thin fog pouring into the dark night. And then a voice said, ‘Michael!’ and Hilary tumbled across the paved yard and fell straight into his arms.

She was apparently composed, but she was dreadfully cold. Michael tightened his hold on her instinctively, and there was a moment when his body betrayed him, responding with sudden hard urgency. He put her from him, gripping her hands, trying to hear, trying to sense – oh God, let me have my sight just for five minutes! – trying to know what was wrong.

She was not precisely crying but as her cheek brushed his he felt tears. His mind registered the lack of the brief veil she had always worn. She is dressed ordinarily. This is the person existing beneath the religious armour. He set his own guard firmly back in place and turned as he heard Tobias bustling out, exclaiming to know what had happened, ushering them both inside and calling for hot coffee laced with brandy, and the preparing of a room.

Michael said, in a voice that he barely recognised as his own, ‘Tobias, there is no need for histrionics. The lady is simply exhausted and cold . . .’

At his side, Hilary said, ‘That’s true. A small crash in the car . . .’ Sick dizziness engulfed her, and she staggered and half fell against Michael.

‘And some food if you would be so kind,’ said Michael, his arm about her again, and Tobias, tutting at the terrible people in the world who could crash into a lady’s car and leave her to drive on shaken and distressed, went off into the kitchens.

Hilary said, ‘I should love something to eat.’

‘Would you like to wash and tidy up first?’

‘Oh – could I . . .?’

‘My room’s upstairs,’ said Michael, groping in his jacket pocket for the key. ‘Number Four.’

‘Comb and hairbrush?’

‘Vanity, Sister Hilary?’ He felt the brief, answering smile, but he only said, ‘Comb and hairbrush and anything else you want are there. Use whatever you need. The water will be hot if you want to take a shower. And then come back here and tell me everything.’ He reached for her hands. ‘Should I get a doctor? The police?’

‘I – no.’

‘Truly, Hilary?’

‘Truly, Michael.’

‘All right. Shall I come up with you?’

He caught her momentary hesitation, but in the same heartbeat, she said, ‘No, I shall be all right.’

‘Come back quickly.’

‘You will – be here?’

‘I will be here.’

She looked at him, and for a moment almost believed that the vividly blue eyes could see. Intimacy, warm and strong sprang up, and then Hilary released her hands and went swiftly up the stairs.

The water in the tiny bathroom adjoining Michael’s room was piping hot. Hilary threw off her clothes and stepped into the shower cubicle, soaping herself vigorously with Michael’s soap. The shower was something of a novelty after the cold stone-floored bathrooms of St Luke’s where the water was hardly ever more than lukewarm and there were cracks in the porcelain.

The hot spray felt good. It stung her skin with hundreds of tiny needlepoints, scouring it of Janos’s fumbling hands, sluicing away the despair and the dank evil of the castle. The soap smelt expensive. There was a plastic bottle of shampoo on the ledge, and Hilary hesitated and then shook out a caramel-scented handful. After the carbolic and lye soap of the convent, it felt sinfully luxurious. She concentrated on the good soap and the cleansing water, and on getting dry on the huge, thick towels left on a warm brass rail.

It was going to be very difficult to douse that intimacy that had sprung up downstairs. Was it only because I fell into his arms, cold and exhausted? Was it – this was disconcerting – was it because I am no longer dressed as a religeuse? Oh, face it, said Hilary to Hilary, the intimacy has been there for some time now. It will have to be resisted.

But when Michael had pulled her against him, he had felt strong and warm . . . There had been the faint masculine scents of aftershave and clean hair . . . And now I am using his towels and his soap . . . Oh God, I must stop this!

She towelled her hair vigorously and brushed it into shape, frowning in the mirror. It curled into little damp curls, the colour somewhere between auburn and chestnut. She could just remember her mother having the same colouring. She and Sarah had inherited it. It had been all either of them had had left of their mother.

She thought that on the whole she did not look so bad. She was pale and there were dark smudges beneath her eyes, but considering everything, it was not bad. Vanity again, Sister Hilary?

Warmth and light met her as she entered the coffee room. The innkeeper – Tobias was it? – was setting down a bowl of steaming soup on a hastily laid table. Hilary could smell the rich fragrance. There was a platter of thick crusty bread and butter alongside.

‘And I have brought for you some of our best pâté,’ said Tobias, indicating a generous wedge of smooth, creamy pâté, flanked with tomatoes and cucumber. ‘Together with smoked cheese and a terrine of broccoli. Here is rye bread – very sustaining. And here –’ another of the huge beams – ‘one of my wife’s apricot strudels.’

‘It looks lovely,’ said Hilary, sitting down at the table, suddenly conscious of ravenous hunger. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘If you would wish for something more – perhaps a hot meal – my wife could prepare an omelette – ham, cheese – it would be no trouble. I regret we have not the hot dishes served earlier—’

‘Truly this will be more than sufficient,’ said Hilary. ‘It is very kind of you to go to such trouble at this time of night.’

She glanced across at Michael, who seemed to pick up her thoughts. He stood up, and said, ‘We are indebted to you, Tobias.’ There was the rustle of paper money. ‘And if we could be undisturbed for a while? The lady will wish to recover from her ordeal . . .’ Hilary saw the note slide effortlessly, unembarrassingly from Michael’s hand to Tobias’s. Sympathetic understanding flowed from Tobias, and he said, with immense dignity: ‘I do not expect any guests to arrive at this late hour, Herr Devlin. Already it is close to eleven o’clock. Everyone is in the bar . . .’ A shrug. ‘A beerdrinking competition, you understand. Vulgar songs and laughter, but all good for business.’ He pointed to the door. ‘There is a key to this room. I shall leave it on the inside for you.’ He glanced from Hilary to Michael. ‘Also I shall leave the brandy decanter,’ he said, and made good his exit.

The coffee room was warm and safe. Even when the fire burned up, the shadows it sent across the panelled walls and the oak-beamed ceiling were no longer the surreal nightmare phantoms that had chased her down the treacherous mountain path. Hilary, drinking the soup, which turned out to be mushroom and very good indeed, felt the cold knot of panic and terror dissolve a little.

Michael sat opposite to her, the fingers of one hand curled loosely about the stem of his brandy glass. The firelight had turned his dark hair to copper and his eyes were in shadow. His eyes . . . He felt cautiously for the brandy decanter and there was the chink of glass against glass, and the sound of liquid being poured. ‘Enough?’

‘Dear God, yes.’ Sister Veronica would have had a fit at the thought of a nun swigging brandy, but Hilary was still icy cold and the brandy could surely be regarded as medicinal. Didn’t people say that in fun? Purely medicinal, they said, accepting huge measures of brandy and whisky.

And the unaccustomed spirit set up a little core of warmth deep inside her. It was possible to sit up a little straighter, and to arrange her thoughts. When Michael said, ‘And now tell me all about it,’ Hilary took a deep breath and began to speak.

The fire had burned lower, and the level in the decanter had sunk considerably by the time Hilary stopped speaking. They had moved from the table and the remains of Tobias’s excellent supper, and were sitting before the fire on a small settle with faded chintz covers.

Hilary sipped the brandy in her glass, occasionally darting a look at Michael’s face. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. Once or twice he had frowned. Once or twice he had interposed a brief question, not disturbing the flow of her story, simply asking for clarification. Where were you then? Was that before or after you saw the girl killed? Hilary, unaware that Michael had slid almost automatically into the interviewer’s persona where you did not interrupt the subject’s concentration but simply led him or her forwards, responded easily.

She had no way of knowing how he had received her story. Even to her own ears it sounded too extraordinary for belief. It sounded like something out of – what did they call it? – pulp fiction. I’m living in the pages of a paperback novel. Did he believe me? His eyes are still in shadow, and even if they were not . . . She suddenly ached to reach out and touch the untidy black hair.

Michael had listened intently to the remarkable tale, thinking that any other woman would have laid stress on the horror and the fear, and would certainly have described her emotions. I was terrified, I was appalled. I have never felt so frightened.

Every other woman in the world would unconsciously have asked for praise over the escape from the creature, Janos: wasn’t I clever? Wasn’t I brave?

Hilary told the story exactly as it had happened, clearly and chronologically, without back-tracking because a bit had been missed, which so many people did.

And she told it unemotionally. This is what happened. This is what he, they, the castle, looked like. This is what they did to me. When she described the candlelit table and the corpse-creatures, Michael made an abrupt gesture and then was silent.

The half-hour after midnight was chiming softly somewhere when she finished speaking. Michael was distantly aware that the revelries from the bar – Tobias’s beer-drinking contest – had long since stopped. The inn’s old beams creaked gently and rather comfortingly as they expanded in the heat, and once a log fell apart in the hearth, sending showers of sparks cascading upwards.

But there were no other sounds. They were shut into a small warm circle of firelight and all about them the inn and its occupants slept.

Michael said, at last, ‘Those corpse-creatures—’

‘Yes?’ This is it, Hilary thought. He can’t believe any of it. It was absurd to think he could. He’ll start to talk about the car crashing, he’ll ask whether I might have hit my head on the windscreen. He’ll be gentle and kind but rather sorry for me and I shan’t be able to bear it.

Michael said, ‘I saw them as well,’ and Hilary’s heart leapt. She turned her head to look at him, and said carefully:

‘Truly?’

‘Yes. Just before I was blinded. It must have been the same castle . . . Yes, of course it must. About an hour’s drive from here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then whatever hit me, hit you,’ said Michael, slowly.

‘Janos—’

‘Yes. The castle was in ruins,’ he said, frowning in an effort of memory. ‘Smoke-blackened – yes, I remember that! Inside was a long table – the kind you’d see in mock-ups of medieval banquets . . .?’

‘Yes.’ Hilary’s hands were clenched so hard that the knuckles were white. She stared at him, and Michael said:

‘And the shrivelled creatures seated around it . . .’ He stopped. ‘I thought they were dead,’ he said abruptly. ‘I thought they were mummies, that there must be some kind of air exclusion, a vacuum . . . Later I thought it was an hallucination,’ he said, softly.

‘They were alive,’ said Hilary, and shivered. ‘They killed the girl for her blood and – smeared it over their skins.’ She stopped, staring into the golden depths of the brandy in her glass. ‘And they were strengthened because of it,’ said Hilary, and heard with horror the black echo: and the Spirit of the Holy Ghost was upon them. ‘I saw it happen,’ she said a bit too loudly.

Michael said, thoughtfully, ‘Something in the blood that – that rejuvenates them? No, it’s too far-fetched for words.’

‘What about the other way round?’ said Hilary. ‘Something in them that the blood rejuvenates.’

‘Some obscure medical condition? That’s shrewd of you,’ said Michael. ‘But there’s a third possibility: simply that they believe the blood rejuvenates them.’

‘I don’t . . . oh, of course. Self-hypnosis.’

‘Stranger things have been heard of. You ought to know. Aren’t there proven cases of stigmata appearing on religious fanatics? People who concentrate so obsessively on Christ’s wounds on the cross that they actually bleed from the hands and feet?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Hilary tried to concentrate. ‘Those corpsethings believe that the blood makes them live on. And they believe it so strongly that it has some effect. It couldn’t be true, of course,’ she said, half to herself, as if arguing the matter out. ‘No, of course, it couldn’t.’

‘Life through the blood? The original Dracula myth?’

‘Didn’t Bram Stoker base Dracula on an actual person?’ said Hilary, thoughtfully.

‘Vlad the Impaler, yes, it’s the modern theory. A fourteenth- or fifteenth-century feudal baron with a remarkably sadistic nature. But what if . . .’ Michael stopped, and gestured impatiently for the brandy decanter again. ‘This may very well be in vino veritas,’ he said, after Hilary had poured a modest measure into both their glasses, ‘and I have the feeling there are going to be an awful number of “what ifs” before we’re through. But what if this – this blood ritual dates back several hundred years? What if it’s been going on quietly all by itself undiscovered? Maybe for centuries? What if, once upon a time, someone out here believed that immersing in blood could bestow unnaturally long life . . .’ He stopped again and grinned self-consciously. ‘You notice I jib at the word “immortality”?’

‘I do. I like the “once upon a time”, though.’

‘What if,’ said Michael, ‘Stoker stumbled across the something – the someone?’

‘Did he travel out here?’

‘I don’t know. He must have done. To have written Dracula he must have seen the terrain. It’s the kind of thing we could easily find out.’ He relapsed into frowning silence, and Hilary contributed a ‘what if’ on her own account.

‘What if Stoker came across the castle and those creatures and their claim to – immortality? That was your next logical thought, wasn’t it?’

‘Well, it was, but I jib all over again, don’t you? It would mean those creatures were here a hundred years ago. Eighteen-ninety-something was Dracula?’

‘Thereabouts.’

‘And if Stoker stumbled across that castle, and saw the corpse-creatures and witnessed one of the ritual killings, he could have adapted the whole scenario for his book.’

‘Why adapt it?’ said Hilary. ‘Why not tell it as he saw it? It’s a pretty good story.’

‘Because, my sweet innocent lamb, as it was he had a struggle to get people to swallow Dracula. Even in the Naughty Nineties it created a storm of protest.’

Hilary said, ‘But if Stoker came across the corpse-things a hundred years ago, then it means—’

‘It means what they told you is true. Immortality, damn the word to hell. Sorry, Hilary.’ Michael drained the brandy in his glass and reached to set it down, feeling for the small table at the side of the settle. ‘Whichever way up we look at it, there’s something very odd going on here,’ he said, and reached for her hand.

Hilary, who had been rather pleased at the calm, very nearly scholarly way in which she had told her story and discussed it, felt the reserve of the last few hours break. Michael accepted the story; he believed her. With the gentleness, with the tacit acceptance of her ordeal, the hard knot of pain melted and hot tears poured helplessly down her face. Without in the least knowing she was going to do it, she turned her head into the side of the cushioned settle and sobbed helplessly.

Michael’s arms were about her in an instant, his lips against her hair, murmuring words he had thought he would never murmur to a woman ever again. Who could feel emotion for a blind man? Who could be attracted to a blind man?

The comforting embrace, which was all Michael had intended, erupted into violent passion with a suddenness that startled them both. Hilary had the brief blinding impression of a fiery wall blazing up before her eyes, and then Michael’s mouth came down on hers, hungry and sweet, blotting out the world . . . It sent Hilary’s senses spinning, because of all the things she would have expected him to be, she had never expected that he would be so dreadfully vulnerable, that he could reach for her with such desperate longing. She might have fought successfully against passion, but she had no defence against this helpless need.

His hands were beneath the thick sweater now, donned a thousand years ago in Varanno and, as he touched her breasts, a groan broke from him.

‘Oh God, Hilary, I’ll stop in a minute—’

Don’t stop, Michael, don’t stop my dear love. . . Words that must not be said.

There was no memory in her mind of Janos’s ugly fumbling attempt at rape; there was only a spinning sweetness, an astonished delight. So this is what the poets and the writers and the lovers meant . . . Not the messy fumbling of those boys in those months before she had entered her convent. Not the selfish clumsiness that had bored and faintly disgusted her. This. This silken feeling of his hands pouring over her skin. This feeling of his body against hers, still clothed, but so close that she could feel every separate part . . . She could feel the violent arousal . . .

I can’t. I mustn’t. Oh, but just for another minute, God, just for another heartbeat. He tastes of wine and firelight . . . If he touches me again I shall be lost.

My dear love . . . Hilary was unsure of which of them had whispered the words, because the words were somehow woven into the quiet room and the leaping flames in the hearth and the golden warmth of the brandy . . . They were part of the feeling of safety and home-coming after the coldness and the terror.

Michael pushed her from him and sat up, running his fingers through his tumbled hair. Hilary felt a chill brush her skin.

‘Jesus God, Hilary, I’m sorry.’ His voice was shaken and the Irish was more strongly marked than she had ever heard it. ‘I never meant . . .’

Hilary had managed to sit up. She said, a bit shakily, ‘If you say it was only the brandy I shall pour it over you.’ And was rewarded by the glimmer of a smile.

‘Will you ever be bereft of that sense of irony, my love?’

My love . . . Warmth again. He calls me his love and I am instantly warm and safe. This is terrible. I wonder what I shall do about it?

‘The sense of humour will be the last thing to go,’ she said, and Michael turned to her.

‘Well, lady,’ he said, and the lightness was back. ‘Now you know how I feel about you.’

‘Yes.’

‘You knew already. Of course you did.’

‘Of course I did.’ A pause. ‘You knew as well,’ said Hilary, and saw with incredulity the delight touch his face. Hadn’t he known?

Michael said, ‘What are we going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know.’ She stared at him, her mind tumbling into blazing delight, and then back to despair. ‘It won’t do, Michael. I can’t simply turn my back on – on what I did eight years ago.’

‘Eight years of celibacy.’ Was there a faint question in his voice? If there was it had to be ignored. She dare not risk further intimacy in the exchange of confidences.

But she thought: eight years of celibacy, yes, and of other things. Had the years intended as reparation been years of pretence? Of forcing her mind into a mould that did not fit and that had never been meant to fit? What about the rebelliousness, the impatience? The growing knowledge that she had made a dreadful mistake.

Michael or God. Oh please, not that.

Hilary leaned forward and took his face between her hands. Michael felt her lips brush his eyelids. Sweet. Oh God, there is such sweetness here. I think this is the one woman in the world. He forced resolve into his voice, and said, ‘Tomorrow we have to travel back to that place, the castle.’

‘Yes?’ Hilary was grateful to him for tipping her mind off its treacherous course and back on to the strange, secret world in the castle. ‘And we have to try to find Catherine,’ she said.

‘Yes, I hadn’t forgotten that.’ Michael sat back, frowning, and Hilary understood that his mind was already intent on what they would do and how they would do it. This was a fairly safe path to tread. Plans to make. A course of action to decide on. Catherine to be found.

Michael said, ‘Could you continue to drive the BMW?’

‘I think I could. It rather comes back. So many things you think you have forgotten—’

‘Driving no longer bothers you?’ said Michael lightly, and Hilary jumped.

‘I was once – involved in a bad car-crash,’ she said, her voice expressionless. ‘My sister was a passenger. I was driving.’

‘Yes?’

‘She was killed,’ said Hilary, and heard with horror how brusque and uncaring she sounded. How could she be brusque about Sarah?

Michael heard the pain behind her voice, and understood that here was something that might have to be uncovered very carefully. He said, in a studiedly light voice, ‘But you feel able to drive us back there? Because we don’t know what might be happening to Catherine.’

‘We don’t know where she was going,’ said Hilary, slowly.

‘No, but Csejthe’s as good a place to start looking as any. Or at least find a few clues about what’s going on.’

‘And she was certainly driving along that road,’ said Hilary. ‘And yes, of course I can drive us back there Michael.’

‘Then I shall be in your hands, lady.’ He said the word not lightly, but in the old-fashioned, almost chivalrous sense, and then, deliberately giving her mind something else to focus on, said, ‘I wonder should we call in the police. Would they believe us, do you think?’

‘Would they? No, of course they wouldn’t.’ Blessedly he was not going to probe, and Hilary bent her mind to this new aspect. ‘We ought to find out as much as we can and then lay the – the case before them,’ she said. ‘Did you bring a camera at all?’

There was the turn of the head, as if he was looking at her. ‘That is an extraordinary question to ask a blind man.’

‘No. You could have brought one for research. You could have been going to employ someone as interpreter or driver who could have used it.’

‘I did bring one as it happens.’

‘Supposing we managed to get photos of the place. That would be very persuasive evidence.’

‘It would. Good idea.’ Michael stood up and held her against him roughly for a moment. ‘And now go to bed. Before you tempt me even further.’

It could not, of course, be easily dismissed. Hilary lay wakeful in the small but comfortable room hastily prepared by Tobias, her hands linked behind her head, staring up at the ceiling.

‘. . . and a good nun, a pious nun, composes for sleep by crossing her hands on her breasts to remind herself of the last Sleep of all . . . By commending her soul to God and the Holy Saints . . . Her last thoughts are with the Lord . . .’

The crossed hands, of course, were to stop roving hands from sometimes indulging in secret forbidden self-caresses. To prevent questing fingers from exploring breasts made tiptilted with desire . . . Roving hands. Who had said, ‘License my roving hands?’ John Donne? Was Michael lying like this, aching with desire? One knew, of course, what men did if the feeling became too unbearable. Hilary had always thought it rather a lonely thing for them.

Hilary had entered St Luke’s at the age of nineteen, soon after Sarah was killed. It had seemed the only thing to do; the only way to make reparation and ease the terrible guilt over Sarah’s death. Sarah . . . All that bright intelligence, all that enthusiasm for life cut off so abruptly. And it was my fault. Despite the assurances, despite the court findings that had exonerated her so completely, despite even the lorry driver’s emotional admission of blame at the hearing, she had still believed it to be her fault. If I had not been driving Sarah back from school for Christmas, if she had taken the train . . . But it had been a small private end-of-term ritual: the collection from the convent school which had been Hilary’s own; the journey to Gerrards Cross. Lunch at the same roadside inn. Sarah always had the same thing: chestnut soup, poached salmon and apple tart and cream.

If I had taken another road . . . Travelled earlier, travelled later. Listened to the weather forecast to avoid the sleet.

‘What-ifs’ again. She could hear Michael saying it.

Michael. Her thoughts swung on to a different path.

Hilary was not entirely inexperienced – school holidays had been spent with the aunt who was their mother’s elder sister, and with whom she and Sarah had lived since Sarah was a baby. There were cousins a little older and the cousins had boyfriends and parties. Hilary was bright and attractive and she had been included in it all, just as Sarah would have been.

It had been a time when the world was becoming practical again: the flower children with their love doctrines and their pacifisms had given place to hard-headed, hard-working young Thatcherites, and the affluence of the Sixties and Seventies had almost gone. You no longer preached love and railed against war, or sat on the floor at parties and smoked cannabis. The parties were still there, and the pot, mildly flavoured, was still passed round sometimes. You talked about where you were going in life and investing money and buying property. Hilary had found it all rather boring.

There had been a few fumbling, incomplete experiences in the backs of cars or on borrowed beds at people’s houses, which had mostly seemed rather sordid. She had lost her virginity at seventeen in an awkward, painful encounter, which she had pretended she had enjoyed, because it was what you did, but afterwards she had thought about all the men and women through the centuries who had counted the world well lost for love, and she had felt cheated. Was this all it was? Was this what Heloise had felt for Abelard? Henry VIII for Ann Boleyn? Had Edward VIII abdicated a Crown for nothing more than this? If this was all it was, Abelard’s castration had been dearly bought, and Henry VIII had tumbled England upside-down and burned monks wholesale for something very minor indeed. Five and a half minutes (Hilary had timed it) of thrusting and grunting. She supposed she must be naturally passionless and it had been rather a daunting discovery.

And then Sarah had died just before her fourteenth birthday, and anything that would shut out the tormented guilt was seized on.

Hilary had been barely nineteen herself, and the nuns’ influence was still strongly with her. When you had sinned, when you had offended against God’s law or man’s, you had to do penance. She had wanted to fling herself into an enclosed Order of the strictest Rule she could find and to spend her days praying and fasting. Atonement. Reparation. My life for hers. The nuns at her old school had warmly welcomed her tentative approach; they had said, How wonderful to think that one of their girls should have a vocation. How marvellous that she was finding solace in God after the loss of Sarah, and how very rewarding she would find it. She had fastened on to the word ‘rewarding’, and she had let their approval enclose her, forming a carapace against the world and the guilt.

She had gone first as a lay worker in St Luke’s Annexe, discovering an affinity with the blind people who came for training or rehabilitation. And, in one sense, the nuns had been right: the work was marvellously satisfying; it was tremendous to know you were helping people to come to terms with disability; teaching them small, simple ways of coping, occasionally even thinking up little practical devices for them to use. She had got to know people within the guide dogs’ organisations.

The sisters had been pleased with her: such a quiet, obedient child. Such a diligent worker. And a natural teacher. The transition from the Annexe to the Postulants’ House, and then the Novitiate had happened almost without noticing, and every time she performed a distasteful task, every time she took part in Lenten fasting or one of the all-night vigils when the whole community prayed for some especial cause, she visualised the scales of her guilt tipping back in her favour. Look what I am doing, God. Look how self-sacrificing I am being. And it was all of it so wrong as to be almost sinful in itself.

But by the time she was able to recognise this, she had so successfully shut out the guilt and the memories that she had been afraid to go out into the world and risk the carapace being torn aside.

And now Michael was doing what should have been done eight years earlier. He was forcing her to face the world and her own guilt.

Chapter Sixteen

The first thing to assail Catherine’s senses inside CrnPrag was the smell. It was like a solid wall, thick, fetid. The scent of human despair. She shuddered and stood just inside the door, looking about her.

Directly before her was a long, bare corridor, lit by naked electric lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling at intervals. Catherine hesitated. Dare she go in? What if she had unwittingly activated some kind of alarm system? What if she was being watched, on – what did they call it? – closed-circuit television? She looked about her to see if there were any electronic eyes or tiny monitors, but if there were they were well hidden. Catherine thought she would probably not recognise them anyway.

On the left, a door was partly open into what were plainly sculleries. She could see a huge, scrubbed-top table, and an iron cooking range with a black pot on it, emitting a faint odour of soup or stew. Copper pans hung from the walls and there was a deep, old-fashioned earthenware sink at the far end.

There did not appear to be anyone about, although Catherine was conscious of movements and stirrings. Several times she caught what sounded like stealthy footsteps creeping along behind her, but each time she turned, there was nothing to be seen. She was very conscious indeed that there were people close by, and that CrnPrag was inhabited by a large number of people. But pray God I don’t meet any of them until I’ve found Pietro.

Set into the corridor wall was a series of doors, each one secured with locks and iron bolts with chains, and each with a small judas window with the flap closed. Was Pietro behind one of those doors? Catherine reached up to the sliding partition of the nearest, and at once there was the slithering of chains from inside and a thick phlegmy chuckling. She snatched her hand back at once as if she had been burnt, but as if responding to a signal, screechings and wailings started up from behind all of the doors. There was the cold, teeth-wincing sound of steel dragging against stone, and the pounding of fists on the thick oak doors. Several of the doors began to shake and the corridor reverberated with the ugly chucklings and screamings and with frenzied beatings and hammerings. Peals of mad laughter swooped about Catherine’s head and she stumbled back to the scullery, her heart racing, fear scudding across her skin. She dived inside the room, pulling the door half closed.

From deep within the old mansion came the sound of running feet, and two darkly clad attendants, both with bunches of keys at their waist and revolvers slung into their belts, came down the passage.

‘Dawn chorus,’ said one, reaching up to rap sharply on the first of the doors.

‘Give them a bit of light,’ said the other, pulling back the tiny flaps. ‘They don’t like the dark.’

‘Would you, in their place?’

‘I suppose . . .’ The second guard stood looking up and down the bare passageway.

‘Yes?’

‘I suppose nothing’s got in?’

‘What could get in here?’ said the other man. And then, with a rather horrid grin, ‘What would want to get in?’

They turned back and Catherine let out a huge breath of relief. She had not bargained for armed guards, but at least she was still free. So far so good.

She waited until the guards’ footsteps had died away, and then moved cautiously into the corridor again. Pietro was surely not here, because whatever they had done to him, Pietro would never sound like the creatures in these cells. These were plainly Stefan Bathory’s lunatics. Poor, moonstruck madmen, frightened of the dark, hammering to get out.

Where the guard had opened the flaps, bars showed clearly, and Catherine shivered. Barred cells. Necessary if there were violent cases here, of course. It was nothing to get upset about.

She moved resolutely along the cold passage, feeling as she went the despair and the bewildered agony of distorted minds.

Jagged lightning cleaving your mind, showing you the pouring rivers of silken blood. . . Oh yes, I know about that.

She forced down the clustering images. When you were eight, ten, you believed in monsters and mutants and lurching demons. But when you were grown up, you knew that such things did not exist.

Yes, but this is CrnPrag, said her mind. This is Stefan Bathory’s nightmare mansion, where he watches human minds disintegrate. I mustn’t think like that. It’s a very admirable thing, the care of the insane. And with the thought, came another: I suppose they are lunatics in those cells, are they? Surely no sane creature would howl and screech like that?

But supposing you were very sane indeed but you were locked away, put in a tiny, windowless cell for the rest of your life. Wouldn’t you scream until your throat bled, wouldn’t you hammer on the door until your nails were in bloody tatters? Was Pietro behind one of those barred doors, screaming to be let out?

The great old house was waking in earnest now; doors were opening and closing, there was the chink of crockery somewhere, and the murmur of voices.

On the left was a small low door that looked as if it might be a housemaid’s cupboard or a broom closet. Was it? Yes. Inside was a tiny slit of a room, barely six feet square, with a small brown earthenware sink and a shelf holding mops and pails and polishing cloths. There was a cupboard with tubs of industrial polish on the floor and tins of scouring powders. Could she hide here until night fell and she could search the mansion with more safety? It would be cold and uncomfortable and quite dreadfully tedious. But she would be able to hear anyone approaching along the stone passage, and she would be able to squeeze into the cupboard easily enough if that happened. She had her wristwatch to count the hours and she was used to long hours of prayer and contemplation now. There would be no food but she was accustomed to fasting as well. And there would be water from the cold tap. She supposed she could even use the sink as a loo if she absolutely had to. It would not be very nice but Catherine was beyond caring about being fastidious.

She pulled the door shut and settled down to her long vigil in the small bare room that smelt of scouring powders and tins of liquid polish and lye soap.

The convent in Vienna had smelt of scouring powder and liquid polish and lye soap as well. Buildings, especially old buildings, nearly always had individual scents, of substances that had soaked into their walls and their fabrics over the ages. Individual scents had memories. Drifting lavender and woodsmoke and pot-pourri would always evoke Varanno for Catherine: the good side of Varanno that meant home and security; huge fires and charades in winter; picnics and long walks in summer. Burning cloth and the stench of dried blood meant Varanno’s dark underside: the disused wash-house with the immense rusting boilers in Varanno’s gardens, where she had stolen out in those cold, bleak dawns, sick and shivering with self-disgust. At the beginning, when Catherine was small, when they were both small, Elizabeth had smelt of spring gardens and pine forests. On her wedding night with Ferencz, there had been the drift of lovely old-fashioned perfume – patchouli?

But Elizabeth’s shade brought with it the reek of fear and pain now. Squelched bones and bloodied rags. Clotted gore beneath your fingernails that you had to scrub for ages to get clean. Had Elizabeth scrubbed her own skin clean after the rituals, or had Dorko and Illona done it for her? Or had she simply lain uncaring, the dried blood caking her skin? Catherine pushed the thought down.

The scents in Reverend Mother’s study that first day had reminded her of Franz-Josef’s library. Leather and beeswax. Good strong scents that Catherine associated with tranquillity and study. She had felt the leather-scented calm lay a gentle hand over her heart and she had felt a tiny unfurling of hope. I believe that inside this place I could study and pray and forget. I could atone.

Reverend Mother had regarded her very incisively indeed at that first interview. She was pale in the way that elderly people sometimes become pale, with a thin, polished look to her skin. But her eyes were dark and intelligent and ruthless in the way that the eyes of all true religeuses are ruthless; Catherine felt them searching her mind. Seeing what lay coiled in its dark recesses? Please, no.

‘So you wish to give your life to God, do you, my dear?’ They spoke in French, which was Reverend Mother’s native language, and in which Catherine was fairly fluent.

There had been no irony in the elderly nun’s voice, but Catherine had had to force herself to meet the cool regard. Because the real irony lay in the fact that she did truly wish to give her life to God. She wished to do it in exchange for all those lives she had taken – Elizabeth’s victims, Elizabeth’s rituals, but it was my hand that held the knife – and because it had seemed an honest and practical exchange.

She was aware that she was bargaining again: let me go unpunished for all those killings, God – eight was it? ten? – let me escape justice now, and I will devote my life to other people. I will renounce the world and spend my life helping the less fortunate. She knew of the work done by the sisters of St Luke’s. How they taught the blind and the deaf; how they helped those paralysed by strokes or mutilated by road accidents to re-enter the world. Down-to-earth, valuable work. Wouldn’t it be a better exchange, wouldn’t it be a more worthwhile exchange than giving herself up to justice, standing trial, almost certainly being shut away in a cell for most of her life? This was very specious arguing, of course; it was probably what had once been called casuistry, but Catherine thought there was a grain of merit in it.

Let the convent take me, she thought, her eyes fixed on Reverend Mother’s enigmatic features. Let them accept me and I will submit docilely and willingly to the cloisters and the restrictions. I will embrace poverty and obedience unquestioning. And celibacy? Celibacy would be the easiest part. After Pietro there would never be anyone else.

She answered Reverend Mother’s questions as honestly and as fully as possible. ‘It is not a sudden decision, Reverend Mother,’ she said, her eyes on the pale face with its white coif. ‘And I do not know when it was born.’

Reverend Mother said, ‘Who knows when any idea, any thought is born? One day one looks into the mind and there it is, neatly arranged.’

‘Yes.’ This was exactly how it had been. Without realising it, the notion had been forming, accreting layers, like a speck inside an oyster accretes layers until it becomes a pearl.

Catherine said, ‘I believe that I have a true vocation.’

Had it sounded false? But it had not been. Catherine had felt the reaching out of something – something warm and immense and understanding. A huge encompassing love that you could trust for ever more, and that would never betray you. Beneath are the Everlasting Arms. . .

Let her believe me. She had wanted to fling herself at Reverend Mother’s feet and beg to be taken into this sanctuary. This ancient, quiet House of God where one might work and study and where one might, just a very little, make reparation for the terrible things done on those nights when Elizabeth’s spirit and Elizabeth’s dark and bloody presence had filled up one’s mind.

It had not been an instant thing, of course. These had been discussions, consultations. A course of rather formal interviews with Reverend Mother and the Bishop and several of St Luke’s senior nuns. Sessions with Sister Marie-Claire who was in charge of the postulants and the novices.

And there had been the discussions with the Family – yes, those had been the hardest of all, because the Family had not understood. Bianca had stormed at her, angry and hurt. Bianca’s hurt had been the hardest thing to bare. She cares about me after all, Catherine had thought in surprise.

Stefan and the aunts and uncles had come to Varanno and there had been tempestuous arguments. The cousins had stared at her and whispered to one another. Bianca had railed at Franz-Josef, her eyes glittering slits of colour in her white face.

‘You have lost a son already!’ Bianca had cried. ‘Will you lose a daughter as well! Stop her! Refuse the dowry!’

‘They won’t take her without the dowry.’ That had been Ladislas, of course. Ladislas would never understand that there were occasions where money did not matter and there were people in the world to whom it was unimportant. Reverend Mother’s serene pale face swam into her vision briefly. She had a sudden image of Reverend Mother here at Varanno, standing at her side, helping her to fight them. It was unexpectedly strengthening.

But the real strength had come from a wholly unforeseen quarter.

Pietro.

He had come quite quietly and quite unassumingly into the room but every head had instantly turned to him, and Catherine had felt such a stinging of love that for a moment the warm book-lined room tilted and blurred. She fought for calm, because it was unthinkable that any of them should sense her emotions, and she beat down the delight and the singing exhilaration that Pietro had come back. Don’t let the memories surface.

He stood in the doorway looking at her, and despite her resolve, Catherine felt her body ache with the remembered longing. And he still shines, she thought. Not so brilliantly as I remember – did I do that to him? – but he can still light up the room. He’s incandescent. They’re all looking at him. In a minute I shall have to say something. I shall have to be ordinary and calm. I can’t do it, thought Catherine in sudden panic.

And then her father dismissed the others with one of his peremptory gestures, and they went from the room at once, obedient to his careless authority, leaving her alone with Pietro. A couple of the aunts embraced her, one of them weeping a little and the uncles and the cousins were bluff and embarrassed. Ladislas was the last to leave; he looked at Pietro for a long moment, his eyes unreadable but his lips thinned into cold dislike. Catherine thought with sudden irrelevance that people often spoke about eyes being the mirrors of the soul, but in fact it was people’s mouths who more often gave them away.

And now I’m alone with him, and I can’t think what to say, and I don’t know if I can face him . . . Panic started to uncoil again, and then Pietro said, gently. ‘Katerina,’ and held out his arms and Catherine, who had faced the Family stony-faced and dry-eyed, gave a sob and ran straight into them.

There was still the scent of clean hair and warm masculinity, and there was still the indefinable essence that was Pietro and no one else. Catherine felt his arms tighten and she felt her body’s shameful response and then his response also, and she rejoiced. The months and the years and the hours of struggling to forget might as well not have happened.

At last he held her away from him, and looked at her very searchingly. For the first time, Catherine saw that he was thinner; there were hollows under his cheekbones that had not been there three years ago, and his eyes had the dark haunted look she had seen that night in Elizabeth’s rose garden. So Elizabeth haunts him as well . . . The thought formed unbidden, and Catherine felt a tug of disquiet.

Pietro said, very gently, ‘So at last you are going away from Varanno.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ He studied her for a moment, and then said, ‘Do you remember how I said you should?’

Do you remember . . . Impossible to say: oh yes, my dear lost love. I remember everything, every syllable, every sigh, every heartbeat . . .

Catherine said, in a determinedly light voice, ‘I daresay this wasn’t quite what you had in mind, however.’

‘It seems to me a waste,’ said Pietro, his eyes still on her. ‘But if it is what you want then you should do it. Don’t let them talk you out of it. They will try to, you know.’

‘They have tried to.’

‘Yes, they hate to let anyone go,’ he said, and although he spoke softly, there was an edge to his voice that made Catherine look up. But he smiled, and although it was not quite the old reckless Pietro, it was close enough.

She said, ‘My father seemed to understand.’

‘He always did,’ said Pietro, half to himself. ‘He’s a wily old fox, but he understands a great many things. Far more than either of us realise.’ And then, as if mentally shaking himself, ‘Has it to be that particular convent, Katerina?’

‘I feel comfortable there. And it does good work – very rewarding.’ Catherine drew breath to ask what was remarkable about the Vienna Convent, when a soft voice from the doorway said, ‘Pietro is thinking that that particular House has a link with our family, Cat.’ Catherine jumped, and Franz-Josef came back into the room, and seated himself behind his desk, regarding them both. ‘Well. Pietro? That was what you were about to say, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Pietro, after a moment.

‘What kind of link?’

‘A very tenuous one. I believe that an ancestor stayed there,’ said Franz-Josef, off-handedly. ‘But it was many many years ago, and I don’t know the details.’ He looked at her. ‘You stood up to them well, Cat,’ he said, unexpectedly. ‘And you must do what you must do, my dear.’

‘You’re not going to stop me?’

‘No. Any more than I tried to stop Pietro when he went to Paris.’ He looked at Pietro. ‘There is no reason why Cat won’t be perfectly safe in the Vienna Convent,’ he said and Catherine had the impression that he was communicating with Pietro on a level that somehow transcended ordinary speech. And then his thin face relaxed into the rare sweet smile. ‘I am glad you came when I asked, Pietro,’ he said.

Catherine knew that now the decision was made – he’ll let me go! – she should ask about Pietro’s life in Paris and express interest in his work. Was other people’s money still as dull to him? What was his house like and where in Paris was it? The brief conventional letters had said little and told nothing.

But Catherine could not talk to Pietro – Pietro whose mouth had tasted of moonlight and sinless passion that night – as if they were nothing more than acquaintances.

But he made it all right. He held out his hands again, and said. ‘Pray for me when you’re in your convent, Katerina?’ The old grin flared, and a painful spasm twisted Catherine’s heart.

‘Of course.’

He had taken her face in his hands then, exactly as he had done on that long-ago night – Elizabeth’s rose-garden, oh God let me stop remembering! – and he had traced her features as if he could absorb her face through his fingertips. ‘Pray for me, Katerina,’ he said again, only now he was completely serious.

After he had gone, she had faced them all easily and she had been cool and resolute and completely immoveable. It was only later that she had wept for Pietro and for herself and for the burden she was about to shoulder.

Reparation. Reparation without the luxury of confession. She could never share her terrible secret with another soul, and she could never tell anyone about her dark alter ego who had prowled the night, butchering women for their blood.

Except for God. She prayed that God would understand.

And in the beginning it had seemed as if it might work. She had felt the soft folds of the religious life close about her, and for a blessed time she had sunk into the quiet, ordered days. Prayer and contemplation and study. Understanding and taking part in the great religious year which turned like a wheel, and which had the feast days and the festivals dotted along its axis. Advent with its promise and its hope; Passiontide with its sombre message. Epiphany and All Souls. Each with its own special meaning. Each celebrated in its own particular way. Purple vestments for Lent and dazzling white for Easter. The triumphal Ascension Thursday forty days afterwards: the convent had a particularly good reproduction of Corregio’s marvellous inspired painting. And the remarkable ‘Lauda Sion Salvatorem’ and ‘Pange Lingua’ sung at Corpus Christi. Catherine had found a balm and a healing in the choral masses, in the beautiful plainchant that the nuns sometimes sung and in the soaring works of Bach and Handel.

There had been periods of immensely hard work, struggling to meet the demands of the conventual day: rising at five in winter and four in summer; keeping the hours of silence and fasting; learning the work in the infirmary. That had been an atoning if ever anything had. Changing the beds and the clothes of the incontinent. Helping to feed those who could not feed themselves: spooning soup and milk puddings into the dribbling mouths of those distorted by paralysis. Taking her turn in the sculleries and in the laundry.

‘We do not send our washing out for others to deal with,’ said Sister Clothilde, who was the convent’s prioress.

‘We cannot afford laundry bills,’ said Sister Thérèse, the convent’s treasurer, who was not very much older than Catherine, but who had been in St Luke’s since she was seventeen.

‘And it is not beneath any of us to scrub and boil.’

But there was a purging in working in the wash-room with its stone floor and the huge copper boilers, and there was a hard, strong satisfaction in emptying pans and bottles and in sluicing floors clean of vomit and blood. She had tried to be gentle with the more helpless patients.

I am atoning. A very little, but I feel it. The scales have tipped just a few degrees back in my favour.

There had been periods of study; Reverend Mother encouraged the nuns to read the great literature of the world, to discuss Voltaire and Goethe and Dostoevsky, and the long common room where the nuns gathered during recreation hour after supper had shelves containing not only the lives of saints and works of the great religious men and women, but more worldly works as well.

‘In so many different languages,’ sighed some of the novices, struggling with unfamiliar English and French.

But Catherine, brought up in the Family’s scholarly tradition, was fluent not only in French and German, but also in Polish and English. Many of the books had been in Franz-Josef’s study, but others had not. She read voraciously and with delight, barely noticing the change from French to German to English and back to French. With Sister Marie-Claire’s approval, she and Sister Thérèse began to make notes for a belles-lettres about the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, for whom Sister Thérèse was named.

‘A good friendship, that,’ said Reverend Mother, who believed that while the Rule forbidding unhealthy intimacy must be observed, there was nothing wrong in honest friendship. ‘Sister Thérèse came to us at such a young age that she knows little of the outside world and Catherine, who came later, little of monastic life. They’ll give one another balance.’

‘Sister Catherine has a remarkable command of languages,’ said Sister Marie-Claire. ‘And her Latin is truly scholarly. I wonder—’

‘Yes?’

‘I wonder if we might assign her to the library and the archives for a time? She could translate some of our older manuscripts because, as you know, Reverend Mother, there is so much that the monks left behind them, and we have never had the time or the resources to translate or transcribe any of it.’

‘Jesuits,’ said Reverend Mother in an expressionless voice.

‘Well, yes. But Sister Catherine is too intelligent to be diverted by any specious arguments.’

‘That is true, Sister. And I have never believed in blind obedience.’ Reverend Mother frowned, and Sister Marie-Claire had the sudden impression that Reverend Mother did not want Catherine Bathory to enter the convent’s library. This was so extraordinary as to be scarcely believable. But one did not question a superior, and so Sister Marie-Claire waited, and at length Reverend Mother said, ‘You are right. It would be good work for her.’

‘It would.’ Sister Marie-Claire went off, pleased to have recommended such a devout, hard-working novice. Sister Catherine had some deep sadness in her life, of course, this was apparent, but perhaps she might one day be able to talk about it. Nobody would pry, but the nuns would be there to listen if the time came. Already a degree of trust had established itself between Catherine and their good Sister Thérèse. All the same, it was odd that Reverend Mother had seemed almost afraid of letting Catherine into the library.

It was not, of course, possible to refuse the important and rather flattering task assigned to one, or even to question it.

Catherine, listening carefully to Reverend Mother and Sister Marie-Claire, had to bite back the words: but I do not want such luxury! Because it would be luxury indeed to work in the quiet old library with the rows upon rows of ancient books and manuscripts. The novices were not permitted to enter the library, which was tacitly reserved for the more senior nuns, but Catherine had sometimes paused outside the low oak door and thought: if only.

She bowed her head and accepted the work, and acknowledged Reverend Mother’s murmured blessing, but inside she was crying that she wanted the hard, sometimes distasteful work in the infirmary; she wanted to scourge her soul of Elizabeth’s dark taint and she wanted to scrub and wash and feel cold and exhaustion. It could not be said.

The sun was setting as she entered the library, and Catherine saw that the windows overlooked the old cobbled square outside. Golden rays slanted in, lying across the old polished floor in diamond shapes, picking out the goldleaf lettering on some of the books, and the rich calf and vellum of the bindings. Catherine stood for a moment in the doorway, letting the scents and the calm touch her. A beautiful room. A room so reminiscent of Franz-Josef’s library at Varanno that homesickness, sharp and hurting, welled up without warning. She moved forward and, as she did so, felt a stirring, an oily coalescing of the shadows.

Something waiting for me.

And there, over the fireplace, lit by the dying sun, was the carved outline of a letter ‘E’, up-ended to represent a wolf’s jawbone with three jutting teeth, all of it encircled by a coiled serpent.

The ancient Bathory emblem.

For a moment bewildered incomprehension blurred her. mind, and the library tilted and swum before her eyes. And then, without warning, it fell back into sharp relief, and Catherine understood.

This had been Elizabeth’s Viennese town-house.

Chapter Seventeen

For several dizzying minutes, the darkness enveloped Catherine, warm and familiar and beckoning. Scarlet-streaked night. And the silken kiss of the blood. God help me, it is starting again.

Elizabeth’s presence was all about her and the months of careful devotion might never have been. The jagged lightning was cleaving her mind again, showing the cascading blood beyond . . .

She supposed she had known vaguely that Elizabeth possessed a house in Vienna; she had certainly known that at times in the year a lavish cortége had threaded its way down from Csejthe and the Carpathian Mountains, stopping at various inns on the way, finally coming in to the old city through the ancient Stubenthur gate. And of course this was what her father had meant that day at Varanno. ‘I believe an ancestor stayed there,’ he had said. Not an ancestor. An ancestress.

It would have been almost preordained that Elizabeth would come to Vienna’s Old Quarter. She would have been drawn to these streets, to the Blutgasse itself, the sinister Blood Alley with the dark alleys and twisting stairs, and the echoes of the bloody slaughter of the Knights Templar. Thirteen hundred and something had it been? Had Elizabeth felt the pain and heard the screams reverberating down the years? Did she once sit here as I am sitting here, looking out into the square?

She forced her mind to concentrate on the task in hand; on the transcribing and cataloguing of the haphazard collection of books and manuscripts and diaries; on the privately bound sermons and essays. Elizabeth is on the other side of a wall and the wall has iron spikes on the top. She cannot get over it. Remember that, hold on to that. Concentrate on laying out a work area at the leather-topped table; on setting out pens and a large lined pad for notes. Good.

And after her initial panic, the task assigned her was fascinating. After the months of physical drudgery in the infirmary and the kitchens, Catherine felt her mind being stretched, and it was a good feeling. She worked methodically through most of that first day, absorbed and intent, liking the sensation of touching the lives of people who had lived here before her; enjoying the beautiful script of the monks who had used the house as their Order’s headquarters until the turn of the century. There would be all kinds of history in the monks’ careful records: household accounts, records of items bought or sold. What the historians called primary source material. Perhaps there would be letters with references to Viennese life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Marvellous. It might be possible to have some of the documents printed and bound for private circulation within the Order, in the way that she and Sister Thérèse were hoping to have their work on St Teresa of Avila printed and circulated. She would ask Sister Marie-Claire if Reverend Mother might consider this. She placed the monks’ records to one side.

The library was quiet and calm and Catherine relaxed her guard. The tainted years when Elizabeth had lived here belonged to another world. She had been foolish to panic. Elizabeth had been here, as she had been at Varanno, at Csejthe, at all her other castles. But she was not here now. Probably the monks who came after her, and then their own Order of St Luke, had made such strong imprints that Elizabeth’s darkness had been dispersed. This was very heartening. Catherine reached for a fresh batch of papers from a top shelf and made a new heading for her notes.

The noon Angelus bell broke her concentration and she went obediently into the refectory for the midday dinner. It was like coming up out of smoky green water, and Catherine, eating the stewed lamb with rice, felt herself blinking as if she had come from a darkened room into brilliant sunlight.

The sun was setting behind St Stephen’s Cathedral, showering the old quiet library with a mellow, golden glow, when Catherine at last leaned back, massaging her aching neck. Had the bell sounded yet for Vespers? She thought she would have heard it if it had.

Four-and-a-half centuries ago, Elizabeth had been here. With Ferencz? Yes, Ferencz would have wanted to show his beautiful, arrogant young wife off to Austrian Society. Catherine thought they had not been married for very long when he brought her to Vienna.

Ferencz had feared Elizabeth and he had not really understood her; in those first years she had given him no children, which was a sadness for a man with lands and estates to be inherited. But she was diligent in swallowing philtres and potions to cure her infertility, and she was remarkably knowledgeable about such things.

Ferencz had managed to put from his mind the rather distasteful incident when he had come upon the Countess punishing one of her ladies by smearing the poor creature’s naked body with honey and tying her to a tree, and then watching as the woman’s body became a heaving mass of ants and flies.

‘The creature was caught stealing,’ Elizabeth had said off-handedly, and Ferencz, who liked a quiet life when he was at home, had accepted this. Serving wenches were no concern of his, except to tumble in bed when the mood took him, although he was not overly fond of the pastime.

But for all his Lady’s strangeness, he liked to attend imperial receptions and Court functions with her at his side. He liked to see her at the head of the long table in the panelled banqueting hall at their house in Vienna. They entertained all the dignitaries of the day; the Palatine, Gyorgy Thurzo, came frequently, and the old Emperor Maximilian. It was well known that Thurzo greatly admired Elizabeth. But there would have been no impropriety, of course. Elizabeth did not much care for that side of marriage.

Elizabeth had been sorry to leave her beautiful cruel cage behind in Csejthe, but there would be diversions to be found in Vienna.

One of the diversions was leading Gyorgy Thurzo on and then rejecting him. He had a man’s grunting desires and a man’s coarse protruberances. Ugly beyond bearing, like great swollen warts. Like a hanging, withered tongue.

She eyed instead the slender perfumed ladies who graced her table. The Turks and the Eastern pashas whom Ferencz’s armies fought knew the pleasures of lying with their own sex; the men had a saying for it: a woman for duty, but a boy for pleasure. Elizabeth, greedily eyeing the patrician ladies who came to dine, had her own version: an aristocrat for the body but a peasant for the blood.

She entertained them all lavishly and regally; ambassadors and dukes and princes. Sometimes there were churchmen. It amused her to seat Catholic cardinals and Protestant ecclesiastics together and watch their subtle, cruel sparring. It was like putting two spiders in a cup and watching them fight.

The house thrummed with life and noise and shone with the flames of hundreds of candles when guests came. The scents of good food and spiced wine and burning fruitwood filled the rooms, and there would frequently be music from gypsy orchestras, or acrobats or flamenco dancers. It was splendid and colourful. Elizabeth moved through it all, imperiously beautiful, garbed in her favourite white or sometimes scarlet, frequently with a black, fur-lined cloak slung about her shoulders. Her jewels were always magnificent: pigeons’-blood rubies and garnets and seedpearls and jewelled snoods for her hair. Married ladies were expected to dress more richly than single girls, and it was fun to issue orders to the pale, weak-eyed sempstresses. She had lately discovered the pleasure of dragging them down to the cellars if they sewed a seam or a hem crookedly, and using their own needles on them. Sometimes they took a whole week to die.

She spent hours in front of her looking-glasses, searching for the first signs of ageing; flinging herself into a tantrum if there was the slightest hint that her white skin had been touched by wind or sun.

‘Nothing, madame,’ said Illona, peering over Elizabeth’s shoulder.

‘No trace of it, madame,’ said Dorko, her face swimming into view, so that the three of them were reflected in the glass: Elizabeth’s dazzling beauty at the centre. It made Elizabeth feel better – it made her feel safer – to see how Dorko and Illona were ageing: how their skins were wrinkling and drying, and their hair turning thin and dull.

And beneath the silks and the furs, the jewels and the formality, the hunger gnawed at her as fiercely as ever. Beneath the perfumed velvets and satins, she was for ever assessing, selecting, discarding. Even with Ferencz home, there was no reason not to satisfy herself. An aristocrat for the body, a peasant for the blood. The one hunger fed the other. The Viennese house was not her beloved Csejthe, but it had deep, far-reaching cellars where plump peasants could be taken. Ferencz did not hear if she stole through the slumbering house, a candle held aloft, and slipped between the sheets of another’s bed. It was sweet beyond imagination to feel the silken skin of some nobleman’s daughter, to feel pointed breasts instead of coarse-haired masculine chests. Fingers and tongues could do all the things that a man’s ugly genitals could. Afterwards, she would go to the underground rooms, the love juices drying between her thighs, holding the skirts of her silken robe about her ankles, and see what Dorko or Illona had locked into the cellar for her.

The cellars were deep and dark and no one ever heard. If the girls screamed, their lips could be sewn up with iron needles. If they struggled, their flailing hands could be stilled by red-hot needles under the nails. It was an exquisite pleasure to let the thin, agonised blood drip from fingertips, and to smear it over face and neck. If the creatures tried to run away, the undersides of their feet could be ironed with white-hot flat-irons to give them scarlet-soled shoes. Dorko and Illona could be trusted to get rid of the bodies very early the next morning, before anyone was about.

Catherine, seated motionless at the leather-topped table, no longer seeing the manuscripts and the folios of a later age, felt Elizabeth’s presence and Elizabeth’s hungers filling her mind. Like pouring water from one jug to another. Elizabeth was very close; she was on the other side of the wall that Catherine had built; she was watching silently. Catherine could almost see her great dark eyes peering out of the shadows.

And if she once finds a breach in the defences I have constructed, she will be with me.

She will wind her claws about my mind and my soul and the killings will begin all over again.

Dorko and Illona had spent a great deal of time preparing for the Lady’s banquet tonight, chuckling hoarsely as they reminded one another of all the other banquets held here.

But tonight there would be no dukes or cardinals at the table. The Master had left to fight the Turks again, and tonight the guests would be of a very different order.

Tonight the Lady would don her scarlet mantle . . .

The entire household had turned out to see the Count’s departure; cheering and waving from the windows, running and scurrying about the courtyard, pleased to be attached to such an important warrior but secretly relieved at bidding farewell to the rowdy entourage, which made a great deal of work for everyone. The Emperor had commanded the Count to fight against Islam again, everyone knew that. The Carpathian Mountains provided a natural defence for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but you could not be too careful, not when you were dealing with Turks, nasty marauding things. The Count always went off with a promptitude that told his household a very great deal. He was still a little afraid of his Lady, of course; even after eight years he still feared the strange, imperious creature he had married. It was a relief to him not to have to share her bed.

It was a relief to Dorko as well, because it was Dorko who had to prepare the fertility philtres, mixing the Turkish jasmine oil, slyly sent to the Lady by her cousin Sigismond of Transylvania, and blending into it the bodily emissions of the Master, taken from his bedsheets. It would have been distasteful work to anyone but Dorko, who enjoyed mumbling over the horrid stale juices and slipping the philtre into the Master’s wine. Once the Lady had given birth to a son or two, none of it would be needed, but for the time being it was as well to help things along by adding a bit of a thrust to the Count’s lance, although it was necessary to be discreet about it.

But, for tonight, the two women had their orders, and they would obey them to the letter. Ah, the Lady had enjoyed her oval cage, built by the cringing blacksmith at Csejthe; Dorko and Illona had enjoyed it as well.

They had laughed about what was going to happen tonight, and they had enjoyed gathering up the guests. The pretty, feckless daughters of Viennese artisans and chandlers and apothecaries. Service in a Countess’s castle, they had all been told; easy pleasant tasks in the still-room or even the bedchamber. The care of beautiful gowns and cloaks and furs. Come inside, my dears. . .

And now there were nearly sixty of them, all safely locked inside the long, rather dim room on the house’s eastern side. All bidden to seat themselves at the long, carefully laid tables, and partake of the food and the wine set out for them.

But the wine was drugged to a nicety; it would dull the creatures’ wits and blur their reactions, and at sunset Dorko and Illona would close the shutters and lock and bolt the doors.

The Lady would enter and fall upon her prey.

The housemaid’s cupboard in CrnPrag was cold and dank. Catherine stretched her cramped limbs and lifted her head, listening. Above her head was a narrow slit of window; she had watched the sliver of light turn pale as the day progressed. There had been sounds of life within the great old mansion: people coming and going, the chink of crockery from the nearby kitchens. Ordinary, homely sounds. They ought to have been reassuring; they ought to have told her that this was a normal house – an institution certainly – but normal. A place where people prepared food and clattered crockery and called to one another as they went about their work. At midday there was the scent of something savoury cooking, and the hunger juices filled her mouth, so that she turned on the tap over the sink cautiously, and drank water from her cupped hands.

Several times she caught the sound of the creatures in the cells screeching, and she shuddered and automatically murmured a prayer. The thought, At least I can still pray! touched her mind comfortingly.

Even at the very blackest of times, she had been able to pray. Even when she left the library – Elizabeth’s library – that first night, wrapping herself in a thick dark cloak and going stealthily out through the little garden door which the nuns seldom used. Even then she had murmured the Mea Culpa.

‘O God, I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins . . . I detest them above all things . . . Because they have offended Thee . . .’

It was asking forgiveness before the act, of course; it was trying to put yourself in credit with God. The venal medieval priests who had sold penances and traded in indulgences had known about that. Give money to the Church and you will gain remission: five years fewer in purgatory. Go on a crusade, take arms against the heretics and have twenty years knocked off your purgatory sojourn. Payment in advance.

And now I am doing the same thing. Bargaining with God again. An Act of Contrition against an act of murder.

But Elizabeth’s dark taint was filling her up, and Elizabeth’s hunger was tearing into her flesh.

Her mind was splintering, and beyond the jagged tears were the pouring rivers of blood . . . Like soft rainwater against your skin. Like a lover’s caress . . . Pietro, where are you now . . .?’

God help me for what I cannot help myself, whispered Catherine and, wrapping the thick dark cloak more tightly about her, she slipped into the night streets of Vienna’s Old Quarter.

It was very easy to stand in the shadows, unseen by passers-by. Catherine, hitherto permitted out only under the supervision of Sister Marie-Claire, stood for a moment, feeling the ancient agonies of the butchered Knights Templar soak into her mind.

Pain and blood.

She picked out a quiet intersection where three streets converged and where low archways spanned the street at intervals. Narrow openings led down to small enclosed courtyards, several feet below street level. There were dim alleyways and, set near to the pavements, were small, grimed windows indicating empty basements or cellars. Exactly right. A pulse of anticipation began to beat in her temples and she glanced at her watch. Eleven-thirty. Very late indeed by convent standards, where the nuns were required to be in their rooms by ten, unless there was a night vigil.

But eleven-thirty was not very late in the streets. It was an hour when people would be making their way home from wine bars and pubs and restaurants. There would be a great many escorted girls, but there would be some lone ones as well; older teenagers and young women in their twenties who had failed to find a partner for the night or who had quarrelled with a boyfriend and were making a rather disconsolate way home.

A shiver of excitement swept through her. This was easier, this was closer than crouching in the dark watching for cars to flag down.

And, as with the cars, primeval instinct gripped her, so that she felt before she heard the creature’s approach. Something tempting this way comes . . .

There was the rapid tapping of high heels on the cobbles, the brief glimpse of a cheap, badly cut coat. As the girl passed under one of the lit windows, Catherine saw that she was quite heavily made up and that her hair was streaked with ash-blonde.

Elizabeth would have been aware of the stale odours of infrequently washed flesh and old sweat from her victims; Elizabeth’s descendant, standing in the shadowy alleyway, was aware of cheap perfume. She felt her fingers curl into predator’s claws. Oh God, I want to sink my nails into her flesh. I want to rip open her skin and feel her blood gush over me . . .

She waited until the girl had gone past, seeing how the creature glanced nervously over her shoulder from time to time. So the quarry scented the hunter, did it? So much to the good. Fear would lend an edge to the culmination. Elizabeth’s smile curved Catherine’s lips, and she moved out of the shadows.

The tapping of the girl’s high heels had a rhythmic, almost sexual pattern. Catherine stole after her, keeping to the shadows, keeping the dark cloak wrapped about her. Elizabeth walked at her side. There had never been any point in shutting her out, of course. She would always return, she would always surmount the carefully built walls or chisel her way through the painstakingly constructed armour. Elizabeth and I together . . . Yes, it was inevitable.

Elizabeth was with her when the girl paused at the corner and stood looking about her. She might be looking for a passing taxi or she might have arranged for someone to collect her here. Either way, it did not matter. Catherine glanced about her. A good place. No one in sight; no prying windows overlooking them. To the right was one of the dark alleyways.

Catherine bounded out of the shadows, her cloak billowing out, and fell on the girl, knocking her to the ground. There was a gasp of surprise, and then a choked-off scream as Catherine’s hands closed about the creature’s neck.

Don’t kill her yet . . . Disable her only . . . The blood must flow . . .

Elizabeth’s words echoed in Catherine’s mind, exultant, insistent, and she half carried, half dragged the girl into the dark alley and pushed her against the wall. She closed in. Anyone passing by the end of the alley would take them for a pair of lovers, a man and a woman locked in an embrace. She could feel the girl struggling, she could feel the thrust of soft breasts with the rise and fall of lungs beneath.

There was a moment, terrible, scalding, when Catherine – the real Catherine who had loved Pietro and who had fought Elizabeth – surfaced, and shuddering horror at what she was about to do swept over her. I must not! Let me run away now!

And then Elizabeth closed about her again, and there was nothing but the need for the blood, there was nothing but the slaking of the raging hunger, and this was only some common little girl, some street trollop. Catherine tore away the girl’s cheap flimsy satin blouse and tore her nails into the jugular vein.

Chapter Eighteen

The blood had run in the same way for Elizabeth’s banquet, but there had been more of it. It had puddled on to the floor of the long low room in the Viennese house that looked out over the cobbled courtyard, and lain in dark, glistening pools, so that Dorko had to spread cinders on the floor the next day.

The girls had come willingly into the house. Dorko had promised them a rich and easy life in the Countess’s service; Illona had welcomed them and given them a midday dinner in the stone-floored sculleries just below ground level. It had been the easiest thing in the world to slip one of Dorko’s potions into the wine flagons: the creatures were unused to wine anyway. They had giggled and tossed their heads and pretended to be worldly-wise, but they had drunk the wine vulgarly and ignorantly, pouring it down their pretty white throats like the peasants they were. Illona was glad she had not wasted the Lady’s best vintages on them.

The problem was going to be the used bodies, as it always was the problem. It was all very well for the Lady to say. Dispose of them: she was not the one who had to do it. She did not have to drag sacked corpses out of Csejthe’s dungeons by night, or think up tales about agues and plagues to fool the snooping Ponikenus, so that the poor emptied bodies could have Christian burial. Not that anybody really cared whether the corpses got Christian burial or not, but you might as well bow to convention where you could. And it was as well to be very wary of Ponikenus, although if it came to it, it was doubtful if anyone would listen to a humble village pastor’s word against the wife of the great warrior Count.

And Ponikenus was far away, ministering to his flock in Csejthe, and nothing should be allowed to spoil tonight’s banquet. This was to be the Lady’s most ambitious ritual yet. Sixty peasant girls, every one of them to be killed for their blood. They had come a long way since the memorable day when a clumsy maidservant had bled on to the Lady’s bare arm.

Dorko, who had taught the Lady the first of the simple forest incantations, and Illona who had helped preserve her marvellous pale beauty, were determined that nothing should hinder tonight’s feast.

As the sun slid behind St Stephen’s Cathedral, bathing the old room with its latticed windows and its long oaken tables in a soft red glow, the Lady entered. And even after so many years, even after witnessing their mistress in her tantrums when she drummed her heels on the ground in rage and screamed until she was exhausted; even after seeing her in the grip of her most violent blood-lusts when she beat her victim until the creature was one huge wound, even after all of that, Dorko and Illona were still not able to repress a shiver of awe. The Lady did not make grand or ceremonious entrances; even at the most formal of banquets or receptions she never insisted on footmen springing to attention or lines of bowing attendants. She did not need to. For her to simply enter a room was sufficient. She was slight and almost frail: unclothed she weighed barely more than a child, but the instant she entered a room every eye turned to her.

She stood inside the door of the long low room now, gowned in a loose white silk robe tied at the waist, with a scarlet velvet cloak slung negligently about her shoulders. Her hair was unbound, and her eyes darted from side to side, drinking in the assembled girls, seeing that they were flushed and heavy-eyed from Dorko’s potion: ‘Mandragora,’ she had said in an aside to Illona, ‘it has never failed me yet.’

It had not failed her now. As Elizabeth surveyed her prey, a slow smile curved her lips. The assembled girls were drowsy and lethargic. Drugged but not unconscious. Sufficiently awake and aware to feel pain. Exactly right. She slid her hand down to turn the key in the lock and to slide home the iron bolts.

You are locked in with me, my dears . . .

It began slowly and in an almost civilised fashion.

The Lady went from table to table, presenting dishes of food and flagons of more wine to the imprisoned girls, who were not yet fully aware of their imprisonment. She was gentle and calm but her voice held the familiar caressing note and Dorko and Illona exchanged meaning glances. The Lady is purring over her prey.

And then – no one quite knew when or how it began – but there was suddenly something cold and evil in the room with them. At one minute it was not there: at one minute there was simply a rather unorthodox feast being held and all was well. Some of the girls had got up to dance, moving to and fro at the centre of the room, singing in their sweet, untrained voices, stumbling and tripping over one another in their semi-drugged states.

And then, in the next minute, in the blink of an eye, in the single beat of a bat’s wing, nothing was well and everything was wrong. Those who had been dancing and singing faltered to a stop and turned to look at the slight figure garbed in scarlet and white, and those who had remained seated tried to stand, pushing back their chairs and struggling to their feet. Every eye was on the Countess.

The Lady stood motionless for a moment, the hunger flaring behind her eyes as if twin flames had been lit. Madness, red and stark, glared from her eyes as if a mask had been ripped aside.

And then she bounded forward, tearing off the thin silk gown as she did so, so that her naked white body gleamed in the candlelight. As she fell on the first girl, sinking her long fingernails into the creamy neck, blood began to spurt, and the Countess flung back her head and gave vent to a low cry.

Screams rang out and the girls began to make for the door, but Dorko and Illona were there at once. Dorko stood barring the way, her meaty forearms crossed, her brows drawn down forbiddingly, and the girls faltered and glanced at one another uneasily. It was easy for Illona to partly stun the prisoners from behind as they scrabbled at the lock, and then to drag them back to their seats. Spiritless things they were, with no fight in them. Several of them had fallen to their knees in attitudes of prayer.

Dorko stalked across the room and flung open the doors of a large press in the fireplace recess. The girls were almost all screaming now, and it was necessary to be swift and efficient. Probably no one would hear them, but you could never be sure.

Inside the press were the earthenware pots, and Dorko scooped them up and placed one beneath each girl’s chair. At each place she laid a glinting butcher’s knife and a square of white linen. Occasionally the Lady liked to wipe her hands.

She did not do so now. She went systematically from place to place, taking up the knives, one for each prisoner, slitting each one’s veins, sometimes using the throat so that the blood spurted, sometimes simply making small slits at wrists and breasts, so that there was a slower, thinner trickle. Blood dripped from her hands and ran down her wrists and arms, and the once-calm, once lavender-scented room was becoming fetid with the stench of fresh blood. From time to time, the Countess’s mad laughter rang out, blending with the steady dripping of the blood into the pots. Elizabeth crouched over each prisoner, crooning a mad little song to herself.

‘The blood never failed me yet,

Never failed me yet.

It lifts me from the dead,

Never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

Though I die, I shall live . . .’

Her long hair swung forward over her face; she was completely absorbed in her task, but several times she put up a hand almost absently and rubbed the fresh warm blood into her skin, exactly as if she were rubbing in a new beautifying lotion. Her arms were scarlet to the elbows, and blood dripped from her hands as she walked from place to place.

Illona was dragging the white porcelain bath from the bottom of the press, and Dorko was gathering up the earthenware pots, some of them overflowing on to the stone flags, tipping the contents into the bath. The girls were crying and plucking at the servants’ skirts, begging for mercy, but too dizzy from the drug to fight properly. Dorko threw a triumphant glance to Illona. Mandragora!

Night was falling over St Stephen’s Cathedral, and black shadows were creeping across the floor when Elizabeth finally stood back, shaking her hair back from her eyes, her skin crusted with blood. She showed no trace of fatigue; her eyes burned with such intensity that Illona, who was not a fanciful person, had the thought that the wall-candles hardly needed to be lit: the light from the Lady’s eyes would illuminate the entire room.

But the candles were lit, of course; they burned up strongly and sharply, casting a reddish glow everywhere. The carnage was complete; the girls lay in ungainly sprawls, some of them on the floor, others slumped across the table. Here and there they were entwined in a companion’s arms, as if reaching for comfort. Rivulets of blood still trickled from one or two, but in the main they were emptied, milked, their skins were marbled and waxen.

Elizabeth approached the bath slowly, her eyes fixed upon it. Behind her Dorko and Illona held their breath. This was the culmination, this was the heart and the core and the matrix of the Lady’s ritual. Immolation . . .

The blood never failed me yet . . .

Elizabeth lifted her arms above her head, the palms turned upwards. She stepped into the bath and the thick warm gore cascaded over her skin.

It had been so easy for Elizabeth. The things that the Blutgräfin could do, the things she could command and demand, were not things that Catherine could demand.

The girl in the Blutgasse that night had died slowly. Catherine had felt the blood soaking her own skin and, for an unmeasurable time, there had been the remembered ecstasy. This is what matters, this is what has come down to me. The Bathory legacy, the bequest of the Blood Countess . . .

And then the awakening had crept over her, as it had always done, and she was aware that she was crouching, shivering and sick against the alley wall, with the emptied body at her feet.

This was not sixteenth-century Vienna or Romania, where servants could be ordered to dispose of the body. Nor was there a dark enveloping forest where a body could be buried without anyone seeing. They were in the heart of a city, only minutes from one of the main thoroughfares. Catherine stood up, looking about her and, after a moment, she wrapped her cloak about the girl, making a kind of lumpish parcel. She dragged the body deeper into the alleyway – heavy! dead meat! – pausing every few steps to listen. But nothing stirred, and no curious footsteps came clopping along the street.

At the far end of the alley was a flight of steps leading down to one of the innumerable little courtyards below street level. Windows overlooked it, but they were all boarded up, and even in the uncertain light, Catherine could see that grass grew between the flagstones, giving the place an air of neglect. She tumbled the body down the steps and into the deep shadow of what looked to be a small disused warehouse. With luck there would be no hue and cry for a day or so. With luck she would get back inside St Luke’s.

God – or more likely the devil – was on her side that night. No one saw and no one heard as she slipped like a shadow through the small side door of the convent that she had left unlatched. The bloodied clothes could be burned in the convent’s incinerator, where so many other bloody and soiled things were burned. Catherine stole through the silent house – Elizabeth’s house – and pushed them into the furnace, wincing at the scrape of the metal lid. In the morning Sister Margaret would fire the incinerator as she always did, so that not only would soiled dressings be hygienically disposed of, but the convent’s kitchens would have hot water for the day. The things would burn unnoticed, and no one would notice if she wore one of the other dark blue dresses in place. Most Orders were rather parsimonious about the issuing of new garments; the Poor Clares had to make one set of clothing last for several years, but in Orders where they worked with the sick, things were a little different. Even Sister Clothilde seldom questioned a request for the replacing of a scapular or a skirt or even an entire new habit.

I escaped that time and all the other times, thought Catherine, curled into a corner of the small cupboard in CrnPrag. I learned cunning again, as I learned it at Varanno. She stretched her cramped limbs and looked at her watch. Six o’clock. From the sculleries came the clatter of pans, and the occasional snatch of conversation. Several hours yet before she could steal out and make her search. She thought she should wait until midnight at least. Then there were six or seven hours yet to wait. Six or seven hours until she could try to find Pietro. She fell into a half doze, afraid to let her mind relax completely, but drifting into a state of semi-consciousness. She thought she could be instantly alert if footsteps came this way.

She curled back into her corner and waited for night to fall.

Chapter Nineteen

Franz-Josef had left Varanno shortly after lunch and driven himself down the mountain path and along the desolate but rather beautiful road that led to the old mansion.

It was some years since he had entered CrnPrag – ‘Closing your eyes to what is within,’ Stefan had said, sneering – but Franz-Josef had always believed it safer for the Family, apart from Stefan, to have as little to do with CrnPrag as possible. There should be no connections made between Varanno and Csejthe or between Csejthe and CrnPrag.

Finding CrnPrag had been a piece of marvellous good fortune. The first time Franz-Josef had seen it: stark, isolated, surrounded by its own wooded acres and the high walls, he had known instantly that this was the place. At all costs they must have it.

He could remember the negotiations with CrnPrag’s owner very clearly indeed, although he could not at this distance remember the man’s name. He had been the last scion of some once-rich, once-powerful House, of course. Probably his family had served the Hapsburgs, as most noble families out here had, and probably they had lost money and sons in the wars with the Turks and Prussians. But in the end, all that had been left was the ageing, sad-faced man and the huge old mansion with its rotting panelling and whole walls marbled with fungoid growths from the encroaching damp. The roof had sagged in several places, and there was the unmistakable dank grey stench of dry rot when you entered. A huge liability. The owner had been living in two of the ground-floor rooms, defiant and still arrogant, but for all that he had driven a hard bargain.

When they went over the house they found that several ceilings had collapsed from the weight of water from the leaking roof, and in some of the rooms windows had fallen out. There were rat droppings everywhere. The sadness of it had gripped Franz-Josef’s vitals.

People talked volubly about the nouveau riche, but what about the nouveau poor? What about the struggling landowners forced to live in corners of great crumbling houses, seeing decay overcome what had once been splendour, moving from room to room to keep one step ahead of the decay.

The purchase of CrnPrag had taken place long before the days of welfare states in any country, but Franz-Josef thought that, even today, CrnPrag’s sad proud owner would have been given no help. He had belonged to the strange half-world of impoverished nobility, where income from rents had dwindled to virtually nothing as tenants bought their own land. You could not live off an ancient title any more than you could live off bricks and mortar, and CrnPrag’s owner had long since reached the last ditch: sending to the auction houses paintings and silver and tapestries and, in the end, finally and inevitably trying to sell an impractical, half-ruined house that no one could afford and no one wanted. It was every man’s right to own his house and his piece of land if he wished – Franz-Josef knew himself to have been ahead of his time in supporting this view – but tenant purchase bore hardly on the great landowners. It bore hardly on European heritage as well, when private collections must perforce be broken up to be sold, and when the great houses of Hungary and Romania rotted where they stood for lack of money to maintain them.

CrnPrag’s owner had signed the Deed of Conveyance with tears streaming down his face, and when Franz-Josef had held out his hand in the age-old gesture of sealing a deal with a handshake, the man had been unable to reciprocate. Stefan had shrugged and turned away, saying afterwards that the creature should have been thankful for such an easy, profitable sale of his rat-infested hulk, but Franz-Josef had found it difficult to put the man’s distress from his mind. He had wanted to visit him in the small, characterless house several miles distant where the man would be living, but he had never done so.

The Family had restored CrnPrag in secrecy, rebuilding and renewing it with care. They had not used local labour because local people would talk, and for CrnPrag to work it must be feared by those in its shadow. It must be shrouded in dark legend and sinister myth, so that even the most curious would not dare approach it. And so they had brought in teams of artisans from beyond the mountains: bricklayers and stonemasons and carpenters from Moldavia and the land then called Wallachia in the South. They had been sworn to secrecy; hints of an anonymous house being made ready for royalty had been made. Preserve the secrecy and you will be well rewarded.

It had worked very well. The workers had been permitted to bring their wives, and a small, completely contained community had sprung up. It had been an easy matter to house them all in the cluster of rather tumbledown but weatherproof cottages in the grounds. No one in the surrounding villages had known or guessed what was being done; CrnPrag stood behind high walls, at the centre of its own wooded acres, and there had been no mingling of the workmen with the locals. In any case, they spoke different languages, and in any case, they had their own people. There was even a pair of village fools with them: brothers, perhaps twins, small, stunted creatures with thick doughy skins and a fund of half-childish, half-malicious tricks and songs and sly, capering dances.

And when the work was completed and CrnPrag had risen phoenix-like, there had been a celebration, rather in the manner of farmers celebrating a harvest home, or vintners a vendange. Food and wine for everyone. Music and dancing. One of the dwarf-creatures had played the fiddle and there had been raucous laughter at the antics of the other one. CrnPrag had echoed with laughter and music and the scent of roasting meats and spiced wine had mingled with the pine scents of the mountain forests.

And all the while, the Family had been outside, concealed in the shadows, listening and waiting, peering through the half-open doors. They had known that there would come a moment when the carefully doctored wine would overcome the revellers, when they would sink, exhausted and dizzy, on to the floor.

When the moment came, they had pounced, going into the centre of the candlelit hall, falling on the befuddled workers and plying the knives and the razors.

Franz-Josef, driving through the overcast afternoon, felt his mind go back across the years, until he was in the great central hall of CrnPrag on that remarkable night, with the candles flickering wildly, and the frightened faces of the workmen. They had fought only briefly, their senses blunted, the suddenness of the attack overpowering them. But there had been a brief space when the women had screamed and the men had pushed them into a corner in a pitiful attempt to protect them.

We overcame their feeble resistance, of course, thought Franz-Josef. We had the advantage of surprise and the ease born of long practice in murder. And the poor peasant creatures had been bred to feudalism. They were too much in awe of us to fight properly.

Blood had poured and puddled on to the stone floor and dripped from the edges of the long banqueting table. Here and there the walls had been splashed. As the terrified workers began to die, Franz-Josef had heard his own people begin to sing Elizabeth’s strange, tuneless chant, handed down over the centuries:

‘The blood never failed me yet . . . Never failed me yet . . .

It lifts me from the dead.

Never failed me yet . . . Never failed me yet . . .

Though I die, I shall live . . .’

The most vivid memory of all was of Bianca. She had sprung on to one of the tables, among the spilled debris of food and wine, completely naked, catlike and sensuous and beautiful. Her white limbs were already glistening with fresh blood, and her eyes blazed with sexual ecstasy. She had lifted one of the old earthenware pots – one of Elizabeth’s own – and poured the fresh warm blood down over her body, turning slightly so that the candlelight cast its eerie glow on her. Franz-Josef could remember how he had paused and stared and thought: that is exactly how Elizabeth would have looked.

The only ones to escape had been the stunted fool-creatures, Ficzko and his brother, Janos. They had found them the next day, crouching at the bottom of a cupboard together, trembling like animals; they had taken them back to Varanno as servants. Bianca had let them take part in some of the rituals. Enough to give them a little of their own longevity. Enough to keep them grateful. It was the only way to get and keep loyal servants.

Over the decades, CrnPrag had woven its own cocoon. It had been absurdly easy to spread the rumours that would keep people from prying. In the nineteenth century, the villagers around CrnPrag had been simple and unsophisticated, and Romania and Hungary had ever been steeped in legend and lore. The villagers had listened, round-eyed, to the whispers of the devil Ordog walking again; of black cats who served him; of the goddess Mielliki, and of half-human creatures who could be summoned at full moon. There had grown up a belief that CrnPrag was a doorway to a dark world inhabited by ancient forest gods.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the madnesses and suicides and the morganatic marriages that rocked the Hapsburg Empire had made the task even easier. They had spread rumours of bastards and pretenders born in secrecy. Romantic, Dumas-type legends that had been believed. Even poor imbecilic monarchs hidden away for their own and their country’s good.

It had been this last that had given Stefan the idea of turning a small part of the house into an asylum for the incurably insane. The modern layer of their armour, he had said, his lips curved in a smile but his eyes cold. And so the notion of the dark old madhouse behind the iron gates had grown up, almost of its own accord. People avoided CrnPrag; they averted their eyes when they spoke of it. No one had ever questioned what lay beyond the iron gates and behind the high walls.

But it had not been until the beginning of the present century that Tranz had been conceived.

The creation of Tranz had been a stroke of genius. Even now, ninety or so years after its conception, Franz-Josef felt a shiver of awe, because Tranz had needed no adapting or shaping. It had been there, ready-tailored, the edges neatly trimmed, the surfaces buffed smooth, as if it had lain dormant somewhere for a very long time, moulding and polishing itself ready for their exact purpose.

An organisation, not so very large, apparently dedicated to giving sanctuary to those fleeing from violence or invasion. Actually doing just that for much of the time. It was a marvellous disguise, and it was a true one; from the first, Tranz had employed a small team of people to bring to CrnPrag the victims of war and revolution. There had been servants of the Romanovs after the revolution in Russia: not the Tsars themselves, of course, but many of their court. Later there had been Jews fleeing from Hitlerite Germany and Poland. People were more aware of world events by then and travel was becoming easier. There was wireless and there were newspapers and it had been necessary to strengthen CrnPrag’s latest mask. The carefully chosen group of men and women had continued Tranz’s work, and the Family had kept a close eye on them, never allowing too many of the group to meet, using mostly volunteers, people of widely differing backgrounds and nationalities. There was a strict watch kept on the families and the friends of the workers, and there was a private rule that workers must not get together on a social level. There must be no cosy meetings where notes might be compared and dangerous conclusions drawn. Divide and rule.

In the nineteen thirties and forties, Stefan Bathory had let it be believed that Himmler’s Gestapo had requisitioned CrnPrag. A place where Mengele practised his gruesome experiments. A place where Adolf Hitler’s mad vision of a Super Race might be realised. Franz-Josef had once or twice wondered whether Stefan had in truth made some kind of deal with Mengele. More recently they had let slip whispers of a wing dedicated to caring for those mutilated or diseased from atomic accidents. It was a believable story; Chernobyl was not far distant. Tranz and CrnPrag were chameleons, both of them adapting easily to world events.

At present CrnPrag housed homeless Bosnians, forced out of their countries by ruthless warlords. Tranz was diligent in helping the fleeing families and in bringing them through the war-torn areas of Hercegovina and across Hungary.

‘But anonymously,’ Stefan Bathory always told the handful of dedicated workers. ‘The head of Tranz is someone very well known, very prominent on the world stage. It would not do for him – perhaps it might be a her – to be seen to have any political affinities. It might have far-reaching consequences. It is essential that you work in as much secrecy as possible. Anyone found speaking to the media will be dealt with very severely.’

Another master-stroke. Tranz’s workers had instantly assumed that Tranz was headed and funded by a world leader or a member of royalty. Exactly as Stefan had intended. In the days when news reports on the activities of Amnesty and the International Red Cross were commonplace, Tranz went unnoticed.

And so now it was Bosnians who were kept inside CrnPrag, grateful for food and shelter and warmth, too shocked and distressed to question who their rescuers were; sometimes even too bewildered to know which country they had been brought to.

Franz-Josef frowned as he drove down the mountain road. There must be no sentiment. Tranz took what it could, trawling the war-torn countries over the years. There was always something somewhere, and Tranz was just big enough to be able to bring them all out of their war-torn lands, but just small enough to escape the eye of the media. It worked extraordinarily well.

And in reality CrnPrag was what it had always been: a storehouse, a vast blood reservoir. Tranz was a gigantic fishing net, bringing to the Family the one thing it must have to survive. Living blood for the rituals.

Night had fallen on Varanno when Bianca Bathory woke, stretched like a cat in the bed, and turned to regard her still-slumbering companion. Like most young men, Ladislas’s performance had fallen a bit short of his promise, but it had been fun to seduce him. Beneath his suavity, Ladislas had been discernibly awed at being beckoned to by Franz-Josef’s lady. Bianca had rather enjoyed this.

He had come like a lamb to her bed. He would never equal Franz-Josef because no one ever would, but he had made an amusing diversion for a few nights and it was always fun to intrigue.

Ladislas stirred and half opened his eyes. Beneath the sheets, he was hardening into arousal against her thigh again. It was a pity that young men tended to give you short sharp love-making three or four times over, instead of containing themselves for one or two beautifully lengthy episodes, which Bianca would have preferred, but people’s attention-span for everything was short these days. Bianca could remember when love-making – the real thing – had ranked very highly in the social arts. Young men of good family were tactfully introduced to older women – frequently high-class courtesans or their fathers’ discarded mistresses – and taught to make love in the same way they were taught to ride a horse and dance gracefully and make polite conversation. Courteous manners and considerate behaviour had been expected to extend to the bedchamber, and it had been considered very discourteous indeed to reach a climax before your partner. It was a pity that the world had adopted other manners now. The trouble with the young now was that they did not think there was anything to learn about love-making: they thought you just did it.

At her side, Ladislas murmured something and slid his hand over her breasts and down between her thighs. He had achieved a full arousal at last, instead of the half-mast affair of their earlier encounter, and he was hard and insistent. With any luck he would remember what she had taught him about control.

He did remember it, and afterwards Bianca lay waiting for him to drift into half sleep, because this would be the moment to find out about Pietro; this would be the moment when Ladislas would be off his guard. She would introduce the matter lightly and casually, her voice deliberately blurred with sleep. A count of twenty should she make it? One, two, three—

But as she reached twelve he forestalled her. He said, ‘Bianca, my father believes that Franz-Josef is failing,’ and Bianca, who had been expecting anything other than this, turned to stare at him in horror.

She had thought that no one had known. She had not even been sure if Franz-Josef himself knew.

To begin with she had dismissed it, because it was unthinkable and unbearable that Franz-Josef, the cool, enigmatic aristocrat she had married so very many years ago, should succumb to the slow erosion, the metamorphosis. What he himself had once called the disenchanting. Oh God, how shall I bear seeing it happen? But the signs were unmistakable. The faint fastidious disgust at the rituals in Csejthe; the waning of sexual excitement at those rituals. The blood is turning against him, Bianca had thought and, almost without conscious thought, had begun to draw attention away from him and on to herself. She had heard the whispers of exhibitionism and vulgarity and laced mutton – that last was an eighteenth-century expression of course, but astonishingly explicit. And none of it had mattered, because all that mattered was to protect Franz-Josef for as long as possible.

You have had more lovers than you can count, my dear, he had said to her once, the faint, amused tolerance in his eyes, and it was true. She had taken and discarded more lovers than she could remember over the decades. Just as he had.

But never one to match you, my love. . . There would never be anyone quite like him. He had dazzled her from the very first, and she had stayed dazzled. She had never failed to experience a surge of almost indecent triumph at entering the Family’s banqueting halls on his arm; at hearing the sudden hush and seeing the Family turn respectfully to watch his leisured progress to the place set for him at the head of the table. He never failed in the small courtesies to her, especially in public. The unfolding of her napkin, the adjusting of her chair, the pouring of wine into her glass. They were tricks, of course; beneath it he was as wild and as rapacious as his ancestress had been. But he possessed a veneer of quite remarkable urbanity which you sensed rather than actually saw. Silk over iron. It was an extraordinarily alluring mixture.

But for all his allure, for all his strength, he was failing, he was succumbing to the disenchanting. Elizabeth, you never lived to discover the true power of the blood, thought Bianca. But we discovered it, and your legacy was more remarkable than ever you knew. Immortality. But after a time, even immortality betrays us.

Soon the signs would become visible: the shrivelling of skin, the dulling of eyes and hair. And once that happened, the Family would fling Franz-Josef out like the wolvish creatures they were. They would throw him into Csejthe with the other gerons, and they would snarl at one another’s throats over his successor before even the door had closed. I don’t think I shall bear it.

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.

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.’

‘And 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.’

‘Stuff her cunt with rotten vegetables.’

‘Hold her down and take turns with her,’ said the greasy-faced guard, leering.

‘I wouldn’t touch the bitch,’ said the guard whose face had been clawed. He drew out a handkerchief and pressed it to his cheek, his expression sullen.

The woman ignored them all. She lifted her great haunted eyes to where Catherine still stood helplessly at the room’s centre, held by the other two guards, and recognition showed in her face.

In a soft throaty voice, she said, ‘Hello, little sister.’

Chapter Twenty-one

Michael telephoned Varanno immediately after breakfast, requesting Tobias to make the connection, and explaining to Catherine’s mother that after all there was no cause for concern; Sister Hilary had returned – he believed there had been some kind of misunderstanding about the arrangements. He was extremely sorry for his previous call which might have aroused concern.

‘No doubt I am at fault,’ he said, urbanely. ‘Since my illness, I am sometimes confused, you understand . . .’

Bianca was purringly sympathetic. ‘We are glad to know what has happened, Mr Devlin.’ Her English was good but more accented than Catherine’s. Michael caught himself wondering what she looked like.

‘My husband is away from Varanno today,’ said Bianca, ‘but I am pleased to have your call. It is a concern if someone fails to arrive when expected. In these days there are so many terrible things that can befall travellers.’

There was a faint ironic note, as if Bianca Bathory found life amusing. This was a lady who was probably very aware of her attractions.

‘I didn’t meet her,’ said Hilary. ‘But Catherine’s father was extremely attractive.’

‘How did I sound?’

‘Convincing. Have you always been such a facile liar?’

‘It was necessary to allay their fears,’ said Michael equably. ‘It was important to let them think we don’t suspect anyone inside Varanno.

‘Do we?’

‘Don’t we? Why did that creature – Ficzko – follow Catherine? It’s very probable that Franz-Josef or his wife ordered it.’

‘Yes,’ said Hilary, frowning. ‘Yes, of course. It’s only—’

‘It’s only that by the cold light of morning, the phantoms and the ghouls pale a little?’

‘Yes.’ Hilary found it a bit awkward to talk about last night because of how last night had ended. Was it better to ignore it, or to have a calm, adult discussion and explain that it must not happen again? She had no idea. You were supposed to avoid what was called the occasion for sin, which in this case meant keeping Michael at arm’s length, but in view of their self-imposed mission, that would be difficult. She wondered if she was making too much of the whole thing. Perhaps Michael automatically went into a kind of preseduction act if he was alone with any female under fifty. Some men did that on the basis that nine times out of ten they were rejected, but the tenth time they were not. Michael would not have had many rejections. Hilary put down her empty tea-cup and said, ‘If you are ready, I think we should make a start.’

‘To the castle on the hill? To Csejthe?’

‘To Csejthe,’ said Hilary.

‘Lead on, Lady.’

It was far easier by the morning light to manoeuvre the BMW out of the Red Angel’s yard and on to the high road. They stopped at the first petrol station they came to, and Michael paid for a full tank of petrol and asked for the oil and water and tyres to be checked. ‘Because we won’t risk any kind of breakdown again.’

‘I’m glad one of us has plenty of money,’ said Hilary, and saw him grin.

‘Aren’t you breaking all the vows one by one now? That’s poverty just gone, and last night it was chastity . . .’

Hilary said, ‘Would you like music as we drive?’

‘Did we bring any Mozart?’

‘I believe so.’

‘It’d be the only way I could bear your driving,’ said Michael.

‘You can’t see my driving!’ Hilary was nettled.

‘I can hear it.’ He grinned again and his hand came out to close over hers briefly. Hilary had the thought that he was becoming far too practised at this.

As they sped towards the mountain road, the measured tones of the Jupiter Symphony flooded the car’s interior.

‘Have we a plan of campaign?’ asked Hilary as they stopped at a low roadside inn later in the morning.

‘Not in any detail.’ Michael had asked Hilary to keep a look out for somewhere to break the journey after an hour or so. He was perfectly relaxed with her driving – but he guessed that it was putting a strain on her.

They drank the roadside inn’s excellent coffee, and Hilary found herself enjoying sitting here in casual clothes, as if they were a couple on an ordinary motoring holiday. It did not matter how one looked, not really, but it was nice to think that one blended into the surroundings. The borrowed trousers and sweater were comfortable, and Michael had lent her a plain shirt which was too big, but which went surprisingly well under the sweater with the white collar folded outside. Before they set off she had showered using his soap again, and she could still smell it on her skin, expensive and luxurious. Be careful, said Hilary to Hilary.

‘I think all we can do for now is get as much detail about Csejthe and its inhabitants as possible,’ said Michael, draining the coffee in his cup. ‘And then lay it before the Viennese police. If there’s anything to lay, that is. Sorry if that sounds somewhat ambiguous, by the way.’

‘With photographs,’ said Hilary, determined not to rise to any bait.

‘Yes, if we can. You’re happy about using the camera, are you?’

‘I think so.’ Hilary had carefully studied the camera Michael had produced, which he said was called a night-sight camera.

‘It’s one that’s used by the armed forces,’ he had said. ‘For night-raids. It operates with infra-red light, I think. They used it in the Gulf War and also on snipers’ rifles.’

‘Is it – official for you to have it?’ said Hilary and Michael grinned.

‘Not entirely,’ he said. ‘I got it through – we’ll call it private channels. No, I didn’t steal it and no one stole it for me. It was a matter of a favour being returned unexpectedly. Bread cast on the waters and returning tenfold. But more or less above board. It’s been enormously useful and it’ll be so now. There’s nothing to alert anyone, you see.’ He tapped the camera’s surface. ‘No flash bulb. It’s no good our getting inside Csejthe with immense stealth and then waking the whole zoo with flashbulbs exploding everywhere.’

‘No, of course not. How does it work?’ said Hilary, examining the camera. ‘Don’t be too technical.’

‘It’s what’s called image intensification. The shutters are here, I think . . .’ His hands felt for the camera. ‘Yes, here. And this is the lens. See? The focus is just beneath. It’s pretty simple to use. And quite portable.’

‘Yes. Does it produce ordinary photos?’

‘Not quite ordinary. It doesn’t make use of light and conventional photography needs light – either natural or artificial. With this you get a kind of green and white set of images. But they’re recognisable images. If we can shoot the corpse-creatures in Csejthe they’ll be identifiable. Good evidence.’

‘What about developing the film?’

‘That isn’t something you can get done quite anywhere. We won’t be able to take a roll of film into the Austrian equivalent of Boots and collect it the next day, but any organisation with specialist dark-room facilities could develop the film. The military can do it, of course, or I could ask Reuter’s or WPN.’

‘What about the police?’

‘Yes, the police would have the technical equipment.’ He spoke as if arranging for the developing of night-sight photographs was a minor difficulty, and Hilary remembered that he would have been intimate with high-ranking military personnel and international organisations through his work.

Hilary stowed the camera away in the BMW’s glove compartment, wedging it firmly with a sheaf of the maps provided by Reuter’s. ‘Shall you wait in the car while I go up to the castle?’ she said.

‘No,’ said Michael at once, and the scowl drew his brows down in a black bar.

‘I didn’t suppose you would. But you know if you stayed behind it would be far—’

‘Easier for you?’

‘I was going to say quicker.’

‘Whither ye go, I shall follow. If not quite shoulder to shoulder, then at least hand in hand. Maybe even roped together like mountaineers. Would you tie yourself to me?’

He could not see her of course but, for all that, his eyes appeared to be filled with mischief. Hilary said, composedly, ‘Have you finished your coffee? Then shall we go on again?’

‘Ever onwards, lady.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’

‘No you don’t.’

‘No, I don’t.’

Places that were sinister and threatening by night usually took on a different face by day. Hilary was fully prepared for the mountain road to appear fresh and untroubled in the brightness of morning, with Michael at her side and Mozart’s exquisite music pouring out of the BMW’s speakers. She was pleased to find that she remembered the road pretty well, because it was an efficient thing to do. She would concentrate on being efficient because it would keep the fears at bay.

Michael was unexpectedly helpful about the direction. He said things like, ‘About an hour out of Debreczen I recall seeing a farmhouse with a steep gable roof somewhere on the right.’ And, ‘It feels as if we’re going down an escarpment, and if so you ought to be able to see a church with twin spires somewhere ahead.’

But as the road climbed, Hilary fell silent. This was the way she had come last night; ahead was the road she had travelled two nights ago, when she had followed Catherine. Had it really been only two nights?

Both times the nights had been full of fear and terror; now it was full day and brilliant sunshine – the kind of strong bright light that often lights a late autumn day – but, despite the sunshine, Hilary was cold. Would the dwarf-creature Janos be lying in wait? Did he trap all unwary motorists, or only lone women at night? It was probably the latter; if motorists had started to disappear on this stretch of road, there would have been an investigation. There would certainly have been a good deal of talk locally. People liked to tell you about haunted roads and ghost-ridden mountain passes. Hilary put this viewpoint forward and Michael said consideringly, ‘I think you’re right. They couldn’t have any kind of organised capturing. Tobias at the Red Angel would certainly have known about it, if so. That dwarf-creature probably saw the car headlights, and decoyed you to the castle on the chance that you were alone.’

‘Yes, of course.’ This made Hilary feel better.

And then they rounded a curve in the road, and the cliff rose steeply on their left, and Hilary saw quite clearly skid marks in the road and splinters of rock strewn about. This is where Janos darted across the road and I crashed. She could make out the jutting rock obscuring the castle path. At the end of the path was Csejthe and the corpse-creatures who had bathed in the blood of their caged victim.

Hilary drew the car as far as possible on to the grass verge and, in a rather uncertain voice, said, ‘We’re here.’

Michael said, ‘We aren’t going to argue about this. I’m coming up there with you.’ And Hilary felt a huge relief, because although it might be difficult – and certainly impractical – for him to come with her, it would have been unbearable on her own.

He looped a belt about her waist and fastened it round his left wrist – ‘So that there is no possibility of us becoming separated,’ he said. In his right hand he carried the ash walking stick that he preferred to the white one. Hilary slung the camera around her neck by its strap, finding it lighter than she had expected.

The fear closed about her more strongly as they made their way along the narrow path. It was fringed with thick undergrowth on both sides, and beyond the undergrowth was the sweep of the mountains, with dark green patches of pine-trees scattered across. By daylight it was possible to see that the path had been cleared, making it possible to walk up to the castle with reasonable ease. But it had not been cleared to a degree that made it look as if it were regularly used. Whoever was behind Csejthe and its terrible occupants was extremely clever.

‘We’ll take chronological shots,’ said Michael as they made their way carefully upwards. ‘Can you do that? Showing the approach, showing the apparent desolation. And than as we get nearer more shots showing that it isn’t deserted at all. Those will come out as ordinary snaps. How bright is it? I can’t feel any sun . . .’

‘There’s some mist,’ said Hilary. ‘But it’s patchy, and I think the light’s bright enough for ordinary photographs.’

‘Then it’ll only be inside the castle that you’ll need to use the night-sight lens. All right?’

‘All right.’

It was easy and rather comforting to slip into the old relationship as they walked up the track. The mist thickened as they went higher, but the sharp scents of autumn were all about them, and although the undergrowth did not encroach on to the path, it brushed their ankles with light, feathery fingers as they walked. The pine scents drifted into their faces on the light wind.

Hilary guided Michael’s footsteps and warned him of uneven ground and tried to see the easiest way. It was bad enough to approach this place with your full sight, and it must be a million times worse if you were blind, but Michael was showing no fear. Hilary thought he was even finding it stimulating.

‘Keep up a running commentary as much as you can,’ he said. ‘Tell me how close we are getting, and what you can see. Make me see it as well.’ Hilary wondered if this was merely a ploy to concentrate her mind on something other than being frightened, but Michael’s voice was sharp and businesslike. Was this how he had sounded when he took his camera crew and interpreters on assignments in devastated cities and war-torn capitals? His expression was absorbed and rather remote, as if there were only one thing in the world for him at the moment, and that thing was Csejthe Castle.

The mist swirled around the crouching bulk of the castle as they approached, but Hilary levelled the camera carefully and took two or three shots. It seemed to be a simple enough technique, and there was satisfaction at having mastered the mechanism.

‘Patrick Lichfield you aren’t,’ said Michael repressively when Hilary reported this small success. ‘But if you can get a plain record, that’ll do.’

The castle looked deserted but, as they drew nearer, Michael feeling his way impatiently with the stick, Hilary thought it did not feel deserted. This might be because she knew what dwelled at its heart, but she thought that there was a dark brooding aura about it. This is a place where evil has stalked and where something ancient and hungry has survived. Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess. Immortality from immersing your body in blood. I’ll stop thinking about her. I don’t think I believe in her anyway.

‘We’re about fifty yards from the castle now, Michael,’ she said, ‘and the mist’s all round us.’

‘I can feel it,’ said Michael. ‘Damp and clinging. Does it hide the castle?’

‘No.’

‘Then we should . . .’ He stopped and his hand closed about her wrist painfully. ‘Somebody’s coming,’ he said in a sudden urgent whisper. ‘Can you hear? Someone’s coming from out of the castle. Get us into hiding! Quickly!’

Another couple of minutes and they would have been seen. If Michael had not possessed the abnormally sensitive hearing of the sightless, they would certainly have been caught.

Hilary responded instantly, plunging into the undergrowth at the side of the path, pulling Michael with her. The bracken was thick and there were patches of dogwood and briar, almost waist-high. As they half rolled, half slid into the rough concealment, the thick branchy stems caught Hilary’s hair and scratched her hands.

They lay face-down in the bracken, several feet from the path, and a little below it. Hilary was vividly aware of the feel of Michael’s thigh against hers. His arm came around her waist.

‘Hidden?’ he said in a thread of a voice.

‘Yes, but keep absolutely flat. I’ll watch and tell you when it’s safe to move. They’re coming down the path.’

‘Who?’

‘Janos and three of the attendants.’

The mist, which had seemed so eerie earlier on, would be their friend now. It would hide them. And as the four men drew nearer, it was clear that they were deep in conversation; Hilary strained to hear. But her knowledge of the language was patchy and they spoke in the thick dialect she remembered, so that she could make out only a phrase or two. She saw Janos bend his arm at the elbow, the fist clenched in an unmistakable gesture of obscene description, and there was a burst of derisory laughter. At her side, Michael stiffened and his arm tightened momentarily about her.

The four men were level with the makeshift hiding place now, and Hilary held her breath. Her heart was thumping painfully in her chest. Please God don’t let them see us. They won’t be expecting to see us and they certainly won’t be expecting to see me. They’ll have discovered that I escaped, of course, and they might think I’ve gone to the police – are they called police here? But they won’t expect me to come back on my own. Nobody would come back here after getting free. Not alone. You’d come with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men . . .

Probably the men were going to the roadside to see how well the path was hidden in case she was bringing help of some kind. Something like that. There they go. They’re nearly at the foot of the path. I can hardly see them through the mist. We’re nearly safe. Or are we? I think there’s something I ought to have remembered . . . What is it?

As the four men neared the road, Hilary relaxed, letting her head fall against the thick, springy ground, feeling the soft damp earth against her cheek.

‘They’ve gone. Don’t get up for a moment and don’t speak very loudly, but they’re at the foot of the path. Near to the roadside.’ In a minute he would remove his arm and he would move away and it would feel suddenly and sharply cold. I shouldn’t be feeling any of this, I should be thinking about the danger, about how we’re going to get into the castle and what we’re going to do when we’re in there. What is it I’m trying to remember? Something that might have drawn attention to us somewhere? On the journey? Did we talk about Csejthe in hearing of someone?

It was very quiet in the bracken. Hilary could still feel the warmth of Michael’s body close to her and there was the faint masculine tang of clean hair and good soap. Don’t notice it. Concentrate on watching the pathway. Concentrate on remaining still. Concentrate on trying to remember what’s worrying you.

There was nothing worrying her of course; it was simply nerves. I think we’re safe, said Hilary silently, her eyes on the retreating figures. If they reach that dead tree lower down I’ll count us as safe and we can steal away from the path. They would be swallowed up by the mist, and they could go deeper into the undergrowth and approach the castle from the rear.

She glanced at Michael and saw that his brows were drawn down into a frown and that his ear was against the ground. Could he hear their footsteps better than she could? Could he tell how far away they were?

Michael turned his head and spoke into her ear in a whisper so soft that Hilary barely caught it. She turned her head, searching his face, because for a moment the words had not arranged themselves into an understandable pattern.

And then Michael spoke again, and Hilary felt ice close about her heart. Of course. That was what had been tugging at the edges of her mind.

The car. Michael had said, ‘We left the car on the grass verge. And they’ll recognise it.’

It was then that Hilary saw the four men materialise out of the mist again.

Coming towards them.

Chapter Twenty-two

They were both frozen into immobility. This was how animals must feel when they were hunted. Foxes, rabbits. If I keep very still, if I don’t move even an eyelash they won’t see me.

There was a harsh note in the voices and angry shouts. Hilary risked a cautious peep through the fronds of undergrowth and saw that the men had plunged into the bracken and were swishing angrily at it with canes. And they were coming nearer. She began to pray silently.

‘They’re closer, aren’t they?’ said Michael’s voice in her ear.

‘Yes. Searching the bracken. Janos is going back to the castle – maybe for help. The three men are being quite thorough.’

‘I can hear that they are,’ said Michael, and although he spoke so softly that Hilary had to strain to catch the words, she could hear the frustration in his voice. He was aching to trap the men in some way; perhaps to trip them up one by one as they trod this way so that they fell into the undergrowth, and then render them unconscious. Trip them up . . .

Hilary said in a low, urgent voice, ‘Listen. This may not work, but . . .’

Michael listened intently, and the brief, blinding grin lit his face for a moment. ‘Resourceful child,’ he said. ‘Can you do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hilary, incurably truthful.

‘Try!’ said Michael, and then with savage impatience, ‘Jesus God, if only I could see!’ He struggled with his feelings for a moment, and then said, ‘I can’t do it, so you’ll have to. When he gets close, grab both his ankles and pull them towards you very sharply. Understand? Towards. It’ll be like pulling the rug from under someone’s feet. It won’t take too much strength, but he’ll go flat on his back. And then you’ll stun him and you’ll have to do it immediately.’ His hand sought and found hers and there was a brief, warm handclasp. ‘I’m here with you, remember. Here, use my stick to hit the bastard: it’s fairly heavy at the handle.’

‘Yes. All right.’ Hilary grasped the stick and took several deep breaths.

Michael said in an expressionless voice, ‘Had you a vow of non-violence as well?’

‘I expect so, but I can’t be thinking about it now. Keep quiet, one of them’s coming.’

It would be necessary to be extremely quiet but immensely quick about this. It would not do to bungle it. Hilary found herself praying again. Please God let me do this swiftly and cleanly. Don’t let the others turn round.

The man was within a yard of them, but the other two were some distance away. It looked as if they had agreed to split up and take a portion of the hillside each. Would they hear? Would they see? In just a minute, in another few seconds, she would reach out and grab the man’s ankles and bring him down. Another eight steps, six, four . . .

Hilary tensed every muscle in her body and lunged forward, snatching at the man’s ankles, jerking them towards her with all her strength. He gave a surprised cry, a kind of half grunt that could not possibly be heard by his colleagues and fell backwards, hitting the back of his head on the ground. Hilary bounded forward, still keeping low to the ground and lifted the stick. It was a sickening thing to bring the stick down on the man’s skull. The fall had not quite stunned him, but it had knocked the breath and the wits from him. It was horridly easy to rap him on the head, in the part where the hair grew thickest, but Hilary clenched her teeth and did it. The man gave a snorting grunt again and his eyes rolled upwards, so that only a rim of white showed.

From his prone position in the bracken behind her, Michael said very softly, ‘All right, Hilary?’

‘I think so.’ Hilary was trembling violently and feeling a bit sick, but this could not be paid any attention. ‘He’s unconscious,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think he’s—’

‘Wait till we see.’ The Irish was there strongly again. Was it only in moments of extreme emotion that it broke through?

But he had understood without needing to have it explained; he inched forward in a half crawl along the ground and felt for the man’s pulse. Hilary, who was shaking so much by this time that she could not have told if the creature was breathing or dead, watched gratefully.

‘His heart’s beating loud and clear,’ said Michael, sliding his hand out from beneath the dark jacket. ‘Nicely judged, lady.’

‘He won’t die?’

‘Not for another forty years by the sound of him. He’ll have a nasty headache for a day or two, and he’ll probably throw up a few times when he comes round. Serve him right,’ said Michael, unrepentantly. ‘What now?’

They were still keeping low down in the bracken, but Hilary could see the other two men searching on the castle’s far side. She said, ‘I think if we keep low we might get away now. Janos has gone back to the castle and the other two’re quite a distance from us. They’re searching the other side.’

‘Down to the road?’ said Michael, and then, with another of the swift, reckless grins. ‘Or up to the castle to complete what we came here for?’

Hilary stared at him, and without warning caught his mood. Exhilaration coursed through her, because although this was frightening and dangerous, it was marvellously exciting as well. They would find out what was going on in Csejthe; they would get the photographs of the corpse-creatures to show to the authorities in Vienna or Debreczen, and then they would somehow reach Catherine. She sobered slightly, because Catherine had still to be reached.

‘To the castle,’ she said at last. ‘Of course.’

‘Of course.’ The grin flashed again. ‘Once more unto the breach, my child.’

‘Let’s hope there is a breach,’ said Hilary, and they began the cautious approach to the castle’s rear.

Michael thought he was keeping his agonised frustration fairly well in check. It had been wormwood and gall to have to let Hilary trap the castle guard and stun him, but there had been nothing else for it. Michael knew that with his sight and wits he could have dealt with all three guards using Hilary’s plan; it would have been very little different to some of the unscrupulous methods he had occasionally employed in the past to get into the Iron Curtain countries. When the Iron Curtain was still there. But without his sight he was helpless. He was dependent on Hilary to be his eyes. Damn it, he was dependent on her for his sanity and his happiness as well now. He had no idea as yet what he was going to do about that.

Hilary was treading cautiously around the castle’s walls and Michael could feel its huge bulk towering over them. Were they about two feet from its wall? He put out the stick and felt it scrape against stone. Yes, his instincts were becoming much more trustworthy. But I don’t want to have to trust them! he cried silently. I don’t want to be compensated by sharper hearing and supersensitive feeling. I want my sight back!

He would accept the instincts for now because they would help him. He took a firmer grip on the belt that was looped about Hilary’s waist, and followed her.

She had been murmuring that they were nearing some kind of rear entrance: perhaps it would have been where carters and pedlars would have come in the days when Csejthe had been thriving and humming with life.

‘If I stop speaking,’ she said, ‘you will know that someone is within sight.’

‘Yes. If that happens I’ll stand still and pray.’

‘Don’t blaspheme.’

‘What makes you think I’m blaspheming? I was never more serious in my life.’

He heard her level the camera twice more and the whirr of the shutter as she took more shots. A tiny speck of red-eye glowed and Hilary supposed this was the night-lens operating. It was rather eerie to know that this was how night-raids had been carried out in the Gulf War, or how snipers lined up their victims. She said, in a whisper, ‘The castle is plainly not deserted. There’s a kitchen with pans and ranges and things. I think I’ve managed to photograph it. There’re packing cases – tins and jars of food.’

‘The attendants would bring up supplies.’

‘Yes. And there are lights burning – not electric lights, wall-torches.’

‘How romantic,’ said Michael in dulcet tones, and felt her relax into momentary amusement.

And then they were stepping inside a door or a doorway and the warmth of the afternoon had shut off abruptly and Csejthe’s huge, menacing darkness closed about them.

Hilary could see the immense central hall where the unknown girl had died in the cage. Fires had recently burned and there were indications of ordinary life everywhere: a drift of ash around the hearth, a tray of dirty plates that somebody had set down on a ledge and apparently forgotten. The scent of still-warm ash drifted on the air. But for all its apparent emptiness, Csejthe felt lived-in in the indefinable way that places did feel lived-in. And so far from finding the traces of occupancy homely and reassuring, Hilary found them frightening. It was all too much like Grimm or Andersen again: entering the giant’s castle or the witch’s house and finding that, although it seemed deserted, the kettle was singing on the hob and the beds were warm. At any minute you might hear the ogre’s tread shaking the ground as he returned home, and hear him shouting for the blood of an Englishman . . . At any second you might hear the witch’s cackle and the door slammed and bolted behind you . . .

She said firmly, ‘There’s no sign of the corpse-creatures anywhere. They’re probably in the dungeons and—’

‘No.’

‘No what?’

‘No you can’t go down there alone again.’

‘Michael, I’ll have to! It’s where they were before. It must be where they spend most of the time.’

‘Until the servants bring them sacrifices,’ said Michael. They were standing huddled in the doorway, speaking in angry whispers. ‘The servants go out and find victims,’ he said. ‘And then the corpse-things come up into the light for their grisly banquets.’ He frowned. ‘The staircase you went down before—’

‘You’d never manage it,’ said Hilary at once. ‘It’s narrow and steep and slippery. You’d give us away. You wouldn’t be able to help it.’ Michael bit down a curse as Hilary looked around the hall. He ought not to have come after all. He was useless. He was worse than useless, he was a danger. Bitterness flooded his mind again.

Hilary said, ‘The servants probably think I’m here alone. They’ve seen the car – that’s obvious – and if they catch me, they’ll be sure that I’m alone. They won’t suspect a collaborator. So if I’m caught, you would be free to get out and raise help. You were right not to stay in the car after all.’

Michael managed not to say, How could I raise help? because it sounded petulant and whining. He knew that if Hilary went down to the dungeons and failed to return he would rescue her somehow. He would get help and he would get her out if he had to tear down the castle brick by brick and slaughter every living thing inside it. He controlled his temper and said, ‘All right. Point me into a good hiding place until you get back.’

‘Over here.’ There was a deep cupboard at the far end on the left of the hearth. Hilary thought it would once have been used to keep dishes of food warm before setting them on the tables. It was probably even used for the same purpose now. ‘Inside here,’ she said. And almost automatically, added. ‘You’re on the – let me see – the east side of the banqueting hall. It’s oblong in shape and if you stand back against the wall you’re facing the long side of the oblong. All right?’

Michael formed a mental picture in the way that Hilary had taught him in the Hampshire convent. ‘Yes.’

‘The stone fireplace is on your left and the wall on your right. I expect you’ll feel the warmth from the chimney.’

‘I shall,’ said Michael who had already felt it.

‘In front of you, against the wall on your right, is a massive oak dresser. Like a huge sideboard. Jutting out about three feet.’

‘Yes.’ He added this detail.

‘The door leading outside is facing you.’

‘How long is the hall?’ At least forty feet, he thought. There was a feeling of great space. When Hilary said, ‘About fifty feet,’ he was aware of a small surge of satisfaction.

He said, ‘Fifty feet. That’s twenty-five or -six paces from this end. And the door?’

‘Central in the wall.’ Hilary narrowed her eyes. ‘The hall is about twenty feet wide. Say eight paces across.’

‘Which means the door edge is three paces if I stand with my back to the wall at that end,’ finished Michael. ‘What’s beyond it?’

‘A courtyard. An open courtyard.’ Hilary narrowed her eyes.

‘There’s a small parapet, but directly in line with the door are steps. I can’t see properly, but I think they lead on to the path we used from the road.’

‘All right, I’ve got that as well. Don’t bother to describe the furniture, Hilary. If I have to move out by myself I’ll use the wall for guidance.’ He felt for her hand. ‘Get the photographs,’ he said. ‘But don’t endanger yourself. Go now and go quickly and safely. When you get back, I shall be waiting for you, my love.’

Hilary made a cautious way to the stairs that she remembered from two nights ago and began to descend. There was the same flickering firelight and the same leering stone gargoyles that seemed to leap and gibber as she went down. There was the same feeling of oppression.

She had decided that if she could see the corpse-creatures from the stair, she would photograph them from there. Even with the night-lens there would be the whirring of the shutter and the least noise would alert them. She went on.

The corpse-creatures were there. Hilary could see them beyond the stone arch, some grouped about the table, others seated in high-backed wingchairs. Her senses were not so assaulted this time and she could take in more details. There were comfortable chairs and settles. Books and rugs and warm hangings on the walls. Someone had thrown down a newspaper, exactly in the way that people did throw down newspapers when they were halfway through reading them and were called away for a minute. She made out the name: Neue Zeit and the headline – something about a politician’s speech and the economy, she thought.

Silver-framed photographs were dotted about on small tables and chests. Most of them were faded and dim so that it was impossible to make out the subjects, and many of them were the unmistakable sepia tints of the last century. Daguerreotypes, thought Hilary, staring. How long was it since daguerreotypes had been the norm for photography? A hundred and twenty years? More? This was remarkable beyond belief. It was like a surrealist retirement home. Sunset Rest, Eventide Haven. Your own room with TV and a garden view, and your family visiting every Sunday after lunch.

She was lifting the camera warily, not quite pointing it at random, but certainly aiming it with more regard for speed and stealth than accuracy, when there was the sound of a door opening at the other end of the dungeons. Light – ordinary yellow electric light – streamed in.

Two men, one older, one younger, both with the dark eyes and slanting cheekbones of Catherine and her father, came into the dungeon and sat down at the long table.

It was not possible to retreat. The two men were facing the stair and they would certainly see if she moved. Hilary pressed back into the shadows.

The younger one was very good-looking, in the dark-haired pale-skinned way that Catherine and her father were good-looking. It was an extraordinary type of beauty: luminous-skinned, high-cheekboned. Exotic and faintly Eastern, but with a dash of something that transcended race. A tribe apart. But there was an ominous weakness about the young man’s mouth, and there were lines of dissipation around his eyes. Hilary distrusted him at once.

The corpse-creatures had shuffled their pitiful way to the table, some of them leaning heavily on sticks, some helping one another along. Hilary had a brief, painful vision of how they had responded to the blood, and how they had stood up straighter and been stronger and smoother-skinned.

They were all seated now – there were about eighteen or twenty of them – and the older man had the air of a businessman chairing a meeting. But when he spoke, there was an unexpected deference in his voice, and Hilary heard with relief that he spoke not in the difficult hybrid Hungarian tongue, which she wouldn’t have had a hope of understanding, but in smooth Austrian-German. She stayed where she was, hoping she could follow the conversation.

‘I am grateful for your hospitality,’ said the older man, and the corpse-creatures inclined their heads. ‘And for according me your time.’

Again there was the brief gesture, and the one whom Hilary remembered as their spokesman, said in his once-beautiful voice. ‘We do not know how much time we have left, Stefan.’

‘But we can spare a little of it to hear you,’ said the woman at his side.

‘Thank you.’ The man called Stefan appeared to arrange his thoughts and then said, ‘You know that Franz-Josef’s boy – Pietro – turned his back on the Family a few years ago?’

‘And his sister entered a convent after he went,’ said the woman. ‘Yes, we know it . . .’

She paused, and the spokesman said, ‘It is interesting to speculate whether there is any connection between the two events. Had you not thought of that?’ said the man, as Stefan and the younger man looked up. ‘I see you had not.’

‘I don’t see how there can be,’ said Stefan, slowly. ‘Cat was only fifteen or so when Pietro went. She didn’t enter the Vienna Convent until two or three years later. There can’t be a connection.’

‘No? Perhaps there are still many things you have to learn about your lineage.’ The man glanced at the others, and a murmur of something akin to indulgence went through them. It was almost as if they were smiling with tolerant affection on the shortcomings or the immaturity of a favoured nephew or grandson.

‘You are still very young, Stefan,’ said the man. ‘But you will learn. Do you wish to speak to us about Pietro’s defection?’

‘Partly. I think we have not an exact precedent for it,’ said Stefan evasively, and a man seated further down the table said, ‘It is something that has never happened before.’

‘There has been the occasional blackmailer,’ put in another.

‘But then there has been money involved. This,’ said the spokesman, ‘is very different.’ He leaned forward and the flickering light lay cruelly across his face. Hilary knew that the authority had shifted from Stefan to him; she had almost seen it happen: a globe of coiled silver thread passing from one pair of hands to another. ‘Pietro was a remarkable boy,’ he said.

‘Dazzling,’ murmured one of the women. ‘But one would expect any child of Franz-Josef and LaBianca to be so.’

‘There were only ever the two children of that pairing, of course,’ said one of the men, thoughtfully.

‘But it was as if everything was concentrated into those two,’ said the woman. ‘They are both dazzling. Pietro is brilliant.’

She glanced rather defiantly at the spokesman who said, ‘But for all his dazzling looks and for all his brilliance, Pietro renounced his inheritance. That is something that has never happened in all our history. As you say, there is no precedent. I cannot remember anyone ever rejecting Elizabeth’s legacy.’ He looked down the table in courteous question, and the others shook their heads.

‘Not knowingly,’ said one of them.

‘No.’ The man turned back. ‘How did the Family’s head deal with Pietro’s desertion?’ he said, a thread of malice in his voice, and for the first time Stefan looked across at the younger man, and spread his hands as if to say, we have to tell them everything. Hilary understood that these corpse-creatures were what might be termed the Family’s elder statesmen, once rulers in their own right, but now too frail to play an active part. But their minds had stayed sharp and shrewd and they were still consulted and accorded respect, rather in the way that retired heads-of-state were consulted and accorded respect.

After a moment, Stefan spoke again, and it seemed to Hilary as if he selected his words with extreme care. ‘Pietro has been found,’ he said. ‘Ladislas found him.’

‘Did you indeed?’ said the man looking across at Ladislas.

‘It took many months,’ said Ladislas. ‘His renunciation of us was complete and he had covered his tracks very thoroughly.’ There was a glint of complacency. ‘But I found him,’ said Ladislas softly.

‘And where is he now?’

There was a pause, and then Stefan said, ‘Inside CrnPrag,’ and at once a stir of interest went through his auditors.

‘Imprisoned?’

‘Yes. After all,’ said Ladislas, his face sharper and crueller, ‘after all, Pál, CrnPrag is the Family’s place for traitors.’

Pál. Hilary heard it almost as the English ‘Paul’, but not quite. Some kind of unfamiliar way of accenting the vowel. Russian? Hungarian? She thought she was following everything pretty well; the corpse-creatures spoke in the measured tones of extreme age, and it was not hard to fill in the vocabulary gaps.

The man called Pál leaned forward. ‘Is Pietro in CrnPrag by Franz-Josef’s orders?’ he said, and Ladislas hesitated.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Pietro was imprisoned on my father’s orders,’ and instantly the corpse-creatures turned to Stefan. Hilary thought: then they are father and son. I thought they might be.

Pál and Stefan regarded one another. Then Pál said, ‘Pietro is in CrnPrag. That suggests only one thing.’ He paused and then said, ‘Franz-Josef is failing and you are intriguing to take the place that should be Pietro’s.’

There was a sudden and complete silence. ‘Well?’ said Pál.

‘Franz-Josef is failing,’ said Stefan at last, and a sigh went through the corpse-creatures, like a breath of wind against dry leaves. The man and woman who had led the discussion looked at one another, and there was no mistaking the triumph in their faces.

‘At last,’ the man said, almost as if he were speaking to himself, ‘and so at last the bastard is failing,’ and Hilary heard with a cold thrill that he used the word not in the modern way, the derogatory way, but in the true, literal sense. Bastard. Base-born.

‘Are you sure of it?’ said the woman, with sudden sharpness. ‘Can we trust you?’

‘Ladislas has it from Franz-Josef’s lady.’

‘Has he indeed?’ Pál turned to regard Ladislas and there was a prurient glint in his eyes. ‘So LaBianca is as lascivious as ever, is she?’ he said, and the crescent-shaped smile curved his lips. ‘Does she make a worthy bed-partner, boy?’

‘Very worthy, Pál.’

The thin dry lips stretched in a smile. ‘LaBianca,’ he said softly. ‘A dazzling creature. Once, Ladislas, I should have enjoyed challenging you for such a one.’

‘Once, Pál, you would have beaten me hands down,’ said Ladislas instantly, and Hilary thought: he looks insolent but at least he is not entirely bereft of courtesy.

‘Where is Franz-Josef now? Is he still at Varanno?’

‘He is on his way to CrnPrag.’

‘And once he reaches CrnPrag . . .?’

Stefan did not answer for a moment. Then he said, ‘My people have their orders.’

‘So you intend to lock him up and take his place, do you?’ Pál studied the two guests. ‘Yes, I thought so. I ruled for as long as I could,’ he said. ‘You will know for how long. It was only when I began to fail – when we discovered that the blood ritual was not eternal, after all – that the bastard took my place.’

‘Because you had no son living.’

‘Yes. But the case is different now. Franz-Josef has a son—’

‘Also a daughter,’ put in the woman.

‘Anna is right. What about Catherine?’

‘Catherine has not reneged,’ said Anna at once. ‘She had still to be brought to her first ritual.’ She eyed Ladislas coldly. ‘What about Catherine?’

‘She also is held in CrnPrag.’

The corpse-creatures regarded Stefan. Then Pál said, ‘Both of them? You are being very thorough, Stefan.’

‘I dare not risk any pretenders.’

‘But,’ said Pál softly, ‘pretenders sometimes come from a quarter that one least expects.’ His eyes flicked to Ladislas and then away.

‘Pretenders have languished in windowless cells for many years and still emerged to lead rebellions,’ said one of the men slyly.

Anna said impatiently, ‘Catherine should be given the opportunity to avail herself of Elizabeth’s legacy.’

‘She doesn’t want it.’

‘You don’t know that. She should be offered it.’

‘Anna is right,’ said Pál again, and several of the corpse-creatures nodded. ‘Pietro turned his back on the ritual with full knowledge and full understanding. But, as far as we know, Catherine’s case was different. She should be shown what could be hers.’ His thin dry old fingers tapped thoughtfully on the table.

‘I am wondering,’ he said, looking at Stefan, ‘what punishment you really have in mind for those two. I think it is not just imprisonment. But that is up to you. And I agree with Anna: Catherine should be offered what is rightfully hers.’

‘She may resist. She has been inside a convent for four years—’

‘She had been in Elizabeth’s old house in the Blutgasse,’ said Pál impatiently. ‘She may be more aware of Elizabeth than you think.’ He eyed Stefan. ‘Have you ever been in that house?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘I thought you had not. If you had you would understand. If Elizabeth walks anywhere, she walks there . . .’ He stopped. ‘Well, Stefan? I assume you are here to ask for our support in your insurrection? Yes, I thought so. I think we would give you that, but only on condition that you offer the ritual to Catherine first.’ He glanced along the table. ‘Are we prepared to support Stefan?’

‘I support him,’ said several voices.

‘I also,’ said several more.

‘He’s nearest in line and it accords with the rule,’ said one.

‘My thoughts also. Then,’ said Pál, turning back, ‘those are the terms, Stefan.’ Take it or leave it, said his tone.

Stefan and Ladislas exchanged a quick look. Then Stefan said, ‘Very well. Yes. If you will support us, we will agree to that.’

‘Good. You will bring Catherine to Csejthe – a week from today? That would give you time?’

‘I – yes,’ said Stefan, slowly. ‘Yes, it would give us time.’

‘You have sufficient prisoners inside CrnPrag?’ There was a lick of greed in Pál’s tone and the others leaned forward eagerly.

‘Yes,’ said Stefan again.

The crescent-shaped smile curved Pál’s lips, but it was Anna who spoke. ‘You are very anxious for our support, Stefan,’ she said. ‘We haven’t much strength to oppose anything done within the Family any longer. Why do you want our approval?’

Stefan paused, and Hilary had the impression that he was selecting his words with care. Finally, he said, ‘When Franz-Josef took the rulership after Pál failed, you all approved it.’

‘We did.’

‘And yet,’ said Stefan, ‘I have heard it said you hated him.’

Pál said, ‘I did hate him. I still hate him.’

‘But you sanctioned his rule. Why?’

‘He was in direct line,’ said Pál. ‘For all that he was a bastard, he was Elizabeth’s direct descendant. I had no choice.’

Stefan said, slowly, ‘I don’t believe I can rule as the Family’s head unless you all support me as you did Franz-Josef.’ He looked at Pál and Anna. ‘Most particularly I must have your blessing,’ he said. ‘You and Anna.’

‘Blessing is an odd choice of word,’ said Pál, wryly. He glanced at Anna. ‘But since you ask, we give it. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Anna slowly. ‘As Elizabeth’s two surviving children, we give you our blessing.’

Chapter Twenty-three

Michael was almost frantic. He could feel by the Braille watch on his wrist that half an hour had already passed since Hilary went down into the castle dungeons – although it felt like four times that much. It ought to have taken her no more than ten minutes – fifteen at the most – to position herself and reel off a half-dozen or so photos. The fear that she had been caught and imprisoned again gripped him by the throat.

He tried to persuade himself that if they had found her there would have been some kind of tumult: running feet, shouts of anger or triumph. But Csejthe’s walls were so immensely thick that a dozen battles could be raging in the dungeons and he would not have heard a thing.

As well as that, there was the matter of the guards and the dwarf, Janos. Were they still searching the hillside for the occupant of the BMW? Michael thought they must be. If they had discovered the unconscious body of their colleague, some kind of hue and cry would have been raised; people would have run out through the upper rooms of the castle, calling to one another for help to carry the man inside. He thought he would have heard that. So far so good on that score at least.

Another seven minutes ticked by and Michael knew he dared not risk waiting any longer. The idea appalled him, but he knew he was going to have to step out of the concealing hearth cupboard and find his way back to the road to get help.

The thought of Hilary in the hands of the corpse-creatures gave him strength, even while the dangers reared up to gibber at him: he could unwittingly walk into a roomful of the corpse-creatures, he could fall down a flight of stairs, into a quarry, into a pond, be seen without knowing it.

But Hilary had been gone for forty-two minutes now and there was nothing else for it. He fought for calm and, after a moment, managed to conjure up the layout of the hall that Hilary had sketched in word-pictures. Fifty feet long and the door facing you. Could he do it?

Forty-four minutes now. Three-quarters of an hour. Something had unquestionably prevented her from returning. Michael found the cupboard latch and the door swung open with the slow, sinister creaking familiar from a dozen bad horror films, used in fifty different formats to herald the murdered body or the rotting corpse falling out of the wardrobe.

He felt the echoing space of the banqueting hall the instant he stepped into it, and there was a faint scent of woodsmoke and old timbers. Empty? I believe it is, he thought, his senses stretched to snapping point. There is no sense of human presence here.

Only the ghosts . . . He would pay the ghosts no attention. Ghosts did not hurt you, not even when they pressed in on all sides, blood-drenched, bone-squelching, their dripping, fleshless fingers held out in piteous entreaty . . . Stop it!

But this is the Blood Countess’s castle, said his mind slyly. The corpse-things told Hilary about her. This was her lair, her den, the place where she butchered her victims and immersed her body in their fresh warm blood . . . And you are walking through it in the pitch darkness of your sightlessness . . . Anything could be creeping after you, anything could be watching from the shadows . . . You must be mad to think you can get out of here unseen.

Michael took a determined grip on his stick and began to feel his way along the wall of the banqueting hall. Fifty feet. Twenty-five or six paces. And at any minute the corpse-creatures’ servants – the corpse-creatures themselves – could bound out from the darkness and be upon him. From behind him was a sudden whisper of sound, and he stopped dead, the hairs lifting on the back of his neck. Had it been simply a board creaking back into place after his own steps? Or had it been a light, soft footfall? Was something stealing after him? His instincts screamed at him to whip round and confront whatever might be there, and the fiercest frustration he had yet experienced tore jaggedly across his mind. I can’t see!

But nothing came out of the blackness and nothing moved. It was absurd to conjure up images of grinning phantoms or of the butchered victims of Elizabeth Bathory reaching out to him . . .

Join us, brother . . .

Yes, the ghosts were here all right. There were dozens of them. Michael felt his mind reel with the long-ago agonies and the centuries-old cruelties. For a moment it was as if he were drowning in the pain and the evil.

And then he took a deep breath and shook off the crowding ghosts, and forced his mind to concentrate on the task in hand. Hadn’t Hilary said there was some kind of settle or dresser partway along the wall? With the thought it was there, lumbering out of the blackness to smite his legs. Michael gasped at the unexpected smack of pain and swore under his breath. At any minute there would be running feet, and the hall would fill with the servants. But nothing happened. Onwards then. He felt his way around the carved wood, smelling the faint aroma of beeswax and old oak. Whoever looked after Csejthe did so thoroughly. It was odd how your mind latched on to totally irrelevant things at times of stress.

It was possible to feel the current of colder air from the door now, and Michael inched along the wall, forcing himself to walk as Hilary had insisted: upright, shoulders back. There was an almost irresistible desire to lean forward when you could not see, groping with your hands for obstacles before you hit them. But you could not do it, Hilary had said firmly. All that leaning over did was cause spine and shoulder problems eventually, never mind looking silly. And you did not find the obstacles any more easily.

He found the door and stepped outside without too much difficulty, but there was a huge vulnerability now. Inside the castle Michael had felt vaguely safe; protected by walls and cupboards and floors. But the outside yawned enormously; there were no boundaries here, no comforting walls to tap or window-ledges to mark your progress along a wall. He understood suddenly how agoraphobics must feel. At any minute the ground might open up and swallow you. At any second you might fall headfirst into a yawning chasm. Or a fire, or a lake . . . Don’t!

He would make a deliberately casual way down the mountain path. It suddenly occurred to him that, even if he was spotted, there was nothing to link him with Hilary. He could be just a chance traveller, a sightseer. There was a bitter irony about that last, but if he went slowly and casually, his blindness might not be apparent. If he was careful to stand up straight and not fumble his way, he might pass for an abstracted student of architecture or wildlife. He blessed the providence that had make him refuse the white stick and opt instead for a plain ash cane. He did not mind people thinking he had sprained an ankle or injured a knee, but if he could fool them into thinking he could see, so much the better. If he could fool them now, it might mean the saving of Hilary.

He walked deliberately across the small brick courtyard, occasionally pausing as if looking up at the castle. Hilary had said there was a parapet at the edge – Michael felt for it and was rewarded with the scrape of stone or brick. Eighteen inches high? About that. He moved warily along until he found the break. Now what? Steps? Oh God, can I manage steps? He set his teeth and grasped the stick and, as he did so, he heard, quite distinctly, the sound of footsteps crossing the hall behind him.

It was one of the worst moments yet. Michael swung between a wish to run away and the knowledge that to run would be the most damning thing he could do. Could he meet whoever it was and fool him? One of the biggest giveaways was the way the blind were unable to look directly at the person they were speaking to.

And then the steps came running towards him and they were light, breathless steps, and suddenly, blessedly, it was Hilary.

She was out of breath but she was unharmed. Michael clutched her hands, wanting to grab her to him, knowing there was no time.

‘I’ll explain later,’ said Hilary, ‘but we have to get away—’

‘Not in the car,’ said Michael, who had worked this one out inside the castle. ‘The guards will surely have disabled it. And we can’t simply walk along the road until we find a phone-box. We might walk for miles out here.’

‘And the guards are still searching for us.’ Hilary sent a hunted look over her shoulder.

‘Can you see them?’

Hilary scanned the hillside. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, they’re further away, but they’re still searching the undergrowth.’

The undergrowth that Michael might very well have walked through moments before . . .

‘What about the castle’s own cars?’ he said suddenly. ‘Where they put the BMW that first night—’

‘Converted stables,’ said Hilary. ‘At the rear.’ And with the words, they were half running round the castle’s side walls. Hilary’s hand about Michael’s arm, pulling him with her.

The cars were there. Michael smelt them the minute they went in: metal and rubber and warm oil.

‘Two cars,’ said Hilary. ‘A Land Rover thing—’

‘Four-wheel drive. Fast but noticeable. What’s the other?’

‘I’m not sure if I could manage a four-wheel drive anyway. The other’s smaller – some kind of hatchback.’

‘If the keys are in it we’ll take it,’ said Michael at once, and Hilary stared at him, the knowledge of what they were about to do suddenly dawning on her.

‘But – we can’t steal their car . . .’

‘If we go back down to the BMW we run the risk of the guards again. And,’ said Michael, inexorably, ‘if we find that they have put the BMW out of commission, we’ll be stranded.’

‘Were you serious about that?’

‘Yes. Think about it. They know you’re here somewhere and they know you can blow the whistle on them. They’ll do anything to stop that. They could have slashed the tyres, smashed the steering lock . . . But if we can drive hell for leather down the mountain path, we’d be back in Debreczen before they knew what had happened.’

‘But it’s stealing . . .’ said Hilary again.

‘Then we’ll go straight to the police and confess!’ Michael reached for her hands. ‘Dear girl, we’re committing a small crime in order to bring a far larger one to justice,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly gentle. Hilary bit her lip because it was much more difficult to cope with her emotions when he understood how she felt and treated her feelings so seriously. ‘These people are mass-murderers,’ he went on. ‘You saw them kill that girl.’

‘And I think they’re planning to kill Catherine’s brother and imprison Franz-Josef,’ said Hilary, staring at him. ‘Yes. All right.’

‘Are the keys in the hatchback?’

‘I can’t see if—’ Hilary leaned forward. Michael waited.

‘No.’ He felt her hand close over his arm in panic. ‘Michael, there aren’t any keys.’

Michael stood very still, his mind working furiously. Of course the keys would not be left in any of the cars. The denizens of Csejthe Castle would have made very sure that no one could effect an escape. It was a miracle that Hilary had been able to bring the BMW out.

If he had his sight he could have smashed the steering lock of one of the cars and joined the ignition wires. If he had his sight . . .

‘Hilary,’ he said urgently. ‘There may be a way. But we’ll have to be quick and you’ll have to do exactly what I tell you.’ Blessedly she did not protest or question; she simply said, ‘Yes. Tell me.’

‘Both of us in the car first. Jesus God where’s the door handle . . .’ He forced himself to remain calm. Hilary’s hand came over his, warm and familiar, guiding him to the door and into the passenger seat.

Michael said, ‘Wretched foreign car. Everything on the wrong side.’ He felt Hilary slide into the driver’s seat on his left. ‘Are you with me, lady?’

‘I’m here.’

‘All right. Now take my stick – that’s right. What you’ve got to do is smash the moulding around the ignition switch and expose the wires behind it. One quick sharp blow. Understand?’

‘I – yes.’

‘The object is to pull out the whole of the ignition switch, so that we can get at the wiring behind it.’

‘The ignition switch . . .’ Hilary sounded momentarily thrown and then she said, ‘The silver metal circle where the keys go in?’

‘Yes. Can you do it? One clean blow would be best. Use the head of the stick – it’s heavier, and try not to damage the wiring beneath the switch. It’s doubtful if anyone will hear in here, but it’s probably best to be as quick as we can.’ He tried to visualise the interior of the car – any car. Was there sufficient room to make a strong enough sweep? Wasn’t it how opportunist car thieves worked every night of the year? There had to be sufficient room.

But Hilary slid out of the car, leaving the door open, and Michael heard the swish of the ash stick as she brought it down. There was the sudden crunch of plastic and wood splintering.

‘Done,’ said Hilary, a note of triumph in her voice.

‘Good girl. Can you see the wiring?’

‘I – yes.’

Michael knew that it was important to be very quick. The guards were still searching the grounds, but at any minute they might come back to investigate the castle itself. They could not afford to waste a second. He said, ‘Pull out the ignition switch – carefully! – so that the wires come with it. Don’t let them disconnect. Understand? If a wire breaks we’re lost. Slowly.’

‘Yes,’ said Hilary after a moment. ‘Yes, I’ve done it. Now what?’

‘Give it to me.’ He felt her put the metal and wires into his hands and ran his fingers over the switch mechanism, forcing his hands to convey the images to his mind. Five wires – or was it seven? Were foreign cars wired in the same colours as British ones? Oh God, if only I could see! But he said, ‘Among these should be two wires of the same colour.

‘Brown? White?’ said Hilary. ‘Mostly white with a coloured stripe?’

‘Ignore the brown – I think that’s the battery. Any plain white?’

‘Yes – here –’ Her hands guided him.

‘All right.’ Michael took a deep breath. ‘This is probably the trickiest bit, but it’s not so very hard,’ he said. ‘First be sure that the car is in neutral.’

‘It’s in neutral. It’s another automatic clutch, but it’s in neutral.’

Michael did not know if automatic transmission would make it easier or harder to connect the starter motor, but he didn’t say it. His mind touched on the need for choke. Was it automatic choke as well? Please God.

‘All right,’ he said, speaking slowly and deliberately. ‘The wires will be held on to the underside of the switch by metal tabs. You’ll have to pull them off.’

‘Yes,’ said Hilary again. ‘Yes.’

‘So far so good.’ He frowned again, trying to think of things she could connect with. ‘You’ve wired plugs? For irons or vacuum cleaners?’

‘Yes.’

‘This isn’t so very different then. This is a question of switching, but doing it in a more direct way.’ Another deep breath. ‘There’ll be two stages,’ he said. ‘The first stage is to join the two white wires together – connect them as cleanly as you can.’

‘Twist one round the other?’

‘That ought to do it.’

Hilary hesitated and Michael, understanding, said, ‘There’s no power. You can’t get an electric shock. What will happen is that the first stage of the ignition will engage: like the first part of turning the key. It’ll give lights, indicators, maybe the radio.’

‘I’ve done that,’ said Hilary, after a moment.

‘Good again. The next part is to engage the starter motor.’ He paused again, thinking hard. Hilary waited and tried not to feel ignorant. How many people knew how to start a car this way for heaven’s sake?

‘Take any two of the other wires,’ said Michael. ‘Not the ones already joined, but any other two. And simply touch them together. Imagine you’re turning the key all the way round to start the engine. Remember how it always springs back a quarter turn. Touch and release. When you get the right two wires the car will start.’

He felt her concentration. After a moment, she said, ‘Nothing.’

‘It’s a process of elimination. Try again. And remember that the instant the starter motor kicks in you’ll have to drive us out of here like a bat escaping hell.’

‘Yes.’ Hilary was managing to be very calm. She stared at the wires again, and wiped her palms on the sides of her thighs.

The white and red to green this time. They touched and fell apart.

Nothing.

‘Again,’ said Michael’s voice inexorably. ‘Keep trying. Systematically.’

White and red to blue. Silence.

White and red to white and yellow? It was the only combination left. She touched the wires and with a growl of triumph the car sprang into life. Hilary dropped the wires instantly.

‘Michael, it’s worked!’

‘So it has!’ He leaned back in his seat. ‘And now drive straight out and don’t stop for anything!’ The reckless grin flashed. ‘The game’s afoot, lady. God for Harry, England and St George!’

‘I hope there’s enough petrol in the tank,’ said Hilary in a prosaic voice.

Chapter Twenty-four

The preservation of Elizabeth’s houses had been one of the Family’s early major preoccupations. The sale of her castles and lands had been enormously lucrative; even with the Bathory stigma attached they had attracted wealthy buyers. The Family had kept Varanno and Csejthe and the Vienna house in the Blutgasse where Elizabeth had stayed as a young childless bride. They had lost the Vienna house during Austria’s muddled troubled Hapsburg years, but Franz-Josef, approaching CrnPrag through the darkening afternoon, thought it had been one of Fate’s strange ironies that Catherine, coming four centuries later, should choose as her convent that very house. Had she been closing one of the strange circles with which Time was so often studded when she passed under its portals?

He had not told Catherine of her Convent’s history and he had stopped Pietro from doing so on that last day at Varanno. If Catherine needed to run away, even in this unexpected way, she must do so, and Franz-Josef thought that if Elizabeth walked anywhere it would not be in the Vienna House where she had lived so briefly, but in her beloved Csejthe.

Csejthe had passed in and out of the Family’s hands two or three times over the years: for a while it had been requisitioned by the Imperial army, which had added hugely to the Bathorys’ coffers, of course. It had been burned twice, once in the early eighteenth century by French Army Officers – for which we made them pay dearly afterwards! thought Franz-Josef with a sudden wry smile – and then again in the nineteenth by the frightened and superstitious people in the surrounding hill farms and the villages. The Lady lived again, they had said. The Beast of Csejthe was walking once more. In the end, the fears that had seethed beneath the surface for years had erupted into hysteria, and there had been that infamous torchlit procession to the castle, the villagers chanting prayers and shouting death to the Beast. They had fired it in twenty-four places and the flames had lit the sky for miles around.

But somehow the Family had saved it. Somehow they had doused the fires and quenched the hysteria and somehow they had regained it for the Bathorys. Franz-Josef remembered that there had been intrigue and bribery, although he could no longer recall the details, but at length they had got Csejthe back and in the closing years of the nineteenth century they had restored its interior in much the way they had restored CrnPrag.

CrnPrag. CrnPrag had never been one of Elizabeth’s lairs; it was something that had been grafted-on. The ugly old mansion, situated on its strange boundary lands, had no butchered ghosts to walk its halls, no lingering memories of torture and agony, but there was a darkness about it all the same. We bestowed our own darkness on CrnPrag, thought Franz-Josef.

Stefan had exulted over CrnPrag’s situation: ‘Neither quite of Transylvania nor of Moldavia,’ he had said. ‘A borderland territory. And if we are clever, answerable to neither country.’

Transylvania had become Romania, and Moldavia little more than one of its provinces, and so far as Franz-Josef knew there had been no awkward questions. By the time the twentieth century was ushering in its morass of certification and bureaucracy and permits, CrnPrag had been sufficiently established for no one to wonder about it.

Franz-Josef had never seen inside the jutting wing at the rear of the house, where the chapel had been, but he knew that it was there that Stefan put the gleanings of Tranz’s work: the homeless, the dispossessed. The frightened, bewildered creatures who came trustingly into what they believed to be sanctuary. There had been so many of them over the centuries: such widely differing races and creeds and cultures. Russians and Romanians and Poles. Czechs and Austrians. More recently, of course, Bosnians. All lambs to the slaughter. CrnPrag had become the Family’s storehouse, as Csejthe had once been Elizabeth’s. Food for the rituals.

The prisoners were segregated, of course: the men in one dormitory, the women and children in another. ‘We take the men only as a blind, anyway,’ Stefan said with one of his sly smiles.

The men were mostly painlessly slain just before each of the rituals, and their bodies put into a communal grave in the grounds. But children were a different matter. Children were mouldable. The girls were saved for the rituals – ‘Virgin blood, my dears,’ Elizabeth might have said – but the boys were carefully treated, and indoctrinated into loyalty and gratitude to the Family. The Jesuits had known the value of having a child up to the age of seven, and the Family knew it also. The stateless youngsters received schooling and every care, but Franz-Josef thought wryly that it was a distorted schooling, almost a brainwashing. He had never forgotten those disquieting rumours about CrnPrag’s links with Germany fifty years earlier. Did Stefan employ Mengele’s methods on the children in CrnPrag? Did he perhaps use drugs to destroy their wills and even their memories? It was entirely possible.

The majority of the boys became servants in Varanno or Csejthe or in CrnPrag itself, often working their way up to positions of authority. Those with aptitude were given medical training to enable them to assist Stefan with the asylum side, and a judicious number of the girls were spared the ritual and trained in domestic skills. Inevitably there was inter-marrying. Stefan had known that to keep people happy you gave them three basic things: shelter, food and sexual gratification. To this he added a fourth: the prospect of advancement and monetary rewards. Start as a humble scullion but work hard and prove yourself and you could end in a position of authority. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. And labour is basic to wealth. The Family’s strange, secret realm had undeniable elements of Marxism in it, but whatever name was put to it, it worked. There was hardly ever a case of rebellion or even dissatisfaction.

As CrnPrag’s gates loomed before him, Franz-Josef felt, as he always felt, the darkness that clung to the old mansion. Entering CrnPrag was like plunging neck-deep into black, ice-cold water. But Pietro is somewhere in there. And Cat? Was Cat in there as well?

The gates were locked and barred as they always were, and he got out of the car and pressed the electronic device at the side. At once a tinny voice – one of the guards? – came crackling out of the speaker, and Franz-Josef said tersely, ‘I am here to see my cousin, Stefan Bathory.’ He was aware of arrogance in his words and his tone, but he was damned if he would meekly submit his name into an electronic box and wait to be accorded permission to enter one of his Family’s houses. There was a brief silence, and then the voice said, ‘Please to come in.’ There was a whirring of machinery and the great gates swung open. As Franz-Josef drove through, they clicked shut behind him with disconcerting abruptness.

Shadows lay across the chequered hall where once the Family had butchered the long-ago workers from Wallachia and Moldavia, and as Franz-Josef entered the house, he felt a prickle of unease: the faint hackle-rising instinct that had warned his ancestors of danger ahead. Something ahead that is threatening . . . Something waiting for me . . . He turned sharply about, but as he did so there was the crashing sound of the huge doors being slammed shut, and two of the guards barred his way. Two more appeared from the shadows and stood at the foot of the stair directly ahead of him.

Franz-Josef forced authority into his voice. ‘What is this? You will take me to my cousin, if you please.’

There was a split-second of silence, as if the guards were overcoming their instinct to obey him. And then one that he remembered as being high in Stefan’s hierarchy, a coarse-featured man with an oily skin and small, mean features, stepped forward.

‘Your cousin is not here. And I regret, Herr Bathory, that we have our orders,’ he said.

‘Orders?’

‘You are to be taken to one of the cells until our master returns,’ said the man, and the guards surrounded him.

Unlike Catherine, Franz-Josef did not fight. He submitted politely but rather absent-mindedly to their capture, almost as if his mind might be on something more important, and he allowed them to lead him through the house, along the narrow corridor with the harsh cold electric light and the rows of cells.

‘And be glad you aren’t going into the Men’s Ward,’ said the oily-faced guard, unlocking the end door and pushing him inside. ‘Be glad you’re who you are. One of the élite. The Family,’ he said, rather sneeringly, and Franz-Josef studied him thoughtfully.

‘You will assuredly be punished for this,’ he said, and the guard laughed derisively and went out, locking the door behind him.

There had been a rather dreadful finality about the sound of the lock being turned, but Franz-Josef beat down the panic and surveyed the small cell grimly. Sparse and bare. A narrow bed. A hinged table. Basin and jug for washing. He glanced up to the small oblong of window through which the twilight was already showering its purple-tinged light, and the helplessness of his situation flooded his mind. Imprisoned. Decoyed here by Stefan’s tale about Pietro. Bitter fury rose in him, because of course Pietro was not mad, Pietro had never been within a mile of being mad. Was Pietro in fact here at all? The thought was black gall to him.

He hardly noticed the plain but perfectly palatable meal brought to him later, or the awed glance of the guard who set it down on the small hinged table that folded down from one wall. He ate the food – thick vegetable soup – and then lay on the hard narrow bed, his hands linked behind his head.

Rage rose in him at the way in which they had imprisoned him, but there was rage as well at himself for being so easily fooled by Stefan. Did Stefan intend to take his place as the Family’s head now? Yes, of course. It was the matrix of the whole sordid little intrigue. But Franz-Josef would be damned if he would let Stefan get Varanno, and he would be thrice damned if he would let Stefan’s wretched whelp take his place in Bianca’s bed. Ladislas and Bianca . . . Would Bianca try to rescue him? How infatuated was she with Ladislas?

Franz-Josef’s eyes shone with a hard cold light at the thought of Ladislas in Bianca’s bed. He hated Stefan for usurping him, but he hated Ladislas more. He hated him just as much as Pál Bathory had hated Franz-Josef himself. The smile curved his mouth unexpectedly at the memory of Pál’s forced renunciation all those years ago.

Pál and Anna had gone to immense lengths to preserve Elizabeth’s legacy, Franz-Josef knew that, as most of the Family knew it. They had been fiercely loyal, and they had been determined that their mother’s remarkable secret should survive. And although they had not Elizabeth’s strength, they had nurtured the trickle of power they had inherited and, after Elizabeth had died, they had sought out the ancient crones and the forest sorceresses that she had consulted. Some had been dead and some had been husked dry of any power they had ever possessed, so that they had been toothless and mumblingly impotent. Some had been too frightened to talk at all. But a few had been greedy and ready to talk, eagerly snatching the gifts of money that Pál and Anna had offered.

There had been two other daughters, born after Elizabeth’s demands of those same forest sorceresses for fertility philtres, but they had both married young and Franz-Josef could not recall what had happened to them. Certainly they had never shared in the legacy, and probably they had wished to distance themselves from the scandalous crimes of their mother.

It had been Anna and Pál, and later Franz-Josef who had nursed that fragile vein of power, and who had laid such careful and intricate plans for the secret dynasty that gradually evolved.

The dynasty that I ruled for so long.

At the thought of Stefan taking it all from him, the mercurial spirit of his ancestors rose strongly in him, and the old fervour and the passion for life was again in the ascendant.

He would think as his ancestors had thought: not of defeat and death, but of fighting and victory. The Bathorys had been a wild, ungovernable clan; they had frequently died violent and bloody deaths and they had often led ill-starred revolutions and fought in cruel wars. In the earlier centuries they had hurled themselves into battle brandishing the dragon-head spears which had been their symbol, the eerie music of twin-pipes made from the clawbones of cranes echoing coldly across the scenes of carnage. And while many of them had been satyrs and sadists, as many again had been strong, powerful rulers: Stephen of Poland; Christopher and Sigismond of Transylvania; Andras the Cardinal of Varad; Laszlo the great biblical scholar. They had sometimes been mad – brain-diseased and tormented; they had often been guilty of incest and lechery and rape, and they had frequently been tragic, haunted creatures.

But they had been fighters. They had fallen to appalling deaths on glaciers; they had been hacked to pieces by marauding Turks; they had been skewered and impaled and roasted on spits. But they had never ceased to fight. Seven centuries of that fighting spirit rose up in Franz-Josef now, and he clenched his fists and thought: Stefan shall not take Pietro’s inheritance and Ladislas shall not have Bianca, not if I have to traffick with Elizabeth’s own forest gods to prevent it!

Because for all that had been done to her at the end, Elizabeth had never really been destroyed.

Franz-Josef would not be destroyed either.

Chapter Twenty-five

Elizabeth had understood about fighting when every hand was turning against you. She had fought not with her body, that sacred vessel which she had tended obsessively, but with her wits. And she had nearly – so very nearly – won.

She had pitted her wits against the dignitaries of the day when they had begun to inquire too closely into her way of life; Franz-Josef, who knew the stories, thought she would have enjoyed doing so.

It had begun, inevitably, with Csejthe’s pastor, Ponikenus. Ponikenus had never ceased to worry away at all those unexplained deaths at Csejthe; his mind continued to question the hasty interments, the midnight burials. All of them young girls. This was the thing that had stuck in Ponikenus’s tender conscience like a thorn. A mixed lot of deaths he might have accepted: people died from plagues, from agues and fevers and from a dozen different illnesses. But the burials at Csejthe had all been girls.

Elizabeth had haughtily sent benefices for the Church, and they had been lavish benefices which any prudent churchman would have accepted with tactful gratitude and loyal discretion. But Ponikenus was a devout, straightforward soul, with the fervour of the early martyrs and the tenacity of a weasel. He had spent nights praying for guidance, days walking the stark mountainside, struggling with his conscience. To instigate an inquiry into the Lady’s ways? To lose at one sweep this generously endowed living and incur the wrath of the Lady’s powerful relations, all for fears which might prove groundless? Or to take the other course? To turn a blind eye; to compound the sin – committing one of his own in the process – and remain silent?

In the end he had written to the Palatine, Gyorgy Thurzo, sending his most humble duty, but outlining his suspicions that Csejthe’s Lady might be trafficking with the devil. He could not bring himself to pen the word ‘murder’, but the Palatine, a man of learning and percipience, would understand.

Gyorgy Thurzo understood very well indeed, and he read the pastor’s careful missive with interest, seeing at once what the good honest man could not bring himself to write. Trafficking with the devil meant any number of crimes, but inevitably and at last, those crimes led to human sacrifice. Elizabeth Bathory a murderess?

It was not, of course, becoming to a man of Thurzo’s standing that he should harbour resentment – he did not rule out the possibility that this pastor was smarting under some kind of slight from the Lady either – but it did not behove anyone to ignore such a hint. Thurzo was a Protestant by birth and by inclination, but he took his responsibilities as Palatine very seriously, and like Ponikenus he was well aware that there were sins of omission as well as commission.

He pondered the matter at some length. Was it conceivable that Elizabeth had been dabbling in the dark arts? Soiling her white hands with the blood of human sacrifices? If they were to prove it, they would have to proceed with extreme caution; the lady was related to half the crowned heads in Europe, and Palatines were expendable. But it was very thought-provoking.

Franz-Josef thought it was impossible that Thurzo, at that stage, could have guessed the extent of Elizabeth’s atrocities, but he had certainly got dangerously close to the truth. Perhaps he remembered the Lady’s disquieting beauty and her bizarre moods. Perhaps he had experienced at first hand the way the dark hunger could blaze without warning in her eyes. Anna and Pál, loyal to their souls, had always vowed that their mother had only ever taken one man, and that man her husband, into her bed, but Franz-Josef, with his cool, scholarly detachment, doubted this. Elizabeth had been a sensuous, catlike creature, and she would have explored many paths to find gratification.

Witchcraft, necromancy, the offering of Christian souls in return for power had been a serious offence in Hungary in those days, as it had been in England. James I of England had set the standard; he had scoured the meadows and the hedgerows of his island for offenders, and he had dealt summarily with those he did find. Burning alive.

Gyorgy Thurzo, studying the missive that had cost Ponikenus so much thought, remembered that he had always rather admired the English; certainly he would not disdain to take James Stuart as his model. Even if it involved sentencing the wilful, beautiful Countess? Even if it ended in burning that slender perfumed body and seeing it charred and blackened on a pyre? It had been a number of years since Elizabeth had rejected his advances, and Thurzo was not by nature vengeful. But his vanity had been wounded in its most vulnerable place – between his legs – and although he was not actually visualising the stake or the scaffold, it would please him to deal the imperious Countess a sharp and public rap across the knuckles. There was a saying that revenge was a dish as good taken cold as hot. He pondered the matter, because he did not want to make a fool of himself; there was another saying about the biter getting bitten. He would probe a little deeper before he took any action.

Pál and Anna had been very young when Gyorgy Thurzo invited Elizabeth to the splendid and lavish banquet to celebrate his daughter’s wedding in his magnificent castle at Bicse. Pál had been barely ten, Anna a few years older, but they could remember the accounts of the pageantry; the tales of Bicse’s splendour, the dazzling furnishings and paintings, the gold plate and jewel-crusted faience jars and goblets that the Palatine set before his guests.

Elizabeth had been an honoured guest, as befitted her rank, seated near to Thurzo at the wedding feast, allotted one of the best bedchambers. She had been jewelled and furred and robed in satin and silk for the ceremonies; she had been icily beautiful, arrogant and glittering, and Thurzo had eyed her speculatively. To believe the Csejthe pastor or not? Faced with the reality of the Countess, it seemed almost impossible.

The festivities had gone on for several weeks, as was the custom, and through it all Elizabeth comported herself with icy dignity. She took part in the banquets and the entertainments and bear hunts, and she watched the jousting tournaments and the crossbow competitions that took place in the wintry afternoons when cold grey light slanted across the mountains, and throughout it all she was bored, bored, bored! Even the at-first piquant game of fooling Thurzo, of sending him melting looks of remembrance, had palled. She had seen instantly the speculative looks he had directed at her, and she had guessed that someone – who! – had been talking. There had been instant fury at the knowledge that her household harboured a jackal: she would seek out and punish the culprit when she returned to Csejthe.

It had been easy to deal with Thurzo as it was easy to deal with all men; absurd, awkward creatures with their ugly lusts and their clutching bodies and simple minds. It was easy to play a part for the Palatine. She donned a plain white silk gown for the banquet that night, and arranged a black fur-trimmed cloak over it. Her great dark eyes were made larger and darker with the smoke of crushed burnt wild nuts, and her lips had been emphasised with one of Dorko’s geranium pastes. Her body in the white silk appeared so helpless and frail that the little bones might snap in a man’s hand, but her small white face was dominated by her eyes: black, smouldering pits. It was an astonishing contrast, and when she entered Bicse’s great hall, every head turned to look at her; for a few moments, naked lust showed in the eyes of the men. The women glared with angry jealousy: the plain, unadorned silk was a breathtaking contrast to the heavy, ornate jewels and the florid velvets and brocades of the other guests, and a wave of hatred wafted across the hall. Why did we not think of such a trick! Elizabeth, standing in the arched doorway, the glow from hundreds of glowing wax candles lighting her small figure, heard the whispers and saw the looks and smiled the cat smile.

During the banquet she talked wistfully of the Count away fighting the Turks and the Mohacs, and several times laid her hand on Thurzo’s arm, as if seeking strength and protection. I am a helpless harmless soul who is often lonely. She was not so blatant as to say: and I should not disdain to accept a little comfort for a time: but it was implicit in her eyes and in her voice.

But in the safety of her bedchamber, she threw off the sickly-sweet mien and reached for the shrivelled scrap of caul with its bloodied incantation etched in the oddly musical mixture of ancient Czech and Serbian. Thurzo had been partly lulled, but Elizabeth was taking no chances. She removed the caul from its leather pouch and stroked it, murmuring the incantation:

‘Isten, give me help: and ye also. O all powerful cloud . . . Protect Erzsebet, and grant me a long life. I am in peril. O cloud . . . Send me ninety cats . . . Tell them to assemble together, to come from the mountains, from the waters, from the rivers, from the rainwater and from the oceans . . . Tell them to bite the heart of Gyorgy Thurzo again and again . . . And guard Erzsebet from all evil.’

It had never failed her and it did not fail her now. Thurzo was at her side for most of the remaining time, guiding her to the best seats at the entertainments, seeing to it that she had the best viewpoint of the jousting or the archery; inviting her to ride with him in the hunting and dance with him in the hall after supper. A number of times his hand lingered on her arm or her shoulder and his eyes were warm. He had never quite forgotten their brief closeness, he said. Elizabeth lowered her eyes demurely and whispered that she had not forgotten it either. Inwardly she was laughing scornfully at the ease with which she had achieved her goal. She was still silently laughing when Thurzo came to her bedchamber that night. He had the air of a man who had stolen furtively along the draughty corridors, clutching his robe about him to conceal his bedgown, constantly looking over his shoulder in case anyone should see. Once in her room, he was between the sheets in an instant, groping for her body with his hard, horny hands. It was a dreadful bore; he was clumsy and fumbling and his untrimmed nails snagged at the sheets and rasped her skin. His breath was tainted with wine and with the spicy foods served that evening, and Elizabeth had to grit her teeth as it gusted into her face. But it all had to be endured.

The other guests were of no interest at all. They were sycophantic sheep, bleating their gratitude throughout the thirty-course banquets, mincing their self-satisfied way through the formal dances. They had flock-mentality, rushing off first to the bear-hunt and then the javelin throwing, gabbling their thanks for the Palatine’s condescension in inviting them. It was easy to escape them for a while, simple to order her coach and go off by herself with Illona and Dorko.

Too risky, Dorko had said sourly when Elizabeth issued the order. Courting trouble, said Illona, frowning. What if she were seen? What if they could not trust the coachman any more? Someone had talked, said Dorko meaningly, who understood her mistress insofar as anyone ever did understand her, and who had guessed what lay behind the seduction of the Palatine. They had better be very careful indeed, said Dorko dourly.

But Dorko and Illona did not understand how it felt to burn up with the hunger until your body was a raging torment, until only one thing could slake the searing agony.

Only one thing . . .

As the coach jolted its way across the snowy tracks, behind them Bicse glittered with music and colour and lights. Bicse was safe and enclosed and innocent in its complacent world. But ahead was a small, white-covered village, no more than a sprinkling of cottages and a meagre farm with outbuildings, and within that village there would be people . . .

Animal tracks were clear in the ground as the coach jolted towards the village, and there was a hard, glittering frost everywhere. The coachman shivered and blew on his hands in an attempt to keep warm, and the horses’ breath turned to vapour on the air. The leader skidded several times on the hard-packed ice.

Inside the coach, Elizabeth was wrapped in thick fur cloaks, her hands were thrust into a huge black muff and a deep hood shadowed her face. Her expression within the hood was languorous, but her eyes were alert: they darted constantly from side to side, scanning the landscape. Nearly beyond Bicse’s boundaries. Nearly beyond Thurzo’s lands where his people might be patrolling. And at any minute prey would scurry across her path: she could feel it. At any minute some plump little serving girl, some blood-filled kitchen-wench or cotter’s daughter would appear. She knew that it would happen with that uncanny dark perception that came to her at such times. A pulse of excitement started to beat.

‘Isten help me . . . Send me a sacrifice . . .’

It was beginning to snow in earnest, and the dark afternoon was stingingly cold when the girl appeared. Her head was covered with a shawl and she had a basket of provisions on her arm. Was she taking food to some bedridden villager or grandmother? It did not matter. The coach drew to a halt, and the door opened. A slender white arm snaked out, the pink-tipped fingers beckoning. As the girl moved curiously forward, Dorko and Illona moved as well.

Horror replaced the curiosity on the girl’s face and she broke away, running crouched low to the ground like a fleeing hare. Dorko and Illona pounced, knocking her to the ground and dragging her back to the coach, her arms twisted painfully behind her back. They stood waiting, breathing hard from the exertion, and only then did Elizabeth step down, treading daintily over the frosted ground, her velvet and fur boots hardly making a sound, her eyes fixed on the shivering victim.

‘Strip her clothes from her.’

Dorko and Illona exchanged uneasy glances. This was a new direction; the Lady had never wanted this before. They hesitated.

‘Strip her!’

And of course you did not question the Lady’s orders, not even when you were her most trusted servants. The girl stood helplessly while they tore the thin, shabby clothes from her, crying and begging for release. Her skin was marbled with cold and her lips and fingernails were blue. Illona fired several torches from the coach’s box lanterns, and thrust them into the ground to create a circle of fire and light, but Dorko held firmly on to the writhing prisoner. The torches burned up and the girl turned longing eyes towards them, struggling to reach the small warmth, but Dorko’s thick, muscular fingers bit into her flesh and she was helpless.

Elizabeth circled the girl, her eyes never leaving the white, trembling body. Round and round . . . The flames illuminated her to eerie life, the thick dark fur cloaks stark against the snow. Her little triangular face was white inside the thick hood, and for a moment it was as if a great, black-eyed, human-faced wolf had reared up to stand erect, and was padding around its cornered victim. The girl’s eyes were glazed, and Dorko and Illona nodded to one another. The Lady had tranced the girl, as a snake tranced a rabbit. They’d seen it happen before. With the forming of the thought Elizabeth moved, bounding forward, knocking the girl to the ground, pinning her arms down and biting and clawing at her flesh. A few drops of blood splashed on to the snow and Elizabeth sprang back at once, her eyes glittering with triumph, her hair working loose from the hood and spilling over her face. Dorko moved back, twisting the girl’s arms half up her back again, smiling as the creature yelped in pain.

‘The creature turns faint,’ said Elizabeth, softly. ‘Revive her.’ And then, her eyes slewing round to where the two women and the coachmen stood, ‘Do it,’ she said sharply. ‘Oiled paper. You know where. She is not to miss a single second of the agony.’ And then to the girl, ‘You would hate to miss it, wouldn’t you, my dear?’ she said, and incredibly there was affection and concern in her tone. ‘You must not miss any of it.’

The oiled paper flared up and Illona stood waiting. Elizabeth reached out, forced the girl’s thighs apart with her gloved hands.

‘Wider, my dear, wider . . .’

The girl fell to her knees and Dorko jerked her head back by the hair. Elizabeth tore off her gloves and plunged her uncovered hand between the girl’s thighs, white soft skin against rough peasant. There was a moment when her questing fingers curved upwards, stroking the girl’s body intimately. The girl shuddered in revulsion and fought to break free, but Dorko held her firmly. Elizabeth’s expression held the concentrating pleasure of one intent on sexual release and, without looking round, she held out her free hand for the burning paper.

Illona handed it to her silently, and Elizabeth held it aloft for a moment. Then, slowly and deliberately, she brought it down between the girl’s legs, and thrust upwards. There was the brief sickening stench of flesh and hair singeing, and the girl screamed and beat wildly at her captor. Elizabeth drew away, laughing exultantly, casting the charred paper into the snow.

‘Gag the creature!’ she cried. ‘Muffle the screams! Quickly! Good. And now the razors. Bleed her on to the snow! Do it!’

Dorko and Illona, surer of their ground now, pulled the girl to her feet and set to work, using the thin, glinting blades, opening the veins at throat and wrist. The blood began to flow at once, and the girl fought, biting against the rough cloth gag that Illona had twisted into her mouth.

Elizabeth threw herself down at the girl’s feet, the black cloak stark and dramatic against the snow, the front flung open to show that beneath it she was naked. The blood was sliding over the girl’s white limbs to drip on to the Countess’s body, and her eyes were filmed. When she reached up to smear the blood into her skin, she did so with slow languor.

‘Sweet . . . The sweetest thing you would ever know . . .’ The words were so soft that the two women barely caught them. They stayed where they were, holding the girl upright until at last the flow slowed and the Lady stood up and wrapped the thick cloak about her body again.

Incredibly, the girl was not quite dead. Her skin was marbled and bruised where they had slit her veins, but there was a flicker of life in her. She had fallen to the ground now, but her hands scrabbled weakly at the ground, as if she were trying to crawl away.

‘Fetch the water!’ cried Elizabeth. ‘Break the ice in the ditches and bring the water up. Fetch ewers from the coach and douse the remaining fires, for the creature fought and she ran from me, and she is trying to run from me now!’ She stamped her feet on the ground. ‘She still lives!’ she screamed. ‘Subdue her! Freeze her where she lies!’

Dorko was no longer young, and Illona was growing slow and heavy, and catching the fleeing girl earlier had taken a toll of them both. But it would have been suicide to disobey any one of the Lady’s orders and so, panting and wheezing, they fetched from the coach the earthenware pitchers without which the Lady never travelled, and plunged into the ditches at the sides of the roads, stamping on the thick, dirty ice to break it.

The girl revived slightly as the icy ditch-water poured over her; she moaned and her eyes rolled up showing a thin line of white.

‘Again!’ screeched Elizabeth, huddled back in her furs. ‘Stand her upright! Douse her until she is solid! A human icicle!’

It took several pitchers and it took more trips to and from the ditch than they found easy. But at length the girl was frozen solid, a thin human stalagmite rearing up out of the snowy ground, her features eerily visible through the transparent ice covering, the gag torn aside showing her lips stretched into a soundless scream. Dorko and Illona carried her to the ditch and flung her down. The snow would cover her and it would be spring before the thaw set in and she was found.

The Lady’s hungers had been assuaged once again, and no one had caught them.

Chapter Twenty-six

As night closed about Crnprag, Catherine lay on the narrow bed, unable to sleep, watching the woman the guards had called the Collector. The woman intrigued Catherine. She was clearly mad, but there was something beneath the madness that was intelligent and shrewd. And why had there been that flare of recognition when she saw Catherine?

The guards had gone out, locking the door behind them, and Catherine thought that just as the woman had not heard the guards come in, she had not heard them leave. Because she was too deeply entrenched in whatever form of madness held her? And then: no! thought Catherine, suddenly understanding. Because they are beneath her notice.

CrnPrag was shrouded in silence now and, through the tiny, high-up windows, the sky had taken on a velvety blackness. I am shut inside Stefan’s nightmare asylum, thought Catherine, and it is midnight, when creatures who fear the daylight wake and prowl, and when things that feed on the darkness stir and lift their heads to sniff the air . . . The woman called the Collector slipped down from her bed and padded silently across to Catherine, and the eerie images vanished at once.

‘You permit?’ She pointed to the bed with an abrupt, questioning gesture, and Catherine sat up.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘You are awake?’

‘Yes.’ Catherine studied her. ‘I could not sleep,’ she said. ‘I should be glad of a – a friend to talk to.’ Was this the right tone to adopt? Gentle and ordinary. She thought it was.

The woman glanced over her shoulder in the darting, glancing way Catherine had marked earlier. ‘They can’t hear us at night,’ she said, and Catherine felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck.

‘“They”?’ The images returned: invisible daemons and beasts that gibbered on the outer edge of the poor mad thing’s vision, unguessed-at by the sane, but nonetheless there.

But the woman said, in a perfectly sensible voice, ‘The guards. They listen, you see. They listen and then use what they hear against us.’

This was all perfectly sane, and Catherine said, ‘I understand. Have you . . .’ She paused and then said, ‘Have you something to talk to me about?’

‘I’m not mad,’ said the woman, and there was the fierce intensity about her that Catherine had felt before. She said, carefully:

‘No.’

‘I wanted you to know that.’

‘I understand.’

‘It’s only that I was in his embrace. And no one ever emerges from his embrace with a sound mind.’

There was a sudden silence. Catherine was strongly aware of CrnPrag’s silent isolation, of the isolation of herself and the Collector. If she attacked me, what would happen? Would the guards hear if I screamed? But she said, still using the same gentle voice,’ “He”?’ and the woman paused, frowning, as if marshalling her thoughts. Catherine again had the impression of a strong and powerful mind buried fathoms deep under the dementia.

‘Imagine a tall old house, very ramshackle, the windows blind or empty, weeds growing up through the pavements.’

‘I don’t—’

‘And when you go inside, everything is decayed and rotting.’ For a moment, unmistakable madness showed in the woman’s eyes, and she rocked to and fro. ‘Everything dying, everything crumbling.’ And then her eyes cleared, and she sat up a little straighter. ‘It’s where he dwells,’ she said, half to herself. ‘He is lying on an old iron bedstead, his eyes on the door, waiting for me.’

‘“He”?’ said Catherine again, and waited.

‘Madness,’ said the woman, a slurry note of exaltation in her voice. ‘He wears a deep slouch hat that hides his eyes, and a long swirling cloak that smells of old, dried blood. And his hands are huge, they’re great huge hands that reach for you, and great swollen knuckles that fasten about your mind . . .’ She rocked to and fro again, and Catherine, torn between pity and repulsion, waited. Presently, the woman said, ‘He rears up from the bed when you enter, exactly as a child fears that the discarded dressing gown on the chair in its bedroom might suddenly rear up.’ Her eyes glazed. ‘And he smothers you with his blood-smelling embrace, and he breathes his tainted breath into your mouth . . .’ She broke off again. ‘And then he pushes you on to the bed and parts his cloak and puts himself into you.’ She glanced at Catherine. ‘You understand what I mean, little sister?’

‘I – yes.’

‘And when his seed has filled you, then you have his taint for ever. For ever and ever and ever and—’ The frenzy soared in her voice again, and Catherine flinched.

Without warning, the woman darted across to her own bed, scrabbling impatiently beneath the pillow. Her eyes were shining and, as the pillow slipped unheeded to the floor, she held up a thick, smeary jam-jar. The cold moonlight slithered over it, showing greasy marks and grisly brownish smudges. Catherine remembered that concentrated snatch at some helpless wriggling insect on the wall earlier, and shuddered.

The woman had padded back across the bare floor, making no sound, and resumed her seat on the edge of Catherine’s bed, holding the jar against her breast and crooning over it. She stared down into the repulsive contents, and then thrust the fingers of her left hand inside, scooping up several of the trapped spiders and cramming them into her mouth. There was a terrible moment when her cheeks bulged and her jaw worked and when she threw back her head, her eyes bolting. Catherine saw her throat ripple, and nausea clutched the base of her stomach.

And then the woman turned her huge brown-ringed eyes on Catherine, and held out the jar, and although Catherine’s mind flinched with horror, she felt her hands move of their own volition. The jar was in her hands, repulsively warm, filled with scuttling life – oh God, what now? she thought.

‘It is filled with life,’ said the woman, and Catherine jumped and felt her skin crawl. ‘Life and blood,’ she said. ‘You understand. You know about it.’ You have shared it, said her expression.

Catherine said in a whisper, ‘The blood . . .’

‘The blood has never failed us yet.’ She indicated the jar and without warning she began to sing a mad little tune that lifted the hairs on Catherine’s neck.

‘The blood . . . never failed me yet, never failed me yet,

It lifts me from the dead.

Never failed me yet, Never failed me yet,

Though I’m dead I’m alive . . .’

Elizabeth, thought Catherine, staring. That is Elizabeth’s song, that is what she used to sing all those years ago when she was knocking at the gates of my mind, when she was slithering through the chinks in the wall. That is how she has always sounded. Elizabeth is looking at me from out of this creature’s ravaged eyes.

Of course she is mad, thought Catherine. Of course she is. But this is the blood-hunger of Elizabeth at the lowest, most primeval level. She glanced down at the jar’s contents and shuddered. Spiders and a few spiny-backed creatures. Beetles? Oh God. But she gave the jar back and said in a gentle voice, ‘I would not deprive you—’

‘I can get more.’

‘Why do you take them?’

‘For the blood.’ The woman snatched the jar back, hugging it to her.

‘How do you know about the blood?’ said Catherine. ‘Tell me how you know?’ She fixed the woman with her eyes, willing her to answer and, after a moment, the woman lifted her head and looked directly at Catherine. Her lower lip was smudged with traces of black, but her eyes were clear.

‘In the same way that you know, little sister,’ she said, in the gentle modulated voice that was so shockingly at odds with her appearance. ‘It was handed down to me. From my grandmother and her grandmother, and back and back and back . . . From the One who started it.’

Catherine said in a whisper, ‘Elizabeth.’

‘The secret was handed down and down and down—’ The madness was flaring again, and Catherine glanced uneasily at the door. Ought she to shout for help? ‘Until it reached me. Down and down and down and down—’ Red pinpoints of light showed in the woman’s eyes.

‘I’m not mad,’ she said, and Catherine heard the soaring note of frenzy and backed away. ‘They think I’m mad.’ She reached out and grabbed at Catherine’s hand with cold, bony fingers. ‘I’m not mad,’ she said and now her voice was hoarse and filled with desperate entreaty. ‘It was because he caught me – Madness with his blood-draggled cloak and his huge-knuckled hands . . . When he pushes inside you, he is barbed like an arrow so that your womb tears . . .’ Her grip on Catherine’s hand tightened. ‘Tell them I’m not mad,’ she said. ‘Tell them, tell them—’

‘Yes. All right.’ Catherine forced herself to grip the cold hand. ‘Will you tell me your name?’ she said. ‘Perhaps we can be friends . . .’

The dark eyes regarded her. Then, ‘Orsolya,’ said the woman, and grinned suddenly. Her teeth were smeared with brown spider-blood. ‘My name is Orsolya.’

Catherine stared at the poor mad thing, her mind in turmoil. She had almost forgotten her surroundings and, in any case, they had ceased to matter. At some distance, she was aware of hearing people running in the corridors outside, and shouts of command, as if an important guest might have arrived at CrnPrag.

But Catherine was reaching for Elizabeth as she had never reached before now, scraping at the inner skin of her mind for the knowledge she had absorbed – almost by osmosis – over the years.

Elizabeth was dead; she had died four centuries ago, and if she walked the world today, then she walked it in Catherine’s mind and in Catherine’s body. The poor ravaged creature in the narrow bed was not Elizabeth.

But Elizabeth had had children.

For many years she had tried to resist childbearing; she had hated the idea of her body being used and she had detested being regarded as a brood-mare. But tradition demanded and necessity required that she give Ferencz an heir and, in the end, after years of gulping down Dorko’s loathsome potions, four children had been born: a daughter called Anna and a son called Pál. And some years afterwards, two more girls.

Anna had been the eldest: ‘A daughter!’ Ferencz had said, blusteringly hiding his disappointment. ‘Well, Lady, we will soon get ourselves a son.’ But Pál had not been born until almost ten years afterwards. It was from one of those two, Anna or Pál – Catherine did not know which and it did not matter – that the Family traced its descent.

Anna and Pál had married conventionally and well: Anna to the Hungarian Count, Miklos Zrinyi and Pál to a daughter of the Forgachs, one of Hungary’s leading families. Pál had become Grand Officer of the County of Eisenburg, and it had been on to him that most of Elizabeth’s lands and wealth had finally devolved. Anna’s husband had been rich in his own right and a member of the old Hungarian nobility. So much for Elizabeth’s two older children. What about the other two? Catherine knew hardly anything about the youngest girl, only that she had married young and left Csejthe. She did not know how she even knew this, unless it was in the way she knew everything else about Elizabeth. She did not know the youngest girl’s name, or the name of her husband.

But she knew the name of the middle one, the one born after Anna and Pál. She had been named for Ferencz’s mother.

Orsolya.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Four children had been more than sufficient. Elizabeth had hated every minute of the entire process, from the conception when the loathsome seed lodged in her body, through the swollen, sick indignities of the gestation months, to the final hours of tearing agony when the child fought its way out.

Ferencz’s pride and his pleasure in the babies had been repellent; she had felt sick at the way he had fawned over her after each birth and said, ‘Another little one, Lady, and with God’s good graces many more still to come.’

There would not be any more. Elizabeth had had enough of the revolting potions, and of Ferencz’s greedy hands and messily spurting genitals. It had not become any easier with the years, and it had been God’s mercy that had kept him away fighting wars for so many years. Occasionally she had lured one of the young men of the Court to her bed, a little from curiosity, but mainly to see whether someone else could succeed where Ferencz had failed. If he could not sire his own brats, perhaps someone else could do it for him. It would get the whole messy business of providing an heir over and out of the way. Unexpectedly there had been an odd inverted pleasure in luring the young men to her bed for a night or two. She did not enjoy their clumsy bodies, but it gave her a feeling of superiority to discover that she had only to beckon with her eyes and they succumbed, tiptoeing through the candlelit corridors to her room.

‘Unbecoming for one of your age,’ Illona had once said, and Elizabeth had turned upon her, her eyes flashing, her face white with rage. She would not punish Illona in the way that she punished the other servants if they were slow or disobedient; Illona was too valuable and moreover she knew too much. But the creature had overstepped the mark and Elizabeth would not forget.

‘Frightened,’ said Illona afterwards to Dorko. ‘That’s all it is. She’s frightened of growing old.’

‘Frightened of losing her looks,’ said Dorko scornfully. You could be very thoroughly scornful about another’s vanity when you had nothing to be vain about yourself. Neither of them voiced aloud the thought that the Lady was approaching forty, because it was not something you would dare say aloud if you wanted to keep a whole skin. But it was true that the Countess was no longer young. It did not bear thinking what might happen when that ivory skin began to show faint lines, or when that velvety flesh started to pull away from the bones beneath. The blood would not stave off age for ever.

And now there was the matter of the Master being home for good after all these years. His health had failed, which was small wonder after the years of living in camps and eating rough food and engaging in hard fighting. Damp groundsheets to sleep on and hours of sitting on a horse in rain and wind, said Dorko, shaking her head. You could not wonder at it if his kidneys had ceased to function properly or if he suffered pains in his joints.

In any event, the Lady would not be best pleased to find that her lord would no longer be riding off to war, staying away for months or even years at a time. She would not like it at all, sniggered Dorko to Illona.

Elizabeth did not like it. She had become accustomed to being her own mistress, to living in whichever of her castles she chose – Csejthe was her favourite, but sometimes it was good to travel to the others. There had been the glittering Court life in Vienna: she had enjoyed attending the balls and the receptions by herself, making a grand and imperious entrance, graciously and gracefully accepting the homage paid to her. As the wife of the great Count she commanded instant respect, although the respect would have been forthcoming anyway.

The sojourns in Vienna were enjoyable. She spent hours painting her face, letting Dorko twist her silky black hair into the fashions of the day: threading it with strings of seed-pearls or binding it with gilt filets or jewelled snoods. If her skin did not show the requisite whiteness, Dorko or Illona could be sent out to trap some toothsome little serving wench from an inn or a tavern. There could be a hasty killing; a swift, pleasurable immersing in the blood. It was a bit makeshift after Csejthe’s torture chambers, but the need for secrecy and haste lent its own excitement. Even the search for somewhere private to do it in other people’s houses added to the pleasure. And afterwards it was the most exhilarating thing in the world to walk haughtily into the banquet or the musical evening with the feel and the scent of the fresh warm blood still upon her.

She spent almost as much time selecting the gown she would wear as painting her face and dressing her hair. White was still her favourite, perhaps crusted with pearls or milky opals, but she sometimes wore vivid scarlet trimmed with the sable fur of wolves. It amused her if the sheep of the Court tried to copy her. They did not succeed, of course, because she had at her beck the arts of the forest sorceresses. The blood . . . It had never failed her yet.

There were young men to fascinate; more importantly there were young women to seduce. The aristocracy for their bodies, the peasants for their blood . . . It was as good a maxim as it had ever been. It was the most exquisite joy to introduce some trembling, unawakened virgin to all the things that could be done between women. Hands and tongues and fingers. Nipples and clefts. Cloven not crested. . . That never lost its power.

And now Ferencz was back, spoiling her carefully ordered life, getting in the way, inclined to be querulous, wanting attention. Snooping and asking questions. Why had she so many young girls as servants? It was surely unnecessary. How did she spend her days? Whom did she entertain? How often did their children and their spouses visit her? Elizabeth, accustomed for years to being her own mistress, to serving her moods and hungers as they arose and more or less ignoring her children, stormed about her apartments in a rage. Ferencz’s fretful prying was not to be borne. His watery eyes and trembling hands were not to be endured and his ailments were disgusting. His skin had weathered into a loose, leathery sack, inside which his bones rattled, and his face was pouchy and mournful. Elizabeth could scarcely bear to look at him, and she was certainly not having him in her bed. If she were to appear at Court gatherings – at any gatherings – on the arm of such a one, she would be a laughing stock. Worse, she would be classed with him: old. Old. But Ferencz did not want to go to Vienna any more, and so Elizabeth said, Very well, she would go alone. It was what she had been accustomed to do during the years of his absence in any case.

But Ferencz had other ideas. They would not need to be at Court so often now, he said: the fool actually smiled with pleasure as he said it. His days of public life were over, and so could hers be. He intended to live quietly in one of their many castles, delving into the works of the great minds of the past, riding out on gentle excursions when he felt well enough, holding discussions with such men of religion as would come to visit them. He had been turning more and more to religion in the latter years, he said, his collapsed, bloodhound-face serious. Perhaps it was associating so closely with the Catholic Hapsburgs. He was even thinking of taking instruction in the Roman faith. What did Elizabeth think?

What Elizabeth thought was that Ferencz was all set to sink into an ignominious old age and that she was having no part in it. He was pathetic and repulsive with his bloodshot eyes and his fumbling movements and his old man’s weakness. It was embarrassing to his household that he had to be placed near to the door at lengthy banquets and people had to pretend not to notice his frequent trips to the privy. It was humiliating that his boots were sometimes dribbled with smelly moisture.

But she smiled the falsest of all her false smiles and laid a hand on his arm and said it all sounded very interesting. He should tell her about it. But, later that night, alone in her apartments, she paced the floor, screeching curses, her mind seething. If Fate thought it could bestow on her this fractious, slow-witted old creature, Fate would have to think again. At last, she summoned Dorko and Illona to her bedchamber. If an incantation could not be found to get rid of the old fool, then more direct methods would have to be used.

Dorko and Illona, conferring together afterwards, agreed that this was going to be the riskiest thing yet. It was one thing to take village girls, the daughters of cottagers and gypsies where there were often so many children in the family that the disappearance of one was scarcely noticed . . .

The slaughtering of peasant girls was one thing; the deliberately contrived death of the great warrior Count Ferencz Nádasdy was another thing entirely.

In the end it was done with stealth and caution, and with such care that no one ever suspected, not even the meddlesome Ponikenus.

It was of no surprise to anyone that the Count was unable to digest plain ordinary food any longer. The sympathetic who remembered how bravely Ferencz had fought in wars, said you could not wonder at it, but the cooks and the scullions who had perforce to cope with the new regime, said crossly that the Master had become downright finicky and they would not have thought it of a soldier. As for this latest fancy of Her Ladyship to dabble in the preparation of the Master’s jellies and soups and broths – Well! said the cooks, that was no work for a lady and certainly not for one who had hitherto hardly known the way to her own kitchens! Mark their words, Madame was up to no good, said the kitchen staff, who liked to say that they knew more of what went on in Csejthe Castle than folks gave them credit for.

But it was difficult to prevent the Lady from entering her own sculleries, and it was even more difficult when the Master began such a pageant of vomiting and purging that you’d think his poor old body would turn inside out. Madame went rampaging through the sculleries like the Furies then, demanding to know what was being sent to the Master’s bedchamber by way of sustenance, stirring and tasting, and even carrying up his trays with her own hands on two occasions! The kitchen staff did not quite sulk, because nobody in the Lady’s service ever dared to sulk, but they were aggrieved to think she did not trust them to prepare some nice, wholesome dishes to tempt a capricious appetite.

There was little trace now of the fiery-eyed soldier who had led his men across battlefields for so many years and who had been one of the Emperor’s most trusted men. The Count’s skin had taken on a yellow tinge, and boils and blisters had broken out on his body. And the sickness! Well, said the servants, if he wasn’t vomiting up from one end, he was purging from the other! You could scarcely keep up with it, they said, and told one another that he was dying by inches and, while it was all very sad, it made more washing then you’d give credit for! They heard, with sympathetically clenched buttocks, of how a clyster was to be administered by an apothecary who had come from Vienna especially for the purpose, and told one another that it went to show that all the wealth and power in the world was no proof against ill-health.

In the stiflingly fetid bedchamber, the apothecary greased the thick shaft of the piston syringe with sweet butter, and helped the two attendants to turn the Count on to his front and pull up his nightshirt. It seemed almost insolent to be interfering with the back passage of such a high-ranking gentleman, but the good God made no distinction when it came to sickness, and a good clyster, properly prepared with honey and salt water and herbs, was often very beneficial. The apothecary spread the Count’s thighs as respectfully as was possible for such an intimate act, and inserted the end of the shaft, relieved when he found the opening without difficulty. It was not pleasant for either party when you had to poke around, and sometimes you inflicted more damage than was seemly. But the syringe slid in and up and there was only the barest groan from the bed. The apothecary pressed the plunger, and the warm fluid emptied into the poor gentleman’s bowels. He straightened up from his unsavoury task and wiped the syringe clean.

‘Try to retain that for as long as possible, my lord,’ he said, and then, because he knew what was what and because he had practised it earlier on, bowed low as he took his leave.

But either Ferencz Nádasdy did not hear or could not heed these words. Or perhaps he was too near to death for the apothecary’s ministrations to have any effect.

He died early the next morning, after a night of squalid agony spent squatting over a bucket and retching into an enamel pan.

His Lady, who had welcomed his return so warmly and cared for him so assiduously, shut herself into a black-hung room for seven days and seven nights, only emerging to attend the elaborate funerary ceremonies proper to a gentleman of the Count’s birth.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hilary and Michael had swept down the hillside in the stolen car exactly as Michael had wanted. Hilary experienced a surge of exhilaration at seeing the guards look round and then run after the car, waving their fists impotently.

‘They’ve seen us, haven’t they?’ Michael said.

‘Yes.’ Hilary was crouching over the wheel, gripping it too tightly. She had understood in a general way how they had managed to fire the engine, and she knew with the logical part of her mind that the car would not simply cut out without warning. But it felt safer to keep the engine revved. What would they do if she stalled it as they swung out into the main road below? Would she be able to start it again? Red and yellow. Easy to remember. Tomato and egg. And the two white wires were the first stage. Lights and indicators. White to white make the light. And then the road was ahead and she was pulling the steering wheel hard over and blessedly there was nothing coming from either direction, and they were on to the good tarmac road and Csejthe was receding.

Michael said, ‘Is the BMW there?’

‘Yes.’ Hilary had looked for it as soon as they turned on to the road. ‘All four tyres cut to ribbons,’ she said. ‘You were right about that.’

‘I wish I hadn’t been.’

‘So do I.’ It had given Hilary a cold, sick feeling to see the viciously damaged car. It brought home the brutality of these people. Though it was an uncomfortable feeling to know you were driving a stolen car, never mind if you had stolen it from a nest of murderers.

Supposing it ran out of petrol? The petrol gauge was reading half full. Was that enough to get them back to the Red Angel? Hilary tried to remember distances. What would they do if they stopped at a garage and could not reconnect the wires again? A thread of panic spiralled. You had to switch off your engine when you put in petrol. What if somebody saw them using the wires to start it again? Wouldn’t it look suspicious?

‘And,’ said Michael softly at her side, ‘what if the castle people have reported the car as stolen and we face road blocks.’

‘How did you—’

‘I can hear your thoughts, lady,’ he said. ‘All the “what-ifs” coursing through your mind.’ He paused. ‘But they’re quite reasonable “what-ifs”. What were you worrying about? Petrol?’

‘Well, largely.’

‘How full is the tank?’ said Michael. ‘You notice I’m an optimist. I could have said, “How empty is the tank?”’

‘Just on half,’ said Hilary.

‘Not enough to get us to Debreczen.’ He relapsed into thought as Hilary concentrated on driving. It would not do to admit to tiredness, but she was actually beginning to feel very weary indeed.

Michael said, ‘I think we can be fairly sure that the castle people won’t report this car as stolen.’

‘Why? Oh, because it would draw attention to them.’

‘Yes. And I think we ought to try to reach the Red Angel,’ said Michael. ‘Are you all right to drive as far as that, lady?’

Impossible to say: when you use that voice, when you call me ‘lady’, I can do anything in the world. Hilary said, ‘If it has to be done, then I can do it.’

‘Good. Jesus God, I wish I could be driving us, Hilary . . .’ He stopped, but the savage frustration had been in his voice again.

Hilary understood that he wanted to be in the driving seat, taking control. Of course he does, she thought. Any man would. But he’s keeping his temper pretty well reined-in on the whole.

Michael said, ‘As for petrol . . . Supposing we stop at the next garage and simply buy a can of petrol – better still, two – without switching off the engine. Say it’s for a lawn-mower or a motor scooter if they ask, although there’s no reason why they should. Is your German up to that?’

‘If not I can point or use sign language.’ But Hilary thought she could manage to buy petrol.

‘All right. Then we drive beyond the garage, pull in somewhere quiet and disconnect the wires and fill the tank – oh God, that’s a point – has the petrol tank got a lock?’

‘Well, I can’t see from in here—’

‘If it’s got one it’ll have to be smashed,’ said Michael with decision. ‘Or picked. Can you pick a lock, do you think?’ He said this as if asking a perfectly ordinary question, and Hilary smiled.

‘It’ll widen the field of my criminal activities even more,’ she said. ‘If necessary I’ll try. Have we enough money for petrol?’

‘How worldly you’re becoming, Sister Hilary. That’s one thing we don’t have to worry about.’ Michael did not add, We don’t have to worry yet, but he thought it. He had counted the notes in his wallet carefully, but it was not easy to tell the difference between the amounts. His mind touched and then discarded the idea of asking Hilary to count them. If there were only fifty schilling notes left, she would worry. And so, when they drew up at the garage and parked a little way beyond the forecourt, he handed her his wallet and said, ‘Take out two – no, three hundred schillings for the petrol.’

The garage was large and modern and busy. Hilary left the engine ticking over and went inside. The engine would be warm enough not to cut out and, in any case, Michael could reach over and rev the accelerator if necessary.

It was unexpectedly reassuring to be in an ordinary place where lights blazed and people were engrossed in normality: buying petrol, choosing magazines, discussing the weather. There were two families with children; the children were clamouring for sweets and crisps for the journey. Pop music blared from a radio at the cash desk and Hilary grinned inwardly. Michael would have hated that.

The plastic cans were on a shelf at the far end. Hilary bought two and discovered that you had to fill them yourself from the pumps. She topped them both up, using the nozzle carefully, and went back inside to pay. The garage had a small area where pre-cooked food and sandwiches could be bought to eat while travelling, and Hilary remembered that it was a long time since they had eaten. Would it be all right to use a little of Michael’s money? But the petrol had only cost 180 schillings, which Hilary thought was about eight pounds in English money. And the food was not expensive. She made a quick selection: crisp brown rolls stuffed with cheese and ham. It was frivolous but fun to be choosing food and deciding what they should have. She added two slabs of solid-looking fruitcake and two cans of coke. They could have a picnic wherever they stopped to top up the tank. She slid back into the driver’s seat and explained this. ‘And there’re quite clean-looking loos at the back of the garage. Shall we take turns to wash and brush up?’

‘Good idea.’ Michael was grateful for the food. He ran a hand ruefully through his hair. ‘I daresay I look like a fugitive.’

‘Turn left as you get out of the car, about twenty paces straight ahead and you’ll feel the wall on your left,’ said Hilary, reaching for the ash stick and handing it to him. ‘The men’s too is the . . . Could you lean back, I can’t see . . . Yes, I can, it’s the second door. Say five paces from the edge of the building. Can you manage? I don’t think we ought to leave the car unattended.’

He did not look like a fugitive, of course. Hilary leaned back, massaging her aching neck muscles with one hand and watching him.

He looked dishevelled and there was a faint shadow over his jaw where he had not shaved. It made him suddenly and excitingly masculine, and it made her remember how his hands had felt on her body, how he had reached for her with that heart-stopping need . . . It was a very dangerous way to think.

She felt better after she had taken her own turn in the wash-rooms. It was a rough-and-ready kind of wash, and it was a bit public with other travellers coming in and out all the time, but the water was hot and there were clean paper towels.

The rolls tasted marvellous. They stopped in the shelter of some trees, and Hilary steered the car to where it would be more or less hidden from the road. She disconnected the wires and wound the side window down. Cool night air flooded in, and behind them was the immense backdrop of the pine-studded mountains, with purple twilight stealing over it. The stuff that nightmares were made of . . . The setting for every vampire film, every horror story ever told or remembered or written about this strange land . . . It was very hard to shake off the legends. It was practically impossible to discern where the line dividing fact from fiction was. I am deep in vampire country, thought Hilary, watching the purple twilight slide through the trees and shroud the mountains. I am in the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains, in the myth-drenched land of Romania . . . And behind us is Csejthe, the ancient ruined castle which is not ruined at all, and where creatures practise a grisly, centuries-old ritual.

At her side, Michael finished the last ham roll and said, ‘Food and drink. That chases the phantoms away, doesn’t it?’

So he was aware of the phantoms as well. But the makeshift meal had brought them both back to a semblance of normality.

Michael leaned back against the car seat and said, ‘And now tell me exactly what happened in the castle.’

Chapter Twenty-nine

He listened with the absorption that was so characteristic, not interrupting except to ask for clarification a couple of times, his expression one of complete concentration.

At last he said, ‘However we look at this, however mad we think those corpse-creatures are – however mad they might actually be – one fact remains—’

‘Catherine and her brother are imprisoned in CrnPrag,’ said Hilary. ‘That was very clear.’

‘Yes.’ Michael frowned and thrust the fingers of one hand through his hair in angry impatience. ‘And there’s some kind of punishment in store for Pietro because he ran away. So whatever’s ahead for Catherine, it’s not unreasonable to think that Pietro at least is in danger.’

‘He turned his back on the ritual,’ said Hilary trying out the word to see if it sounded as melodramatic as she thought it would.

‘Yes,’ said Michael again. ‘Dear God, this is incredible. I oughtn’t to believe a word of it, and yet there the facts are. I do believe it, by the way. I trust your account completely. I’d believe you even if you reported something even more unbelievable.’

‘I don’t know that there could be anything more unbelievable,’ said Hilary, frowning.

‘I suppose we can’t write it off as harmless lunacy?’

‘There was the girl they killed in the cage.’ Hilary shuddered at the memory. ‘That might have been the act of lunatics, but there was nothing harmless about it.’

‘True, O King. And you were locked in the cell.’

‘Yes. And you’re not forgetting the strongest piece of evidence of all?’

‘I saw them as well,’ said Michael, softly. ‘Yes. Eighteen months ago I hid in Csejthe Castle – although I didn’t know what it was called then – and saw the corpse-creatures.’ His hand brushed his eyes lightly. ‘Like you, I was got out of the way,’ he said. ‘Only they used a different method.’

‘Because you were a man,’ said Hilary. ‘It’s why they didn’t bother to take you down to the dungeons, of course. Those creatures are really only interested in—’

‘Say it.’

‘In the blood of young women. Oh, this is ridiculous.’ Hilary did not recall that she had taken his hand, but it seemed to have happened anyway. She withdrew her hand carefully. ‘None of it rules out madness,’ she said. ‘Csejthe might be the local asylum.’

‘“What-ifs” again?’ said Michael, grinning. ‘I’ll grant there are enough of them. What if you’d simply strayed on to the location of a horror film liberally spattered with fake blood? What if they were a coven of some weird religious sect? Or a society who re-enact this Countess’s life – like those people who fight the Civil War every year in England – what do they call them? – the Sealed Knot Society. Or they might be a group of fringe writers and actors using the “live-it-out” method of producing a play. Stanislavsky in surreal mode. Or a travel agent’s setting for Dracula buffs.’

Hilary started to say something, but Michael went on.

‘Then there’s drugs. They might have been under the influence of hallucinogenics. Or you might. Perhaps Franz-Josef is a drug baron – maybe that’s where they get their money – and he fed you crack when you were at Varanno. Or maybe Csejthe is a secret government establishment used by geneticists . . . Don’t laugh at me, child, I can go on like this for hours.’

He grinned and Hilary said, ‘We don’t think any of those things, do we? Not really?’

‘Not really. But how about madness? Hereditary insanity? Epilepsy at its wildest. Or some form of dementia. You listened to that grisly little conversation in the dungeon. Did they strike you as mad, any of them? What about Stefan and the boy – Ladislas?’

‘That’s the eerie part,’ said Hilary, thoughtfully. ‘I think they’re both sane. I think they’re all sane. They believe the blood . . . rejuvenates them. That it gives them immortality.’

‘Only eventually it fails,’ said Michael. ‘Or they believe it does. Like recharging a car battery. You can only do it a certain number of times and in the end it can’t hold the charge. Yes. You know this isn’t Bram Stoker after all: it’s Rider Haggard. It’s Ayesha and Leo Vincey somewhere in the lost Egyptian city. She lived for a couple of thousand years by bathing in some immortal fire, didn’t she?’

‘Yes, but in the end the fire took back what it had once given,’ said Hilary, momentarily distracted. ‘I always loved that book; I didn’t think people read Rider Haggard any more. But whether they’re mad or sane, Stefan and those creatures intend more than imprisonment for Catherine and Pietro.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Michael looked thoughtful and, after a moment, he said, ‘If you accept the premise of a family having an hereditary ruler, you’ve probably got to accept that there’d be challengers for the rulership. History’s littered with that kind of thing.’

‘Yes. And Stefan talked about not risking pretenders once he’d got Franz-Josef out of the way. Let’s not forget the threat to Franz-Josef as well, by the way.’

‘I’m not forgetting it. And I don’t believe either Franz-Josef or Pietro would let Stefan snatch the power without a fight,’ said Michael. ‘I wouldn’t. I don’t think any man with red blood in his veins would – sorry I didn’t mean a pun – no man with any—’

‘Guts?’

‘Saving your cloth, Sister, I was going to say something a bit more vulgar. But guts will do. Pietro Bathory might have renounced his family, but I can’t see him meekly letting Stefan take what’s rightfully his, can you?’

‘No.’ Hilary grinned again. ‘It’s not even Rider Haggard now, it’s The Prisoner of Zenda. Rupert of Hentzau and Black Michael fighting over the throne of Ruritania.’

‘What astonishing literary tastes you have.’

‘I suppose—’ said Hilary and then stopped.

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I was wondering if Pietro experienced some kind of religious compulsion,’ said Hilary, half apologetically. ‘And left to enter a monastery or a seminary for priests.’

‘Like Catherine? But she didn’t know about the – the legacy,’ said Michael. ‘Or so the corpse-things said. That’s why they wanted her brought back.’

‘For an initiation ritual,’ said Hilary.

‘Like a bar mitzvah?’

‘Well, sort of.’

‘Pietro knew about the ritual,’ said Michael, thinking hard. ‘But he ran away from it. We don’t know why. We know that Catherine ran away as well, but that was because she had a vocation. You’d know more about that than I would, of course.’

‘It isn’t always easy to tell the gold from the dross,’ said Hilary in such a low voice that Michael barely caught it. But then she said, ‘Pietro doesn’t sound wildly religious, somehow. And the convent would have known if he were a priest or a monk,’ said Hilary. ‘They’d have talked about it. They always take a pride in having more than one of a family. It was a bad idea, forget it.’

‘So all we know is that Pietro rebelled,’ said Michael.

‘He ran away to live in Paris,’ offered Hilary.

‘On what? You don’t just run away and live in Paris unless you’ve got money to live with.’

‘They seemed quite well-off,’ said Hilary. ‘Houses and servants and things.’

‘It’s a pity we can’t get inside CrnPrag,’ said Michael, rather regretfully. ‘Because I think a number of questions could be answered. Tranz’s precise activities for one. You know, that’s one of the most extraordinary things about all of the extraordinary things happening here. All those tales about people being lured there. Tobias said—’

‘Tobias? Oh yes, the owner of the Red Angel.’

‘Tobias told a very remarkable tale about CrnPrag,’ said Michael. ‘About Bosnians and Romanians and refugees from every war since World War II being brought to CrnPrag. I wonder—’

‘What?’

‘I wonder if there’s a connection,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Between Csejthe Castle and CrnPrag. Because to find one sinister old house out here is startling enough, but to find two is stretching coincidence a bit far.’

Hilary said, ‘Varanno was pretty odd as well if you want a hat-trick.’

‘Yes.’ Michael beat a clenched fist on the dashboard with frustration. ‘Jesus God, if I could just get up there—’

He stopped, frowning, and Hilary said, ‘To CrnPrag? It isn’t possible. Is it?’

‘I don’t think it’s possible for you, lady,’ said Michael. ‘Shouldn’t you be going back to the Convent?’

‘I suppose so. Yes, of course I should.’ Michael could not tell from her tone whether she wanted to return or not. She’s putting up a barrier. Is it because I said she should go back? Yes of course it is. Damn. But Hilary only said, ‘I wonder how Catherine’s family have explained her absence to Reverend Mother?’

‘Will they give an explanation?’ said Michael, and then at once. ‘Yes, of course they will. She was only given a week’s leave, and they won’t risk any unexplained ends. Will Reverend Mother want to know why you left Varanno without your belongings? Might she ask awkward questions?’

Hilary said, ‘The Rule requires that I give obedience to her, but I’m on loan from England. A guest. So she can’t be too curious.’ She frowned, thinking, and then said, ‘I’d guess that some very plausible tale will be spun about misunderstandings over travel arrangements. Something that appears to tell the truth but is so complex that it hides the fact that it actually tells nothing. You’re a journalist, you ought to know what I mean,’ said Hilary.

It was as if she had said: you belong to the hard cynical modern world and I do not. Michael ignored it and said, ‘Are you sure you won’t be questioned?’

‘No. Reverend Mother’s of the old school,’ said Hilary. ‘She’d consider it impolite to demand explanations. Especially of a guest.’ She looked at him. ‘You’re not coming with me, are you?’

‘No.’

‘I thought you weren’t. What are you going to do – storm CrnPrag single-handed?’

‘Yes, but not single-handed,’ said Michael and grinned. ‘I’ve been working it out – listen. If we drive as far as Debreczen and get a meal and a rest at the Red Angel, can you cope with returning to Vienna by train? And then a taxi to the Convent at the other end?’

‘I think so. Yes, of course I can. It’ll be German-speaking by then; my German’s pretty sparse, but I can get by.’

‘Be thankful we’ll be beyond Hungary,’ said Michael. ‘I believe Hungarian’s hideously difficult to master.’

‘What about the car? Aren’t we going to the police?’

‘I think the best thing to do with the car,’ said Michael, thoughtfully, ‘is to simply leave it somewhere public and let it find its own way home.’

‘Won’t the Csejthe guards have reported it? And us?’

‘Not to the police because they won’t dare draw attention to what’s going on inside the castle. Whatever that might be,’ said Michael. ‘And even if they did—’ The grin slid out, ‘Even if they did, my love, would the police seriously suspect a nun and a blind man of stealing a car?’

‘You’re – that’s trading on it,’ said Hilary.

‘No it isn’t, it’s turning a negative into a positive. And on the subject of negatives and positives, you didn’t get a photograph of the corpse things, I suppose?’

‘I didn’t dare,’ said Hilary. ‘Not with Stefan and Ladislas there.’

‘Ah. Well that’s another reason why we can’t go to the police,’ said Michael and Hilary heard the note of satisfaction in his voice.

‘Why?’

‘No evidence. In fact,’ said Michael, sounding very pleased indeed by now, ‘in fact, we really haven’t got any evidence at all. Not police evidence, that is,’ he said.

Hilary stared at him. ‘You really are going to CrnPrag?’

‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘Quite apart from trying to find Catherine and her brother, I want to know what’s going on inside the haunted house. Tranz and refugees and carefully-spun horror tales to keep people out – it’s all some kind of a cover and I want to find out what’s underneath the cover. I don’t want to tamely hand it over to the police; I want to find out myself.’

‘You can’t. I mean you can’t go on your own. I’ll come with you,’ said Hilary.

‘Impossible, my love.’ His hand came out to her. ‘I’d like you to come, but it can’t be risked. If you don’t go back to Vienna, Reverend Mother will have all the Pope’s horses and all the Pope’s men hunting for you.’

‘But you can’t do it on your own!’

‘I shan’t be on my own. Once we’re back at the Red Angel, I’m going to get Tobias to drive me out to CrnPrag.’

There were a dozen things that could be said to this, including the very sensible, ‘Don’t go – you might get hurt.’

Hilary said, ‘Have we got enough money left?’

They had enough but only just. The petrol gauge on the stolen car was flickering ominously on ‘Empty’ as they came down the mountain road, and Hilary saw the distant spires of Debreczen University and the old church in the distance with thankfulness. Almost there.

She was beginning to feel dizzy with exhaustion and the unaccustomed hours of driving, but now that it was almost over, she relaxed a bit. How many borders had they crossed in the last week? Had there been checkpoints, with papers demanded of them? She had been concentrating on driving and on not being recognised as car thieves so intently, that she could not remember. There was a vague memory of Michael simply producing his World Press News identification, which had seemed to open most doors.

Tobias was charmed to welcome back the English couple who were having some kind of adventure and clearly becoming romantically embroiled along the way. He served them steaming plates of chicken in a paprika sauce along with a bottle of the Hungarian Merlot wine that Michael had enjoyed before. It saddened his romantic soul to hear that the lady must return to Vienna directly after they had eaten, but at Michael’s request, he went off to find out about train times, returning presently to report that the Vienna train was due out of Debreczen station later that evening.

‘It is not a very long journey, but it will be close to eleven o’clock before you reach Vienna,’ he said and added hopefully that perhaps this would not be acceptable.

‘It’ll have to be acceptable,’ said Michael before Hilary could speak, and as Tobias padded away again he reached for her hand. ‘Hilary listen. I want you to be inside the Convent before nightfall. Eleven o’clock’s a bit late, but we’ll phone ahead and ask them to wait up for you.’

‘What on earth is all this about?’ said Hilary, staring at him. And then suddenly realising precisely what it was all about, said ‘Oh,’ in a rather blank voice. ‘You’re afraid that the Csejthe people might come after me. That’s it, isn’t it? Because they could trace me through the car and Varanno.’

‘I could wish you weren’t so astute,’ said Michael. ‘And I don’t really think anyone will come after you. But I don’t like the sound of Ladislas Bathory and we can’t ignore the fact that there’s a connection between Csejthe and Varanno. You were at Varanno with Catherine and you were driving the BMW. It’ll all jigsaw into place if they think about it.’

‘Might they really follow me?’

‘The odds are they won’t bother,’ said Michael. ‘The odds are that I’m being neurotic, simply because it’s you.’ Had that broken down the barrier? He thought it had. After a moment he said, very gently. ‘But will you let me be neurotic? To please me, will you go back to Vienna and stay behind locked doors for a few days?’

‘Sister Clothilde’s locking-up round would keep out anyone,’ said Hilary, and Michael smiled and hoped she had not picked up any of the bitterness he was feeling. It was agonising to find that a houseful of nuns could give Hilary better protection than he could. But he said, ‘We’ll have coffee now, shall we, and then ask Tobias to get a taxi to take you to the station in Debreczen. I’ll come with you and then back here in the taxi. Once you’re on the train stay with other people all the time.’

‘A carriage with several others in it,’ said Hilary, who was not really believing any of this, but saw the argument.

‘Well they’re usually open carriages these days. That shows how long you’ve been in the cloisters, my girl,’ said Michael. ‘But if you don’t like the look of any of your travelling companions lock yourself in the loo or the guard’s van or something. Get a porter to get you a taxi at the other end, and take—’

Hilary said, ‘I know what comes next. “Not the first cab in the rank or the second, but the third”. Conan Doyle’s advice.’

‘I suppose you could be given worse. Will you ring me here when you reach Vienna station? And then again from the Convent?’

‘Even if it’s midnight when I get there?’

‘Even if it’s the end of the world,’ said Michael.

The calls came through faithfully, and Michael took them in Tobias’s little coffee room, where he had asked Tobias to join him.

Hilary sounded perfectly all right. She reported that the journey had been uneventful and in fact rather interesting, and a porter had been helpful over the matter of a taxi at Vienna station.

‘Not the first and not the second but the third.’

Sister Clothilde had sat up to let her in as arranged and had made a pot of tea, which had been unexpected because to be drinking tea at midnight was the height of decadence in monastic circles. And now she was locked away from the world and its villains.

‘Stay that way, my love.’ Michael said it softly, but he knew she had picked it up. ‘Until we find out what’s going on.’

‘Tobias will go with you?’

‘He will.’ Michael smiled, recalling Tobias’s complete absorption in the story and his instant assent.

At the other end of the phone Hilary said, ‘And you’ll find Catherine?’

‘If she’s there. I won’t forget her. Or Pietro.’

‘You’re storming the battlements of CrnPrag, aren’t you?’ She sounded sleepy but amused. There was absolutely no reason for Michael to worry about her.

He said, ‘Storming CrnPrag with the blast of war blowing in my ears.’

‘Goodnight, Michael.’

‘Goodnight, my love.’

Chapter Thirty

Reverend Mother was pleased to see Sister Hilary and to hear that Mr Devlin had remained in Debreczen, but she eyed Hilary thoughtfully. She would not let her thoughts show, of course, but it did not take a mystic or a visionary to see that something had passed between those two. Reverend Mother hoped it was not what she feared, but even forty-five years in God’s service did not give one any especial optimism where human nature was concerned, and Mr Devlin was extremely attractive. Reverend Mother had been conscious of it herself: a lifetime of celibacy did not stop you from recognising these things.

She explained that there had been a telephone call from Varanno and it appeared that Sister Catherine was to stay a little longer. There had apparently been some confusion about the travel arrangements – Reverend Mother had not inquired too closely into what had actually taken place, because it was none of her concern. But the week’s leave of absence had been extended in view of Pietro Bathory’s continuing illness, and they were all praying for him of course – tomorrow’s Conventual Mass was to include a special intention in his name and all was in God’s hands. And, said Reverend Mother, briskly donning her administrative persona, since Sister Hilary had returned earlier than planned perhaps she would help them by taking on a little work in the library during Sister Catherine’s absence.

She was glad to see that the habit of years held; whatever might have taken place during the vaguely confused events of the last few days, the ingrained obedience was quite plainly still there. Sister Hilary accepted her new duties automatically, which was exactly as it should be; life had to go on, even though hearts might be bruised.

Hilary, acceding to the request that was really an order, felt safe inside the convent. There was comfort in knowing what was expected of you, and there was reassurance in the gentle mechanism that spun the convent’s day. It was a mechanism that she was very used to: it was compounded of prayer and meditation and study, and of orderly duties in the convent itself or the infirmary wing. There were no disturbing, reckless young men who got under your armour and stirred up feelings you had not known you possessed. St Luke’s Order adhered to a strict pattern, with each House following the same structure, so that, except for the different language, Hilary thought she might almost have been in the Hampshire Convent again. The days here were exactly as they had been at home: you rose at five o’clock and read the Office for the Day, and then heard the conventual Mass. For the trained nuns there was work in the infirmary; for the others there was the running of any large house. Food had to be prepared and served; laundry had to be dealt with, the vegetable gardens had to be tended. Each nun kept her own room clean, of course, but there was the cleaning of the communal rooms: studies and music rooms and interview rooms for patients and their families. There was correspondence to be answered and account books to be kept and balanced. This was done here by the young Sister Thérèse, who had been working on a literary project with Catherine involving the life of Teresa of Avila. It was exactly like the convent at home, where two of Hilary’s colleagues had collaborated on a book about St Luke’s work with the sick which the British and Foreign Bible Society had printed and circulated.

The Vienna House had even the same raggle-taggle queue of tramps who came to the side door at noon every day. The nuns kept a stricter rota here than in England, with even Reverend Mother taking a turn, saying, Hadn’t Our Lord Himself fed the needy with His own hands? Hilary had grinned to think of Sister Veronica spooning out stew to tramps, but Reverend Mother did it with great panache and appeared to think it a very valuable exercise indeed.

‘Those men have some remarkable philosophies,’ she said. ‘I learn an astonishing amount from them. Most interesting.’ She refused to listen when Sister Clothilde said that the cost of doling out hot dinners every day was becoming alarming, even when you used the cheapest cuts of meat and threw in as many root vegetables as you could to plump it out. Sister Clothilde was as charitable as anyone, but she did not approve of feeding idle layabouts who could very likely find honest work to do somewhere, even if it was only sweeping the streets or emptying dustbins. But alms-giving was an integral part of any Christian institution, and the tradition of a midday dinner queue was one that had been observed for many years by the Order, and so Sister Margaret who oversaw the sculleries always made sure that there was a simmering cauldron of stew and a separate steel urn of the strong tea that the men liked.

The queue formed every day, coinciding with the chiming of the noon Angelus bell.

Within the grey, subterranean world of the homeless, it was agreed that the chiming of St Luke’s midday bell gave shape to a shapeless life. You might be sunk in torpor or the hag-haunted sleep of cheap raw alcohol, but while you were in the city the bell would always penetrate your consciousness. You would rouse yourself and you would cobble your mind and your body together to be sure to get to St Luke’s in time for your portion of hot, filling stew and your mug of tea. Nobody who stood on the steps of St Luke’s ever cavilled at the tough mutton or belly pork that flavoured the stew; nobody certainly felt at all deprived on Fridays, which the devout sisters still counted as a fasting day, despite Vatican II. On Fridays there were usually good solid fishcakes, or even what Reverend Mother, who was French, called ‘bouillabaisse’, which was a fancy name for fish stew.

Sometimes the sisters wanted a job of work doing, which nobody ever actually called payment, but which could probably be regarded in that light. Nobody ever jibbed at this; it was always some very simple task, something that the sisters could not manage themselves, something requiring strength. It was a source of amusement to the raggle-taggle gentlemen of the road that it was nearly always when the sharp-tongued Sister Clothilde was on dinner duty that they were asked to perform these small tasks.

‘It gives them a sense of dignity,’ Sister Clothilde said firmly to Reverend Mother. ‘It teaches them independence.’

‘And it gets our firewood chopped and our trees felled,’ said Reverend Mother urbanely, and Sister Clothilde looked up suspiciously, because you could never be quite sure whether or not Reverend Mother was essaying a gentle joke against you.

‘None of them looks as if they’ve an ounce of strength left in their poor starved bodies,’ declared Sister Margaret, who itched to drop every one of the down-and-outs into hot baths and comb the lice from them and scrub away the stench of drink.

But between them, there was usually one or two who could wield an axe or shift a heavy piece of furniture.

There was one today; a new face in the queue, a bit younger than most of them, and certainly not as worn. He had with him a long canvas bag with carrying handles, the kind used for workmen’s tools, and the stalwarts glanced at him a bit warily. You sometimes got interlopers; sons – very occasionally daughters – of the rich, who thought it was fun to pretend to be poor and homeless for a few days. Once or twice there had been people from newspapers who wanted to write about the injustices of a city that harboured so many homeless, and who used expressions like ‘unfair distribution of wealth’ and ‘oppression of the working classes’. The rag-tags had not much interest in these matters, but they were always pleased to talk because you could usually turn this kind of thing to your advantage.

But the newcomer did not talk about injustice or oppression. He was rather quiet, although he was very interested in the stories about the convent: about how it had been altered and added to over the years; how the infirmary wing was across the courtyard and the sisters’ quarters in the old part of the house which you could see from here. They were glad to show off their superior knowledge and point out these different parts to him. They were pleased to identify the nuns for him, pointing out Reverend Mother in front of whom you had to be watchful of your manners, and Sister Margaret who cooked the grandest stew ever and was less severe, and Sister Thérèse who was a bit offhand on account of being young and shy. There was even a young English nun visiting the convent; the rag-tags described her to the newcomer who found it all very interesting.

After a few days they began to think of him as one of themselves. He was no trouble; he was well-mannered and liked to listen to their tales, and he did not try to push his way to the front of the queue ahead of the elders of the community.

On the morning when Sister Clothilde was on dinner duty and asked for help in moving an old marble sink out of the sculleries, he was the first to volunteer.

Ladislas Bathory placed the canvas bag on the stone floor and stood in the convent’s scullery and felt a wild surge of triumph. I am inside.

It was annoying that Pál and Anna’s people had let the English girl escape, but at least they knew who she was. Ladislas had listened very closely to the description of Hilary and he thought he would recognise her. She would have to be silenced of course, and as soon as possible. They could not risk her telling the police what she had seen inside Csejthe.

Stefan had been cautious; he had asked whether they could be sure of Hilary’s identity, but Ladislas had thought they could.

‘She was driving the car that brought Cat from Vienna,’ he said. ‘And according to Bianca she took it from Varanno to follow Cat—’

He stopped, and Stefan said, ‘I suppose you do know what you are doing over Bianca, do you?’

‘Jealous, father?’

‘Not in the least. But make sure you don’t find that your little intrigue turns about on you,’ said Stefan.

‘The biter bit?’

The grin deepened, but Stefan said seriously, ‘That’s not what I meant.’

The intrigue with Bianca was immensely satisfying to Ladislas, but the thought of finding and silencing Hilary was unexpectedly arousing.

But overriding the thought of Hilary, even overriding the necessity to find a hiding place until nightfall, was another emotion, one which he had not expected. I am in Elizabeth’s house. I am in the place where she moved through Viennese society like a dark, beautiful she-wolf, and where she danced and presided over banquets and donned a mantle of conventionality. And then, when the guests had gone, she had cast aside the mask and the real Elizabeth had looked out of her eyes.

Ladislas finished moving the old cracked sink into an outhouse and, without looking back, crossed an inner courtyard and entered the central portion of the house. He stood for a moment, savouring the scents of polish and old wood.

As he went along the long corridors with the oak floors – every inch gleaming with true conventual fastidiousness – he encountered what were clearly patients from the infirmary side. Most had nuns with them, helping them to walk rather falteringly or pushing them in wheelchairs. They all looked up with varying degrees of curiosity but they were all wholly unsuspicious.

Ladislas smiled openly at them all and said, ‘Good afternoon to you.’ And walked purposefully on, carrying the long canvas bag at his side. None of them was Hilary.

He did not feel in the least nervous. Everyone he encountered would assume he was a workman with a job to do. Plumbing or electricity. But he was aware that he trod a thin line; at any minute someone might demand an explanation of his presence.

It was believed within the Family that if the Countess walked then she walked in two places only: Csejthe Castle which she had loved for its wild desolation and its thick, muffling walls, and this house where she had entertained the glittering pageantry of the Hapsburg Court, and where she had held her infamous blood-drenched banquet for the sixty serving girls. Ladislas, walking warily through his ancestress’s house, thought: if you are here, Elizabeth, guide me to a hiding place.

He found it with an ease that was very nearly sinister. Are you showing me the way, Elizabeth? Half hidden at the end of a corridor on the first floor, there was a small, tucked-away stair, twisting up and up and round, finally debouching at the very top of the house, directly beneath the roof.

It was stiflingly hot and there were discarded pieces of furniture, broken-backed chairs, desks rotten with woodworm. Bundles of old curtains and trunks of rat-nibbled papers. Tiny scuttering pawmarks lay in the dust: mice or even rats. But the dust was undisturbed by human footprints and Ladislas smiled. Absolutely right. Plainly no one had come up here for a very long time. He would not mind the rats and he would be safe until the convent slept and he could go in search of Hilary. If he crept partway down the stairs he would probably be able to hear the nightly locking-up ritual. The smile curved his lips as he remembered how the tramps had been so eager to impart their knowledge about the convent’s customs.

He wondered if Elizabeth had truly guided him up here. Would she have wanted him to be undetected? Would she have cared if he had been caught? He thought she had been a cold-hearted creature as far as her children were concerned, impatient and intolerant. But the gerons at Csejthe told how, despite her lack of interest, her children had stood by her. The husbands of Anna and Orsolya and also Pál himself had all spoken for her at the end, petitioning for leniency for their mother. The Bathorys had closed ranks, as they always did in times of trouble. Ladislas knew as much about Elizabeth as any of the Family; he had spent a great deal of time with Anna and Pál, listening to their memories, and he knew that there had been many occasions when Elizabeth’s children, with their respective spouses, had stayed at Csejthe Castle and in this house.

But there was nothing to suggest that Elizabeth had ever possessed any normal maternal instinct: Anna and Pál spoke of her brilliance and her dazzling looks and her defiant courage, but they were evasive about their relationship with her and there was nothing to show if Elizabeth had welcomed, or even wanted, the visits of her children.

It was irritating when your family descended on you almost without warning, certainly without asking. Elizabeth had other things to do than make preparations to welcome her daughter Anna and Anna’s husband, Miklos Zrinyi, to Csejthe. It was autumn, when the nights were long and the evenings were languorous and tinged with indigo and violet, and when the twilight was scented with woodsmoke. It was not a time to devote several weeks to the entertainment of a daughter you hardly knew and a son-in-law who disliked and feared you: Elizabeth had no illusions about Miklos Zrinyi’s opinion of her. And autumn at Csejthe was the time when the wild woodland sorcery of the mountains was at its strongest, and when the forest witches could yoke new daemons and persuade familiars to yield up new spells. She wanted to prowl the mountainside and go into the forests, finding out the old witches with their remarkable knowledge. She wanted new and more potent spells.

She was nearing fifty now, and although her looking-glass assured her that she was as white and as firm-skinned as she had been at twenty, ugly doubts sometimes brushed her mind.

There had been an occasion recently where a woman, the mother of one of the creatures who had been butchered at the banquet in the Blutgasse, had flung herself in front of the Countess’s carriage, screaming imprecations.

‘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, shadowy 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.

Ladislas went back to his attic eyrie, well pleased.

He had not expected to get Hilary’s room at the first attempt and he did not do so. But he experienced an enormous feeling of power in levering each trapdoor up and peering silently down into the rooms. The nuns had narrow, rather comfortless-looking beds, made up with white, unbleached sheets and pillowcases, and covered with plain counterpanes. In the first two rooms were older nuns, who slept as their calling decreed: on their backs with their arms crossed. They wore cotton caps, covering their shorn hair, and the beads of rosaries were twined lightly between their fingers.

But in the next room was a much younger figure, and Ladislas’s attention was caught. Hilary? Certainly the right age. She slept sprawlingly, the cotton cap tossed aside, her hair a close-cut cap shaping her head. Ladislas looked at her thoughtfully, his mind alight with sudden desire and, as he did so, the girl turned on to her back and opened her eyes. She blinked, as if unable to believe what she was seeing, and then her mouth opened in a soundless O of shock and fright. Before she could draw breath to scream, Ladislas had dropped through the trapdoor and was on the bed with her. His hands curled about her throat. Choke the bitch! Throttle her before she raises the alarm! Fierce joy scudded through his body.

The girl struggled frantically, writhing against him and flailing with her hands, and Ladislas felt a huge rush of arousal. Achingly sweet. Elizabeth, was this what you experienced? Was this what you felt when you drained your pretty witless serving girls and your plump, blood-filled kitchen-maids?

The girl’s struggles had almost ceased, and her eyes had rolled back in her head so that only a rim of white showed. A weak pulse fluttered at the base of her throat. Not dead, but unable to fight.

Ladislas was by now barely aware of anything but the hard, insistent throbbing between his legs and the pounding at the core of his mind. The blood . . . He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket for the knife. Switchblade knives they had once been called. Flick knives. He released the spring and the blade erected itself with a silken purr.

As he propped the girl against the bedhead, she moaned and revived a little. Ladislas caught the whispered, ‘Aidemoi,’ and his mind accepted that this was not Hilary, even as his hands were closing about her throat again. It took only a very little pressure on her windpipe with his thumbs to silence her again, and she fell back, her head rolling on her neck. But the pulse still beat in her neck, and Ladislas stood back and glanced at the door. Was there a key? Yes! He turned it, and then, quickly and silently, threw off his jacket and shirt and stepped out of his trousers.

Because the blood has to slide over the skin, my dears . . . He could hear Elizabeth whispering to him. The blood has to slide over the naked skin and it has to be warm . . .

Ladislas drew his victim to a half-sitting position on the edge of the bed and knelt at her feet, between her thighs. It was child’s play to reach up and slide the glinting knife into the great blood-rich arteries at neck and wrist. It gushed at once, spattering the bed and the walls, tainting the small room with its coppery odour. Strong good blood . . . Warm . . .

It was warm and fresh and in the moonlight it was almost black. Ladislas let it gush over his hands, and drew in a great shuddering breath. Elizabeth’s legacy. Virgin blood. Was there any chance that this one had been a virgin?

The girl’s skin was marbling into cold whiteness and the blood was dripping in runnels. Indescribable. Purest ecstasy. It was soaking the sheets, dripping on to the floor at one end. He smoothed it between his hands, and smeared it across his chest and between his legs. The smell and the feel and the taste. Oh God, the sweetest thing you ever knew.

The English writer, Stoker, had got it nearly right, but the real truth had so completely eluded him that Ladislas found it laughable. Not drink it, you fool. Bathe in it. Immerse in it. And then you will live for ever and then you will be strong and young and beautiful for always.

For always? said a tiny treacherous voice within him. What about the gerons at Csejthe? Anna and Pál and the rest? What about the enigmatic Franz-Josef, failing after so many years?

Years away. Centuries away. I have barely begun the journey. He looked back at the white, drained body on the bed, and Elizabeth’s hunger flared in his eyes.

He had been aroused almost to fever pitch by the feel and the scent of the blood, and as he looked down at the emptied body, he felt himself more violently charged than he had ever been in his life. Mine. My own private ritual, not the travesty, the colourless, empty ceremony the Family permits itself four times a year. This was a true immolation, Elizabeth’s own ceremony. To be shared with no one.

The girl’s flesh was cooling now and she was flaccid against his skin, but it would be the final sweet culmination.

Ladislas reached forward to part her legs.

Hilary was not completely asleep. She was in the comfortable in-between stage of being sufficiently awake to enjoy sliding into sleep. Sleep was the place where you did not have to think or make decisions. Where you could lay down whatever worry you might be carrying. A borderland world.

Sounds were different in the borderland world. Abstract things took on substance and form. She could still hear her thoughts scuffling about somewhere outside – down the corridor, was it? Or had they moved to over her head? It was vaguely disturbing, because thoughts did not move like that. Thoughts were silent and invisible. They came and went on swansdown feet and nobody saw them and nobody heard them.

Whatever was scratching and slithering was trying to be silent, but was not quite succeeding. Hilary pushed back sleep a little more and considered this. Whatever it was was no longer outside her room, but above it. Overhead. Something scuttling about overhead. Something in the attic. Something, or someone . . .?

Someone in the attic. . .

There was the scrape of wood being moved and then the rasp of hinges. The soft creak of a door being slowly opened. Hilary’s eyes flew open in fear and she sat up, her eyes going automatically to the door leading into the corridor. Closed. Then what—

Then the gust of cold air from above pricked her to a different awareness, and she looked up.

Framed in the yawning trapdoor over her bed was the head and shoulders of a man looking down at her. He was spattered with blood and his eyes glittering maniacally. As he began to climb through the small aperture, she saw that one hand held a dripping knife.

The man she had seen talking with the corpse-creatures in Csejthe.

Ladislas Bathory.

And he was coming down from the dark attic to murder her.

Chapter Thirty-two

Hilary sat in Reverend Mother’s office, trying to be calm. She thought she had certainly screamed – she could still feel the echoes spinning about her head – but she could not remember actually getting to the door of her room and rousing the others. Had she shouted for help in English or German? It had not mattered, of course, because the message had been clear in any language.

Ladislas had vanished at once and Hilary had caught the sound of scrabbling footsteps over her head. The trapdoor was still open, showing a gaping black hole, but Hilary could not have gone up there if God and the entire hierarchy of His angels had told her to.

Sister Clothilde had summoned police officers at once, using the emergency number – ‘Something I never thought I should do,’ – and there had been time to get properly dressed which made Hilary feel better. You could deal more easily with things like making statements and embarking on explanations when you were fully clothed.

Reverend Mother was immaculate. It was inconceivable that Reverend Mother would receive anyone, leave aside policemen, other than impeccably gowned and veiled even at three-thirty in the morning. Sister Margaret had been requested to brew up a huge pot of coffee for everyone. ‘Real coffee,’ said several of the nuns, accepting their cups with half-guilty pleasure. St Luke’s was not an especially ascetic Order, but good coffee was regarded as an expensive luxury.

‘Well, Reverend Mother thinks we need something heartening after such a terrible experience.’

Hilary cupped her hands about the hot mug of coffee and concentrated on describing to the thin, grey-haired detective exactly what had happened. Being sleepless; hearing vague sounds as if someone were moving about somewhere. Half falling asleep and then waking and seeing Ladislas looking down at her. The knife in his hand . . . She said, ‘Have you searched everywhere? There was blood . . . If he attacked someone—’

‘Be calm, Sister, a search is being made now.’ The grey-haired detective spoke very good English. He had intelligent eyes and a thin, tired face with an unexpectedly sweet smile. He looked at Reverend Mother. ‘You have not made a count of your nuns?’

‘A roll call? It didn’t seem necessary . . .’ Reverend Mother made a quick gesture, half anger, half impatience. ‘There was so much confusion, you understand. People were rushing to make telephone calls, trying to reassure one another, making sure that the patients in the infirmary wing were all right . . .’ Again the impatient gesture of her hands, quickly stilled. ‘We are unused to such an intrusion. If one of the sisters was missing we would not necessarily have noticed.’ She frowned. ‘Should we search—’

‘It isn’t necessary now, Reverend Mother. My men will do so.’ He turned back to Hilary. ‘You said you recognised the man, Sister?’ The question was courteously put, but the grey eyes were steely. Hilary drank coffee to give herself time to think. It was impossible to lie with Reverend Mother sitting behind the desk. She thought she would not have done so anyway. Not now. Ladislas had come here to silence her. The gerons had told him about her, and he had come to find her exactly as Michael had suspected. And because of it, someone might be injured . . .

She took a deep breath and tried to collect her thoughts, and said, ‘There is rather an extraordinary story behind all this. You will have to know it all and you will find it—’

‘Surprising? Sister, we see and hear many very strange things in our profession.’

Hilary regarded him thoughtfully, but only said, ‘I am afraid it will take rather a long time.’

‘Then,’ said the detective, whose name was Armand Wagner, and who was discovering that nuns were not quite what he had been brought to believe, ‘then perhaps the good Sister Margaret can bring some more of her excellent coffee to assist us.’ He glanced at Reverend Mother. ‘You permit? Good. And you shall tell us your story. Herr Gustav will record everything.’

There was a sudden businesslike air in the little study. The plump Herr Gustav brought from his briefcase a small portable tape recorder and placed it on the desk.

‘It is easier to record your story at this stage,’ he said, smiling in a rather cosy fashion, as if they were all attending a friendly tea party.

‘It will not trouble you?’ said Wagner. ‘Good. Please to take your time. It is all quite informal as yet, you understand? No official statements. That can be done later. I shall try not to interrupt you, unless it is to clarify something.’

The story sounded quite as improbable to Hilary here as it had when she had told it to Michael in the inn at Debreczen. It sounded even more improbable to tell it to police officers than to tell it to someone you knew was a friend. Nothing could be omitted. Csejthe, the gerons, Pál and Anna. The blood ritual. Hilary told it all, as clearly as possible, trying not to miss anything, trying to be unemotional. Trying above all, to push aside the terrible feeling of responsibility. That blood-stained knife . . . Another death to be laid at my door . . .?

It was odd and rather shocking to hear her voice describing the dwarf Janos’s attempt to rape her and how she had brought her knee up to slam into his genitals. You did not use words like genitals in front of Reverend Mother; Hilary glanced at Reverend Mother and saw that her expression was one of absorption, and if she was shocked she did not show it.

It was towards the end, as Hilary was explaining how she and Michael had escaped from Csejthe that one of the policemen knocked at the study door and pushed it partly open.

‘Well?’

There was a significant glance at Reverend Mother. Wagner said, ‘You have found something, Bremner?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ The young man called Bremner eyed his chief levelly and Reverend Mother rose at once and moved to the door.

Wagner put out a hand to stay her. ‘I don’t think—’

Reverend Mother regarded him. ‘Herr Wagner, if one of my nuns has been hurt I must know. If it is more than – just hurt, then you should remember that death is not an enemy here.’

Hilary saw Bremner’s involuntary glance at Wagner, and Reverend Mother at once said, firmly, ‘You will permit me to accompany you, Herr?’ Her eyes were quite as incisive as Wagner’s, and her manner held just as much authority, but Hilary caught the involuntary glance across the room.

She stood up and said carefully, ‘Could I come with you, Reverend Mother? Would it be allowed?’ She did not say, Would it help, but Reverend Mother’s response was immediate.

‘That would be very kind.’ Was there even a trace of relief? But having swept aside Wagner’s authority, Reverend Mother could now afford to be gracious. ‘You permit, Herr Wagner?’ she said.

Wagner said thoughtfully, ‘Sister Hilary may recognise something that would help us. And there is the matter of identification. Normally that is done . . . later, but the circumstances are not altogether normal here.’ He frowned, and then said, ‘Very well. You will be careful not to touch anything?’

‘Of course.’

It was a grim journey they made to the nuns’ wing. Was this where it had happened? Had someone really been killed so easily? While they slept, had one of their number been butchered within yards – within feet of hearing? Hilary’s thoughts were chaotic. What are we going to see? And who? And worst of all: could I have prevented it? If Michael and I had told the full story in Debreczen, would this have been prevented?

The corridor was alive with Wagner’s men, and there was a sense of disturbance on the air. And it is not just because a killing has taken place, thought Hilary. It is the masculinity of Wagner’s men disturbing the virginal ambience.

Police equipment had already been set up in the corridor: Wagner’s men clearly worked swiftly. There were cameras and strong flashlights on stands, and attaché cases like medical bags standing about, most of them half-open to show bottles of chemicals and brushes. Two men were painstakingly dusting thin white powder over the doorframes of each room. Fingerprints? Would they all have to have their prints taken? That would flutter the dovecote even further. But he came through the trapdoor in the roof, not through the door, thought Hilary, confusedly. Or did he? Supposing he came silently along the corridor first, trying all the doors. She felt a shiver of horror.

The young, keen-eyed Bremner had come with them, and the plump Gustav, exuding sympathy. Hilary noticed that he accorded Herr Wagner an alert deference.

The door of the fourth room down was propped open. Sister Agnes? No, Sister Agnes was next to Hilary’s own room, with Sister Margaret beyond that. In any case, she had seen both sisters since it happened. Hilary felt as if her mind was refusing to function. It ought to be easy to remember which room it was. Only I can’t, thought Hilary in sudden panic. Is this what shock feels like?

As they approached the open door, the first thing to assail her senses was the stench of blood. Hilary felt her stomach chum and bit down nausea resolutely. Please God let me not faint, and above all, God, don’t let me be sick.

And then they were on the threshhold and Hilary felt her senses spinning again. For a moment her mind was unable to do more than repeat over and over the conventional phrases. This is a very dreadful thing that has happened. This is quite terrible. An outrage . . . Beyond that she could not go. Her mind was like a car with the gears jammed so that it was unable to move forward. A terrible thing . . . At her side, Reverend Mother murmured a prayer and, with the words, the stuck wheels of Hilary’s mind unlocked and she could think and reason again.

The little room had been distempered in a bright sunny buttercup and there were yellow and white curtains at the windows. The rooms had been newly painted a week or two before Hilary’s arrival, and Sister Clothilde had still not got over the expense.

Ladislas Bathory’s victim lay as he had left her, propped against the wall behind the bed, her head flopping forward, her legs sprawling in an ugly, obscene fashion. Hilary glimpsed the tangle of dark pubic hair, matted and smeared with blood and looked away at once. But her mind had already registered the gaping wounds at neck and wrist and groin, and her inner vision was printed with the image of the unnaturally white flesh. Emptied of blood. Drained and milked . . . And there is the stench of death and fear and of raw sexual greed in here.

The blood had splashed the buttercup walls so strongly that it must have spurted from the bed in a great fountain; the bedclothes were soaked and stiffening and even the bright curtains were marked. The room is a touch frivolous – Sister Clothilde said it was – and now amidst it all is a corpse lying in its own gore, and there is the stench of too-ripe meat from the stale blood and the torn-open flesh . . .

On the window-ledge was a small, ikon-type picture: a young smooth-faced woman wearing the close neat headband and veil of a Carmelite. St Teresa of Avila. Then this is Sister Thérèse’s room. Sister Thérèse, named for the fourteenth-century Spanish saint. Catherine’s friend.

Hilary had not known Sister Thérèse very well, but they had talked briefly one evening at supper about the projected work on the other Teresa, which Hilary had found interesting, and they had exchanged good mornings each day as one did in any kind of community. It had been Sister Thérèse, as the convent’s treasurer, who had given Hilary a small amount of money prior to the journey to Varanno. ‘Petty cash,’ she had said, and smiled as if trying out a colloquialism to see how it sounded. ‘In case of anything unforeseen.’ Hilary had received the impression of considerable piety oddly blended with sharp organisational skills.

And now this nun – this efficient organiser who had been devout and a bit shy and enthusiastic about her work – was dead; she had been butchered at Ladislas Bathory’s hands. It was so dreadful as to be scarcely believable.

At Hilary’s side, Reverend Mother reached for the crucifix that hung at her waist. Hilary thought: it is her instinctive act, to reach out for God. She reaches for God while I can feel only anger and a wish to punish the animal who did this. She discovered with a shock that the fingers of both her hands were actually curving into predator’s claws. I should like to tear out Ladislas Bathory’s heart for this. It could not be said. It ought not to have been thought.

Hilary turned to Reverend Mother, remembering that she was not young – probably she was well beyond seventy years of age – and that she had the uniform pallor and the slight blue lips of one whose heart is not as robust as it might be. When Hilary put out a tentative hand, Reverend Mother took it gratefully.

Hilary said, ‘Could we be quiet for a little while, Herr Wagner? Do you need to ask any more questions for the moment?’

The grey eyes took in Reverend Mother’s pallor and silence.

‘No,’ said Wagner. ‘No, we shall need to be in here for a little while.’ He regarded Hilary thoughtfully. ‘I need to know where you will be, of course. And to request that you do not leave the house.’

‘I understand. We shall be in Reverend Mother’s study.’

One of the scullery nuns had banked up the fire in the study and the coffee pot had been placed in the hearth to keep it warm. Sister Clothilde had brought in some of the convent’s precious hoard of brandy – ‘Just a tiny sip for medicinal purposes, Reverend Mother.’

Despite the horror of everything, Hilary smiled inwardly. That joke again: purely medicinal, and down went a large double brandy. She reached out and poured a generous measure of the brandy into the coffee, and watched Reverend Mother drink it gratefully. A little of the frightening blue look faded from her lips. She said, half to herself, ‘Sister Thérèse, that good, gifted child. So much still to give. To die in that way . . .’ She frowned and appeared to push away the thoughts. ‘God takes where He chooses, of course,’ she said. ‘And death is something to celebrate.’ Hilary had the impression that she had pushed away the shock and the horror and was calling up a lifetime of beliefs and trust. Death is something to celebrate . . .

Reverend Mother was mentally rolling up her sleeves, ready to deal with what came next, and when she said, ‘That was a very remarkable story you unfolded to Herr Wagner,’ Hilary heard with relief the authoritative note. Richard’s himself again . . . Ready for the fray . . . I think I’m becoming hysterical. Would she let me have a sip of that brandy, I wonder?

She said carefully, ‘You understand why I did not tell what had happened when I returned?’

‘Because, “there are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times” perhaps?’

It felt like a test, as conversation with Reverend Mother sometimes did. Hilary remembered that Reverend Mother was French, and said, ‘Is that Voltaire?’

It was not quite a bow drawn at a venture, but she was absurdly pleased when Reverend Mother said, ‘It is. Although he also said that, while he was fond of truth, he was not at all fond of martyrdom. He tilted at windmills many times, Voltaire, and sometimes he came to grief. I am talking irrationalities to avoid facing the truth, you understand.’ A pause. ‘Truth should be respected at all times, Hilary. The fear of martyrdom should not weigh. Nor the fear of ridicule.’

Hilary said in a low voice, ‘If I had spoken out, perhaps this would not have happened. I am aware of that.’

‘Well, you should not feel responsible. That would be nearly a sin of pride.’ Hilary looked up and Reverend Mother said, ‘Wouldn’t it be pride to think you had brought about a death? Death is for God to deal out. He has His plan, even though it is sometimes hard for us to fathom it.’ Hilary drew breath to object and thought better of it. Instead, she said, ‘Did you believe me?’

‘About Catherine Bathory’s family?’ There was a pause, and Hilary had the sudden, strong impression that Reverend Mother was weighing something in the balance. But when she spoke, it was in an ordinary voice. She said, ‘Oh yes, my dear. Yes I believed you. I question the premise of immortality for any of God’s creatures, of course, but I believe you saw and heard precisely what you told Herr Wagner.’ A pause. ‘You see, this was her house.’

‘I don’t – whose house?’

‘The Countess’s. Elizabeth Bathory – Elizabeth Nádasdy as she should be correctly known, since she married only the one husband,’ said Reverend Mother, a stickler for accuracy. ‘But it is as Bathory her legend has been preserved.’

‘I had never heard of her,’ said Hilary. ‘Should I have done?’

‘She is not so widely known as all that, although her tale has been told at times.’ The quirk of humour that made Reverend Mother a far warmer person than many other religeuses, flared. ‘She surfaces now and then, mainly at the hands of Gothic novelists, and even the occasional film-maker. But she has been overshadowed by the Irish writer, of course.’

‘Who – oh yes, Bram Stoker.’ Hilary kept forgetting that Stoker had been Irish. ‘And – she lived here? Elizabeth Bathory? It was rather eerie to be hearing all this. It was even eerier to come upon such matter-of-fact acceptance of Elizabeth’s existence.

‘Yes, she lived here,’ said Reverend Mother. ‘This was – what today might be called her town-house. She would have stayed here when there were Court functions to attend with her husband, or perhaps to entertain the important people of the day.’

‘I understand.’ The creature talked of by Pál and Anna in Csejthe Castle had been an ephemeral thing to Hilary until now. A chimera but a dark, blood-drenched chimera. A will o’ the wisp, steeped in her own evil legend. Now, in the quiet study, listening to Reverend Mother’s soft voice, Elizabeth was a chimera no longer. She was real, thought Hilary. She lived. She lived in this house. She did quite ordinary things here. For some reason this ordinariness made Elizabeth suddenly much more sinister. The dark, bloody mask beneath the smooth façade. Aloud she said, ‘You – forgive me Reverend Mother – but you know a good deal about her.’

‘That she lived here is not a thing we would wish to be known to many,’ said Reverend Mother. ‘Not because of the sin of pride, but because the Countess was an immensely evil woman. Cruel beyond imagination. And we would not wish to deter novices from entering our Order, or patients from coming to our infirmary.’

‘And – there are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times?’ said Hilary, and grinned for the first time that night.

‘Impertinent child,’ said Reverend Mother without rancour, and stood up. ‘Come, I will show you.’

Herr Wagner’s men were in the corridors outside, and the young, eager-eyed Bremner looked up. Hilary felt Reverend Mother hesitate and felt, as well, the horror of what had happened deal her a fresh blow. But she fixed Bremner with a steady look and said, ‘Would you have the kindness to tell the Chief Inspector that Sister Hilary and I will be in the library for a little time,’ and Bremner nodded.

The library was dark and filled with clustering shadows. Sister Margaret or one of her helpers had apparently stoked up a boiler somewhere because, as they entered, Hilary heard a chuckle of sound from the hot water in the pipes feeding the old-fashioned iron radiators. Was it the pipes? Or was it someone standing in the shadows, perhaps half concealed in the deep alcove at the far end of the room, laughing not-quite-silently? Were the shadows red-tinted, as if someone had lain dying in the room, bleeding into the shadows? Hilary remembered Sister Thérèse and shivered.

And then Reverend Mother reached for the light switches and glad yellow light flooded the room, picking out the crucifix with its beautiful tortured figure over the mantel. The shadows vanished at once and, after all, the library was a perfectly ordinary room, the kind you would find in any ancient house in any country in Europe. Books and manuscripts lined the walls, and two or three leather-topped tables stood at the centre. The heavy curtains were drawn across the windows, shutting out the night, but Hilary, glancing at the clock, saw that it was five a.m and knew that the grey dawn would be stealing across the square outside.

Reverend Mother went to the small desk which held the rather simplistic but efficient index, and flipped through the listings. Once or twice she paused as if she might have found what she sought, but each time she gave an impatient shake of her head and went on. But after a few minutes she took from one of the shelves a slender, vellum-bound book, the cover faded and the engraved book-plate worn and virtually indistinguishable.

Reverend Mother held the book between her palms for a moment. ‘The minutes of the Countess’s trial,’ she said, and quite suddenly the room which had been made warm and safe, and which had had the little homely gurglings of water along the skirtings, was warm and safe no longer. I believe she walks, thought Hilary, unknowingly echoing Ladislas. I believe Elizabeth walks and that she is here with us now. If I looked round would I see her, half-hidden by the shadows, watching me? She shivered again.

Reverend Mother was saying, ‘The truth about the Countess was always intended to be kept a strict secret. It was never meant that it should get out.’ A brief gesture. ‘Those who headed her trial and later sentenced her were afraid of her powerful relatives and so they tried to draw a veil of silence over the proceedings. They were reasonably successful: the records of the trial were kept at the Court of Vienna and later sent to Budapest.’ Reverend Mother tapped the vellum book with a fingernail. ‘But this tells it all.’

‘What—’

‘This is a monograph on the Countess, written by a Jesuit Father in the early years of the eighteenth century. He published his findings a few years afterwards. Because of his scholarship he had access to archives not generally available, and the legend is that he came upon the trial documents by chance.’

‘The trial?’ said Hilary. ‘Then she was brought to justice?’

‘It was a harsh justice,’ said Reverend Mother, thoughtfully. ‘Even for such a one, it was a very terrible punishment.’ She looked down at the book again. ‘This is culled from what researchers term primary sources. Contemporary accounts. Do you read Latin, Soeur?’

‘Not well, but sufficiently for a general understanding, I think,’ said Hilary.

‘I am very pleased to hear it. I am old-fashioned enough to regret the loss of Latin in the Mass,’ said Reverend Mother, severely. ‘However, it is not for us to question the Holy Father’s decision. Well, it is all in here. Elizabeth Bathory’s trial. The findings of the tribunal under Gyorgy Thurzo, who was the Grand Palatine of Hungary. Transcripts of interrogations made of the Countess’s serving women. Father Laszlo put together a remarkable document.’ Reverend Mother opened the vellum cover carefully. ‘This would be regarded as immensely valuable by a collector, but I have never felt especially privileged to have it in our library.’ A faint tremor passed over her usually calm features.

Hilary said, ‘Did it – this document – come with the house when the Order bought it?’ And thought with irritation that she sounded like an estate agent.

Reverend Mother said, ‘Yes. Father Laszlo’s Order owned this house for a time, and it was here that he worked and studied. But at the turn of the century the Jesuit Fathers wished to open a school. This was not really large enough, and there were no facilities for sports fields – important for boys, of course – and our own Order of St Luke acquired it. Along with the contents of the library.’

‘I see.’ Hilary stared at the book, torn between fascination and repulsion. Elizabeth’s trial. Elizabeth’s final punishment. Written down by those who had dealt with her. She looked back at Reverend Mother. ‘And – you will permit me to read this?’

‘If your Latin is adequate enough, it would be helpful to you. You have learned something of her life, and perhaps you should know how her evil was brought to its culmination. I read it myself when I was young and eager and when I planned to set down the record of this house’s history.’ One of the Gallic shrugs. ‘I grew out of such worldly notions, of course, and there was more than enough of God’s work for me. I forgot about it. But then, four years ago, Catherine Bathory asked to join our Order.’ She paused, and Hilary said, softly,

‘And then you remembered.’

‘Yes. I read Father Laszlo’s monograph again. Perhaps I hoped to find guidance as to whether Catherine should be accepted as a novice. You understand that I was very hesitant. Elizabeth Bathory’s descendant—’ A shrug. ‘Of course there was no guidance to be found in the manuscript, but I began to be aware of two things: one was that Catherine was genuinely devout, and the other was that she had a very deep belief that she had to make reparation for something. If both those assumptions were right, then she should certainly be welcomed into our House.’ She paused again and Hilary waited. ‘The likeliest explanation was that despite her extreme youth, Catherine herself had committed a crime.’ Reverend Mother frowned and then went on. ‘But during my talks with Catherine, I could not rid myself of the feeling that it was not her own sin, but that of her ancestress she wished to expiate.’

‘Elizabeth—’ said Hilary, half to herself.

‘Yes.’ The cool eyes met Hilary’s. ‘Elizabeth Bathory was a woman of immense fascination,’ said Reverend Mother. ‘Was she simply insane, or was there more to it? Great cruelty is as interesting in its way as great goodness.’

‘That sounds a little like Gnosticism,’ said Hilary cautiously.

‘That without evil one cannot appreciate good? I daresay Our Lord would not have dismissed the notion,’ said Reverend Mother. ‘I have never been sure how much Catherine knew about Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘And I hesitated for a very long time before permitting her to come to us. But in the end we did receive her.’

‘Because of Elizabeth?’ asked Hilary. ‘Or in spite of?’ Reverend Mother smiled. ‘I think it was more that I felt the coincidence of her wanting to enter this House had a meaning,’ she said.

‘Elizabeth returning,’ said Hilary, thoughtfully. ‘Through her descendant.’

‘Yes. I believed that Catherine was suffering because of Elizabeth’s wickedness. Whether she knew it or not. I thought of the very famous Exodus verse.’

She looked at Hilary and waited, and Hilary said, softly, ‘The iniquity of the fathers being visited upon the children.’

‘Exactly. Or,’ said Reverend Mother, a feminist before her time, ‘that of the mothers. I thought Catherine should be allowed to work out that suffering and that we could help her.’ She stood up and moved to the door. ‘And now do you realise it is six o’clock, Soeur? Time for our day to begin. Even violent death must not halt God’s work, and there is a Requiem Mass to prepare for our dear Sister Thérèse.’

As she opened the door, Hilary heard the Angelus bell, and Reverend Mother’s soft voice began the short, rather lovely prayer.

‘Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae . . .’

Hilary heard her own voice joining in. ‘The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she received the Holy Ghost . . .’

God’s work went on. Even in Elizabeth Bathory’s house.

Chapter Thirty-three

Armand Wagner regarded his men in the small room set aside for them by Sister Clothilde. It was a good team. Gustav, and the two young officers, Bremner and Burghen. Bremner had dived straight in, of course, and so long as he did not allow his zeal to overtake his discretion, he would be very useful. Burghen was stolid and clumsy, but he had his usefulness, and he was a good counter-balance to the mercurial Bremner.

Wagner thought for a moment, and then said, ‘This as an odd place for us to work, but we’ve had odder. We’ll ignore the scenery as much as possible and we’ll have no tasteless jokes. Burghen, are you listening to that? What’s this? The preliminary medical report, is it?’

‘It is.’ Gustav had sorted the chief’s papers into a nice tidy pile and frowned to see him rifle through them. ‘The doctor had to go off to another call but he left you his notes. There’re a few definitive points.’

‘So there are.’ Wagner donned his spectacles.

‘It’s much as we might have expected,’ he said, looking up after a moment. ‘Deceased was female, in good health, aged approximately twenty-six – we could have guessed that. Death almost certainly due to a massive arterial haemorrhaging. We could have taken a run at that, as well. I suppose the medical boys do earn their fees somewhere, do they?’ He flipped a page. ‘The lady appears to have been virgo intacta until our man got his claws on her.’

‘Rape, sir?’

Wagner looked up. It was Bremner who had asked it, of course. But there was no prurience in the boy’s face, only a wish to understand as much as possible. And it was a fair enough question. Wagner said, ‘Rape undoubtedly. Semen in the vaginal canal. And penetration after death, so they think.’

Gustav coughed primly. ‘Semen in the mouth also,’ he said. ‘If you turn to the next page—’

‘Yes, I’ve seen it. After death again, was it? Yes, of course it would be. Nasty, unnatural beast, isn’t he?’

‘There’re no fingerprints yet, sir,’ said Gustav, because you had to concentrate on routine in these cases, and ignore the chief’s flights of fancy. ‘They’ll get a blood match from the semen, of course, and they think there might be traces of his saliva— Sorry sir, did you say something?’

‘Only that you’re giving me a picture of something not entirely human slavering over its prey. Anyone here prone to nightmares? Are you, Burghen? Then you’d be better off directing traffic.’

‘Sir,’ said Bremner anxiously, ‘if Sister Hilary’s to be believed, we don’t need blood matches, or only as corroboration maybe. That’s assuming we do believe her,’ he added, mindful of his chief’s dictum to accept nothing and nobody until proven.

‘Well, it was all a touch far-fetched,’ said Wagner. ‘And she’ll have to be checked, of course. Nuns have run mad before. But I’m inclined to think she’s sound. And she apparently recognised the man as Ladislas Bathory.’

‘A clear accusation,’ said Gustav, who thought they had done well to get such a plainly defined suspect in this peculiar case.

‘Yes. I think that unless something turns up to contradict her, for the moment we’ll believe Sister Hilary.’ He frowned.

‘What about CrnPrag, sir? The place where Catherine Bathory and her brother are supposed to be imprisoned?’

Wagner said, ‘CrnPrag’s a place with a somewhat obscure reputation. There’s been some very odd stories about it – most patently exaggeration, of course, but there’s always been something a bit questionable about it. It’s been a madhouse for a good long time, and it was supposed to be very accommodating before the war. You know how it used to go: Sign a nice little certificate of lunacy for us, and we’ll make it worth your while. That’s how the rich did it, Bremner, in the Bad Old Days when divorce was beyond the pale. If you had money, you could put away your husband or your wife if they stood in your way. You could get your elderly father or your grandfather declared unfit if he was being a nuisance and you wanted to get at your inheritance. All for a percentage of grandfather’s estate, naturally. CrnPrag was always a bit suspect, but nothing was ever actually proved and so it was left alone. It’s outside our jurisdiction anyway.’

He chewed his lower lip thoughtfully and Bremner, shocked, said, ‘But all that’s illegal, sir.’

‘Of course it’s illegal. But it’s less illegal than murder, and it’s harder to prove. One doctor says that grandfather’s as sane as last Tuesday, his colleague says he’s as mad as the moon. And while grandfather’s fate is being disputed, the people who own CrnPrag make themselves a lot of money, leave aside what the lawyers get out of it.’ He frowned. ‘If Ladislas Bathory is connected with CrnPrag, we’re going to have to walk on eggshells. If we’re crossing any borders to get into CrnPrag, we’re on delicate ground anyway. Somebody had better find out where the wretched place is. It could be in Hungary or Austria or halfway to China for all I know.’

Gustav said, ‘Sir, if Sister Hilary will swear to Ladislas Bathory’s identity, haven’t we a good enough case to arrest him and hold him for forty-eight hours, never mind what country we’re in?’

‘And what about the other young lady – Catherine Bathory?’ asked Burghen. ‘That’s almost a hostage situation, sir.’

‘Yes, that’s something that can’t be left,’ said Wagner. And then, ‘Or can it? If Michael Devlin’s worked out some kind of surprise attack we don’t want to spoil it—’

He stopped, frowning, and Gustav said, ‘But sir, can we trust this Devlin?’

‘D’you know, Gustav, I’m inclined to think we can,’ said Wagner. ‘He sounds remarkably astute to me. But we’ll check on him of course – Burghen do that, will you? WPN, Reuter’s, the London address – you know the form. And Bremner, try phoning the Red Angel again. Yes, I know Devlin wasn’t there earlier on, but that doesn’t mean he’s already started for CrnPrag. If he hasn’t, I’d very much like to talk to him. Oh, and while you’re about it, find out whose toes we’d be treading on if we did go into CrnPrag, will you?’

‘Is Ladislas Bathory mad, sir?’ asked Bremner, scribbling notes at top speed.

‘If that young woman’s account is to be believed they’re all stark raving mad,’ grunted Wagner. ‘But I don’t think our man is mad.’ He eyed the men. ‘I think he’s as sane as anyone in this room.’

‘That’s not counting Burghen of course.’

Michael sat in the passenger seat of Tobias’s car and felt the mountainside rush past. It was remarkable how you could feel the different landscapes when you could not see them. Quick bursts of sound for rows of ordinary buildings, and soft feathery whisperings for trees, and then solid blocks once you reached the mountains.

The drive was turning out to be more relaxing than Michael had expected; he had not slept very much before they set off, although a hot shower and a hefty breakfast had revived him a bit, and Tobias was turning out to be intelligent and companionable. Michael thought Tobias was actually rather enjoying himself.

As they sped along the mountain road Tobias talked about the different places they were passing: old churches with interesting legends attached, or half-crumbling castles or mansions once owned by the dozens of noble houses who had lived out here.

‘But the castles and the noble families are almost all gone now,’ he said, sadly.

‘You’re a romantic, Tobias.’

‘Certainly,’ said Tobias at once.

He had brought some of Michael’s cassettes, which he said would help to pass the journey for them, and of his own accord selected Schubert’s Fifth Symphony.

The music calmed Michael, as it always did, and he leaned back against the car headrest and traced the patterns as the miles slipped by. Tobias, most of his concentration on driving, looked across at his passenger once or twice, and smiled and nodded to himself. It was a remarkable imbroglio of events that Mr Devlin and his lady were involved in, and Tobias – who had liked Michael and Hilary from the start – was very pleased indeed to lend his help in bringing the villains to justice.

But one had to remember that Mr Devlin was here for an operation which might restore his sight, and Tobias had not liked the tired pinched look on Michael’s face as they set off. He thought the music would calm them both and if Mr Devlin could snatch a brief sleep as they drove, Tobias would be very pleased.

Michael was not quite asleep, but for the moment he was able to let go of the nagging worry about Hilary and the need to plan ahead. He was listening to Schubert’s strong melodic symphony; the first movement always conjured up for him the image of a vast glittering ballroom with chandeliers and mirrors and flower-like girls with crinoline skirts and spaniel ringlets waltzing with deferential young men.

Had Hilary ever danced? He would like to dance with her some day: not ugly unplanned jerking to loud disco music, but smooth close dancing. The dancing you saw on old black and white films, when Fred Astaire fell in love with Ginger Rogers and hidden orchestras played ‘The way you look tonight’, and ‘A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.’ Irving Berlin and George Gershwin and declarations on terraces and roses and champagne. Disco dancing was loaded with unmistakable sexual signals of course, but the romance of ballrooms, and white tie and tails beat it hands down. He smiled briefly and as the slow movement began, let himself slide a little further into sleep.

They stopped a couple of times, once for an early lunch and once for Tobias to consult his maps to be sure they were on the right road.

‘Although,’ he said, as they set off again, ‘it is a road easy to travel.’

‘You know it?’

‘Everyone for miles knows CrnPrag,’ said Tobias. ‘But no one, as far as I know, has ever approached it. There are locked gates. And perhaps electronic devices to prevent people from entering.’

‘Well we’re going to approach it now,’ said Michael. ‘And if we can, we’re going to enter it. You know the plan?’ He was wide awake now and feeling very much sharper and better. They had eaten hugely of home-made soup and crisp loaves for their lunch: Tobias appeared to consider it necessary to punctuate the day with eating, and Michael was beginning to feel equal to anything.

He said, ‘We’re sticking to the truth almost exactly.’

‘It is good, that. I do not approve of lying,’ said Tobias, firmly.

‘No. Also, we don’t know how much they know about me, so I’ll have to be precisely what I am,’ said Michael. ‘A journalist gathering material for a story and also here for treatment for an eye injury. You’re driving me because of my blindness.’ He stopped. I put the injury second, he thought. And then I used the word ‘blindness’ without a qualm. How remarkable. But there was no time to consider this. ‘Your car’s broken down,’ said Michael. ‘On the road outside CrnPrag, it developed— something? What?’

‘Blocked carburettor? Snapped fan-belt?’

‘Either of those, I should think. Keep it simple. We’ll park as close to the gates as we can—’

‘With the bonnet propped open—’

‘Yes, and we’ll ask if we can use their phone to call a garage. It’s fairly corny,’ said Michael, grinning. ‘In fact it’s very corny indeed, and it’s how most horror films begin. But it’s simple and everyday, and I think it’s believable. People do break down and ask to use phones on lonely roads. If we find that they know more than we suspect about my connection with Hilary, I’ll simply admit that I’m concerned about her – Franz-Josef and his wife know that already from the call I made earlier, so that will fit.’

‘What if they won’t let us through the gates?’ asked Tobias, and Michael frowned.

‘In that case, we’ll have to wait until somebody comes along who they will let through and then sneak in behind them.’

‘But supposing nobody comes at all? I am not,’ said Tobias, ‘trying to throw bad water—’

‘Cold water.’

‘Thank you – cold water, on the plan. I am thinking of things that might go wrong, you understand. Plans for—’

‘Contingency plans. Yes, I understand,’ said Michael. ‘But I think people will be coming and going. Remember that they’ve got Catherine and Pietro in there and probably their father as well by now. I’d guess that’ll mean a good deal of activity. But we’ll have to be prepared for all eventualities. Adapt to the moment. Can you do that?’

Tobias said with dignity, ‘You forget I have kept an inn for over twenty years. Of course I can.’

Michael grinned and without warning felt a surge of exhilaration. Like going into battle. You wanted to sound trumpets and hoist flags and yell victory cries as you went. Marvellous but wholly impractical. He said, ‘Once we’re inside the place, I’m in your hands, Tobias. All you’ve got to do is hold onto me like grim death and we’ll walk into every room we come to, until we find what we want.’

‘Catherine Bathory and her brother.’

‘Yes, and any other poor sods they’ve got shut up for the wrong reasons.’ Michael felt in his jacket and brought out the small portable recorder. ‘And pray to God that this keeps running,’ he said.

Ladislas Bathory, his face sheet-white, eyed Bianca with a mixture of fear and defiance.

‘Well, Ladislas?’ said Bianca, at last. ‘It rather looks as if you’ve brought us all down, this time.’ She curled into the corner of the sofa and regarded him.

‘I had to silence the English girl – Cat’s friend. After Pál and Anna’s people let her escape from Csejthe. I had to make sure she wouldn’t talk. I followed her to the convent—’

‘But,’ said Bianca, icily, ‘unfortunately, once you got there you silenced the wrong one. And Hilary saw you.’ She paused, frowning. ‘You’re sure she did see you, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘To recognise again?’

‘Yes.’ Ladislas’s eyes flickered from side to side like a trapped animal.

‘I think we must assume that the nuns will have called the police,’ said Bianca, thinking hard, ‘I suppose you did well to get out before they caught you. But the police will go to CrnPrag now.’

‘Why? Why would they do that?’

Bianca said, very slowly as if talking to a child, ‘Because Hilary almost certainly heard more than she should have done in Csejthe. She’ll know about Cat and Pietro being in CrnPrag.’

‘We don’t know that—’

‘I think we do. In any case, we can’t take any chances,’ said Bianca. She uncurled from her catlike position and crossed one leg over the other. There was a slither of silk and despite his obvious fear, Ladislas looked down at her body. Bianca smiled slightly. So easy to manipulate, these young men. And then: yes, until you also start to fail, my dear . . . Oh God, don’t let me think about it.

She said, abruptly, ‘They may come here first, which will give us a little time. Varanno is as innocent as the morning, but there are a good many things inside CrnPrag that they can’t see.’

Ladislas said, carefully, ‘The prisoners are kept there, of course. For the rituals. As you know.’

‘Then,’ said Bianca, smoothly, ‘you had better remove them.’

‘Where—’

‘To Csejthe.’ She studied him. ‘Forgive me, my dear, I forget sometimes how very young you still are.’ She held out a hand, and Ladislas took it. ‘Listen, my child,’ said Bianca, drawing him down beside her, ‘Csejthe is our fortress. Our stronghold against the world. It always has been. Once inside Csejthe, we’re safe.’

‘We can’t be sure. The police could follow us there—Hilary could lead them there—’

Bianca smiled, and slid a hand inside his shirt, undoing buttons as she went. ‘You’re panicking,’ she said. ‘And that’s the one thing you mustn’t do. Csejthe can be very strongly bastioned when we want it to be. It’s a very old place; it keeps its secrets, and we help it to do so. If a few foolish prying policemen fall into the disused machinery of the Middle Age torturers – dear me, how sad. How unfortunate. Everyone thought those old machines were rusting anachronisms. Incapable of inflicting even a scratch.’ She slid her hand down to the zip of his trousers. Was he aroused yet? Yes. Good. ‘You understand all of this, Ladislas?’

He had watched the descent of her hand with sudden concentrating emotion. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. Then you had better start emptying CrnPrag of prisoners at once,’ said Bianca, softly. ‘Can you do that?’ Her hand slid against his naked pulsating flesh and began to stroke rhythmically.

‘The prisoners? I – yes, of course I can.’ He gasped and thrust forward against her hand.

‘Tonight?’ said Bianca.

‘Yes.’ It came out in a gasp, but then Ladislas said, ‘Yes, of course it can be done tonight. It’s the contingency plan anyway.’

‘Tell me what that is.’

‘We use the vans we normally use to take the prisoners to the castle for the rituals. The vans are kept behind the house.’

‘So they are. And the machinery?’ said Bianca, still stroking him. ‘The setting of the portcullis machinery?’

‘It hasn’t been used for a time, but I think it’s still working—’ Ladislas’s eyes were half closed and he was writhing against her hand.

‘You mustn’t “think” it works, you must be sure it does.’ She withdrew her hand and Ladislas groaned. ‘Oh God – don’t stop now—’

‘First tell me that you can clear CrnPrag of the prisoners,’ said Bianca. ‘For all our sakes it has to be done, and it has to be done efficiently, Ladislas. The prisoners taken to Csejthe.’

‘A Ritual—’ said Ladislas, his eyes darkening.

‘Yes.’ Bianca thought quickly. ‘Yes, why not? But the ordinary mental patients must be left there. That part’s important.’

‘Yes – I understand— Bianca, put your hand back—’

‘You’ll leave the ordinary mental patients where they are? As a blind to the police? It’s very important that you do that. If the police search the place they must find an ordinary asylum.’

‘Yes, I understand,’ said Ladislas. ‘The mad creatures to stay in their cells with a few guards but the designated prisoners to go to Csejthe under cover of dusk.’ He grabbed her hand and pulled it down again. ‘Bianca—’

Bianca smiled and let him put her hand back where it had been.

Chapter Thirty-four

Catherine found that sleep in the long scrubbed Ward at CrnPrag was impossible. In the bed opposite, Orsolya was sleeping, her hands curled tightly about the repulsive smeared jam-jar. Catherine shuddered, but it was not Orsolya’s presence that troubled her; she had lived with Elizabeth’s shadow for too long to feel anything other than repulsion at Orsolya’s warped version of Elizabeth’s hungers. She had tried to talk to Orsolya again, to find out where she had come from and about her immediate family, but Orsolya had simply sat rocking to and fro, crooning the eerie little song, and at last Catherine had given up.

It was not Orsolya that kept her wakeful, nor even the knowledge that she and Orsolya shared the same ancestry.

It was the knowledge that she had failed Pietro that sent all hope of sleep spinning away from her, so that she lay staring up at the ceiling, watching the insidious moonlight slide across the bare floorboards. She had come here to rescue Pietro, and she had ended in being captured herself.

I have failed.

Elizabeth had never cared enough for anyone to lie awake like this. She had certainly never felt this black, bitter desolation, although, after Ferencz died, she had pretended to be lonely in order to serve her own hungers.

With Ferencz dead there had been no one to question anything. She could come and go unchallenged; she could descend to Csejthe’s bowels whenever she wanted, and she could order new torture instruments from the poor bemused blacksmith in the village. It was remarkable and hugely satisfying that the cringing creature had been kept in thrall for so long. She enjoyed leaving her carriage at the village centre, and descending from it to enter the hot-smelling, fire-drenched forge. She enjoyed seeing the blacksmith’s fear. In the beginning he had been a muscular, ruddy-skinned man; well set-up and glowing with health. There had been some kind of wife and children in the background somewhere; Elizabeth had not paid that any attention. But the strong, healthy smith who had climbed the hill to Csejthe with the grinning iron cage had long since gone, and his skin was pallid and loose on his bones, as if they had shrunk. His eyes were never still, constantly darting from side to side as if scanning the shadows, and the hands that wielded the tongs and the hammers so surely, trembled. Illona and Dorko had told how his wife had left him – ‘No longer able to satisfy her,’ Dorko had said, leeringly – and how his children had gone with her.

None of this mattered. His strength was as good as ever, and it amused Elizabeth to design new instruments of torture for the dungeons, and half force, half coax the snivelling creature to fashion them.

If she had not begun to suspect that the blood might be failing her, the time after Ferencz’s death would have been happy.

It had not been until some time after Ferencz died that the real advantage of widowhood became apparent. Elizabeth, casting about her for new prey, for new games, was becoming aware that the blood was no longer as effective. She studied her reflection for hours at a time, seeing the tiny eroding signs, the slight sagging of facial muscles, the roughness of the long dark hair that had once been like a black silken curtain. There was a slight thickening of waist and hips, and a crêpey look to the skin of her neck.

The blood failing . . . To begin with, she had flung about the castle in a tantrum, storming at Dorko and Illona to bring her more victims, better and stronger peasant girls. Csejthe’s dungeons had rung with the screams and the agonies of the creatures, and Elizabeth had plunged again and again into the stone troughs, feeling the warm gore slop over her skin, cupping it between her hands and smearing it over her breasts and her thighs. The scarlet mantle . . . There was nothing to equal it.

But if the coarse peasant juices were no longer sufficient, then perhaps she should try smoother, more finely honed essences. The blood of patricians. Nobility.

The idea fired her body, and she set her mind to how it could be done. Could she lure the daughters of the aristocracy to Csejthe? There was considerable talk about her now, which made her laugh because, no matter how much they talked, and now matter how much they feared her, they would never dare challenge her. She was invincible. The caul incantation protected her as it always would.

‘Isten give me help . . . Grant me a long life . . .’

How could she bring to Csejthe the daughters of the nobility so that she could drain them of their silken juices?

In the end, the solution was simple. She would play on her newly widowed state and, although she would not actually use the word neglect, she would make sure that everyone remembered that her children were all married and far away, and that winters in Csejthe were long and often lonely. She would play a part, as she had so often done in the past: and this time it would be the part of the sad widow of the great count, alone in her stark castle, hungry for young life and young companionship.

Gradually and judiciously, amongst what were termed the lesser aristocracy, she let filter down the knowledge that she would welcome young, marriageable girls of good family to Csejthe. She would enjoy having them with her – they would be like daughters to her, she said, soulfully, – and in return, she would see to it that these children of two-generation barons and newly-landed gentlemen learned the manners and the customs of the highest in the land. Her people would instruct them in feminine skills such as household management: the preparing of pot-pourri and the stocking of stillrooms and sculleries and flower gardens, while she herself would tutor them in the gentler arts: embroidery, the reading and understanding of rose romances or the lyrical flower-stories of the poets; the singing of ballads and perhaps the music of the lute and virginals. There would be banquets and entertainments for their pleasure and, most importantly of all, they would meet well-connected and eligible young men. She was guileless and rather solemn as she went about this new chapter of her life and, beneath it all, the wolfsmile curved her lips as she anticipated the pretty, velvet-blooded creatures inside her castle.

The plan worked beautifully of course. It was not unheard of for girls to leave their homes and take up residence in some great lady’s household, in order to learn the ways of the aristocracy. And Elizabeth sought her prey in the homes of the newly-rich and the recently-ennobled who were flattered and slightly awed at the thought of their daughters entering a Countess’s household.

It was true that more than one gentleman lifted his brows at the idea of his daughter going into that household, and remembered the very disquieting rumours about the beautiful Countess. But the rumours were so bizarre that they scarcely bore repeating into the ears of ladies of delicacy. The suspicious fathers contented themselves with vague warnings to their wives, and quelled their own twinges of conscience by telling themselves that daughters, when all was said and done, were a woman’s concern. They turned with relief to the rearing of their sons and left the very awkward matter of Csejthe Castle to their wives.

And so the pretty, gently reared girls came happily and willingly to Csejthe, and settled into the pattern of the days prescribed for them by their mentor.

Gyorgy Thurzo, Hungary’s Grand Palatine, had not wanted to visit Csejthe again, and he certainly did not want to do so in the company of his King.

But along with a number of other Palatines, Thurzo had been bidden to a sitting of Parliament in Presbourg, and while Presbourg was not an especially arduous journey, it necessitated one or two stops on the way. When the King said, thoughtfully, ‘Csejthe Castle is on our route, I think?’

Thurzo, who had long since learned the knack of saying what people wanted to hear, spoke up, ‘Indeed it is, and a good place to break our journey, Your Majesty.’

His Majesty said, ‘I believe I should be interested to meet Ferencz Nádasdy’s widow on her own ground. You know, of course, that she has a rather unusual reputation?’ He glanced at Thurzo from the corners of his eyes, and Thurzo felt a tremor of nervous presentiment. Supposing people had been talking about Elizabeth again? Supposing that wretched pastor – what was his name? – had been hinting once more, and the hints had reached the King’s ears? Thurzo remembered that he had always thought celibate Roman clergy prone to gossiping.

But the King said, in a thoughtful voice, ‘She is not especially liked by her son-in-law, I think?’ and Thurzo’s mind worked quickly. Not the pastor after all – Ponikenus, that had been the man’s name. This time it seemed to be one of Elizabeth’s own family. Thurzo ran his mind quickly over the three daughters; he thought they were all married, the eldest shortly after her father’s death, but he could not bring to mind the names of any of their husbands. And then Matthias said, ‘You perhaps know the young man, Thurzo? Miklos Zrinyi, the husband of the eldest girl.’

‘Anna,’ said Thurzo, thankful to have at last sorted this out. ‘I know Zrinyi slightly, Sire. Not well, but I have been in company with him.’

‘It’s a well-respected family,’ said the King, frowning as if he was weighing evidence of some kind. ‘A trustworthy lineage. And Zrinyi spoke with obvious reluctance.’ Again the sideways glance. ‘But he has some odd tales to relate about his wife’s mother,’ said Matthias. ‘It sounds as if Csejthe is sometimes the scene of rather questionable activities.’

Thurzo felt a chill again, but he said, ‘Csejthe is an unusual place, Sire. If you think these – odd tales warrant your making a visit there . . .?’

‘Do you know, Thurzo, I believe they do. Zrinyi is not known for exaggeration. It might be as well to make some discreet inquiries. We should go carefully, you understand; the Lady is – who she is.’

Related to half the crowned heads in Europe, thought Thurzo crossly. Why did the King think that he, Thurzo, had been so reluctant to investigate the Lady years ago?

‘Great tact and considerable diplomacy will be necessary,’ said Matthias, which Thurzo knew meant that it would be Thurzo himself making the tactful and diplomatic inquiries, so that if the whole thing turned out to be a mare’s nest, Matthias could step fastidiously backwards from it, leaving Thurzo to cope with Elizabeth’s powerful relations.

But he said the only thing possible, ‘I should be happy to make suitable arrangements for you to visit Csejthe, Sire.’ And waited, and presently the King said, slowly, ‘Christmas at Csejthe. An interesting interlude. A good idea, Thurzo. And the Countess will surely receive us,’ he added, with the unruffled certainty of royalty who could sleep where it chose, regardless of expense or inconvenience, or even, thought Thurzo resentfully, threat to reputation.

It was not so much Zrinyi’s apparent accusations as the King’s wish to spend Christmas at Csejthe that caused the hackles on Thurzo’s neck to lift. Kings did not spend Christmas in bleak, out-of-the-way fortresses if they could help it. They made sure to be in their own palaces for the celebrations, snug and warm and surrounded by every comfort. If Matthias intended to celebrate this Christmas at Csejthe, it was certainly not for Csejthe’s comforts. The King, it seemed, was taking this matter very seriously indeed. Thurzo wondered precisely what Anna Bathory’s husband had discovered.

It was some years since Gyorgy Thurzo had listened to the anxieties of Elizabeth Bathory’s pastor. He had conscientiously initiated a few discreet inquiries at the time, but he had been unable to discover anything other than vague gossip. There were sly hints that the Lady liked the company of her own sex, as against that of gentlemen; but while this was curious, it was not unheard of and, as far as Thurzo knew, it was not a crime. But there had been nothing to substantiate Ponikenus’s veiled hints of witchcraft. Would there be anything to substantiate Miklos Zrinyi’s stories now, whatever they might be?

Thurzo was very unhappy about the entire thing, and he did not want anything stirred up that might have been better left muddy. He had remarried since that episode in Elizabeth’s bed, and there was his wife to consider. If you unearthed a scandal – any scandal – it had an unpleasant way of splashing its noisome filth on to the cloaks of the innocent. Thurzo did not want to go down as a sordid footnote in history: somebody involved in unsavoury rituals involving virgin blood-letting and ritual sacrifice. His daughter was about to give birth, and a man did not want his descendants saddled with a grandfather they were ashamed to talk about in public. It was the kind of thing that might not be lived down for several generations. But when kings ordered, you had to obey. Thurzo would obey.

In the end, it was quite a party that arrived at Csejthe two days before Christmas, because in addition to the Palatines, several magistrates had been bidden to the Parliament sitting, and no one saw any reason why Elizabeth Bathory’s hospitality should not be solicited for them all. It was the rule of travel. You expected to be housed and fed by acquaintances on your route, and in turn you housed and fed them when they travelled. It was true that the levels of the hospitality varied quite astonishingly, said several of the lesser magistrates a bit sourly, but the principle was a good one. In any case, they had to sleep somewhere, and Csejthe Castle was as good as anywhere else.

Elizabeth, advised of the advent of so many guests by a missive from the conscientious Thurzo, felt chill fingers brush her skin. It was not so unusual for people of various ranks to request a night or two’s hospitality, but it was very unusual indeed for the King to do so. Like Thurzo, she instantly suspected that there was some much deeper reason behind Matthias’s decision to spend Christmas at Csejthe.

Was Gyorgy Thurzo delving again? Or had someone been talking? She had not forgotten how Anna’s husband had eyed her with horror on the morning that one of his accursed dogs had dug up the incompletely buried corpses. Supposing Zrinyi had talked?

But no matter how it had happened or if it had happened, the King was going to be more difficult to deceive than Gyorgy Thurzo or Zrinyi. You could purchase one man’s silence by seducing him – you could probably do the same with three or four or even more, if you had to – but a king was a different proposition.

It might be that the methods she had used to silence her drooling old idiot of a husband would have to be employed again.

Chapter Thirty-five

The feeling of a slowly-swelling threat, like an abscess reaching bursting point, intensified as the time for the King’s arrival at Csejthe drew closer.

Elizabeth knew that Matthias was surrounded, as all kings were, by a large entourage, and that within that entourage would be greedy and self-serving men and women, perpetually on the look-out for scandals and juicy tidbits to carry to their master. It was therefore important that all of these unwanted guests were entertained so glitteringly and so sumptuously that they would have no time and no energy for gossip. She sent out invitations to neighbouring castles, and she gathered about her as many of her family as she could. Her daughters and their husbands must attend, together with Pál and his wife. She hesitated briefly over the inclusion of Anna and Zrinyi, and then decided it was probably safer to have Zrinyi under her eye.

Matthias and Gyorgy Thurzo would see a glittering pageantry, nicely mixed with a family Christmas. They should see the widow of the great hero Count in the bosom of her family, entertaining her children and her friends, so far above suspicion that they would feel remorse and shame at listening to the gossips.

She considered again the idea of poisoning the whole lot of them as they sat at the table; it was an alluring notion and it would get rid of the snooping nuisance Thurzo and also of Miklos Zrinyi whom she was beginning to hate intensely, but in the end she decided against it. To deal with such a large number of people – the King among them – as she had dealt with Ferencz would be impracticable and dangerous.

But what about one of the lesser drugs? The crescent smile curved her lips. She had not listened to her forest crones in vain, and she was by now extremely knowledgeable about the ways in which an unsuspecting guest’s food or wine could be spiced. There was mandragora, the sleep-juice of the poets, but there was another preparation that had far livelier effects than mandragora. A potion made from the dried bodies of the family of cantharidae beetle, which caused such a raging heat between the thighs that those fed it sought instant and fierce sexual gratification. Spanish Fly.

If she could feed her guests Spanish Fly, this unwanted Christmas revel might turn into something akin to a Bacchanalian orgy.

And after that, there would not be a one of them who would dare to denounce her.

The great fortress glistened under the December hoar-frost and, as night began to creep over the Carpathian Mountains, Elizabeth went silently and alone to her bedchamber and, behind locked doors, took out the scrap of caul with the magical incantation. She was confident of her ability to deceive Matthias and the ineffectual Thurzo who had apparently become Matthias’s tool, but a little help would not come amiss.

She sat stroking the leathery surface, rocking gently to and fro, her eyes glazed and unseeing, her lips murmuring the chant.

‘Isten give me help . . . I am in peril . . . Protect Elizabeth and grant me a long life . . . Order ninety-nine cats to bite the heart of Matthias and claw out the brains and the liver of Gyorgy Thurzo . . . Keep Elizabeth safe from harm . . .’

No one who attended the remarkable three-day revels at Csejthe Castle and celebrated the Christmas festival in company with the Countess could ever afterwards find the words to do justice to the splendour and the remarkable pageantry that unfolded throughout their stay. As the castle filled up, the sound of sleigh bells rang out on the cold, crisp afternoon, and servants moved quietly to and fro, replenishing the cressets of wood in the wall-sconces and flinging on to the huge fireplaces newly-felled tree-trunks. The mountain fortress shone and echoed with music and laughter. Gypsy orchestras played ceaselessly, and gypsy dancers and acrobats tumbled and whirled about the courtyards as the guests arrived.

The banquet on Christmas night was the most elaborate anyone had seen for a very long time. One or two of the older guests murmured to each other that the rumours about the Countess’s impecuniary state must have been erroneous or at least exaggerated, but the more cynically minded said, No, this lavishness was precisely the behaviour of a person poised on the brink of financial disaster. If you were hovering on ruin, the first thing you did was order several trunkfuls of gowns and replenish your wine cellars, said these misanthropes. Not that the wine was anything so very special; if you wanted to be discourteous, you might almost accuse Elizabeth Bathory of serving inferior or even watered-down wine.

Further along the table, neighbouring Squires and landowners who knew very well that they had been invited to swell the numbers, thought a bit guiltily that perhaps they had been ungenerous to give credence to the sinister tales whispered about Csejthe. You ought not to listen to gossip about a lady and then accept and enjoy her hospitality, said these overawed Barons righteously, holding out their wine chalices for the pretty young serving girls to refill.

The banquet consisted of ten courses, each one more magnificent than the last. There was baked swan and roast oxen and small succulent sucking boar. There were chines of beef and venison and smaller dishes with such delicacies as stuffed larks and pigeons, and quail. There were even baked carp and trout – very great luxuries at this time of year. When everyone was almost surfeited, the servants carried in immense silver platters piled high with fruit, glistening with honey and crushed sugar. Everyone ate and drank hugely, and no one ever admitted afterwards to the odd effect that the revels had on them. You did not quite like to put into words the fact that you had been seized with such a remarkable burning in your privy parts that you had scarcely been able to sit still and had perforce spent most of the night trying to quench the itch by whatever method occurred to you. It had been very fortuitous indeed that, just as the burning had reached its almost unbearable peak, the Countess’s serving girls had entered the guest bedchambers carrying hot water or a night-candle.

When the guests assembled for a huge breakfast before setting out on a wolf-hunt next morning, it was noticeable that at least three-quarters were unable to meet either the maliciously amused eyes of their hostess or the inquiring glances of their fellows.

The festivities were interminable. They were something to be got through as quickly as possible. To begin with, Elizabeth had found it fun to feed the sheep-creatures with cantharides and watch their antics, and it was knowledge to tuck away in case it could be used against the stupid bores in the future – but it had soon palled.

On the day after Christmas Day, most people had joined in the wolf-hunt; four wolves had been caught and slaughtered, which meant there would be new wolfskin rugs in more than one Romanian stronghold before the week was out. There had been dancing by candlelight to the gypsy bands that night, and the guests had set out early next morning, so that they could make the most use of the brief daylight. Elizabeth watched them go with profound relief; standing at an upper window, seeing the fur-covered sledges making thick tracks in the fresh snow. The castle was hers again, and the knowledge was as heady as wine. She had maintained a mask of normality and a semblance of gracious hospitality throughout the revels; she had headed the long banqueting table and she had watched as the guests ate and drank themselves into a frenzy. The serving girls had obeyed her orders to the letter, so that for most of those fools the Christmas banquet at Csejthe would remain an embarrassment they would want to bury.

And now she was safe. If Thurzo had indeed come to pry, he had found nothing. If Zrinyi had been talking, he would be feeling immensely foolish. The caul incantation had rendered her safe as it always would and the Spanish Fly had drawn a smeary, sexual smudge over most of the guests’ sensibilities. She was safe and she was alone and at last she could gratify the ache stirred up by the silken white skins of the ladies of Matthias’s court.

She swept through the castle, her eyes burning pits, her fingers curled into claws. Where were the pretty blood-filled girls she had gathered about her to lighten her widowhood? It was time and more that they found out the real reason for their weeks of soft living at her expense. It was time that particular debt was paid. Illona and Dorko must light the torches in the dungeons; they must bring out the braziers and the scourges and the knives. The wolfsmile that she was to bequeath to her descendants across four hundred years curved her lips.

Gyorgy Thurzo had been almost deceived by the splendour and the normality of Csejthe, but he had not been quite deceived. The beautiful Countess had moved coolly through it all, gracious and poised. She was as dazzling as Thurzo remembered, although it was a cold, soulless allure, and her eyes were those of an animal: opaque and cloudy. They were eyes that would never reflect light, even on the brightest of summer’s days. The old suspicions revived, and Thurzo knew that the King had been right to come here. There was something very wrong about Elizabeth Bathory! He watched her covertly, and saw how her glance rested on the guests as they ate and drank themselves into a stupor, and how her lips curved into a cruel smile, and he felt a chill. That speculative stare was unpleasantly like the smile of a predator watching its prey swallow bait. Thurzo enjoyed his food as much as anyone, but he found himself eating and drinking sparingly. The thought that Ferencz Nádasdy might have met an untimely death tugged at the edge of his mind.

As they rode away from the castle, Thurzo took huge lungfuls of the cold clean mountain air, and looked across at the King who was making this part of the journey on horseback. What now?

The King caught the look, and drew his mount alongside Thurzo’s. ‘It would please me if you would return to Csejthe in secrecy,’ he said in a low voice and, as Thurzo waited, Matthias said, ‘My people have ensured that a garden door was left unlatched. You will be able to enter unseen.’

Thurzo, trying to anticipate his King’s wishes, but selecting his words with care, said, ‘Then you believe that our hostess – that the stories about her may hold some truth?’

‘The Lady is tainted with something I cannot identify,’ said Matthias, softly. ‘There is certainly something going on that should be uncovered.’ He frowned. ‘But she is who she is and we dare do nothing unless there is proof. You understand me?’

He eyed Thurzo and Thurzo said slowly, ‘I am to secure the proof.’

‘Yes.’ There was a pause, and then the King said in a voice so low that Thurzo had to bend over to catch it, ‘Wait until night descends on the mountains. And take with you the pastor and a crucifix.’

It was an eerie and uncomfortable climb back up the mountain path in company with Ponikenus, and Thurzo caught himself thinking that this was an odd companion for the King to have given him. Had Matthias then believed Ponikenus’s veiled hints of witchcraft? Was that why he had said: Take with you a crucifix? Thurzo shivered and drew his fur-lined cloak more firmly around his shoulders. This was an arduous climb for a man no longer in his first youth. He felt his muscles protesting and his heart beginning to pound. It had been one thing to approach Csejthe in the middle of the afternoon, in company with the King’s party and with twenty or thirty people, most of them bearing flaring torches. They had known that inside the castle there would be warmth and company and lights. He remembered how the gypsy music had sent its sweet, lively strains across the mountainside, and how he had rather enjoyed hearing it.

But seen by night Csejthe was secretive and shrouded in a sick darkness. Thurzo saw the creeping fingers of black shadows trickle down the mountain and shuddered. The night wind was stirring the forests to the east, scenting the air with the cool, clean tang of pine, and there were rustlings all about them. Several times he caught the beating of light wings on the air. Owls? Or bats?

And then, almost before they realised it, they had rounded the curve and there, silhouetted against the wintry night sky, was the black bulk of Csejthe. Cold fear welled up in Thurzo’s heart again. Shorn of the music and light and company, this was a tainted place. It was as if something evil and warped had lived at its heart for many years, and as if the evil and the deformity had oozed outwards. A slimy snail’s trail dribbling down over the old, dark walls.

The portcullis was lowered, great iron teeth clamped firmly down, but the small side entrance was ajar, as the King had said it would be. Thurzo supposed that Matthias’s servants would not dare to be other than efficient. As they crossed the courtyard, Thurzo felt a sudden anger, because this was surely an unworthy way for a Palatine of Hungary to behave. He would have as soon entered Csejthe openly and honestly, accusing Elizabeth Bathory face to face, instead of this sneaking, back-door stealth.

Bars of moonlight lay across the great banqueting hall as they entered, and there was still the faint drift of roasting meats and mulled wine on the air from the festivities. They hesitated, unsure of where to go next, certainly unsure of how far the King’s orders would protect them from the Countess’s wrath if she caught them. Thurzo was aware of scraping, clawing sounds somewhere near by. It would only be rats, of course, which was not pleasant, but which was not anything to worry about, because every large house had rats, even his own beloved Bicsere. The absurdity of what they were doing smote him, and he drew breath to say to Ponikenus that they should call out to let the servants know of their arrival, perhaps with a story about having returned to solicit shelter for a further night. It was then that he caught, above the scuttering of the rats, a sound that halted him. Something almost rhythmic; something high-pitched and painful to the ear . . .

Thurzo frowned, not understanding, and then, between one heartbeat and the next, he did understand.

Screaming. Somewhere in the castle bowels someone was screaming.

Descending to Csejthe’s dungeons was like descending to hell. Both men could feel the lingering agonies and the despair: layers of it, thought Thurzo. Layer upon layer of torment and hopelessness, all arranged one atop the other. He caught a movement from his companion and understood that Ponikenus had taken a firmer grasp on the crucifix that hung about his neck. For the first time the Protestant Thurzo was conscious of envy. How must it be to have a faith that you trusted so much, you reached out for it without conscious thought?

The stone steps made no sound as they trod down and round; they were worn away at the centre, indicating many years of use. A flickering light seeped upwards.

All old houses showed signs of age, such as the worn-away steps, and a great many people left lights burning in all kinds of unexpected places. There was nothing sinister about it.

There was everything sinister about it. As they drew nearer to the foot of the steps, both Thurzo and Ponikenus heard the screams again, much louder, and then the sound of peal upon peal of laughter.

‘Bring out the brazier!’ shrieked the voice. ‘Bring out the brazier and fetch the knives! And see to it that they are sharp!’

The wall-sconces flickered wildly as the two men moved forward, and as they reached the foot of the stair, there before them was a scene so grisly that, for a single moment, their two disparate beliefs merged, and they shared a thought: we have descended into hell’s deepest cavern.

Firelight and torchlight washed the old stone walls with a crimson glow, and the scent of burning wood or charcoal assaulted their nostrils.

There were three people in the dungeons – and they are like no dungeon I ever saw! thought the bemused Thurzo. There were no stone passages, no barred cells for individual prisoners; the dungeons of Csejthe Castle were one huge, echoing stone vault, scooped out of the mountain, extending for what looked to the two men like miles.

At the centre stood an iron brazier, perhaps three feet high, packed with burning charcoal, so hot that its sides glowed with heat and it cast its own shimmering crimson shadow. It gave out a scent of hot metal and smouldering cinders.

Directly beneath one of the iron wall-sconces, an immense stone trough was partly sunk into the floor. Jutting shelves of rock held huge earthenware jugs, each one darkened and stained, several with thick, viscous fluid dripping from the lips. Pipes led away from the trough at each corner – drains, thought the horrified Thurzo.

Culverts to drain away whatever fluids collect in the trough.

Whatever fluids . . .

Elizabeth Bathory stood naked in the stone bath, her unbound hair tumbling over her shoulders, her white skin smeared and clotted with blood. One of the ugly old serving women that Thurzo dimly remembered seeing about the castle stood in the shadows, but the other, the younger one, was standing on a ledge over the trough, holding aloft a large earthenware jug. As Thurzo and Ponikenus stopped at the foot of the steps, momentarily unnoticed, she tipped it up.

At once a stream of red gore cascaded over the naked body of the Countess. She gave a low shuddering cry, which brought a look of incomprehending repulsion to the face of the pastor, but which Thurzo, no celibate, recognised at once as the cry of a female animal reaching sexual climax.

Elizabeth held both hands above her head, reaching up to catch the blood and, as it trickled between her fingers, she lowered her hands and smeared the blood into her skin, sliding her hands between her thighs, throwing her head back and giving vent to low, sensuous cries. Her eyes were half closed, only the thinnest line of white showing and, moving with the same slow languor, she brought her smeary fingers up to her lips and licked the blood from them with the rapaciousness of a feeding she-wolf.

Terrible, thought Thurzo, caught in the grip of appalled fascination. Terrible and evil and mad. And then: but beautiful. He felt a treacherous, never-to-be-acknowledged stirring between his thighs and confused memories of the night spent in her bed tumbled through his mind. He thought: that is exactly how she used her tongue on me! Licking, probing . . . He could feel again the swing of the black silken hair against his belly as she had bent over to take his swollen manhood in her mouth.

He stared at the naked skin, his senses racing. She was not young – she had been born old, this one – and although he did not know her exact age, he knew that her four children were grown up and married, and he knew that she had not been so very young when they were born.

But she is as lovely, as smooth and unmarked as any sixteen-year-old.

Elizabeth stepped from the trough and moved across to the charcoal brazier, gesturing impatiently, and at once the serving woman set down the jug and scuttled across the floor to join her companion.

‘Bring the knives! Bring the skillet!’ And then, with such greedy relish that Thurzo and Ponikenus, unseen in the shadows, felt their flesh crawl, she cried, ‘Let the last one taste her own fear!’

The two women were lifting something out of the shadows, and they were cackling with eldritch glee as they did so. There was the sound of something lumpish, something that might have been a heavy sack being dragged across the floor.

They propped their burden upright, and Thurzo, his sight adjusting at last and his senses steadying, at first took it to be a carcass of raw meat. Wild notions of biblical sacrifice flooded his mind: the burnt offering of Abraham offering up Isaac, and God taking the slaughtered lamb instead . . . The Jews and the Israelites with the meat-offerings, sprinkling the blood of the oxen on Mount Sinai . . . Was this, after all, nothing more than a warped religious ritual? Was Elizabeth Bathory simply serving God in the old ways of blood libation?

It was at this point in his thinking that the raw carcass moved, and stretched out a pleading hand. The lips opened in the bloodied, flayed face, and the thing that Thurzo had taken for a butchered animal, cried out in a human voice for mercy.

Chapter Thirty-six

Of the two men, it was the man of God who moved first. Thurzo was still struggling with acceptance, but Ponikenus, who had lived alongside the knowledge of the Bloody Countess’s ways for more years than he dared admit, accepted at once, and was across the expanse of floor and standing at the centre of the grim, echoing cavern.

At once the serving women dropped the poor wretched thing they had been holding, and Thurzo saw it crawl a few feet, scrabbling pitifully at the stone flags. Blood dripped from dozens of wounds, thick slow dark blood that did not spurt or fountain, but simply welled silently to the surface and dripped on to the ground. The lips moved again, and a voice stripped raw by agony cried for pity.

‘Kill me . . .’

Too savagely wounded to live, thought Thurzo. Too tortured and too mutilated to want to . . . His mind spun with terrible visions of clubbing the pitiful creature swiftly into merciful oblivion. Did God forgive that kind of merciful murder? What place had God in this nightmare anyway?

Elizabeth had whipped round at the sound of Ponikenus’s footsteps; she was regarding the pastor from a half-crouching stance, a cat tensed to spring. Her white limbs were wet and glistening with blood and her eyes were blazing with anger and hatred. As Ponikenus approached, the crucifix held out before him, she stretched out her hands in a travesty of a lover’s beckoning. Thurzo had no memory of following the pastor, but he was standing at Ponikenus’s side, shoulder to shoulder with the man, fixing the Countess with a cold stare.

‘Madame, I had hoped to find you innocent of the accusations made against you, but I see that you are steeped in guilt and evil.’ He paused. ‘By virtue of the power invested in me, I must ask you to accompany me now and later to a place of judgement.’ The words were well-tried and ought to have lent him strength and purpose, but his voice sounded hollow.

Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment, and then a slow smile curved her lips. ‘Foolish little creatures,’ she said. ‘I have had men like you for breakfast, Gyorgy Thurzo.’

‘God’s law—’ began Ponikenus.

‘And I have eaten pastors like you for supper,’ she said, the smile becoming contemptuous. ‘Was it you who talked, Pastor?’ She leaned closer so that Thurzo caught the stench of stale blood and felt a twist of nausea. ‘Your God is no match for me,’ said Elizabeth. ‘If you truly intend to pitch a battle between us, you will very soon see which of our gods is the strongest.’

‘You blaspheme,’ said Ponikenus very quietly. ‘Will you not acknowledge Our Lord, Jesus Christ, who died for you?’

‘Christ was a peasant carpenter with ideas above his birth,’ said Elizabeth at once. ‘The gods I serve have higher appetites.’ She beckoned imperiously to the two serving women who were cowering in a corner. ‘Show them,’ she said, and then, as the frightened women hesitated, ‘Show the fools what we do with those we catch!’

Illona and Dorko glanced fearfully at the two intruders, but Thurzo thought they were far more afraid of their terrible mistress. They leapt to obey her, going to the shadowy corners of the dungeon and dragging forward more of the slaughtered, drained bodies. A sick dizziness blurred Thurzo’s vision, and for a moment he was aware of nothing other than the heavy dragging sounds, and the scent of the smouldering brazier, and the laboured breathing of the two women as they dragged forward the other victims.

Because of course there were more of them; the poor wretched thing they had taken for a carcass of raw meat was not the only one.

Six or eight, thought Thurzo, his mind spinning. Six or eight milked bodies, life still just flickering in them. Was it? Yes, thin rivulets of blood still ran from beneath them, trickling across the flagstones and into the culverts at the sides of the dungeon.

Elizabeth studied them detachedly, and Thurzo could almost have believed she had forgotten his and Ponikenus’s presence. ‘Pretty little creatures,’ she said, and her voice took on a crooning, affectionate note. ‘They had sweet voices before their throats burst with screaming.’ The mad eyes swivelled to regard Thurzo. ‘We silenced most of them,’ she said. ‘I cannot bear to hear them scream, you see. Dorko and Illona know I cannot bear to hear them scream.’ She looked at the two men unblinkingly and Thurzo felt ice trace its way down his spine. Dear God, she is without the least shred of sanity.

‘But this one,’ said Elizabeth, reaching down to stroke the still-struggling creature at her feet, ‘this one we have left free.’

Before either of the men knew what she intended to do, she snatched the thin-bladed knife from the nearest serving woman, and brought it down on the bloodied lump of humanity at her feet. Thurzo felt the moan before he heard it, and a red mist obscured his vision. When he could see again, Elizabeth had stepped back and was holding aloft a torn, bleeding lump of flesh. She bounded to the brazier, and flung it on to the metal pan.

At once there was a sizzling spitting, and the unmistakable scent of roasting meat filled the dungeon. Thurzo’s stomach rose and he felt his mouth fill with bile. She is cooking her! Dear God, the evil monster is cooking her victim’s flesh!

He bent over, retching violently, and there was the shameful sound of his own vomit spattering wetly on the floor. When at last he straightened up, wiping his mouth with his hand, he saw Elizabeth regarding him with amusement through the greasy smoke spiralling from the brazier.

The nausea vanished at once, and hot fury replaced it. Thurzo moved forward, knocking the knife and the pan from the Countess’s hand, hearing it fall with a sharp clatter to the floor.

‘Do what you can for the wounded ones,’ he said tersely to Ponikenus. ‘The King’s people will be waiting on the mountainside.’

‘Yes. Very well.’

‘But you, Madame,’ said Thurzo, turning back to Elizabeth and regarding her coldly, ‘you will come with me.’

‘Yes? What do you intend to do with me?’

‘That,’ said Thurzo, ‘is in God’s hands – or the devil’s.’ He glanced at the serving women. ‘A wrap – a robe for your mistress?’

The pastor was bending over the huddled figure of the first girl, and Elizabeth watched him. Thurzo thought: she is not the smallest bit afraid. And with a sudden fear: it is as if she knows herself protected, he thought, and with the thought, there was an oily coalescing of the shadows. For a brief instant, it was as if something else was in the dungeon with them. Something that went cloaked in a mantle of darkness, and that prowled the forests on cloven hoofs, not on all fours but upright, like men . . . Thurzo shook his head impatiently and the image vanished. He looked back at the slender figure of the Countess, wrapped now in a crimson velvet robe, the shivering serving women at her side.

‘You are ready to accompany me?’ he said, with icy courtesy.

‘Certainly. And my servants?’ She indicated the two women.

‘They will come with us to be questioned.’ Thurzo saw the sly flicker of the women’s eyes, and understood that they knew a very great deal about their mistress and that they were afraid. He said, ‘As for you, Madame, I shall lock you in your own bedchamber until His Majesty’s men arrive to place you under armed guard.’

Elizabeth smiled, ‘As you will,’ she said. ‘But when all is done, Gyorgy Thurzo, you will be more surprised than I at what is ahead.’

Thurzo could not be fought physically, that was plain. He was no longer young – he had been born elderly, that one – and he was flabby and jowly. But in a struggle he would easily overpower her. And there was the weasel, Ponikenus. The sly, snooping worshipper of the pallid Christ-god, who was still bending over the milked bodies of the two girls who had given such good yield, as if he thought he could bring them back to life, as his posturing Jesus-god had pretended to do. In another few minutes, the pretty birds would have crossed death’s threshhold and there would have been the last embrace, the sensation of the lungs emptying . . . What the physicians and the apothecaries called the tidal breath. Marvellous and sensuous and fulfilling beyond all words. Elizabeth’s fingers crooked into claws and scarlet anger pounded through her head at the thought of Ponikenus. A weasel, a jackel. All of those years he had lived at her expense, preaching his puling sermons to the villagers, taking her benefices. And all the time he had been sneaking about prying and spying, red-faced with righteous disapproval. There would be a reckoning for this treachery.

She allowed Thurzo to conduct her to her bedchamber and lock the door. Once alone, she flew to the secret drawer where the caul lay, her hands going with sureness to the corner. Only let her get the caul into her grasp, let her murmur the incantation and feel the worn-smooth surface beneath her hands, and she would know herself safe. She would know herself in the keeping of the forest gods, the deities who walked the night with cloven hoofs and three-cornered faces . . . Meilliki of the forest and the devil, Ordog, waited on by witches . . . Delibab the noon-fairy, and the weird sisters who came on the winds from the Tunders, combing their eldritch hair and keening into the storm . . . And Isten himself, who ruled the trees and the earth and the birds . . . ‘Isten protect Elizabeth . . . Keep me from harm . . .’

Isten would vent his wrath on the miserable weasel pastor and the flabby Palatine outside her door. Isten would send a hundred cats to bite out their hearts, and a thousand claw-footed demons to tear out their brains. Her breathing slowed and the red mist cleared from her vision as she felt for the caul, the bloodied fragment that had once veiled the soft unformed skull and the wizened blind face of a murdered baby.

The caul had gone. She jerked the drawer out frenziedly, and tipped it up, scattering lavender sachets and haresfoot brushes and unguents. There was no mistaking it. The caul had vanished.

Elizabeth flung open garderobes and presses and chests, her mind awash with panic, tumbling gowns and cloaks and jewels over the bed and on to the floor.

Nothing. Her touchstone magic, the gruesome scrap that had provided her with an armour against a stupid world with stupid laws, had gone. A terrible cry rent the air as Elizabeth sank on to the floor, her arms wound about her body, moaning and rocking to and fro in anguish.

The caul had vanished and without it she was at the mercy of Thurzo and the King.

Hilary had waited until later in the morning before looking properly at the remarkable document Reverend Mother had given her in the library.

Elizabeth Bathory’s trial. The record of the investigation into the strange evil creature who had lived in this house and who had walked through the dark old castle in the mountains. The ancestress of the corpse-creatures.

Eternal life and undying beauty. Hilary did not believe it, and yet there the thing had been.

The convent was still in turmoil from Ladislas Bathory’s attack: it was very nearly possible to actually see the great jagged tear that the violence had made in the ordered life. Like a wound on the air.

Sister Thérèse’s body had been taken to the police mortuary, which the nuns had found the most shocking thing yet. Reverend Mother had told them after breakfast and there had been a quickly stifled gasp. Sister Clothilde had said, ‘But Reverend Mother, we have to prepare our sister for the requiem Mass and burial.’ She had not quite said: We cannot let her be pawed by policemen, but Hilary had felt her thinking it and she had felt them all thinking it. Death was something to be regarded without sadness or bitterness in here, of course: the soul had gone on its joyful journey to God, and the devout Sister Thérèse would surely not have to stop off to pay many debts in purgatory en route. Hilary wished she could be as sure of her own reservation in heaven. But Thérèse’s death had been something so far outside the nuns’ experience that they were having difficulty in accepting it; they would have found comfort in the tried and trusted routine of death: washing the body and dressing it for burial; making a vigil on the night before the requiem Mass, and then celebrating the Mass itself. All the time concentrating their thoughts and their love about their departed sister. Hilary thought that some of them might even have prayed for Thérèse’s killer, whom they would see as a sinner who must be reclaimed. Yes, there would undoubtedly be a few prayers for Ladislas. How good they all are, thought Hilary, looking round the refectory at the nuns, some of whom she had come to know quite well, others with whom she had only exchanged good-mornings or goodnights. How good and how innocent and how trusting they all were. They would see her feelings for Michael as very clear-cut indeed: avoid him completely, they would have said. Cut him out of your life, avoid all occasion for sin and pray for strength. The trouble was it was not that clear. It was not God versus Michael; it never had been. The problem had begun eight years ago when Hilary had entered St Luke’s for all the wrong reasons.

It was a relief to be able to concentrate on something else. Hilary’s mind had been on a treadmill since Ladislas Bathory’s attack: Michael storming CrnPrag, Ladislas himself climbing through the trapdoor, Catherine inside CrnPrag. And then back to Michael. All roads led there.

She frowned and went quietly to the library and stood for a moment at the latticed windows, looking out. Most of the houses in Vienna’s Old Quarter had been preserved in their original states, and Hilary thought that the Blutgasse would not have changed so very much since Elizabeth Bathory’s time. It was a rather eerie thought, and she turned determinedly to the electric switches. Warm amber swathes of light bathed the room which was dark, even in the middle of the morning.

Hilary sat down and considered the task ahead of her. Reverend Mother had thought it would help her to know more of Elizabeth, which had seemed a bit odd at the time. But Hilary trusted Reverend Mother and she would do her best to read the ancient book. It was not so very thick: what the Victorians would have called a novella. Perhaps the thickness and length of a doctorate thesis.

The Jesuit Father had apparently been quite learned, which meant that the text might be difficult to translate. Hilary’s Latin was not good: the nuns in her own convent school had taught it fairly well but there had been a strong emphasis on Latin as a religious tongue rather than as a means to decipher historical documents. Hilary could recite with accuracy upwards of twenty prayers in perfect Latin, along with the entire Mass without thinking very much about any of it, but she had long since forgotten the mechanics of the language. She would be hard put to it to decline a verb, and it was going to be uphill work to translate Father Turoczi’s monograph. She scanned the shelves for help and was rewarded with a small, somewhat foxed Latin grammar, clearly dating back at least fifty years, but perfectly readable. This would be an enormous assistance; the age did not matter because, whatever else Latin did, it most certainly did not date. Was there a vocabulary at the back? Yes, praise the saints.

Father Turoczi’s manuscript was foxed as well, and there was the damp, musty smell of extreme age about it, which Hilary rather liked. All scents were evocative, of course, but it was curious how widely different were the scents of very new books and very old ones. This one smelt of old houses and dead centuries and forgotten ways of life. It was a pity you could not open up the long-ago centuries along with the books.

She set the grammar on the table where it would be close to her hand, and turned back the first page of Turoczi’s book. It had been properly printed and rather nicely bound in what Hilary thought was thin calf – probably originally rich green or brown, but faded by the decades to an indeterminate grey. It was important to be extremely careful with turning the pages, which were brittle with age and already cracking at the edges. She took up a thin embossed paper-knife and tried sliding it under each page as she went. Even with immense care there was a shower of tiny dry snowflakes as each page was touched. The whole thing ought to be under glass in a museum somewhere.

Turoczi set his scene with unexpectedly vivid imagery, describing the trial of Elizabeth Bathory – Countess Nádasdy, he called her – which had taken place in the castle of the Grand Palatine of Hungary, Gyorgy Thurzo, at a place called Bicse.

There had been twenty judges and the witnesses had almost all been Elizabeth’s own household. Twenty judges seemed so many that Hilary reread this and checked the dictionary to be sure she had got it right. But twenty there had been, under the auspice of the Judge of the Royal Supreme Court, Theodosius Syrmiensis de Szulo. A mental image of today’s High Court judges rose before her eyes. Even today they were robed in scarlet and wigged in white, and if the present casual world adhered so faithfully to tradition, how must those twenty judges have looked in the violent, vivid seventeenth century? Sixteen hundred and something, had this been? It was suddenly important to know every detail, and Hilary turned back to the start of Turoczi’s work. The trial had been in January 1611. The depths of winter in the Carpathian Mountains. She remembered the bleak loneliness of Csejthe and shivered.

Elizabeth had not been taken to Bicse; she had been arrested and placed under guard in Csejthe. So she had not been present at her own trial? This again seemed so remarkable that Hilary read it three times and resorted to the Latin grammar again. But there was no mistake. Why had Elizabeth not been present? Because they had feared her and forbidden it? Or because she had simply disdained to attend? Hilary thought this was entirely likely. It was remarkable how Elizabeth came across the centuries, so that you could almost see her and feel her arrogance. Let the peasants get on with it, she might have said, and however much she had cared about the trial’s outcome, she would not have shown it. Hilary turned another page and read on, referring to the vocabulary at intervals, struggling with the Latin syntax which was so different from English and French, but managing to get the sense of it.

The Countess’s servants had been questioned by this dazzling array of justice. The two women who had served her and were reputed to have assisted in her gruesome rituals, Dorko and Illona, appeared to have played star parts in the trial. Hilary had the sense of them enjoying the brief notoriety, as if neither of them had entirely grasped the severity of what was happening. Hadn’t they understood the danger they stood in? It sounded as if they had not. Hilary read on, finding it easier as she went, feeling the dark, bloody days of Elizabeth Bathory fold about her. Yes, these two women had admitted to everything, openly and frankly. They had been almost exultant and very nearly smug.

The scrupulous Turoczi had transcribed the actual questions asked of Illona and Dorko, which Hilary thought were not so far from questions that would be put to suspected accomplices in a murder trial today.

How long were you in the Countess’s service?

How many women did you kill? Where did they come from?

How were they killed and what tortures were used on them?

What did you do with the bodies?

She could almost see the crowded room; the solemn-faced judges and the avid faces of the watchers. It had been January, and it would have been bitterly cold, so that there would have been roaring fires and hundreds of candles to illuminate the dark, short days. There would have been a stench of stale sweat in the room.

Dorko and Illona both told how their mistress had developed a liking for young girls early in her life – unusual but not unheard of, said Illona. Hilary thought she had probably eyed the judges with irritating knowing.

And yes, the mistress had discovered that the spilling of warm, fresh young blood kept her skin white and her beauty alive. She had been quite young when this had happened, said Illona, who seemed to be more intelligent and more articulate than Dorko.

‘And so she killed for the blood?’

‘Everywhere the Mistress went, she set up torture chambers. There would be beatings until the girls bled from dozens of different wounds.’

‘She beat them to death?’

‘Some.’

‘What else?’

‘I don’t remember it all. Sometimes she bit them. If she was unwell and forced to lie on her bed, Dorko and I took the girls to stand at her bedside. She liked to bite them until they bled.’

Hilary felt the chill brush her skin. The biting. There it was, the Dracula kiss. If this account ended with Elizabeth Bathory being sentenced to have a stake hammered into her heart and her mouth stuffed with garlic, she would strongly suspect a huge, elaborate joke. She frowned and read on, achingly aware of a wish that Michael could be reading this with her.

Illona was being questioned about the forms of torture that her mistress had used, and Hilary could feel the gloating of the woman. She began to dislike her very strongly.

Illona told how at times her mistress had ordered flat-irons to be brought down to the dungeons and heated to sizzling point so that she could iron the soles of the girls’ feet.

‘Why would that be?’

‘To give them red shoes. So that they could not run away.’

Turoczi did not embellish his work with things like; ‘The witness paused and looked gloatingly around the courtroom’, or, ‘The listeners gasped’, but Hilary could fill in the gaps. She could almost see the crafty-eyed Illona standing boastfully before the judges, glorifying in the brief notoriety, but so stupid that she did not see that she was talking herself into her own execution.

‘How long did the Countess do all this?’

‘Many years.’

‘During the Count’s life?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘But – he did not know?’ Would there have been a note of pleading in that question? Hilary had already received the strong impression of Elizabeth’s husband as a hero-figure; a soldier who had beaten back the Turks. Nobody wanted to see a hero-warrior reduced to a sordid woman-torturer.

Illona said, ‘The Master knew. But he was afraid of my mistress. Everyone was afraid of her.’ Yes, there would certainly have been a note of vicarious pride there.

‘The Count did nothing to stop his lady from committing her crimes?’

‘No.’

Hilary could almost hear the shocked gasp of the judges. The courtroom must have echoed with the sound of toppling pedestals and clay feet cracking.

Dorko, who had been the longest with Elizabeth, was questioned as thoroughly. She sounded bitter, but she confirmed Illona’s testimony, and told how, later on, other girls had been burned with tongs heated on a brazier.

‘The Mistress liked to see the pain. But not the screams. If they screamed, she made us nail their lips together. She did not like to hear them screaming, you see.’

Turoczi had certainly not written in anything about a horrified silence at this point, but Hilary thought you could take it as read.

The judges asked, ‘What happened to the bodies of these unfortunate creatures after they were dead?’

The sullenness in Dorko’s answer was impossible to miss. She told how she had always been charged with disposing of the drained bodies, and Hilary could hear her voice taking on the whining monotone of all discontents. ‘I was put upon. I did all kinds of things and never so much a word of thanks. If things went wrong, I was punished even though it wasn’t my fault. And no matter the difficulties, the bodies had to be got rid of.’

‘How?’

‘In the moat at Csejthe, beneath the crypt of the church . . .’ Hilary could feel the shrug. ‘Wherever I could. I became quite skilled.’ Surely a note of pride there.

‘Christian burial?’ asked the judges, and Dorko said eagerly that in the beginning certainly it had been Christian burial. The Lady had wished for it.

‘But later?’

‘It became harder. The snooping pastor started to ask questions. In the end we said what prayers we thought appropriate.’

‘“We”?’

‘Illona and me. When she helped.’ The contempt was plain.

‘What other things were done to the prisoners?’

‘The Lady sometimes tore flesh from their breasts. And sometimes Illona helped her to bum them between their legs.’ Illona did that, not I, said the words, self-righteously.

Turoczi had probably edited that part. Dorko would have been a lot more explicit and a whole lot earthier.

Again the question was put: ‘How many girls were killed?’

The answer was as before.

‘We did not count. But at least three hundred.’

The judges had not taken very long to deliberate on the evidence. Turoczi, precise as ever, had set the events down chronologically, and it appeared that the sentence against the two women servants had been pronounced almost immediately:

‘Whereas the confessions and testimonies have demonstrated the guilt of Elizabeth Bathory, it is known she has committed frightful crimes against female blood . . . Whereas her accomplices were the women known as Illona and Dorko and we have decided that their fingers shall be ripped off by the executioner’s pincers, because they have by means of these fingers committed crimes against the female sex; they shall further be thrown alive into the fire.’

‘This sentence shall be carried out immediately, in the courtyard outside this palace.’

Hilary, reading the words of the sentence, occasionally having recourse to the dictionary and the grammar book, felt her skin crawl. It was unclear whether the words were Turoczi’s own, or whether he was reporting the judges’ words verbatim, but either way it made chill reading.

Their fingers torn off and then burned alive . . . It was necessary to remember that they had knowingly and willingly aided in all that butchery and in all that torture. It was certainly no worse than either of them deserved.

But what had been the sentence on Elizabeth?

Gyorgy Thurzo had deliberated long into the night with his fellow judges, and a chill dawn was breaking as they filed back into the courtroom. Below the window were the sounds of hammering as the haiduks erected the scaffold for the execution of the two serving women. The sentence would be carried out at noon: Dorko and Illona, along with a handful of others who had been discovered to have assisted Elizabeth in her butchery, would die in the flames.

A bad death. But a deserved punishment.

And what of Elizabeth?

Thurzo’s mind was concentrated on Elizabeth all through the terrible hour when Dorko and Illona were taken out to the courtyard to die. They were stupid women and they deserved every ounce of the agony ahead of them, but even so Thurzo felt his bowels slither ominously as he stood with his fellow judges to watch the execution.

The executioner was robed in scarlet and wearing a cowl, and his assistants had already stacked up the faggots, ready for firing. The tearing off of the women’s fingers was to be done by white-hot pincers – an ironic touch when you remembered some of the tortures these creatures had helped to carry out.

As the Judge Royal read out the act of accusation and condemnation, there was a dull murmuring from beyond the palace gates, and Thurzo saw that hundreds of people were gathering outside to watch. Ordinary people, peasants, who must have travelled miles to witness the end of a reign of terror.

Only she still lives, said his mind. Elizabeth still lives.

With the thought, he heard the crowd chanting: ‘The Beast, kill the Beast . . .’

So she would go down in history as the Beast of Csejthe, thought Thurzo. The Beast of Csejthe who murdered between three and six hundred virgins for their blood . . .

Long before the reading of the condemnation was over, the two women were swooning, so that the guards had to drag them to the centre. Their hands were held firmly in place, chained to a small wooden block, and the executioner lifted the glowing tongs.

Thurzo thought the worst part was the sound and the smell: the sizzle of scorched flesh and then the stench of charred skin and fat. He was near enough to hear the other sounds, as well: the tearing of joints, the crunching of bones. One by one, the fingers were torn from their roots, leaving bloodied stumps that poured blood on to the ground. He should have ordered sawdust to be spread. You never got rid of bloodstains. Several of the judges were pressing linen kerchiefs to their lips and others were swaying, but the crowd at the gates were shouting in triumph. The two women were screaming, terrible trapped-hare screams, and the crowd screamed in joyful ecstasy against them.

‘Kill the monsters . . . Burn them, burn them . . .’

The executioner and his assistant left the thumbs until last. They’ll be the hardest to tear off, thought Thurzo, sickened and appalled, but unable to look away. As the pincers gripped what was left of Dorko’s hand again, Thurzo felt the agony at the base of his own thumbs.

The executioner paused and seemed to consult with his two young assistants. After a few moments, he reached for a glinting knife and, as the crowd pressed eagerly forward, he raised it above his head and then brought it down sharply, half severing the victims’ thumbs. As he reached once more for the tongs, both women swooned from agony and terror.

‘Prop them up.’ Thurzo did not know who had given the order, but the women were set upright, guards on each side of them. The crowd was shrieking again, ‘Burn them, burn them, burn them . . .’

Dorko and Illona were half carried, half dragged to the jutting stakes and tied to them with iron gyves at wrists and ankles. They are high up, thought Thurzo, staring. Then there will be none of the merciful strangling under cover of the smoke. They will bear the whole brunt.

The executioner’s assistants stepped forward and held burning torches to the piles of faggots, and at once the flames leapt into the raw wintry afternoon: garish red and yellow. A thin pall of smoke drifted across the courtyard and Thurzo shuddered. What must it be like to smell your own funeral pyre?

The fires were burning up now, and the whole square was filled with the hot pungent scents of an ordinary winter’s bonfire. As the wind drifted across they caught and roared upwards, engulfing the two struggling prisoners; there was a truly dreadful sound as the women’s hair caught light and blazed wildly. From his position, Thurzo could see that their skins had turned shiny and red, and then began to split with the heat. Rivulets of fat ran out and the smell of burning meat was so obscenely reminiscent of roasting pork that he actually felt hunger-juices flood his mouth.

The wind scudded across the courtyard again, flurries of snowflakes in it now, whipping the smoke into a huge, greasy cloud. For several minutes it was no longer easy to see what was happening and Thurzo murmured a prayer of thanks, but then the smoke billowed upwards and Thurzo saw, with dreadful clarity, the blackened, shrivelled things on the stakes, the flesh charred and smoking, but still moving. Still struggling to escape.

As the wind changed again, the smoke belched into the faces of the judges, the rank, meaty stench so strong that Thurzo’s innards betrayed him then, and he ran from the scene.

The death of the two evil old women solved nothing. It certainly did not solve the problem of what they were to do with Elizabeth.

It was useless to argue that her high rank absolved her from the law; Thurzo had been genuinely appalled at the bloody pageantry unfolded at the tribunal, and he was absolutely determined that the Lady should answer for her butchery. The evidence had been inconclusive insofar as actual numbers were concerned: the judges had murmured to one another that probably the servants were near enough illiterate, and so the clerk to the court had tried to make a rough calculation. But the evidence, overwhelming as it was, had been so contradictory, that they had been unable to agree the point.

At last, de Szulo said, ‘What do numbers matter? It’s clear that she killed at least three hundred of the poor miserable creatures by various appalling methods.’

What in God’s name were they going to do with her? What sentence could they pronounce that would punish her and satisfy the murmuring crowds but would not bring down the ire of her family.

As Hilary turned the last pages of Turoczi’s remarkable document, the only sound in the convent library was the steady ticking of the clock. All about her, the house slept, and the traffic in the city outside had died to the occasional purr of a solitary car or a lorry rumbling its way through the night. Pools of yellow light lay across the great leather-topped table, and the old library was scented with long-ago lavender and beeswax and the lilac that must once have bloomed in Elizabeth Bathory’s gardens outside.

It is an autumn night and yet I can smell the lilac and feel the sharp tang of the lavender . . .

And beneath it all I can smell the blood that she spilled.

At any minute, thought Hilary, her senses racing, I shall know what happened to her. In another minute I shall turn a page and there it will be.

There was a mounting sense of dread now; only a few pages left. In five pages I shall know what they did to her, thought Hilary and discovered that she was shaking with sheer nervous anticipation. It had all happened over four hundred years ago, but she was shaking as she waited to hear the verdict. Four pages, three . . .

The judges’ indecision and their reluctance to pass any kind of death sentence – in particular Gyorgy Thurzo’s reluctance – came over very strongly. They had hated her and they feared her and her crimes had genuinely horrified them. But they had also feared the wrath of her powerful family.

Turoczi had said, in a brief introductory note, that at the end of his work were listed the appeals made by Elizabeth’s family for mercy to be shown. These would be interesting, but they could be studied later. What mattered now was Elizabeth’s fate.

And then, without warning, it was there. Hilary felt the breath catch in her throat.

‘Elizabeth Bathory, by the power vested in us from His Highness, Matthias of Hungary, I condemn you to perpetual imprisonment in your own Castle of Csejthe.

‘You will be immured inside Csejthe for ever; a room will be made for you and the door and the windows of that room will be bricked up. Food and water will be passed through a small hatch.

‘Four scaffolds will be erected at the four corners of the castle to show that inside lives a creature condemned to death.

‘That death will never be dealt by us, Madame.’

Hilary laid down the book carefully.

Walled up alive. Never to see a human face again, never to hear a human voice. Darkness and silence for the rest of your life. How long would you survive? How long could anyone survive like that?

She looked down at the page again. Beneath the closing paragraphs, someone had written in a clear neat hand.

‘On 21 August 1614, four years after sentence was passed, Elizabeth Bathory died in her lonely windowless prison. She died towards nightfall, without crucifix, without light, abandoned by all.’

Chapter Thirty-seven

Elizabeth had shown neither weakness nor regret. She had stormed about the locked bedchamber, her eyes burning like ebony flames in her little white face, bitter fury scalding her small, frail body.

The sound of hammering reverberated through the castle. The workmen preparing the terrible dungeon, and building the four scaffolds which would indicate that within the castle walls was a creature condemned to death.

Her mind seethed with speculation. There would almost surely be appeals for mercy from her children. Anna and Pál would speak out, certainly. They did not understand her, and their spouses feared her. But they would do what was expected.

But escape would not come from that quarter. Thurzo and the King would listen to the pleas, but they would not give in. If she was to escape she would have to fight, not as her ancestors had fought, with clawbone-horns and curving scimitars and double-headed axes, but with her mind and her body. Could it be done?

She paced the bedchamber, stifled by the warmth and the closed curtains, staring at the candle flame that burned at her bedside. Soon now, there would not even be a candle flame.

In her mind, she reviewed the guards. In every fortress there was a vulnerable spot, in every armed sentinel there was a weak link. Where was the weak link here? How could it be used?

There was one guard – not young, but physically powerful and well-built – who had looked at her not as a creature to be guarded, but as a woman. His eyes had flickered over her and then had determinedly reassumed their correct impassivity. He was dark-haired and slant-eyed, in the manner of those possessing a little of the old Magyar blood.

The wolfsmile curved her lips.

Guarding the Lady of Csejthe, the Blood Countess who was being called by her own villagers, the Beast, was not quite the sinecure the dark-haired, half-Magyar guard had expected. He had boasted a bit in the village, of course, as they had all boasted; everyone drinking deeply of the ale served by the innkeeper whose modest tavern was enjoying more prosperity since the Lady’s capture than he had ever imagined possible.

The dark-haired guard had drunk his ale, listening and joining in with the talk, everyone vying to tell what they’d do if the Lady should try any of her tricks, their voices just a bit too loud to be quite believable, their laughter just a little forced.

The guard duty was easy enough. You had to stand outside the Lady’s bedchamber door for quite a long stretch, but in the service of His Majesty you got used to that. They shared the hours out between them, careful to be fair, occasionally swapping shifts so that two or three of them could go off to the tavern together.

The dark-haired guard had drawn the early evening stretch of duty tonight. It was a time when you felt curiously unsafe in Csejthe Castle, although it would not have done to say this. But it was the slightly eerie hour when you felt the day shiver and blur, and when purple shadows stole across the harsh mountains that girdled Csejthe, and the forests were filled with the wakings of nocturnal creatures. His Magyar forebears had told some very strange stories about creatures that woke when twilight stole over the mountains out here.

The orders were that the Lady was to be answered if she tapped on her side of the door, but that the door was not to be opened unless at least two of them were present. She was well provided with everything. Food and drink were taken in at appointed hours, and there were washing facilities. There was absolutely no reason why she should want anything else.

The tapping from within the chamber made him jump. The supper tray had been taken in earlier: a leg of chicken and a wedge of bread it had been, together with pitcher of fresh milk. Very plentiful, although they said she ate hardly enough to keep life in her body. The door would not be unlocked until the tray was fetched in the morning, and bread and bacon set down in its place.

When she tapped, the guard felt a lurch of fear. The others were not far away, of course: the Palatine’s orders had been that at least three must always be within easy reach. They none of them knew what tricks their prisoner might try, he had said solemnly. They must always be ready for some kind of ploy.

This did not sound like a ploy. It sounded like the scrabbling of a creature in pain. A poor, frail thing who had managed to crawl as far as the door and was trying to attract attention. A trick? The guard reminded himself that this was Elizabeth Bathory, this was the Beast of Csejthe who had been found guilty of slaughtering several hundred girls so that she could bathe in their blood. She was a murderess and probably she was a witch. He closed his ears resolutely and thought that probably he had misheard.

It came again, almost at once. The scratching of nails against wood. A whisper that might have been a piteous cry for help. Supposing she was ill? Supposing she had been poisoned? Given Elizabeth Bathory’s crimes, this was perfectly possible. The guard remembered how the Palatine, his jowly face serious, had said: ‘We dare not execute this Lady. She is too high and that is why she is being imprisoned in this way. We cannot let her die.’

They dared not execute her, nor dared they let her die, and yet she might be dying as he stood there. Would it hurt to just unlock the door and push it open a sliver? He glanced along the corridor to where his colleagues were playing cards. Within shouting distance. He grasped his sword firmly in his left hand and, with his right, reached for the key that hung on a nail.

The last desperate gamble . . . The weak link in the chain.

He had been easily dazzled, the Magyar guard. He had already been half under her allure as he unlocked the bedchamber door. It was exhilarating to find that they still came to her beckoning.

He had been a worthy lover as well. It was ironic and extraordinary that, at the very last, she should have taken a man who had given her that brief, explosive pleasure.

There had been a surprised delight at his ardour, and there had been a moment of joy – unlooked-for, unsought – when his body had shuddered and he had clutched her tightly against him and she had felt the rippling of her own body answering him.

It had been the deep midnight when finally he left her, exhausted and spent, going without a word, his face turned away as he donned his clothes, fumbling at the fastenings in his haste to be away from her.

Elizabeth knew he would never speak of it. He would keep it as a memory – a strange dreamlike experience – and he would probably never forget it. But if he spoke of it, Gyorgy Thurzo would fling him into prison and leave him to rot.

The procession through Csejthe took place at midnight. The torchlights carried by the attendants flickered wildly as they descended, and there was a thick, brooding silence everywhere.

Gyorgy Thurzo walked at the head and, behind him, chanting prayers, the pastor Ponikenus. They were absurd and ridiculous with their empty prayers and their mumbling talk of repentance and forgiveness. Elizabeth walked between six guards, whose swords were unsheathed. She was robed in black and she looked neither to left nor right, her head high.

She paid no attention to the direction they took her, other than to notice that they were somewhere close to the old castle keep. The only sounds were the padding footsteps of Ponikenus and the heavy booted tread of the guards. Was her Magyar here? No. It afforded her a grim amusement to think that he might have traded his spell of duty tonight so that he should not have to face her again.

The grisly procession came to an abrupt halt, and there before her was her prison, an oblong box, a dank, dark tomb with a small opening left for her to enter. Two stonemasons stood in the shadows, their faces averted. Waiting to wall her up.

The room was roughly half the size of her bedchamber, and it smelled of new mortar and the hastily-laid stones. It had been sparsely furnished with a pallet bed, and a wooden chair and table; a handful of straw had been spread in one corner. So I shall be forced to endure the stench of my own ordure.

A small slit for light and air had been left high up in one corner where the wall met the ceiling. She could see the deep velvety night sky, and she could hear a faint susurration of the wind in the trees. Then on the other side of that wall was the forest.

She sat straight-backed, her face impassive as the workmen began their appointed task. There was a massive set of iron bars which they dragged into place, scraping across the stone floor with a sound that set her teeth on edge. The iron grille filled up the space between the floor and the ceiling, an extra wall in itself, and for a moment she dared to hope that this was all there would be. For through the iron bars I can at least see into the tunnel beyond, and I can see the people who will come down here to bring food and water.

And then the workmen began to haul the bricks and stones into place, and Elizabeth understood that the iron bars were for extra security. Newly built walls could be dislodged; mortar could be scraped out while it was still damp, and desperate prisoners could squeeze out through the smallest of apertures. The grille was reinforcement. It crossed her mind that they might have commissioned it from the blacksmith who had wrought for her the grinning cage so many years ago, and she fought down the urge to laugh wildly.

As they began the final task of bricking up the wall, she could see the faces of Thurzo and Ponikenus, lit from below by the flickering candles, their expressions sombre. Were they exulting over her downfall? The stonemasons worked quickly, anxious to be finished, not looking at her. Ponikenus’s droning prayers faltered into silence, and the only sound was the rhythmic slapping of wet mortar and the scraping of the stones, one layer arranged atop the next. As the layers built up, the light dimmed. Then the last thing I shall see is the light of the burning torches and the faces of the two men who brought me to this.

With that thought, the last row of stones was in place, touching the ceiling, shutting out the faces and the voices of everyone in the world.

For ever.

And now she was more alone than any creature in the entire world. She was bricked up, left to the huge, brooding darkness of the old castle. Above her were the rooms and the galleries and the chambers where once she had moved imperiously and haughtily, ordering her servants, deceiving her lord. Great empty, echoing rooms. Did the shades of her murdered girls walk there? Would they come to her here, wringing their bloodied hands, their bodies torn and mutilated? Could she bear it if they did?

Food and water would be pushed through the tiny hatch at intervals by servants from the village. They would come up to the castle for the express purpose – she guessed they would come in threes and fours, determinedly brave – but it would probably not be more than once or twice a week. She would find herself measuring the days and the weeks by that small event. She, who had once dazzled the Imperial Court and given banquets to which the highest in the land came eagerly, was reduced to looking forward to four or five minutes once a week when coarse peasant food was shoved at her on the end of a hooked pole.

The food was disgusting. Fat pork and coarse rye bread and salt bacon. Sour ale which made her retch.

She counted the days since the guard’s love-making, and she watched, through the slit above her bed, the moon wane and vanish and then grow gibbous again . . . If the moon’s phases no longer ruled her blood, she would begin to hope.

Two moons and nothing. Three . . . But I was surely too old! her mind cried. I was surely already beyond the watershed of a woman’s life . . . Yes, but he was strong and virile.

The fourth moon brought a swelling of her body, and wild dreams began to tumble through her mind. Escape. Freedom out there in the achingly sweet afternoons, scented by lilac and hawthorn. She laid her plans and wove her schemes and somehow held on to the tattered shreds of sanity.

But the light was dimmer these days, and the birdsong outside her prison wall was fainter than it had been. Perpetual darkness, perpetual silence. I am becoming blind and deaf.

The birth was harder than her other four births. The pain tore through her, so that she howled into the night, barely able to hear her own voice now, peering into the darkness like the blind, underground creature she had become.

But she could still feel and she could still smell, and she could feel her hair sweat-soaked from the agony and smell her own stale body juices. She was sick several times before it was over, feeling her way to the straw in the corner, doubling over to retch and choke in lonely agony.

Agony . . . Hours and hours of unremitting pain . . . Grinding waves of torment so that you thought your womb would burst open. I am too old by far to give birth . . .

But the birth was the way to her escape. If, when the villagers next came to bring her food and ale she could present to them a living crying child, they would have to break down the wall and remove the iron grille: they would have to get the child out. They would never leave a child in this place. And once they had broken down the wall, once the miserable cell was filled with stonemasons and women clucking over the child, she would have her chance. Out through the passages and the halls of Csejthe, out into the forest. Hold on to the thought. Hold on to the memory of the forest just beyond this wall.

At the end, she crouched against the wall, her knees drawn up, squatting over the straw like an animal. And although she could barely see, she could feel the child when at last it lay between her thighs, small and shrivelled, but breathing. Alive. And a boy. She would not have expected a puling girl from her Magyar.

She managed to wrap the child in a small square of blanket from the pallet bed and, working by feel again, wiped his eyes and his nostrils clear with a wisp of straw moistened in the metal tankard of water. She rocked him against her, feeling his mouth searching for food. Her failing hearing had just caught the feeble mewling cry at the beginning, but there had been nothing more. She bent over, her ear pressed against the narrow, birdlike chest. Dying? Then my plan will never work.

Elizabeth sat where she had fallen after the birth, her thighs bloodied and smeared with birth fluid, weak and dizzy, but her mind clear. Presently it narrowed towards a single, concentrating point.

For the plan to work, the child must survive. It must thrive. She began to concentrate ferociously on his survival.

Pál and the three girls had been handed straight to a wet-nurse, of course, but even in those well-fed luxurious days there had been only the thinnest trickle of milk from her breasts. Now, kept in darkness for nine months, fed only on sparse peasant fare, her breasts were empty and barren.

In her arms the child stirred, flailing feebly with one hand, its mouth opening and closing like a bird’s beak.

Elizabeth reached into her mind: there was something you could do – something that animals did— An immense and immediate form of nourishment—? Race-memory stirred, and for a moment she was a child at Varanno, watching wolfcubs born . . .

This child should survive. Anna and Pál and the others would call him the Bastard but it would not matter. One day he would be the Family’s Head; she knew it as strongly as she knew that she herself would not live to see it. He would be elegant and patrician, and he would possess that cool inbred authority that was impossible to feign and formidable to oppose. The sharp mind in the velvet scabbard. The sensualist and the scholar. He would be the most brilliant, the most shining of all the brilliant shining Bathorys and it was unthinkable that he should die here in the dark dungeon. Clutching the child to her with one hand, she reached down between her thighs, feeling in the bloodied straw beneath her. Almost at once, her hand closed about the still-warm afterbirth.

The greatest irony was that the plan so nearly succeeded.

Her captors had broken down the wall to get at the child, of course, exactly as she had known they would, but for Elizabeth it was already too late: the she-wolf had lost its spring and the creature who had once terrorized the mountain villages no longer existed. Her strength had been leached away by the terrible prison, and when they finally came, she was too weak to outwit them; her sight was too dim for her to even see the broken wall and her senses were dulled by the months of silence and isolation. She could only cower shivering and purblind in a corner as they took the child away, and then re-built her prison wall.

She had failed. She had taken that last remarkable gamble and she had lost. The years stretched out before her: utterly without hope, and filled with cold and hunger and black bitter misery. There was nothing left to cling to. There was nothing left for her but darkness and silence and aching empty loneliness. Despair, the agony of the soul, closed about her mind.

She could not know that many years later, a Jesuit Father would write a monograph on her life, and that later still, a young English nun would sit reading it, in the very room where once Elizabeth had held the grisly banquet at which sixty serving girls had been slaughtered.

She could not know of the strange stark epitaph that she would be given:

‘On 21 August 1614, four years after sentence was passed, Elizabeth Bathory died in her lonely, windowless prison. She died towards nightfall, without crucifix, without light, abandoned by all . . .’

The convention of the day – of any day – required that a further sentence be added: ‘And may God have mercy on her soul.’

But whoever had written the epitaph had not done so.

Hilary sat for a long time in the library, staring at the remarkable manuscript that recorded Elizabeth’s trial and that of her servants. Beyond the thick oak door, she could hear the ordinary life of the convent going on, but the sounds were muted and faraway.

At last she picked up the monograph and went in search of Armand Wagner, who was still using the little room at the rear of the convent. He was studying a typed report with the young Bremner, but they both looked up at once when she tapped on the door and the sudden thin smile lit Wagner’s face.

‘Sister Hilary? You have some information for us? Something you have remembered?’ He stood up and set a chair for her, closing the door leading out to the passage.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Hilary, sitting down. ‘It might not be important at all. If it’s not, I’m sorry to be wasting your time. But it might have a bearing on what’s happening to Catherine and her brother and I thought you’d better see it.’ She put Turoczi’s book on the desk, opening it carefully at the final pages. ‘I’m afraid it’s dreadfully fragile. You’ll be careful of it, won’t you? I thought you’d need to see the book itself, rather than a transcript.’

Wagner was handling the small book with extreme care, turning the pages warily. He said, ‘Erzsebet Bathory—’ and Hilary heard with a shock how he gave the name what was probably its correct pronunciation. Erzsebet . . . It had a harsh, rather gutteral ring.

‘Sister, what is this?’

‘The minutes of her trial,’ said Hilary. ‘The details don’t matter so very much – at least, not as far as your – your case is concerned. But it’s this that I thought you should see.’ She pointed to the last page. ‘There’s a kind of appendix of documents farther on – lists of the people in Elizabeth’s family who appealed for mercy on her behalf.’ Hilary had only glanced through this because you could only absorb so much harrowing detail at a time, and also her head had begun to ache with translating the Latin text. ‘But the epitaph underneath is hand written.’

‘And,’ said Wagner, studying it closely, ‘at a guess, added relatively recently.’ He indicated to Bremner. ‘It’s ink, not biro, which makes it easier to take a guess at the age.’ He looked back at Hilary. ‘Can you translate the Latin, Sister?’ he said and Hilary remembered that Latin was no longer a language that many people understood.

She read out the paragraph about Elizabeth’s death, feeling the horror prickling her skin again. ‘“She died in her lonely windowless prison . . . Towards nightfall, abandoned by all”.’

‘Rather nastily evocative,’ murmured Wagner. ‘Go on.’

Hilary said. ‘Directly beneath that – here where you can see – the same person wrote something else.’

‘Yes?’

Hilary read it carefully. ‘“This punishment was adopted as the exemplum for those who transgressed the Family’s rule”.’ She laid down the book and looked at them.

‘“Exemplum”?’ said Wagner. ‘That is—?’

‘As far as I know, it’s exactly what it sounds. A punishment intended as an example to would-be offenders against the Bathorys,’ said Hilary.

‘Ah. I meant, has it any religious significance? Monastical, conventual?’

‘Not that I’ve ever come across,’ said Hilary, frowning.

‘Then it’s a punishment?’

Hilary said, slowly, ‘According to this book, Elizabeth Bathory was walled up alive for her butchery. But the two servants who testified against her were burned alive.’ She eyed him.

‘Two punishments,’ said Wagner, thoughtfully.

‘Yes, exactly.’

‘And we don’t know which of the two punishments the writer of that regarded as the exemplum.’

Hilary said, ‘If Turoczi’s information is accurate – and he got it from the actual minutes of the tribunal – I think it could be argued that Elizabeth’s servants betrayed her. Their testimony is given more or less verbatim and, as far as Elizabeth was concerned, it must have been absolutely damning. Perhaps without that testimony there would have been no case. Elizabeth might even have gone free.’

‘And so they were regarded afterwards as traitors,’ said Wagner, frowning. ‘By Elizabeth’s family.’

‘Yes.’ Hilary was finding this easier than she had expected; Wagner and the young Bremner seemed to be taking her seriously. She said, ‘Elizabeth’s descendants – Franz-Josef and his wife and Stefan and the others – seem to be viewing Catherine and her brother as traitors – her brother especially. Pietro’s looked on as a renegade because he left a few years ago. Those corpse-things in Csejthe referred to a ritual that Pietro rejected – I’m sorry, I told you that earlier,’ said Hilary, impatient with herself for repeating what they already knew.

But Wagner made a brusque gesture. ‘It does not matter, I would rather be told something a dozen times than not be told it at all. And you are very articulate, Sister. Very clear-minded.’

He lapsed into silence again and Bremner said, ‘If the servants were believed to have betrayed their mistress at the trial and punished by burning—’

‘The story may have been handed down,’ said Hilary. ‘The tradition that traitors to the Family should suffer the exemplum – whatever it is – may have been nurtured. I know it sounds far-fetched,’ she said, defensively.

‘Not so far-fetched as all that. The Sicilians have their vendetta. The Ku Klux Klan in America theirs. And blood feuds can last for many generations.’ Wagner was still staring down at the book, but when he looked up his eyes were sharp and searching.

‘Sister Hilary, I don’t often make swift decisions, but I’m going to make one now.’ He studied her for a moment, and then said, ‘I’m going to ask you to come with us to Csejthe Castle tonight.’

‘Csejthe?’ said Hilary, startled. ‘But surely – CrnPrag is where Catherine is—’

‘Your Mr Devlin is taking on CrnPrag,’ said Wagner, and Hilary was annoyed to find herself blushing. ‘In fact he’s on his way there already – we know that because we rang the Red Angel. And we don’t want to upset any little plan he may have cooked up. Also,’ said Wagner, scrupulously truthful, ‘CrnPrag isn’t exactly the kind of place where we can just wave a warrant and go in.’

‘Assuming we could get a warrant by tonight,’ put in Bremner.

‘Well, yes. But Csejthe’s a different cup of tea. It’s a bit of a no-man’s land, and it seems to be the centre of a good part of all this,’ said Wagner. ‘If we can round up those corpse-creatures and a few of the guards, we’ll be a very good way to getting what we want.’

Hilary saw the logic of this. ‘But why should you want me to come with you?’ she said.

‘Well, there are a number of reasons. You can be of help in identifying some of these people to us.’

Hilary looked at him. ‘That’s not the real reason,’ she said. ‘The real reason is that you don’t think I should stay here.’

‘You could truly be of help to us,’ said Wagner. ‘But you’re quite right; the real reason is that I don’t want you to stay in this convent until we’ve got Ladislas Bathory locked up and stern questions asked of the rest of his strange clan.’

Bremner said, ‘Chief Inspector you don’t really suspect—’

‘I don’t know what I suspect!’ said Wagner explosively. ‘What I do know is that there’re too many nasty strands weaving themselves into this business and too many bloody threads unravelling! I mean bloody in the literal sense, you understand,’ he said turning to Hilary suddenly and Hilary grinned.

‘Listen,’ said Wagner, ‘Ladislas Bathory tried to silence you last night. Supposing he tries to do so again tonight? Or sends someone else to do it for him?’

Hilary stared at him and heard Bremner’s sharp gasp of surprise. ‘But sir – Chief – we’ll still be here ourselves. Nobody would get in.’

‘Nobody should have got in last night,’ said Wagner, angrily. ‘But we know that somebody did.’ He looked back at Hilary. ‘Well, Sister? We’d give you every protection we could if you stayed, but it would serve all ends if you came with us. What about it?’

For a moment, Hilary did not speak. To go again to that dark, menace-drenched castle in the mountains . . .? Yes, but this time in the company of all the King’s horses and all the King’s men . . . And supposing Ladislas tried to get into the convent again? What had Wagner said: ‘Supposing he tries to do so again tonight? Or sends someone else . . .? Hilary remembered with a shudder Janos at Csejthe, and Ficzko who had scuttled across the courtyard after Catherine at Varanno. The gnome magicians with their stunted warped bodies that could slip through chinks in houses, where ordinary-sized humans could not go . . .

She took a deep breath and said, ‘Will you tell Reverend Mother or shall I?’

Chapter Thirty-eight

Michael and Tobias had tried to call through to CrnPrag on the small intercom fixed to the gates as soon as they drew up outside. Tobias had propped the car bonnet open and hunted in the boot for a grease-stained rag to drape over the radiator grille, which he insisted would lend their story verisimilitude. He had appeared to rather enjoy putting this artistic touch to the tale they were going to tell about a split radiator hose and Michael had grinned to himself.

But whoever lived inside CrnPrag either did not hear or did not care about ill-starred travellers who broke down outside their high walls and requested help. Michael heard the sharp peremptory buzz as Tobias depressed the button of the intercom, and he heard, as well, the stubborn silence that followed it.

‘No response at all,’ said Tobias at last. ‘Perhaps there is no one there, although I think that is unlikely.’

‘I think it’s unlikely as well. I think there’s probably some kind of code to get in to the wretched place,’ said Michael, angrily. ‘And unless it’s used, they simply don’t answer. It’s something I should have thought of. You don’t get inside nightmare mansions without the correct sequence of knocks, Tobias. It’s in all the best fairy stories. Open Sesame and new lamps for old. Or even, “Open, locks, to the dead man’s hand”. Hell and damnation I ought to have foreseen this!’

‘We revert to the other plan?’ asked Tobias, practically.

‘Sneaking in after anyone who goes up? Yes, it’s not as good as the other idea and it’s much riskier, but there’s nothing else for it. Let’s simply wait it out for a time. You never know, I might get a sudden inspiration.’

Tobias said, ‘I have brought some.’

‘Some what?’

‘Inspiration,’ said Tobias and Michael heard the rhythmic sound of something being unscrewed and then the glug of liquid being poured. ‘It is only cider,’ explained Tobias, ‘because of driving and the adventure. It is not the cider you have in England, which everyone knows to be the best in the world. But this is very good cider and I have kept it cold in a flask. Also there are cheese rolls here and apple pie and a second flask with coffee.’

‘Do you ever go anywhere without being sure of your next meal, Tobias?’

‘Certainly not.’

As the day wore on, Michael felt twilight beginning to steal over the countryside. He was becoming accustomed to differentiating between the hours of the day by now: to feeling through his skin the sharp, alive anticipation of early morning, and then the busy top-of-the-hill feeling of mid-day. Late afternoon had a weary drag about it, as if people in nine-to-five jobs were beginning to flag and to contemplate struggling through their various rush hours to get home.

But the half-world of dusk had a feel all to itself, and in the Hampshire convent and later in Vienna Michael had begun to enjoy it.

He did not enjoy the dusk that was creeping over CrnPrag. They had half-opened the car windows to be sure of hearing the approach of any other vehicles, and Michael caught himself thinking that the twilight out here was eerie and filled with odd rustlings and scuttlings. Was it because they were close to Elizabeth’s domain? How far were they from Csejthe? In Elizabeth’s time it would have been many hours’ journey of course, but in today’s world it was not so very far. Did it feel eerie because it was on the boundaries of the dark mountain villages where Elizabeth had once prowled, searching for victims? We’re in a blood-tainted demi-world, he thought. If I could see, I might even see the sky becoming suffused with blood . . . Like the beginning of an old horror film when they used to pour dripping crimson over the opening credits so that the screen slowly became drenched in gore . . .

He was roused by Tobias touching his arm, and he pushed back the grotesque half-dreams and came awake at once. ‘Someone coming, Tobias?’

‘A car with a youngish man driving it. Approaching the gates, I think— Yes,’ said Tobias on a note of satisfaction. ‘Yes, he is stopping.’

Michael felt the black swathes of his blindness as angrily as if he had only just lost his sight. Damn! If I could just see! He said, ‘Keep talking, Tobias. Keep telling me what’s happening.’

But Tobias was already saying, ‘Whoever he is, he is winding down his window to speak into the intercom.’

‘Can you see him?’

‘Only to know he has dark hair. Be quiet, he may hear.’

But neither of them could hear if a pattern was punched out on the intercom, or if anything like a password was given. There was nothing until a whirring sound indicated that the gates were being opened.

‘Aren’t we following him? Tobias why aren’t we following him?’

‘Wait,’ said Tobias. ‘Something’s happening inside the house. Lights everywhere – I can’t see now, but when the gates opened I could see through the trees and lights were coming on at all the windows. Wait, we’ll get closer.’ He released the handbrake and let the car roll off the grass verge and onto something that sounded like a gravel drive. From his left, muffled by what he thought were trees or even a high wall, Michael caught the sound of several large-engined cars – vans? – being revved.

‘What’s happening?’

‘There are several vans being driven around to the front of the house,’ said Tobias. ‘I still can’t see very well, because the house is quite a long way from the gates. But I can see that there is more than one – three, four – I think there are five vans altogether. Large vehicles to carry several people—I do not know the word for them.’

‘Minibus? Coach?’

‘Little buses,’ said Tobias. ‘Such as used to transport small parties. Schools for children’s outings. Clubs.’

‘Yes, I understand. Can we get in?’

‘The gates are closed,’ said Tobias. ‘But I think the buses are all facing this way as if they will soon be driving out. The headlights are pointing towards us—’ He broke off and reversed the car very abruptly. There was a jolt as they went back onto the grass verge again and then the engine was switched off. ‘They’re coming,’ said Tobias. ‘Down the drive towards the road.’

‘Are we in darkness here?’

‘Yes, of course. They won’t see us.’

‘And even if they do, we’ve very innocently broken down.’

‘Exactly.’

Michael could hear the small buses trundling towards them and he could smell the exhaust fumes. It was very easy to visualise how it would all look: a long wide drive with pouring purple dusk, and the headlights slicing through it like lidless eyes, and exhausts belching carbon monoxide into the night. What on earth was happening? Had Ladislas Bathory somehow got wind of their approach? Had they been seen and recognised when they rang for admittance earlier on? Or was this some kind of exodus that took place regularly?

It did not seem believable that Ladislas knew they were there and was emptying CrnPrag because of it. Michael, his mind working furiously, was more inclined to think that this had something to do with Catherine and her brother. A gathering of the clans? The mini-buses were trundling past them now and vanishing into the night. Michael’s mind darted after them for a moment, trying to think where they might be going and if they should be followed. Damn! If I had my sight we could have brought two cars up here and split up. No, I’m wrong, we should stay together, no matter what.

He said, ‘Tobias, switch on and get in gear. The instant the last vehicle’s out, drive like a fiend through those gates before they shut.’

‘You are the boss,’ said Tobias, doing as he was requested.

‘I don’t think they’ll realise that we’re not among their number,’ said Michael. ‘I think we’ll mingle sufficiently well with their own headlights and the engines. All right?’

‘Yes, I agree. All right.’

Michael heard Tobias slide the car into gear and inch it forward. There was a moment when Michael had a sudden vivid impression of the car as a tiger or a panther crouching with its muscles quivering, ready to spring.

And then the car shot forward and Michael felt the heat and the petrol fumes as they passed within inches of one of the vehicles on its way out of CrnPrag.

There was the impression of driving up a long straight drive – trees on both sides! yes! – and then coming to a sedate stop.

‘We’re here?’

‘We’re here,’ said Tobias.

CrnPrag. The threshold of darkness. The nightmare mansion on the hill.

Catherine had begun to find it difficult to know which of the two worlds she was in. Am I in Elizabeth’s cruel, blood-drenched seventeenth century, where she prowled through the night, trapping virgins and snaring village girls? Or am I in the harsh strident twentieth century, flagging down lone women travellers and killing them in a lonely ritual that I do not properly understand?

She sought and grasped reality. She was inside CrnPrag, of course she was, and Elizabeth was long since dead, walled up alive in Csejthe Castle four centuries earlier.

Dead in her lonely windowless prison, dead towards nightfall, without crucifix, without light, abandoned by all . . . She lived like that for four years, thought Catherine. And then: how do I know that? I do know it, though. Just as I know that those two wretched ghoulish old women who served Elizabeth suffered the exemplum. Did I read it? If so when did I read it? Where? When did I know about the exemplum? Was it Elizabeth again, oozing the tainted memories into my mind? Memories dripping from her mind into mine . . . But Elizabeth never knew about the exemplum. Is it what they intend for Pietro now? Pietro reneged. That’s how they’d see it. He ran away, only none of them understood that he didn’t run away from the Family; he ran away from me. If Pietro is made to suffer the exemplum it will be my fault.

Without warning the door of the Women’s Ward was unlocked and flung open and Catherine came out of Elizabeth’s dark world as if she was coming up out of a greasy, stagnant lake. Oh God, yes, I am in CrnPrag. She looked towards the door, and saw Ladislas Bathory, his face sheet-white, his eyes blazing, standing on the threshold.

The other women in the ward began to cry and shrink against the wall, but Catherine did not move. From the rim of her vision, she was aware of Orsolya regarding Ladislas with cold dislike. There was a sudden darting movement as Orsolya scrabbled for the repulsive jar of spiders, and hugged it to her chest.

Ladislas ignored Orsolya and the others and went straight to Catherine’s bed, jerking her upright. Catherine struggled briefly, and his grip tightened. ‘We’re going to Csejthe,’ said Ladislas, his face close to hers, the eyes glittering. ‘You and I, my little wildcat, are going to Csejthe.’

Catherine fought to free her arms from his grip. ‘Why? I don’t understand—’

Ladislas shook her, and a little flame of madness flared in his eyes. ‘Because your precious Order of St Luke, your ridiculous House of Nuns, is setting the police on to us,’ he said. ‘And therefore we have to get away.’

Catherine stared at him. ‘Why? Why would the police come here?’

‘Because of what we are,’ said Ladislas, his lips curled back into a contemptuous sneer. ‘Because of what we cannot help being.’

Pointless to press for more. But Catherine’s mind was working furiously. ‘Are the police here now?’ she said. ‘Inside the house?’ Because if so, if the police were truly here, it might mean that Pietro could be saved.

Ladislas said, ‘They aren’t here yet, but they soon will be.’ The odd light glinted in his eyes again, and Catherine caught the exhilaration that was racing through him. He’s enjoying this. He’s threatened and he’s in danger but it’s spurring him on. How remarkable.

Ladislas was already half pushing Catherine ahead of him, out of the ward. Two of the guards were on watch at the door and as soon as they were through it, the men slammed the door and bolted it tightly. So Orsolya and the others are not coming with us.

Ladislas said, ‘Unless I’m mistaken the police will be at the gates before nightfall. I can feel the danger, Cat, my dear. I can smell it,’ he said, and for a moment the wolfsmile of their ancestress was so pronounced that it was as if Elizabeth herself was there with them. Elizabeth, fleeing her captors, exulting in the danger. Picking up the threads and the strands of menace and urgency and forging them into a single, seamless cloak to protect her . . . Yes, but at the end she failed. They shut her away in the dark for ever.

‘We’re leaving CrnPrag,’ said Ladislas, still holding her in a brutal hurting grip. ‘We’re going to Csejthe. And you’re going to witness your beloved Pietro’s punishment.’ He looked at her and the wolfsmile curved his lips. ‘The exemplum,’ he said, and then pushed her out of CrnPrag’s doors and into the twilight.

The urgency was out here as well. People were scurrying and running everywhere, shouting orders and gesturing to cars and to three or four small minibuses. The twilight was ugly with panic and with the harsh sounds of engines being revved. Catherine had just time to see some of the guards herding little groups of frightened dark-eyed people into the minibuses, prodding them with guns, and slamming and locking the doors once they were inside.

Ladislas jerked open the door of his own car and pushed Catherine into the back. The attendant who had baited Orsolya in the Women’s Ward was inside already, and he smiled his brutal smile at Catherine and snapped the seat-belt about her waist. From the driver’s seat, Ladislas flicked the electronic door lock and there was a click as all four doors locked. They are making very sure I don’t escape.

‘Our people,’ said Ladislas indicating the other vehicles falling into line behind them. The wolfsmile glinted again in the half-light. ‘They’re all coming with us, you see. All following,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘This is the exodus, Cat. The evanescence.’

As they swung out on to the road, Catherine saw Ladislas’s eyes on her in the driving mirror. ‘The police will come through the night to catch us, Cat, my dear,’ he said, and Catherine shivered at his tone. ‘Only when they get here, we shall be gone.’ The smile slid out again. ‘The stupid, unimaginative police will discover that the birds have flown, and that CrnPrag, their haunted sinister mansion, is innocent. And if they follow us to Csejthe, we shall be waiting for them.’

Michael was grateful for Tobias’s firm hand on his arm as they walked towards CrnPrag. He could feel the old house rearing up in front of them, like a huge soulless hulk, watching them approach.

Oho, two more for our dungeons. Two more to add grist to our mills . . . Grist was a nasty word. It was a grisly word. It made you think of giant mincing machines that crunched up your bones and vomited out squelched flesh and muscle and skin . . .

Mengele and his grisly experiments. If you read about Mengele’s work in a novel you would think it was far-fetched. It was impossible to believe and yet all the world knew it had taken place. Hitler, practising ethnic cleansing before the expression had been coined, trying to purge the world of Jews, writing his inhuman blueprint for a Master Race . . . Is this where all those Bosnians and those other poor sods of refugees were brought? But if so, why?

Michael’s hand went automatically to the small recorder in his jacket pocket. Whatever’s here, I mustn’t miss a shred of it. And what about Catherine Bathory and her brother?

At his side, Tobias said, very softly, ‘The door is ajar,’ and Michael felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck, because there was something quite enormously terrifying about doors of legend-drenched old mansions that were left ajar. Would they hear a disembodied voice bidding them to come inside . . .

They moved forward, Tobias’s hand firm and strong on Michael’s arm and Michael reminded himself that they were here to find out what had happened to Catherine and her brother, and also to look into the possible plight of a large number of refugees. He repeated words like ‘hostages’ and ‘ethnic minorities’ several times in his mind, and reminded himself that they might be entering a modern-day concentration camp.

But as they moved forward, a cool rather husky voice from behind, said, ‘Good evening, gentlemen. May I know what you are doing here?’

For several wild minutes Michael forgot about twentieth century horrors and tumbled dizzily into the dark fairytale world again, where snow queens whipped their sleds through ice-covered forests and evil sorceresses peered from beyond looking glass worlds.

Yes, and where Elizabeth Bathory once lived . . .

He whirled round, Tobias’s hand still on his arm, and the voice said again, ‘Who are you? How did you get in here?’ and this time, Michael registered that the owner was speaking in modern German, and whatever else witches and evil enchantresses do, they do not use modern German.

He reached for his own German, and said as suavely as possible, ‘Good evening. Please forgive us if we are trespassing, but our car has broken down and we are wanting to phone a garage for help.’

At once the owner of the voice switched to English. ‘You may use the phone with pleasure,’ she said, and it was then that Michael recognised her.

‘But,’ said Bianca Bathory, smoothly, ‘I think we should stop playing games and be honest with one another. Mr Devlin, isn’t it? The English journalist? Yes, I thought it was. Won’t you come into the study?’

‘Or even the parlour,’ said Michael involuntarily, and felt a ripple of amusement from her.

But she only said, ‘Oh, I am no spider, Mr Devlin. I think you must be here to look for your runaway English lady?’ There was a sudden flurry of perfumed silk and Michael was aware that she had come to stand before him. ‘Do you know,’ said Bianca, softly after a moment, ‘if I were that English one, I should certainly not run away from you. Rather the reverse.’

‘Thank you,’ said Michael after a moment, and introduced Tobias, who said, ‘It is a delight to meet you, madame.’

‘Since you know who I am,’ said Michael taking the plunge without thinking too much about it, ‘perhaps you know why Sister Hilary did not return to Vienna? That’s really why I’m here.’

There was a brief silence, and Michael thought: if she knows that Hilary escaped from Csejthe I could be sunk. But she won’t know that I was there when it happened, so the odds are that she’ll believe me.

Bianca was silent as if she was considering how best to reply and Michael was aware, as he had been aware on the phone from the Red Angel, that this was a very alluring lady indeed. He found himself wishing very strongly that he could see her. Then Bianca said, ‘Please come into the study here, Mr Devlin. Both of you.’ There was the sound of a door being opened somewhere to the right, and then of a soft little hand being laid on his arm and guiding him into a room that felt small and warm.

‘It’s rather unfortunate,’ said Bianca, ‘that you have appeared like this.’

‘Unfortunate? For who?’

‘Well for you,’ said Bianca, and Michael felt her lead him to a chair. ‘You see,’ said Bianca, ‘we have such a very good plan nicely unfolding tonight. Everything in place. Everything allowed for. Only the one thing we did not allow for was trespassers.’ There was the drift of perfume again as she moved across the room and Michael heard Tobias half rise from a chair nearby. Bianca said, ‘Your presence is unexpected and quite frankly unwanted, and I think there is only one way to deal with it.’ Michael felt her cross the room on sudden swift catlike feet. He turned his head trying to gauge her movements.

The door of the small warm room was abruptly closed and there was the sound of the key turning in the lock.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Even in such comforting company, Hilary found it daunting to be approaching Csejthe again. This is the third time I have been on this road, she thought. Once alone, once with Michael, and now with the Viennese police. It was impossible to avoid wondering what Sister Veronica might have thought of all this.

The journey passed unexpectedly quickly. Hilary sat in the back with the alert young Bremner; the plump, avuncular Gustav, who seemed to be Armand Wagner’s second-in-command, was driving.

They were plainly comfortable with one another, these three and, as they went along, they discussed their plan for getting into the castle. Gustav seemed to be doubtful about the use of unmarked cars and said so, shaking his head dolefully several times.

They included Hilary in the discussions, which was nice of them, asking questions about Csejthe and once or twice even deferring to her – ‘Since,’ said Gustav, ‘you have been there already, Sister. That’s a great help.’ Hilary hoped she was remembering Csejthe’s layout and the approach accurately.

There was, it appeared, a cavalcade of five cars, each one holding four men, with Wagner’s car at the front. We’re spearheading the attack, thought Hilary, hanging on to reality. I suppose I am seated here and I suppose we really are going to raid Csejthe and rescue Catherine and her brother?

It was inevitable that they should approach Csejthe as night was drawing a purple veil over the ancient, ruined stones. Hilary thought it would not have been in keeping with this legend-drenched place that they would approach Csejthe other than by twilight, at the hour when you felt the strange half-life of the forests stirring. Whatever half-human creatures might lurk in the pine forests and the caves out here, they would certainly not be the cheesecloth and tinsel sprites of nursery tales. They would be the darker, more direful beings: creatures with three-cornered faces and slanting eyes . . . Leaving behind them not paw marks, but the prints of hoofs that were cloven . . . The greedy-featured goblins and long-fingered hags and hobgoblins that peered slyly from the illustrations of Arthur Rackham . . .

None of these creatures were real, of course. The legends were nothing more than folklore, stories handed down and handed on and embroidered and exaggerated as they went. Ogres and goblins and werewolves had never really walked abroad in the world.

But Elizabeth had walked abroad in the world. Elizabeth had walked these mountains and prowled these forests and Elizabeth’s legend was as grisly as anything ever depicted by Rackham or created by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

They parked about half a mile from the concealed path, and Wagner, using what Hilary thought was a small intercom, gave soft-voiced orders to the men in the other cars. She listened carefully, so as to be sure of not getting in anybody’s way. The thing to do would be to simply sit quietly in the car until Wagner or one of the others told her to do otherwise. A masterly policy of inactivity. Would Michael be adopting a policy of inactivity? No, of course he wouldn’t.

It appeared that a dozen or so of the men were going to climb the mountain path to the castle – ‘Fan out as you go,’ Wagner had said – and would try to get inside and see what was happening without being seen themselves. They were to keep in radio-contact, but they were not to put themselves at risk, and very particularly they were not to do anything that might put the two prisoners, Catherine and Pietro Bathory, at risk.

Wagner said, ‘You know the plan, all of you. Don’t deviate by a whisker. All right?’ He glanced at his watch, and Hilary thought that if he said: Synchronise watches, the bubble of mirth that was probably hysteria would erupt.

Wagner did not say it. He simply nodded to Gustav and Bremner, and gave a brief, incisive order, and at once a dozen dark shapes detached themselves from the cars and vanished into the night.

Wagner watched them, and just as Hilary was thinking how remarkably silent they were, said irritably that a herd of elephants would have been quieter. He turned to look at her. ‘This is where you help us,’ he said, and handed her one of the small intercoms. ‘I’m going to ask you to be our eyes as we go into the castle. Normally, we’d have made a reconnoitre, but—’

‘You can’t reconnoitre a castle,’ finished Hilary. ‘Particularly not with two people inside who have to be got out.’

‘Exactly. But if you can give us directions as we go – guide us around the back of the place, it’ll be just as if we’d mapped it out for ourselves.’ He flicked the switch of the phone, demonstrating. ‘This is a personal radio – what used to be called a walkie-talkie, and very simple to operate. It won’t reach headquarters – that was one of the problems. No kind of radio or mobile phone could operate out here because of the mountains.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘we’re keeping our heads a bit low on this. If everybody had their rights, we’re trespassing on Romanian police territory.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, not quite,’ said Wagner. ‘We’ve got clearance to be here – you saw that we were waved through the boundary – but we might have forgotten to explain precisely what we intend to do here.’

‘A Freudian forget?’

‘Yes. But don’t worry about that side of things.’ He handed her the walkie-talkie. ‘Here’s the switch; you hold it down to speak and then release it to listen. Only one side can talk at a time, so you have to remember to say “over” or something like that when you finish speaking, so that the other end knows you’ve finished. It’s what’s called encrypted, which means that short-wave radio enthusiasts can’t eavesdrop.’

‘“Encrypted”? Scrambled?’ Hilary was beginning to feel as if she had fallen into a time-warp and landed somewhere in the middle of 1940.

But Wagner said, quite seriously, ‘Yes, exactly that. But all you’ve got to remember is to keep listening and answer anything any of the men ask you. You’ll be able to hear them talking to one another as they go, of course.’ There was a sudden smile. ‘You’ll forgive any obscenities, I daresay,’ said Wagner. ‘There’ll be a bit of stress and if somebody – probably Burghen – trips up and stubs his toe, he’ll swear.’

‘I have heard obscenities before, Chief Inspector.’

‘Good girl. Don’t hesitate to shout for help if you have to.’

‘Wouldn’t that alert anyone inside the castle?’

‘That’s something else you don’t have to worry about. If anything comes along that you don’t like the look of, sing out and we’ll come to the rescue. You understand it all?’

‘I – yes.’

‘Good girl.’ He brushed her arm lightly. ‘Stay put, won’t you?’ he said, and followed his men into the night. The silence and the shadows closed about Hilary.

To Catherine, entering Csejthe was like coming home after a long absence. So this is the wild, bleak fortress in the mountains that Elizabeth loved best. This is where she had her torture chambers and her dungeons and her slaughter sheds. This is where she cooped up her prey until she should have need of them.

As Ladislas pulled her beneath the yawning portcullis, one of the shark-mouthed attendants grasping her other arm, the shadows thickened and swelled and became threaded with crimson . . .

The Blood Countess walking again, wearing the scarlet mantle . . .

And then they were through the portcullis and across the courtyard, and there, ahead of them, was the great stone hall, the grey walls softened with firelight and lit by dozens of candles. There was the scent of burning applewood, sweet and evocative of a dozen parties in Varanno. Only this was not Varanno, safe and familiar; this was Csejthe, the stark, ruined castle.

The hall was filled with people. Catherine, her sight adjusting to the brilliance after the long dark road, saw the cousins and the aunts and uncles all assembled at the far end. Some were seated, but in the main they stood in rows on a small dais. She recognised distant relatives: fourth and fifth cousins whose faces were dimly familiar from photographs or occasional visits. How many were here? A hundred? More? The hall was so vast that it could easily hold two hundred people and not feel crowded.

Stefan was seated at the table and Catherine looked automatically for Franz-Josef and Bianca and could not see them. Panic spiralled because, whatever this gathering was, whatever it meant, surely Franz-Josef should have been leading it. Surely Bianca should be with him? Above all, where was Pietro?

Ladislas and the guard pushed her back against the wall on the left of the great door, into a half alcove which partly hid her from the view of the others. There was the cold feel of steel chains about her wrists.

‘A further precaution, my dear,’ whispered Ladislas. Catherine heard the lock snap home, and saw the guard bend down to attach the gyves to an iron ring embedded in the stone wall. Chained and fettered to Elizabeth’s castle. Hidden in a wretched, shadowy corner.

Ladislas moved across the hall, arrogant as a cat, nodding to people as he went. The panic shifted gear and became anger, for Ladislas was walking through the throng as Pietro had once walked, he was pulling about him the mantle that had once been Pietro’s, except that if he practised before a mirror for a hundred years, he would never possess a tenth of Pietro’s charm. When Ladislas took the chair at the head of the table, Catherine heard a murmur go through the assembly. Ladislas in Franz-Josef’s place?

Ladislas nodded to the two guards standing at the far end of the hall, and at once a door was flung open, and there was the sound of chanting, and the spillage of more candlelight from beyond. Catherine, aware again that Ladislas seemed to be manipulating this entire assembly, leaned out of the stone niche as far as she could.

Through the door came a procession of grotesque, shuffling creatures; impossibly old, unbelievably bent and frail, but with the remnants of something that had once been charm and with the shreds of an old, old authority. They chanted as they came, and Catherine heard with fresh horror that it was the eerily familiar song of the poor mad Orsolya. Elizabeth’s own song:

‘The blood . . . Never failed us yet . . .

Never failed us yet . . .

Though I die, I shall live . . .’

They ranged themselves along the table, and Catherine saw that places had been left for them. As they made their pitiful way to the seats, the assembly turned and every head bowed, not quite in subservience or humility, but with deep respect.

A stir of anticipation rippled through the hall and several of the Family joined in the chant, so that it echoed and spun about the old castle.

‘The blood . . . The blood . . .

Never failed us yet, never failed us yet . . .

Let us live though we die . . .’

The attendants were bringing in a group of young women: Catherine saw that they were perhaps fourteen or fifteen. They had sallow skins and dark eyes and it was clear that they were very frightened and also that they barely understood what was going on. She caught the murmured word, ‘Tranz’.

The old man who seemed to lead the ancient creatures looked across at Stefan and smiled. ‘The gleanings of Tranz once again?’

‘Yes.’

‘A master-stroke, my son.’

Stefan said, ‘These are from the lands sometime known as Yugoslavia, Pál.’

‘I have read of the war there,’ said the man called Pál. ‘And these are pretty creatures.’

The woman next to him said, ‘Peasant stock. Exactly as it should be.’

Because peasant blood was ever the stronger, my dears . . .

Pál said, ‘You have done well, Stefan. We shall enjoy them,’ and with the words, Catherine felt the anticipation go through the hall again. ‘And,’ said Pál, ‘are we safe, Stefan? Have the prying police been satisfactorily dealt with?’

Stefan glanced at Ladislas who said, ‘The police will not reach us.’

‘Ah. The machine is in place?’

‘It is in place, Pál,’ said Ladislas softly.

The old man held out his hands. ‘Then begin the exemplum,’ he said. ‘Bring out the renegade, and in the name of the Lady of Csejthe, begin the exemplum.’

Chapter Forty

Armand Wagner thought that things were going pretty well. He had been uncomfortable about leaving Sister Hilary on her own on the road below the castle, but it would have been far worse to let her return to St Luke’s. In any other case where a witness stood in danger from a killer, he would have booked her into one of the small anonymous hotels known and used by the Viennese police, but this was not like any case that Wagner had ever come across. They needed Hilary’s inside knowledge of the castle to help them. Entering a medieval castle was not like entering your average murderer’s lair. He touched the small walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, glad that at least Hilary could be in touch with them.

Bremner and a few of the younger men had almost reached the castle, and Gustav was puffing along in their wake. He would have to slim down, that Gustav, if he was to continue in properly active service. He was one of Wagner’s best officers, but he preferred cosy predictable raids where you were near to headquarters, able to phone for help if you needed it without obstructive mountains getting in your way and without the need to deceive the local men.

The castle was not quite in darkness. As Wagner drew nearer, he could see a red flickering light within and he could hear a faint, far-off chanting. He frowned, trying to make out the words.

Hilary responded instantly when he flicked the button, almost as if she might have been climbing the hillside with him. When Wagner said, softly, ‘We’re two-thirds of the way there. I can see the portcullis – over,’ Hilary at once said:

‘Keep the castle on your right. Is the portcullis raised?’ And remembered to add ‘over’.

Wagner squinted through the darkness. ‘Damn. No, it’s down.’

Hilary said, ‘There’s a narrow path – hardly more than a track – that winds around to the back of the castle. On the left.’

Apart from the portcullis being lowered, this was all more or less in accordance with what they had planned. They had hoped that most of the men could go in through the main entrance, as Hilary had done, while Bremner and Burghen, who were both agile enough to climb through windows, would try to find a means of ingress at the rear. Hilary had described a door leading to the sculleries which at this time of day – eight o’clock in the evening – would hopefully be deserted. They went on, cautiously.

Great pools of shadow lay around the castle, and the huge iron grille of the portcullis cast its chequered shadow on the ground. Wagner found it unexpectedly daunting. So much iron, such sharp teeth . . . Was it completely impassable? He had long since learned to check everything for himself, and he moved stealthily nearer.

The portcullis was not completely lowered. The iron teeth were actually a couple of feet short of the ground, as if the machinery that operated the grille might be faulty or rusting. Wagner could see the deep holes where each spike would slide home. Holes gouged by centuries of usage. Was there sufficient space for the men to crawl under the portcullis? Wagner thought there was, but he put it to them, a quick, low-voiced question into the intercom.

The men had already seen and appraised the situation and they thought they could get in.

‘It’ll be a squeeze, but we can do it,’ said one.

‘Plenty enough space, Chief,’ said another.

‘So long as Gustav doesn’t get stuck halfway,’ put in somebody else, and Wagner felt the faint stir of affectionate amusement.

He watched as the men inched forward, seeing how they dropped to all fours as they neared the immense gate, pleased at the way they were obeying orders exactly and precisely. A good team. He was proud of them, although he did not very often tell them so. You could not risk complacency in the department.

The men were not complacent now. They were crawling, ready to slither under the narrow gap. Once inside they would make a stealthy search, while Bremner and Burghen went in at the rear. If the men attracted attention, then at least Bremner and Burghen would be unnoticed. It was not the best plan in the world but, taking the extremely difficult conditions into account, it was not bad.

And then they were there, the shadow of the iron portcullis had fallen across them, and they were crawling flat on their fronts under the immense grille.

Wagner felt it happen before it happened. A sudden glint of grinning steel; something iron catching the flickering light from the castle depths . . .

Something iron . . .

There was the whirring of massive machinery, and the portcullis gate crashed down, the iron spikes, each one easily the thickness of a man’s waist, ramming down into the gaping holes beneath.

The eight men, the good team who had never been complacent, who had not been praised as often as they might have been, were impaled like insects on pins. Probably even almost severed in two. Wagner’s mind spun into shocked disbelief, and he wasted several seconds before going forward, knowing he must try to help them, knowing that there would be nothing he could do . . . Radio for help? Ambulances? But how? The isolation of their situation slammed into his mind. Cut off by the mountains, and prevented from ordinary radio or mobile phones by them. And even the Romanian police had believed them to be pursuing an ordinary, routine felon.

Horror and guilt engulfed him, but he started to run towards the castle, snatching his own radio from his belt, and gasping instructions into it as he ran.

‘Hilary . . . Something terrible . . . See if you can . . .’

A shadow lurched out of the darkness – a squat, misshapen thing, like a stunted tree-trunk, barely four feet in height. Something came swinging out at his head and there was an instant of explosive pain in his head and a blinding light before his eyes.

And then nothing at all.

Hilary was gripping the walkie-talkie so tightly that she had drawn blood from her fingers.

That last frantic message – ‘Hilary . . . Something terrible . . .’ – had been snatched away by the darkness, and a terrible dead silence had descended. She clicked the switch on and off frantically, listening for a response, but feeling only a blank black silence at the other end.

Hilary . . . something terrible . . . Hilary sat for a moment, staring at the phone as if she could penetrate its depths and see what was happening on the mountainside, and then she laid it down on the seat beside her and turned to look into the darkness.

Something had happened to Wagner and it sounded as if something had happened to his men as well. Hilary sat in the dark car, summoning up courage, her mind tumbling with indecision. To venture out on to the hillside? To climb that eerie dark path once more? Or to drive hell-for-leather to the nearest phone-box and get help. The Romanian authorities? But how long would it take to explain the situation to them, and could she make herself understood? She remembered Wagner’s wry comment about forgetting to tell the Romanians everything about this mission. What about the Viennese police force? Her heart sank as she remembered that it would take at least two hours for them to get here. Perhaps they could summon help from somewhere nearer.

The sensible thing would be to go for help anyway. She would find a phone – there was the garage where she and Michael had stopped for petrol. There would be a phone there she could use. Because if she went up to the castle she might walk into whatever took Herr Wagner. And if nothing had taken Herr Wagner’s men, if they had got inside Csejthe, she might spoil the whole plan by crashing in.

She was clambering across to the driver’s seat when the image, vivid and accurate, flashed across her mind.

Wagner, preparing to get out of the car, explaining the simple mechanics of the walkie-talkie to her.

Turning the steering wheel until the automatic-lock clicked as all drivers did without thinking about it.

And also, as all drivers did without thinking about it, pocketing the ignition keys.

Then there was only one thing left to do and that was to go after Wagner. Hilary could see no other course of action. She would try to find out what had happened, and if she could she would get the car keys from him, or the keys to one of the other cars. And then she would come back down the mountain and drive like a fiend to the nearest phone.

She would do it all extremely quickly and incredibly quietly, and there would be absolutely no danger whatsoever.

She heard the chanting before she reached the castle, and remembered fear closed in. But it was important to go on, and it was important to remember that whoever was in the castle would be so taken up with what was happening that she would not be seen.

The portcullis was down, exactly as Wagner had said. Hilary supposed that the castle’s occupants would have closed all doors and sealed all entrances. It remained to be seen if she could find Herr Wagner. There were thick lumpish shadows at the foot of the portcullis, which Hilary found disconcerting. But shadows were eerie anywhere and shadows up here were a hundred times worse. She skirted the castle carefully, thinking she would make for the little scullery door she and Michael had found on their earlier visit, and which Bremner and Burghen had planned to use.

As she rounded the side of the castle’s western walls, a hand came out to cover her mouth, and she was pulled into the deep shadow cast by Csejthe itself.

‘Don’t scream,’ said a voice. ‘It’s me – Bremner.’

He removed his hand cautiously, and Hilary took in a deep breath of air.

‘I was afraid you’d scream. I’m sorry if I frightened you.’

‘You did,’ said Hilary a bit sharply. ‘But I daresay I’ll recover. What’s happened? The radio cut off and—’

‘Yes, something’s happened to the others.’

‘What?’

There was a brief pause. Then Bremner said, awkwardly, ‘They tried to slide under the portcullis – it wasn’t completely down. Only something happened and they – it came crashing down on them.’

Hilary stared at him. ‘Dear Heaven, no . . .’

‘It was probably an accident – old machinery. Unsound—’

Hilary heard her voice say, ‘That’s absolute nonsense. If the gate came down it was because somebody brought it down deliberately.’ A pause. ‘They – are they dead?’

‘Yes.’ Bremner was not going to tell this gentle-voiced nun who could sometimes be very ungentle, and who had amazingly beautiful eyes, how he had managed to creep up to the huge entrance and search for his colleagues’ heartbeats and pulses. He knew quite well that his hands were smeared with their blood, which was a shocking thought to have if you let yourself dwell on it, and he feared, as well, that they had not all died at once. But Bremner had rather old-fashioned ideas about protecting ladies, and he would not have dreamed of telling Sister Hilary any of this. He said, ‘Yes, they were all killed.’

‘And the Chief Inspector?’

‘He’s vanished,’ said Bremner, and Hilary felt him make a swift, bewildered gesture. ‘He was out here somewhere. Burghen and I were going to enter the castle at the rear and he was going to stay out here to keep an overall control—’

‘Yes, I know that. Where’s Burghen?’

‘Looking for a way in at the rear. We’re going on with the plan. That’s always the arrangement on a – an assignment. If somebody gets hurt you do what you can or you summon help, but you go on. So we did. And then we heard you coming and I doubled back. We didn’t know who you were.’

‘Shouldn’t one of us go for – for reinforcements?’ It sounded silly. Like the old joke about the soldier whispering, ‘Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance,’ only by the time it got through, it had turned into, ‘Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance.’ Hilary gulped in a deep breath of cold night air and the threatening hysteria receded. ‘Couldn’t I drive one of the cars to a phone?’ she said.

‘Have you got the keys?’

‘No, Wagner took them. But there’re the other cars . . .’ She stopped. ‘Oh,’ said Hilary. ‘The other keys are in the pockets of the – the ones who’ve been killed. And you daren’t go to the front of the castle again in case you’re caught by—’

‘By whatever took the Chief,’ finished Bremner. ‘Exactly. We daren’t expose ourselves again—’

‘Because whoever’s on watch knows we’re here and is probably lurking somewhere.’ Hilary saw the logic of this. ‘Could I walk along the road until I reach a phone?’ she said, but even as she said it, she glanced uneasily over her shoulder.

‘Certainly not,’ said Bremner at once, because no matter what anyone else thought, you did not let a solitary lady – and a nun at that – go wandering off into the dark night.

‘Well, then I’d better come in with you,’ said Hilary.

‘Would you? I mean – do you mind?’ This was not really in accordance with correct procedures, but Hilary said firmly, ‘It’s better than sitting in the dark by myself. And we’ve got to find your Chief. Come on Bremner, the game’s afoot.’

‘What . . .’

‘A quotation. Never mind. Let’s find Burghen and get inside.’

Burghen had levered open a small scullery window, and he and Bremner went through first.

‘Because we don’t know what might be waiting on the other side,’ said Bremner, solemnly. ‘Can you manage, Sister?’

‘I can manage perfectly well, thanks, Bremner. By the way, do you think you could drop the “Sister”? It’s a bit formal when I’m wearing cords and a pullover and we’re scrambling through windows and holding hands in the dark.’

‘Hilary. All right.’

They stood for a moment in the shadowy scullery, listening. The castle felt different and Hilary knew at once that a great many people were here, in the way that you knew if a house was empty or occupied as soon as you entered it. As they went stealthily through the sculleries and along a narrow unlit corridor towards the castle’s heart, they heard voices raised in a rhythmic chanting and Hilary shivered, remembering how the corpse-creatures had crept up from the dungeons. But this was much louder than the corpse-things’ chanting had been; it was magnified as if a great many people were joining in.

She scanned the shadows as they went, because surely at any minute they would be caught, at any second somebody would spring out into the narrow passage and confront them. But nobody came and nobody seemed to hear. Because they were all too intent on whatever was going on in Csejthe tonight? Might it all be a trap? I wish Michael was here, thought Hilary, suddenly. It seemed odd to be sharing this new danger with someone other than Michael. Almost like being unfaithful. No, I mustn’t think like that. But please God, whatever he’s doing, let him be all right.

Light was spilling out into the corridor now: flickering red light that came from somewhere up ahead, and that showed their way more clearly and washed the dark cold stones to warm glowing colour. Ahead of them was a narrow doorway and beyond the doorway must be the stone hall. Was it? Yes, the chanting was louder now; it must be coming from the hall itself. Bremner pointed and then laid a finger on his lips, and Hilary understood that he was saying if they huddled silently in the shadows they would be able to see what was going on.

The flickering candles and the firelight illuminated the stone hall of Elizabeth Bathory’s castle to grisly life. Grotesque, fantastical silhouettes leapt and pranced across the walls, and to Hilary it was as if they stood on the threshold of one of the Middle Age conceptions of after-life: the stone-built iron-hued Malebolge of Dante . . . Milton’s brimstone sea of boiling fire . . . Hell with its fire-drenched dungeons and molten pavements.

The corpse-creatures were ranged at the head of the long table, their shrunken features lit from below, lending them a diabolic countenance. Behind them surged a crowd of people – Hilary thought there was easily a hundred, and the firelight fell over them so that she could see that they had the silken dark hair and the high, slanting cheekbones of Catherine and her family. Then they must all be Elizabeth’s descendants.

The man she recognised as Pál was standing before them, with Anna at his side, and every head was turned to the great archway leading to the courtyard. They’re waiting for something, thought Hilary. For someone? Is Catherine here? Dare I lean out a bit further?

From outside the hall was some kind of commotion: a scraping sound, as if something heavy and cumbersome was being brought across the cobbles of the courtyard. A great stillness fell on the hall and, although no one moved, every head craned forward and in every face fevered anticipation showed.

Something’s coming in, thought Hilary. Something that has an immense meaning. Something handed down to them by Elizabeth, could it be? She remembered the grinning iron cage with the glinting spikes that the gerons had used that night. Was it the cage they were bringing in? She touched Bremner’s arm and said, very softly, ‘I think this might be the exemplum,’ and saw him nod, as if the same thought had occurred to him.

Elizabeth Bathory’s descendants, bringing forward one of her old torture machines, so that the renegade in their ranks might be punished?

And then from out of the night, came six of Csejthe’s granite-faced attendants, bearing at shoulder height a long coffin-shaped casket, roughly seven feet long and perhaps three feet wide. It was rounded at one end, and as the guards carried it under the flaring wall brackets, Hilary saw that the lid had been shaped or carved to represent a slumbering female figure, the arms crossed on its breast, rather in the way that Egyptian sarcophagi and mummy-cases were carved. An iron coffin, thought Hilary, and at once, horrified memories of the medieval Iron Maiden flooded her mind: the terrible instrument of the Middle Age torturers who forced their victims to lie inside, and then slammed the spiked door impaling them. Hilary leaned farther out, trying to see better. Would the carved door swing open, showing glinting spikes . . .?

The silence in the stone hall was absolute and Hilary thought you could feel the anticipation and the fierce emotion as if it was a solid thing.

The attendants set the coffin down so that the round head-part was uppermost, propping it carefully against the chimney wall. Pál and Anna both moved at once, coming to stand on either side of it. The attendants stepped back, and Pál reached out to touch the smooth surface as if in a caress. As the wall sconces directly over his head flared, Hilary saw that the coffin was not, as she had thought, iron, but soft pure silver. There was a moment when Pál and Anna regarded one another, and the thin cruel wolfsmile showed on their faces. And then Pál turned to Ladislas and in his once-beautiful voice, said, ‘You have done well, Ladislas.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ladislas, but he, too, was staring at the coffin as if hypnotised by it.

‘And now we are all gathered,’ said Anna, a note of deep satisfaction in her tone. She turned to survey the assembly and in a voice suddenly sharper, said, ‘Where is LaBianca?’

‘At CrnPrag,’ said Ladislas. ‘Ensuring that an innocent façade is presented if the wretched snooping police enter. She will be here in good time for the ritual.’

‘A pity if she misses it,’ said Pál, thoughtfully, but Anna said in the same sharp voice, ‘Bianca has taken part in too many rituals to mind overmuch about missing this one.’

‘And,’ said Pál, thoughtfully, ‘perhaps she has discovered an unexpected streak of squeamishness. Well, we shall not delay for her. As Anna says, we are all gathered.’ He reached out to the coffin lid and Hilary dug the nails into the palms of her hands. This would be it, this would be the glinting spikes, catching the red firelight as they moved, only you would be unsure of whether it was really firelight, or whether the points were still dripping with blood from the last victim . . .

The lid came away slowly, reluctantly and with a little sighing sound as if whatever lay within regretted the intrusion.

Whatever lay within . . .

A low murmur went through the hall, so charged with emotion that it was very nearly sexual. The inside of the silver coffin that Hilary had thought resembled a sarcophagus was the same smooth silver as the outside. There were no traces of tarnish anywhere, as if every inch of it had been polished and quite recently. At the heart, in a scooped out hollow, lay a small figure, swathed and bandaged in the way that the mummified bodies of the ancient Egyptians had been swathed and bandaged. A faint musky odour of bitumen and gum rose in the warmth of the hall and a sick dread began to uncoil in Hilary’s mind.

Pál said, ‘The exemplum has never been used in all our history.’ He looked round the hall, and then back at Anna. ‘But it will be used tonight,’ he said. ‘The renegade Pietro and the bastard Franz-Josef will both be brought up presently, and they will both suffer it.’ With another of the aristocratic gestures, he pointed to the frail embalmed creature in the silver tomb.

‘But we could not proceed with the exemplum without the presence of the Lady of Csejthe herself,’ said Pál, and Hilary felt the horror uncoil and then lash stingingly across her mind. She stared incredulously at the silver coffin, her mind tumbling with disbelief.

This was not one of Elizabeth’s torture machines.

It was Elizabeth herself.

Hilary knew that the thing in the coffin could only be a shell; she knew it logically and sensibly and practically. Shrivelled and husked and long since juiceless.

But as she stared at the swathed bandages, she found that she was not thinking: that is only a poor dead body, but – this is the monster of Csejthe Castle.

Elizabeth Bathory’s mummified body, embalmed and shrouded in the perfumed linens and the natron and bitumen of the Egyptians, encased in its grisly silver tomb. Hilary felt sick and dizzy because this was completely and wholly dreadful. That shrivelled scrap of mortality in its lumpish pitiful bandages, was the creature who had tortured and killed hundreds of girls for their blood. And who had handed down the terrible legacy to the people gathered in the hall tonight.

She turned to Bremner and Burghen, both of whom were staring into the hall as if unable to believe any of it.

Without warning, feet came pounding hard along the corridor, and as the three jerked round, there in the shadows were the runny-tallow faces of the two dwarves, Ficzko and Janos.

As Hilary looked frantically about her for an escape route, the two creatures leapt forward and she saw that behind them were six of the attendants.

Chapter Forty-one

The two police officers fought furiously, but the Csejthe guards overpowered them almost instantly and with what Hilary could not help thinking of as nearly contemptuous ease. Hilary, who had tried to dodge back into the passage, was snatched up and carried into the hall. It felt suddenly and dreadfully vulnerable to be out here, with every face turned towards her. Were they assessing her? Were they thinking, One for our ritual?

Pál and Anna were both studying her and Hilary glared defiantly at them. After a moment Pál said, with satisfaction, ‘The little English runaway. The one who escaped us.’

‘But will not do so again,’ said Anna and incredibly there was a lick of sexual greed in her voice. Hilary shivered, and Anna smiled and said, ‘Ladislas will deal with you presently, my dear.’

‘If he tries to touch me I will scratch out his eyes,’ said Hilary clinging to anger and defiance.

Ladislas at once said, ‘I should enjoy the fight.’

‘Whatever she does, she won’t get away this time,’ said Pál, dismissively and nodded to the attendants. ‘Bind her and put her with the others.’

‘She will add to the ones brought from CrnPrag,’ said Anna, and Hilary’s mind sprang to attention all over again. CrnPrag. Had Michael reached it? Had he got inside without being caught? She scanned the hall frantically, but there was no sign of him and she could not decide if this was encouraging or not.

Pál said, ‘And now bring up the prisoners for the exemplum.’

As the guards moved to the door leading to the dungeons, Anna Bathory said, ‘And bring out the blacksmith’s cage.’

The instant Hilary saw Pietro Bathory, she understood why Catherine’s eyes had shone with such luminosity when she spoke of him, and why Ladislas and Stefan had deemed it so necessary to rid themselves of him before attempting their coup.

He stood at the far end of the hall, held by the attendants; Franz-Josef was with him, both of them held firmly and although Hilary looked first at Franz-Josef, once she had looked at Pietro she forgot everything else. She forgot for the moment about being captured and she certainly forgot about the grisly thing in the coffin.

She had been strongly aware of Franz-Josef’s charm at Varanno that night, but Pietro was Franz-Josef twenty – thirty, years earlier. This was the saint or the rebel that had looked from Franz-Josef’s eyes but, whereas in the father the saintliness had dimmed and the rebelliousness had diluted, there was nothing dimmed and there was certainly nothing diluted about the son. Hilary thought you could not often apply the adjective ‘beautiful’ to a man, but you could apply it to Pietro Bathory. His eyes were as dark as his sister’s and even from this distance, the lashes that veiled them were long and silken. His skin was pale; even with the shadow of a ragged beard, his bone structure was remarkable. This was a face out of its time, a face you might, if you were fortunate, come across in Renaissance Florence or Moorish Spain. You might find it standing at the stake, ready to die for an outlawed religion, or you might see it in one of the dreaming spire-tipped citadels of learning, the eyes burning with the fervour of creation. Scholar and lover and poet . . . Yes, he had probably been all three. He had the long sensitive hands of an artist, and the dark slanting eyebrows of a rebel. Hilary felt her grasp on reality slip for a moment because this was a face, these were eyes you might very easily go to the block or the stake for . . . Small wonder that Catherine’s face had always filled up with such light when she spoke of her brother . . .

Hilary blinked and reached for normality, and the strange images faded, and she was inside the half-ruined medieval castle again and she had to think of a way to get out.

Pál was regarding Pietro thoughtfully, and after a moment he said, ‘You know that you are here for the exemplum.’ He gestured to where the grinning cage was being manoeuvred into the hall, and Pietro said in a bored voice, ‘Yes?’

‘You see the Family are all gathered,’ said Pál, making one of his wide graceful gestures to indicate the packed hall.

‘The exemplum was always intended to be witnessed by everyone,’ said Franz-Josef with immense politeness. ‘I am so glad to see you have not neglected that courtesy to our people, Pál. Elizabeth’s own cage to be used, as well.’ He inspected it with detached, almost scholarly interest and Hilary was suddenly sharply grateful to him for being arrogant and aloof before these people.

Pietro had ignored the cage, but he was studying the open coffin with sardonic interest.

‘So that is the Lady herself, is it?’ he said. ‘It’s rather a garish tomb you gave her, Pál.’

‘It’s very nearly vulgar,’ agreed Franz-Josef, turning to look.

‘But then Pál’s branch of the family was never famous for its good taste,’ finished Pietro.

Pál did not move, but a tautness came over him. He said, ‘You were always an insolent cub, Pietro,’ and Pietro grinned and said, ‘So I was. Shall I be making history tonight? The Family have never before executed a renegade, have they? And,’ said Pietro looking around the assembly sarcastically, ‘I can see the huge effort it’s costing everyone.’

Pál was watching Pietro, and Stefan and Ladislas were standing with him. Ladislas said, ‘You do know that you can’t escape?’

Pietro looked at him in surprise. ‘Yes of course,’ he said, as if he thought Ladislas a fool.

‘No farewell speech?’ said Pál, with a sneer.

‘Well,’ said Pietro, as if this was something to be given careful consideration, ‘if I put my mind to it, I expect I could come up with a speech that would burn the air with its fervour.’ He eyed the three men before him. ‘I could certainly hold most of you up to ridicule,’ he said, and Ladislas made a quick angry movement. ‘What are you going to do with my father?’ said Pietro, suddenly and for the first time Ladislas hesitated. It was Stefan who answered.

‘He will join the gerons. But first he will be made to relinquish his position as the Family’s head.’

Pietro looked at Franz-Josef, who said, suavely, ‘How very unpleasant. But not wholly unexpected. Supposing I were to refuse?’

‘Then you will die with Pietro.’

‘Ah. And you will take my place, will you? Yes, I see.’ He looked at Stefan. ‘Do you really think they will accept your authority after me?’ he said, and although he did not say, You fool, every person in the hall heard the words. ‘Where is Cat?’ said Franz-Josef.

‘She is here,’ said Pál.

‘Where?’ It was Pietro who spoke now, and the sharpness of his tone sliced across the listening hall. A thin cruel smile curved Pál’s lips.

‘So I have found your weakness at last,’ he said, softly. ‘You and Cat. I suspected as much, but I was never sure.’ He studied Pietro. ‘A damned incest going on under our noses,’ he said, in the same silken tone and Pietro made an abrupt movement as if to strike Pál but the guards held him back.

Pál gestured impatiently towards the half-shelter of the stone alcove where Catherine lay. ‘Bring her forward,’ he said, and the men stooped to unlock the fetters about Catherine’s legs and pulled her into the hall.

Catherine had barely been aware of the scuffle beyond the stone hall, or the capture of Hilary and the two policemen.

Until Pietro and her father were brought up from the dungeons, there had been nothing in the world for Catherine except the small embalmed figure in its silent coffin. Elizabeth, thought Catherine, staring as if she could penetrate the coverings. That is the creature who has shadowed my entire life. I killed for you, Elizabeth. I performed bloody butchery for you in stealthy forests and deserted midnight streets, and all the while I thought it was some kind of secret legacy.

She dragged her gaze from the coffin at last and looked round the hall, a deep anger stirring. My own people and they all knew. They all knew about Elizabeth and the blood. In this hall was the feeling of a ritual performed so often that it had long since been honed to perfection. Catherine looked to where the bewildered girls were clustered together in a corner, held by the attendants from CrnPrag, and black bitterness rose in her throat. Those will be the victims. Those are the ones brought here to be drained of their blood. All those years when I tried to fight, thought Catherine. All those nights when I crept shivering and frightened after likely victims, and afterwards buried their bodies in forests and cellars.

And during those years when she had been fighting Elizabeth’s taint, the Family had been accepting it. And nobody told me.

When Pietro was brought in, Catherine felt as if her heart had been twisted out by its roots, and when the guards dragged her to the centre of the hall, she saw something violent and painful flare behind Pietro’s eyes.

He said, very softly, ‘I prayed you had escaped.’

‘I did escape for a while . . .’ Pointless to say, I came back because they told me you were sick and demented. Catherine said, ‘They brought me back.’

‘Yes.’ Pietro looked at the guards standing around them, and spread his hands in a gesture midway between helplessness and bitterness. ‘So after all it ends here, my love.’

My love . . . His voice was like a caress, and with the sound, the years of struggling to forget, of trying to build a bridge to take her away from that sweet sinless night at Varanno melted into nothing. I might as well not have tried, thought Catherine staring at Pietro, the old longing scalding her body and searing her mind. All those exhausting months of forcing my mind on to other paths. I have only to see him and I am burning up again.

Pietro reached out and cupped her face in the remembered gesture, his eyes boring into her as if he wanted to print her on his memory for ever, as if he wanted the sight of her to be the last thing he would see. He said, very quietly, ‘I take you with me, my love.’

Catherine could no longer see for the stupid tears that were streaming down her face, and she knew she was going to have to watch him die. Pietro, who was filled with such life, and who was so dear, so precious, was going to die. It no longer mattered about pretending not to be afraid before Ladislas and Stefan and the others, all that mattered was to stop them from killing him, spilling his life onto the floor of Elizabeth’s castle—

‘Make them stop,’ whispered Catherine. ‘Oh God make them stop—’

She was crying and struggling to get free, but he said, very softly, ‘Let me lay it down, Katerina. Let me go.’

Because I shall take you with me, my love. And because in this way, I shall find peace . . . Catherine heard his thoughts as easily as he had always been able to hear hers. Pietro said, very softly, ‘There has never been any peace since that night,’ and Catherine knew he had suffered as she had. All of those bleak desolate nights when you tried to pray, but when the pain smothered your prayers; all those hours of piteous entreaty – help me, God! – but when God was beyond your reach, and the only solace was the dark trickle of Elizabeth, clawing her way into your mind . . .

And now Pietro is going to die, and then there will be nothing in the world anywhere, ever again . . .

Pietro looked back at Pál and said, sharply, ‘Is Katerina to suffer the exemplum also?’

‘No. She is to be brought to the ritual. Elizabeth’s legacy will be offered to her.’

‘But first,’ said Anna, ‘she is to witness your punishment.’

A ripple of new awareness stirred the assembly and a spark of rebellion flared in Pietro’s eyes. For one marvellous moment, Catherine thought that Pietro was going to throw off the guards, and make a run for the door, and she felt her own muscles tense, because of course she would go with him, nothing else was bearable, there would be a way . . .

And then she felt the gyves snap as she pulled against them, and the despair and the pain closed down again, because of course there was to be no escape.

Pietro looked at Pál. ‘Well,’ he said, impatiently. ‘Shall we get it over with?’

With a rasping that grated on Catherine’s stripped-raw nerves, the guards pulled open the door of the terrible cage.

Catherine was dragged back and pushed against the wall. She was shivering with cold fear, and the scene was blurring before her eyes, but she would not faint, she would not give way to merciful unconscious . . . She would be with Pietro every inch. Let me share the pain with him, God. They’re putting him in Elizabeth’s cage . . .

Pietro was eyeing it quite coolly, but Catherine, helpless in her corner, felt his fear like a white-hot spear cleaving her mind. She looked frenziedly around the hall. Were the Family going to let this happen? Wasn’t there one of them who would move to stop it?

The guards were pulling Pietro forward and now, finally, he was fighting. Catherine could see that even though there were three of them, they were having difficulty in holding him and she understood that although there could not possibly be any escape, Pietro was making it as difficult as possible for them. For an incredible minute she thought he would actually break free and her heart bounded, but then two more guards ran across the hall. Between them they dragged Pietro up to the cage and began to force him inside. Catherine’s heart twisted again and she began to feel sick. Elizabeth’s grinning cylindrical cage had been fashioned when people were smaller and slighter, but it had been planned by a tortuous mind and the dimensions had been carefully thought out. Even the under-nourished peasant girls would have been cruelly compressed by the rigid iron hoops that circled the framework. For Pietro, who was slender but quite tall, it must feel like being held in a vise. Could he smell the agonies and the torments that would have soaked into the evil frame?

For a moment it seemed as if no one was going to move and as if no one was going to be the one to slam the door. It hung open, moving a little: Catherine could see the glinting spikes quite clearly and she could see the anguish in her father’s eyes. Which of them would do it? Pál himself? It wouldn’t be Anna, thought Catherine with a sudden spurt of cynicism. Anna would derive far more pleasure from watching someone else.

And then Ladislas stepped forward, and a low murmur went through the watching crowd and Catherine thought: yes, of course it would be Ladislas. Ladislas’s eyes were glittering triumphantly; fingers of colour were painted across his high cheekbones and his hatred of Pietro had never been plainer. Catherine looked about her frenziedly. Were the Family really going to let this happen? She looked at the faces – almost all of them familiar from visits to Varanno, and saw the fear and greed in their faces. Disgust rose in her at the sheep-creatures, the sycophants who so slavishly followed anyone who could grab a spurious authority. For the first time she saw Hilary, held by two of the guards, standing white-faced on the other side of the hall, and this was so unexpected that her attention was momentarily distracted. Hilary did not fit into any of this. Catherine stared at her, and Hilary turned and looked across the hall. Their eyes met, and Catherine thought Hilary tried to say something, but she was too far away to understand what it was, and she had no emotion to spare for anything other than Pietro.

Ladislas was standing in front of the iron grilles and the hoops and staves wrought four and a half centuries earlier by a bemused village blacksmith. The fire blazed up and the wall sconces flickered wildly, silhouetting him darkly against the red glow of the fire and the candles. Catherine clasped her hands and sent up every prayer, every plea, every frantic agonised supplication she had ever heard that Pietro would escape.

Ladislas paused, and made a curious gesture of obeisance to the thing in the silver coffin and another of the low murmurs went through the watchers.

‘Elizabeth—’

Catherine sank to the ground, wrapping her arms about her, rocking to and fro, sobbing in helpless agony, and it was at that moment that there was the sound of running footsteps outside and wild shouting. Every head turned, and across the courtyard, lit to fantastical silhouette by the deep purple Carpathian night, came Bianca Bathory, running hard, her hair tossed into wild disarray by the wind, her eyes brilliant with fury. Behind her, running at her heels, brandishing makeshift but effective weapons, were the lunatics from CrnPrag, the poor demented men and women who had suffered under Stefan’s cruel cold rule for so many years.

Orsolya was running with them, but immediately behind Orsolya, Tobias’s arm holding him firmly, was Michael.

Chapter Forty-two

Hilary felt a surge of delight so immense that for a moment she could not speak. Michael was safe. He was here. And then she was fighting against the guards’ hands, struggling and clawing to get free, shouting to Michael at the top of her voice.

‘Over here! Michael over here!’

The lunatics were pouring into the hall, singing as they came, scrambling over the stunned guards at the door and knocking them to the ground, singing in high ragged voices as they came.

‘The blood . . . Never failed me yet.

Never failed me yet . . .

Though I die, I shall live . . .’

There was no time to wonder who these creatures were or how they were here, or even which side they were on. Michael was only yards away and nothing mattered in the whole world but reaching him.

The stone hall was becoming a seething boiling mass of screaming people and wild-eyed men and women, but above it, Hilary heard Michael’s voice.

‘Where are you? Hilary keep shouting!’

‘Here! Michael. I’m over here – on your left! Oh hurry—’ The guards who had been holding her let go without warning, and ran across the hall, hitting out at the surging frenzied creatures, making for the cowering gerons at the far side. Hilary sped across the hall, dodging the ragged, mad-eyed creatures as she went, and tumbled into Michael’s arms, sobbing and gasping.

‘You’re safe, lady, it’s all right— I’ve got you.’

Nothing had ever been so safe, so familiar, so utterly and absolutely right as the feeling of his arms closing around her. Even in the midst of the maelstrom of noise and confusion and rocketing terror, Hilary thought: oh yes, this is where I’m supposed to be. There was the remembered feel of his skin, rough and a bit unshaven, and the clean masculine scent all round her. Hilary wanted to run out with him into the safe dark night beyond Csejthe, but she said, ‘There’s no time to explain any of it, but Catherine’s here, she’s chained up, and we must get her out. And Pietro— Oh God, Michael, Pietro’s in Elizabeth’s cage—’

‘Yes. All right. If they can be got out we’ll do it.’ He took her hand firmly and held out the stick with his other hand as if he could see with it. ‘What’s happening? Are the CrnPrag people fighting them?’

‘What?’ Hilary found his sudden understanding of what was happening bewildering. But she scanned the hall hastily, and said, ‘Yes, they’re falling on the corpse-things – Pál and Anna and the others. It’s – oh Michael, it’s rather horrible. They’re crouching in a corner, terrified— one of them’s screaming – I think it’s Anna.’

‘Serve them right,’ said Michael callously. ‘Jesus, yes I can hear her. Where’s Catherine exactly? Can we get to her without going across the centre?’ He frowned, as if painting himself a mind-picture of the hall. ‘What about going round the edges? Against the wall?’

‘Yes, we could do that. Couldn’t we, Tobias?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Right. Hold on to me for grim death as we go,’ he said. ‘Tobias?’

‘I’m here.’

‘Good man.’ Michael put out his free hand for Tobias. ‘Now: all for one and one for all. Hilary, for the love of every saint in heaven, don’t let go of me!’ The familiar grin flashed out, and Hilary stared at him and felt a wild surge of joy. ‘We’re simply going to walk round the sides of this godforsaken hole and grab Catherine and carry her out. Bodily if we have to. Pietro as well if we can get him out of – what did you say he was in?’

‘He’s in a cage,’ said Hilary, knowing it sounded absurd.

‘In a cage? Dear God,’ said Michael. ‘All right. Take my hand, lady. And if you want to take it for the rest of your life, it’s yours. But we’ll talk about that afterwards. Ready? Now then!’

Elizabeth’s song was filling up the hall, and the CrnPrag lunatics were streaming everywhere. Catherine, torn between agony for Pietro and anguish about what would happen, thought there were easily sixty or seventy of them. CrnPrag’s inmates? All mad, thought Catherine, staring at them. And Orsolya the maddest of them all. She taught them Elizabeth’s song, and I believe she taught them Elizabeth’s hungers, as well. That’s how Elizabeth would have looked, thought Catherine, staring at Orsolya. Her eyes went involuntarily to the dead enigmatic thing in the coffin and she shivered. It was eerie beyond imagining to crouch in a corner of Csejthe Castle, watching Elizabeth’s blood ritual acted out, with the dead Countess herself presiding over it.

Catherine shuddered and turned back to the hall. The lunatics were falling on the guards and advancing on Stefan and the rest of the Family. Catherine could see her mother and Franz-Josef near to the silver coffin, both of them trying to find a way through the screaming whirling mass of people. Franz-Josef looked across at Catherine, and she thought he was trying to shout something to her and gesture at Pietro, but the shrieking of the lunatics blotted out almost every other sound.

Bianca brought them here, thought Catherine, tearing her nails into bloodied ribbons in her struggle to break free, uncaring and unfeeling of the pain. Somehow she got them out of CrnPrag and led them up the mountain path. Did Michael Devlin help her to do that? It’s a rescue, thought Catherine, wildly. But is it enough? Are there enough of them? Oh God, if ever I prayed to You, I’m praying now. Let Orsolya’s people be strong enough to fight Stefan and Ladislas and the rest. Let them be sane enough . . . And then with sudden understanding: no! Let them be mad enough. Because this is the superhuman strength of real madness, this is the unearthly strength of dementia, the strength that bows only to straight-jackets and barred cells . . . If they were never mad before, please let them be so now, prayed Catherine.

Orsolya bounded to the centre of the hall and stood there for a moment, clad in the rough, no-colour CrnPrag shift, her stance that of an animal ready to pounce, her feet slightly apart, the muscles quivering, her shoulders hunched. Her fingers had curled into predator’s talons and her eyes darted incessantly from side to side. Which way to spring? Which one to pounce on? Which one to take first? She was like an insect ready to dart at its prey, an animal quivering before the final spring . . .

Stefan and Ladislas turned to meet the onslaught, and the Family moved to stand with them. They don’t believe what is happening, but they’ll fight it all the same, thought Catherine. She wanted to scream with the frustration of not being able to reach Pietro.

Orsolya, her eyes red and feral, leapt straight at Stefan, knocking him backwards. There was a sickening crunch as the back of his head hit the ground, and Orsolya gave a wild, triumphant screech and crouched on him, tearing at this throat with her nails. Bright red arterial blood spurted out, and Catherine knew that Orsolya had clawed open the jugular vein, and that Stefan would die almost instantly.

‘The blood—’ shrieked Orsolya, lifting her head. ‘Take the blood!’ At once the lunatics bounded forward, tumbling on to the horrified Family, cutting and slashing at them with their makeshift weapons: their knives and trowels and scissors. They sang Elizabeth’s song as they went, and the sound lifted the hairs on Catherine’s scalp. The hall was becoming fetid with terror and madness and hideous with the screams of the gerons. As Orsolya’s lunatics slashed and stabbed, the stench of blood rose on the air in thick, coppery waves.

Orsolya was still crouching over the unconscious Stefan, her face in his neck, but as Catherine watched, Orsolya lifted her head. Her mouth and her jaw were smothered in fresh, warm blood; it dripped from her lips and she threw back her head and smeared her hands over her face, and ran her flattened palms down over her body.

‘The blood . . . Never failed us yet . . .

Never failed us yet, sisters . . .

Though we die, we can live . . .’

Skirting the edges of the heaving screaming mass of blood and pain and fear was like walking along the shores of a boiling spitting sea. Hilary was very frightened indeed. But Michael was with her, and Tobias, and it had to be done. She took a deep breath and felt Michael’s hand tighten about hers.

The stench of the spilled blood was like a solid wall in the hot crowded hall and Hilary felt her mouth fill with bile, the prelude to actual sickness. Her stomach lurched.

‘Are we reaching Catherine?’ shouted Michael above the screaming and the singing. ‘Hilary, where are we? I need to know exactly where we are. Keep talking.’

Hilary gulped and forced her mind to concentrate. If you concentrated fiercely on something vital your mind would not let your body betray you. She said, ‘We’re nearly there.’

‘How far? Hilary, how far?’

He might be doing it to stop her from throwing up there and then or he might not. Whatever his reasons, Hilary was feeling better. She swallowed hard and the nausea receded. ‘Twenty feet or so. No one’s taking any notice of us.’ Yes, this was better. Narrow your mind to the task in hand.

Michael said, ‘Good girl! Keep going, my love! Ever onwards and upwards!’ Again there was the grin. She was not going to be sick after all.

Catherine was still chained to the wall and as the three of them went warily forward, Hilary saw with delight that Bremner and Burghen had broken free as well. Bremner’s cheek had been laid open by someone’s knife and blood was soaking into his jacket, and Burghen looked as if he had been punched several times, but they were both free. There appeared to be some kind of hasty consultation, and then Burghen made off towards the door that led to the dungeons, and Bremner began pushing his way towards Catherine.

The lunatics paid them no attention. They had surrounded the Family and they were slashing and cutting wildly, leaping on to the nearest and bringing down knives and razors until the blood flowed. Hilary spared them a glance, and thought that although there did not seem to be very much method about what they were doing, they were being astonishingly effective. Blood was pouring from dozens of stab wounds, here and there spurting in a gruesome fountain as a main artery was cut.

And then as if a signal had been given, the lunatics linked hands and began to dance in a circle about the wounded Family, forming a mad crazed pattern, going round and round. Most of the Family were injured and blood smeared the floor and lay in puddles everywhere. Bianca and Franz-Josef were still on the other side, and Hilary thought that neither of them had been injured, but she could not be sure. She found herself hoping very strenuously that they would both escape.

Every few minutes, the lunatics stopped abruptly in their leaping flying dance and crouched to scoop up the blood, wiping it over their skins, the women thrusting bloodied fingers into their hair.

‘We shall live for ever and ever and ever and ever—’

‘The blood, the blood—’

‘Feel it, feel the blood’s kiss—’

They paid Hilary and the two men no attention at all.

Bremner reached Catherine first and Hilary saw him deal the nearest guard a mighty punch to the jaw. The man staggered and fell back and Bremner bent over him, snatching up the bunch of keys at the man’s waist. As Hilary and Tobias knelt to help, Bremner said brusquely. ‘The keys – here—’ He threw them into her hands. ‘Unlock her and get her out. I’ll try to reach her brother—’

‘Pray God one of them fits,’ said Michael. ‘Tobias—?’

‘I’ll help Bremner,’ said Tobias.

‘Will you? Come on, then. Burghen’s gone down to the dungeons to see if he can find the chief.’

‘Oh God yes, Wagner—’ said Hilary, who was fumbling with the keys, trying one after the other. Oh God, why are there so many?

Bremner had straightened up and was scanning the hall to find the safest path across it, but Catherine grabbed Hilary’s arm, and pointed. ‘Pietro! Hilary, he’s over there! He’s free! Help him!’

‘Dear God, yes! Bremner, can you reach him? While I free Catherine, can you reach him? Oh, why are there so many keys to this thing!’

Pietro’s face was white; his eyes were dazed and he was bleeding from a dozen different lacerations. But he had somehow fought his way out of the terrible cage, and he was struggling to get across the hall.

To Catherine, thought Hilary, staring at him, I don’t believe he even sees anyone else. She turned back to the keys, trying one after the other, her hands shaking with panic and the need for speed.

As Bremner and Tobias started forward to Pietro, Orsolya leapt on to the oaken table, chanting Elizabeth’s song and holding out her arms. Her eyes were rinsed of any sanity they might once have possessed, and she whirled into the mad flying dance of the others, knocking aside the silver platters and chalices that had been set out for the ceremony.

Her flying feet caught the branched candlesticks and sent them tumbling straight into the dry dusty swathes of the wall hangings.

The fire burned up instantly, catching the centuries-old fabric of the castle, flaring the tapestries into blazing life, and reaching up to lick the ceiling rafters. Within minutes, the great hall was a conflagration.

The lunatics were screaming wildly, clawing at one another in panic, and the Family were crawling and dragging themselves to the door, leaving sticky slimed trails of blood as they went. Hilary saw Ladislas make for the little door that led to the sculleries, but even as he did so, a new path of fire sprang up and barred his way. He flinched and turned back, stark terror in his eyes.

Black smoke was filling the hall, and the flames had reached the ceiling beams: burning chunks of wood were falling everywhere.

With a prayer of relief, Hilary felt the next key turn in the locks of Catherine’s gyves, and as the chains slithered open, Catherine bounded forward towards Pietro.

Hilary caught her arm and pulled her back. ‘No! We can get out through the courtyard! Come this way—’

Catherine shook off her arm furiously, her eyes blazing.

‘Pietro!’ she cried. ‘I must reach Pietro!’

‘No!’ cried Michael, reaching out instinctively. ‘Hell and the devil. I can’t see! Hilary, stop her!’

Hilary had already grabbed both of Catherine’s arms, but Catherine shook her off and turned to plunge straight into the raging fire. Hilary took a deep breath and made to go after her and felt Michael drag her back at once.

‘No! You’ll be burned to a crisp! We’ll all be burned! That’s a raging torment in there – I can hear it and I can feel it! Come out!’

‘But Catherine . . .’ She stopped, seeing that Catherine was already beyond her reach, understanding for the first time that Catherine would have gone to Pietro through worse dangers than fire.

A face you would go to the stake for . . .

As Catherine ran across the hall, Elizabeth Bathory’s coffin, dislodged by the heat and the furious fighting, began to topple slowly forward. Hilary felt the breath catch her throat, because Catherine seemed to be going straight into its path.

And then a cascading shower of sparks from overhead fell on to the coffin, and there was the sudden crackling of dry, old linen catching fire. The thing that had once terrorised the countryside for miles around, the creature that had laid dormant in its shroud for four and a half centuries, blazed up in a single blinding sheet of flame.

Pietro flinched from the sudden heat, throwing up his hands to shield his face, and then ran forward again.

As Catherine fell into his arms, the silver coffin, the ancient grisly casket with the blazing remains of Elizabeth Bathory inside, toppled forward, crushing them both.

Michael and Tobias half dragged, half carried Hilary across the courtyard, and although she could hear the fire roaring up behind them, devouring the old castle, and although she could smell the heat and the burning timbers, she could no longer see for the tears, the stupid senseless tears that were streaming down her face.

They paused for a moment, gulping in huge breaths of the cool clean mountain air, while behind them the castle was lit to blazing life against the night sky.

Hilary stopped and brushed the back of her hand angrily against her eyes, and forced herself to look back.

Csejthe could never be saved now. It would be razed to the ground and within its walls were Catherine and Pietro, and Franz-Josef and Bianca. The flames were shooting up into the night sky, illuminating the countryside for miles around. Would the villagers and the hill farmers huddle in their houses as they had done once before, and tell each other that the legend was dead at last?

Because tonight Csejthe was dying; it was burning and within its heart, burned the Blood Countess’s descendants.

And the body of Elizabeth herself burned with them.

Chapter Forty-three

Hilary sat with Michael, Armand Wagner and Tobias in Reverend Mother’s study. One of the scullery nuns had built up the fire, and Sister Margaret, beaming, had brought in a platter of sandwiches, because there were to be Men present, and Men had to be fed. There was a tray with a coffee pot and cups on it, together with a pair of very beautiful cut-glass Venetian decanters holding brandy and whisky.

‘A small gift that I brought with me when I came to St Luke’s,’ Reverend Mother said tranquilly, pouring brandy into exquisite goblets. ‘Mr Devlin you will take a little brandy?’

‘I will indeed.’ Michael held out his hand, not fumblingly or impatiently, but sharply and cleanly, waiting for her to place the glass in his hand. Hilary watched. Three more days until he entered Istvan’s clinic for the operation. He might almost have forgotten about it. He had already begun dictating everything that had happened on to the small dictaphone. ‘A book,’ he had said, with one of his sudden grins. ‘Or at the very least, a good long TV documentary. This is much too rich to waste on a single article. They’re all dead, so no one’s going to be hurt.’

Armand Wagner sat next to Michael; he was pale and there was still an ugly bruise on his temple where Janos had struck him and raw patches of skin on his arms where Burghen had dragged him out of Csejthe’s dungeons, but he accepted the brandy appreciatively and sat back. Hilary was very glad indeed that Burghen had got him out.

Tobias was entirely at ease. He had shaken hands with Reverend Mother and appeared to be finding his surroundings of immense interest. ‘A very beautiful place, your convent,’ he had said solemnly. ‘Much history.’

‘Some of it rather violent, I am afraid,’ said Reverend Mother, but Tobias had replied seriously that history was a mixture anyway; that was what made it so interesting. He sat in a wide chair by the fire, sipping his brandy with evident enjoyment, a look of pleased expectancy on his round face.

Reverend Mother took charge in her own way, saying composedly that the Convent had commenced a series of Masses for the repose of the souls who had died at Csejthe, and Michael said, ‘Of course,’ as if this were an everyday thing and to be expected. ‘Tell me, was the castle completely burned?’ he said, and Wagner paused, marshalling his thoughts before answering.

‘There is very little left,’ he said at last. ‘We sent people in as soon as we could, and some of the ground floor rooms are still intact. The sculleries at the rear and the stable block. But everything else perished.’

‘Including the people inside,’ said Michael, half to himself, and Wagner made a quick gesture as if to say it had been inevitable.

‘And your arrival saved many lives.’ He paused and then said, ‘May we know more about that?’

Michael revolved the brandy goblet between his hands. ‘The storming of CrnPrag,’ he said, softly. ‘Do you know, it didn’t go at all as I expected.’

‘These things seldom do,’ murmured Wagner.

‘I thought we’d go rampaging in with flags flying and bugles sounding – like Henry V at Agincourt or the Battle of Britain or something,’ said Michael. ‘In fact all we did – Tobias and I – was nearly ruin Bianca’s plan.’ The ghost of a grin touched his face. ‘A remarkable lady, Bianca Bathory,’ he said, reminiscently. ‘I wish I could have seen her.’ He sipped the brandy in his glass. ‘She was still inside CrnPrag when we got there, of course and to begin with, she was all for flinging us into the cells and forgetting about us.’

‘But – she realised that you were on the same side?’ said Wagner.

‘Well, I did some pretty fast talking,’ said Michael. ‘But at last we joined forces.’ This time there was no doubt about the grin.

‘But,’ put in Tobias, ‘it must be explained that there was a spell of time when matters were a little – on the fence.’

‘In the balance?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘She knew about the plot to remove Franz-Josef, of course,’ said Michael.

‘How?’

‘Well, she’d been having an affair with Ladislas Bathory.’ Michael paused and Hilary glanced at Reverend Mother, who said, mildly,

‘Dear me. And he so much younger.’

Michael looked amused, but he only said, ‘Ladislas and Stefan thought Bianca was on their side, but what neither of them realised – what the gerons in Csejthe didn’t realise either – was that although Bianca had taken lovers all her life, she was totally and irrevocably committed to Franz-Josef. She was absolutely loyal in a – a fundamental way that had nothing to do with sexual relationships. Sorry, Reverend Mother.’

Reverend Mother said, ‘True loyalty is a very great prize. I should have been interested to meet her.’

‘I think,’ said Michael, ‘that she had been dazzled by Franz-Josef when she was very young, and—’

He stopped, searching for words, and Hilary said softly, ‘She had stayed dazzled.’

‘Yes. It was rather a remarkable partnership, that one. I certainly don’t think she had taken Ladislas very seriously.’

Hilary thought about saying that no one who was married to Franz-Josef could possibly have taken anyone else seriously, and decided against it.

‘She was fiercely loyal to Catherine and Pietro as well,’ said Michael. ‘She would have done anything to save them.’

‘She almost did save them,’ said Tobias, from his quiet corner. He looked at Hilary. ‘You saw it, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Hilary had not thought anyone else had seen. She said, ‘Franz-Josef and Bianca got Pietro out of Elizabeth’s cage. The fire hadn’t started then, but Orsolya’s people were everywhere and the whole hall was in confusion. Franz-Josef’s guards had left him to fight Orsolya and he could quite easily have escaped. But he didn’t. He stayed with Bianca and between them they got Pietro out.’ She frowned, and then said, ‘Is it at all possible that Bianca entered into the affair with Ladislas to find out about the intrigue?’ and Michael and Wagner both grinned. Tobias regarded Hilary with indulgent affection.

‘I wouldn’t credit her with quite that much altruism,’ said Michael. ‘But she certainly used Ladislas without him guessing it. When Tobias and I reached CrnPrag, after Ladislas left with the Tranz prisoners, Bianca was already marshalling her forces. A number of the guards were on her side. I didn’t,’ said Michael clearly directing this at Reverend Mother, ‘inquire too deeply into the lady’s methods over that, you understand.’

‘She would not have been without the financial means to bribe them, of course,’ said Reverend Mother urbanely, and Michael said,

‘No. Quite.’

‘Go on, if you will,’ put in Reverend Mother. ‘A little more brandy, gentlemen?’

Michael promptly said, ‘Beware, Wagner. She’s dulling your senses so that you’ll tell us the confidential police angles.’ He waited while the glasses were re-filled, and then said, ‘There isn’t very much more to it. Bianca had arranged for a couple of large coaches to drive up to CrnPrag after Ladislas had left with the Tranz prisoners. They arrived on schedule – huge pantechnicon things weren’t they, Tobias?’

‘Such as used for people moving house,’ agreed Tobias. ‘Cumbersome on the mountain roads, but unremarkable. And very practical to transport a large number of people – what is it? namelessly?’

‘Anonymously,’ supplied Hilary.

‘We drove to Csejthe,’ said Michael, ‘and then Bianca led those poor witless things up the mountainside. It was an odd experience, that,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Tobias was at my side all the way, describing everything as we went.’

‘It was very dark and most unpleasant,’ said Tobias, mildly.

‘It was as black as the depths of hell and as scary as – very scary indeed,’ said Michael. ‘When we got up there, Bianca led the way around the side—’

‘By-passing the portcullis?’

‘Yes, she seemed to know all the side ways in,’ said Michael. ‘She led everyone forward – I think we crossed an inner courtyard, and then Bianca simply stood back and let Orsolya and the rest go in. As soon as she was inside Csejthe, Orsolya’s madness boiled over. Presumably that was what Bianca was gambling on.’ He spread his hands. ‘The ambience of Csejthe itself may have worked on Orsolya,’ he said. ‘We’ll never know that part. And although I’m not shedding any tears for Ladislas Bathory and the other villains, I wish we could have saved Bianca and Franz-Josef and their children.’

There was a pause, and then Reverend Mother said, ‘And Tranz?’ and the smile lit Michael’s face again.

‘Ah yes, Tranz. We found out a good deal about Tranz,’ he said. ‘Tobias and I managed to get a good look at CrnPrag – it’s all recorded – Tobias described everything and I talked into the tape. There’s a separate wing at the rear with dormitories and communal kitchens – exactly the set-up you’d find in a refugee centre. There were a dozen or so women and young girls still there. We brought them out with us.’

Reverend Mother said, ‘They are being looked after?’

‘Yes, of course. Amnesty International is already working to find them temporary homes.’

‘Thanks to your contacts,’ murmured Tobias.

‘Well, I made a couple of phone calls.’ Michael sipped his brandy. ‘The prisoners were Bosnians in the main,’ he said, ‘although it’s pretty clear that over the years CrnPrag’s had all nationalities. Tranz – under Stefan Bathory, and more recently, Ladislas – was dedicated to bringing the homeless out of war areas and appearing to give them sanctuary in CrnPrag.’

‘On the surface, a praiseworthy organisation,’ said Reverend Mother.

‘Very,’ said Michael, drily. ‘I suspect that Stefan had links with the Nazis in the Forties, although I don’t know if it can ever be proved. But I think if we went back, we’d find some very extraordinary things in CrnPrag’s history.’

‘Shall you try?’

‘I shall. The ghosts of that place need to be laid,’ said Michael. ‘Heaven only knows who CrnPrag belongs to now, but it could be put to very good use.’ He made a quick gesture. ‘A genuine asylum,’ he said. ‘An orphanage. That’s why I’d like to give it some publicity.’ A sudden grin. ‘Not sensationalism, but a proper drawing of attention to it.’

‘Would that work?’ asked Reverend Mother, and Michael smiled.

‘Oh yes, it would work,’ he said. ‘They’d be fighting over who was to have it before a week had passed. All the larger charities would compete for it. They’d launch national and international campaigns for funds; people would go on marathon walks, there’d be TV and radio appeals— Teams of volunteers swarming all over it to renovate it— I’d quite like to think that could happen,’ said Michael, thoughtfully. ‘I’d quite like to set the thing rolling.’

Reverend Mother said, ‘Did all of the mental patients perish at Csejthe?’

‘We’re afraid so,’ said Wagner. ‘Bianca seems to have rounded up the whole lot of them – through Orsolya. The mental infirmary side seems to have been more or less genuine, by the way, although the conditions were barbaric.’

Tobias said quietly, ‘It was pitiful and dreadful. As if we had stepped back a hundred – a hundred and fifty years. I thought never to see such things, and I am very glad,’ said Tobias, suddenly looking as fierce as was possible for one of his amiable countenance, ‘that we ended that evil.’

‘The mental infirmary was a good cover for CrnPrag’s real activities, of course,’ said Hilary, thoughtfully. ‘You expect oddities in asylums. And people give such places a wide berth.’

‘Exactly,’ said Michael. ‘Stefan and his minions traded on that. And all the time Tranz was simply taking victims to save for the next ritual. It’s a brilliant evil mind that thought that up.’

‘There have been minds as brilliant and as evil in Europe more than once, Herr Devlin,’ said Armand Wagner.

Reverend Mother said, ‘And so we have seen the ending of one of the really ancient families of Europe. And the ending of Elizabeth Bathory’s line.’

Chapter Forty-four

Michael felt odd and a bit disorientated to be returning to Istvan’s clinic after so much turmoil.

The place felt exactly as it had done so on his first visit. The same sharp clean clinical scents were still strongly on the air, and he could hear, beyond the door of his room, the hospital sounds of rubber-wheeled trolleys and stainless steel instruments clattering in bowls.

The operation had been delayed for several days while Armand Wagner’s men pursued their enquiries and made out their reports. Istvan had been entirely charming and wholly understanding when Michael had asked if this was possible.

‘A situation of the most unusual,’ he had said. ‘But I can rearrange my work without any difficulty, and once you are here, I shall not want police officers disquieting you.’

Probably Istvan did not want his clinic besmirched by the heavy boots of the Viennese Police Force, which Michael found quite understandable. In fact he had been rather pleased to remain in the convent for a while longer. The scents of old timbers and drifting lavender, and the beeswax from Sister Margaret’s diligent polishing felt safe and familiar. And Hilary was there. He had not let the thought form completely. Perhaps, afterwards, he had thought. Perhaps if I had my sight. He left the convent quietly and unobtrusively on the morning scheduled for the operation, simply accepting a lift in the convent’s little car from Sister Margaret who had marketing to do that morning.

‘No fuss,’ he said to Hilary. ‘No huge farewells. I’ll be back by the end of the week. With or without my sight.’

‘Please God.’

‘Shall you pray for me?’ asked Michael.

‘Do you need to ask?’

Istvan came in to talk to him on the night before the operation, perching on the end of the bed in a friendly, informal fashion that Michael rather liked, explaining that a full anaesthetic would be used.

‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Michael dryly.

‘And so you will know nothing until you wake up. Then two days – perhaps three – with dressings, and we shall know whether or not we have been successful.’

‘Yes. I understand.’

‘And you know the odds are not good,’ said Istvan, anticipating the question which Michael would not ask. ‘I shall do my very best, but it is a quite severe case of detachment, Herr Devlin.’

‘I was never a betting man anyway.’

Istvan talked then about the practice of playing music in the operating theatre, which Michael found interesting. ‘It is something that is becoming more common. The patient hears only a very little of it, you comprehend, but for some it is soothing.’ Michael felt the small ruffle of deprecatory amusement. ‘Also, it is relaxing for the surgeon,’ said Istvan. ‘Although it depends on the choice of music, of course. That is for you to say.’

Quite right too at your fees, thought Michael, but he was intrigued by the notion of selecting music to be anaesthetised to. Like choosing music to die to.

In the sixties, at the height of the nuclear war fears, there had been a saying, half flippant, half not. When the four-minute warning goes, this is the music I shall play . . . brandy I shall drink . . . woman I shall screw. Michael thought he would not have spent the last four minutes of life in screwing (four minutes for God’s sake, what an insult), but if he could, he would have chosen to wait for the holocaust with a glass of port and brandy in a cut-glass snifter and Mozart on the stereo. In particular he would have liked to go out to the first movement of the marvellous magical Symphony No. 29 in A major. He chose it now, pleased at the small irony.

‘And the allegro takes seven minutes,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s followed by a slow andante movement.’

Istvan laughed, understanding at once. ‘Herr Devlin, you will certainly not hear the second movement,’ he said. ‘And you will hear very little of the first. The pre-medication is so heavy that you will scarcely be aware of anything that happens after it.’

‘And on the other side of the anaesthetic?’

‘Return to consciousness will be very gradual, very gentle. There will be no sickness, no struggling. We make very sure of that.’

Michael supposed this was something to be thankful for.

He heard the music quite clearly and the rippling notes were like a cool, sweet breath on his mind as he lay on the operating table, not seeing but certainly sensing the presence of the silver and steel instruments close by.

The anaesthetist bent over him and there was the scent of strong soap and chemicals from the scrubbing procedure and underneath it a faint whiff of good scent. Aftershave or deodorant, was it? The anaesthetist might be a woman and it might be perfume or talc. The small unimportant detail occupied his mind for a few minutes.

There was the drift of something sweet and sharp as well. Orange juice? Istvan had told him that surgeons often drank sugared orange juice when operating, for energy and refreshment. It would be nice if he could have a sip of it to counteract the throat-dryness of the pre-med. It would be even better if they laced it with gin. How must it have been to submit to operations a hundred and fifty years ago, when the only anaesthetic you got was a hefty swig of cheap brandy? Michael was suddenly enormously grateful to the person who smelled of such nice scent or aftershave, and who would ensure that the return to the sentient world was gentle and slow, and that there would not be the indignity of waking up to find yourself being sick in a hospital basin . . .

Mozart’s music was flooding the operating theatre, folding gently about him. Like autumn rain in a forest . . . Like the scent of woodsmoke and the mist over the Wicklow Hills . . . All the good things . . . Bronze chrysanthemums and wine with firelight reflected in it . . . Hilary . . . If this works I shall be able to see her.

And then the unknown anaesthetist bent over him, and he was distantly aware of a brief, stinging coldness in his arm.

Unconsciousness came down like a thick black curtain.

Hilary had spent the hours of Michael’s operation in the convent’s little chapel, but after supper she went quietly along to the library, and reached for Turoczi’s manuscript on Elizabeth. There were no loose ends to be tied up, but Hilary wanted to look at the notes at the back in case Turoczi had listed anything relating to Csejthe, or even CrnPrag, that might be of help to Michael in tracing back the houses’ histories.

She thought, as well, that she wanted to say goodbye: not to Elizabeth, but to Elizabeth’s descendant: Catherine, who seemed to be bound up in these pages, and who had died in Pietro’s arms in Csejthe . . . Hilary would have liked to forget that last vivid scene: the coffin toppling forward, and Pietro and Catherine under it, but she did not think she ever would.

In his scholarly way Turoczi had appended a list of various documents relating to Elizabeth’s life and her trial: not precisely a bibliography, since he had used little more than the actual archives and the Minutes of the trial, but letters sent to Gyorgy Thurzo and the King pleading for mercy for Elizabeth. It seemed that all Elizabeth’s children had petitioned for her release or, at the very least, a mitigation of her sentence.

There were details of the disposition of the Countess’s lands and properties, which was precisely the kind of information Hilary had been looking for. She made some notes and then went along to obtain Reverend Mother’s permission to take these to Michael in the clinic.

Being with Michael again was a benison. He was propped up in a narrow white bed in a small scrupulously clean room with a view over the car park. His eyes were heavily bandaged and he was rather pale but he was still blessedly Michael. Hilary could not stop looking at him. She wanted to reach out and touch him so much that she clenched her fists.

‘Feel free to take advantage of me while I’m in a weakened state, my love,’ he said. ‘What about if we lock the door and you get into bed with me? I don’t suppose I could give much of a performance in my present condition, but you never know.’

Even with his eyes covered with dressings, even through the pain he was probably still feeling, the mocking amusement was not diminished. Hilary said, ‘When will you know if it’s been successful?’ and hoped this was not being too blunt.

The mobile mouth widened in the familiar smile. ‘Direct as ever. Don’t ever be any different, will you?’ And then, before she could even think about an answer, ‘Another two days,’ he said, and one hand came up impatiently to brush the bandages. ‘Never mind that. Sit down and talk to me. Have you read the end of Turoczi’s manuscript? Oh, good. Tell me what was in it. Sing it to me if you like. I love the sound of your voice. Even if you were reciting the London telephone directory I’d love it.’

Hilary said, severely, ‘You’re very mercurial for somebody lying in a hospital bed.’

‘I’d be even more mercurial if you were lying in it with me,’ he said, and then, with barely the space of a heartbeat, ‘I don’t think Istvan’s been successful, Hilary.’

‘But that’s—’ Hilary stopped. ‘How do you know?’

‘A feeling up here.’ He touched his head. ‘No light.’

Hilary said, slowly, ‘You sound—’

‘Resigned?’

‘As if you might have come to terms with it.’

‘That’s putting it a bit strongly. If I could have you for the rest of my life I might accept it more easily.’ He paused and, as she remained silent, said, ‘All right, my love, I won’t argue it now. We’ll save it for the long winter nights. Snow piling up outside and a roaring fire. Good music on the stereo; even books. I shan’t be able to read them, but you will. You can read the classics of the world to me – Jane Austen, Trollope, even the Brontës, although they’re not really—’

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.’

‘—Dorothy L. Sayers, Clemence Dane, Victorian ghost stories— But you’ll come to visit me, won’t you? In Hampstead? Will you, Hilary? It’s a huge flat: what they call a lateral conversion – only one floor, but spread across two immense old town houses. Early Victorian or maybe even Regency. There’s a view over rooftops and gardens and you go up by a twisty old staircase with carved balustrades. And there’re great high-ceilinged rooms and inconvenient old-fashioned fireplaces and a ridiculous dining room that somebody papered in that absurd extravagant dark red Chinese paper that I could never bear to strip off. But the rooms are always filled with light and there’s more space than you can imagine. You can have twelve people sprawling about the sitting room and not be in the least crowded.’

It sounded like a poem Hilary had once had to learn as a child: something about a girl planning to live in a house of dreams and describing beamed high ceilings and an old-fashioned hall with light filtering in . . .

It was the kind of thing that caught in your throat without warning so that you wanted to cry and it was not at all the sort of thing to remember now, when the man you loved so much it hurt was raking at every vulnerable spot you possessed and was holding out to you everything you had ever wanted.

Only I didn’t know I wanted it, thought Hilary, staring at him. I didn’t even know it could be there for me.

A huge old house where there would be books and music and firelight and conversation . . . Friends visiting, because he would know so many people . . . He would find a way of continuing to work of course: there were Braille typewriters and probably Braille keyboards for computers and word processors, which Hilary thought was how most writers worked these days. What would it be like to live in the huge, light-filled house with its old-fashioned fireplaces and the beautiful dining room wallpaper? Living there with Michael. There might be children . . . The knowledge that she would live happily with him in a two-room cottage flooded her mind and pain sliced through her again and the words of the half-forgotten poem slid into place:

‘The house of dreams in which I live

Has beamed old ceilings high.’

And then something about the garden and a brook, and then,

‘A quaint old-fashioned hall where soft light filters through

Red roses on the newel post, And on the staircase, You . . .’

On the staircase, You . . .

It was ridiculous and far-fetched and drenched in sickly Victorian sentimentality. It was not something to be considered, even for a moment. Hilary pushed it out of her mind and began to talk about Turoczi’s monograph and the listing of the documents.

‘A very terrible story.’ Reverend Mother sat behind her desk in the small calm-feeling study, and tapped Father Turoczi’s manuscript. ‘A terrible creature, Elizabeth Bathory.’

‘Yes.’

‘I have prayed for her soul’s repose, of course,’ said Reverend Mother, as if this went without saying. ‘And we shall be offering Masses for Catherine as well. I could wish—’ She stopped, and Hilary waited. ‘I wish I could have helped Catherine more,’ she said, at length. ‘I thought that by letting her come here, she could expiate whatever evil she believed she harboured.’

‘Can one carry the evil of another?’

‘The Church would tell us not,’ said Reverend Mother. ‘Apart from original sin, that is, although I have always interpreted that as an allegory. But each soul is responsible for his or her own deeds.’ She frowned, and then in a different voice, said, ‘But it is not of that I am here to speak.’ She paused, and then said, ‘Well, my child, what are you going to do about Mr Devlin?’

Reverend Mother’s study was a good place for confidences and Reverend Mother was very easy to confide in.

Hilary said, carefully, ‘If I revoke my vows it means I’ve failed.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, but surely—’

‘The machinery is there for people to go out as well as come in. The Church does not wish you to live a pretence. Perhaps in the process building up resentment against it and against God.’

‘I can’t give in . . .’

Reverend Mother said, thoughtfully, ‘I think you have a warped vision of this, because of Michael Devlin. But you have to question very closely your original motives, Hilary. You must look to see if you entered St Luke’s for the right reasons eight years ago. If those reasons were good then, they will be good now, and you must ask God’s help to fight your feelings for Michael. But if the foundation was spurious then . . .’

Sarah’s death. Of course it had been guilt, and of course the whole thing had been wrong. Hilary said, ‘If I had had someone like you to talk to at the time—’

‘You cannot blame your advisers.’ She stood up. ‘And although I am not your superior in the Order, I have lived for very many years and I have seen many novices and nuns come and go. It has pleased God to let me learn a very little of human nature.’ The thoughtful eyes rested on Hilary. ‘If I were in a position to advise you, I should tell you to be on your own for a time – perhaps six months or so, if that is possible.’

‘Without Michael?’

‘Yes. Yes, you must not permit him to blur your judgement. If you leave the Order it must be because you can no longer serve God honestly in that way. It must not be because of Michael.’

‘I know,’ said Hilary in a low voice.

‘Has he offered marriage?’

Hilary said, helplessly, ‘Truly, I don’t know. He said something – when we were fighting to get across the hall at Csejthe and rescue Catherine— And then again when I visited him this morning—’ She broke off, and Reverend Mother smiled.

‘I should not expect him to be precisely conventional, Hilary. Not even when proposing marriage. Perhaps especially not when proposing marriage. He is waging his own fight against the world and if he does not regain his sight he may put up a very flippant front.’ One of her Gallic gestures. ‘There will be people in your own House in England that you can talk to about this. But if you wish for my counsel, dear child, it is at your disposal.’

‘Thank you.’ Hilary thought this might be very helpful indeed.

Reverend Mother was clear-sighted and deeply devout, but she had also a remarkable understanding and a tolerance of ordinary people’s needs and weaknesses. Hilary thought this was a very unusual blend, but she knew better than to say so.

‘If,’ said Reverend Mother, ‘you decide to leave the Order, you must not look on it as a failure. You should think, instead, that you have given eight years of your life to God and that He will not disdain to accept those years at their fullest value. It may be that your life has moved into another phase, and you can continue God’s work in another way.’

‘I – could I?’

‘Turning your back on the convent does not mean turning your back on God. Or does it?’ said Reverend Mother suddenly.

‘No! Oh no—’

‘Your training would still be valuable. People still need help to come to terms with blindness, to learn Braille and all the skills necessary to cope. I should judge you to be a gifted teacher, and you would surely be very acceptable to one of the many medical establishments.’ She touched Hilary’s hand in a rare caress. ‘You do not need to live in a convent to serve God,’ she said. ‘Nor do you need, necessarily, to live the life of a celibate. But you must make the decision unclouded by Michael Devlin.’ She stood up. ‘Is it tomorrow he will know if the operation was successful?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then,’ said Reverend Mother, ‘I shall go along to the chapel and offer up a Novena for him.’

Michael sat in Istvan’s consulting room, and thought how he had imagined this moment for a long time: the small consulting room where he had sat for the initial discussions, Catherine Bathory with him. He found himself wishing that he could have seen Catherine. He wished he could have seen them all. Catherine and Pietro and Franz-Josef. And Bianca. And then, with sudden fierce longing: I should like to see Hilary!

He managed to remain calm as Istvan began the removal of the dressings over his eyes.

‘A little soreness,’ Istvan said. ‘A small discomfort.’

‘I don’t care if you tear off skin.’

But Istvan’s touch was deft, and there was hardly any more pain than from removing a bandage from a flesh wound. How long would it take? There was a clock somewhere in the room; he could hear its steady tick. Ticking away the minutes until I shall see again? Or the path into permanent blindness? He felt the lifting of the layers of surgical dressings, and cool air against his eyelids.

Istvan was saying, ‘A small solution to help your eyes to open,’ and there was the feel of lukewarm liquid being applied.

‘And now you will open your eyes,’ said Istvan, and Michael’s mind spun into ridiculous panic. This was how music hall hypnotists talked. ‘You will open your eyes and you will remember nothing—’

Istvan seemed to understand about the panic. He said, ‘Slowly, as slowly as you wish. Take all the time you need. The room is in shadow, at present. Blinds are down, you understand. A very gentle ingress of light is important at this stage.’

An ingress of light . . .

Michael said in a flat voice. ‘There’s nothing.’

‘Ah. Perhaps if you turn your head— Now?’

‘No.’ He felt Istvan withdraw and sit opposite to him. There was the soft creak of good leather. ‘It’s failed,’ said Michael, and the old bitterness was strongly in his voice. ‘Hasn’t it?’

‘You knew the chances of success were very small.’ There was the feeling of Istvan bending over him, and the click of a small instrument – a light? – being moved close. Istvan’s hand came out to clasp Michael’s, and Michael took it gratefully. He had thought he would want Hilary with him for this, but he had discovered that he wanted to be on his own. Because he had known what the results would be and distrusted his emotions? Or because he had known that only with his sight would he have anything worthwhile for her to revoke her vows for?

Arrogance and rank pride! he thought now, bitterly. And here is my reward for it! Blind. Sightless for ever.

But he thought he had known, deep down at some primordial level, that the operation had failed. He had known. But there had still been a faint hope. Perhaps I am wrong.

Istvan was seated quietly at his side, and when at last Michael lifted his head, he said, softly, ‘Mr Devlin, I am so very sorry.’

With an effort, Michael said, ‘Well it was always a gamble. And the odds were not good.’

‘Nevertheless, it is a hard blow to bear.’

‘Yes.’

‘I have had to share this moment many times, of course,’ said Istvan. ‘And I have tried to find words of comfort to give when – as in your case – the outcome is the worst.’ The grip tightened for a moment. ‘You have perhaps heard of Helen Keller?’ A pause. ‘You may be a little too young—’

Michael said, ‘Wasn’t she the American girl who became blind and deaf very early in her life?’

‘Yes. A severe fever, as I recall. She died – oh, perhaps it was twenty or so years ago.’ Michael could feel Istvan’s will imposing itself on him, forcing him out of the deep terrible despair. ‘Blind and deaf,’ said Istvan. ‘She could neither see nor hear. But she had an indomitable will, and she achieved very great literary heights, including a university degree. Her books can still be obtained, and I believe you would find her Journal of great comfort.’ He paused. ‘But there is a thing she once said, which I have always tried to convey to people in your situation now.’

Michael heard him frown and after a moment, Istvan said, ‘Helen Keller had known sight – only briefly, but for a few years in very early childhood she had seen the world. As you have seen it. And she believed that once sight had been there: that once you had seen the world, you were armoured. She said, “When once we have seen the day, the day is forever ours”.’

The day is forever ours . . .

Epilogue

Hilary dismissed the taxi at the end of the street because she wanted to walk the last part of the way on her own. There was still a cautious joy in walking through London, in seeing places she had never seen, in exploring the world.

A year had wheeled past since Michael had described his home, but it was exactly as she had visualised it. A wide road with trees filtering the early evening light, and old houses on each side: many of them with the distinctive white stucco of the early eighteenth century; all of them at least three storeys high. Not all were split into flats, but those that were looked to have been converted with care. There were no offices because this would be a severely residential neighbourhood. The houses had only small gardens, but some had plane trees at the front, and at the far end was what must have been one of the very few private gardens left in London: the kind that had high iron railings, and where you locked yourself in and out with your own key. Children could play there with absolute safety. There were one or two basement flats in the larger houses – Hilary thought these were called garden flats, which was rather nice.

And then it was there; precisely as he had described it. A tall house with lovely long windows at which you could hang William Morris-type curtains and behind which would be high-ceilinged rooms with old-fashioned fireplaces. You would have huge roaring fires in winter, and in summer you would fill the empty hearths with huge jugs of lavender and lilac to scent the rooms. There was a date carved into the stucco – 1800 – and one of the oval blue plaques which you sometimes saw in London, telling you that somebody of note had once lived here. Hilary squinted at it, but the sun was in her eyes and she could not read who it had been.

Inside there was a large communal hall, carpeted in dark blue. Somebody had placed huge old-fashioned jardinières of aspidistras and shiny-leaved fig plants to catch the light that spilled in through the fanlight of the main door.

The stair to the first floor was wide and the banisters were polished and carved and there was a scent of beeswax and pot-pourri.

As Hilary climbed the two flights, she heard him open the door above her, and she felt him stand waiting to welcome her.

As she went forward, the lines of the old poem were singing through her mind:

The house of dreams in which I live

Has beamed old ceilings high.

It sits far back amid the trees

And a brook runs laughing by;

It has a quaint old-fashioned hall,

Where soft light filters through,

Red roses on the newel-post

And on the staircase, You.

Mellow evening light slanted across the upper landing, and Hilary, tears pouring unashamedly down her cheeks, her heart filled with light and joy, ran up the last few stairs and went into Michael’s arms.