Countess Dracula (26 page)

What Klára's case does reveal is the sixteenth century's obsession with family honour and public propriety, which were taken more seriously in aristocratic circles than occasional lapses such as the manslaughter or rape of a commoner. Remarriage was common, even necessary to protect inheritances, but multiple marriages by a woman could not be condoned, and all Europe thrilled with indignation at the exploits of adventuresses such as Jeanne d'Aragon, the wayward daughter of the King of Portugal; rumour invented melodramatic explanations – poison or suffocation – for the non-violent deaths of husbands. One sort of sinful behaviour implied another, and religious or social lapses became elaborated, particularly in the black propaganda of the Catholic pamphleteers, into sexual perversion and incest.

The nineteenth century's concern was to build a convincing and, if possible, exciting narrative out of the mixture of fragmentary documentation and outright rumour that it had inherited. From that time on it became necessary not only to marvel at the Báthorys but to analyse and make sense of them. Eccentricity and deviancy were cited: ‘Most of the Báthorys in both family branches shared extreme character traits. Many of them leaned towards tyranny, complacency, pride, cruelty, carnality and sexual perversion.'
¹²

Elisabeth was much closer to her elder brother than to Klára. Even during his lifetime Stephen Ecsedy Báthory's strange behaviour was misunderstood by his bewildered servants, and their gossip became the substance of later tales in which he is reconstructed as an alcoholic, a lecher and a probable lunatic. The unfounded charge of alcoholism seems to be an attempt to explain his reclusive nature, and the lechery is simply guilt by association with his scandalous relatives. Stories of lunacy are more revealing of the wonder which the workings of the cultivated imagination provoked in simpler minds. Stephen was excessively devout and recited his own poems and probably also sang religious songs late into the night; the noises were taken to be the ravings of a man possessed. To travel on the waterlogged causeways which crisscrossed the marshes surrounding Ecsed castle, he put his carriage on ski-like runners; the legends record that he was so thoroughly demented that he rode on a sleigh in summer. If we search Stephen's surviving writings for dementia and dissipation, we find only piety and lucidity.
¹³

There was also a strong element of religious prejudice in the gradual composition of a family mythos. Catholics later condemned Elisabeth as an agent of Calvinism; yet, although she was praised in her lifetime for her understanding of doctrine, there were no signs in her letters of fanaticism, or even deep devotion.

Literary authors have even more licence to rearrange and embellish the residue of past lives and use the results for their own ends. Elisabeth plays a central role in the 1925 novel
Ördögszekér
(the literal translation is ‘Devil's Wagon', but the meaning is ‘Tumbleweed') by Sándor Makkai. The writer, a noted theologian and historian and a Calvinist, like Elisabeth Báthory herself, was elected Bishop of Cluj in Transylvania (now Romania) the year after the book's publication. In the book, Elisabeth (‘of wondrous beauty') instructs her niece Anna Báthory – aged fifteen and ‘awakening to the magic of her beauty' – in the ways of the world:

The chief pleasure for some, to love and to sacrifice oneself, is absolutely nothing for us. For us the pleasure of love is the pleasure of conquest. We enjoy the burning of those who wither in our embrace more than the fire in our own blood.

When the Emperor's envoy arrives, Elisabeth ‘bewitches' him, and Anna also applies what she has learned to a member of his retinue, a noble officer:

Elisabeth and Anna laughed long at the Emperor's men, of whom they had made fools. They sat together for quite some time, and finally, Elisabeth proposed that Anna should sleep with her, not go back to her own quarters.

‘You are a wonderful apprentice!' Elisabeth said, embracing Anna. She held her tight, passionately, did not let go of her. Her embrace grew hotter and hotter, more and more overwhelming, her face distorted in the dark. The beautiful beast embraced and kissed her till dawn.
¹⁴

For Elisabeth Báthory, 1610 was the year in which the events of her private life and the political manoeuvrings taking place beyond her walls came together, culminating in the transformation of the country's most formidable woman into a prisoner without a social identity or any hope of salvation.

As the new year began, Countess Báthory was still in firm control of the family's business affairs: she personally negotiated the loan of 400 gold pieces and a plot of land to one Andrew Orossy in January.
¹⁵

At the same time from Vienna King Matthias was anxiously trying to extend his control over the senior Hungarian nobles with the help of George Thurzó, the newly appointed Count Palatine, whose first priority was to deal with the anti-Habsburg elements who were gravitating towards Gábor Báthory just as they had towards Bocskai. Among the key figures who had to be brought under the Habsburg wing at all costs were Count Nicholas Zrínyi, Elisabeth's son-in-law, and a powerful twenty-seven-year-old grandee whose family had supported Bocskai but were themselves pretenders to the Transylvanian throne, George Drugeth of Homonna. George Homonnay Drugeth has been described – in the dismissive shorthand favoured by old-fashioned historians, as ‘a notorious adventurer' and was accused by the seventeenth-century essayist Máté Szepsi Laczkó (whose writings tend to the sensationalist, as in the case of Chancellor Kátai) of poisoning his cousin and his son for the inheritance. The year 1610 was a momentous one for Drugeth, too; on 6 January he celebrated his wedding to the younger daughter of Countess Báthory, Lady Kate Nádasdy. Later in the same year he converted to Catholicism and declared for the Habsburg cause.

The north and west of the country was now in a state of uneasy peace, and there was nothing but the winter weather to prevent guests from attending Lord Drugeth's nuptials. During the festivities
the village of
Č
achtice would have been lit with torches and bonfires and hung with evergreen branches and the small square crowded with well-wishers. Inside the manor, according to the witness Török and others, the corpses of two girls were concealed in the private apartments of the Countess, after which, the priest Fábry claimed, they were secretly buried without his permission in his parish of Kostol'any. Whatever had gone on in that closed world was not allowed to disturb the celebrations, but the court of justice at Nové Mesto recorded the news of the deaths. No action was taken; no official dared interrupt such a glittering occasion, although Elisabeth's enemies, the Lutheran priests, were well aware – indeed may have reported the news – and would have informed their patron, George Thurzó. The cabal of local squires around Daniel Pongrácz kept the rumours on the boil, and these cases could have been the immediate pretext for the judicial hearings which started two months later.

Elisabeth began her annual progress around her estates by travelling to Sárvár some time in March. In the meantime the new Palatine was determined both to move against his enemies and to increase his personal wealth as decisively and as quickly as practicable, but did nothing about the widow Nádasdy for the time being for the very good reason that he was waiting on the outcome of the plot, which he and his circle had covertly encouraged, by Chancellor Kendy and his associates to murder Gábor Báthory in Transylvania.

On 5 March, Thurzó initiated an investigation into crimes alleged against Countess Báthory by ordering the secret examination of witnesses from the counties of Györ, Veszprém, Pozsony, Tren
č
ín and Nitra, in western and upper Hungary.
¹⁶
The wording of his letter of instruction is important as it set out for the first time the accusation that was being made, for the time being in private, against the Widow Nádasdy: ‘several maids and virgins and other women have been killed by various means, who were in her apartments'. The interrogations began on 22 March. Shortly afterwards the second phase of the inquiry opened, with witnesses summoned from the west and south-west.

On 10 May, Palatine Thurzó was forced to travel east to the Seven Counties to deal with unrest caused by Hajdúk bands who were looting and burning the estates of the lesser gentry and killing the proprietors. Thurzó was still in that region on 7 June when Elisabeth's sons-in-law joined him secretly for discussions. Also in June Thurzó met with Prince Gábor Báthory at Majtény and tried to persuade
him to declare formally for the Empire against the Ottomans. Gábor refused.

On 19 August, Countess Báthory accompanied a widowed gentlewoman named Hernath to the Vasvár-Szombathely county court near her Sárvár estates, and a voluntary deposition was formally lodged with the local justices.
¹⁷
The lady stated on oath that her late daughter, Susanna Ungváry, who had been in Elisabeth's service, had died of natural causes and that the marks to be found on her body after death were the result of disease and not of violence, her employer being wholly innocent of her untimely death. This document, which has been mentioned in passing in some recent accounts of the case, deserves closer attention. It proves firstly and beyond doubt that Elisabeth Báthory was aware of the accusations that were being laid against her elsewhere (although the investigation was proceeding in private and in secret) and was ready to move decisively to defend herself. Had she been guilty of causing the death of a servant and had wished to admit it, there was a course of action that was open to her at almost no risk; this was the private negotiated payment, a later version of the old Anglo-Saxon
wergild,
whereby a killer could compensate the victim's family in cash or in kind and avoid further punishment. But there is no evidence that Elisabeth ever contemplated this strategy, although, as we shall see, it was employed by a noblewoman in circumstances very similar to hers.

Just as Pastor Ponikenus said, the Countess thought that the county courts would be her salvation. The statement given by her maidservant's mother shows that Elisabeth was aware of the sort of evidence that could be brought up in any trial – the same evidence that was indeed being put forward at the secret sessions. An important part of the information lodged against Countess Báthory and her senior domestics concerned the signs of torture visible on the bodies of the many young girls carried out for the informal burials that so provoked the local clergy. Although the descriptions taken down are too sketchy to allow a proper analysis, it is possible to offer a sceptic's explanation for some of the marks that witnesses claimed to have seen.

Livid red and blue patches on the skin, so easily identified as bruises from beatings, can be caused by blood settling in certain parts of the body after death. It was also standard practice to tie the hands and feet of corpses, both to help in moving bodies before rigor mortis froze them in less manageable poses, and to make it impossible for the dead
to escape from their coffins and wander abroad. This combination of practicality and superstition extended in some cases to piercing the bodies so that a build-up of gases would not swell and perhaps burst the coffin; at the same time the post-mortem wounding would ensure that the deceased was perfectly dead.

The widow Hernath's statement was never referred to at the trial of Elisabeth's servants, or in the later phases of the investigation.

In the meantime, Thurzó had convened the Diet, not in Bratislava but in Bocskai's old fiefdom of Kosice, the centre of the mutinous eastern counties. He intended to coerce the nobles and the representatives of the other powers in the Kingdom to give a unanimous declaration of opposition to Gábor Báthory.

On 25 August, Thurzó travelled to Vienna, where he closeted himself with his spies and his Austrian advisers to plan the next stage in his campaign to subvert the Transylvanian Prince.

On 3 September, Elisabeth was in residence at her castle of Németkeresztúr, where she drew up her last will and testament. The original of the will, a five-page manuscript, can still be inspected in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest:

I, the Honourable Lady Elisabeth Báthory, the widow of the Most Honourable Lord, Francis Nádasdy, thinking of my weak health and being at an advanced age [she was fifty] ... for I wish to be free of all my duties in the material world, I order, according to this, my last will, that all of my estates, including those inherited from my husband, should be given to my son, Paul Nádasdy. However, my much loved children have not until this time decided to divide the estates among themselves, as my daughters are far from here, but I ask them that if at any time in the future they will gather together, they will find a way to divide the estates peacefully and in harmony, but until that time that my son, Paul Nádasdy, should not be disturbed in his inheritance. The estates of Kapuvár, Léka and Kanizsa should be given to one of them, these must be kept intact and undivided, on condition that if the inheritor should die, the surviving inheritors may divide them among themselves. The remaining estates, wherever in the country they be, should be divided between the three. The estate that was my wedding gift [
Č
achtice] should be given to my three children with each having equal rights to it.
¹⁸

This was to be the public settlement, but in private Elisabeth was even more carefully specific in her instructions: she was especially concerned about the estate of Szécskeresztúr, which bordered the famous vineyards of Tokaj. The castle of Tokaj had been given to Thurzó, and in 1610 he was extending the borders of his demesne there by his usual methods. When she was arrested later, one of Elisabeth's first concerns was to give the eastern Keresztúr lands into the hands of George and Kate Drugeth with immediate effect so that they could safeguard them from the attentions of predators and use their revenues to support Elisabeth in her captivity: ‘Those properties that I shall inherit from my family in the future should be divided equally between my children, as I bequeath them my castles and houses. The property documents will be kept together with one of my children in accordance with the law.'