Countess Dracula (32 page)

Dese
ő
's reference to the tutor Imre Megyery disproves the entry in the diary of Thurzó's secretary and prosecutor, Závodský, where it was noted that ‘even Megyery knew nothing [of the lady's crimes]'.
¹⁷

Pásztory, who was the next to testify, played down his involvement in the Countess's affairs, although he had been named as one of her confidants. He tells the story against Ficzkó perhaps to devalue Ficzkó's own statements, but it gives a picture of feuding servants that we know to be generally true, whatever the ins and outs, from Elisabeth Báthory's letter to Thurzó complaining of Gáspar Tatay's violence.
¹⁸
He is, interestingly, the only witness to use the word ‘gossip', although a great many of the testimonies imply that gossip was rife in and around the court.

Pásztory brings a new element to the developing theme of secret containers: we have had home-made coffins and incriminating
documents in locked caskets; now we have the sinister accessory, the bag of chains and locks. A modern cynic might feel that Pásztory is slipping into place one of the missing pieces needed to build a convincing overall picture. No one had yet explained why none of the maidservants, some of whom must have been girls of spirit, had managed to get away: the chains, put on each night, provide the answer. But were they individually manacled, in which case a large number of chains would be required, or was the door of their dormitory simply padlocked shut? The records are silent, of course.

Jacob Szilvássy seems to be one of the most voluble of the witnesses, and we can imagine a man of some education who is, perhaps, more articulate than some of the simpler gentry who testify, and is also desperate to acquit himself of any suspicion (Helena Jó had stated before she was burned that ‘Szilvássy and the court steward Dese
ő
both saw how the Lady tortured naked maidservants'). Szilvássy mentions again the practice of putting burning paper between the fingers, Lord Francis Nádasdy's novel revival technique which understandably aroused the curiosity of the servants. This witness's evidence is spiced with detail and pathos – the cherry given to the dying girl, the stabbing at the Bratislava ferry and the use of the giant needle, and, most affecting of all, the bravado of the doomed cobbler's daughter. We are in no position to dismiss this exchange as a fantasy, but it is remarkable that the heroic girl's last words had not passed into local folklore and were not mentioned by any other witness. Furthermore, it is interesting that Szilvássy, Dese
ő
and an earlier witness, Sir Francis Török, who lived in the same county, use almost identical phrases in their testimonies, each of them exclaiming, ‘It is impossible to account for all her horrible deeds!', ‘Only God could enumerate her crimes!' and ‘Her wickedness is as boundless as the sea!' This proves nothing – these may have been common forms of words – but it could suggest that the witnesses had been coached, or simply that they had prepared their testimonies together.

Szilvássy was a senior and trusted servant who offered vivid eyewitness descriptions of his mistress's sadism as well as the usual hearsay; the modern reader is bound to want to ask, as the examining authorities seem never to have done, ‘Why did you do nothing, tell no one?' (The earlier witness, Dese
ő
, had provided an answer to this unasked question. He claimed, like some others who testified, that he had wanted to stop serving the Countess and that Imre Megyery had asked him to stay on. This hints at a promise by Megyery to protect Elisabeth's attendants
if they gave evidence against her, but it does not excuse them for remaining silent in the past, in some cases for years.)

One more loose end is left untied by Jacob Szilvássy's deposition in this round of hearings and it concerns the book that the woman Susannah claimed Szilvássy had seen, in which Elisabeth Báthory had recorded the number of her victims as 650. How Szilvássy was supposed to have stolen a glance at this most secret document was never explained, but by the time he came to give his evidence the inquisitors and most of the population of the family estates must have heard of this little book and its shocking contents. According to the record, when Szilvássy had his chance to speak he said nothing about it at all. If we decide that the existence of the book was a fantasy or a fabrication, it is still easy to see where it might have come from. The servants must have been fascinated by the locked cabinets, chests and travelling trunks that filled their employer's private rooms and into which they would never be permitted to pry. When the Countess was sent to the high castle in disgrace, she was allowed to take with her a little box, perhaps the same box that Ficzkó had said was part of her magical paraphernalia, or the box containing her will and her private letters that her son Paul took possession of when she died (perhaps they were one and the same).

The remaining witnesses add only incidental detail to the evidence already collected, with the exception of John Dezs
ő
who, like Anna Szelesthey, accuses the Countess of murdering his relative – and even announcing that she would do so – but frustratingly fails to explain what steps, if any, he or the girl's immediate family took against her.

Modern legal experts who have considered the conduct of the trial of the accomplices – foremost among whom is the Hungarian judge Dr Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss, whose distant ancestor, Caspar Kardoss, was co-presiding in 1611 – have declared it a travesty, and have pointed to the similarities between the whole investigation with its accumulation of unproven and often contradictory accusations, followed by a hasty trial before a hand-picked court, and the show trials of the communist era in which names were systematically blackened, guilt was imputed, then assumed.

There are certainly many unusual aspects to the gathering of testimonies and the trial, not the least being that the principal accused was not present. But there was method in the Palatine's bending of the rules and precedents. Firstly, it seems clear that the arrest and the trial of
the servants had been carefully planned well in advance, and was not put together in response to the dramatic ‘discoveries' at the manor-house in
Č
achtice. The examining authorities were all present and ready to start the proceedings one day after the arrests, on New Year's Day, and the jury took only days to assemble. This accelerated timetable not only allowed the key personalities in the case to be disposed of without interference, but, given the season, would prevent news reaching the outside world until the case had been decisively closed.

The only permitted circumstances in which a nobleman or woman could be condemned without a formal summons being issued first were if the accused was caught red-handed in the act of murdering someone of equal status. The status problem was never clarified in the case of the girl found dead at the manor-house, but, by stating that he had come upon Báthory in the act of torturing, Thurzó was able to justify his instant sentence upon her. Even in such a case, precedent demanded that there be at least seven persons of high rank on hand to pronounce judgement. There were not. Thurzó's secretary, George Závodský, claimed in his journal that his master had been in the company of Zrínyi, Drugeth and Megyery at the scene of the crimes, but this is not so. Although all three had probably supplied men for the raid on the village, the sons-in-law did not arrive until after the Countess had been removed to the castle. So it was Thurzó alone, or Thurzó and Megyery, who dispensed summary justice to her.'
¹⁹

Such irregularities were not unknown in seventeenth-century Hungary: there were recognised traditions of ‘alternative' forms of justice, two of which Thurzó may have had in mind at different stages of the Báthory affair. The first was the so-called ‘family court' whereby the senior members of noble families gathered privately to deal with offences committed by relatives that threatened the honour or prosperity of the whole dynasty. Although unofficial, this method of judgement had been sanctioned at the highest level, since it was the way in which the Habsburg family were thought to have persuaded the eccentric Emperor Rudolf II to abdicate in favour of Archduke Matthias. In the case of Hungarian noble families, the objective was usually to isolate and neutralise the offending family member. If the person concerned was female, she would often be placed in a convent, and Thurzó is said to have considered this fate for Elisabeth Báthory. The other type of case in which normal legal processes were often sidestepped was where sedition or sorcery were involved, and in many
ways the trial and condemnation of Elisabeth Báthory's manservant and confidantes most resembles a witch-trial, although it was she, and not they, who were accused, almost in passing, of practising black magic.

By royal decree, the trial documentation for capital crimes had to include a medical certificate relating to the victim or victims, and this was not done in the case of Báthory's accomplices, although a medical report was attached to the papers at a later stage. It was not an official coroner's report, but a deposition made by a bonesetter named Thomas Borbély who declared that he had cured a girl named Anna who was a member of Elisabeth Báthory's court, almost certainly the same person who was displayed to the people of
Č
achtice immediately after the raid. He detailed the wounds that the girl had exhibited: there were four deep lacerations, two on her shoulders, two on her buttocks, and another serious wound on the back of her hand. There was pus in the wounds when Borbély attended the girl, but after two months in bed she recovered and the doctor was paid 56 florins and 15 pounds of corn by order of Count Thurzó.
²⁰

Other oddities which have been pointed out are the obvious ones: potential star witnesses such as the surviving maids and seamstresses – the ‘little Cseglei' mentioned by Helena Jó for one – were never called. Those who did testify were not cross-examined about their own guilt or complicity. The many cadavers were not exhumed, even though it was known where they were supposed to have been buried – in the village churchyards of Lesetice and Kostol'any, for instance.

Why were all the investigations focused on the west of the country closer to Vienna, when torturing girls would have been so much easier in the more remote and lawless east? Even though witnesses mentioned murders which were carried out at Füzér castle in eastern Hungary, none of the castle staff from there or from Szécskeresztúr or Ecsed were interviewed as far as we know. Could this have been because they would have been less easy to intimidate? They might have felt that their interests lay with the Báthory rather than the Nádasdy patrimony; they were living beyond George Thurzó's ambit and were probably weighing up the prospect of declaring for his rival the Transylvanian Prince if the chance arose.

When we look at the choice of witnesses, there are definite criteria being applied: although both lowly peasants and members of the minor gentry were called and heard, no senior aristocrats were summoned – to do so would have been a serious slur on individual families and the
ruling class as a whole. But, if it was unthinkable for the country's elite to appear in person, there was nothing to stop them sending their familiars to speak on their behalf; no servant of the Sittkey family came forward to corroborate the death of their relations, and why should the Zichys have remained silent, if their daughter had been killed? (It was Count Zichy, not a simple country squire, but a man of influence, who had written in admiring terms to Elisabeth four years earlier.)

Some of the witnesses and the supposed victims – and the Nádasdy-Báthory family themselves – were interrelated by blood and marriage, which casts more doubt on the objectivity of the investigation. Imre Megyery, the familiar of the Nádasdy family who was appointed as Paul Nádasdy's tutor, was related by marriage to the Szép family who were in turn related to the legal official Caspar Ordódy and to the witness Katherine Dömölky. Megyery was also related to the Szelesthey family, one of whom was a victim of Elisabeth and another a witness testifying against her. The Szelestheys, the Megyerys and the Nádasdys were all related to the Sittkeys, two of whose daughters were alleged to have been killed by Elisabeth. The presiding investigator Syrmiensis was a familiar of the Thurzó household and was also related to Daniel Pongrácz, the part-owner of Beckov, whose serfs provided so much damning testimony in Nové Mesto nad Váhom.

In a painstakingly thorough review of the judicial aspects of the case, the Hungarian legal expert Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss appointed herself counsel for the defence and after considering the whole body of written evidence and the personal and family connections between witnesses and prosecutors, exonerated Elisabeth in her conclusions. When this author asked her to assume the prosecuting role and asked her whether she would have had enough evidence to bring a case, she said she would not have.

But we must not expect the citizens of seventeenth-century Hungary to conform to modern notions of legality or fairness.

There is another letter in the Thurzó family archives which no one who has written on the Báthory case seems to have commented on at any length. Yet it is one of the most surprising and revealing of the few documents that have come down to us, and it draws together more than one strand of the complex network of events and personalities that we have to contend with. It is a letter dispatched by Count Sigmund Forgách, the Chief Justice of Hungary, to the Palatine,
George Thurzó. Forgách was an ardently pro-Habsburg Catholic who was related to Thurzó through his stepfather and a man who hated Gábor Báthory and his supporters inside Hungary (Forgách in his parallel role as captain-general of the armies of Upper Hungary had invaded Transylvania the previous year to try and unseat the Prince), so this was someone with no reason to side with Elisabeth Báthory. Nevertheless on this occasion, 16 February 1612, just over a year into Elisabeth's captivity, Forgách wrote from Bratislava: