Haunted Castles (15 page)

T
hou knowest, Lord, that blood bath was the first, but not the last, in which I would immerse myself in all the years that follow'd. As if a gate of Hell had been thrown open, Ferencz and Dorottya, made confident by the bastion of my family name, now steep'd us all in reeking devilish rites, and vilest pleasures; whilst I, like unto one in whom the soul has died, became a stunn'd, obedient creature, sharing both dark lust and blame.

Whether 'twas truly some streak of grainèd foulness in my stirps that made me such an unobjecting partner in those crimes; or whether disenchantment with my Ferencz and with all humanity had stifled gentler humours; or whether Dorottya's cunning simples had a part in blunting my fair nature (as they had blunted poor Ilona's), I know not. I only know that I became as despicable and perjur'd as Ferencz and Dorottya, for all of us would make a show of most devout obeisance when the village priest would call to say mass; and our confessions were but cynical recitals of small vices and transgressions, nothing more.

As hideous vermin crawl from under lifted stones, now bloated, grinning cohorts stream'd to Csejthe, call'd hither by Dorottya. Thou wert long familiar with them, Lord: the sorcerers Ujvary and Thorko, the first a skillful crafter of new tormentry which far surpass'd in cruel genius those of rack or wheel or any hitherto invented; another witch, call'd Darvula, whose energies and hungers rivall'd those of Dorottya; two serving maids, Otvos and Barsovny, to tend my person, chosen by Ferencz for youth and beauty and total absence of all scruple; and troops of others, nameless to me now.

Pitiful were those who came to Csejthe unwillingly: the blossoming young girls, who, in the mounting hundreds, were requir'd to fan and then appease our raging appetites. Entic'd from the village by pretty Otvos and Barsovny, who told of fair employment and reward at Csejthe; or drugg'd by Dorottya or Darvula; or overwhelm'd and beaten by the hulking Thorko or the slavering Ujvary; these pathetic creatures (all young and fair, for none else did we crave), were herded like swine into our cellars and our dungeons, to await the most deprav'd extremity of our pleasure.

Dorottya told me once she was far older than she seem'd, and that she held the years in check and retain'd the youthful freshness of her skin by bathing in the blood of virgins. She bade me join her, and I did. If such a thing be horrible—the draining of young veins for such a purpose—how much more horrible, and to no purpose whatsoever, was the manner by which these hapless prisoners were put to death: not with the swift, blunt mercy that is dealt even to dumb cattle, but by prolong'd and calculated tortures, which I have not stomach to set down here, so degraded and inhuman were they.

Inhuman, saith I? Nay: the beasts of the field and forest, lacking all humanity, e'en the most terrible among these, slay not by long deliberate slaying and for lust. Human, then, indeed, were those fell crimes.

From time to time, my brain—like to a wanderer lost in fog which sometimes lifteth, showing clary sun, only to weave greyly 'round the stumbling wretch again—would comprehend the fullest, deepest horror of our acts; and I would then resolve to end them, by freeing our poor victims, allowing them to spread the tale of our decay throughout the village, till it was arous'd. But never did I this, and now, upon reflection, I do think it was somehow for love of Ferencz that I refrain'd; some shred of former feeling clung to me, and I could not bear to think of him haul'd up before tribunals and punish'd.

Then, on one day, fate took that fear from me.

Ferencz was summon'd to the battlefield again to fight the Saracen. As on that night years before, I bade farewell to him whilst cannonades of thunder boom'd through Csejthe and pelting rain curtain'd the countryside.

“Dost recollect,” I ask'd him, “what words thou spake that other time thou left me for the wars?”

“Nay,” he answer'd, “what said I then?”

“Thou didst declare: ‘God's my guardian, thou my guerdon: how else, then, can it be but I will triumph over Death and foe alike?'”

“A pretty speech,” he said, and mounted his palfry.

“Say it now!” I bade him.

“Art silly still?” he scoff'd.

“Say it, Ferencz!”

“Nay, have done. Fare thee well, and—” (irony congeal'd his face) “—prithee, do not pine away in solitude!” He goaded his mount, and rode into the night.

Less than a score of days from then, a courier deliver'd unto me the news: Ferencz was dead, “honourably slain in battle, by the heathen Turk who long hath ravag'd and lain waste our land.” The King himself had signed it.

O fortunate husband! Dead with honour; whilst I still languish'd in a filthy sty of sin. 'Twas then I cast from me all caution, and conspir'd to let the world know of the foul blight Castle Csejthe had now become.

One morning, my gore-streak'd companions still abed, so worn were they by ghastly revels in the night, I stole into the dungeons and unlock'd the shackles from the limbs of a single youthful captive, destin'd soon for torture and for death. I bade her flee to the village, and tell all—“Spare nothing,” I beseech'd her, “relate all horrors thou hast seen, all gushings of fair maidens' blood, all gloating torments, all!”

The frighten'd maid, at first, thought 'twas some trick, some game design'd to raise her hope, then dash it to the ground and thus torment her further. I begg'd her to believe me, trust in me (why
should
she trust in one who had partaken of such infernal rites?), and perchance for some sincerity that shineth from mine eyes, she believ'd me and did as she was bidden.

She was not miss'd by Dorottya or the others ('twas for this reason I but set free a single prisoner), and word soon spread. Grumblings commenc'd to reach us at the castle; village girls no longer were so easefully accessible to our procurers.

But there it stopp'd: rumblings and rumours; frighten'd glances cast toward Csejthe; a need by us of greater stealth; from the village church, veil'd sermons which, by indirections, weakly touch'd on a certain “bloody band” abhorr'd by God, yet even these pale warnings couch'd in Latin—
“grex sanguinarius”
—which the villagers could scarce divine. And still our base carousals went uncheck'd!

Slowly, my dull mind fathom'd why: and, in its own way, the cause was far more crushing to my spirit than the grossest horrors we had wrought in Castle Csejthe.

F
or Ferencz had spoke true.

My name was too refulgent, my family too high-plac'd: who dar'd chastise us? My cousin, Gyorgy, Prime Minister to the King, ignor'd all tales he heard of our debauches, so that his own escutcheon might not be stain'd thereby.

When this execrable truth became clear to me, my heart sank. Was this humanity? Was this nobility? Was this the Christian glory that presum'd to hold itself above the heathen Turk? To suffer innocents be sacrific'd on an altar of corruption, merely that a lofty family be spar'd discomfiture? Oh, this was tenfold more abominable than the crime itself, that high authority should wink at it! Dismay'd, revolted, heartsick, I in that moment of black revelation forswore mankind, abjur'd all ties of family, renounc'd and disavow'd sweet Christ Himself.

Why did I not, disgusted by the perfidious world, plunge with refreshen'd appetite into those hellish orgies? I know not. Some almost dead, not quite extinguish'd lamp of good, perchance, prevented me; and I instead sought out Ilona.

I spoke to her as in far bygone days: “Sweet nurse . . . dear old lady, dost thou hear? Put by thy dreaming ways, and list. Nay, do not drowse—thou must needs hear me! I'll give to thee a letter, which I'll straightway indite, and this I charge thee carry to good King Matthias—ay, to His Majesty, Ilona! Dost grasp my words?”

The good old lady nodded; the clouds lifted from her eyes. “What kind of letter, child?” she ask'd.

“A document describing all heinous, dire iniquities that hath sprouted here like poisonous weeds. An humble, penitent confession of mine own part in them. A strong entreaty that His Majesty send troops to storm this castle and ensnare this whole foul company of demons! Such a letter shalt thou bear, Ilona.”

The old nurse strok'd my hand, as she was wont to do of yore. “Dear child,” she said, “my little babe, thou wilt be tried before stern judges, put to torture . . .”

“It is no matter. I yearn to be dismember'd on the rack, or disembowell'd, or burnt alive, to expiate my sins! No penance less will serve, Ilona; the time for pious mutterings of
mea culpa
is long past, it is too late! Thou
must,
dear nurse, do this thing for me!”

“Send
thee,
Elisabeth, to such judgement? . . .”

“'Twere best, Ilona. In thine own unblemish'd conscience, thou know'st it must be done.”

My old nurse said no more, but obediently awaited my writing of the letter. This I did; and seal'd it with the signets of both Bathory and Nadasdy; and put it in her hand; and watch'd her until she was safe away from Csejthe.

 • • • 

The rest Thou knowest, too, O Lord:

How clement Matthias grew outrag'd, and made Gyorgy Thurzo storm my castle on the very eve of the New Year; how those captives left alive were freed; how all my despicable minions were put in chains and carried off to trial; how all, save me, were put to death.

Ay, all save me: that mercy was as bitter gall to me, who crav'd atonement. I, who wish'd for rack and fire, wast but condemn'd to stay in solitude, wall'd here within my chamber for the remainder of my days—for even when the grisly truth was told, my cousin interceded for me, and my life and comfort spar'd.

In all this tainted record, in all this sorry blot on privilege and authority, is there not one redeeming ray? One good and golden thing to shine in Heaven's book and expiate, in some small part, this race of man?

Verily, there is one. One who, from loyalty and love, could not endure to see me dragg'd before the seat of mortal judgement; one who, lest such a fate befall me, took all blame, all censure, all chastisement, said, “'Twas not the Countess brought these witches to the castle; nay, 'twas I, and only I.”

Too late I learn'd of dear Ilona's act: of how she made her way to His Majesty's court, was recogniz'd as my old nurse and so admitted, and how she then (having destroy'd my letter) told the King an host of horrid truths, and one unselfish lie: her false confession.

And, for that glorious sacrifice, which I neither desir'd nor deserv'd, the noble dame was grimly martyr'd: for though Ujvary, Thorko, Darvula, Otvos, and Barsovny were swift dispatch'd by the headsman's axe, a most particular doom was meted out to those two thought the most despicable of that band: Dorottya and Ilona. Both luckless women (one a fiend, and one a blessed saint) were condemn'd to have their fingers, one by one, ripp'd off their hands, before they were conducted to the stake and burnt alive.

And soon I, too, will die, for I have left untouch'd for many days the food that has been brought me. Before I die, O Lord, I ask that I be granted but one boon:

I ask that Thou send cats—lean, vicious cats with teeth and claws as sharp as daggers—and set them on all pious souls who, when they knew full well what things were being done at Csejthe, sat idly by and mumbl'd orisons, and cross'd themselves, and did no other thing. On my too generous cousin, Thurzo, set these clawing beasts; on that o'ercautious priest down in the village, who water'd down his Christian zeal into an insipid broth; and on all others of their ilk, rain yellow-eyed, mad, scratching, squawling cats! Do this, O Lord, I beg!

And, if Thou dost, why, when I see Thee soon, I'll thank Thee. For what should such an inky soul as mine do in the jasper halls of Heaven? I am so dipp'd in blood of innocents that my intolerable stench would cause the angels to stop up their nostrils at me! And so, instead, I have consign'd myself to Thee, for in Thy realm I am assur'd of welcome. I come, then, like a mistress, to Thy terrible Arms, and offer up mine own immortal soul to Thee—my Sovereign Lord, great Lucifer!

Thine own
Elisabeth

W
ithout exception, every person and place named in this story existed. The main lineaments of the narrative are reconstructed from events that did, in fact, occur. Elisabeth Bathory died, as close as can be determined, on August 21, 1614, in a walled-up apartment of Castle Csejthe, county of Nyitra, northwestern Hungary. After her death, the village priest testified that he had been savagely attacked by a multitude of cats which, after biting and scratching him severely, vanished like mist.

I'm a bloodhound. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you I'm a meticulous researcher, an untiring zealot, a ruthless bloodhound when pursuing facts. I'm not a professional musician, granted; not even a gifted amateur; but my fondness for music can't be disputed and my personal fund of musical and musicological knowledge happens to be huge. All the more remarkable (wouldn't you say?) that no catalog, no concert program, no newspaper file, no encyclopedia, no dictionary, no memoir, no interview, no history of music, no gravemarker has rewarded my efforts by surrendering the name V. I. Cholodenko.

Such a person, it would seem, never existed. Or, if he did exist, became an Orwellian unperson who was whisked from this world as completely as were Ambrose Bierce, Judge Crater, or the passengers and crew of the Mary Celeste. I'm well aware of the transliteration problems regarding Russian names, and I've doggedly searched under the spellings Kholodenko, Tcholodenko, Tscholodenko, Shcholodenko and even Zholodenko, but to no avail. True, I haven't had access to archives within the Soviet Union (my letters to Shostakovich and Khachaturian appear to have gone astray) but I've queried Russian musicians on tour in the United States, and to none of them is it a familiar name.

Its exclusive appearance is in a ribbon-tied bunch of old letters, crisp and desiccated, purchased last year by me, along with items of furniture and art, at a private auction of the effects of the late Beverly Hills attorney, Francis Cargrave. They had belonged to his grandfather, Sir Robert Cargrave, an eminent London physician, to whom they are addressed, and all were written, in elegant if somewhat epicene prose, by Lord Henry Stanton, a fashionable beau and minor poet of the period.

The curiosity, the enigma, lies in the fact that all the people mentioned in the three pertinent letters are real people, who lived, whose names and achievements are well-known—all, that is, but the name and achievements of Cholodenko. Even the briefly-mentioned Colonel Spalding existed, as will be noted later. Down to the most insignificant details—such as the color of his famous host's eyeglasses—Lord Stanton's letters can be substantiated (the only exceptions, again, being the references to the elusive Cholodenko).

Is the man a fabrication? Was Stanton the perpetrator of an elaborate hoax? If so, I can't in all honesty understand why. The letters were written to his closest friend, a presumably sober pillar of the medical profession. Both men were no longer youngsters, and undergraduate pranks strike me as uncharacteristic of them.

But if it was not a prank, how can we explain the way Cholodenko has been ripped from history, his music not even a fading echo but a silence, a vacuum, completely forgotten, as totally unknown as the song the Sirens sang?

I don't presume to solve the mystery. I merely present the three letters “for what they're worth,” and invite other bloodhounds to make what they will of them. Such bloodhounds will sniff out, as I did, a glaring discrepancy, for the very survival of these letters seems to discredit Lord Henry's colorful insinuations—but he would probably counter our incredulity, if he were here, by urbanely pointing out that if God proverbially moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform, might not His Adversary do the same? For reasons of scholarship and accuracy, I haven't condensed or edited the letters in any way (except to eliminate the redundant addresses in all but the first), preferring to let even irrelevant or trivial observations stand, in the hope that they may contain clues which eluded me. I've also kept Stanton's not always standard, though phonetically accurate, transliterations. In a few places, I've inserted short bracketed notes of my own, in italics. The letters bear month and dates, but no year. Stanton being English, I assume these dates conform to the Gregorian calendar familiar to us, rather than to the old Julian calendar which was still in use in Russia at the time. On the basis of internal evidence, such as the first performance of
Eugene Onegin
, I believe the letters to have been written in 1879.

5 April

Sir Robert Cargrave
Harley Street
London, England

My dear Bobbie,

No, do not scold me! I know full well that I have been a renegade and most delinquent comrade. If I seem to have avoided your home these many months; if I have neglected you, your dear Maude, and your brood of cherubim—one of whom, young Jamey, must be quite ripe for Oxford by now!—then ascribe it, I pray you, not to a cooling of our friendship's fires nor to a crusty bachelor's disdain for the familial hearthstone, but, rather, to my persistent vice, travel.

I have set foot on divers shores since last I sipped your sherry, old friend, and greatly fear the proper Maude would frown prettily and tap her tiny foot with disapproval to hear some of my adventures—such as a certain scandal attendant upon my holiday in Greece, whither I journeyed to steep myself in the air Orestes breathed and tan my pallid English hide under the sun of Sophocles. Whilst steeping and sunning, it seems I was the agency whereby all three daughters of a prominent family were rendered
enceinte,
a feat of treble indiscretion that led to dreary judicial proceedings, an elaborate but unavailing defense which I delivered entirely in iambic pentameters, a large settlement upon the dishonoured daughters, an official request to absent myself from Graecian soil, and a rather good
mot
of mine which I think will wrench a chuckle from even your tight Harley Street lips. On the train that took me from Greece, I had the misfortune to meet an American cleric of bloodless aspect and the possessor of a pronounced squint, who, catching my name and having sniffed the gossip, lugubriously lectured me! This presumptuous parson had the gall to inquire what “lesson” I had learned from the experience! Fancy! Fixing him with the most icy of glances, I replied: “Beware of Greeks—bearing Greeks.”

I write to you from St. Petersburg. Yes, I am cosily hugged by “the rugged Russian bear,” a cryptic creature, I assure you, warm and great-hearted, quick to laugh, and just as quick to plunge into pits of black
toská
—a word that haughtily defies translation, hovering mystically, as it does, somewhere between melancholy and despair. Neither melancholy nor despair, however, have dogged my steps here in this strange land. I have been most cheerful. There are wondrous sights to bend one's gaze upon; exotic food and drink to quicken and quench the appetite; fascinating people with whom to talk. To your sly and silent question, my reply is Yes!—there are indeed ladies here, lovely ones, with flared bright eyes and sable voices; lambent ladies, recondite and rare. There are amusing soirées, as well (I will tell you of one in a moment), and there are evenings of brilliance at the ballet and the opera.

The opera here would particularly captivate both you and your Maude, I am certain, for I know of your deep love of the form. How enviously, then, will you receive the news that just last month, in Moscow, I attended the premiere of a dazzling new
opus theatricum
by the composer Pyotr Chaikovsky. It was a work of lapidary excellence, entitled
Yevgeny Onyégin
(I transliterate as best I can from the spiky Cyrillic original), derived from a poem of that name by a certain Pushkin, a prosodist now dead for decades, who—my friend, Colonel Spalding, tells me—enjoys a classical reputation here, but of whom I had not hitherto heard, since his works have not been translated into English, an error the Colonel is now busy putting right.
[Lt.-Col. Henry Spalding's English translation, transliterated as “Eugene Onéguine,” was published in London in 1881. However, other Pushkin poems were published in English translations by George Borrow as early as 1835.]
The opera is a shimmering tapestry of sound, brocaded with waltzes and polonaises.

But St. Petersburg, I find, is richer in cultural life than even Moscow: I have been awed by the baroque majesty of the Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral, chastened by the mighty gloom of the Peter Paul fortress and properly impressed by the Smolny Monastery and the Winter Palace.
À propos
of winter, I have also been chilled to the marrow by the fiercest cold I have ever known. “Winter in April?” I can hear you say. Yes, the severe season stretches from November to April in this place, and the River Neva, which I can see, moonlit, from my window as I write, is frozen over, and has been thus, I am told, for the past six months! It is a great gleaming broadsword of ice, cleaving the city in two.

As for music: just last night, thanks to a letter of introduction from Spalding, I was received at a famous apartment in the Zagoredny Prospekt—nothing ostentatious, a small drawing-room, a few chairs, a grand piano, a table in the dining room loaded with the simplest food and drink . . . but what exceptional people were crowded, shoulder to shoulder, in that place. It was the apartment of Rimsky-Korsakov, who, I was pleased to discover, is not only a gifted and amiable gentleman, but speaks excellent English—an accomplishment not shared by many of his compatriots, whose social conversations are customarily couched in (or, at least, liberally laced with) French. The guests, myself excluded, were, to a man, composers and performers, some (I later learned) being members of a
koochka,
or clan, of musicians of which Rimsky-Korsakov is the nucleus.

You will laugh when I tell you that, not five minutes after being welcomed into the salon, I committed a
faux pas.
Wishing to take part in the musical discussion, I minutely described and lavishly praised the Chaikovsky opera I had enjoyed so recently at the Moscow Conservatorium. My tall host's gentle eyes grew cold behind his blue-tinted spectacles (which he wears because of ailing sight) and I felt a distinct frost. The awkward moment soon passed, however, and a dark young man took me aside to drily inform me that “Our esteemed Nikolai Andreyvich considers Chaikovsky's music to be in abominable taste.”

“Do you share that opinion?” I asked.

“Not precisely, but I do feel Chaikovsky is not a truly Russian composer. He has let himself be influenced by bad French models—Massenet, Bizet, Gounod, and so on.”

We were joined by a bloated, wild-haired, red-nosed, bleary-eyed but very courteous fellow who, after addressing me most deferentially, asked eagerly about the Chaikovsky work: “It is good, then, you think? Ah! Splendid! An excellent subject,
Onyégin.
I once thought of setting it myself but it's not my sort of thing—Pyotr Ilyich is the man for it, there's no doubt. Don't you agree, Vassily Ivanovich?” he added, turning to my companion.

That intense young man shrugged. “I suppose so—but to tell the truth, I am growing weary of these operatic obeisances to Pushkin. One cannot blame a composer of the old school, such as Glinka, for setting
Ruslan and Lyudmila,
but what are we to think when Dargomizhsky sets not one but three Pushkin subjects—
Russalka, The Triumph of Bacchus
and
The Stone Guest;
when you joined the cortège five years ago with your own opera; and when Chaikovsky now follows the pattern with
Onyégin
?” He threw up his hands. “May that be the last!” he sighed.

“There is still
The Queen of Spades,
” said the unkempt man, mischievously. “Perhaps you will undertake that one yourself?”

“Thank you, no,” snapped the other (rather irritably, I thought). “I leave that to you.”

“I may just do it,” was the smiling reply, “unless Chaikovsky is too quick for me!”
[He was: Tchaikovsky's setting of “The Queen of Spades” or “Pique-Dame” was presented in 1890. And, later, Rimsky-Korsakov drew upon Pushkin for his operas “Le Coq d'Or” and “Mozart and Salieri” and Rachmaninoff also turned to Pushkin for his “Aleko.”]
Elaborately excusing himself, the wild-haired man left us and began chatting with another group.

“Talented,” my young friend said in appraisal of him after he left, “but he lacks technique. His scores are crude, grotesque, his instrumentation a disgrace. Of course, he isn't well. An epileptic. And, as you may have noted, he drinks heavily. That red nose was
not
caused by frostbite, no matter what he says. We try to help him, but he makes it difficult for us. A group of us offered him eighty rubles a month, on the condition that he would finish a certain opera. He accepted. At the same time, unaware of our assistance, another group of friends offered him a hundred rubles a month if he would finish a certain
other
opera. He accepted that arrangement, as well, and, as a result, has finished neither. Still, somehow, he goes on writing music. There is a tavern in Morskaia Street, called Maly Yaroslavets—any night you will see him there, drinking vodka, scribbling music on napkins, menus, the margins of newspapers, feverishly, almost as if—” He broke off.

“As if possessed?” I said.

“A somewhat lurid allusion, don't you think? No, I was about to say, ‘almost as if his life depended on it'—as I suppose it does, for his interest in music is probably the only thing keeping him alive. To look at him now, Gospodin Stanton, would you ever guess he was once an impeccably groomed Guards officer, of refined breeding, a wit, a ladies' man?” He shook his head dolorously. “Poor Mussorgsky,” he sighed.