Countess Dracula (10 page)

The estimates of the number of victims vary but there is some consistency: Ficzkó and Dorkó suggest thirty-six or seven, Helena Jó and Benecká around fifty. Naturally, accomplices to mass-murder are likely to minimise their involvement and knowledge, but if we consider that these figures are very roughly accurate, but were actually deaths from natural causes, the totals could be credible, given epidemics, accidents and violence. A figure of five to ten deaths a year among a female staff (in the Lady's larger estates across the country) of a couple of hundred is not beyond possibility, but we will see these estimates change dramatically as other witnesses are called.

The four accused were examined on New Year's Day, and the court assembled on 2 January 1611. Unsurprisingly, given the venue, the proceedings were conducted almost entirely by persons in the pay of, or in some way dependent upon, George Thurzó. Theodore Syrmiensis, a representative of the royal assizes at Bratislava (and a personal friend of Thurzó), was presiding, with Eördögh from neighbouring Tren
č
ín, and Caspar Bájaky and Caspar Kardoss, who were both employed by Thurzó at Byt
č
a.
⁸

The full court convened on Monday, 7 January, with a jury of twenty including John David, sometimes known as Szent-Peter, and Caspar Ordódy, the assistant justices of the nearby Thurzó seats of Orava and Tren
č
ín respectively, as well as the presiding dignitaries. The prosecutor, Thurzó's secretary George Závodský, formally proclaimed to the court that the Lord Palatine had acted to protect the goodly and the innocent and to bring the Widow Nádasdy's inhuman crimes to an end. He had gone, Závodský announced, with his retinue and in the company of lords Nicholas Zrínyi and George Drugeth, and Paul Nádasdy's guardian, the knight Imre Megyery, to
Č
achtice where he had surprised Countess Báthory
in flagrante delicto
in the act of torturing her victims. One girl was already dead and two others were dying. The Palatine, in his anger at her bestial cruelty, there and then had the Lady confined as ‘a bloodthirsty female' and pronounced upon her a sentence of life imprisonment in the castle of
Č
achtice. The woman's
accomplices had been tried there at the Byt
č
a court and justice had been done. Závodský introduced the certified documents recording the accomplices' confessions into evidence and these were read out to the assembly. The four accused, who were deemed to have pleaded guilty by their confessions, repeated that they had been forced to do what they had done; they added nothing further.
⁹

At this point thirteen other witnesses were heard. Nine of these were people of low rank brought from
Č
achtice, the other four had come from the Nádasdy estates south of the Danube in western Hungary, or at least had knowledge of events which had taken place in that region.

The first to testify, George Kubanovi
ć
, said that he had seen the body of the last girl to have been murdered. She had lived at the manor-house and her body had been removed after the Lady's arrest. There had been signs of beating and burning on her body. (Kubanovi
ć
did not name the girl but others did, calling her Doricza. The rumour was that she had angered the Countess by stealing a pear.) The next five witnesses, John Válko, Martin Jankovi
ć
, Martin Krsko, Andrew Uhrovi
ć
and Ladislas Antalovi
ć
, supported this evidence without adding anything significant. The seventh witness, Thomas Zima, said that he knew that two bodies had been buried in the cemetery in
Č
achtice and one in Lesetice. When the priest from
Č
achtice had criticised the Lady, bodies from
Č
achtice had been taken to Lesetice in secret.

John Chrpman supported the previous testimony and said that he had once asked a girl who had escaped from the Countess who her accomplices were. This girl had said that Báthory had acted alone, but was sometimes assisted by a woman who was disguised as a man.
¹⁰
Andrew Butora, the following witness, was recorded as giving similar evidence. The next to testify was a woman, identified only as Susannah, who said that Countess Báthory had been helped in her torturing by Helena, Dorothy and Anna, known as Darvulia (in some versions ‘nicknamed Delbora'). John Ficzkó had also been involved, although Katherine was kindlier and had brought food to the maidens who were awaiting their cruel fate. Susannah said that several of her own friends had been killed by the Countess. She also informed the court that Jacob Szilvássy (the administrator of Léka and Keresztúr castles) had found a list of the Lady's victims in a casket (or chest) and that this list contained 650 names. The eleventh witness, Sarah Baranyai, agreed with Susannah and said that in the four years
that she, Sarah, had been serving the Lady eighty people had died. She knew this from Bicsérdy, the castellan at Sárvár, but she had seen it also with her own eyes.

The penultimate witness was Helena, the widow of Stephen Ko
č
iš (this may be the ‘bald Mrs Ko
č
iš' whom Ficzkó accused of joining in the torturing, but the name is a common one). She confirmed the stories of murder, but added that the Widow Nádasdy was also practising witchcraft and was adept at preparing poisons. She planned to kill the King and the Lord Palatine and Imre Megyery in this way. The last to be called, Anna, the widow of Stephen Gönczy, said that her own daughter aged ten years had been one of the victims and that she had not even been allowed to see her.

This part of the trial documentation also seems to be constructed from a number of different copies, signed by different notaries. Some phrases are entered illogically, out of place. It is also conceivable that some of the alleged crimes relate to Dorothy Szentes and not to Elisabeth Báthory. The witnesses once again employ the causative structure in Hungarian, which blurs the distinction between ‘did' (oneself) and ‘had done' (by someone else), even when less ambivalent forms could have been used. Some of the archaic vocabulary is also ambiguous: ‘She used her teeth to tear the flesh of the girls' could also be rendered ‘She used tongs to tear the flesh of the girls'.

The statement from ‘Susannah' was one of the most sensational of the whole investigation. She estimated that 650 girls had been killed – by far the highest number mentioned in connection with Elisabeth – and said that the court official Szilvássy had seen the proof in the form of entries in Countess Báthory's journal. Those modern writers who have taken the depositions by witnesses at face value and who are convinced of Elisabeth's guilt quote this as the ultimate proof of the scale of the woman's serial sadism. The weavers of legend have included this strand, too; in their versions the notebook in its secret casket also contains, like a seducer's diary, comments on the girls' features and figures.

In a modern courtroom drama such a devastating allegation would be followed by gasps of incredulity and indignation, then an impatient shuffling while Szilvássy himself is called to the stand to corroborate or deny. The bare written records from 1611 are silent; the witness said no more and a full year elapsed before the name of Szilvássy was heard again.
¹¹

When the presentation of evidence was over, the court went on to pronounce its sentences immediately. The published judgement read as follows:

The lady has committed a terrible crime against the female blood, and in this Dorothy, Helena and John Ficzkó were privy and purposeful accomplices and under interrogation the accusation proved to be well-founded and to determine more of the matter, Dorothy, Helena and Ficzkó were submitted to torture on the same occasion of the questioning. The accused persons then confirmed their previous statements and added even worse details of the terrible crimes committed by her ladyship, the widow Nádasdy. All the accused before the court, in the confessions that they made voluntarily and also under torture, and in other confessions, prove beyond doubt the guilt of the accused which surpasses the imagination in the many murders and slaughter and specific tortures and cruelty of all kinds and evil. And as these most serious crimes should be matched by the severest punishments, we have determined and we hereby decree that regarding firstly Helena and secondly Dorothy as those most implicated in the bloody crime, and as murderers, the sentence is that all the fingers of their hands which they steeped in Christian blood and which were the instruments of murder shall be torn out by the executioner with iron tongs, after which they shall be placed alive on the fire. As concerns John Ficzkó, his guilt and punishment is alleviated by his youth and his lesser participation in the crimes. He is therefore sentenced to lose his head; only his dead body will be placed on the fire with the two other condemned persons. And Katherine, as her two female companions stated that she had not participated in these affairs [sic], on only the basis of John Ficzkó's confession she cannot be condemned, therefore she shall be kept in close confinement until her guilt may be determined.
¹²

In fact the truth was the reverse: Ficzkó had spoken in Benecká's defence, the two women had tried to implicate her.

This sentence has been pronounced publicly before the accused and the punishment has immediately been carried out. As wider
proof and as an example for future times, this document is signed in our hand and affirmed by our seal, and we order that it be dispatched to his excellency the Palatine. Dated 7 January 1611.

There followed the signatures and seals of the twenty jurors.
¹³

The punishments handed out to those found guilty were carefully graded and designed to match the crime. This was an age in which the idea of rehabilitation was unknown and punishing was carried out as a social ritual to deter and, just as importantly, to enact retribution, ensure public approval and to purify the whole community. As well as its pillory (instead of the wooden stocks, larger Hungarian communities favoured wrought-iron cages suspended above the marketplace) every village had its gibbet as a reminder to potential miscreants, and towns and castles kept their instruments of chastisement on public display. At Byt
č
a there was a prison within the castle itself, where Ficzkó was kept, and a public jail for common criminals in the town, where the old women were held.
¹⁴
Public executions were held outside the town on meadowland by the river, overlooked by a line of hills. Here large crowds could assemble, and, if the wind blew from the right direction, the stench of the pyre could disperse along the valley. The condemned were usually brought out in carts early in the morning as bells tolled. They would be standing or sitting in an open cart, restrained by chains or a sort of scold's collar: a wooden yoke with a line of holes for the head and the two wrists held one before the other.

In death by burning it was thought that the forces of nature were annihilating the guilty, and not just the hand of man; it was one of the longest-drawn-out and most painful forms of capital punishment, usually reserved for witches or heretics. Hanging was considered to be the most shameful form of death and beheading the most noble in the prescribed range of capital punishment.

In Hungary, as in the rest of Europe, the moments before the act of execution could be a confused, sordid and shaming experience, or they could provide the chance for the condemned to enjoy, fleetingly, an audience before which he or she could repent, ask forgiveness and vouchsafe a few words for posterity. No account of the executions at Byt
č
a has survived, so we do not know how Ficzkó and the women faced their deaths. In a comparable case in Engand, there would have
been pamphlets printed and doggerel rhymes and songs composed, but Byt
č
a was Thurzó's fiefdom, the few printing presses were all in the hands of the nobles and dissent was not tolerated, so any public response could only have been oral and transitory.

So died the human instruments of Elisabeth Báthory's cruelty, if the evidence and the verdict can be trusted. Apart from her, they were perhaps the only individuals who knew the truth about the deaths of so many innocents, and they could no longer be brought back to fill in the many gaps in their testimonies or alter their stories to exonerate the woman they served. Whether or not they deserved to die, the speed with which these lackeys had been condemned and the sentence carried out was unusual and irregular, but they were, with the exception of Benecká, who was spared, people of absolutely no consequence in society and therefore expendable.

The judgement pronounced on the three servants who had suffered the death penalty was proclaimed publicly in all the areas where Elisabeth's family had landholdings. Shame was a powerful weapon in the early modern period, and the potentates of the late Renaissance were experts in black propaganda: the ‘facts' that had been revealed brought ignominy on Countess Báthory and by extension upon her late husband, but did so without smearing any other high-born individuals.

Of the ultimate fate of Katherine Benecká, the only one of the inner circle of servants to escape immediate execution, we know nothing at all. Arbitrary justice could work both ways; unexpectedly merciful treatment was almost as likely as disproportionate harshness, and Benecká, especially if she had relatives from the gentry to agitate on her behalf, may have walked free once a decent interval had passed (there were two men of the same family name recorded in documents of 1612 as living in the Byt
č
a area and owing allegiance to the Thurzó family). Unluckier prisoners – war captives who could not be ransomed, minor miscreants without friends of substance, or victims of embarrassing miscarriages of justice – were generally left, literally, to rot.