Countess Dracula (24 page)

I serve you
¹²

After the greetings and preamble the letter is uncompromising. The closing phrase is curt, and, just before it, Elisabeth's reference to Thurzó's high office is not only in deference to his rank (in becoming palatine one year before, he had attained the most exalted position possible for a loyal Hungarian), but a reminder that upon accepting his office he had taken an oath to uphold the law impartially. This interesting document may simply illustrate the day-to-day tensions of life in the court, the taverns and the marketplace, but it may contain more than this. It is possible that Tatay was a provocateur sent by Thurzó to incite Báthory's entourage to commit some crime or indiscretion; against this would be the fact that the Lady's daughter and Lord Zrínyi were present as powerful – if not wholly impartial – supporters of her cause. It is intriguing that Elisabeth nowhere gives the name of the member of her household whom Tatay challenged and who fought him off. Could this have been Ficzkó, her factotum, who was accused by the squire Gregory Pásztory, testifying in the later investigation, of provoking a fight with
his
servant in very similar circumstances at almost exactly the same time?
¹³

Another motive for Tatay's hostility to Elisabeth's court has been proposed by Dr Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss, who discovered that Stephen Báthory, the late King of Poland, had bequeathed large estates to the three Tatay brothers in gratitude for their faithful service, but that these estates were granted to the brothers for their lifetimes only, after which they would revert to members of the Báthory family, of which Elisabeth was one of the few surviving. Although we do not know the details of Gáspar Tatay's parentage, we can reasonably suppose that he may have resented the loss of his family's temporary fortune and held a grudge against the Countess.
¹⁴

By judiciously arranged marriages, by petitioning the King and frequently by force, the noble Hungarian families were all engaged in a relentless contest to increase their landholdings, enrich themselves and guarantee a secure future for their offspring. If they could choose, their first priority was obviously to acquire land that was cultivable – wine was the most profitable crop, but grain and cattle could bring enormous rewards. As far as the location of estates was concerned, the ideal was that they should be as far as possible from the contested Turkish frontier and also well away from the holdings of more powerful neighbours who might move to annex a village or a few hectares of pasture at any time.

From the King's vantage point in Vienna, the priorities were different. The Austrians knew that they could not depend on the loyalty of their subjects who lived in the areas bordering Transylvania, nor could they enforce their rule in the Partium, which they had long since tacitly abandoned to the Prince, but everyone was aware that they would never allow strategic strongholds in the western parts of the Kingdom to fall into the wrong hands.

One surviving letter, hitherto unknown, confirms that after she had lost her husband, Elisabeth was subjected at least once to the usual attacks by predatory neighbours on the lands held by widows. The letter also shows clearly the uncompromising strength of the Lady's character. It was dispatched in early 1606 from her late mother-in-law's castle of Kapuvár to the Transylvanian nobleman Count George Bánffy:

Magnifice Domine Nobis Observandissime

God give you all the best. I must write to you on the following matter: My servant János Csimber arrived home yesterday evening, and he reported to me that you have occupied my estate in Lindva. I do not understand, why have you done this thing? Just do not think, George Bánffy, that I am another Widow Bánffy! Believe me that I will not keep silent, I will let no one take my property. I wanted only to let you know this.
Ex arce nobis Kapu 3 Feb 1606.

    
Elizabeta Comittissa de Bathor

P.S. I know, my good lord, that you have done this thing, have occupied my small estate because you are poor, but do not think that I shall leave you to enjoy it. You will find a man in me.
¹⁵

Elisabeth's scathing reference is to the widow of another Bánffy, Gáspar, who was conspired against by rapacious relatives and dispossessed after her husband's death. In her final defiant flourish Elisabeth uses a Hungarian phrase meaning ‘I will be more than a match for you.'

When she was placed under house arrest at the end of 1610, Elisabeth Báthory's first thought was to safeguard those of her domains which bordered on the acres of vineyards surrounding the castle of Tokaj, which had once been Bocskai's and was awarded to Thurzó in gratitude for his part in arranging the 1606 peace. With this in mind, she gave the estate of Szécskeresztúr over into the hands of her son-in-law, George Drugeth.

While Elisabeth owned the Báthory estates which were her dowry and still governed the huge Nádasdy-Kanizsai inheritance that she had acquired by marriage, she was so well endowed with land scattered all across what remained of the Kingdom that most other nobles were smallholders in comparison. Any one of her score of castles and mansions would have made an honourable seat for a family of substance. She would regularly depart on tours of inspection, visiting most of the larger holdings, but she held court only in the four or five most magnificent and left the others in the hands of factors and stewards. It has been said that the peripatetic existence that Elisabeth led in the years after her husband's death was made necessary because she had become so notorious in the environs of her castles that she had to go further afield to entice victims for her sadistic practices, but this is unconvincing: local mothers, neighbours and officials continued to send or bring girls to all the courts, and Elisabeth's constant travelling was forced upon her once she took over her late husband's role of overseeing the vast estates, the town-houses in Trnava and Piešt'ány and the many farms, and attending to the other duties of a feudal dignitary (under this cover she may also have been travelling for political purposes, too). Once again it seems that the popular imagination has misinterpreted the ‘inexplicable' behaviour of the aristocrats and the fact that Elisabeth had stepped outside the normal bounds of feminine custom.

The closest property to
Č
achtice, situated about halfway between Nové Mesto nad Váhom and the free royal town of Tren
č
ín was the village and castle of Beckov. Sited on the summit of a rock which rises perpendicularly from the flat valley floor and overlooking the fields which open out towards the Danube lowlands, Beckov is
today a picturesque pile of ruins. Placed where Bohemia, Moravia and Hungary meet, it had been a point of great strategic importance in the constant wars of the preceding centuries.

The valley of the Váh is famous for the romantic stories that have grown up around its landmarks, many of them concerning the mediaeval Polish warlord Duke Stibor, who was given tracts of land there by the Hungarian King Sigismund. At
Č
achtice, Stibor built the first chapel hard by the castle walls and was reputed to have lured travellers into the fortress by offering sanctuary from brigands, then robbing his guests himself and tossing them from his battlements.

Not far north-west of Sárvár lies the village of Deutschkreuz, in Elisabeth's day called Creitz by the German-speaking locals, but known to her as Németkeresztúr (the
német-
prefix, meaning ‘German', is important to distinguish this possession from the eastern estate of Szécskeresztúr –
szécs
is an ancient Slavonic word for a clearing – which also belonged to the family). There among low hills lay a vast fortified palace adjoining a lake and abutted by paddocks and an ornamental garden. Not far away another of Elizabeth's castles, Léka (now Lockenhaus in the Austrian Burgenland) was built on a dramatic hilltop site. It contains a crude iron maiden in which the evil Countess is reputed to have shut her enemies,
¹⁶
its secret wells were said to penetrate the solid rock down to the valley floor far below, and the Nádasdy crypt beneath the castle is still haunted by Elisabeth herself, who, local people say, will reach out of the darkness to clutch at the arms of visitors.

On a more massive peak near by in Burgenland stands the impregnable fortress of Forchtenstein, once the property of Elisabeth's mother-in-law Ursula Kanizsai and today still in the hands of the Esterházys, whose ancestor Count Nicholas, the nemesis of the Thurzós, received it in 1610. Elisabeth is reputed – anachronistically – to have stayed there as Esterházy's guest and to have indulged in her satanic hobbies in the dungeons whose upper vents can still be seen at the base of the inner walls. Turkish prisoners-of-war laboured for long years in unspeakable conditions to tunnel Forchtenstein's 142-metre well and it was there, the folktales say, that Elisabeth disposed of her horribly maimed victims when she had tired of them. Forchtenstein's foundation myth is especially apt in that it prefigures our later drama. The tale tells that the castle, known to the Hungarians as Frakno, was built by a prince named Giletus who had Rosalia his wife thrown into
its deepest dungeon as a punishment for ill-treating her serfs while her husband was away.

North-west of Ecsed and close to Szécskeresztúr was another of Elisabeth's possessions, the spectacular twelfth-century gothic fortress of Füzér. Füzér castle, which was destroyed during the anti-Habsburg Rákóczi rebellion at the end of the sixteenth century, stood on a rock butte atop a steep rise covered with pines and birches. Below in the flat meadows, small village houses covered in vines were scattered among orchards where animals foraged and villagers lounged, lulled by the benign, almost freakishly tropical climate, the beauty of the landscape and potency of the local wines.

Memories of Elisabeth's notoriety cling to other stately sites, now mostly in ruins: Buják, where within living memory the occupying Russians took over the maze of underground passageways, the pinnacle at Stre
č
no, and Fogaras in Romania, which had passed into the hands of the princes of Transylvania, but whose name was always attached to the male Nádasdy heir's titles.

Even while her husband Lord Nádasdy was still alive and known despite his misgivings to be their faithful subject, the Imperial strategists in Vienna must have looked in consternation at their maps, musing on how they could secure these territories if the shifting allegiances settled once and for all in favour of their enemies. Elisabeth's brother, the judge Stephen Báthory, died at the very moment when a quarter of Hungary had joined Bocskai's insurrection and challenged the dominance of the Habsburgs. Among other bequests, the pro-Bocskai Stephen left Elisabeth the fortress of Devín, which stood on a promontory in the Danube, dominating the city of Bratislava and guarding the threshold to Vienna itself, the ‘Red Apple' coveted by the Turks. It was quite unthinkable that a woman, a widow of questionable loyalties whose late brother and young nephew were in the enemy camp, should be allowed to take possession of this prize, and when Elisabeth at the head of a detachment of her own soldiers rode from Sárvár to lay claim to the citadel, the German burghers of Bratislava, either under direct orders from Vienna or loyally anticipating the King's wishes, barred her way. The garrison commander refused to let the Countess and her entourage cross the Danube and the ferries at Bratislava were the only means of approaching Devín. Elisabeth had no option but to turn back. There was no question of defying the wishes of the Empire and risking charges of treason, but Elisabeth was furious; she had been
deprived of her inheritance illegally and had been personally insulted by the Bratislava authorities. ‘If the Germans can behave thus towards me, they can do this to anyone!' she stormed to a Transylvanian relative.

Unquestionably part of Elisabeth Báthory's offence in the eyes of her peers was that she had too much property, more than the Palatine himself, and too much power, and this would in itself be justification in those times for the confiscation of her land and fortune. The other strongly held view was that property and wealth should be devolved quickly and efficiently to the male children or children-in-law who had need of it to support them in their political duties. The widows had no official responsibilities in society, and so were held not to deserve the possessions they retained. It was only a matter of time before someone – a member of her own family, a rival aristocrat more formidable than Lord Bánffy or an agent of the King – made their move against her.

Protected in your boundless infamy,
For dissoluteness cherished, loved and praised
On pyramids of your own vices raised
Above the reach of law, reproof, or shame

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,
Valentinian

King Stephen Báthory and Prince Sigmund ~ family scandals ~ Count Stephen of Ecsed ~ two literary wantons ~ the events of 1610 ~ the Widow Nádasdy's testament ~ a letter from the Prince of Transylvania ~ collusion, conspiracy and pleas for mercy ~ the mystery of Megyery ‘the Red'