The Obsidian Princess

Chapter 4

The next day was better since Eloa had slept off the whole last day. She had missed an entire day of her trip only because of her foolhardiness. She rose up from the bunk bed to find her back pack kept at the corner of the room and she opened the first chain of her pouch to take out her wooden comb but she came up with nothing.

“I must have dropped it somewhere in that blasted room,” she sighed. It was very difficult for her to manage her waist long raven black hair without brushing it in the morning. Without thinking anything she pulled her hair in a top-knot and went out to find her friends having breakfast and chatting away. Some were clicking pictures and selfies and posting them on Insta. Eloa rolled her eyes as she grabbed a muffin from the bowl. She took a bite and went out of the small stone house in the courtyard and looked up at the castle. It looked like crumbling old man climbing the hill who had stopped to take a breath. Eloa looked at the walls which were now standing mute probably from being the witness of so many horrors that gone by inside.

“Hey girl!!! You feeling okay today? Heard you saw the ghost of the Bloody Lady in the castle at night?” asked a girl from behind her.

Eloa turned back to face her and found herself looking at the most intense pair of azure blue eyes she had ever seen. She smiled at the girl with her mouth full of muffin.

“Sorry I didn’t introduce myself. We are a group of hikers from Chicago, but due to the storm our hiking trip was cancelled so we all camped down here. I am Mirani,” said the girl as she thrust forth her hand to shake it.

“Well I was deprived of sleep and in a cold place with an addled brain, so I am not really sure about what I saw. It must have been a dream or I was sleep-walking. I go by Eloa,” she replied shaking her hand.

“You know, Eloa. You might not have been entirely wrong. I found something near the stairs which made be believe otherwise. My friends don’t know this and probably neither should yours too,” said the girl as she plunged her hand inside the backpack she was carrying on her shoulder and took out an old tattered book, which was probably leather bound.

Eloa’s eyes went wide like saucers and she said,” Is this what I think it is?”

“Well I can only hope so. This is written in some old language of which I have no inkling but you were the recipient of the hit, so I guessed probably you should take a look at it,” said Mirani as Eloa took the book from her hand.

“I don’t know how to thank you for this. I would have otherwise seriously thought I had gone crazy. And my therapist would have had a field day with this,” said Eloa as she perused the leather-bound volume.

Hearing her Mirani started out laughing. Her laughter was just like the summer rain and the birdsong too, and on hearing it Eloa felt that the sun brightened. It was as if her sound lifted a veil from our eyes and allowed us to see the world more clearly. It's funny how laughter can do that, those honest rumblings of the soul.

“Guess I shall see you around then,” said Mirani and Eloa nodded at her with a smile.

Eloa went back to the room where they were staying with the diary in her hand. Nia had called her in the meanwhile and asked if she would like to go camping in the woods but Eloa said that she needed to sleep some more. No one thought of questioning her after that. After the incident of first night, none of the boys or girls had even dared to venture inside the castle even for the sake of a historical architectural training trip. Although Eloa was not aware of the fact.

She sat down upon the bunk bed and opened the volume and a familiar coppery scent hit her nose. She knew that it was something that she knew but she could not place it still. The handwriting was a beautiful one, in cursive, slanting a bit towards the right. It was Latin, well the language was not an easy one but her Mama had forced her to learn it in her childhood. At least some good was coming out of it, thought Eloa with a sigh.

Elizabeth Bathory Nasdady.

Holy Mother of Heavens!! This was the diary of the Countess of Blood herself, yelped out Eloa.

She started reading the diary slowly. Eloa did not know what she was feeling but she still could not shake off the feeling that someone was looking at her at all moments. She could feel a cold presence over her shoulder but probably she had caught the chill in the weather.

The Countess had written very little about her childhood telling that she was a very frail child and had suffered a lot from seizures and fevers. There were no proper treatments for her disease which made her want to learn how to become a healer but she was a member of the royal household and that was not allowed for women in those days. Still she learnt from their healers and the other forest witches who were outcast but knew about physiology, and they helped the unwed girls abort their fetuses. It was definitely a nasty business but for the first time in her life Elizabeth had felt that she had found her calling after she had touched all that blood and mangled flesh.

Her marriage to Ferenc was not a happy one. She had never wanted to marry that man who would never be able to be her husband and would be away to fight wars almost all his life but she was forced in that marriage. Ferenc was not an unpleasant man however she could never forget the boy, a farm-hand who had taken her virginity when she was thirteen. But her child was not allowed to be aborted like she wanted to, she was forced to give birth and then the baby was given away to someone else in the village. She never came to know in her life what became of him.

Reading this Eloa sat up and rubbed her eyes. The language which had been used was definitely Latin but the underlying emotions and the currents which was palpable made Eloa think twice about how much she had been falsely alleged. How she had been forced to live something she did not want to but she had still gone on living.

A lot of pages had been dedicated about her children, Anna, Ursula, Andreas and Paul and she had written as well about one of the infants whom she had lost within a few days of her birth. She had loved her children and spent a lot of time on their upbringing and grooming and education. But unlike her they were satisfied to become wives of the nobles and lead a life of luxury. Her sons were also members of the Court. While Fenrec was away it was she who had to take over the responsibility of his land and his castle and his people. She spoke about the women whose husbands had gone to war and they were left alone and destitute without protection. Turkish raiders came and took them away as bonded slaves and left some of them raped and murdered.

The forest witches who used to abort the illicit and illegitimate sins of womb had been burnt or murdered long back and the brunt of this business fell upon her shoulders. She lost the lives of sixteen woman on her operating table. It was a bloody affair. She could not save them but no one actually said her or accused her of murder. They knew that the girls were beyond saving.

As Elizabeth started staying more and more with the women and treating them the more closer she grew with them. For the first time in her life she probably felt at place and she fell in love with the young girls. They were just like lamb, so innocent, so pretty and they did just like she wanted them to do in bed.

Reading that Eloa closed the diary and looked outside. She had finished almost three-fourths of the diary. Only one thought reeled in her mind that the Countess was a lesbian. It was almost afternoon and she had missed lunch. That really did not bother her very much. Eloa went out and looked at the castle ruins once again. Her eyes befell on the grandeur of the weather-beaten stone once more as the winds whistled through the trees. She could hear an ode to dissatisfaction, an ode to selfishness and a prayer for the fallen. The grasses and their blades beneath her feet whispered tales of the pain of the women who had run here to seek refuge and found it only to die a few days later.

The castle lay like an old man of the hill, the moonlight shone on his craggy, tumble down face. Moss clung in the shade of the ancient walls like a straggly beard. The once proud turrets had crumbled in places giving the impression of a disheveled party hat. Without even thinking Eloa started walking towards the castle and entered it through the same path that she had taken a couple of nights earlier. This time she did not feel out of place. It was as if she belonged. There was a woman who was unloved and unwanted, who had cried for love all her life and searched for it in the wrong places but never found.