Erzsebet
When dissecting the events coloring history,
it is hard not to judge royalty –
so consumed with inbreeding,
inbreeding as a result of greed for keeping
treasures and power within select families
for political gains.
Sometimes these alliances of power and land holdings
grow genetically flawed and
proved themselves a recipe for self-immolation,
an amalgam that sparks legends and myths to be generated.
And in the case of Countess Eresebet’s, a reality so harsh,
an ‘Act’ of Parliament resulted,
declaring the mention of her name a criminal act.
This niece of the King of Poland was scarred
at the moment of conception,
the maleficence of genes dividing within the zygote
became cells dividing into sects of evil compounding evil,
spliced between layers of schizophrenia and insanity.
Her head crowned into a dynasty of the arcane,
the richest most powerful Protestant family in Hungary.
1560 welcomed Erzsebet Bathory into a rich life
below the shadows of the Carpathian mountains.
By the age of five, they called her Elizabeth,
epilepsy rocked the delicate, porcelain skinned child.
She was beautiful, spoiled and catered to,
better educated than most men.
Elizabeth knew her standing was different,
she saw it the day when a gypsy was held for a crime.
Brought outside the castle,
Elizabeth’s young ears heard the screams
and she loosed herself from a nanny to watch justice:
the gypsy’s horse sliced open and eviscerated while still alive
the condemned man then sewn inside to die
this impression became a raw infusion of dark portentous thought
latching forever into Elizabeth’s psyche.
By age eleven, raven haired Elizabeth was sent to her fiancee’s Castle ,
where she was groomed for marriage,
to prepare for the raping
and taking of all childhood innocence, a custom carried forward.
Her marriage deemed a political allegiance,
her husband a soldier eleven years her senior,
Ferenc Nadasdy, gave his gift to her, Castle Csejte,
a new home for her pleasures and pain.
While he busied himself with fighting the Turks,
The engaged 13 year old, Elizabeth gave birth by a male servant,
the baby was removed along with the hushed secrets
always dulled within castle walls.
At 15 she married as highest royalty,
her husband took from her, the last name of Bathory,
a more socially prominent name.
Her new mother-in-law tended to dominate and criticize,
her new husband was busy on distant battle fields as
Elizabeth was living a life of boredom
and a recognition that she needed attention.
True bliss came only on her visits to Aunt Karla
and pleasuring themselves with indulgent, all female orgies
and extravagant flagellation.
The newlywed Countess, preferred buxom women, hot wax,
and hot branding irons.
Ferenc specialized in his own devices of torture for the enemy.
Elizabeth became absorbed by the occult
taught by her servant, Dorka.
With her nurse and several ‘witches’, Elizabeth had a new hobby;
beating female servants for her sexual delight,
inserting pins into their lips and fingernails,
hot metal spikes for girl’s tender body parts,
cutting them with scissors,
shoving oiled papers between their tender
toes and setting the papers on fire.
Elizabeth delighted in having a servant taken into the freezing snow,
to have water poured upon the girl until she froze.
If the weather was fair,
Elizabeth poured honey on her victim
waiting for the fleas and rats and wild animals to consume the body alive.
Heaven and lust found at the fringes of mutilation and
bloodied female corpses.
In between the torture, She bred spawns for legacy,
a daughter, then two children died. She produced two more heirs,
but heirs to what?
Did they suffer from her sicknesses?
Did they desire their parent’s predilection of pain as pleasure?
Where were the children when they mother was having her orgies
and killing sprees?
Did they hear the screams, did they peek as Erzsebet had done
with the gypsy’s horse?
Don’t you wonder what the bedroom chambers held
between two people so thriving on hurt and suffering
and hungering for perverse attention?
Frenec was recognized as “The Black Hero of Hungary” –
one of “The Unholy Quintet’ known for his ravaging cruel nature.
But even the Count became repulsed by his wife’s insatiable capacity
for overt sadism.
1604 brought death into Castle Csejte as Ferenc died,
a war injury had spoiled the blood.
Finally, after 29 years of marriage,
the mother-in-law was removed,
Elizabeth now had complete domination,
a new meaning to home sweet home.
The countess was aware of her age, her faded beauty
and one day after a release of blood from striking a servant,
she welcomed a warm rush of red fluid against her aging body,
a vitality unrecognized before.
She demanded a servant girl be drained of blood
so Elizabeth could bath and drink in this resource of eternal youth,
revitalizing herself by the lives she would sacrifice.
After that Elizabeth got greedy, setting up cages in the dungeon
hoisted high metal bars with perforated bottoms –
spikes penetrated the flesh of the victims for draining blood.
These cages provided Elizabeth the showers of rejuvenation.
Needing more ‘available help’,
in 1609 she advertised her castle
as a ‘finishing’ school, which it literally became.
Elizabeth was grateful for so many virginal girls
and their rich blood source.
She saw to it they each received a Christian burial for their sacrifice –
even though the priest wondered how so many died mysteriously.
Elizabeth grew sloppy in her obsessions,
a victim escaped, bodies were reported thrown out of the castle in
laziness.
The King ordered Elizabeth’s cousin,
Count Gyorgy, governor of the providence to raid the castle.
Gyorgy waited for Christmas, and sent his men in –
They found victims scattered about,
50 bodies had been buried beneath the castle,
one victim was being drained, but still alive.
The trial was political,
they wanted no scandal,
and no royalty to be put to death.
Elizabeth did not plead anything, nor did she make an appearance.
The jury heard from those who had suffered for sometimes months of unrelenting vile servitude for Elizabeth’s bloodthirsty fetishes.
The ‘cache’ of ‘ritualists’ assisting the Countess
were sentenced in ‘Biblical’, Christian justice;
their fingers torn off with hot metal pinchers,
their tortured bodies then tossed into a pyre.
A few lessor criminals were simply beheaded.
Proving religion was just as guilty of
having its’ own vicious, fetish perversion
in their desire for retribution.
Elizabeth was ordered sealed inside a small room at the castle,
no windows or doors,
only a small opening for food and ventilation.
Her remaining in residence at the castle assured that her children
kept their royal inheritance.
Assured the good name of Bathory was unspoiled,
even with those who claimed she was a victim of a conspiracy.
By the time she died in 1614, she had tortured almost 650 girls,
keeping hand written lists of incrimination,
possibly taking pleasure from the sheer numbers
or the remembrances themselves.
Mostly they were virgins,
mostly poor or lower peasant class –
They all served the Countess and country beyond the call of duty.
The records were sealed; no one was to speak her name for a century,
for fear the words themselves would release a dark force
or spell bringing her deeds back in spirit form.
What became of her children?
her Castle Csejte fell into ruins –
Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, the fictional account
of similar events of psychosis living among the mountain.
Stories spread throughout the world.
Was it was due to simple inbreeding?
To the people talking inside Erezsbet’s brain?
Or maybe it breaks down to spoiled, bored ‘titled people’
with too much time
on their bloodied, royal hands.
Perhaps there were too many tantalizing tales of perversion
on the battlefield and from the Church.
Too many twisted opportunities with little respect for human life.
Elizabeth Bathory’s life will not be remembered for her
duty as loving wife or mother,
but as a bloodthirsty dominatrix who needed to inflict pain
to satisfy her own.
These are the secrets still lingering today,
still whispered in the Carpethian mist
and read off the stains from castle dungeon walls…