In the years following the end of my blood treatments, the fits I had previously endured lessened. My blood lust did not, and I came to revel in the displays of cruelty perpetrated by my father and his guards.
Sometimes, they would torture peasants for some perceived slight, but other times, their punishments were put on as a show of sorts. My father would bring together other nobles of the region and put on a sumptuous banquet. The men would gorge themselves with food and wine while the women congregated in another part of our estate. Rather than being sent to sit with the nobility wives, my father would make me sit with the men.
They disgusted me. By the end of the meal, a layer of spills and stains would cover their finery, and they would become emboldened. They would talk of affairs with their slaves, leering at me as they regaled the table with their tales of debauchery. By the time the entertainment began, some would stroke my hair or whisper horrid things in my ear, the fetid stench of their breath nauseating me.
The entertainment consisted of violent acts against men and women plucked from the surrounding area. The guests at my father’s events were encouraged to cut the villagers, creating wounds not designed to kill but rather to induce pain and torment. The screams of the tortured did nothing but drive the men to more heinous acts of violence. I saw beheadings, disembowelments, and flesh flayed from the body and fed to the dogs. These images should have haunted me as a child, but instead, I found myself enthralled by the suffering. I once asked my father why he didn’t torture the people held in our jail, but he laughed and said that his guests demanded innocent blood.
It was at one of these events that I was to meet my future husband. I was still a girl, no more than ten years old, but my father saw fit to arrange a wedding with Ferenc Nadasny, a nobleman of the region. It was a decision made out of political needs and one in which I had no say. Ferenc would remain my husband for many years, but I never felt anything but distaste for the man. Sex was nothing more than a function for adding to the Bathory line, so I allowed him to take me whenever he wished, which, thankfully, was not often. My marriage to Ferenc has little bearing on my story, so I will waste no more time talking of it.
When a gentleman named Ladislaus came to attend one of my father’s banquets, things changed for me. I’m sure that when I take my last breath, which will be soon, it will be his face I see before darkness takes me.