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1573: Inspired by the true story of ‘The Blood Countess’
1573: Inspired by the true story of ‘The Blood Countess’
In 1573, Countess Erzsébet Báthory gave birth to an illegitimate child. The infant, a girl, was swiftly bundled up and handed to a local peasant family to be brought up in one of the hamlets surrounding the Castle. Many years later, 15-year-old Boróka reluctantly leaves the safety of the only home she has ever known in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. Trusted members of the countess’s household have been sent out to gather new serving girls, and the kindly old man who has taken care of Boróka for almost all her life knows that it is dangerous to turn them away.
Boróka struggles to find her place at Cachtice Castle: she is frightened of the countess’s reputation as an alleged murderer of young girls, and the women who run the castle are terrifyingly cruel. When plague comes into the heart of the castle, a tentative bond begins to form between Boróka and the Countess Báthory. But powerful forces are moving against a woman whose wealth poses such a threat to the king: can the countess really trust the women who are so close to her? And when the show trial begins against the infamous ‘Blood Countess’ where will Boróka’s loyalties lie?
Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed
Elizabeth was a Hungarian noblewoman and alleged serial killer from the Báthory family, who owned land in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Slovakia). Báthory and four of her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and women from 1590 to 1610.
Her servants were put on trial and convicted whereas Báthory was imprisoned within the Castle of Csejte (Čachtice), where she died under mysterious circumstances.
Some insist she inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula although Stoker’s notes on the novel provided no direct evidence to support this hypothesis.
TheBookTrails review of The Nightingale’s Castle – Sonia Velton
Destination/Location: Slovakia, Hungary, Čachtice Author: Sonia Velton Departure: 1610
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