Quiver by Holly Luhning Page A

like mouldy boxes of newspaper. Immediately, I noticed Báthory’s portrait, hung prominently on one of the faded robin’s egg blue walls. I had seen reprints of it in books, but it was larger, more vibrantly coloured than I had pictured it. She was ornately dressed, with a very pale face. Her eyebrows were thin and highly arched over round, heavy-lidded eyes. She wore a stiff, almost platter-like white collar, which sloped high around the back of her head and extended into a straight edge over her breast. A thick rope of pearls encircled her neck, looped over her collar and down the centre of the turquoise corseted bodice of her dress. Her thin white arms were visible through the light gossamer sleeves, which were gathered tight at the wrists with a band of turquoise velvet studded with rubies. Her right hand rested delicately on a pillow-lined window ledge. But her left hand firmly clasped a red-and-white zigzagged shield. Her fingers curled over the front as if they were atrophied around the metal.
    “Her portrait,” I said. The paint looked vibrant, as if it had been done relatively recently, but the portrait style was of a much earlier era.
    “Ah, yes.” Maria stood straighter and stepped towards the painting. “But that is not original, of course. That is by a contemporary artist in Bratislava, a copy. The original portrait, it was stolen from this museum years ago.”
    “Who took it?” I asked.
    “That is still a mystery. Perhaps someone local, some teenagers looking for mischief.”
    Apart from the portrait, the room contained an antique chair, a few pastoral paintings that resembled the surrounding landscape, and a glass display cabinet that housed a hollow vessel made from a lizard leg, with a wooden top placed askew across the opening.
    “Are all of these things relics of the countess?”
    “Well,” said Maria, “they are meant to be. At least, the way they are arranged here suggests this is true. But I do not believe they have the documentation to prove it is so.”
    “Where are these things from, then?”
    “Oh, they are quite possibly from the castle, or from Erszébet’s manor house, which used to stand in town. But other nobles, other generations, used those grounds also. Come,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulder, “the rest of the museum is more professional, more documentation. In another room, they have letters signed by Báthory.”
    Maria hurried me through two more rooms. As we went farther into the museum, the rooms became smaller, the air mustier.
    “Wait,” I said to Maria, trying not to give in to her constant tugging on my arm, “I want to look at these rooms, too.”
    “Dani, these things are of no consequence,” she responded, pausing for just a moment. “These things may be from the castle, but I have been here before, I have talked to the curator, if you can call her that—they are all just knick-knacks. Some villagers found them in an old trunk and sold them here, it is likely. Dani, trust me.” She stepped to face me squarely. “I will show you the real things.”
    I followed her into the last; room in the museum. “Now, this is authentic,” said Maria pointing to a block of stone. “They have it documented here, definitely from the ruins of Čachtice castle. And over here,” she gestures to a black-and-white framed print of a tall man with dark hair and a heavy beard, wearing a long black tunic. “Her husband, Ferenc. He was a very successful warrior—they called him Hungary’s Black Knight. Fought the Turks incessantly. Still, he took Elizabeth’s last name when they married, because her family was more illustrious.”
    “I remember reading about that. I was surprised she kept her name.”
    “Yes, yes, and her children, too; it was very common. Pass down the most powerful name,” said Maria, leading me along the wall. “And here, a letter from him to Elizabeth.”
    It was written on a thick parchment paper. “It looks well-preserved,” I