“I call it . . . an anniversary gift.” She smiles.
“That’s great,” I say. “Except that it’s not our anniversary.”
“One year, seven months, three days? That sounds like an anniversary to me. Besides, did you ever really have a honeymoon?”
We leave two weeks later, spend three days in Rome. On the fourth, we wind our way south along a twisting road overhung with lemon trees. And I desperately want to try limoncello, though Luka claims it tastes more like lemon Drano.
He’s aged in the last few months. We all have.
But none of us complain.
We check into our hotel on the terraced slope and wander the town of Positano. As on every day since we arrived in Italy, we end up eating too much pasta, crash out in our hotel that afternoon.
Jester chimes in some time around dinner.
Where are you?
Me: Preparing to eat. Again. Some more.
Come downstairs.
There’s a picture attached, and I recognize it as the beach of our hotel.
“Jester’s here!” I squeal to a drowsing Luka. “Let’s go!”
“Doesn’t she know it’s bad manners to crash a honeymoon?” he asks. But he’s up, immediately awake, and putting his shoes on. We haven’t seen her in over three months.
We pick our way along the beach, looking for her dreadlocked head.
But it’s the blond one that catches my attention.
The ponytail is longer than I remember, practically past her shoulders. I stare, afraid to move, as though she might be an apparition.
Until I see the small form with her.
She is the image of perfection. The face of love.
I cover my mouth, and stagger to the beach on legs with rubbery knees.
Clare turns, in mid-laugh, a small hand in hers. She lifts the girl up in her arms. She’s so big, and it’s the first time I have ever heard her giggle.
“Come back and see where we’re staying,” Clare says. “I want you to meet our neighbor. She has trouble with her memory.”
I don’t care about neighbors, but it doesn’t matter. I will follow that little face anywhere.
We go to the small house on the side of the cliff. The courtyard is filled with lemons. Eva is shy, afraid of holding my hand, but she looks back at us with a smile.
“Give her time,” Clare says, and I tell her I don’t mind. It’s okay to be afraid of strangers.
There’s a little gate between their two villas, and Clare ducks through the old stone arch to the adjoining house and raps on the door.
“Barbara,” she calls out. “Eva’s parents have come to get her. Come meet them and convince them to stay.”
A middle-aged woman comes out a moment later, an apron around her waist.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” she says, smiling at me and clapping her hands. “And yes, you must stay! I admit, I’m attached to the girl. She’s like a daughter to me.”
I know that face. Her smile is mine. But she tilts her head in confusion when I start to cry.
“Oh, such happy tears,” she says, wiping my cheek. “Come! Come inside. Clare, get them drinks while I finish the dumplings.”
We duck into her villa, and I steal glances at them both, and at Luka, whose eyes are red-rimmed.
A half hour later, Eva’s peering around the kitchen doorway, no longer shy, and I chase her toddling steps into the small sitting room as I have now three times in a row.
Except this time I slip and bump into Barbara’s bookshelf. A thick volume in another language falls flat from its standing position. As I reach to straighten it, I notice a very old book half-hidden behind the others. I pick it up, begin to thumb carefully through the fragile pages . . . and my heart begins to hammer.
“Barbara,” I say, as I go into her small kitchen where Luka and Clare regard me from the table. “What’s this?”
“Oh, that. I found it in a box of my things, must have had it forever. A family, ahhh . . . what is it called?”
“Heirloom,” Clare says gently.
“Yes, at least I think so. Some high-born woman’s journal from long ago. Proof, I guess, that if you go back far enough, everyone is related to nobility.” She chuckles.
I page to the beginning. The first entry is dated 1576.
I clasp the book and excuse myself to her little courtyard.
A little while later, Barbara comes out with Eva in her arms, finds me sobbing on the bench beneath her lemon tree.
“Poor girl,” she says. “Don’t you know when you should be smiling? The dumplings are ready. Eva’s smiling, aren’t you, Eva? Yes, Barbara makes her favorite dumplings.” She laughs as Luka comes to lean in the doorway. “But dear, now I’ve forgotten your name, and that of this handsome man with you.”
I wipe my eyes and set the diary aside, leave it on the bench as I get to my feet. Because everything I wanted is here, alive, right now.
“My name is Audra Ellison,” I say. “I’m twenty-two years old. This is my husband, and my daughter. And your real name is Amerie.” I smile softly and take her hands.
And you are my mother.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
With the exception of the St. Francis Center for Memory Research, the locations, sites, and buildings in the Progeny books are all real, and the details about them are true.
Photos of the monastery on Cres Island, the windows in the Nyirbator church, Cachtice Castle, as well as the Bathory crest and portraits of Elizabeth herself may all be found on my Real Life Progeny board at www.pinterest.com/toscalee./real-life-progeny/.
The part about the tunnels beneath Budapest—as well as the missing map—is also true. And while I’m unaware of clinics selectively erasing memories in humans, researchers have been tinkering with turning off and on the memories of lab rodents for years, offering promise for those suffering from conditions such as PTSD in the future.
Who was Elizabeth Bathory?
If you’ve read my historical novels, you know I’m a big believer in the idea that there’s always more to the story. That no person is only one thing or another. In that way, I’m pretty sure Brother Goran got it right when he said that we like to think we learn people when we really only learn their stories.
The Elizabeth Bathory of history and Hollywood is portrayed as a monster, a seductress, a sadistic narcissist with a vendetta against those more youthful than herself. But somewhere between the purported rages and explicit stories of torture suffered at her hands—as well as the blood-bathing that became part of her legend two hundred years after her death—hers is the story of a woman trained in the classics, philosophy, fencing, and art appreciation when women typically received little to no education. A Protestant subject of a Catholic king, she gave money to the clergy, church, students, the poor, and was known to be a doting and caring mother to her children.
As a noble, her pedigree was undisputed. Born into one of the most prestigious families in Europe, her uncles on both her mother’s and father’s sides were princes of Transylvania, her uncle the king of Poland.
A lifelong learner, Elizabeth Bathory was fluent in Hungarian, Greek, Latin, German, and Slovak and was known for writing her own letters in a succinct, to-the-point style. Her education in the arts was likely furthered at the household of her future in-laws after her engagement to Ferenc Nadasdy at the age of twelve.
It was at her in-law’s estate in Sarvar that the thirteen-year-old Elizabeth is rumored to have had an affair, after which she gave birth to a daughter who immediately disappeared to history.
In addition to her extensive learning, Elizabeth was extremely wealthy, having inherited her parents’ estates by the time she married Ferenc at the age of fourteen, during which her new husband gave her Cachtice Castle, where she would later spend the last years of her life incarcerated in a set of rooms.
Rumors began during her marriage: that she maimed her serving girls, that she kept secret rooms where she meted out punishment and torture, that she was h
elped by female accomplices, including her own children’s wet nurse and a young man she took into her household.
Did abuse occur? No doubt. Peasants were considered property, along with the land they lived on. Elizabeth and her contemporaries functioned during a time of near-constant war where enemies were roasted alive, sewn into the carcasses of horses, and met other equally barbaric and imaginative ends. Did she ritualistically kill young girls? We don’t know. If so, did her victims number in the hundreds? Not likely.
By the time of Ferenc’s death as a national war hero, Elizabeth would own thousands of acres and more than twenty castles, making her richer than the Habsburg king who, after years spent fighting the Turks, owed Elizabeth and her late husband more money than his coffers could repay.
It’s possible, in the end, that Elizabeth’s greatest sin was not her wealth, power, and Protestantism, but her unwillingness to retire from public life and her insistence on directing her own financial affairs, including calling in debts after Ferenc’s death—most notably from the crown. It didn’t help that her cousins were allied on the side of rising Transylvanian tensions against the king, either.
Perhaps foreseeing that her massive fortune would make a widowed Elizabeth vulnerable to the Turks, the crown, and a long list of debtors with no ability or intention to repay their debts, Ferenc entrusted the protection of his wife and children to Palatine Gregory Thurzo—the most powerful man under the king himself. This was the same Gregory Thurzo who would later, at the prompting of the crown, begin an investigation into the growing rumors surrounding Elizabeth.
Whether Thurzo succeeded is debatable. Owing obedience to the crown’s interest but himself a Protestant, Thurzo was in a dicey position. Nor could he have wanted to encourage the torture and execution of a noblewoman—the widow of a national war hero, no less.
After hundreds of dubious testimonies and a total body count that could not be confirmed but likely ranged from thirty-six to an unbelievable 650 (this second number attributed to a witness named Susannah who claimed Elizabeth kept a diary of her victims), Elizabeth’s accomplices confessed under torture. Her female accomplices’ fingers were ripped out with hot pincers before the women were burned at the stake. A young man named Ficko was beheaded and burned.
Elizabeth herself was walled up in Cachtice Castle, her existence struck from the record as though she had “never been.” The crown’s debt was canceled, and the king became Holy Roman Emperor in 1612. Elizabeth’s grandson, also named Ferenc, was later executed for treason and her descendants eventually banished to Poland.
Today, Elizabeth Bathory’s place of burial is not known; her grave has not been found.
Nor has her diary.
Her story is best known for its morbidity—on par with that of Vlad Dracul, “The Impaler”—and probably made more shocking because its main actor is a woman surrounded by other women. And while some of the allegations against her could be true, the story that rarely gets told is that of an intelligent, independent woman caught in rising religious tensions during the Protestant Reformation and myriad political crossfires.
For those interested in learning more about Elizabeth Bathory, I recommend Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory and The Private Letters of Countess Erzsébet Báthory, both by Kimberly L. Craft.
Probably the weirdest thing that happened to me during the writing of these books was learning of my distant relative Sir Ian Moncrieffe’s link to Bathory herself, thanks to my mother’s lifelong commitment to genealogy—including the use of DNA testing.
In the end, The Progeny and Firstborn aren’t about history at all, but what it really means to be alive, right now, in the only moment that exists: this one. They’re about what we choose to stake our identity on (our experiences? Our jobs, families, culture, education, religion?) . . . and who we are beneath them all.
It’s also about genius in all its forms—some more obvious than others. Maybe you, like me, have OCD. Or have contended with something unseen by others, in secret, for years. Maybe you’ve struggled with it through your life to the point that it’s interfered in your daily existence. Whether it’s ADHD, addiction, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, autism, a chronic illness—whatever it is—I believe it informs your particular genius. The thing that causes you to see the world in a way that others can’t. I wrote this book as a reminder that the way you—and I—see this world is a gift. You are amazing. You are Progeny.
Use your powers for good, people.
—Tosca
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I usually thank my readers first, though I’ve realized recently that there’s a group of people I’ve neglected in the acknowledgments of my other books: the teachers. So let me correct that here by saying thank you—not just to the teachers who encouraged me to pursue writing (Pat Kaltenberger and Anne Cognard of Lincoln East High, Craig Davis of Smith College, and Daniel Mueller of the University of New Mexico), but every teacher who had the dubious honor of having me as a student, as well as those intrepid souls who get up each morning to shape the lives of young people (and grown-ups) everywhere. You are my heroes.
Thank you to my readers—from your letters to your interactions on social media to the stories and hugs we share when we meet in person, you are such a bright light in my life. I love you guys.
Thank you to my agents, Dan Raines of Creative Trust and Meredith Smith, to Jonathan Merkh, Amanda Demastus, Ami McConnell, Beth Adams, Jennifer Smith, Brandi Lewis, and Bonnie MacIsaac at Howard, president and CEO Carolyn Reidy, and the team at Simon & Schuster.
Thank you to Stephen Parolini, Cindy Conger, Lisa Riekenberg, and Jeff Gerke for keeping me functioning and turning stuff in (mostly) on time.
Nikola Špehar, thank you for your patient answers to my many questions. You are a wonderful ambassador for Croatia.
Barbara Bocz, you are one of the most intelligent and amazing women I know and a wonderful ambassador for all of Europe.
Bryan, you are perfect to me in every way. Thank you for your amazing love, for making me a mother, for keeping me sane, and for holding me every night.
Kayl, Gage, and Kole . . . my favorite adventures are with you. Sorry about the creepy bedtime stories.
And thank you most of all to the Ultimate Author, for loving me to the very last line.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TOSCA LEE is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Progeny, Iscariot, The Legend of Sheba, Demon: A Memoir, Havah: The Story of Eve, and the Books of Mortals series with New York Times bestselling author Ted Dekker (Forbidden, Mortal, Sovereign). A notorious night owl, she loves watching TV, eating bacon, playing video games and football with her kids, and sending cheesy texts to her husband.
You can find Tosca at ToscaLee.com, on social media, or hanging around the snack table.
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ALSO BY TOSCA LEE
The Progeny
The Legend of Sheba
Iscariot
Demon
Havah
Also by Tosca Lee
Iscariot
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The Legend of Sheba
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Demon: A Memoir
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Havah
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The Progeny
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Tosca Lee
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First Howard Books hardcover edition May 2017
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Interior design by Jaime Putorti
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Author photograph © Lee Steffen
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.