Dear Reader,

For years, I thought I knew Countess Báthory: the blood-soaked woman of myth and legend. A monster of a woman said to have bathed in virgins’ blood to cheat time. The Lady Countess has inspired folklore, horror, film and fiction for centuries. So why go back now, surely there couldn’t be anything left to explore?

But once I started doing some digging, what I found blew my mind. Because behind the myth is a darker, sharper question: who cares when the victims are peasant girls? And what can one girl do when she finds herself entangled in a corrupt and torturous regime, held together by the suffering of others? When the rich and powerful decide to murder and kill, who will stop them? Elizabeth Báthory was not only accused of unspeakable cruelty, but she was also one of the richest, most powerful widows in Hungary, a woman whose wealth and influence made Kings uneasy. The crown even owed the Countess money and her ultimate arrest changed fortunes. Her wealth  were all distributed to those that worked collectively to bring her down. Her name was forever tarnished, a macabre and grotesque example to the rest of us what happens when a woman has too much freedom – and power.

This novel does not excuse horror. The suffering of girls and servants in that brutal world cannot be whitewashed or excused. But it does ask what history buried beneath the blood, what was exaggerated, what was useful, and what was never recorded because the victims were poor, female and disposable?

Please step with me into the boggy swamps and gloomy corridors of an isolated castle brimming with secrets and fear. I cannot wait for you to meet the Countess, but also Catalina, and the peasant girls who had to outwit their betters every day, simply to survive.

I dare you to enter, and decide for yourself where legend ends, where truth begins, and who is still paying the price of unbridled power and cruelty today.

Clare Whitfield