Author: Edward Kelley

Cited by

• Rebecca Alexander (1)
  • IN: The Secrets of Life and Death (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: When I was a boy, on one frosted morning, my father bade me dig our a pile of rotting straw that was obstructing the stable. I took a shovel and plunged it into the heap. Within, a knot of serpents in their winter sleep had been injured by my blade. One had been cut almost in two, and their bodies writhed together even in the depths of their hibernation, the severed bodies pumping blood upon their brethren. That night, I was reminded, as the bodies of the count and his lady writhed together over the bloodied limbs of Zsofia, the witch. The counters, no longer with the grayness of death upon her skin, looked young again. Her teeth were stained with the witch's blood, and her body scarred with the symbols I had seen burned and carved into her living flesh. I knew then that I was damned, and the sorcery we had completed would haunt the world. But at the beginning of our journey, I knew nothing but the flatteringg invitation of King Istvan Batbory to travel through his beautiful but barbarous country to aid his dying niece, the Countess Elizabeth Batbory.
    FROM: St. Clement's Eve, (1585), Book, UK