The Nosferatu Scroll Read Free Page A

Řezník had two more tasks to perform. The carriage was standing outside the church, the driver waiting for him. Řezník climbed up onto the vehicle and instructed the man to return to Krumlov Castle.
    The gates were still wide-open, but the courtyard was now virtually deserted. Only three men waited for Řezník’s return and the orders they expected him to issue. The priest stepped down from the carriage and walked across to them.
    The men were all wearing tunics that identified them as servants of the Schwarzenberg dynasty, and two of them were armed with short swords, the scabbards buckled to their belts. It was these two men whom Řezník approached first.
    “It’s time,” he said. “Do it now. Kill them all, and dump the bodies in the forest.”
    The men nodded, turned on their heels and vanished inside the building.
    Řezník turned to the third man. “Show me the painting.”
    The servant led Řezník into the castle and to a long gallery, at one end of which hung a life-size portrait of Eleonora. The priest stared at the princess’s pale face for a few moments, his lip curling in disgust.
    “Lift it down,” he ordered.
    Once the painting was leaning against the wall, Řezník took his folding knife and opened it. He drove the point of the blade through the canvas to the left of the princess’s head and hacked downward in a vertical line. He repeated the operation on the right-hand side of the image as well, then sliced a horizontal line above the head to join the two cuts. He seized the flap of canvas that now fell forward, and started to cut along the last remaining side.
    As his blade began cutting through the painted image of Eleonora’s neck, the mournful howl of an animal echoed through the vast old building.
    The man beside Řezník glanced round in alarm, but the priest ignored the interruption. He completed the final cut through the canvas and stepped back, holding the painted image of the princess’s head in his left hand. He looked around and then stepped across to the nearest sconce in which a torch burned brightly. Taking it down,he held the flames to one corner of the square he’d removed from the painting. The canvas was heavy and the paint thick, and for a few seconds it merely smoldered. Then the fire took hold and it flared suddenly, the flames a kaleidoscopic mix of colors as the pigments in the paint were consumed by the heat. Řezník dropped the final corner of the canvas to the floor and watched as the last of the flames flickered and died.
    “Are there any other pictures showing that woman?” he demanded. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak her name.
    “That was the last one. All the others have been destroyed.”
    Řezník nodded in satisfaction. His work was done. The princess was buried in what amounted to an unmarked grave, and he had done his best to expunge all traces of her life, all reminders of her presence, from the castle.
    Without a backward glance, he walked out of the gallery and a few minutes later passed through the double gates that secured the courtyard of Krumlov Zamek. He knew he would never enter that cursed and wretched castle again.
    He just hoped that he had done enough to stop the contagion before it took hold in the district.
    But in that regard, Řezník was mistaken. Over the next few years he would officiate at nearly a dozen burials that would require him to use his peculiar and arcane knowledge,though none of these would involve another member of the aristocracy.
    And on his own deathbed, nearly twenty years later, he would finally acknowledge the truth he had shied away from for all those years.
    Because what happened in the months and years after the burial of Eleonora Amalia proved to him beyond doubt that she was not the source of the plague, as Řezník had always believed, but simply another victim.

1
    Present Day
    “This truly is a spectacular place,” Chris Bronson said, looking back at the city of Venice.
    It was the first day of