CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Péter István,” said Tanner. “He was a Hungarian performer specializing in magic tricks and allegedly reading minds, healing peoples illnesses and even identifying thieves and murderers in the crowd. He was part of a large troupe of performers that traveled the world and yes, he was in Dublin when those three women were burned at the stake. His act, specifically was of a priest performing holy magic.”
“Holy magic?” frown Chief. “Is there such a thing?”
“No, which is the point we’re trying to make,” said Tanner. “He had a history of convincing the wealthy that they were dying and had to perform an act in order to survive.”
“Let me guess, the act had to do with paying him an exorbitant amount of money,” said Fitz.
“Ironically, no. The act was always something horrible. He would tell them that they had to murder a stable boy or hang a butcher and make up a story. He told one nobleman that the butcher was cheating on his pregnant wife. He made up a story of a scullery maid attempting to poison the master’s food and she was boiled alive. ”
“Holy shit,” muttered Rory. “We thought O’Shan was bad. Do we have anything on the bone yet?”
“We do,” said Riley staring into the screen.
“O’Shan wasn’t exactly a healthy man but a blood transfusion would not have helped him.
He had cancer, we think of the liver or pancreas.
My guess is that our pretend priest saw that he was jaundiced or at the very least, losing weight and knew he could convince him to do something horrible. ”
“Was he there to witness these horrible acts?” asked Fitz.
“For some, yes,” said Tanner. “From what we can tell so far, more than thirty victims occurred during the time that the troupe was in the western part of Ireland. No doubt, O’Shan was convinced he had to continue his quest long after the priest left.”
“What was the criteria? I mean, we know it was age related, sort of. And we know he didn’t want dark-skinned people. But what exactly is the perfect person he was looking for?” asked JT.
“Of that, we’re not sure,” said Riley. “If he spoke to Joseph, maybe he could go back and ask on the premise of helping him find the person. I don’t know. I’m not exactly an expert at ghost fighting.”
“It’s worth a shot,” said Joseph. “He seemed fine speaking with me.”
“What do we know of Péter István?” asked Marc. “Is there anything remarkable about him?” Riley nodded at them once again.
“It’s a good question. He was married at one time with three children.
They all died from the Hungarian Disease.
At that time, there had been years of constant warfare, destroyed farmlands, and marching armies which resulted in severe localized famines.
Like many places in that time period, as people starved and sanitation collapsed, the country was swept by epidemics.
“Most notable was something called xanthomatous typhus or historically called the Morbus Hungaricus or Hungarian Disease. Although the records aren’t clear, it appears that his wife and children died of this.
It’s also possible that he went mad afterwards and began wanting others to suffer as he had,” said Riley.
“Okay, so we have a chieftain who took the advice of a madman and began killing people believing they could save him. We’ve got the madman priest whom we cannot even speak to because, at least I assume, he died somewhere other than Ireland,” said Joseph.
“He died in Hungary, many years later,” said Tanner.
“Damn,” muttered Rory. “What do we do now?”
“We don’t do anything,” said Joseph. “I go back and try to speak with him. I’ll tell him what we know and see if that matters at all to him. If not, I’ll see if I can’t find out what his criteria is for the victim he’s trying to find.”
“It’s late,” said Riley. “All of you get some sleep. We’ll be trying to find any angles on this end.”
The screen went black once again and they all leaned back, taking in the information they’d been given.
“Well, I’m going to bed,” said Julia standing, the entire room of men standing with her. “Thank you for a lovely day, Sean. I saw Dublin like I’d never seen her before.”
“That was what I wanted,” he smiled. Julia turned with a smirk to Joseph, batting her eyelashes.
“Don’t worry about me. Michael is taking me upstairs to safety.” Joseph flared his nostrils.
“Am I going to have to vanquish two ghosts?”