—
They lay joined, pressed together, feeling hearts slow and breaths ease. His eyes were closed again, his face calm. Hers were open to study him. He looked almost like the boy he’d been when she’d taken off the veil of coins and seen him properly that first time.
She knew the stories. There had been many in the court all too willing to recount his deeds—her maid, Elisabeta, daughter of Turcul jupan, the most eager until she stopped her. But those she knew—of cruelty, of hideous punishments—did not tally with the man who lay in her arms. He did not talk of them there, nor of anything like that; had never revealed to her the source of the darkness that could flood his eyes in an instant. Those words were for the confessor it was said he went to, and for God, not for her. He called her his sanctuary. She would not violate the one place he felt safe, no matter what it was said he had done.
A horse came down the street. Pass by, she prayed, but it didn’t. A voice came softly through the shutters. “Prince?”
She pressed her hands over his ears but he heard anyway. “I come,” he called.
The horse moved away. Not far. He tried to rise and she held him still. “My love,” he said, placing his hands on top of hers.
“Stay.”
“No longer,” he said firmly, “God calls.”
“Strange that God speaks in Ion’s voice.”
He laughed, slipped her grip, rose, dressed swiftly while she watched him, studying each curve of muscle, noting every scar. There were none new to add to the map she carried in her head.
He turned, one boot on, seeing the intensity of her regard. “What is it?” he asked.
“Come back to me,” she whispered.
He pulled on the second boot, sat upon the bed. “I shall,” he replied, “and if I do not then Ion has sworn—”
She put a finger to his lip. “I know. But I suspect that if you do not come then Ion will not, either, for I cannot see him live if you die.” He tried to interrupt but she went on. “I will be safe. I will dress once more as a boy and get myself to the nuns at Clejani whose cloisters you have so generously endowed. It is the ending place for every royal mistress, is it not?”
He smiled at her sudden temper, pulled her fingers away, kissed them. “Somehow I cannot see you in a wimple.”
She did not smile. “If you do not come back I will shave my head and wear one till I die.”
He reached for her thick hair, lifted it from her shoulder. “If for no other reason then,” he said. She laid her head in his palm. He bent, kissed her eyes closed. “Keep them shut,” he whispered. “And when you open them I will be here again.”
She obeyed, as ever. She heard her door open, then the one on the street below, a murmur of voices there. As the horses were ridden away, she kept her eyes shut still, despite the tears that squeezed through. He had never broken a promise to her and, for as long as she could, she’d believe he never would.
– THIRTY –
Night Cries
It was the cry that woke him. At first, Hamza was not sure if the hawk’s call had come from within his dream or without it. If within, then he heard it in the place of dreams, the sand dunes beneath the walls of Laz. If within then, perhaps, he could return there, to his birthplace on the shores of the Black Sea, in the brief time he had left before the muezzin’s call to prayer. A few moments of heat, of brightness, before he rose to the chill and dullness of Guirgiu castle, where the piles of furs and sheepskins under which he lay failed to prevent the river chill seeping into his every bone.
If the cry was without, it was most likely the saker he’d brought with him. Though his title of cakircibas—chief falconer—was largely honorific now, so busy was he with affairs of state and the Sultan’s commands, every man had still to labor at his trade when he could, against the day of disaster. Mehmet himself was to be found in his gardens, trowel in hand. Often, actually, such was the Sultan’s love of all things that grew. Every emissary was ordered to seek the rarest plants in the lands they visited.
This embassy was a good chance for Hamza to ready a hunting bird for the spring and Mehmet’s fist. But it was an eyass, stolen from its nest too early, so nervous and bad-tempered. His kindness had failed so far. It would soon be time for harshness.
He was awake now, dreams of a warm sea beyond reach. In a few moments he would be forced to his knees, his prayer kilim scant protection from the flagstones. Though the Turks held it now, Guirgiu had been built by the Franks years before and they did not seem to care about the cold.
Another cry, but this time more of a giggle and close by. Hamza turned to see the outline of a head upon the pillow, the prized and styled hair a red halo around it. He could guess the sort of dream the man beside him was having. It would involve pain, inflicted.
Thomas Catavolinos. Though after the fall of his city of Constantinople, he had converted to Islam in order to serve the Sultan, and taken the name Yunus Bey, Hamza still thought of him by his former name. The man had made little other concession to the faith, kept the clothes, the uncovered hair, the Greek delight in all things devious. And he had risen high because of certain skills…
Hamza sighed. He knew why Mehmet had yoked them in the harness of this embassy. As a falconer, he had often used a blinded rat, tethered near a saker’s nest, to trap an adult bird. He was that rat, to lure the one they were to meet. While the man beside him had been sent for his special talents. The Sultan’s orders had been clear—once the Prince of Wallachia was taken he was to be broken. As with his falcon, Mehmet did not have the time to make his enemy biddable himself. He only wanted to enjoy the results. And no one was more skilled at breaking men than this Greek.
Hamza shuddered. It was not something he would be involved in, praise be to Allah, Most Merciful. He remembered how hard it had been to break the youth. How much more would it take, now he was a man? A man who had ruled, and of whom…disturbing stories were now told. A part of him hoped the prince would not come, that the lure of his own reassuring presence would not be enough. Yet, what choice did Vlad have? Hamza had spies in every court in Europe. All told him the same thing. That though Vlad might itch to face his enemy, every other monarch was looking the other way. Hungary alone was actually mustering. But Corvinus had taken too much papal gold not to put on a show. Hamza was certain he had no intention of going to war.
Vlad would know this. Indeed, his spy at Targoviste, a boyar named Dobrita, had told him how isolated the prince was, even in his own land. He would have to come, bring tribute in coin and boys, bend his knee. And it would achieve him nothing. Mehmet had decided that the throne of Wallachia needed another, more compliant, occupant—his lover, Vlad’s brother, Radu “cel Frumos”—“the Handsome”—more beautiful now than when he was a pretty boy, and still in Mehmet’s heart. Often still beside him on his divan.
Another noise, a groan this time. Hamza looked again, in disgust. He’d been unable to refuse his fellow ambassador the comfort and warmth of Guirgui’s only bed, since they were of equal status. He supposed he could have chosen to sleep in the stables himself. But the winter had bitten hard.
Their first night in Guirgiu, he had suspected the Greek would attempt to seduce him, had lain tense, ready to fend him off. But in their week in the fortress, he had come to realize that the man was interested in neither men nor women—in that way. Only in pain. And truly, Hamza knew, his own appetite for men had never been strong. In his life, he had simply…loved. His four wives, especially his first, Karima; Murad, the old Sultan, when he was his cupbearer. For a time, the one they had been sent there to take. And the green-eyed youth was the only man he sometimes still thought about, at night.
Hamza shivered. Perhaps he will not come, he thought.
And then it came again, the cry that had woken him, and it had him off the bed in a moment, despite the frosted air, the freezing stone. For the bird that gave the cry should not be there! Only a heron or a rough-legged buzzard should be hunting the Danube delta in December.
Not a goshawk. That bird should be snug in the forests of the north, awaiting spring.
Someone must have brought it there.
He found slippers, a robe, and climbed the stairs that led from the room to the turret platform above. In the last light of a waning full moon, the Danube glistened silver on the three sides of the island the fortress was built upon, those that he could see. Yet it was not to the water that Hamza looked now but to the land, the flood plain rising gently in banks of mace reed to a stand of white willow about two hundred paces from the narrow bridge that joined island to shore. The moonspill etched the trees in silver, around cores of darkness.
And then a shape separated from the willows, stepped to the side of them so it was silhouetted against the coming dawn. When an arm was raised, Hamza knew he was looking at a man, not a beast, one as black as the darkness he had come from. A cry came, the same call that had woken him; slightly different because this one came from a human throat.
“Kree-ak, kree-ak.”
It was only because the moon was yet bright, his eyesight good and he was staring so very hard that he saw the fast-moving shape swoop down, saw the man bend to absorb the velocity of the goshawk’s landing. The man straightened and, for a moment, all was still. Then he vanished among the trees and Hamza, who had been holding his breath, let it out on one, slow word.
“Dracula.”
—
“Voivode? Where are you?”
Ion’s harsh whisper was lost beneath the willows. His prince had been beside him a few minutes before. And then he had gone, soundlessly, and the next noise he’d heard was the hunting cry of that cursed hawk Vlad had insisted on bringing! Ion shared his friend’s passion for falconry. But was this the time and the place?
“Voivode,” he hissed again.
“Here.” Vlad slid in beside Ion as silently as he’d left.
“What have you been doing?”
“Hunting.” Vlad raised his left fist. “But my beautiful Kara Khan has had no success.”
“Of course not,” Ion said, exasperated. “What sort of fool flies hawks at night?”
Vlad’s teeth glinted in his smile. “This kind.” He gave a low whistle and immediately his falconer-servant, Stoica the Silent, came from the shadows, moonlight reflecting off his bald head. “Take her,” said Vlad, and the man nodded, the only reply he could make since the priests had taken his tongue for blasphemy. He pressed his gauntlet to Vlad’s, luring the bird with meat from a pouch, then retreated to the darkness again.
Ion was not satisfied. “Are you not worried that you were seen?”
“At night, this distance from the castle?”
“Someone might have seen you. Recognized you even. And if they did, they might tell Hamza pasha.”
“He already knows I am coming. We have hardly made it a secret.”
“But he might be concerned that none of his men has warned him of our nearer approach.”
“He might.” Vlad grinned again. “Have you the clothes?”
Ion shook his head, sighed. “Stoica has them here.”
Vlad whistled again. “You worry too much, my friend,” he said as his servant, birdless, came forward bearing clothes and armor. Vlad took the breastplate, held it up to his chest. “Good,” he said. “I was worried we might not find one that fitted. Is it possible that the Turks are growing taller?”
He began to pull off his black clothes, Ion holding what was discarded, Stoica passing what replaced it. “We got this from one of those we killed tonight,” Ion said, watching his prince transform into a Turkish warrior. He stripped to his loin cloth, then put on two cotton robes, topping them with a knee-length woollen capinat. Over this he pulled the mailcoat that covered him from shoulder to shin. The breast-and-back plate was slipped over, a skirt of steel links dropping to mid-thigh. As Stoica moved to tie the straps, Vlad looked at Ion. “Come, Ion bey before you split a gut. Say what you wish to say.”
“Well, since we are using Turkish titles…Hospodar,” Ion snapped, “I think this is madness.”
“And have said so often enough. Though never in front of the men.” He glanced at Stoica who kept strapping. “Even dumb ones. But I have told you before: I need to make sure of the castle. It will be my base for all that is to follow.”
“I understand that. What I don’t see is why I cannot be the one to take it.”
“With me safe in the camp, you mean?” Vlad shook his head, as Stoica knelt and began to fix greaves to his shins. “After all this time, have you not learned? I can never, will never, lead from behind. My kismet is already fixed. If I am to die this day then there is nothing I can do about it.”
“Maybe you won’t die. Maybe you’ll be recognized and taken,” Ion grunted.
“What? In this cunning disguise?” As he spoke, Stoica tied a silk scarf around his face, then offered him the turban helmet. When Vlad had slipped it over his head, and spread the metal mesh that hung from it over his shoulders, only his eyes shone, their greenness pale in the early dawn light. He gestured at them with two fingers. “Besides if anyone does note these—and Ilona assures me they are my best feature—I hope they will be using their own to look at you.”
Ion sighed. “You are merry, my prince.”
“Of course. I am about to start killing Turks.” He stepped back a pace. “How do I look?”
Ion considered. “Like a sodomite donkey,” he said at last.
“Excellent,” replied Vlad. “I should blend right in.”
Stoica had gone back into the bushes. He returned, holding an armful of weapons. “Ah!” said Vlad, his hand resting for a moment on the Dragon’s Talon.
“Prince…” Ion warned.
“You are right, my friend. They may not know my eyes but a yaya with a hand-and-a-half, marked with the Dragon…” He sighed, looked to the heavens. “Soon, Father,” he murmured, releasing it, picking up the Mamluk sabre with its slightly curving blade and hilt, cutting the air with it, swinging it hard down. “Good balance but…no,” he said, “for where we are going I think this mace”—he hefted the heavy club with its four-fluted head of iron—“and a falchion.”
Slipping the long-bladed dagger and club into his belt he turned and began to move through the trees, the crust of ice on the shallow stream cracking beneath his feet. Ion followed and soon they had come to a bowl-shaped pool, surrounded by willows, its banks thick with reeds. Sitting among them were twenty men dressed just like Vlad. Dangling from branches were the same number of men, stripped naked, their black tongues protruding from swollen lips.
The soldiers rose as Vlad and Ion entered the circle. Their leader took his time to look each man in the eye and nod. They had been with him a while, these vitesji, selected men who had helped him regain his throne and hold it. Thirty of their comrades were back in Targoviste, keeping the boyars in hand. Those here, nearly all Wallachians, had been chosen because each had spent time among the Turk—as soldiers and slaves both—and spoke the tongue.
Vlad beckoned one of them forward. “So, Ilie,” he said to the man standing beside him who seemed to be twice his height and inordinately dark, “have you mastered it yet?”
“No, Voivode.” The man’s voice was as dark as his face. Now he held out what he had in his hand. “There’s something wrong with it. It cannot be pulled all the way.”
“Cannot?”
Ilie gripped the string, inhaled, then drew. But it reached no further than his chin. After a moment of shaking, he relaxed the string. “See?” he grunted. “Broken.” He looked around. “Everyone has tried.” His gaze came back, met Vlad’s. He tipped his head and held out the bow. “Except you.”
Vlad looked up into the man’s black eyes then around at the rest of his men; all silent as Stoica now, staring back. Only Gregor smiled, as he always did. Ion shook his head very slightly. He had also tried the bow, and failed, and was reminding Vlad that the Turkish bow was a very particular weapon. To draw it required a skill possessed by few men who had not p
racticed with it since childhood. For it did not take mere strength but focused strength. And the head-shake was also meant to remind Vlad of something else—soldiers were always looking for favorable signs before they went into battle. Their leader failing to pull a bow, even if all had failed before him…
So Ion shook his head. Don’t, his eyes said.
Vlad took the bow. Saw immediately that one of the men who dangled behind them must have been wealthy, for the weapon was of the finest kind. The wood was certainly maple, the sinew stretched over it undoubtedly buffalo. It looked old although it was hard to tell with a Turkish bow. The best, it was said, could last for two hundred years.
Vlad reached back, not turning. Stoica placed his arrow ring in his hand. He had had it since Edirne, when a bowyer had fitted it to his finger with sealing wax. Slipping it on, he took one of the long pine arrows his servant held, ran his finger down the swan-feather flight. He looked up once more into Ilie’s black eyes. Then, fitting the arrow, he drew, paused for a moment where Ilie had halted, string to chin, breathed deep…then pulled it all the way to his ear; held it there a moment before he loosed the shaft. The arrow whispered between the willows towards the river beyond.
Vlad lowered the bow. “I’ll keep this if I may.”
“Yours, Voivode.” Black Ilie grinned, bowed, stepped back.
“So, let us follow the arrow,” Vlad said, and as men bent to pick up their weapons, he turned to another man, dressed in the clothes and armor of a Wallachian, his commander of cavalry. “You know the signal, Buriu. Keep Stoica before the trees so he will be clear.” He nodded at the dumb man. “And when you come, come fast.”
“Voivode,” Buriu replied. Then the two men bowed before disappearing into the reeds, to join the second, far larger party of men, hidden in a small valley beyond.
His vitesji stood in two files. He took a step towards the front.
Ion’s hand restrained him. “Prince…” he said.
Vlad placed his hand over his friend’s. “In one hour, Ion. In the castle my grandfather built. It begins.”