Kalafat, his beloved horse, closing her soft brown eyes as she knelt so slowly, so he could step from her back before she died; Hamza, roped to a saddle, stumbling in the road dust; mostly the same two men—Mehmet, so close Vlad could smell the ginger and musk, and Radu, beautiful Radu, that beauty twisted by hate. Radu bringing the sword down from the high plane…
His eyes would open to blood, real blood, his blood. The wound where his finger had been would not remain staunched. He’d been told to rest it. He had laughed. He killed with the Dragon’s Talon, and it needed both hands.
Yet it was not his own blood or the blood of others that tormented him the most. Not even the cruellest cut, of brother on brother. It was the moment just before that. The one when Mehmet the Conqueror stood a sword’s length away and all their fates gathered. He’d talked all his life of kismet, of his destiny. That single moment was it. But then…then instead of lunging, striking, slaying he’d…paused. Someone else struck.
He fought still, killed still. But now it was not others’ deaths he truly sought. It was his own. And kismet denied him even that.
Vlad opened his eyes, moving from that single moment to an oaken door. He heard a horse snort behind him, turned. His men, his vitesji, stood at their mount’s heads, looking up at him in silence. Stoica, who had somehow escaped the Sultan’s burning tent and rejoined him; Black Ilie; the rest. There were just twenty of them left now and their armor was as smashed and filthy as his, as stained with blood.
He sought an answer in their eyes. Why was he there? Were there not Turks still to slay? What door was this?
Then he remembered. He was there for a wedding. His wedding. And, amidst all the betrayal, another. In some ways, the worst.
She’d lied to him. Yet he’d made a vow. He drew his sword.
—
There he stood, silhouetted in sunlight, the Dragon’s Talon stretched out to his side.
Dracula. Her prince.
He was not the tallest of men. But he was broad and strong, and his sable armor made it seem that a black giant stood at the entrance of the Bisierica. And when she saw him, her heart, as it always did when they had been parted for a time, beat faster, her breath caught. And, as always, she remembered the first time she had seen him—dappled by Turkish sunlight, through the slats of a litter. She’d seen him again through a string of golden coins as he rescued her; but finally and clearly only when the boat was pulling away from the dock. And in that last look, her life’s course was set. Kismet, he called it.
His men came in behind him, each bending stiffly, crossing themselves before spreading out at the end of the nave.
Silence held for a long moment. Broken when Dracula sheathed his great sword and began to move down the central aisle. He walked slowly, staring straight ahead, ignoring peasants and boyars prostrating themselves as he passed. As he drew closer, she could see the weariness in him, the black bruises under his eyes, startling in that so-pale face, as black as the dust-shrouded armor. Closer he came, and closer. Beside her, Ion squeezed her arm and she looked up, saw his smile that his prince was alive. Ilona was happy he would give her away, since she did not have a father. It was only her one friend and her one love that kept her standing. Ten paces and Dracula would be beside her. Only ten…
He never took them. A man moved between her and her love.
“You have come, Voivode,” said the jupan, Turcul. “We did not think you would.”
The reply took a while. His voice was ever low, and here it came through road dust and the ravages of exhaustion. “Should a man not come to his own wedding?”
The words were for the boyar. But his eyes, those great green eyes, were for her alone.
“Yet can such a wedding take place? To her?” All heard the contempt in the last word.
The eyes changed. The chill that could sweep away all warmth took them and, for the first and only time in her life, Ilona pitied the jupan.
“To her?” There was no tiredness in the voice now. “Of course. Only to her.”
The boyar swallowed. He was a powerful man, second only to Dracula himself in the whole kingdom. But he was second. “My prince,” he mumbled, “I seek only to preserve your honor.”
“If only that were true.” The words came on a whisper, but loud enough to carry. “Tell me what you mean, jupan. Now.”
The boyar hesitated. But he was too far in now. And seeing how much the man was prepared to risk, Ilona realized, for the first time, the true extent of her danger, and shivered in the heat.
“She has brought you here falsely, my prince. To trick you into this marriage.”
“Trick me? No one tricks me.” A sudden shout. “No one!”
“Never the less…”
There was a blur of movement, a shadow passing through sunbeams, a gauntleted hand seizing a throat. Turcul was a head taller but he was lowered like a doll so that Dracula could look down on him.
Other nobles stirred. Each man there had a sword at his side. None reached for them. Perhaps it was the sound of black-armored men notching arrows to bow-strings.
The whisper again. “Tell me what you mean.”
A gurgle came. Metalled fingers eased enough to allow out sound.
“She lied. For she is not with child.”
“Lied?” The word echoed off the stone. “Ilona never lies.” He looked around. “The only one who…who…”
All saw it, how he faltered, stumbling forward, the man slipping from his grasp.
“Then ask her, Prince,” Turcul wheezed from the floor. “Ask her.”
His gaze came back to her, a darkness in the eyes she’d seen bestowed elsewhere, but not on her. Never on her. She felt all her breath leave her, as if she’d forgotten how to breathe. “One word, Ilona. End this with a word.” His voice dropped again. “Do you carry my child?”
She nearly fainted then, in the heat, in the sudden surge of blood below, in the terrible darkness in his eyes. “My prince…”
“One word!” He shouted now. “Do you carry my child?”
She felt it. In the emptiness inside her. In the look Turcul’s daughter had given her. In the soiled linen at her belly. In the tiny shift of Ion’s fingers on her arm. She was in a rainbow and then she was slipping into darkness. But she could not go there again until she had answered him. He’d asked for one word. She always obeyed him.
“No.”
The word hung there, like a dust mote in a colored sunbeam. And all could see the effect it had on Dracula; how he sagged, as if within his armor his flesh shrank away, contracting from the metal touch. “No,” he echoed. Then, he closed his eyes and whispered, “Another lie.”
Dragging himself up, Turcul went to stand with the other nobles, a phalanx surrounding him. “And how will you deal with this, my lord?”
The beckoning darkness held off. “My lord?” she wanted to shriek. He is your prince. But she knew what Turcul did. He was reminding Dracula that he was truly only primus inter pares—the first among equals—that he owed his crown to them.
“Deal with?” The weariness was back in his voice, in his body. “You ask me this now, with the Turks a day away from Targoviste?” A murmur came at that. “You ask me this, you, who should, even now, be gathering your men, buckling on your armor, to follow me?”
Another voice, a different noble. “How can we follow someone who allows this treason to pass? Who will not do what must be done?”
Other voices joined, with the courage of the pack.
He silenced them with a raised fist. And she noticed then how the smallest metalled finger was twined to the one next to it. It glistened in the torch-light and the twine was red with blood.
His words took a long while to come. “What must be done.” It was an echo, infinitely weary. But it was not a question.
And then Dracula was moving, as fast as he’d moved to Turcul. Faster. Seizing Ilona by the arm.
“No!” Ion had released her, stepped forward, tried to get between the man in
the black armor and the woman in the white dress. “Prince! Vlad! No! She—”
The hand that had crushed a noble’s throat now smashed into Ion’s face. He was flung backwards, crumpling onto the stones. Then Vlad dragged Ilona through the screen door, up the two steps to the altar, flinging her down before it. No one else entered the space before the screen, not the Metropolitan whose realm it was, not the jupan Turcul and the other nobles. They crowded both doors, but did not cross the threshold.
For a moment, Dracula stared up at the crucifix on the high table, at the figure of the tortured Savior upon it. For a moment, he paused. Then he closed his eyes…and drew his stiletto, the thin-bladed weapon crowned with the same Dragon as his sword, its edge as keen. Raising it on high, its blade and guard paralleling the cross before him, he cried out, “Moloch!”
The cry echoed around the great stone vault of the cathedral. All knew what it meant—the men crowded at the rood screen door, the congregation in the nave, the man spitting teeth and blood upon the stones where Vlad’s blow had thrown him.
It was the Canaanites, throwing their children upon the fire.
It was the sacrifice of what one loved most.
The dagger fell. Not into flesh. Not yet. It sank into white linen, slitting, in one swift movement, the dress from hem to neck. It parted like a Bible, opening.
Their faces were so close she could have kissed him. She lay there, not struggling, frozen by the eyes of the man she loved. In them was something she’d never seen before. No, not something. An absence of something. Of life.
He was so close, only she could hear him. “Do not move,” he whispered. “Not a hair’s breadth.”
And then he jabbed the tip of his stiletto into her breast.
– THIRTY-EIGHT –
A Single Tear
Poenari Castle, 1481
“Enough! Surely this is enough!” Petru shouted, leaping up.
It brought the Count of Pecs suddenly, forcefully, back to the hall of Poenari Castle, to the three curtained confessionals and the tale of a man emerging from them. He had not been there for a while, lost, as all of them had been lost, in the last confession of Dracula, as told by the three people who had known him best. He had even been lost to his reasons for listening to these horrors…until this last horror proved too much for a young man who, Horvathy now remembered, had a young wife upstairs, heavy with her first child.
“Peace, Spatar,” he said, rising from his chair to grasp the younger man’s arm. The touch silenced the knight, though Horvathy could feel how the silence cost him in the shaking under his fingers. “We all feel your disgust. But, in the end, we are not here to feel. We are here to consider. We are here to judge, are we not?”
Horvathy’s words were spoken to the Spatar. But they were meant for the other man there, the one still sitting. For it would be up to Cardinal Grimani, the Papal Legate, to make a judgement; then to advise the Pope whether to permit Christ’s Crusader to emerge from these tales and thus allow the Dragon Order to rise again, uniting the Balkans under its banner in Holy War. And if he judged thus, if Dracula’s sins were to be forgiven, then…perhaps Horvathy would be able to forgive himself.
The Count turned now to Grimani and, as he had attempted from time to time as the tale unfolded, tried again to read something definite in the Italian’s face. Yet, as ever, there was little he could tell. Horrors had been described, yet even with this last one, this desecration, Grimani’s expression had scarcely altered. His lips remained parted in what could have been a smile. His eyelids still drooped, as if he would sleep. Beneath them, though, the eyes themselves were bright as ever, and moving.
“Judge?” cried Petru, pulling his arm from the Count’s grasp. “There can be only one judgement after this! He was the Devil himself, not just his son. Before the high altar? It was blasphemy!”
“Perhaps.” The Cardinal’s quiet tone shocked as much as the shout had.
“Perhaps?” Petru blurted. “You, a man of God, can say this?”
“I am a man of God,” replied the Cardinal. “I am also, in my way, a warrior for Christ. I know what it is to have the Infidel kicking at my gate. But to have him about to burst through my door?” He shook his head.
“Are you calling this obscenity a necessity?” Petru turned. “My lord Horvathy, I appeal to you.”
The Count had been watching the Italian, hope rising in him. “As I said, I share your disgust, Spatar,” he said, “but His Eminence is right. Consider the threat Dracula faced. Have you ever seen what happens when the Turk sacks a town?” He shivered. “This obscenity, as you call it, would be swiftly lost in the thousands that followed.”
“That cannot justify—”
Horvathy raised a hand. “Dracula was a pragmatist, Spatar. He needed the boyars to raise their forces and follow him. Men will rarely do that for love. Not even always for God.” He closed his one eye. “But I have witnessed, often, how they will do it for terror.”
“But are we not missing another point, my lord?” The Cardinal said. “In many parts of Italy, we have the Feast of Fools, when madmen are given license for a day to behave according to their madness. Do you not have the same in Wallachia? From what we have heard, Dracula was maddened, then at least. Should we not give him license?”
“Surely you cannot have it both ways, my lords,” Petru whined. “A mad pragmatist does not sound a likely combination.”
“On the contrary, young man. Most of the princes I know in Italy have exactly that combination.” Grimani laughed, continued. “There is something I am curious about, though. Like some of these other horrors, I had heard a version of this one before. But it told of a mistress’s murder.” He turned to look at the middle confessional. “Yet here she is, telling it herself. What are we to believe?”
All now looked at that confessional. Within it, Ilona had not really been listening to their talk but rather to the fall of Ion’s tears within his. Hearing them, she remembered others. Her own, that day, from the agony, from the grief. The two times she had cried since. The first, after the cutting, on the way to the convent, when she’d realized exactly what he’d done and why, and how she would never, could never, be allowed to see him again. And the second time when she’d been proved wrong, and did see him. A part of him, anyway.
Yet the Cardinal had asked a question only she could answer. So she did. “Believe this, so you know it all,” she said softly. “He slit me from breast to breast. Then he completed the crucifix by cutting from my throat down, all the way down…”
“Blasphemy on blasphemy!” Petru stepped before her confessional, arms spread wide as if they could stop the words. “Enough! What more is there to know?”
“Only this.” Her voice grew stronger, for what she had to tell now had sustained her through every night of her darkness. “When he placed his knife…there, when he cut me there, the pain was…” She sighed. “But, in the end, it was not the blade that ravaged me. It was the single tear that dropped onto me. The only one I ever saw him shed.”
Silence, a whisper of flame the only sound, even the scribe’s quills stilled. After a moment, she spoke on, but softly now so that all had to lean closer to hear. “He called me his sanctuary. In that one tear were all his goodbyes. A farewell to the only peace he’d ever known.”
“You forgive him?”
“Is that not what God’s children are meant to do, Your Eminence?”
“But…that?”
How could she make them understand? Wasn’t it so simple in the end?
“I loved him,” she said, “and I have never stopped.”
“It is impossible,” Petru whispered. “No one who received such wounds could have lived.”
Another voice came—Ion’s, rough with grief. “Only he could have inflicted them and let someone live. He had learned the lessons of Tokat too well. He knew, better than any, the border-land between life and death. He dwelt astride it. God forgive me, I helped him straddle it often enough.”
/> A silence again, longer than any one before. And the cry that finally broke it did not come from within the room, but beyond it.
“Kree-ak, kree-ak.”
All who could, looked up at the hawk’s call. Through the opaque, beeswax cloth that blocked the arrow slit, the faintest of lights came. They had talked and listened for a day and half a night. Yet no one there felt tired.
The Count gestured to the tables. Petru, forcing down his disgust, turned and ordered his servants to take food and water into the confessionals. Horvathy crossed the room, helped himself to wine. Grimani joined him, walking silently on slippered feet. The Hungarian’s good eye was turned away from the Italian, who studied the other, puckered socket before he spoke, softly. “My lord,” he said, as Pecs started, turned. “Before we go on, I have something to ask you.”
The Count took a sip. “Ask.”
Grimani glanced over his shoulder. No one was near, but his voice dropped to a whisper anyway. “You have made clear your desire to see your Dragon Order restored to glory. You judge that such an outcome would be vital to the success of the crusade we hope to launch against the encroaching Turk—leaders throughout the Balkans united under the Dragon banner. You may well be right.” He leaned closer. “But I see something else, Count Horvathy. Hear it in what you say and how you say it. Hear it perhaps most in what you do not say.”
The Count remained silent. Grimani went on. “There is a yearning in you, for something beyond the dream of a restored brotherhood. Greater maybe even than your love of God? And I can see this yearning is rooted in pain.” He squeezed the other man’s arm gently. “Am I not right?”
The one eye was turned fully on him now, reflecting reed torchlight. “Perhaps.”
The Cardinal reached out, laid his hand gently on the taller man’s arm. “My son, I am a priest as well as a judge. And you are a true child of our Holy Church.” His voice was honey. “Before we proceed further with Dracula’s confession, do you wish me to hear yours? Relieve you of the weight I see you carry.” He tipped his head to the confessionals. “We can clear everyone from the room, sit within one of these. Without the need for any of it to be set down on paper.”