by Paul Doherty
They were desultory talks about border incidents and a possible alliance. Nothing was given or received on either side, these were just informal discussions to establish contact between the two countries. I was not needed, the subject of Drakulya was studiously ignored, so I let my attention wander and studied the men who had accompanied Radu. Only then did I notice one of the Turks, a high ranking Janissary officer, was staring at me. He was further down the room on Radu’s left so, at first, I had not noticed him. He was dressed in a yellow robe buttoned down the front, the golden gorget of his high office around his neck and a white turban with heron plumes clasped to it by a purple jewelled brooch. His face was lean, predatory, even cruel, if it were not for the soft, dark eyes and white, close-trimmed beard. I stared back, something stirring in my memory. Was he someone I had met in battle? I looked away, oblivious to the hum of conversation around me as I tried to place his face. I could not. I turned and stared again. He still gazed at me and then, without a change of expression, winked at me. A gesture so out of place in those cold surroundings that for the first time in my life, I felt like bursting into laughter. I knew the man. Aged, a few years older than me, he was Selim, the Janissary officer from Egrigoz, the fortress where Drakulya and I had spent so many years. I grinned and turned away.
Eventually, the conference ended. Radu had conceded nothing and neither had the Moldavians. Both parties got to their feet, talking volubly, offering assurances in their fine diplomatic language. Bodies milled around me, people pushing and moving, then the discussions were over. Both factions were leaving, empty-handed, except me, for someone pushed a strip of parchment into my hand which I read on the way back. The message was simple. “Radu will die. He has a disease which eats his stomach. Tell Drakulya that his real enemy is not the Turk!” I gave King Stephen the first message but the second one I kept to myself. The diamond ring I gave away and then I returned to Anna.
21
As the years passed it was difficult to find out what actually happened to Drakulya but I later learnt from the Prince himself that he had to spend a few months in Solomon’s tower, a huge, stinking edifice on the banks of the Danube, the usual place of incarceration for the Hungarian king’s political prisoners, before being moved to the castle of Visegrad on the Danube, the summer palace of the Hungarian king, about seventeen miles from Buda, built on a hill to catch the breeze from the river. A pleasant enough place for what was really house arrest rather than imprisonment. On a number of occasions I received letters from the Prince begging me to join him in Hungary but why should I? I was tired of blood, the battles, the broken bodies and stinking corpses, exhausted with the intrigue, the night rides, the constant agitation and nervous excitement which always pervaded the Prince’s person and presence. Moreover I was happy. Two years after our marriage Anna gave birth to a son. For the first time in my life I had a family. Although I felt guilty about deserting the Prince, I never even considered leaving Anna and my baby son. On her part, my wife continued to regard Drakulya as a living abomination. She would not tolerate his name mentioned in her presence and she would certainly have nothing to do with the man himself. I comforted myself with the thought that Drakulya would spend the rest of his life in honourable but comfortable captivity and perhaps take service with his Hungarian masters, and so the nightmares would end and we both would have peace.
Drakulya’s letters never told me anything about himself but his writing was as firm and masterful as ever, though the content of the letters was simply limited to a plea that I join him “with as great a speed as possible.” I did not even reply and so the letters ceased and, though wistful about the past, I honestly thought it was now dead and buried. Cirstian returned to Wallachia, taking service with Drakulya’s younger brother, Radu, advising council meetings as he had done for Prince Drakulya. He wrote to me often, declaring that there was no confusion of loyalties and, like a good administrator, pointing out that his duty and services were to the Crown rather than to the person who wore it. The situation in the principality was that Radu had been accepted by the Boyars and many of the people as a calm respite from the terrifying warlike years of Drakulya’s reign. The devastation Drakulya had brought upon his country had bled it dry and, as Cirstian pointed out, there is a limit to what people will accept in the name of honour and liberty.
Then early in 1475, just before disaster struck me, almost a harbinger of what was to come, I received a final letter from Cirstian. I can almost remember it word for word, like any good clerk or administrator should. It opened with the usual flowery greetings and assurances of eternal friendship, then he told me his startling news. Drakulya was free and had been for almost eight years. He had been held at Visegrad under comfortable house arrest, basking in his reputation as either a champion of Christendon or as a notorious murderer. “No one,” Cirstian sardonically commented, “believed he was a traitor and Matthew had become increasingly embarrassed at the forged letters he had used to force Drakulya’s arrest in the winter of 1462.” Cirstian then proceeded to narrate how the Hungarian authorities had then tried to portray Drakulya as a homicidal maniac. “Even in gaol,” Cirstian wrote, “it was alleged that nothing was safe from him. He captured birds and mice, torturing them in different ways, cutting their heads off, skinning and impaling them.” Of course, Cirstian went on to say how ridiculous such stories were but at least they were proof that the Hungarians still regarded Drakulya as a powerful enough man to warrant a systematic campaign of vilification. However, as the years passed, Matthew realised that Turkish control over Wallachia was growing stronger and eventually they would have a province on his very doorstep. He needed to check this influence but, as Cirstian wrote, the only man who could effectively do this was in a Hungarian gaol.
So, negotiations began to free Drakulya yet, at the same time, keep him firmly under Hungarian influence. When Radu died, Cirstian wrote, King Matthew, the treacherous dog, wrote to Drakulya – “If you wish to become Voivode of Wallachia once again then you must relinquish the Orthodox faith and convert to Catholicism. Should you refuse, you will die in gaol.” Drakulya immediately announced his interest in Catholicism, his desire for instruction, followed, as Cirstian tersely commented, by one of the speediest conversions in the history of Christendom.
On his part, Matthew kept his promise though he took steps to bring Drakulya more firmly into line by persuading the Prince to enter into a marriage alliance with one of his kinswomen, a cousin, Helen Corvinus. If religion posed few scruples for Drakulya, then I had to agree with Cirstian when he wrote that marriage presented even fewer. Drakulya wooed and won the lady’s hand. The flexible, pliant Prince acceded to all of Matthew’s proposals with the sole fixed purpose of being restored to Wallachia. Matthew, however, kept up his favourite game of ‘wait and see.’ Drakulya was treated as a great nobleman and given a palace in the city of Pest opposite Buda on the river Danube. Drakulya, so I remember Cirstian writing, acted like the loyal Hungarian courtier but when the opportunity presented itself, effectively reminded Matthew that he was a Wallachian prince with allegiance to no one. An outlaw escaping from justice had broken into Drakulya’s home in Pest. A captain of the Hungarian guard, a Bohemian mercenary, Jan Griskra, pursuing the felon, had simply followed him without a formal warrant or Drakulya’s permission to enter the house. Drakulya did not bother about the fugitive but he remembered Griskra and promptly stabbed him to death. The Hungarians, of course, were furious and complained bitterly to King Matthew, who imperiously summoned Drakulya into his presence to give an account of his actions. Matthew must have realised that Drakulya had a special grudge against Griskra but was too shrewd to open old wounds and raise fresh speculation about the propriety of Drakulya’s earlier arrest. Instead he questioned Drakulya about the incident and, according to Cirstian, the Prince replied with his customary arrogance. “I did nothing wrong. The Captain is responsible for his own death. Anyone who trespasses onto the property of a great prince deserves to die. If the captai
n had first come to me and asked my permission then I would have caught the thief and judged his crimes accordingly.”
Matthew took the hint and, within days, Drakulya was commissioned to journey south to guard the Transylvanian border. Drakulya made his home near Sibiu and apparently had the Hungarian king’s permission to become involved in fighting against the Turks. At the same time, so Cirstian reported, Drakulya became involved in covens and not-so-secret societies linked with Black Magic. I groaned when I read this for I knew of Drakulya’s determination to use sorcery to divine and control the future. There were, so Cirstian wrote, rumours that Drakulya was part of a Devil’s school, that he would go into the forest and meet secret covens who worshipped the dark Horned One. Whatever Drakulya intended Cirstian never discovered, hardly surprising for Drakulya would never discuss such matters. Nonetheless, the area around Sibiu was now filled with rumours about the appearance of Strigoil, the living dead; of coffins where the corpses were supple, the skin warm and elastic, and the burial place awash with hot blood.
Such reports, according to Cirstian, did not hinder Drakulya. He now used his new-found freedom to cement a new friendship with King Stephen of Moldavia and offered his services as a mercenary against the Turks. Cirstian reported that Drakulya went to war with a vengeance, allied to Moldavian forces and those of the Serbian despot, Vuv Brancovic. Drakulya never took prisoners, they were butchered and impaled; Cirstian even alleged that there were rumours that Drakulya went berserk, actually drinking the blood of his enemies.
I studied that letter written so lucidly that it was almost like hearing Cirstian’s cool, diplomatic tones speaking to me. I felt stirred by his news; Drakulya the tiger had burst free seeking vengeance. I both pitied and applauded him but found I could not join him. I did not reply to Cirstian’s letter, yet I was secretly hurt that the Prince himself had never written, though I concealed this in the daily humdrum routine of my life.
22
For all my interest in it, I was foolish enough to believe that my old life was dead but then, in the summer of 1474, tragedy struck. The plague which had made its appearance in the territories of the Austrian king moved eastwards, no respecter of class, status or creed. By the end of the summer, a long hot dry season, the plague was raging in Suceava. The dead lay unburied in the streets, entire households were wiped out and if one member of the family became infected then the city guards immured the entire family in their home, summarily executing anyone who attempted to enter or leave. The Moldavian court left for their cool summer villas in the higher reaches of the hills. We were about to follow when the boy, never strong, went down with a fever. I prayed that it was some summer ague but then the dreaded boils and buboes appeared in his groin and armpit. As they swelled, his little body became so thin that his ribs were clear, the white skin stretched like gauze across the thin brittle bones. All was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Anna prayed and I cursed but the fever continued. His pathetic body wracked with sobs, his eyes once so bright and clear glazed with the heat of the fever, stared at us, beseeching us to help him. There was nothing we could do but clean the spittle from his lips and the yellow bile which would seep like some sinister snake from the corner of his mouth. No doctor would come near him and, despite my pleas and show of authority, the city guards sealed our doors and forced me to display a banner from the upper window of the house as a sign that the plague was there.
The servants had fled but our cellars had enough provisions to withstand even the longest siege; yet my boy died. Shrivelled like a fresh flower in the heat of the sun, his life slipped away like a bird quietly, even before we noticed. Anna was distraught. The house rang with her sobs and cries. I have met learned men, doctors who believe that if we really want to, we can force ourselves to die. Anna was like that. After a while, she stopped crying, ceased her mourning and simply withdrew into herself like some creature retreating into its hole fearful and terrified, not wanting to move. Perhaps it was the plague or just the exhaustion of unrequited grief, but within days of my son’s death, she had fallen into a fever and then into a long deep sleep from which she never woke. Even now, many months later, I have not overcome that grief because I have never accepted it. I had fought in battles, seen men, women and, yes, even children, die horrific deaths, but never like that. Perhaps it was a punishment, a just retribution brought by all those souls and shades of those whose bodies had hung in the Valley of Shadows. Some men would have blamed God, but even then at the height of my anguish I could not blame someone I had never believed in. I placed the body of my young son near the corpse of his mother and then sat for hours beside them hoping perhaps for either a miracle I did not expect or my own death. I had one resolve and that was not to have their bodies taken by the grave-diggers, who pushed their filthy carts around the streets collecting the corpses of plague victims as if they were refuse to be taken and then dumped.
One morning I went into the cellar of the house and removed the containers full of oil which the cook had used. I poured this over the bedroom where my family lay, flung in a torch and, as the room burst in a conflagration of fire, I opened the door of my house, knocking aside the seals placed there by the civic guards, and walked into the street. Perhaps I hoped that I would meet my own quick death there but even then it eluded me. The street was deserted and so I walked away, the future I had hoped for burning furiously behind me. I do not know where I walked or for how long. I remember begging in the market place along the walls of the deserted churches. I lived off scraps and bits of offal. No one bothered me. During the plague the people adopted the safest measure of avoiding anyone, particularly an eccentric bedraggled man who wandered the streets, mouthing curses and imprecations. One day I collapsed, overcome with grief, exhaustion and hunger. I remember lying on the steps of one of the churches feeling the cool wet rock beneath my face, glad at last that the death which had avoided me so often had finally found me.
Yet it was not to be. The brothers told me that I slept for days and I awoke refreshed but weak in the white-walled cell of a small monastery just within the main city gates. The brothers there had not fled but, after caring for their own casualties from the plague, had gone out looking for fellow sufferers to aid and comfort wherever possible. The infirmarian, a small, wizened man with skin yellow, like parchment, and with eyes small, black and shiny as beads, blithely informed me that they had only taken me in because my body was blocking the entrance of one of the churches and the brother who found me believed that I had a chance of surviving when he realised that although sick I bore no symptoms of the plague. So, the monks looked after me with their simple food and healing herbs and when I was well and strong enough to move around, they did not ask me to leave but left me alone.
Time passed, unnoticed, unfelt. I became part of the monastery, a silent figure in a silent unobtrusive world. The seasons changed, the monastery orchards became lush and heavy with fruit. Cold breezes came driving the plague from the city, or so I heard. I was conscious of the hard frost early in the morning and wrapping up well when cold, hard winds swept down from the mountains. I grieved quietly and secretly for my family, and sometimes I thought of suicide but I had survived too much to press such a matter through to its final conclusion.
Then the world re-entered my life, pushing its way back in – just as the monks were preparing to celebrate the feast of the birth of their White Christ. Winter flowers and evergreen branches decorated the communal chapel and, time and again, I heard the choir rehearse their paens of praise to the emergence of a new star, the Lord of Light. I was listening to their faint melodic chanting when the Prior of the monastery knocked at the door of my cell and opened it to let the world in. He was a young man, exuding energy and purpose, his fur cloak still spattered with snowflakes and drops of water which hung like miniature pearls. He was of medium height, with black hair, a swarthy sun-burnt face with a firm jaw framed by a luxuriant, drooping moustache. He both thanked and dismissed the Prior with a cursory nod and
then sat opposite me on a small stool, studying me closely as he pulled off thick riding gloves. In a low voice, he introduced himself as Ion Polivar, a Wallachian in the retinue of the Voivode Drakulya. He paused to see if his announcement had any effect but I was past caring and sat staring stonily at him. He apologised for intruding on me and hoped he was addressing Rhodros, a former friend and close confidant of the Prince. When I nodded, he breathed a sigh and continued; the Prince had been in Moldavia since spring, just a few weeks after the great battle of Vlasie where Stephen had inflicted a severe defeat on the Turks. Drakulya had then moved to Sibiu on the Transylvanian border to await support from the Hungarian court. The Prince, Polivar dramatically concluded, intended to assert his claim to Wallachia once the campaigning season began. He would like me to join him.
I heard the man out, not caring very much for his dramatic messages. I was wearied, tired and wished to be left alone.
“Tell the Prince,” I replied, “that I am grateful for his messages. I wish him well on his venture and will pray that it meets with well-deserved success. But also tell him I am a broken man. He can do well without me. I cannot come!”
Polivar looked at me and realised I was determined. He shrugged, picked up his cloak and moved to the door. He was almost through it when he remembered something and turned back to me.
“The Prince,” he said in rather puzzled tones, “asked me to give you a personal message.”
I nodded at him to continue.