The Historian

by Elisabeth Kostova

  “And this is Vlad’s church, then?” I pointed at the lovely building nearby, with its soaring cupolas and the dark trees rustling around its walls.

  “Noo, I’m afraid not,” said Georgescu. “The monastery was partly burned by the Turks in 1462, when Vlad’s brother Radu, an Ottoman puppet, was on the throone of Wallachia. And just after Vlad was buried here, a terrible storm blew his church into the lake.”WasVlad buried here? I longed to ask it, but I kept my mouth firmly closed. “The peasants must have thought it was God’s punishment for his sins. The church was rebuilt in 1517-it took three years, and you see here the results. The outside walls of the monastery are a restoration, only about thirty years auld.”

  We had strolled to the edge of the church, and he patted the mellowed masonry as if slapping the rump of a favorite horse. As we stood there, a man suddenly rounded the corner of the church and came towards us-a white-bearded, bent old man in black robes and black pillbox hat with long flaps that descended to his shoulders. He walked with the aid of a stick, and his robe was tied with a narrow rope from which hung a ring of keys. Around his neck on a chain dangled a very fine old cross of the type I’d seen on the church cupolas.

  I was so astonished by this apparition that I nearly fell over; I can’t describe the effect it had on me, except to say that it was very much as if Georgescu had successfully conjured a ghost. But my new acquaintance went forwards, smiling at the monk and bowing over his gnarled hand, on which sparkled a gold ring that Georgescu respectfully kissed. The old man seemed fond of him, too, for he placed his fingers on the archaeologist’s head for a moment and smiled, a wan, sere smile that involved even fewer teeth than Georgescu’s. I caught my name in the introductions and bowed to the monk as gracefully as I could, though I couldn’t bring myself to kiss his ring.

  “This is the abboot,” Georgescu explained to me. “He is the last one here and he has only three other monks living with him now. He has been here since he was a yooung man and he knows the island much better than I ever will. He welcomes you and gives you his blessing. If you have any questions for him, he says, he will try to answer them.” I bowed my thanks, and the old man moved slowly on. A few minutes later I saw him sitting quietly on the edge of the ruined wall behind us, like a crow resting in the afternoon sunlight.

  “Do they live here year-round?” I asked Georgescu.

  “Oh, yes. They are here in the moost difficult winters.” My guide nodded. “You will hear them chanting the mass if you dinna leave too airly.” I assured him that I wouldn’t want to miss such an experience. “Now, let us go in the church.” We went around to the front doors, great carved wooden ones, and there I entered a world I had never known before, quite a different one from our Anglican chapels.

  It was cold inside, and before I could see anything in the penetrating darkness of the interior, I could smell a smoky spice on the air and feel a clammy draft from the stones, as if they were breathing. When my eyes adjusted to the gloom, it was only to catch faint gleams of brass and candle flame. The daylight filtered in dimly, through heavy, dark colored glass. There were no pews or chairs, apart from some tall wooden seats built along one of the walls. Near the entrance burned a stand of candles, dripping thickly and giving off a smell of scorching wax; some of them were stuck in a brass crown at the top and some placed in a pot of sand around the base. “The monks light these every day, and now and then there are other visitors who do, as well,” Georgescu explained. “The ones around the top are for the living, and the ones around the bottom are for the soouls of the dead. They bairn until they go out by themselves.”

  At the center of the church he pointed upwards, and I saw a dim, floating face above us, at the peak of the dome. “Are you familiar with our Byzantine churches?” Georgescu asked. “Christ is always in the center, looking doon. This candelabrum”-a great crown hung from the center of Christ’s chest, filling the main space of the church, but the candles in it had burned out-“is typical, too.”

  We proceeded to the altar. I felt suddenly like an invader, but there was no sign of the monks and Georgescu strode ahead with proprietary cheerfulness. The altar was hung with embroidered cloths, and in front of it lay a mass of woven wool rugs and mats in folk motifs that I would have called Turkish if I hadn’t known better. The top of the altar was adorned with several richly decorated objects, among them an enamelled crucifix and a gold-framed icon of the Virgin and Child. Behind it rose a wall of sad-eyed saints and even sadder angels, and in their midst was a pair of beaten-gold doors backed by purple velvet curtains, leading somewhere completely hidden and mysterious.

  All this I made out with difficulty, through the dusk, but the gloomy beauty of the scene moved me. I turned to Georgescu. “Did Vlad worship here? In the previous church, I mean?”

  “Oh, cairtainly.” The archaeologist chuckled. “He was a pious auld murtherer. He built many churches and other monasteries, to be sure that plenty of people were praying for his salvation. This was one of his favorite places and he was very cloose to the monks here. I doon’t know what they thought of his bad deeds, but they loved his support of the monastery. Besides, he protected them from the Turks. But the treasures you see here were brought from other churches-peasants stole everything valuable in the last century, when the church was closed. Look here-this is what I wanted to show you.” He squatted down and turned back the rugs in front of the altar. Directly before it I saw a long rectangular stone, smooth and undecorated but clearly a grave marker. My heart began to thud.

  “Vlad’s tomb?”

  “Yes, according to legend. Some of my colleagues and I excavated here a few years ago and found an empty hole-it contained only a few animal boones.”

  I caught my breath. “He wasn’t in it?”

  “Absolutely not.” Georgescu’s teeth glinted like the brass and gold all around us. “The written records say that he was buried here, in front of the altar, and that the new church was built on the same foundations as the auld, so his toomb was not disturbed. You can imagine how disappointed we were not to find him.”

  Disappointed?I thought. I found the idea of the empty hole below more frightening than disappointing.

  “In any case, we decided to pooke around a little more, and over here”-he led me back down the nave to a spot near the front entrance and moved another rug-“over here we found a second stoone just the same as the first.” I stared down at it. This one was indeed the same size and shape as the first and also undecorated. “So we doog this up, too,” Georgescu explained, patting it.

  “And you found -?”

  “Oh, a very nice skeleton.” He reported this with obvious satisfaction. “In a casket that had part of the shroud still over it-amazing, after five centuries. The shroud was royal purple with gold embroidery and the skeleton inside was in good condition. Beautifully dressed, too, in purple broocade with dark red sleeves. The most wonderful thing was that sewn to one of the sleeves we found a little ring. The ring is rather plain, but one of my colleagues believes it was part of a larger oornament that showed the symbol of the Oorder of the Dragon.”

  My heart had lost a beat or two, by this point, I confess. “The symbol?”

  “Yes, a dragon with long claws and a looped tail. Those who were invested in the Oorder wore this image somewhere on their person at all times, usually as a brooch or clasp for the cloak. Our friend Vlad was no doubt invested in it, probably by his father, when he reached manhood.” Georgescu smiled up at me. “But I have the feeling you knew that already, Professor.”

  I was struggling with warring emotions of regret and relief. “So this was his grave, and the legends just had the exact spot wrong.”

  “Oh, I doon’t think so.” He smoothed the rug back over the stone. “Not all my colleagues would agree with me, but I think the evidence is clairly against it.”

  I couldn’t help staring at him in surprise. “But what about the regal clothing and the little ring?”

  Georgescu shook his head.
“This fellow was probably a member of the Oorder, too-a high-ranking nobleman-and perhaps he was dressed up in Dracula’s best clothes for the occasion. Perhaps he was even invited to die so that there would be a body to fill the toomb-who knows exactly when.”

  “Did you rebury the skeleton?” I had to ask it; the stone lay so very close to our feet.

  “Oh, noo-we packed him off to the history museum in Bucarest, but you can’t go see him there-they locked him up in storage with all his nice clothes. It was a shame.” Georgescu did not look terribly sorry, as if the skeleton had been appealing but unimportant, at least compared with his true quarry.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, staring at him. “With so much evidence, exactly why don’t you think he was Vlad Dracula?”

  “It’s very simple,” Georgescu countered cheerfully, patting the rug. “This fellow had his head on. Dracula’s was cut off and taken to Istanbul by the Turks as a troophy. All the sources are in agreement about that. So now I’m digging in the old prison for another toomb. I think the body was removed from its burial site in front of the altar to outwit grave robbers, or perhaps to protect it from later Turkish invasions. He’s on this island somewhere, the auld bugger.”

  I was transfixed by all the questions I wanted to ask Georgescu, but he stood and stretched. “Wouldn’t you like to go across to the restaurant for supper? I’m hungry enough to devour a sheep whoole. But we can hear the beginning of the service first, if you’d like. Where are you staying?”

  I confessed that I had no idea yet and that I needed also to provide lodgings for my driver. “There’s a great deal I should like to talk with you about,” I added.

  “And I with you,” he agreed. “We can doo that during our supper.”

  I needed to speak to my driver, so we made our way back to the ruined prison. It devolved that the archaeologist kept a little boat below the church and could row us over, and that he would prevail upon the owner of the restaurant to find local rooms for us. Georgescu stowed away his gear and dismissed the assistants, and we returned to the church in time to see the abbot and his three monks, equally black garbed, processing into the church through the doors of the sanctuary. Two of the monks were elderly, but one was still brown of beard and stood firmly upright. They walked slowly around to face the altar, the abbot leading with a cross and orb in his hands. His bent shoulders carried a purple-and-gold mantle that caught the glow of the candle flames.

  At the altar they bowed, the monks prostrating themselves full-length for a moment on the stone floor-just over the empty tomb, I noticed. For a moment, I had the horrifying sense that they were bowing not to the altar but to the grave of the Impaler.

  Suddenly an eerie sound rose up; it seemed to come from the church itself, to curl out of the walls and dome like mist. They were chanting. The abbot went through the little doors behind the altar-I tried not to crane for a glimpse of the inner sanctum-and brought out a great book with an enamelled cover, tracing his blessing over it in the air. He laid it on the altar. One of the monks handed him a censer on a long chain; this he swung above the book, dusting it with an aromatic smoke. All around us, above and behind and below, rose the dissonant sacred music with its buzzing drone and wavering heights. My skin crawled, for I realized that at that moment I was closer to the heart of Byzantium than I’d ever been in Istanbul. The ancient music and the rite that accompanied it had probably changed little since they were performed for the emperor in Constantinople.

  “The service is very long,” Georgescu whispered to me. “They woon’t mind if we slip away.” He took a candle from his pockets, lit it from a burning wick in the stand near the entrance, and set it in the sand below.

  In the restaurant on the shore, a dingy little place, we ate heartily of stews and salads served up by a timid girl in village dress. There was a whole chicken and a bottle of heavy red wine, which Georgescu poured liberally. My driver had apparently made friends in the kitchen, so that we found ourselves utterly alone in the panelled room with its fading views of lake and island.

  Once we had warded off the worst of our hunger, I asked the archaeologist about his wonderful command of English. He laughed with his mouth full. “I owe that to my mither and father, God rest their souls,” he said. “He was a Scottish archaeologist, a mediaevalist, and she was a Scottish Gypsy. I was raised from a bairn in Fort William and worked with my father until he died. Then some of my mother’s relatives asked her to travel with them to Roumania, where they came from. She’d been boorn and bred in a village in western Scotland, but when my father was gone she wanted only to leave. My father’s family hadn’t been kind about her, you see. So she brought me here, when I was just fifteen, and I’ve been here since. When we came here I took her family name. To blend in a bit better.”

  This story left me speechless for a moment, and he grinned. “It’s an odd tale, I know. What’s yours?”

  I told him, briefly, about my life and studies, and about the mysterious book that had come into my possession. He listened with brows knit together, and when I was done he nodded slowly. “A strange story, no doubt about it.”

  I took the book from my bag and handed it to him. He looked through it carefully, pausing to gaze for long minutes at the woodcut in the center. “Yes,” he told me thoughtfully. “This is very much like many images associated with the Oorder. I’ve seen a similar dragon on pieces of jewellery-that little ring, for example. But I’ve never seen a book like this one before. No idea where it came from, then?”

  “None,” I admitted. “I hope to have it examined by a specialist one day, perhaps in London.”

  “It’s a remarkable piece of work.” Georgescu handed it gently back to me. “And now that you’ve seen Snagov, where do you intend to go? Back to Istanbul?”

  “No.” I shuddered, but I didn’t want to tell him why. “I’ve got to return to Greece to attend a dig, actually, in a couple of weeks, but I thought I’d go for a glimpse of Târgoviste, since that was Vlad’s main capital. Have you been there?”

  “Ah, yes, of coourse.” Georgescu scraped his plate clean like a hungry boy. “That’s an interesting place for any pursuer of Dracula. But the really interesting thing is his castle.”

  “His castle? Does he really have a castle? I mean, does it still exist?”

  “Well, it’s a ruin, but a rather nice one. A ruined fortress. It’s a few miles up the River Arges from Târgoviste, and you can get there rather easily by road, with a climb on foot to the very top. Dracula favored any place that could be easily defended from the Turks, and this one is a love of a site. I’ll tell you what -” He was fishing in his pockets and now he found a little clay pipe and began to fill it with fragrant tobacco. I passed him a light. “Thank you, lad. I’ll tell you what-I’ll go along with you. I can stay only a couple of days, but I could help you find the fortress. It’s a great deal easier if you have a guide. I haven’t been there in a wandering moon, and I’d like to see it again myself.”

  I thanked him sincerely; the idea of striking out into the heart of Roumania without an interpreter had made me uneasy, I admit. We agreed to start tomorrow, if my driver will take us as far as Târgoviste. Georgescu knows a village near the Arges where we can stay for a few shillings; it isn’t the nearest to the fortress, but he doesn’t like going to that village anymore as he was once almost chased out of it. We parted with a hearty good night, and now, my friend, I must blow out my light to sleep for the next adventure, of which I shall keep you apprised.

  Yours most affectionately,

  Bartholomew

  Chapter 46

  My dear friend,

  My driver was indeed able to take us north to Târgoviste today, after which he returned to his family in Bucarest, and we have settled for the night in an old inn. Georgescu is an excellent travelling companion; along the way he regaled me with the history of the countryside we were passing through. His knowledge is very broad and his interests extend to local architecture and botany, so that
I was able to learn a tremendous amount today.

  Târgoviste is a beautiful town, mediaeval still in character and containing at least this one good inn where a traveller can wash his face in clean water. We are now in the heart of Wallachia, in a hilly country between mountains and plain. Vlad Dracula ruled Wallachia several times during the 1450s and ‘60s; Târgoviste was his capital, and this afternoon we walked around the substantial ruins of his palace here, Georgescu pointing out to me the different chambers and describing their probable uses. Dracula was not born here but in Transylvania, in a town called Sighisoara. I won’t have time to see it, but Georgescu has been there several times, and he told me that the house in which Dracula’s father lived-Vlad’s birthplace-still stands.

  The most remarkable of many remarkable sights we saw here today, as we prowled the old streets and ruins, was Dracula’s watchtower, or rather a handsome restoration of it done in the nineteenth century. Georgescu, like a good archaeologist, turns up his Scotch-Romany nose at restorations, explaining that in this case the crenellations around the top aren’t quite right; but what can you expect, he asked me tartly, when historians begin using their imaginations? Whether or not the restoration is quite accurate, what Georgescu told me about that tower gave me a shiver. It was used by Vlad Dracula not only as a lookout in that era of frequent Turkish invasions but also as a vantage point from which to view the impalements that were carried out in the court below.

  We took our evening meal in a little pub near the center of town. From there we could see the outer walls of the ruined palace, and as we ate our bread and stew, Georgescu told me that Târgoviste is a most apt place from which to travel to Dracula’s mountain fortress. “The second time he captured the Wallachian throne, in 1456,” he explained, “he decided to build a castle above the Arges to which he could escape invasions from the plain. The mountains between Târgoviste and Transylvania-and the wilds of Transylvania itself-have always been a place of escape for the Wallachians.”