A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula

by Mary Lancaster

  It was a recent appointment, but he was hoping it would earn him another piece of land to add to his growing estates in Hungary and Transylvania. He thought about that, and about his wife and children at home, as he left the palace and stepped out into the midday sunshine, making his way to the formal gardens where he had an assignation to keep.

  The left-hand path was usually deserted. Any parties out to enjoy the flowers tended to stick to the central path, which led to a charming, open summerhouse. But today he was sure someone followed him. The hairs at the back of his neck prickled. If it was his mistress, she was early, and he could look forward to a longer than expected dalliance. If it was her suspicious husband, he might well have to postpone it.

  With careful nonchalance, he paused to inspect the red tulip on his right. With his attention on the path behind him, he was surprised to hear hushed male voices drifting on the breeze over the nearby hedge. Alarm bells began to ring in his head. Had Helena’s husband truly discovered their affair? Had he hired someone to teach Szelényi a lesson?

  Uneasily, Szelényi strained his ears and caught a furious, intense whisper: “…damn it, we tried! But he’s not an easy man to pick a fight with!”

  “I never heard he was a coward,” came a different voice, and one that made Szelényi frown, because although it spoke Hungarian, the accent reminded him of an occasional inflection he noticed in his prisoner’s. Wallachian?

  “I never said he was a coward!” came back the angry, Hungarian whisper. “He just sneered at me as though it would insult his sword to cross it with mine. Before throwing me across the room by the throat!”

  And abruptly, the overheard conversation was far more important that petty intrigue. For Szelényi was sure it related to the incident in the exercise chamber this morning. He and the prince had been practicing sword play as usual when a group of young courtiers had come in and tried to pick a fight with Vlad. It wasn’t such an unusual occurrence. Young bullies trying to make an easy name for themselves by besting the ageing prince with the fearsome reputation. If the prince had ever risen to the bait, it hadn’t been in Szelényi’s time. He wasn’t going to risk his freedom and his throne for the pleasure of humiliating a stupid young man. And Szelényi had fought often with Vlad. Provoking him for self-gain was incredibly stupid unless you wished to die.

  Vlad had dealt with them leniently by his own lights and anyone else’s. Szelényi had then murmured a few words about the king’s displeasure and their own narrow escape, designed to frighten them. He’d thought no more about it. But now… The young men from the morning had been Hungarian natives. Now it almost seemed they’d been put up to it by a Wallachian who wasn’t best pleased by their failure.

  He needed to warn the prince that someone didn’t want him free. Presumably the agents of the present incumbent of the Wallachian throne, Besarab Laiota. Or even Vlad’s brother Radu…

  Szelényi wondered ruefully if he could still fit in his assignation. Then his eye was caught by a drifting grey figure gliding along the path toward him. The person he’d imagined was following him. A woman. Definitely not his mistress, unless she was in heavy disguise.

  Szelényi blinked. Good God.

  Straightening, he bowed to the princess. The voices drifted away, no longer audible.

  The lady stopped in her tracks as if surprised by his courtesy. A nervous smile flitted across her face and was gone before he could acknowledge it.

  She took a step nearer him. “Count Szelényi?”

  “At your service, my lady.”

  “I’m Ilona Szilágyi.”

  “I know,” he said gravely. “And I’m honoured to meet you.” He found himself speaking gently to her, as if to a nervous horse. Her restless eyes sought his once more, searching.

  “Are you?” she asked vaguely, and yet he had the uncomfortable feeling that those eyes weren’t vague at all but distressingly perceptive.

  He swallowed, and found himself dropping both the courtly manner and the condescension behind it. “Actually, yes. I have the honour to attend the exiled Prince of Wallachia.”

  Her tongue flickered over her lips. Her gaze dropped once more. “I know.” She reached out with odd blindness, touching one soft white petal at random. “And you are—conscientious in your duties?”

  “I hope so,” he said, frowning with incomprehension. “To be honest, they don’t tax me. I find the prince most amiable.”

  Again the fleeting smile skimmed across her lips. “Amiable,” she repeated with blatant disbelief. “And biddable?”

  Since she caught and held his gaze once more, he found himself smiling back. “No, not biddable. But then—”

  “And is he well?” she interrupted. She blurted the words as if they wouldn’t wait any longer, and yet as soon as they tumbled out, she waved one slender, surprisingly elegant hand as if to dismiss her own question. A delicate flush brightened the pale skin of her cheeks.

  Fascinated in spite of himself, Szelényi chose to answer. “Yes, he is very well. Not unnaturally he has suffered bouts of frustration and melancholy in the past, but I am happy to say he looks to the future now with hope. I’m very glad that his fortunes are improving.”

  Her gaze pierced him once more. She nodded as if believing him. Then, abruptly, she turned. “Thank you,” she said over her shoulder. And Szelényi, oddly reluctant to let her go, fell into step beside her.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “I can also tell you he’s very much looking forward to meeting you again.”

  Her gaze flickered up to him, hunted, distressed. He would have pitied her had he not become distracted by the delicate beauty of her bones. Ilona Szilágyi had once been a lovely woman. In fact, now that the vitality or emotion, whatever it was, consumed her face, she still was. Too thin perhaps, and grey was not her colour. Her dress was ugly, but the lady was not.

  Or perhaps that was the illusion. As she turned away and quickened her step, he saw once again the grey, ageing frump.

  She said, “Did my aunt, Countess Hunyadi, visit him yesterday? In the evening?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. Her mouth opened as if to ask another question. Then, apparently deciding against it, she closed her lips.

  Szelényi’s mistress, inexplicably shocking to his eyes just then, tripped along the path toward them. In a charming, heart-shaped headdress and a blue overgown with ridiculously trailing sleeves, she couldn’t have presented a greater contrast to the colourless princess.

  Ilona seemed to regard her with even less interest, merely nodding to the other woman’s elaborate courtesy. Helena’s eyebrows danced in Szelényi’s direction, her blue eyes glinting as she walked gaily past them.

  Szelényi could hardly compromise her by following just then. But neither, he found, did he want to. There was some mystery about his prisoner’s proposed nuptials that he wanted to get to the bottom of, some help this frail lady needed that he wanted to give.

  She said, “He spoke to you about meeting me.”

  “Well, it was hardly a discussion,” Szelényi admitted. “But he said it once. And in any case, I can tell. I know him quite well now.”

  “Then you would know if he changed his mind.”

  Szelényi stared at her averted profile. “Changed his…?”

  “You must tell me at once. Good-bye, Count.”

  Perplexed and dismissed, he stared after the ghostly figure until she whisked round the corner of the path. He was free now to go to Helena. But his thoughts were still with the other, very different woman. And he found what he most wanted to do was to go and ask questions of his formidable prisoner.

  ***

  Count Szelényi didn’t feel at ease as he knocked on his prisoner’s door later that afternoon. Mostly, he didn’t feel at ease with himself. For the first time in months, despite his hectic and delicious interlude in the shrubbery with Helena, he wanted to go home to his family.

  “Enter,” came the prince’s familiar voice. And it struck him as
he unlocked and opened the door that the person he would miss most when he left court would not be Helena or even the king or any of the high-ranking noblemen who called themselves his friends. It would be this strange, isolated prince with his formal manners and veiled humour.

  Vlad Dracula sat at his desk, writing busily, his long, still-black locks falling around his broad shoulders, half hiding his face. Without looking up, the prince greeted him civilly and invited him to take some wine.

  Szelényi went to the table and poured two glassfuls from the silver jug. He laid the first by the prince’s elbow and received as always a murmur of thanks. Taking his own to the carved wooden chair by the empty fireplace, he sat and sipped his wine.

  He waited until the prince began to fold his letter. Like all his correspondence, it would he handed to Szelényi before he left, but never by word or deed had the prince acknowledged that he knew his jailer was expected to read them.

  In fact, Szelényi rarely did. These days he had a list of Vlad’s acceptable correspondents, and he simply sent on all such epistles. Most of them were addressed to noblemen of Wallachia, old friends and supporters, exiled and otherwise. Once, when he’d first come in trepidation to this post, it had surprised him that there were so many of those who kept in touch with him. He’d assumed the boyars would have been delighted to see the back of so cruel and unpredictable a lord.

  Szelényi quickly explained his suspicions about the men trying to provoke him in the exercise chamber this morning. The prince merely sighed and nodded as if unsurprised. Leaving the matter to Vlad whether or not to take the matter further, Szelényi took a deep breath. “I had the honour of meeting your lady today.”

  Vlad made his second fold in the paper with precision. “You are to be felicitated.”

  Szelényi inclined his head and waited. But it seemed Vlad was too indifferent—or too proud—to ask for any further information.

  The prince reached for the wax. “I trust you found her well,” he said at last.

  “Well? I believe so. To be frank, I found her a little—perturbed.”

  The ring seal paused just a little too long in the wax. Vlad lifted his hand, then turned deliberately to Szelényi.

  “In what way?”

  For the first time since his original meeting with Vlad, fear coursed through Szelényi’s veins. The prince’s green eyes darkened until they were hard as agates, relentless. His lips thinned to a cruel line. Szelényi couldn’t help remembering the stories, the legends that had built up around this man, the ones he had discounted over the months of what he had taken for growing friendship. But this, this man was one you would never cross. Christ, you wouldn’t even spill his wine.

  But you bloody would answer his questions.

  Even when you floundered.

  “I’m not sure.” It was an effort simply not to stammer. “I don’t know the lady, so it’s very hard for me to judge. But I couldn’t help seeing that she was…” Szelényi cast around for the right word.

  “Perturbed,” Vlad supplied. “We’ve established that part. What can have perturbed her?”

  “I don’t know,” Szelényi said miserably. “I can’t—you,” he blurted. “Something about you. She came up to me especially, I’d swear, to ask how you were.”

  The prince’s eyelids swept down over his hawklike eyes, granting Szelényi a brief respite. He let his breath out and continued. “Only when she’d asked, she seemed embarrassed. And then, when I said you looked forward to meeting her again, she looked very perturbed.”

  Vlad’s gaze flickered back up to him. The anger still lurked there, cold and terrible, but Szelényi began to believe it wasn’t aimed at him. In fact, the large green eyes didn’t appear to be seeing him at all. He found himself hoping the fury wasn’t aimed at poor Ilona Szilágyi.

  “What else,” Vlad said with such deliberation that Szelényi realised how difficult this was for him to ask, “did she say?”

  Szelényi cudgelled his memory. “She asked if Countess Hunyadi had visited you and then…” He trailed off and swallowed. But under that commanding gaze there was no way to avoid it. “She asked if you had changed your mind.”

  Vlad nodded, slowly, as if it made sense to him.

  Encouraged if even more mystified, Szelényi added, “And she said I should tell her at once when you had. She didn’t seem to doubt that you would.” The last sentence was aimed more at himself, stating yet another tiny mystery, for he’d never encountered anyone less likely to change his mind about anything than Vlad Dracula. But having said it aloud, he blanched, not least because something sparked into life in the prince’s eyes, something blatantly dangerous.

  After a second, his lower lip moved, clamping on the upper in an attitude of thought.

  “The king,” he said, “has arranged for our formal betrothal to take place tomorrow evening.”

  “Congratulations,” Szelényi said automatically.

  A glint of sardonic humour lit the prince’s eyes. “Thank you.” He stood up. “I feel a visit to my promised bride is in order before then. It is not my intention to be betrothed to a perturbed lady.”

  “You would like me to arrange something tomorrow?”

  “No, I’d like you to take me there tonight.”

  “I can’t!”

  “You’ve been forbidden?”

  “No, but—”

  “Well, then. You needn’t come. Just tell me where to find her.”

  “Sir, please, you must allow her time to prepare—”

  “Wrong,” said Vlad, silencing him without raising his voice. Lifting his glass, he tossed the contents down his throat and strode toward the door. “The trouble is, she’s had too much time.”

  ***

  Margit had served Ilona Szilágyi for more than eleven years. In that time, she realised, she had never really learned anything about her. She had first met her in the Szilágyi family home at Horogszegi, dazed and shocked, after her miraculous escape from the Ottomans in Wallachia. The rumour was she had been betrothed then to Wallachia’s hero prince, but she never spoke of it and neither did anyone else in the family. Presumably, when the prince turned out to be not only homeless but unheroic to the point of traitorous, the family called it off. Even Vlad Dracula couldn’t be married in prison. Not to a member of the king’s family at any rate.

  Yet here she was, all but betrothed once more to the same imprisoned prince. Although Margit had seen him move freely enough around the palace when she had been exploring in her own time.

  Margit had been delighted to come to court, to escape her pleasant but dull existence in Transylvania. She’d then been appalled when Ilona maintained her modest, excruciatingly drab dress. There were two fine court gowns in the trunk and a particularly pretty new silk dress for day wear, but the lady ignored them all.

  Margit had hoped court and marriage would brighten her fading lady, had been ready to encourage her in all kinds of entertainment and fun. But frustratingly, her lady was wasting both their lives. Margit was aware she should be angry. And yet when she saw Ilona sitting on the floor, her back against the raised bedstead, her awful grey veil askew on her troubled head, what Margit chiefly felt was a surge of protection.

  In sudden pity, she sank down before Ilona and took her hands. “My lady, what is it?” she pleaded. “Are you ill?”

  Ilona’s eyes came back into focus. She looked guilty. “No. No, I’m not ill.”

  “Won’t you go down to the king’s supper?”

  She began to shake her head. “No—” She broke off, staring at her attendant. “Or perhaps I should?” she said uncertainly. Her gaze moved beyond Margit. “Will he be there?” she murmured.

  “Who? The prince?”

  Ilona flushed and drew her hands free to stand.

  “You’re to be betrothed tomorrow,” Margit reminded her. “Perhaps it would be more comfortable—”

  A spurt of laughter, halfway to a sob, escaped Ilona. “Comfortable?”

  With comp
assion, Margit racked her brains. There was no way out for her lady. It was decreed she should marry a monster, and so she must. Surely even a monster would not be unkind to so gentle a wife? Perhaps the king would immediately send him off to win back Wallachia, and she—and Margit—could simply live out of range of his attention. After all, it was a political alliance, not a mere love match, and Vlad already had an heir. Ilona too was hardly in her first flush of youth for a bride.

  But she had no idea how to say this to Ilona without insolence or offence, how to lighten the lady’s despair.

  A knock on the outer door made them both jump. Margit tried to smile. “Someone’s come to take you to supper,” she said lightly. “I’ll help you to change,” she added, leaving the bedchamber to answer the door.

  Ilona, who thought on the whole she’d rather keep the frumpish grey dress, stood in the connecting doorway to see, mainly, if her escort was someone who’d let her away with it. Not Aunt Erzsébet…

  Margit opened the door and revealed Count Szelényi.

  Ilona’s heart lurched painfully. Had he brought news, a message? She couldn’t breathe. With one trembling hand, she tugged at the neck of her gown. Then Margit fell back, Szelényi stepped aside, and Vlad Dracula walked into her room.

  Chapter Four

  Hunedoara, Transylvania, 1454

  He walked into Countess Hunyadi’s hall as if he had been there many times before. He didn’t swagger, like many young men, but strode with purpose and unexpected grace, his sword clanking at his hip as if to remind everyone that he was still dangerous to someone.

  Ilona, standing behind the countess’s throne-like chair, beside Maria, Aunt Erzsébet’s other attendant of the day, was conscious of the strong, steady beat of her heart. It had been nearly three years since her first glimpse of the strange Wallachian prince, and she’d been looking forward to seeing him again with an urgency that surprised her. Perhaps curious to know if he could still impress the more mature woman she’d become at sixteen. Perhaps just curious to know him, who was still an enigma to her father and to Hunyadi himself.