“Only exiled ones,” Ilona pointed out.
“I don’t think there’s very much of the ‘only’ about these two,” Mihaela said shrewdly.
Stephen seemed flatteringly pleased to see her, and asked all the questions Vlad had not, about her family and the health of the Hunyadis. He looked very dashing in a fur-trimmed blue hat and matching cloak, and it occurred to Ilona that he was actually more handsome than his cousin. It was just that something about Vlad tended to grab one’s attention and keep it…
“I hear you’ve been sleigh-riding,” Stephen teased as they paused on the stone bridge to watch the skaters on the frozen river beneath. “Not to say impromptu sledging!”
“He did that deliberately.”
“I know, and he’s sorry for it. Unfortunately, in some ways, he’s a creature of impulse.”
Ilona regarded him with a spark of curiosity. “I think you know him very well.”
Stephen smiled slightly. “He’s the best friend I’ll ever have.”
“You trust him.”
It was hardly civil, implying as it did, that neither she nor anyone else did, but Stephen only said, “Yes.” Then, as if feeling her gaze still on him, he turned and slouched against the bridge wall. “He came to us an exile, already a veteran fighter at the age of seventeen, offering my father his sword. We took him in because he was family, but he repaid us a hundred times over. He fought beside me in Moldavia, protected me at the risk of his own life many times when my inexperience would have got me killed; and again against Petru Aaron, who seized my father’s throne. We lost that one, but he stayed with us.”
He straightened and began to walk on over the bridge. “I’ve seen enough ambition and intrigue to know that such loyalty is rare in this world.”
It was so much what she wanted to hear that, perversely, she argued, “I would not say your cousin is a stranger to ambition or intrigue.”
“Lord, no, he’s full to the brim of one and a past master of the other! That doesn’t negate his other qualities. What I’m saying is—and I know Hungary trusts neither of us fully—Vlad doesn’t give his loyalty or his friendship easily, but when he does, it’s unchangeable.”
“And who is he loyal to? Apart from your family?”
Stephen shrugged. “Memories, mostly. His father’s and, especially, his brother.”
“Radu?” He whose “affinity” for the Ottomans kept him with them still, despite the fact that he’d been freed years ago.
“No,” Stephen confessed. “Not that I think he’d turn Radu away from his door. He protected him from the Ottomans when they were children, took his punishments, and kept him from harm when things were tough. The kind of ‘tough’ he’ll never tell you,” he added quickly, no doubt catching sight of the intended question forming on her lips. “But it was Mircea, his older brother, that he loved. Beyond even Vlad Dracul, I sometimes think. To be honest, that’s why I sometimes fear…” He broke off, shrugging.
“Fear what?”
“I fear for him when he goes home. Too many ghosts. Too much revenge.”
“When he goes home,” she repeated, smiling faintly.
“Oh, he will, and within the next year. I don’t doubt that.”
“You don’t grudge him it either,” Ilona observed.
Stephen glanced at her. “How could I? His throne is the first step to my own. And why am I here with you talking about him?”
“Because I asked.”
“He’ll like that.”
She cast him a quick, uncertain glance. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I would, in his shoes.”
Understanding dawned, along with the laughter. “Are you flirting with me?” she asked, more pleased with herself for recognising it than anything else, and he grinned.
“I’m trying to.”
“But why?”
“Maybe I’m hoping your father will entertain me when I’m Prince of Moldavia.”
Ilona blinked. “My father is a great soldier, but the Szilágyis are not great nobles. We do not entertain princes!”
“When I’m Prince of Moldavia, who knows what will be true?”
***
Although she doubted the governor of Sibiu would come in person, especially since he was injured, he was the first person she saw when her kind hosts conducted her outside the following morning. Wearing a black cloak with a black fur hat, he stood by his horse’s head, idly stroking the animal’s nose until she emerged. His hands were gloved, and she could see no sign of his wound.
It was difficult to look at him, remembering that brief intimate moment in the sleigh at the foot of the hill. Although, curiously, it helped in the cold light of a new day to realise that to him it had been a mere instant of amusement, perhaps even relief that he hadn’t hurt Hunyadi’s niece by his insane action. He’d already confessed as much to Stephen.
In some ways, he’s a creature of impulse…
No mercy. Kill them all.
The sky was brighter today and travelling beyond Sibiu not too difficult. Shut up in the coach once more with her maid, Ilona saw very little of her princely escort. Only as he prepared to leave her in the company of her original men-at-arms did they finally exchange more than politenesses.
Emerging from the inn where they’d changed the carriage horses and where she’d been given a bowl of warm, tasty soup, she found him in the courtyard instructing her men. He turned as she approached, saying, “You should be perfectly safe for the rest of the journey. If your father knows more, he’ll send men from Sighisoara to meet you.”
Ilona sighed. “It’s all so uncertain these days.”
“Hopefully it will be calmer after this coming year.”
“How?” she demanded. “Everyone expects war with the Ottomans now.”
“Oh, there will be war,” Vlad agreed. “There has to be to restore any sort of security. Not just to prevent the Ottomans from taking Belgrade but to push them back. I doubt they’ll leave Constantinople very easily, but we can certainly keep them out of Wallachia and Moldavia and reduce the threat to Hungary. Maybe then Europe will unite to push them out once and for all.”
“Another crusade?” Ilona said doubtfully. “John of Capistrano is not the best recruiting officer.”
“He’s a little sh…swine,” Vlad said with unexpected feeling. John of Capistrano, the papal legate had come as inquisitor to root out heresy. His recently adopted cause of crusade against the Ottomans was having little success, largely because of the ill feeling he had already stirred up among Orthodox Christians—many of whom looked on the infidel Turks with more sympathy than they accorded Roman Catholics. “He doesn’t even speak any useful language. But we need the Roman church if we’re to have help from the west.”
“We,” she repeated.
His eyes glinted. “You will, of course, report my wholehearted adoption of Hungary’s cause to your uncle?”
It was a challenge she could answer. “You don’t care whether I do or not,” she observed.
He inclined his head. “Actions speak louder than words.”
No mercy. Kill them all. She shivered.
“You’re cold,” he said, opening the carriage door to hand her in. He paused, gazing down at her hand, which looked ridiculously small in his gloved one. He said, “Count Hunyadi bids me to Hunedoara next month. If you return then, my escort is at your disposal.”
“Thank you,” she managed. She began to step up, adding, “It’s to be a council of war, I expect.”
She thought his fingers convulsed briefly around hers, an uncontrollable spurt of excitement. And when she glanced at him, she saw his lower lip clamped over the upper before he let it go to smile.
He wanted war. He needed war, to win back Wallachia and to keep it.
***
“We need to be thinking of your marriage,” Mihály Szilágyi said lazily as he watched her sisters and their husbands dance. The main hall of Katalina’s house in Sighisoara was festively decorated w
ith greenery and berries, the table pushed back to make space for games and dancing. They’d even hired a gypsy fiddler, whose music soared to the rafters, pulling everyone’s spirits with it.
Ilona, still seated on the cushioned bench beside Mihály, smiled, because even her mother danced, and because this was a rare moment of quiet companionship with her father, in the midst of rushing children and noisy celebrations.
“We’ve been lax,” Mihály said. “You’re eighteen years old now. Perhaps after this summer, when things are more certain…”
When you’re not in Belgrade, facing the lions. To distract herself from that line of thought, she teased, “Stephen of Moldavia was flirting with me in Sibiu.”
“Was he indeed?” said her father, straightening with disapproval. “Stephen?” He frowned. “Not Vlad?”
She could feel the warm blood suffusing her face and neck. To cover it, she said hastily, “I don’t believe Vlad does flirt.”
Her father gave a bark of laughter. “That’s not what I’ve heard. If we call it no worse. Stephen, you say?”
“Only very mildly,” Ilona excused. “And respectfully. He must know that if and when he ever wins Moldavia, he’ll look down his nose at the Szilágyis.”
“No one looks down his nose at the Szilágyis.”
Ilona blinked at him. Her father had certainly consumed more wine than normal, but it rarely addled his brains. “Even princes?”
Mihály shrugged. “Your sisters all married well, above their own rank. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t do even better. Especially…” He broke off.
Especially if John Hunyadi defeated the Ottomans at Belgrade and re-exerted all his old influence? Or did he mean more than that? She opened her mouth to ask, but before she could, she was pulled to her feet and swung into the hectic dance. And once again, politics and marriage and war faded into the distance.
***
“What will you do?” Ilona asked.
Vlad said, “I’ll build myself a palace of gold and live there with my treasure and ten thousand exotically dressed servants who will feed me delicacies whenever I snap my fingers. And I’ll hold banquets every night. Until I die of overeating.”
Ilona regarded him. They rode side by side on horseback since the weather was better and the roads clearer. On either side of them, the snowy hills rolled back as far as the eye could see. In front and behind streamed Vlad’s men, and somewhere in among them, her carriage, with the maid and her trunk.
Ilona watched his breath steaming patterns in the cold, dry air and kept silent until he glanced at her to see, perhaps, if she was offended by his mockery.
“So it’s all about food?” she challenged.
“Of course. And palaces and costumes. I promise you, I will be a gorgeous prince. You’re laughing at me,” he added with mock indignation.
“No, no, I fully believe in your gorgeousness, Your Gorgeousness. I’m just wondering where you’ll find the time to fight the Ottomans.”
“I won’t. They might tear my clothes.”
Ilona laughed, and reached out to catapult snow from an overhanging branch onto him. Just how she’d got from the discomfort of Sibiu to this easy, bantering companionship, she still wasn’t sure. But she thought it had to do with him and his mood. He liked that Mihály Szilágyi had voluntarily entrusted him with his daughter. He liked going to Hunedoara to receive Hunyadi’s orders for the coming season. If the truth were known, she was pretty sure he liked the Ottomans’ war preparations providing the shake-up that could bring him back to Wallachia. And as his attitude dispelled her unease, she remembered why she’d always liked him.
But she hadn’t forgotten Stephen’s remarks in Sibiu.
While Vlad brushed snow off his shoulder, she said, “Then it’s not really about revenge?”
His hand paused infinitesimally, then gave one final brush. “Food.”
Ilona frowned. “Won’t you be serious?” Why should he be? She was an eighteen-year-old girl who wouldn’t understand men’s concerns of government and policy.
“I am serious,” he insisted. The heavy lids of his eyes lifted fully, allowing the green blaze of his eyes to dazzle her. “Food is vital. I want to clear vast swaths of the forests for arable land, so everyone can grow food, and we all eat and prosper. I’ll endow the churches which use their land properly and guide the people spiritually. I’ll encourage trade and manufacture to develop the towns. And everywhere, the rule of law will be paramount—no exceptions. Without crime and corruption, we’ll prosper some more.”
Ilona felt her eyes widen at the sudden flurry of quiet words, spoken quite without mockery. He waited for that, for her surprised admiration before he spoke again directly into her eyes. “And I will take my revenge on those who murdered my father and my brother, and on all those who oppose me. No mercy, Ilona Szilágyi. I will kill them all.”
He thought, he really thought she would gasp in horror and ride away from him, perhaps scuttle back into her safe carriage. But although the words wrenched at her, she held his gaze without flinching.
“You’re saying that to shock me,” she said calmly.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I questioned you. For the same reason you forced the sleigh down the hill when the harness broke.”
This time it was his eyes that widened. It gave her some satisfaction. Then he threw back his head and laughed, a clear, ringing sound, rare enough to turn the heads of several of his men.
Chapter Seven
Visegrád, Hungary, 1474
Vlad had seen her that morning when he’d ridden out with Count Szelényi. The back of his neck had prickled as it did when he was under observation, and he’d turned and seen her at the window, watching him.
For an instant, the world stood still. She seemed like part of the pale, grey-and-gold dawn, an insubstantial wraith conjured from the morning air or his own imagination. A wraith in an ugly grey shift with a halo of stunning auburn hair tumbled around her white shoulders and the delicate blades of her clavicles. For an instant she stood perfectly still, framed in the palace window like a painting, and he’d been afraid to breathe in case the vision vanished.
Then her arms jerked upward, perhaps to cover herself, but one hand caught and dragged at her hair in a gesture so achingly familiar that the years of pain and fury rolled away. Her face, her whole person seemed to crumple, and she disappeared. As if the picture had fallen off the wall.
The metaphor had stayed with him throughout the day, reminding him that his mind’s image of her was twelve years old. More uncomfortable to contemplate was her image of him. He could not doubt that her first glimpse of him in twelve years had upset her. He could not doubt that for whatever reasons, she wanted—expected—to be excused this marriage. Erzsébet Hunyadi and Count Szelényi had both told him so.
He didn’t understand what was going on in her head. But he knew one thing: all was not well with Ilona Szilágyi. She couldn’t stop the marriage—women never could—but she could destroy a great deal of what he was building.
And so when Szelényi told him of his conversation with her in the garden, he made up his mind. They’d been living in the same building for days, and at this rate they wouldn’t even meet until the betrothal. Patience was a virtue he had cultivated over his years of imprisonment but with indifferent success, and Ilona’s avoidance had gone far enough. It was time to end it.
And so he strode with some purpose through the palace corridors, forcing Szelényi to quicken his pace, ignoring his jailer’s whispered pleas that he think again before acting. Since it was the formal dinner hour, they encountered only a few straggling courtiers rushing along corridors to further their ambitions. Most took the trouble to bow to him on the way past, a respect which he acknowledged briskly. Only as they entered the female quarters did he encounter curious stares from well-dressed women who clearly wondered what the devil he was doing there. Sooner or later they’d put two and two together, and that would pile y
et more pressure on Ilona. Well, he’d no objection to that either.
Count Szelényi paused at the foot of two steps on the left, which led up to a closed door, and glanced at him. “Sir, won’t you reconsider?” he asked again.
The corridor was empty. Pity, Vlad thought savagely.
“No,” he said and reached past his jailer to knock on the door.
“At least permit me to announce you,” Szelényi pleaded. “Your position and hers demand that.”
Smart bastard, Vlad thought with a flicker of amusement, because the man was using Vlad’s own insistence on his rank against him. With exaggerated graciousness, he stood aside once more, just as a woman opened the door. A pretty woman, still young. Her bright blue eyes suggested intelligence, the softness of her mouth, good nature. Lines of anxiety surrounded both pleasing features.
Szelényi said, “Prince Vlad is here to speak with Countess Ilona, if the lady is here…”
The lady was here. Vlad could feel her. He moved, forcing Szelényi to step inside. The woman fell back in alarm, and Vlad strode past them both.
He saw her at once, wide-eyed with shock, her pale lips falling open. She stood the length of the room away from him, framed in the doorway of her bedchamber. The grey wraith of the morning had become a grey frump. Ugly clothes, an unbecoming veil askew on her head, revealing a clump of straggling grey hair, and behind it, one strand of dark red-gold.
Vlad drank her in, saw what she’d become, what she was hiding. Her beauty, her life. Behind the dull, ugly garb of the penitent.
No, oh no, I will not allow that.
He kept walking, ignoring the moan of fear that escaped her parted lips, the squeak of protest from her attendant. She jerked once, as if trying to back away, but she seemed paralysed, unable to move. Her eyes grew huge, racked with pain and memory like his, surely like his.
He didn’t stop until he was right in front of her, could feel the trembling of her body. In one swift, deliberately startling movement, he raised his right hand and swept the grey veil from her head.
A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula Page 10