He walked toward her, asking after her mother’s health.
“She seems better this morning,” Ilona answered. “Glad that you are here.”
“Good,” said Vlad, and, because they were alone, he took her in his arms and kissed her mouth. Any lingering, foolish doubts vanished in her instant response.
He released her with reluctance. “Have you eaten?”
“With my mother.”
“Come, then. I want to show you something.”
He led her outside into the central courtyard. From one of the towers, he could hear his soldiers laughing. Another, angrier voice shouted orders in the kitchen. Vlad walked across to the well, and rested his hip on the wall as he gazed down into the watery depths.
Ilona gazed too.
“It’s a wishing well?” she hazarded.
A memory stirred, associated with Ilona. But no, it was Maria who had sat at his side at Hunedoara and talked of wishing wells. He pushed it aside.
“It could be,” he said ruefully. “If you’re ever in a hurry to escape. Look.”
He pointed to the narrow iron ladder that lined the wall of the well and stopped some yards short of the water.
“At the bottom of the ladder is a door. It’s disguised so you can’t see it from here, but when you get there, it will be obvious. It leads into a secret passage.”
“Really?” She sounded excited, like a child discovering a new adventure, a new game. He hoped that was all it would ever be to her. “Where does it go? Your secret passage.”
“Down to a cave on the river bank.”
“Did you build it?” she asked curiously.
“I caused it to be built. After my noble work force departed. Remember it’s there, if you need it.”
She glanced at him with clear, penetrating eyes. “Am I likely to?”
“No,” he admitted. “But especially when I’m not here, I want to know that you’re safe. From now on, we post permanent sentries on all the towers—including our own.” At that, a flush of memory suffused her cheeks, but even more delightfully, she didn’t break her gaze. “That way,” he finished, “we’ll have plenty of warning of any visitors. Either from Transylvania or from my little brother.”
***
For Ilona, there was a feverish intensity about those days. Since her mother kept largely to her own chamber and the other ladies preferred to stay out of the prince’s way, there seemed little to keep her and Vlad apart. They rode and walked together in the local village, where she had already made friends with some of the families, including the large and helpful Dobrin clan, and where they greeted Vlad with every respect due their prince. And very often, since nobody cared, they didn’t trouble about finding discreet places to make love. Vlad simply took her to his bed, whether it was morning, afternoon, or night.
And Ilona couldn’t get enough of him. Parting and uncertainty had added obsession to love, and she felt alive now only when she was with him. In her heart, she knew this interlude would be a short one, and she grabbed at it with both desperate hands, aware that fate would part them once more.
Then, one morning, at dawn, she rose from Vlad’s bed, escaping his heavy, imprisoning limbs, to scamper back to her own chamber before her mother awoke and questioned her absence. It wasn’t that she wished to lie to her mother or in fact had ever done so, but she didn’t want to upset her or have this most private aspect of her relationship with Vlad under moral scrutiny.
Countess Szilágyi’s eyes were open, startling Ilona.
“Mother?”
The countess was silent. She didn’t even blink.
Oh Jesus, oh God, oh Mother…
Ilona touched the cold face as fear and shame and horror gathered within her, stifling the grief that she knew would never leave her.
“What have I done?” she whispered and laid her face against her mother’s, as if trying to wake her with her own warmth.
***
“I let her die alone. I didn’t even notice she was so ill. I took my own pleasure while my mother died.”
“She died in her sleep, Ilona. She didn’t even know you weren’t there.”
“I should have been,” Ilona whispered. “I should have been there.”
Vlad knelt at her feet, taking her hands. “There’s nothing you can do about that now. Grieve for the very fine lady who was your mother. Don’t warp it with guilt.”
Without her meaning to, she grasped his hands, holding on to them hard. “I’m afraid, Vlad,” she whispered. “So afraid. When Mihály died, I almost recognised the grief because we’d been through the fear of it so often before. This is like…the world has gone. My mother, the rock I never even realised was there, is gone.”
Vlad pressed his cheek to her hands. “I know.”
***
There was no Roman priest in the village, so after a short service in the little castle chapel beside the well, Countess Szilágyi was buried according to Orthodox rites. Ilona didn’t think she would mind. She knew God wouldn’t.
If it hadn’t been for Vlad, Ilona thought the yawning chasm that was life without her mother would have swallowed her. She knew it would pass as the sharp edges of her grief for Mihály had passed, but you couldn’t make them blunt. You had to get on with life and wait for it to happen. And so she devoted herself to Vlad and the people of the castle and the villages who called her their princess and seemed to truly believe she was.
Once, as she stood quietly in the chapel, praying for her mother, she became aware of Vlad beside her.
He said, “We could ask the priest to return and marry us now.”
Ilona dropped her head onto his arm. She found herself smiling for the first time in days. “Our wedding is for the world,” she said at last. “For your family and mine and everyone else who’s affected by the politics of it. If they don’t want it, they’ll only annul it. But in the ways that matter to me, we’re married already.”
She felt his kiss on her hair, soft and tender. “And you’re living with me without an effective chaperone. If this was Tîrgovişte…”
“It isn’t. And the world isn’t here yet.”
***
Their first visitor from the world was, unexpectedly, Maria, who arrived with her son, his nurse, two maids, and several men-at-arms.
With all her old impulsiveness, she threw herself into Ilona’s arms. But there was a strange desperation in that hug that Ilona had never noticed before.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Maria gasped.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Ilona demanded, trying to peer into her friend’s face.
“Oh, just this wretched war…”
“I thought you were safe in the mountains!”
“I was. But I can’t live like that, cut off from the world. It drives me insane. And I can’t go to Tîrgovişte because it’s full of Ottomans.”
Vlad, who’d lifted the delighted Mihnea onto his shoulders, curled his lip. The Ottomans were almost Radu’s only companions. The boyars still stayed away.
And the world was back in Vlad’s eyes. Ilona couldn’t help the sinking of her heart. But she knew it had to be.
“I’m glad you came here,” he said to Maria. “You can keep each other company. I think it’s time I tickled Radu again.”
But that night, as she lay in Vlad’s arms, Radu tickled him.
A shout went up from one of the sentries, who’d seen movement on the hills across the river. With the dawn, it became apparent that Radu’s Ottomans were approaching.
***
“They followed me?” Maria squeaked in horror.
Vlad shrugged impatiently. “They might have done. It doesn’t matter. They’ve set up camp across the river, and they’ve brought cannon. Perhaps they were coming anyway, in which case you were lucky to avoid them. The point is, they’ll never take this place. But they will make leaving difficult. I’ll shoot a few of them, see if it scares them off, but I doubt it will. Radu is desperate. He needs me out of the way
before the boyars will go to him.”
While Maria inexplicably hid in the guestchamber with her head under the pillow, Vlad led an attack from the castle, fording the river lower down and indulging in a quick skirmish with the enemy before returning with the news that he’d encountered an old friend among the Ottomans.
“He came with me the first time I took the throne,” he mused.
“Did you speak to him?” Ilona asked, wondering what, if any, difference this would make to the situation.
“No. But he saluted me once. Before he called off his men.”
“Perhaps they’ll go away now,” Maria said optimistically.
They didn’t. Instead, they crossed the river and set up camp under the castle. Vlad scoured them with a hail of arrows from both facing towers, but, undeterred, they stayed where they were.
“I think,” he said, “it’s time to leave.”
“Where will we go?”
“Transylvania,” Vlad said reluctantly. “It will take you home and let me find Matthias. I need his Hungarians and quickly.”
“But we can’t leave,” Maria wailed. “The Turks are down there!”
“There’s a secret passage,” said Ilona.
“It will avoid them,” Vlad explained. “The Dobrin brothers will help us down the mountain, and then we’re free.”
“And if we’re caught?” Maria stared at him as if he was mad.
“We won’t be.”
“You’re insane,” Maria whispered, burying her face in her hands.
Ilona frowned, touching her friend’s hair in pity. “No, he isn’t. Really. He isn’t.”
Vlad said implacably, “We leave tonight. The servants should come with us for their own safety, but the choice is theirs. Bring only what you can carry in one hand.”
Maria moaned and ran from the hall.
“She’s overwrought,” Ilona said, rising to her feet, torn between following Maria and the need to speak further with Vlad. “Something’s wrong with Maria.”
“She’ll be fine in Transylvania. She has a morbid fear of the Ottomans.”
Unworthy jealousy flickered through Ilona’s mind. She hadn’t realised how much she would dislike being reminded of the domestic intimacy which had once existed between Vlad and Maria. He knew things that even Ilona didn’t.
But she said only, “Will we be able to take Mihnea down that ladder?”
“And down the mountain. I’ll strap him to my back. Ilona?”
He crossed the space between them, his eyes dark with sudden, unmistakable lust. Her heart began to hammer.
“Yes?”
“Before I organise the men…come to bed.”
“For the last time?” she said, trying to smile as the tears closed up her throat.
He kissed her. “For the last time in this castle, for this month. That’s all.”
***
Maria had never liked this castle. Even after so many of her late husband’s friends had finished building it, she’d hated coming here. She would be glad to leave it, only she was running out of places to go. As darkness threatened, the blackness in her soul crept higher, catapulting her from her own chamber in search of the security that always eluded her now. Along with the peace she never found. And the fun that seemed to have slipped away when she wasn’t looking.
Maria, who’d always lived surrounded by people, couldn’t escape the inner isolation that consumed her. She knew that. It was something else entirely, something beyond thought, that brought her to Vlad’s door. She didn’t even knock when she went in. In truth, she would rather not even find him there. It was a ritual farewell for her, not for him.
But he was there. Kneeling on the bed in all his glorious nakedness. In the fading light, Maria couldn’t even make out the mess of scars which marred his back. But she recognised the beautiful woman he was with. As naked as he, her face raised to his, full of love while he wiped a single tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb.
Ilona, Maria thought with sudden, blinding clarity. He loves Ilona. This was never a political marriage…
Ilona’s head moved, and Maria found herself caught in that dark gaze like a wild animal unable to flee.
“Maria,” she whispered. And Vlad’s head snapped round too.
Laughter caught in Maria’s throat. At least, she thought it was laughter. Whipping away before they lost their dignity altogether, Maria left the room and closed the door. She hurried now, back to her own chamber.
The lamp was still burning, casting shadows up the bare, stone walls that Vlad had never troubled to decorate. Though she was afraid, Maria forced herself to go to the window, to look out on the fearful sight of the Ottoman camp to her right. They had cannons set up. Maybe Vlad was right and fleeing in secret was safer than being locked up in here…
Of course, Vlad’s agenda was different. Vlad couldn’t waste the months of siege. He needed to oust Radu before the boyars started coming in to his brother from necessity and boredom.
Something whizzed past her ear, and Maria fell back with a cry of horror. She was almost surprised to discover there was no pain, that she was still alive. An arrow had buried itself in the bedpost. And from the still-vibrating arrow hung a sheet of paper.
Slowly, as if in a dream, Maria walked toward the arrow and reached up to tear the paper free.
The paper was torn over the first words, but she read the others without difficulty.
“Escape if you can. All is lost.”
Escape. The lure of the word was irresistible.
Maria, curiously unafraid now, walked back to the window. There was no sign of whoever had sent the message. Vlad’s old acquaintance, presumably. Below her, the river flowed relentlessly over rocks and stones, past castles and soldiers, oblivious to the wars and politics that occupied men. It simply made its way to the sea, and nothing could stop it.
I won’t be taken by the Ottomans. I won’t be killed unspeakably like Ilona’s father or see my son taken into captivity. I won’t run anymore, and I won’t listen to the guns.
No one needed her. Not even her children. There was no guilt in this. It was simply for her.
Maria hitched up her skirts and climbed onto the seat under the window. She opened the window wide and stood in its frame. The wind caught at her hair, whipping it free of its confines. Below her, the river swirled and rushed over the rocks.
Maria smiled, closed her eyes, and floated.
***
“I think—at least I like to think—that I won’t mind, providing he still loves me best.”
“What?” Vlad stared at her as if trying to find the meaning in her wild words. Ilona was throwing on her clothes, dragging her fingers through her hair as if they were a comb.
“That’s what she said to me,” Ilona said impatiently, “when I asked her how she would feel about your marriage. She never resented me because she didn’t know I loved you. I tried to tell her once, but Mihnea cried, and the moment passed, and somehow… She didn’t know, Vlad! And suddenly she’s so…frail!”
She took a deep breath. “I have to go to her.”
Vlad nodded once. “Make sure she’s ready. And Mihnea.”
Ilona didn’t wait for more. She ran all the way to Maria’s chamber and found the window open wide. The wind had sprung up.
From somewhere, she could hear shouting. Her blood ran cold. But the window drew her as if by invisible bindings.
Maria’s broken body lay on the rocks. The river rushed over her legs and torso but missed her head. By the light of Ottoman torches and lanterns shone from their own side, she was sure she could see Maria’s beautiful, peaceful face.
***
Another guilt, another failure. She had recognised Maria’s frailty and distress and still spent the time with Vlad. It was like her mother’s death all over again.
“It would have made no difference,” Vlad said grimly. “Whether she’d seen us or not. Whether you’d been there or not. Her mind was made up. If anything, t
his pushed her over the edge.”
He dropped the scribbled note onto Maria’s bed.
“We were escaping,” Ilona raged. “We are escaping!”
Vlad grasped her by the shoulders. “That’s not the escape she wanted. Ilona, put it aside. Grieve later. Help me care for my son. His safety must come first.”
And so she’d shouldered that burden too.
The Ottomans took Maria’s body from the water and laid it out for them to claim. They had to leave her for the villagers to bury, while they climbed down the ladder into the well and crawled along the secret passages that led down to the riverside cave.
It was full of people. After a moment, Ilona recognised them as the seven Dobrin brothers.
Patiently, the Dobrins guided the little train of exalted nobles and their servants and soldiers down the difficult, treacherous mountain to safety.
And then came the hardest part of all to bear. The parting.
Instead of leaving Wallachia altogether, Vlad had decided to take the soldiers to the little mountain fortress of Konigstein—built by John Hunyadi—where he’d organise resistance to Radu and wait for the slowly advancing King of Hungary. Mihnea and his nurse would go too, there to meet up with loyal Wallachian boyars, possibly Carstian, who would care for him in Vlad’s absence.
“Unless you think your brother would take him in?”
“Miklós?” Ilona blinked.
They stood apart from the others, sheltering from the rain under the branches of an old oak, and Ilona found it hard to think of anything but the unendurable parting only moments away.
“If Mihály were alive, I wouldn’t hesitate. For I can think of no one I would rather care for Mihnea than you. But I don’t know your brother.”
Ilona swallowed. It was so tempting to keep his child by her. “Take him with you,” she managed. “God bless him. And you.”
“Are you weeping?”
“It’s just rain,” she whispered, and he bent and kissed the “rain” from her eyes and cheeks.
A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula Page 28