‘The Hungarians grew tired of Vlad Dracula’s rule,’ said Valide Mara Hatun. ‘They ended their alliance and backed the claims of an exiled pretender who launched an invasion from Brasov last spring.’
‘And?’ There was a deal more interest in Gülşah Hatun’s tone than one might have expected, if one was not a court physician with a good memory.
‘It was a complete debacle,’ said Valide Mara Hatun. ‘The pretender was beaten and killed, but not before being made to dig his own grave.’
‘Oh, how grizzly.’
Standing one in front and the other to the rear of their victim, the two executioners passed the vicious looking timber saw between the spread legs and took a firm grip. They would start from the bottom, using the cleft between the buttocks to sight the saw’s first cuts.
Szilágyi began to shout his last prayer.
‘That is not nearly the grizzliest part,’ said Valide Mara Hatun. ‘When the pretender’s men saw that the day was lost, a group rode away to Castle Poenari -’
Yakub lost the rest in the roar of the crowd as the first pull was made on the saw. Then as the noise dampened down, he heard Gülşah Hatun’s soft voice muttering, ‘Oh how tragic, how tragic.’
‘Vlad Dracula only has himself to blame,’ said Valide Mara Hatun. ‘A small kingdom like that, he needed to keep friends with either Turks or Hungarians, but he made enemies of both.’
‘Who could ever be friends with the Hungarians?’ said Gülşah Hatun, who had never met a Hungarian in her short, sheltered life. ‘He should have kept friends with us. Instead they say he insulted the Grand Vizier by not keeping their appointed meeting when he last came to Constantinople. Is there a madness in him? I have heard other gruesome stories. What made him so thirsty for Turkish blood? The Vlad I remember had only gentleness.’
‘Some men outlive their fate,’ said Valide Mara Hatun, ‘but perhaps their minds do not. He must be thirty by now and a soul as reckless as his should never have seen its twentieth year.’
Gülşah Hatun laughed. ‘You make it sound like he cheated Allah’s plans.’
Close, thought Yakub Hekim with a knowing smile.
Beyond the shade of the canopy, the half-sawn cadaver of the now mercifully deceased Szilágyi was shuddering as the blade made slow progress through the breastbone. Calmly averting her eyes, Valide Mara Hatun seemed to spot a face among the crowd beyond the perimeter of sentries and, excusing herself from Gülşah Hatun, made to leave through the rear of the pavilion. She paused at Yakub’s shoulder and said, in a low voice for only his ear to catch, ‘One of your fellow Italians is over there. You might enjoy meeting him. Come.’
Swathed in layers of silk and a thick damask veil, the Valide Hatun glided a quarter turn of the execution ring before Hakim Yakub spotted the portly, fur-clad shape of Benedetto Dei, Florentine merchant-spy.
‘Benedetto, this is Jacopo of Gaeta,’ Valide Mara Hatun said as she slid past Dei and, moving away from the crowd, perched herself on the stone rim of a fountain basin. It was strange to hear her use Italian. Half-thrown, Hakim Yakub shook the fleshy palm of the Florentine and both men came to stand before her. She said, ‘I trust your audience with the Sultan was of interest?’
‘Naturally,’ replied Dei. ‘We had a long discussion on the war for the crown of Naples. Then he moved on to ask about Venice and Milan and Florence.’ Dei gave a nervous titter. ‘I began to fear he plans to add Italy to his list of conquests. I told him, we might be at one another’s throats now, but every Italian state would unite if an outsider invaded. I don’t believe he was convinced by my words at all.’
‘No, I don’t expect he was.’
‘Valide Mara Hatun, Venice represents the greatest threat to Florence, just as they are to yourselves. This gives us a mutual interest on which to build a profitable trading relationship. But should a Turk army land in Apulia, it would change matters. Surely you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said the Valide Hatun. ‘I understand that very clearly.’
‘Do you think that the Sultan – were he to be proceeding along such a course - might be persuaded to reconsider it?’
‘I do not,’ said the Valide Hatun. ‘Once the touchhole is lit, a cannon must fire.’
Yakub saw the Florentine’s face fall. Dei began to say, ‘I fear –’, but was immediately cut short by the Valide Hatun.
‘Of course, it might be possible to change the direction in which the cannon mouth is aimed.’
Benedetto Dei’s face brightened. ‘Do you have a suitable target in mind?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ said the Valide Hatun without any indication that she would share more.
‘Madonna, I – and all of Italy – would be greatly in your debt if you were to accomplish this.’ Dei made a swooping bow and lightly kissed her proffered hand.
‘You would,’ replied Mara Brankovic, ‘and don’t doubt that I would hold you to it, Messer Florentine. I collect favours as the devil collects souls.’
The canopy’s shadow had begun to creep over the cobbles towards the mutilated Hungarian, hanging limp and jointed like a Michaelmas swine. Hakim Yakub left the Florentine beside the well and followed the Valide Hatun away from the dwindling crowd towards the harem entrance gate.
‘What a dreadful waste,’ she said to the air in a tone of tart mockery. ‘With Mahmud Angelovic so sure he could pick off Apulia like a taffeta popinjay. All that planning, all that husbanding of resources. What a shame if he were robbed of the chance to add Italy to his military laurels.’
‘Could it really be done?’ said Yakub. ‘The Grand Vizier is adamant that once Trebizond has been taken the next major campaign will be striking at the heel of Italy. It would take the Sultan’s direct intervention to redirect the invasion now, and even your finest words would fall on deaf ears.’
The Valide Hatun turned and ran her studied gaze over his high-boned face. ‘Have you no stomach for minarets in Gaeta, Jacopo? If you think appealing to my thirst for a challenge will provoke me into helping save your homeland, well there’s really no need. Mahmud Angelovic and his coterie of converts are a bramble that cannot be allowed to grow too thick. I would prune their ambition regardless, but now I will also gain a florin or two for my trouble.’
‘But what can you say to the Sultan to shift him from his position?’
‘Oh Hakim Yakub, why use words when events are so much more persuasive?’ said the Valide Hatun. Then, wearing a face of quiet pride and without further elaboration, she passed beyond the gate and into the impenetrable maze of the harem, like a lioness stalking back inside its lair.
13.
Wallachia, June 1462
The next morning was cold and grey. A raw wind brought with it a fine drizzle that soaked through cloaks and coverings, while overhead the rack of clouds streamed in tatters between the mountains. The highest peaks were a wall before them now, clear-cut crags and long serrated ridges, powdered on their summits with eternal ice and snow.
In silence the column of riders continued to climb, following goat-trails and runnels up into gloomy ravines worn deep by the repeated spring torrents. The air was heavy with the scent of fir needles and pyrola and from higher up the mountain came the slow deliberate stroke of a woodcutter’s axe. They never saw the man. The forest canopy eventually gave way to a landscape of boulders and mossy grass, shivering in the crisp breeze under an open sky flecked in a soft cirrus fleece. They were up in the heavens now and yet the dragon-tooth peaks ahead cleaved ever higher. Among them lay the domain of Dracula.
The Ambassador pointed out openings in the rocky slopes to Sphrantzes as they set up yet another camp for the night. ‘The mountains are riddled with copper mines. The terrain is the greatest weapon the Vlachs possess. The Turks will not pursue into those honeycomb warrens for any price. They know only death waits down there in the darkness.’
‘We are getting close,’ said Sphrantzes.
‘Yes. A day further perhaps, no more; but we must stil
l be on our guard. We heard no more bells today, but I don’t believe that was for lack of watchers.’
Early the following morning they looked down into a steep, concave valley. A tarn glistened, sapphire-like at its centre, and a fringe of pine trees petered out into a village at one end of the lake. The village proved to be little more than a collection of insalubrious hovels without even the pretence of a church. They continued to ride slowly through, eyed warily by the inhabitants, and discovered the village headman drinking fruit brandy with a tonsured monk in the shade of a tall pine.
The headman was bald as a hen’s egg, but his splendid moustache drooped from his lip halfway to the floor. His eyes were open and empty of malice and the monk beside him beamed at the sight of them.
‘Welcome!’ the monk called. ‘Welcome, travellers. What brings you to this accursed land?’
‘We are heading for Poenari castle,’ the Ambassador said as he slid down from his horse. ‘We have business with the lord there.’
The monk took a long swig of brandy. ‘Then I pray God grants you His protection.’
‘Do you have a monastery in these parts?’ the Ambassador asked. It seemed unlikely or they would surely have seen it from up on the ridge.
‘No,’ said the monk. ‘The people of these mountains have scarce more religion than their domestic animals. I am as much a stranger here as you.’ He held his hand out. ‘I am Brother Michael.’
‘Niccolo Sagundino of Venice, a pleasure to make your acquaintance,’ said the Ambassador.
‘Well, Messer, perhaps before you meet with the voivode it would serve you well to listen to my story. It is a monster you are about to encounter.’
The Ambassador glanced at Sphrantzes and Anna, then took a seat beside the monk under the tree’s canopy. ‘I would certainly be grateful for your counsel.’
‘I am from the commune at Kaptol.’ Said Brother Michael. ‘I came here with my fellow lay brother in Christ, Brother Hans, to gather alms and spread the true word of God and the teachings of Saint Bernard.’
The headman passed the jar of fruit brandy to Sphrantzes. It smelled very strongly of apricots and tasted like fire when he took a tentative sip.
The monk continued, ‘They are poor Christians in these parts. Their morality is patchy. Stealing and adultery are considered trifling crimes but violating or dishonouring a girl is a great one. Robberies and murders are extremely common. The reason is obvious: they have an improper concept of both God and the soul.’
Sphrantzes went to pass the brandy jar back to the headman and found him looking intently at Anna. Brother Michael was still sermonizing on the shortcomings of the Vlachs and Sphrantzes wondered how much, if any of it, the locals understood.
‘Any phenomenon, any event of unknown cause is taken by them to be a miracle. They taint the holy Christian ceremony with the dark pagan superstitions still lurking in the caverns of their hearts.’
The monk gestured to the sun hanging over the jagged landskein of mountains. ‘For example, they believe a solar eclipse is the infernal dragon trying to devour the sun.’ He pointed beyond the edge of the village where a small graveyard lay half hidden in the long grass. ‘When they bury their dead, they stop up the tomb and place a wooden cross at its mouth, not to send the soul to our Lord God, but to prevent the dead from rising again as vampyr.’
‘Vampyr?’ said Sphrantzes.
‘A monster of the night. A blood drinking figment of their collective fears,’ said Brother Michael. ‘A childish folk tale. The closest thing to a vampyr you are likely to encounter is the bloody voivode up in that castle.’
‘You implied as much,’ said Sphrantzes, who had grown impatient at the monk’s ramblings. ‘What exactly have we to fear of this hellish man?’
‘Brother Hans and I were summoned to an audience when he learned we were hereabouts preaching. I had already heard stories of his cruelty. They say he has a large copper cauldron in which he fastens people with their heads poking up through holes in the lid. He has it filled with water, with a fire set under it, and listens to the poor wretches howling as they boil to death. Then there are the stakes. Have you seen the stakes?’
‘I have seen one,’ said the Ambassador.
‘There are many more south from here. From Targoviste to the Danube are forests of stakes with human corpses impaled upon them. It is his favourite punishment. That is why they call him the Impaler Prince.’
‘I admit, that sounds extreme, but has that not always been the custom for punishment in these parts?’
Brother Michael shrugged. ‘I grant you such barbarity is not new. To the Vlach our own form of execution with a rope is more abhorrent. They fear that constraining the neck forces the soul downwards in the direction of hell. But it is the scale of things, Messer! One has only to witness the forests of corpse-trees Vlad Dracula has created to recognise true evil. His bloodthirst is unprecedented. He styles himself son of the dragon but son of the devil would be more apt.’
The headman, who had continued to glance repeatedly towards Anna, now moved away silently towards the nearest of the houses.
‘He sounds cruel indeed,’ said Sphrantzes. ‘How did your own audience fair?’ He could guess what the answer was likely to entail from the absence of Brother Hans in the village.
Brother Michael shook his head. ‘The voivode questioned us on the matter of heaven and hell. Some years before, his wife threw herself from the high battlements of the castle down onto the boulders of the river. The voivode wanted to know if this made her damnation a certainty. He feared she might be trapped in some form of purgatory, too chaste for hell, too damned for heaven. In Wallachia they believe such souls return to wonder the earth, neither living nor dead. I confess I said what he wanted to hear, but surely it is no sin to lie to the devil.’
‘Gracious of course not! No man would think ill of you for that,’ the Ambassador assured him.
‘The voivode turned next to Brother Hans and asked if God might view his own actions as saintly, since he had shortened the heavy earthly burdens of so many unfortunate souls. “Sire monk, tell it to me straight, what will become of me after death?”
‘Brother Hans was a most forthright man. He declared the voivode a wicked, shrewd, merciless killer, an oppressor, always eager for more crime; a spiller of blood, a tyrant and a torturer of poor people. He asked what crimes could justify the impaling of pregnant women? What had the little children done? He told Dracula that he had bathed in the blood of the innocent and even the devil must be abhorred by his deeds.’
‘I imagine this was not well received?’ said Sphrantzes.
Brother Michael nodded. ‘The voivode must have been enraged, yet his reply was unsettlingly calm. He reasserted his own dark philosophy, particularly as it applied to the killing of children. I think the mention of it had struck a raw nerve. He said, “When a farmer clears the land, he must not only cut the weeds that have grown, but also the roots lying deep beneath the soil. If he omits the roots, in one year he must start anew. In the same manner, the babes of my enemies would grow and seek vengeance should I allow them to survive into manhood. A savage holocaust is the only means to break the cycle of revenge.” Brother Hans knew his fate was sealed but he insisted on the last word. “Foolish madman, your whole being belongs to hell!” Then the voivode’s fury became undisguised. Brother Hans had pricked him where it hurt most, in his conscience.’
‘Brother Hans was either very courageous or very stupid,’ said Sphrantzes who had drawn his own conclusion but kept it to himself.
‘Brave or rashly foolish,’ Anna muttered beside him.
‘He was a man of deep faith,’ said Brother Michael. ‘He knew what the consequences of his words would be. He embraced his martyrdom, right up until the stakes were set out before us in the courtyard. Then, I must confess, he fainted - but he never recanted his damnation, even as the point was driven through him from beneath.’ Brother Michael’s eyes had glassed over at the recollection of the h
orror.
‘And your own fate?’ asked the Ambassador.
‘I was forced to watch, knowing there were two stakes and fearing all the while that I would join Brother Hans in the bloody puppet dance. The voivode enjoyed seeing my terror and then he asked if I too wanted assistance towards heaven. I begged his leave, so he impaled my donkey instead, since, he said, it must be kin to Brother Hans. I fled the castle, and here I sit, steeling my nerves. I shall begin my journey home tomorrow and I will damn Dracula in every town and city on the road until his infamy spans all of Christendom.’
The headman returned with three other elders and gabbled at Brother Michael in what sounded to Sphrantzes like corrupt Latin. The monk turned to the Ambassador and said, ‘Your party appears to have made quite an impression. They have decided to hold a pig wrestling competition in your honour.’
The Ambassador nodded and smiled at the headman. ‘Please tell him we are most appreciative.’
Reeking of brandy, Brother Michael meandered alongside Sphrantzes as the four elders led them to the village pig pens. ‘It’s an act of unusual conviviality for Vlachs,’ he said. He sounded almost crestfallen.
All the village was out, perhaps twenty men, as many women and two dozen young girls and boys. They were shy people and once again Sphrantzes noticed their furtive glances were mostly directed towards Anna. At one moment a small child approached her and gingerly touched her hand as if trying to determine if she were real. When Anna glanced down with a smile, the child’s mother snatched the boy up and hurried around to the other side of the pen.
In the ring, the star attraction, a mud splattered sow, strutted and wheezed. Riled by the crowd, it was doubtless aware of the ordeal ahead. The initial challenger, a skinny boy, was a first timer to judge by the grin he wore and the lack of purchase he found trying to grapple the sow to the floor. The next looked a veteran but he fared no better.
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