‘But what was he doing in there?’ said Sphrantzes.
‘Well, Captain?’ said Anna. ‘You have been very silent so far.’
He had been, Sphrantzes realised. Both the Ambassador and Captain had not said a word since arriving. What was even more interesting to Sphrantzes was the way Anna held the room in her thrall. From young men like Nikolaos and Lueger, it might be expected, but what held the two older gentlemen in place was not ardour; it was fear.
The Captain gave a cough. ‘I could not begin to guess.’
‘There’s no need to guess,’ Anna said. ‘As always, the dutiful Peregrino Bua was carrying out your instructions. There was your contract to fulfil after all. The Black Sheep were not hired to bring me here; I was just the means to guarantee the voivode let you in and dropped his guard. The key to Poenari. Your payment depends solely on Vlad Dracula’s death.’
‘That’s outrageous!’ spluttered the Captain. It was then Sphrantzes noted that Nikolaos had the doorway blocked and Bua’s dagger still lay in the palm of Erasmus Lueger.
‘I’m going to assume, Captain,’ Anna said in a steady, level voice, ‘that you were given to understand it a necessary evil. I’m going to hope that he told you it was for Venice; that the collapse of Wallachia would make the senate cease to ignore the Pope’s call for crusade. I’m going to pray you are like me - an unwitting dupe who never dreamed herself a Turkish catspaw.’
The first move of the Captain’s head was not a show of denial or even anger, but a glance directed towards the Ambassador. ‘What does she mean?’
Niccolo Sagundino remained as cool as a fish. ‘I’m not sure, Captain. Why doesn’t the kyria spell it out for us all?’
‘If you insist, Messer Sagundino,’ said Anna. ‘You have lied to me from the very start. Instead of petitioning the senate on my behalf you were selling them the idea of Byzantium wed to Wallachia. No more foolish talk of Greek communes in Italy if I am busy whelping little Vlads far from the lagoon. No more troublesome refugees if the lagoon dwelling Byzantines were shunted off back east somewhere. Next, you lied to the Captain when you hired him to murder our host.’ Anna was looking hard into the Ambassador’s eyes as she spoke. She kept looking and he failed to hold her stare. A smile broke across her lips at the confirmation it seemed to signal.
‘Kyria, you are starting to sound insensible,’ he said.
‘To the outsiders, perhaps. To kyr Sphrantzes, Nikolaos, Erasmus Lueger. To those men who but for accident, and certainly through no choice of yours, would not otherwise be here. But not to you. To you I imagine I sound quite sane. You see, gentlemen, Ambassador Sagundino serves two masters - or might I better say two mistresses? He is both a ducal secretary to La Serenissima and an agent of Mara Brankovic, the Ottoman Valide Hatun. It has been her errand that he has had us all running.’
Calm, adept, seasoned by decades of experience in the most hostile of audience chambers, the Ambassador’s voice continued to betray no panic. ‘If you propose to slander the good name of a ducal secretary, kyria, by God you’d best be able to back it up with iron proof.’
He had chosen defiance and well he might, for she could not prove a thing.
‘No,’ Anna said, matching his poise with her own. ‘I shall not slander you at all. I have no need to. I will simply turn Mara’s plans to ashes and let her reward you for its failure.’
The Captain stepped between them. ‘Kyria, let us cool our words here. There is no doubt that the situation is delicate. One of my men is already dead and, if the voivode suspects even part of what you claim, we may all end this day impaled.’
‘I agree,’ said Anna. ‘In fact, I propose to buy the Black Sheep’s complete loyalty. But I’m afraid the debased coin of your lives is all the price I am willing to pay for it. You see, I am the only one who can save us from a sharpened stake. Earlier I said I would explain how the voivode came to be in the courtyard, why he mistook Eudokia at the window and fell upon her with such passion. You surely guessed that he confused the shadowed invitation for mine. That much is true, but what only the Ambassador and I are aware of is this: the voivode believes I am his resurrected wife.’
A single, mirthless, mocking beat of laughter rolled from the Ambassador’s mouth. ‘She’s touched in the head!’ said Sagundino, looking in turn to the other faces.
‘No. I don’t believe she is,’ said Sphrantzes stepping from the corner to stand at Anna’s elbow. ‘There have been many things that made little sense on this journey, not least your choice of kyria Anna to convey Venice’s message here, but truth might at last be dawning. It was no act of cosmic irony that dispatched Turks to clear our path of Erasmus Lueger’s ambush. It was not happy chance that found a suitable boat waiting at Gradec, nor ill luck that in Belgrade’s busy port the Mara Brankovic’s men should immediately locate and waylay us. You were taken inside Smederevo with the women, Ambassador, what did the Valide Hatun speak to you about?’
‘Not a thing. You can’t possibly think I’d -’
Sphrantzes cut him off. ‘It matters very little what I think. Even the question of your potential treason hardly matters. All that matters presently is keeping ourselves from the shadow of the voivode’s wrath. Would you not all agree? And whatever the reason, it is clear to me that kyria Anna commands his attention more than anyone else. So, I propose we listen to what she plans to do about it. Captain what do you have to say?’
The first rays of daybreak traced the contours of the Captain’s taut jaw muscle. He said, ‘I may be a fool and a blackguard, but I’m no Turk. You are correct, Kyria, we were paid by this man to kill the voivode. He said the money came from Venice. If instead it proves to have been from the Sultan’s treasury his life will be forfeit.’
‘It needs to be proven,’ said Anna. ‘It needs to be proven in Venice. For now, confine him to his chamber with a guard. Erasmus, perhaps you could help bury poor Peregrino Bua and next time be a little more suspicious of lustful notes signed in my name – although on this occasion I am very glad that you came. Nikolaos, please see to Eudokia. Now then, I had better prepare to speak with the voivode.’
As the chamber was emptied in a low buzz of male voices, dispatched like worker bees by their queen, Sphrantzes lingered to watch the auburn-crowned figure gathering her thoughts and her resolve by the brightening window.
‘You were a worm of a girl,’ he said, his knuckles blanched white with their grip about his cane, ‘and Venice might be a stinking cocoon, but oh my, what a butterfly has been hatched.’
‘Or perhaps just a moth seeking a flame?’ replied Anna. When she turned from the window, he began to see what the effort of the past hours had cost her. The face, suddenly pale, held none of the conviction which had remained inexorable before the Ambassador’s denials. She placed a hand over her belly and said in a quiet, tremulous voice, ‘Did Constantine ever feel this uncertainty, this tumorous doubt?’
‘Constantly,’ said Sphrantzes. ‘It would be a madman who did not. Which is why it’s imperative one has firm principles on which to base difficult choices. You are facing such a choice now I sense.’ He touched her gently on the arm and then took the weight off his feet by sitting down on the edge of the bed. ‘I have faced one recently too.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘When I met him in Rome, Cardinal Bessarion asked me to support the claim that you are the Basilissa. He wants me to help him remove Thomas Palaiologos as Byzantium’s inheritor.’ Sphrantzes looked up into her eyes. ‘I want to tell you that I won’t do it. And it’s not because of my past conflicts with your father, or that I admire Thomas in the least. It’s certainly not because I feel you lacking in some way. I believe in you, Anna. I have watched you on this journey with the most critical of eyes and I find myself yearning to acclaim you Basilissa. But I won’t do it, because it would be false – you never married Constantine - and if Byzantium is to be saved, if Byzantium is to somehow return, it must not be re-founded upon a lie.’
Gripping his s
tick, he waited for her response. Once she would have cursed him. A month before he would have still expected her to. Now, as anticipated, he found no anger in her eyes or on her tongue.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You give great counsel. I suppose that is why three Emperors kept you to hand. I consider myself privileged to have borrowed you for a time. Now, my resolve is set.’ And without another word she left him sitting on the chamber bed.
II.
Transylvania, October 1453
Winter had come early that year. The dusting of snow turned the bare branches of trees into frozen fountain sprays and muffled the Breadfield plane beneath its velvet-soft cloak. With an evil wind blowing steadily off the mountains it was not a time to be out if one could help it; but Hekim Yakub had no choice. With letters for his mistress sewn into his bag, he had no wish to linger in Hungary. So instead of seeking respite at Hunedoara, home of Janos Hunyadi, the white knight, he had preferred a tavern not far from that castle’s snow-covered towers. In the common room Yakub found himself a dark corner, among the chatter and singing of Saxons, and began to nurse a bowl of warm soup.
He was still toying with the chunks of meat floating in his broth and reassuring himself that it was not pork, when a young couple approached his table. The man’s green stare, shining with good nature, seemed very different in its cast to the lowered hazel eyes of the woman. The man was quite young: twenty-two or twenty-three perhaps.
The woman was younger still and might have been anything from fifteen to twenty. Yakub was never much good at guessing a woman’s age. She had an attractive face with a freckled nose and a single lock of auburn hair hanging loose from under her headscarf. Yakub could see exhaustion carved into her features - the dark circles beneath her eyes, the tautness of her skin, all of which suggested a great deal of effort or worry had drained her reserves. There were very few women in the tavern. Perhaps that was the reason she made a more immediate impression on him than her male companion, even though it was him who spoke.
Whatever his words, Yakub did not catch them. ‘I’m sorry, my Hungarian is poor,’ Yakub said. It was almost the only phrase he knew in that tongue.
‘Do you speak Greek? Do you know Turkish?’ asked the young man, switching effortlessly between both.
Looking a second time at him, Yakub has a peculiar sense of familiarity. ‘Yes. Either is good,’ he said in Turkish.
‘I asked if we might share your table. It is crowded in here today,’ the young man said. His Turkish was better than Yakub’s.
‘Please. Join me.’
The man ushered the woman onto the bench opposite Yakub, then slid in beside her. ‘Thanks, friend. Where are you from, if I might ask?’
Where indeed. Edirne? Gaeta? Judea? Nowhere? It was simultaneously a trite piece of small talk and an unanswerable question that cut to his marrow.
‘I live in Edirne,’ Yakub said.
‘You don’t look like a Turk, if I may say.’
‘I am a Jew.’
‘I thought you might be. The hat.’ The young man pointed to the yellow, stiff-brimmed hat set on the table beside Yakub’s soup. ‘Edirne is a nice place. Safe. You are lucky to live there.’
‘Have you been?’ Yakub asked. ‘Did you study there? Your Turkish is very good.’
‘I learned my Turkish in Amasya. You might say I studied there, but not books. I did visit Erdine once for a wedding celebration. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you whose it was.’
That earlier feeling of familiarity came back to Yakub, hard as a punch in the gut. No. It’s not possible.
Yakub glanced again at the woman whose attention seemed permanently fixed on the far side of the room. ‘Is your wife alright? In my professional opinion she looks far too pale. Perhaps an excess of black bile. I’m a physician you see.’
‘She’s not unwell. Just frightened,’ the young man said. ‘We came from Sibiu and had some trouble there.’ He turned to the woman and, perhaps for Yakub’s benefit, switched briefly into Greek. ‘Are you feeling better my love?’
She gave a wan smile and laid her head against his shoulder.
‘She does not speak Turkish?’ Yakub guessed.
‘No. Only Greek and our native tongue. We are Vlachs.’
‘From Sibiu? I thought that was a Saxon town.’
‘It is. Hence the trouble. We are travelling to Suceava where my wife’s family lives.’
‘Not to Wallachia?’ Yakub was almost sure now.
‘I’m not welcome in Wallachia.’ The eyes studied Yakub from behind their long lashes. ‘Did you know that already, friend?’ For all the calculations the doctor’s own mind had done over the past minutes, clearly the brain across the table had been just as active.
‘I might have. I’ve no wish to alarm you. My name is Yakub. Hekim Yakub. We’ve never met before, but I think you once knew my employer. If I’m correct, that celebration in Edirne you attended was nearly four years past and your name is Vlad.’
The face across the table turned suddenly very cold. ‘My name is Vlad. Did the Sultan send you to kill me? Does he know?’
Yakub raised two open palms. ‘I heal people, I don’t kill people. Our meeting like this is pure fortune. Yes, I work at the palace, but the employer I speak of is a woman. I am travelling from here to Smederevo.’
The languid ease came back into Vlad’s shoulders. He gave a low chuckle. ‘How is Mara Hatun?’
‘She is the Valide Hatun now.’
And won’t she be surprised when I tell her who is still alive.
Vlad looked wistfully away and nodded. ‘Of course. Will she be moving to Constantinople with her conquering son?’
‘Most likely.’ Over the previous five months, seemingly every conversation Yakub had eventually came around to that siege.
Vlad changed smoothly to Greek. ‘I promised Elizabetta I would take her to Constantinople one day. She has always wanted to pray inside Hagia Sophia. Isn’t that right my love?’
‘It’s already a mosque,’ said Yakub. ‘What trouble did you have in Sibiu? Did you kill a man?’
The woman answered Yakub for the first time. ‘My husband killed several.’ There sounded to Yakub’s ear like a deep note of pride in her tone.
‘I assure you, Hekim, I don’t enjoy killing,’ said Vlad. ‘Too much of it robs a man of his soul. I don’t look for trouble.’
‘But it has its way of finding you?’ Yakub recalled the recklessness this man had shown in Edirne.
Vlad shrugged. ‘A lot of people want me dead.’ He began counting names off on his fingers. ‘The usurper in Wallachia. The king of Poland. Janos Hunyadi of Hungary.’
Yakub threw out another name. ‘Sultan Mehmed. More than any of those others, if only he knew the truth. I was also at that wedding celebration in Edirne. But you needn’t fear either myself or the Valide Hatun wishing for the Sultan to be any the wiser.’
‘Of course not,’ said Vlad. ‘It was her scheme. We are all just pawns on her board.’
A thought floated up through Yakub’s mind like the meat in his soup. ‘If Hunyadi wants you dead, what are you doing in a tavern under the eaves of his castle? Suceava is in the opposite direction from Sibiu.’
‘Exactly,’ said Vlad. ‘This is the last place his men will expect to find me. Once they give up chasing their tails, and assume I am already in Moldavia, the road there will become safer for us.’
‘They are looking for a man and a woman, not a party of three?’ said Yakub. ‘So that would be why you wanted to join my table.’
‘Smart man. I take it the Valide Hatun uses you for more than elixir mixing.’
‘She does. Much to my regret sometimes.’ Yakub had switched back to Turkish and was about to ask some questions Vlad would probably prefer his wife not to understand, when the tavern keeper appeared at the table and gabbled a string of impenetrable Hungarian.
Vlad turned to Yakub. ‘Hunyadi’s men are here,’ he said in Greek. ‘The keeper wants us to escape out the
back door while his boy stalls them in the stable yard. Do you have a weapon?’
‘Not really. Just a scalpel in my bag.’
‘Get it to hand. And Hekim, would you do me a favour and stay with Elizabetta? If they kill me, they will be looking for a woman on her own.’
‘If they kill you? You’re not escaping out the back then?’
‘As you said, it’s a tavern under the eaves of Hunyadi’s castle. There’s a fair chance the tavern keeper sent for those men and is trying to send me into an ambush.’
‘My husband does not run from a fight,’ Elizabetta said. ‘He is a war hero in my homeland. There are songs written about what he did to the Polish invaders.’
Vlad smiled. ‘Are you married, Hekim?’
‘Ah. No.’
‘My advice, find yourself a good wife like this one. There would be no light in my life without Elizabetta. For her sake I shall see off these Hungarian dogs like I saw off the Polish.’
He stood up and with an easy stride, crossed the tavern to the door leading into the stable yard.
Before he was outside Elizabetta had risen from the table.
‘Perhaps it would be better to remain here?’ Yakub suggested.
‘I couldn’t bear not seeing it,’ she said. Yakub lurched after her and held her by the arm to stop her advancing beyond the tavern porch.
The snow had begun to fall again, adding a glaze to the trees and the frozen ground. Across by the stables, a knot of seven men was untangling itself into a line. Halfway between there and Yakub’s position, Vlad Dracula was moving at a slow, deliberate pace, the drawn saber pointed down by his side. His steady voice broke the crisp, still air, ‘You are looking for me perhaps? Janos Hunyadi sent you?’
One of the seven took a stride forward from the group. Barrel-chested and greying at the temples, he raised a gloved hand and rested the other on the sword pommel at his hip. ‘He just wants a talk. Put the sword away.’
‘He wants my head,’ said Vlad, continuing to advance on the men slowly. ‘Do you think I don’t know about the price on it? Has it increased since Sibiu?’
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