Porphyry and Blood

by Peter Sandham

  ‘When you do, all my heart shall be yours.’

  ‘And until then?’ he said, ‘how much of you could I hope to possess until then?’

  Once more she heard Mara’s words about playing the game of politics as a woman. My sword arm isn’t bound anymore, Anna thought. ‘This,’ she said leaning forward and brushing her lips against his. She felt him answer her kiss and slipped clear of his pressing mouth. ‘This,’ she said again, sliding like oil from his grasp, ‘and no more.’ Then, stepping lightly to the shelter of the tower stairs, she left him to the matched howling of the wind and his blood.

  18.

  Wallachia, June 1462

  A rumble like the muttering of the gods reverberated down the valley, across the meadows and through scarfs of forest, as the hooves of the flying column drummed their tattoo over the hard summer earth. ‘Make way! Make way, damn you!’ the outriders shouted, sending a pitiful crowd bolting left and right off the baked mud track.

  The refugees stood watching the small army pass with grimy, fearful faces, then fell to their knees at the sight of the banner billowing above the heart of the mounted throng. In one half, a crescent moon and star on a blue field. Bars of blood red and gold in the other. The House of Draculesti.

  One or two among the bewildered peasants, risked a glance of their bowed heads upwards to see the lady riding among the helmets and upright lances, her auburn hair streaming like the banner in the damp mountain wind.

  ‘Take me with you!’ a boy called out. ‘I want to fight. I want to kill a Turk!’ But deaf to any plea, the column of ten thousand warriors would not stop its breakneck ride.

  An hour after their battlement conversation, as an exhausted Anna tried to explain matters to Sphrantzes and the Captain, the voivode had come to her chamber door. By then he had spoken with his boyars and laid out to them his new battle plan; which of course was her plan. It was madness, the boyars had said. It was death to attempt such a thing, to which – Vlad recounted with glee - he had replied that those concerned by death should not follow Dracula.

  Then, to the silent horror of his guests, the voivode added the sting in the tail of his message. Having once before returned from battle to find his love lost, he would not risk a repetition. When the small army of Wallachia came thundering down from the mountains, seeking martyrdom or glory outside the walls of Targoviste, it would bring with it the voivode’s new lady and all in her eclectic little train.

  The valley the army followed descended steadily, west to east, behind the foothills that fringed the northern edge of the Danubian plain, then it curved south, towards the invaders, and the sky ahead showed the ribbons of smoke along its horizon. The land was thick with people all through their journey; women and children mostly, with a few men mixed in, pushing overburdened carts or carrying the elderly. Every one of them was trudging solemnly in the direction of the mountains.

  The sun was falling faster and faster, throwing a flush of orange and rose across the city’s stone walls as the column arrived at Targoviste. The haze of evening light hung trembling in the balance as night closed in on the lonely tower at the edge of the palace grounds. In normal times this would have been the hour for the city guard to signal curfew from this turret. For that reason, it was called the Sunset Tower. In normal times the five city gates would then close for the night and the streets would lie empty until morning.

  These were not normal times.

  There was no one left to light the curfew signal. The townspeople of Targoviste had been those wretched creatures they had encountered miles to the north, dragging their possessions through the mud of the high valleys and passes. The city gates stood open in the gloaming and the streets would remain full of the town’s new residents, night and day. They were Turks, and each dangled, limp and rotting, from the high, wooden pikes on which they had been impaled.

  The gruesome forest of corpses, hundreds, perhaps thousands in number, spread in a wide pattern outside the squat Wallachian palace. The Vlach horsemen slowed to a trot as they moved through the line of stakes. The air was putrid and full of flies and the horses all began to toss their heads and swished their tails in annoyance. Most of the riders tried very hard not to look up.

  One spike, at the centre of the maze, rose higher than all the others. The turban had slipped on the mouldering corpse where a bird had landed to peck at the face.

  ‘That is Hamza Bey,’ Vlad said to Anna as she stared up at the cadaver from her saddle. ‘It was only proper that I gave him a position worthy of his high station.’

  The front of the column had now halted at the Sunset Tower. The sight of the impaled forest had sent Eudokia swooning and both the Captain and Sphrantzes were helping to carry her down. The sight had turned Anna’s stomach also, but she had seen as much and more in the final days of Constantinople. The cruelty of the scene and Vlad’s pride in it made her own skin crawl. Mara had said he was wild, but this was inhuman.

  Doubtless his taste for impalement stemmed from his Turkish education - they were notorious for the practice. Mircea might try to justify it as his master giving back only what he had received - and it was tempting to see it that way - but it was still barbaric. He might be their monster, but he was still a monster.

  Anna pointed up at Hamza Bey. ‘What do you mean by high station? Who was he?’

  ‘An admiral once,’ replied Vlad. ‘The day your city fell, he commanded the Turk galleys. More recently he was governor of Nicopolis. The Sultan dispatched him to my court on a diplomatic errand not unlike your own. His bodyguard, as you can see, were rather more numerous than yours.’

  She felt her nape hairs rise. Clearly, he wanted to intimidate her. He was used to dictating to others. Anything less than his own way must soon feel like a noose around his neck. For now, he had failed to get what he wanted from her. She had forced her own terms upon him, and his wild desire had compelled him to accept the situation, but she could see already how it chaffed him to do so. She also sensed that he would make her suffer for it one day if given the chance.

  ‘Hamza Bey’s embassy was a trap,’ said Vlad. ‘He had orders to kill me at the meeting. Instead I was forewarned and ambushed him on route.’

  ‘Forewarned?’ said Anna.

  ‘By the Ottoman Valide Hatun, Mara Brankovic. She plays a convoluted game against her court rivals. I have been her involuntary puppet more than once.’ His face had become an inscrutable mask. It was impossible to tell how much more he might know.

  Without another word he swung from his horse and gallantly helped Anna down beside him. The rest of the Vlach troops were gathering in the little chapel beside the tower for the vesper prayers. It was Trinity Sunday and every man wished to be shriven before he undertook what the Impaler Prince planned that night.

  More Wallachians were arriving all the time, but not on horseback. All the peasants and shepherds from the surrounding country had seemingly come on foot, armed with little more than clubs and knives.

  Showing Anna to the tower staircase, Vlad said, ‘You will remain here with your escort and keep Hamza company. The fires of the Turk camp can be seen from the top of the tower. I will join my men now and when I return it will be with the head of that accursed dog. Look around, my love, from now on this palace shall be your home. My father was once sent to Constantinople by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. It made a deep impression on him. He often told me stories, when I was a child, about the extraordinary finery of that court; of the ritual and mystery of the holy shrines; of the glittering luxury to be found there. My childhood dreams were of Byzantium and now, in you, Byzantium has come to me. Together we shall make Targoviste a third Rome.’

  As he swept away towards the chapel, she looked past him to the cadaverous scarecrows, starkly silhouetted against the great white face of the rising moon. There was nothing here of Byzantium. Nothing sacred, nothing hallowed, nothing courtly. Nothing at all for her here.

  A little later, the stake shadows had lengthened like talons in
ching their grasp across the grass. Three of the impaled bodies had climbed down from their pikes and were saddling horses at the foot of the tower. Anna looked down on them and the white plume of one bork tilted upwards, revealing in the dancing glow of the cresset flame Vlad’s face beneath the cap. He gave her a boyish grin. ‘My Turk guests have been kind enough to lend me proper attire for a visit to their camp,’ he called up to her. Then he spread his arms and turned a circle. ‘I would have made a splendid janissary do you not think?’

  The Black Sheep stood around Anna on the tower top, watching with a mixture of incredulity and admiration as the voivode mounted his horse and led the other two riders out through the palace gate in the direction of the enemy.

  ‘He’s completely mad,’ said Rallis.

  ‘Isn’t he,’ said Crocodile with a grin. ‘I like him.’

  Was he mad? Anna wouldn’t call it that; and yet it was difficult, having ridden through that forest of impaled death of which he was the architect, to consider him wholly sane. Was he evil, a monster? She had seen and heard so much now about Vlad. All of it contrasting and extreme. He appeared capable of little empathy for most others, but where he did hold feelings, they became overwhelmingly strong - either utter hatred or passionate love. There was something almost childlike in this about him. She believed at his core he was a heroic, valiant soul, but that the trials of his life had warped him; tarnished him; buried his brightness under a heavy layer of black. She could only wonder what might have been Vlad in better circumstances. She could also only guess at what other poisonous events had contributed to his dark side, beside the loss of Elizabetta. She wondered the effect it would have on him to seemingly lose her all over again.

  ***

  It was a short ride over the flat earth of the floodplain from Targoviste to the wooden palisade wall at the camp perimeter. Nearing the camp gate, Vlad heard the cannon clap signalling the end of evening prayer. As was customary, the collective voice of troop commanders sprang up to call good fortune and long life to their Sultan.

  The camp would be at its most chaotic now: men spilling from the barrack tents, night pickets setting themselves, final errands being run before curfew. No one would think to look for the Vlach leader to come calmly riding into their midst, virtually alone.

  The plan, which had formed in Vlad’s head during that day’s ride from Poenari, was simple. He would divide his men into three, then, in the dead of night, the first of these groups would mount an attack on one of the camp gates. They would set fires and make such a din that the entire Turk host, bleary with sleep, would rush out to meet them. At that moment Vlad would lead a second, stealthier raid on the opposite end of the camp, look to penetrate quickly to the Sultan’s tent and slay Mehmed in the confusion. The largest group of Vlachs, including those on foot, would be held back, lingering at Targoviste to guard Anna Notaras and her men. Then from this reserve would come a third wave of attackers, looking to sew enough confusion that Vlad and his raiding party might escape.

  For the plan to work at all he would need to know the exact spot where the Sultan’s pavilion was pitched, the fastest route through the maze of tents to reach it, the likely arrangement of guard ortas and patrols, and alternative routes for escape. It was so crucial a task that Vlad trusted it to none but himself.

  The open gateway was guarded by a three-man picket, moments from the end of another dull watch. They gave hardly a glance to the three dust covered riders who halloo-ed jovially as they came cantering through.

  As soon as he was past the gate the stench of the camel pens assaulted Vlad’s nostrils. Turning left, he saw the beasts huddled in a coral just inside the camp palisade, groaning bad-temperedly at one another. Beyond the camels lay another fenced off area for horses, where the three Vlachs, acting like typically aloof sipahi, left their mounts to be watered and fed.

  Vlad touched his comrade Petru on the arm and nodded at the camels. ‘That would make a good target for the first attack.’

  Both of the men Vlad had taken with him were fluent in Turkish, having previously served in Sultan Murad’s army. Petru was a hatchet-faced veteran. The task of leading the initial wave of the assault was his burden, but he showed no strain while he assessed the defences with a cool technician’s eye. ‘We could ride along the wall and throw brands in among the camels; perhaps get them to stampede across that line of tents.’

  Moving further into the camp, the percussive clang of the armourer’s hammer rang out from the cebeci works. Outside the blacksmith canopies in this section of the camp, newly made polearms were bunched like bundled hay beside racks of sharpened, tapering sabers. The glow from the furnace gave a sinister glitter to the steel.

  The camp appeared to be laid out just as Vlad had expected. He was almost certain that the Sultan’s pavilion would be at the centre of the labyrinth. Sultan Murad’s old campaign tent had been half a mile in circumference, he recalled. Mehmed - the self-declared ‘Fatih’ - would surely feel himself deserving of finer still. Likely as not there would be a whole series of rotundas forming the entrance, smaller tents budding off from the sides and all of it vaulted by a small forest of patterned wood columns. There would be carpets and cushions strewn about, there would be tabernacles full of perfumed girls and - to Vlad’s special disgust- boys. There would doubtless be many things he was not even capable of imaging, but for certain the distinctive six horse-tail banner must be flying overhead. By that sign he would know his target.

  He knew also that standing across from the grand entrance would be the tents of the Çergecis orta, the famous 17th. It was their right as ceremonial tent pitchers having broken their backs every day on the campaign’s long march to erect the fabric moving castle.

  The other elite guard ortas would form a circle around the pavilion: the Samsuncus ‘Mastifs’, the 73rd Turnacis ‘Cranes’ and the 64th Zağarcis ‘Greyhounds’ of that Mecca-facing catamite, his traitorous brother Radu. The men of these ortas would take turns to march in slowly rotating patrols about the inner circle in a careful, ceaseless watch. Their distinctive regimental insignias, stitched into the fabric of their tents and flying proudly from tent-pole banners, would act as markers for Vlad’s route to the centre of the maze.

  The pavilion belonging to the Grand Vizier - a mountain of canvas almost as enormous as the Sultan’s - should lie within this ring also. The other beys, in tents of yellow or red, would be stationed with their own ortas, forming concentric rings out from the middle. And beyond the tents of the janissary, the gun crews, sipahi cavalry, the many azaps and auxiliaries, would form a hinterland stretching to where Vlad was now standing at the edge of the camp. He wanted to spend no more than an hour there, but in that time, he needed to confirm each of these details and make note of the pattern of orta insignias.

  Ahead, two figures caught his eye. The first was a gaunt man, too neat and prim to be a soldier. Vlad recognised the imperial physician; Valide Mara Hatun’s Jewish lackey. The second man, whose gaze now turned slowly towards him, was his brother.

  I.

  Edirne, December 1449

  ‘If anyone were to walk in just now, and find us like this, well, I should think it would be both of our heads,’ said Mara Brankovic coolly.

  Hekim Yakub was acutely conscious of the lack of exaggeration in her words, placed as he was between the exposed knees of Sultan Murad’s youngest wife. Crouched on the wooden floor at the end of the divan, it was an awkward position quite aside from the fact that he was a male without permission to enter these proscribed inner chambers of the harem.

  For her own part Mara Hatun looked perfectly comfortable reclining against a mound of pillows. She had not even blushed when, with as much detached professionalism as he could muster in the circumstances, the doctor had rolled the layers of her clothing carefully up above her thighs and confronted the jet-black badge lying in wait between them.

  ‘And you say you took all the usual steps,’ Hekim Yakub said, trying to keep his tone level. He rub
bed his hands together to warm them.

  ‘I know the dangers of bitter tansy,’ Mara Hatun replied, ‘So, yes, I tried the usual routine of hot baths and jumping about before I resorted to it. The stomach cramps are not a sensation anyone could relish.’

  ‘But you think it was successful?’

  ‘That is for you to determine, Hekim.’ Her tone had grown slightly impatient. ‘There was certainly a lot of blood.’

  Hekim Yakub found himself glancing over his shoulder at the chamber door for the third or fourth time that minute. What would be the punishment for abetting a royal consort in the murder of a Sultan’s unborn child? The wedding festivities should keep everyone in the main courtyard for hours longer, but still...

  ‘Well, don’t be shy. Proceed,’ Mara Hatun thrust her pelvis at him, bringing the lips of her sex uncomfortably close to his nose.

  Steeling himself, Hekim Yakub gingerly inserted an index finger and began to try and determine if any detritus of the foetus remained within. This was far beyond his call of duty, beyond the call for any physician. This was a midwife’s work. He had always suffered a repellence at the sight of female genitalia, even back at the medical school of La Sapienza. They instilled a strange terror in him.

  His unease must have shown across his face. It amused Mara Hatun. ‘Oh, that feels very nice,’ she said, revelling in his discomfort.

  ‘Please don’t joke. It’s hard enough...’

  ‘Is it?’ she said, trying and failing to stifle her laughter. ‘I thought you were a boy-lover.’

  A sudden anger flared in the physician’s normally placid breast. It was bad enough to be dragged into her martial revenge without having Mara Hatun’s omniscience over his own private affairs rubbed, along with her vagina, in his face. Forgetting his professional vows, and for no reason but spite, he sent two extra digits, forcefully, to join the first in its examinations.