Horvathy slipped his arm from the other man’s grasp. “I will speak of it when the time comes. It will not be long, now. And I will speak of it for the record, so all may hear. So all may judge my sins. You. The Holy Father. These people.”
“Very well.” Grimani’s voice hardened. “Then, by the merciful Christ, let us proceed swiftly. For all this sitting is aggravating my arse.”
Horvathy nodded, swallowed another gulp of wine. Setting down the goblet, he strode back to the dais. Grimani joined him, the half-smile gone, settling into his chair with a grunt. The Count waited for Petru to sit, then spoke. “So, who will proceed with this tale? My young friend here has said what all must feel—that what you have just described is blasphemy as well as cruelty. Is there worse? Or was this the ultimate?”
It was a voice less frequently heard that spoke now. “Not the ultimate, my lord,” the hermit said. “Not even close.”
Horvathy nodded, sat. “Speak then.”
“I will.”
– THIRTY-NINE –
The Wedding Feast
When he had finished cutting Ilona, Vlad stood and ripped the white cloth from the altar. He threw it over her and immediately the blood shot through it in the lines of a ragged crucifix. For a moment he stared at it. Then he slowly turned, dagger still in hand, to look at the horrified faces of the boyars crowded at the altar screen’s doors.
“To me,” he cried, as he would in battle, and the noblemen were jostled aside as his twenty companions rushed to his side. He leaned into Stoica, whispering. A nod, and the little man bent, effortlessly lifted the blood-stained cloth and body, and carried it into the priest’s room behind the altar.
“Now,” cried Vlad, striding to the altar screen’s doorway, “are we not here for a wedding?”
Two hundred faces looked up at him in horror. Not all had seen. But all had heard the screams, the witnesses staggering back, white-faced, vomiting.
“Come!” Vlad stepped forward. “I seek a bride. Is that not what you all wanted? Me to marry one of yours? Well, here I am!” He threw his arms wide, laughing. “Who will have me?”
Everyone looked everywhere else. He descended to the nave floor. “You, lady?” He pointed with the bloodied dagger he still held at one woman. “No. You are already married. And yet…is that your husband, my visitier, Iova, cowering behind you? Come, shall I make you a widow first and a bride straight after? You demure? Very well.” He passed on up the nave. “You? No, too old. I need sons, so that the Draculesti will reign in Wallachia forever. You?” A boyar’s daughter, screaming with fear, buried her face in her father’s shoulder. “No! Too young. I have certain…tastes and no time to teach them.”
He stopped, swung in a circle till his gaze rested on one man. “Turcul jupan. So, you got what you wanted, eh? I have not married my mistress. You must be happy. How can I make you happier?” He moved towards the boyar. “Who is that you shelter with your bulk? Could it be…?” He darted round the man. “Elisabeta! Of course. Ilona’s maid, who always hated her. Perfect!” He grabbed her arm, jerked her forward.
“My prince! Please!” Turcul grabbed his daughter’s other arm. “Please. You cannot—”
“I have shown you what I can do, jupan,” Vlad said, his voice ice. “You have seen my sacrifice to Moloch. Now love is dead and only duty remains. Yours to me. Mine to God. Would you stand between me and Him?”
“Prince…” Turcul said brokenly.
But he let his daughter go, and Vlad dragged the weeping woman forward, throwing her down before the altar screen, at the feet of the Metropolitan. “Marry us,” he said.
“I…I…cannot.” The old man thrust the crucifix he held forward as if he were warding off the Devil. “After this…desecration!” He gestured to the screen door, to the thin stream of blood running from behind it, staining the carpet red.
“What?” yelled Vlad. “Concerned by a little blood? What of Christ’s blood? What of His suffering, His sacrifice? Christ knew all about Moloch.” He knelt, pulling Elisabeta down beside him. “And now you do, too.”
“Prince! I…I must not…”
“Marry us,” replied Vlad, in a low voice that still carried to every corner of the church, “or I will burn the cathedral around your ears with all of you inside it. I will abandon God and become forever who you all say I am…the Devil’s son!” His voice rose to a shout. “Marry us!”
It did not take long. Vlad dismissed any pomp, cut short prayer and blessing, allowed only the minimum required. He made his vows, confirmed that the tear-wracked choking that came from Elisabeta were hers. As soon as the Metropolitan had placed the groom’s golden wreath of oak leaf and ivy on his head, the prince was up and turning to the crowd.
“The Turk is a day from Targoviste. I must stop him. No…we must, since we are all now united. Is that not right, Father-in-law?”
Turcul gave a slow, numbed nod.
“So buckle on your armor, gather your retainers…” A murmur came. “…But do not fear. I do not plan to lead you in another night attack. I have different plan now. Moloch has inspired me!” He turned back to the sobbing Elisabeta, still sunk upon the floor, laid his hands again upon her already blood-streaked hair. “We must have a wedding feast. And my bride must have her gift.” His eyes gleamed. “Five thousand gifts.” He straightened. “Ion?” he shouted.
No one moved. No one came. At last Black Ilie stepped forward. “Voivode,” he said softly, “the vornic is gone.”
Vlad swayed, Elisabeta crying out as his hand stayed in her hair. Then he steadied. “You must do this, Ilie. This is my command. Raise the garrison. Empty all the jails. Every Turk we hold. Every deserter, every criminal, man or woman. All.”
“And where shall we take them?”
“To the Field of the Ravens,” Vlad replied.
“My prince.” Black Ilie bowed, turned, signalled half the vitesji to follow, and strode from the church.
Vlad slid his arm around Elisabeta, holding her up. He smiled down at her, then turned again to the crowd. “Come, one and all!” he cried. “Come to the wedding feast!”
—
To the Field of the Ravens, before the gates of Targoviste, the tables were carried. Vlad had them arranged with the precision of a Turkish camp but in a crucifix, not a circle. The high table was placed in the center, where the altar would have been if it were a church. The spaces between, the areas around, were left clear.
The food was hardly sumptuous. The guests, all those who had been at the cathedral, ate what the army ate—every part of the pig, meat that been boiled, roasted, minced, skewered. The largest boar’s head had been baked, so that slices could be taken from its fatty cheeks. To make the delicacy accessible, it stood at the crossway of the crucifix, mounted upon a stake.
It was only the first.
The paucity of the wedding fare scarcely mattered. Only the bridegroom and his soldiers really ate anyway, with the appetite of men on campaign who had seen little food in weeks. The other guests sat almost motionless, clutching implements they didn’t use, eyes fixed ahead, as if salvation lay only in the face opposite.
They stayed like that until the screaming began.
The prisoners came. First, there were the Turks, mostly soldiers, taken from the day Guirgiu fell and whenever there was time in the war of raid and ambush that followed. These proud men, warriors of the Crescent, attempted to march, to revile their guards—until they saw what they were being herded towards. Then prayer replaced curses.
Those of Wallachia followed—men and women, serfs and gypsies—criminals who had sat in their prison cells, suffering certainly—but with a little hope. For since the day Dracula was crowned, justice had always been swift, sinners executed the day they were condemned. Yet not one had been killed during the seven months of the war. So their pleadings now were of the usual kind—for the food they could smell, for the water they craved.
Their cries changed when they saw the stakes. These were laid out in rows,
their bases touching the holes dug just behind the tables, running the entire length of the cruciform shape, three ranks deep.
If the wedding guests could close their eyes, they could not close their ears. To the screams. To Dracula, rising now, a skewer of meat in one hand.
“There are two kinds of impalement,” he declared, “and the lie that is spread about me is that I use only the one. It suits to have my enemies believe this of me. But the reality is that true impalement—the ‘trusus in anum’…”—he poked the skewer forward—“…like any difficult skill, takes time, manpower, expertise. It is for the lazy hour. And with the Turk less than a day’s march away…”
He lifted the skewer high, looked the length of the crucifix and the teams of men standing behind the tables. They were grouped in fours, two men holding a prisoner’s arms, two now raising between them a sharpened stake, looking up to their prince. Behind them, other soldiers with pikes controlled the weeping, praying unfortunates who waited their turn.
“Still,” Vlad said, “we will just have to make do.”
He dropped his arm. Then, along every face of the crucifix, pairs of men ran forward and drove their stakes through the prisoners’ bodies.
“The problem with this method is two-fold,” said Vlad, raising his voice above the screams, the retching, the wailing of prisoners and wedding guests. “The first is that most die instantly—as you can all witness. The second is that once the stakes are fixed in their holes…yes, like that one there, a flagon of wine to you and your men, Black Ilie, for being the first!…the bodies start to slip down. With a smooth pole a corpse might follow the entrails to the ground in an hour, which would spoil the effect.” Vlad lifted a goblet, drank, then continued. “But our carpenters have solved the problem by trimming all the branches but only down to the height of a man. See how the sinner is caught upon them? Look, wife, that one, who wriggles but can only wriggle so far? No, no, do look!”
Dracula bent, pulled Elisabeta’s hands away from her face, his other hand turning her head. Sobbing, she looked, then wrenched away, vomiting.
She was not the only one. Up and down the lines women and men were doing the same. “Yes.” Dracula nodded, glancing left and right. “You are all so grateful I have restored law to Wallachia. That the roads are cleared of brigands and beggars, that you can ride in safety from the Fagaras mountains to the Danubian plain. But none of you has ever considered the price. Until now.”
Another wave of prisoners was dragged forward, dispatched; a third. On the field, a forest grew, of wood and blood and flesh. Vlad sat, silent now, staring ahead at nothing while the screaming grew, peaked, ebbed, finally ceased. There was still weeping, retching. But something close to a silence had come by the time Black Ilie stood beside his prince, stooped and whispered.
Dracula nodded, rose, continued talking as if he hadn’t stopped. “But how could I deny you a glimpse of what has made me so…famous. Why you all call me Tepes behind my back. Why the Turk calls me Kaziklu Bey.” He smiled. “So I have reserved three special prisoners. Here they shall be placed, right here, at the center of the crossroads and the cross.”
He signalled, and servants came to clear away tables and chairs, everyone forced to rise, stagger back, though the hedge of stakes prevented anyone leaving. The wedding party stayed closer, held in by a semi-circle of vitesji. Only Dracula remained where he was, eyes downcast.
An entrance had been left at the base of the cross. Now a man was brought through it, dragged forward, thrown down before Dracula, who bent and lifted his face so all could see and gasp when they did.
It was the boyar, Gales.
“Yes, your brother, Turcul jupan. The one whose whereabouts you said you didn’t know? Someone did, and dug him from one hole…” He gestured, to three servants rapidly digging. “…To bring him to another.”
“Prince, I beg you…mercy…” the kneeling man whined.
Dracula ignored him. “This man deserted me upon the battlefield. When victory was in my grasp he snatched it away. He betrayed not only his country and his Voivode but God Himself, whose anointed I am, whose cross I carry against the Infidel.” He looked around at the boyars and their families, at the long line of them stretching down the crucifix made of wood and flesh. “Some of you once saw the fate of Albu who called himself ‘the Great.’ It appears you didn’t learn the lesson. So it must be repeated.”
Gales was sobbing. His brother stepped forward, knelt. “Prince, I beg…”
“A place beside him, Father-in-law? Of course. It is there, if you crave it so.”
Turcul rose, staggered back, jerking the edge of his robe from his brother’s despairing grasp. Dracula nodded to Ilie. Six men came forward, all in black armor. Skilled men. They bore a longer stake, ropes, pulleys. One led a blinkered farm horse.
He had to speak louder to be heard over Gales’s screams, as his men began. “You see how long it takes? How much effort?” He looked around, at all the averted faces, then bellowed, “I command you to watch. To watch and to learn the price of justice.” One by one the whitened, wet faces were lifted to him. He gestured and all jerked their gazes to the prisoner. “Good.” Dracula nodded, looked himself. Only when the stake’s butt end was raised, then lowered into the hole, when the nails had been driven through feet into the wooden step, did he step forward, look up. “Dead,” he murmured, “it happens.” He turned, his voice gentle now. “Ilie, try to take a little more care next time.”
“My prince.”
A second man was dragged in. Thomas Catavolinos’ exquisite red hair was a morass of indeterminate color, full of the muck of whatever cell floor he’d been lying on for the previous seven months. His fine robes were in shreds. Yet in his besmeared face, his eyes were defiant.
Dracula looked into them. “Do you have something to say, Ambassador?”
“Only this, Impaler.” The Greek leaned forward, sniffed exaggeratedly. “There’s a dreadful smell just here. And I think it emanates from you.”
There was a gasp. Dracula merely nodded. “It must be hard for you, used as you are to the perfumes of the east.” He squinted into the sunlight. “There’s sweeter air up there, I’m certain.” He turned to his waiting men. “Fetch a longer stake.”
He was obeyed. His men took more care and Thomas’s eyes were open as the wood was lifted high, though whether fresher air reached his nostrils, above the stake protruding from his mouth, only he could tell.
“And now,” said Dracula, turning slowly, “at last.”
Hamza had been better treated than the other prisoners. Vlad had commanded it and Ion had seen to it, visiting their former agha on occasion, staying to talk, bringing better food, clearer water. The robes he’d been taken in at Giurgiu were tattered but relatively clean; his beard was trimmed short, his pale blue eyes were clear. He looked around—at the Wallachians who stared back. At the thousands of dead who didn’t. At his fellow ambassador high above them all. Finally at his former pupil.
“Is it time, Vlad?”
A shocked whisper went down the lines of the watchers. The prince simply nodded. “It is time, Hamza agha.”
“And yet,” Hamza said, running a tongue around his lips, “I would not die today.” He looked up again at Thomas Catavolinos, then hastily away. “You know the way of these things. What use is this…example…if it is not reported? Let me return to my master. He listens to me. I can persuade him…perhaps to end this war? To leave you in peace? He listens to me,” he repeated, his voice weakening. “Please. Let me go to Mehmet.”
There was a silence. A breeze had sprung up, but there was no coolness in it. It ruffled clothes soaked in blood, lifted sodden hair. Finally, a raven broke it, settling on Thomas’s stake before letting out a harsh croak.
Vlad glanced up at the cry, stared for a moment. Then he looked back. “No, old friend,” he said, stepping away. “It is better that Mehmet comes to you.”
His men came forward, stripping, turning. As they threw him face
down, Hamza cried out, “There, Prince! Folded into my belt! There!”
Vlad raised a hand and his men halted instantly. He stooped, felt through the discarded robes, then stood straight.
In his hand was a falconer’s glove.
“Do you remember when you made it for me?” Hamza said, craning around, trying to see Vlad’s eyes.
“Yes.” Vlad turned the gauntlet over in his hand. “I was good at my trade, was I not?”
“You were. And do you remember the verse?”
Vlad nodded. Softly, he read it aloud. “‘I am trapped. Held in this cage of flesh. And yet I claim to be a hawk flying free.’” Vlad smiled, then knelt beside the prone man. “Jalaluddin was our favorite, wasn’t he? The poet of mystics and falconers.”
“Like us.” The men had released Hamza enough so he could turn fully, could look up into the green eyes of his former pupil. “Spare me, Vlad,” he pleaded. When the prince did not move, did not blink, he went on in a whisper. “You said you loved me once.”
Vlad stared for just a moment longer. Before his eyes focused and he said, “I did. I do. Die well.”
Then, leaning back, he slipped the glove over the stake’s blunted end.
– FORTY –
The Traitor
Ion wept as he rode. For his devastated country. For his prince, gone to hell. For himself.
Mostly, he wept for Ilona.
He was still weeping when the akinci found him. They were Tartars, mounted on their shaggy-coated, unshod ponies. They came from nowhere, surrounding him in a moment. They debated whether to roast him over their fire. They did roast his horse, having no use for the big destriers the Infidels rode. But it was ordered that all prisoners were to be brought alive to the Sultan’s camp. They might have disobeyed had they not so feared the All-Seeing Eye that Mehmet was said to have borrowed from a famous djinn. And were it not for the gold piece that was offered in exchange for the most valuable prisoners. Ion looked valuable, judging by the armor they stripped from him. They liked gold; it could be exchanged for good horses, unlike this one whose bones they sucked before they tied Ion’s thumbs to his toes with wet rawhide and threw him over the back of a donkey.
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