Vlad

by Humphreys, C. C.

  Janos Horvathy. He had known him a little, when Vlad had been an exile at Corvinus’s court. One of dozens of “new men” around the new king—for Matthias distrusted the old nobility, wanted men loyal only to him, lesser nobles who sought to rise. Horvathy, to have been sent on such an important embassy as this, must have begun that rise.

  Yet it was not the oath Horvathy had sworn to his king that made Vlad smile now. It was another oath—sworn to the brotherhood to which they both belonged.

  “Brother Dragon,” Horvathy had said a week before when first he’d greeted Vlad. There had been warmth in the special handshake the Count of Pecs had given him, in the kiss of welcome, in the smile. He had negotiated hard in the following days, on behalf of his sovereign. But Vlad knew that behind the Hungarian’s insistence on Hungarian terms lay a loyalty as deep. Deeper in many ways and bound by the most sacred of oaths.

  “Brother Dragon,” murmured Vlad.

  Stoica, not hearing or not understanding, thought he was commanded and lifted the sword-belt again. This time Vlad let him fasten it over his shoulders, across his chest. The great weapon’s tip reached almost to the floor.

  Vlad touched the grip at his shoulder. He could have it drawn in a moment. But it was there only to complete the impression of ready warrior. He would not need it. Not when a Dragon waited for him in the Goldsmiths’ Hall.

  “Let us go,” he said.

  —

  Janos Horvathy rubbed his eyes. It did nothing to clear the blurriness. Only sleep would and he’d had little enough of that during the week he’d been negotiating with Dracula; and none at all, in the three days since his master, Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, had decided that the negotiations were over. However, it wasn’t the further arrangements, detailed though they had to be, that had kept his eyes open at night. It was the memory of an oath.

  “Count? Did you hear me?”

  Horvathy started at the voice. He’d forgotten that Jiskra was there. Now his eyes began to focus at last, on the details of the old warrior’s face: the nose, skewed by some long-forgotten blow, trailing left; the pink-hued skin, flaking, so he was spotted as if with flour; the thick, unkempt gray beard; the small, shoved-together eyes. Detail cleared the blurriness at last. “What did you say?”

  “I said that it was time, Horvathy. All is ready.”

  “The Council?”

  “The members have taken their seats in the chamber.”

  “Your men?”

  “In their places.”

  “You are sure you have enough?”

  Jiskra snorted. “Why, by the bleeding Christ, is everyone so frightened of this Wallachian? Because he has had some success against the Turk and has used some…harsh methods?” He laughed. “Well, I was killing Turks—harshly!—when Dracula was sucking his wet nurse’s tit. Besides, he only has those two with him always. And I know my job.”

  “I am sure you do. It is only…” The Count paused. “Do you not regret the necessity?”

  “Regret necessity? What stupidity is that?” the older warrior spat. “A man acts on what is decided. Our king has decided that this Dracula is an embarrassment. He is! And a fool! Demanding that the Crow honors his promises?” He jeered. “Kings don’t honor promises, not unless it suits them. They act on expedience. It is not expedient to go to war against the Turk, and the Crow never truly intended it. He has other uses for his soldiers, to the north. And better ways to spend his gold. He will not sit safely on the throne of Hungary until the crown of St. Stephen sits on his head. The not-so Holy Roman Emperor demands eighty thousand crowns for its return. The Crow could buy a small war with that, with all its risks. Or he could get his crown out of pawn.” He turned, cleared his throat noisily, spat into the fireplace. “Furthermore—”

  “I know! I know!” Horvathy raised a hand to halt the flow of words. Jiskra, once started, would talk for days about the “realities of politics” if he was allowed. “I only truly regret that it has to be this way.” He gestured to the three rolled parchments on the table.

  Jiskra shrugged. “What are a few more lies amongst the many? This Wallachian is causing a fuss, with his appeals to the Pope, to other sovereigns. He must be proved to have betrayed the cause, so we can dispose of him.”

  “Betrayed? Who is the betrayer here?” Horvathy murmured.

  “Man!” Jiskra shouted, looking up at the ceiling. “You are meant to be one of the coming men, whom Corvinus is raising up. His men. Isn’t he going to get your castle out of pawn, like his crown, when you do this? Well, I tell you—you will not last a week in the snake’s nest of Buda’s court if you try to keep your conscience clean.”

  “But it is not just to the King that I owe loyalty,” the Count replied, angered now. “For Dracula and I are both members of the same brotherhood—the Order of the Dragon. Formed to fight the Infidel. Sworn to aid each other. I took an oath—”

  “Fuck your oath,” Jiskra bellowed. “I belong to no orders. I serve one God and one man and take oaths only to them. It keeps it simple.” He straightened. “So it’s them I obey now. Their enemy must be accused and arrested publicly, so all may witness his treason, know of his disgrace.” He leaned forward. “Are you ready to do what must be done? Or would you rather hide up here with your oaths and your conscience while I do the dirty stuff?”

  Horvathy stood, reached for his sword. “No, Jiskra. I will do what I must. I have no choice.”

  “You do not.” The door opened. A soldier appeared, nodded. Jiskra turned back. “And Dracula’s here.”

  —

  The door to the Goldsmiths’ Hall opened. Instantly, the members of the Council of Brasov, seated in ranks on either side of the main floor, hushed, turned to it. Horvathy, on a dais at the hall’s end, looked, his sight blurred again, this time by sunlight. Then the dark figure stepped beyond it and the Count was able to see the man clearly, to note the battered armor and the stained cloak. He smiled for a moment as he realized what Dracula was saying, then remembered that what Dracula said there that day meant nothing.

  He shifted his gaze, looked to either side of the hall at the members of the Council, their rich cloaks and rounded forms a contrast to the lean, stained warrior now striding to the central table, flanked by his two guards. Most stared at him in disgust, in fear, for he had forced them to a settlement three years before, with flame and the stake. Now he was there as supplicant. Horvathy could see, on the faces of those few it had been necessary to tell, a scarcely concealed triumph.

  Vlad did not look to either side. He strode to the middle of the chamber, halted at the table there that bore the Council records in heavy, leather-bound tomes. Beside these, symbols of the Guild’s wealth as well as samples of their prowess, stood two gold objects. One was a golden moon, wreathed in vine leaves. The other was a hawk, its wingspan as wide as a hand, stooping on a hare, both beasts rendered in exquisite detail.

  Vlad studied the craftsmanship for a moment, the expression of hunter and prey. Then he looked up at the councillors who had caused them to be made, saw the smiles on some faces that men did not bother to hide; looked across the table, to the raised dais, the man sitting there; saw the sadness in the Count’s gray eyes. Watched as Horvathy glanced left, followed the glance. To Jan Jiskra, beckoning. And he knew.

  The dozen men came fast through the sunshine, some with swords, some with cudgels. Black Ilie saw steel, tried to draw his own. Clubs fell—on hand, to stomach—and he was down. Stoica had a blade to his throat, his own dagger swiftly removed. Only Dracula was untouched, though blades were levelled at him. Probably because his arms were raised high in the air in the unmistakable gesture of surrender.

  He let the hubbub settle before he spoke. “Why?” he said clearly.

  The Council had risen but Vlad was not addressing them. His question was for the Hungarian, standing ten paces away at the other end of the long table.

  Horvathy took a breath, made sure his voice was steady before he replied. He intoned, speak
ing slowly, for scribes were placed around the room and needed to note down all that was said. “Vlad Dracula, former Voivode of Wallachia, it is with great sadness that we have learned of your treachery. That you, who claimed to be a warrior for Christ, and a loyal vassal of our good King Matthias, have proved a traitor to both.”

  Vlad’s voice, when it came, was calm contrast to the quaver in the Hungarian’s. “Proved? How have I proved so, when my entire life has proved the opposite?”

  “We have the letters, Dracula.”

  “What letters?”

  “These.” The Count gestured to the three rolls of parchment before him on the table. “One you wrote to your equally traitorous cousin, Stephen, Voivode of Moldavia. A second to the Grand Vizier of the Turk, Mamoud. The last to the Sultan himself, the man you claimed as mortal enemy. All three testify to your treasonous plans. That you would take the forces my mighty sovereign was going to lend you and turn them against His Majesty. That you would use the gold offered by Brasov to corrupt loyal men. And finally, and most heinously”—Horvathy reached forward and picked up one of the papers—“that you planned on kidnapping King Matthias and delivering him, naked and bound, to the Turk.”

  The councillors had started to murmur under the Hungarian’s words. At this last many shouted, cursed the traitor. Brave now, some even leaned in to spit. Vlad stood still, ignoring them, looking at one man.

  That man raised his hand to halt the noise, then continued. “It is all written here, signed with your name, sealed with your seal. This will be entered into the records of the Council of Brasov. And pamphlets will be printed and distributed so that the world knows of your infamy.” Horvathy lowered the paper he held when he noticed that his hand was shaking. In a quieter voice, he said, “Do you have anything to say?”

  “Only this.” Vlad leaned down, placing his hands on the table before him. Though his movements were slow, soldiers still stepped a little closer, swords raised. “I know why the men of Brasov would do this, for they have long hated me. I also know why Hungary’s King would do this, for his throne is not steady beneath him and he needs the Pope’s gold, which he took for crusade, to shore it up.” He raised his eyes. “Yet I do not know why you would do this. Or allow it to be done. For you must know, Brother Dragon, the disgrace these forgeries will bring upon the brotherhood. That is the real betrayal, and it will damn all Dragons and blunt, perhaps forever, the lance-tip of Christ, just when it is needed most.”

  Horvathy felt his knees weaken. He bent, held the table, too, stared down it at the man opposite, joined to him by wood. “I do what must be done, Dracula. For the realm. For my king…”

  “And for yourself. I am certain that by delivering me in this manner, you will rise higher, faster, in the court of the Crow. But I also tell you this, Janos Horvathy…” And then Vlad straightened, thrusting his maimed hand out before him, three fingers and thumb spread in a warding gesture. “…You will never find contentment in your rise. For my curse will be ever with you. I curse you. I curse you and your family—for eternity! And you will learn, soon enough, that my curse is as real as these lies are false. That I am not called the Devil’s son for nothing!”

  The curse had risen to a shout.

  “Seize him!” Jan Jiskra cried. A soldier came, and Vlad ducked beneath the outstretched arm, took it, snapped it and flung the howling man back into the second who followed. Then, in the moment he had, Vlad snatched up the golden hawk on the table before him and hurled it the length of the table. The golden beak, poised to tear a hare’s flesh, sunk into Horvathy’s left eye. He shrieked and staggered back, as soldiers fell on Dracula, silent now, powerless at last.

  – PART FOUR –

  The Last Crusade

  I acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not hide my iniquity…then did you forgive the iniquity of my sin.

  —PSALMS 32.5

  – FORTY-FOUR –

  The Exile

  Poenari Castle, 1481

  “And he was proven right.”

  Silence, at last, in the hall of Poenari. Horvathy had stopped speaking, for the first time in a while. And the interjections that had come occasionally from the hermit in his confessional had ceased, too. But as he concluded his story, Horvathy had been speaking increasingly fast, and the scribes now took the chance to ease their cramped fingers, and trim another quill.

  And then he spoke again.

  “This,” he said, touching the puckered scar that was his left eye, “was the least of the curse. Dracula was right, for I rose swiftly, and Pecs grew from an impoverished shambles into the foremost fiefdom of the land. While I stood behind the throne and helped Matthias become the mighty monarch he is. Yet as I rose, the curse accompanied me.” He closed the other eye. “My wife, dead at twenty-five. Our two sons lost, one to war and wound, one to plague. Our daughter killed by the first child she tried to bear, who died with her. I am, and will be, the last of the line of Horvathy.”

  Silence again, for a moment, until another voice came. “A lesser man would have succumbed to his sorrows, Count Horvathy,” the Cardinal said, softly. “Yet here you are, still striving to keep your oaths to your king, and to God.”

  “No, Cardinal Grimani. I serve them in what I do here, perhaps. But I strive for another oath. The one I broke to a fellow Dragon. The one for which I am cursed, for which I have never been forgiven.” He opened his eye, looked at the Italian. “Yet perhaps here, in what has been heard—in what, I remind you, you are still to judge—the curse may be lifted and forgiveness follow. Forgiveness—and the raising of the Dragon banner once more.”

  Grimani turned away, from the one eye and its appeal, revealing nothing. That we have yet to decide. And soon,” he said briskly. “For it seems this confession is nearing its conclusion. I suggest we proceed with pace”—he glanced at the arrow slit, the light growing outside it—“so I can be gone, with my recommendations to the Pope, before another sunset. Yet…” He paused. “I am curious about some inconsistencies in the telling.” He looked at the end confessional. “Where were you, priest?”

  The hermit’s croak came. “Where?”

  “Yes. When you just reported Dracula’s words, you said the Voivode ‘mislaid you.’ Where?”

  “I…” The hermit coughed. “When I heard what had happened in the cathedral, I joined the thousands who fled Targoviste at the Turk’s approach.”

  “So you did not see the…wedding? Nor the impalement outside the gates?”

  “I did not.”

  “Yet you have helped these others describe them in some detail.”

  The Count leaned forward. “Your point is?”

  “Only that even this witness, who seems sometimes to know Dracula’s very soul, is often speaking second-hand.” Grimani pointed at Ion’s confessional. “While that one even chooses to speak for the Turk, Hamza pasha.”

  “I knew him,” Ion protested. “I visited him often in his cell.”

  Both men ignored him. “And therefore?” Horvathy asked.

  “Therefore,” replied the Cardinal, “his testimony, all their testimonies, must be treated carefully.”

  “Have we not been doing just that? Getting three opinions to agree on a combined one?”

  “Indeed.” The Cardinal sat back. “I merely state it. For the record. People’s opinions are just that, in the end. So,” he said with a smile, “the conclusions we draw can therefore be our own.”

  Horvathy nodded. “The ones we need them to be.”

  “Indeed.”

  Petru, less versed in the ways of politics, had a belief in simpler truths. “But this man was his confessor! He speaks what he heard. And even if it is a sin that he betrays those confessions now, still, we must believe the truth of them. A man does not lie to his priest in confession.”

  “Doesn’t he?” The Cardinal shook his head. “I have known men exaggerate their sins greatly, thinking that when they are then forgiven it gives them a certain license. The worst is pardoned, so if a less
er sin is committed later…”

  Petru was outraged. “This may be true of the Church of Rome—”

  The Count intervened. “It is true of men anywhere, Spatar. I am sure within their own rituals the Turk has a way of doing the same. Forgiving himself for what he still must do.” He cleared his throat. “But the point is made. The record states it. And I agree with His Eminence. Let us proceed swiftly.” He turned. “And I am also unclear about something, hermit. When did you re-join Dracula?”

  The croak came. “I went to his prison. To Visegrad.”

  “Caged again,” murmured the Cardinal.

  “It is hardly Tokat,” the Count commented, “more palace than prison. The windows are not barred. The gardens are beautiful and in the Italian style. And the country beyond! Full of game for hound and hawk.” He nodded. “A man could live content there.”

  “Content?” blurted Petru. “After all the killing he had done, all he had striven for in ashes, his throne lost, his love…mutilated…He swallowed. “His best friend a traitor, who sits before us trying to excuse his betrayal.” He shook his head. “Are you saying he was content to live the life of a…a provincial gentleman?”

  Horvathy grunted. “Content? I do not know. Perhaps he raged for a time. But in the end what choice does the songbird have but to sing? The world had shifted. As you say, Dracula had lost everything—throne, power, support, the love of those he loved.” He glanced at two of the confessionals. “He already knew the life of the fugitive. And now he had ten thousand more enemies lurking in alleys with knives, lusting for revenge. Remember, a cage keeps others out, as well as someone in.”

  “And could he not simply have been tired, my lord,” the Cardinal said. “Even Dracula. Tired of blood?”