We rode slowly, our eyes on the castle ahead. Then across the moon I saw a black shape flying and heard a distant cry. Our horses stopped of their own accord, shuddered and snorted. They pawed the sandy turf beneath them. We urged them on and reluctantly they moved. Presently we heard another sound closer by. Coming as it did out of that high and absolute silence it filled us with great horror. It was the howling of wolves.
We kicked our heels into the horses and they began to move with some speed. I felt the hairs on my head prickling. Looking to left and right into the trees I thought I could see pairs of eyes, a dull red colour, glowing in the darkness. The castle seemed to get no bigger as we progressed towards it. The baying of wolves increased and the horses were for breaking into a gallop but we restrained them. The road was treacherous and the pack animals would be unable to sustain the momentum.
It was hard for us not to break and run. I was leading with Razendoringer and the pack animals in the middle and Verney behind. Suddenly my horse halted and reared. Ahead of me on the path and sharply delineated against the moon was the shape of a great wolf. In that light it seemed the size of a calf and its eyes glowed.
It is curious how, at the moments of greatest danger, fear deserts one. The reason is that it is replaced by an intense concentration on the problem with which one is faced. My horse twisted and turned from side to side while I looked at the wolf and the wolf at me, both of us no doubt wondering what to do. On either side of us I became aware of the wolf’s companions emerging from their forest cover. While I felt no fear I was now paralyzed by indecision, and this began to make me fearful once more. Razendoringer, whose pony had come up beside me, had taken the crossbow from his back and fitted a bolt to it.
At that moment the wolf raised its head and began to emit a series of short yelps which sounded like a signal. But by the third yelp Razendoringer had fired and the bolt had buried itself in the creature’s throat. The yelp turned to a scream of agony which was horribly like that of a human.
“Onwards! Quickly!” said Razendoringer. “No time for caution.” And we galloped forward with no thought of the consequences. The howls of the wolves became fiercer behind us. But when we rode over the place where the chief wolf should have lain we could see no trace of it.
Even today, fifty years or so after the event, I wake up sweating from a dream where I have been galloping along a rugged moonlit track with a score of wolves howling like all the fiends of hell behind me. My horse stumbled twice, but by some miracle I did not fall. Once I prevented Razendoringer from doing the same by holding up the bridle of his exhausted pony. Now the wolves were in among the pack animals, snapping at their legs. But our horses kept just ahead of them from sheer terror. More wolves joined the hunt, fresh to it. Twice one leapt up onto the back of my mount, clawing its rump, but fell back, beaten off by my whip.
We barely noticed that we were coming closer to the castle whose outer gates, on a lower level than the rest of the fortress, were now a few hundred paces away. We began to yell at the tops of our voices to persuade the men on the gates to open them. Our horses were beginning to flag in spite of their terror; at any moment they would be succumbing to the sea of wolves in our wake. My own horse threw up its head, jaws foaming, its wild eye filled with despair and, at that moment, placed its hesitant hoof into a hole in the ground. It was only by main force that I pulled it out, but the creature was spent. It would rather have died than run a yard further.
At that point I heard a sharp, sour note on the trumpet. The gates opened and out came a troop of horsemen. The men had swords at their sides, but they carried long dog whips, and with these they cracked and lashed at the wolves which now had our horses at bay. They were in time to save us but not my horse which collapsed under me in a welter of blood and agony.
The wolves dispersed and the men with dog whips led us half dazed towards the gates of Castle Dracula.
I felt a great relief at finally reaching my destination, but was possessed also by a strong sense of foolishness. All through the long and arduous journey my object had been simple, to reach the kingdom of Transylvania and the palace of its monarch. Now that I was at last here I began to wonder if it had been worth it. I was trapped in this place, separated by many miles and mountains from my fellow scholars and familiar sights. I had with me a dwarf and a young sorcerer who might not be welcome. My task was to educate, but how my royal pupils would treat me, or what was expected of me, I could not say. I began to think that there were worse things than wolves in this world.
We were shown first into a great hall, pillared and groin vaulted with many strange carvings on the corbels and capitals. A fire blazed at one end, and before it stood a man in a furred gown. His hands were behind his back and under the gown, which he flicked about to fan the flames and warm his rear. I could see little of his features at first because of the light. An aureole of pale, fuzzy hair surrounded his bald head. I caught the gleam of a smile.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, rather as if we had all been out for a walk and returned a little later than expected. He waved towards a table loaded with food and wine.
“Welcome to Castle Dracula. Supper has been left for you. I am Alexander of Glem, chamberlain to His Majesty. I trust you had a safe journey?”
We had neither the wit nor the energy to reply to this, but he advanced to shake my hand. His face was round and smooth, and his smile, it seemed, an almost permanent attachment. The sharpest features of his face were his eyes which were as quick and piercing as the rest of him seemed blunt and slow. We turned eagerly to the table.
‘‘Your two servants will be accommodated in the kitchens below, doctor,” he said. I looked about me for a moment, wondering whom he meant. Then, understanding, I faced him squarely.
“Sir,” I said, “these men are no servants but my learned and distinguished assistants. I would be obliged if you would treat them with the same honour I hope you will accord to me.”
Alexander looked at Verney, and particularly Razendoringer, with a kind of bland astonishment. But he made no comment; he merely waved us to our meal.
Perhaps it would be best, before I introduce my two pupils who are to be the main actors in this strange story, if I were to say something about the castle and its arrangements.
Castle Dracula was only one of the King’s main residences, but, being by far the safest, it was the one he most often used at this time. For his power — such as it was in this wild and lawless land — was threatened by the inroads of Turks and he was extremely fearful for his own personal safety.
All military operations he had put into the hands of Ragul, a much-feared man and, as I later discovered, one of the King’s many natural sons. The castle itself was a vast place, more like a walled city than a castle. It housed His Majesty’s retinue: cooks, servants, courtesans, soldiers, treasurers, cellarers, armourers, doctors, secretaries and the rest, all presided over by Alexander. It also housed his courtiers and other dubious hangers-on. There was something of the collector in Xantho; but whereas others collected objects of value, he seemed to collect people of no value. Rather, in case I should seem over modest, he collected oddities and curiosities. Many of his boyars, sustained by revenues from lands they never visited, were kept permanently in his company. One was distinguished by the extraordinary length of his beard, another by his refusal to wash, yet another by his pleasant habit of eating cockroaches, spiders and other insect vermin with which the castle was infested. Xantho delighted in these simple vagaries, and when one of them invented some new buffoonery — such as eating his food off the floor like a dog — he would roar with pleasure. But I soon learned that there was cunning behind his coarseness. So long as he kept them foolish, he also kept them powerless.
Often he would give them absurd titles, such as “Master of the King’s Fleas” and “Shaker of His Majesty’s Left Shoulder” to keep them happy. And it seemed they were.
The only boyar of any consequence was the aforementioned Alexan
der, and he was queer enough. He managed the King’s finances, quite successfully it seems, with the aid of four silent secretaries and a much-hated army of tax-collectors. But the greater part of his time appeared to be taken up with his passion for mechanical devices, many of which he had built in the workshop at the top of a castle turret called Glem’s Tower. Verney, being an alchemist, expressed a fine contempt for these toys; and in all conscience they seemed to work poorly and to be of little value.
There was, for example, an eating machine which Xantho tried out on one of the boyars. Operated by foot treadle, a mechanical knife and fork was to lift food from the plate to the mouth of the subject. It proved to be barely an improvement on that boyar’s usual eating habits.
The women of the castle compared for loose living and flea-witted fatuity with the boyars. Very few of them were married to the men there. The large majority of them were subsumed under the general title of “Ladies of the Bedchamber”, and this proved to be a very accurate description of them.
Most were mistresses of one or more of the boyars; many had at some time been mistress to the King. But it was curious, considering the amount of amorous activity that went on, how few children were to be seen about the place. The history of the jealousies and internecine struggles that went on among these women would fill many tedious volumes.
The only class of people for whom one could feel any respect were those in a subordinate capacity, the castle servants: not the personal stewards of the boyars who were, if anything, worse than their masters, but the cooks and tailors and embroiderers and the corps of the King’s personal guard. These last, a troop of whom had rescued us from the wolves, were silent men, almost witlessly loyal, but honest and hard working. Every day they rode out under their commander Stanislaus to train. They were the most accurate source of news from outside the castle, if you had the privilege of being in their confidence, as Razendoringer and I were.
On the second day of our life in the castle we were brought before Xantho and his Queen. They sat on a dais above a shambling, twitching sea of courtiers in the Great Hall. This was a fine construction in the noble Gothick style with a row of stained windows letting in great gashes of coloured light from the clerestory. A confusion of red and green fell on the boyars making them seem a very motley crowd, but the dais was so placed that only clear golden light fell on the King and Queen at the second hour before noon which was the hour of audience.
Xantho was a man of great size, over six feet in height and broad with it. His beard was a reddish colour, but his hair was black and there was something of the Tartar in the broad, flat cast of his features. The coarseness of his appearance did not altogether belie the mind beneath. For, though his assessment of character or the immediate possibilities of a situation were shrewd, he had no feel for looking beyond the borders of his land or far into the future.
His wife had fine blond hair and might have been of North German origin. The face was long and the features delicate, but haggard and scored with lines of care. The slenderness of her youth had become gaunt and her eyes moved restlessly. I detected boredom and the anger that often accompanies it in intelligent minds. Perhaps it shows too great a prescience on my part if I say that I saw all this at first sight, but certainly, of all the faces I saw that day, hers was the one that alarmed me most.
His Majesty greeted me cordially and very graciously accepted the presence of my two companions. He asked no questions about our journey. The Queen, whose name was Eupraxia, seemed equally glad to see me and spoke of the benefits that my modern scholarship would bring. It seemed almost forgotten that I was here for the benefit of her two sons. They, it transpired, were at that moment out riding with Stanislaus, the captain of the guard.
My introduction to them came that afternoon in the great courtyard of the castle. I was informed that I was to receive them there after the ride with Stanislaus, and in this task I was joined by a number of boyars who had less than usual to do. We waited an hour before Stanislaus rode in accompanied by a couple of guardsmen and the King’s two sons.
Mircea, the eldest, was about fifteen and already bidding to be as huge as his father. Vladimir was twelve, and though not undersized, was very slender. He had the long features of his mother but his father’s dark hair and hook nose. Yet he reminded me of neither of them so much as someone else whom I could not identify. There was a steadiness about his gaze which bespoke concentration, an admirable quality in a student.
And so it proved to be. Each afternoon, having trained with the guard all morning, they came to me for instruction. Sometimes I left it to Verney to give them a grounding in Natural Science and Mathematics, more from a wish to keep him out of mischief than from idleness in myself. Before our arrival they had known little but their letters and a little scripture taught them by an old priest and I had the unusual privilege of finding their minds tabula rasa, empty and open.
Mircea was no fool but not a natural scholar and inclined to favour distractions. Vladimir on the other hand — or Vlad as he was familiarly called — was a keen scholar with great natural ability. My own reputation for knowledge was constantly put to the test by him. When he questioned me I often had to think quickly to hide my ignorance.
In the months that followed it seemed as if we lived in a small world encompassed by mountains and divided from all that was outside by deep gorges, rushing waters and steep cliffs. For fear of wolves I rarely went out beyond the castle walls. But within there were many pleasant fountain courts and walled gardens in which to take the air.
The satisfaction I derived from teaching one capable and one exceptional pupil, and the easy if absurd life of the court, gave my spirit some rest. Beyond teaching, nothing was expected of me, so I spent much of my time in the acquisition and arrangement of a library for the castle. Alexander of Glem gave ample financial support to this project. I was able to buy all the latest volumes from Italy, together with some from France, Germany and even England. We corresponded with some of the great minds of the time, among them the learned doctor Johannes Dee whose library at Mortlake in Britain was the largest belonging to a private citizen in that country.
Matthew Verney, who initiated our contact with Dr. Dee, had had some dealings with him in the past, of what nature I cannot say. Let me only note here that some of the books he sent were not ones I would have wished to fall into young hands. I bitterly regret now that I did not burn them on arrival, but how was I to know?
These might have been among the most wholly rewarding times of my life had it not been for a number of events, insignificant in themselves, which were to have great consequences in the future. Even then they seemed ominous.
As I recall them now they are to me like the tolling of the great bell of Castle Dracula whose deep vibrating tone appeared to linger in the brain long after the sound itself had vanished into the night air.
X
The library was a great octagonal chamber at the top of what was called Glem’s Tower in the inner keep of the castle. My time there was undisturbed by any interruptions as a rule. I encouraged Vlad in particular to use the place, but though he would often come to borrow books he would seldom linger there. Indeed, I found a general reluctance among the castle’s inhabitants to visit the place. This fact, slowly impressed on me, did not strike me as very significant. But I took advantage of the refuge it afforded, for some of the boyars and their ladies had taken to using me as a kind of walking encyclopaedia. The subject I was most consulted on was that of astrology: “I was born under Aries; would today be favourable for some amorous exploit?” To which foolishness I would reply as ambiguously as I might without causing offence.
The exception to this reluctance to visit the library was Alexander of Glem, and he only paid his visits late at night when I was working by candle light, or by the light of a fire in the great chimney piece which dominated the room. A curious thing that I noticed about his visits was that I was seldom aware of his entering the room. One moment I would be studyin
g a manuscript, the next I would be conscious of him standing before me, smiling a little. There was always a hint of condescension about that smile, as if he were party to a delicious secret of which I was ignorant.
Naturally it annoyed me, and each time it happened I became more convinced that he had not come in through the only door to the library.
It was at these times that he made himself most agreeable to me. Often he would fetch up and demonstrate to me some new device of his, perhaps for the trapping and beheading of mice and rats, or an instrument whereby the human voice might be distorted.
One day Ragul paid one of his infrequent visits to the castle. I saw him briefly, but Razendoringer reported it to me in detail. The dwarf had become the confidant of many and knew much of the castle’s affairs, but he himself confided in few.
Ragul had come to appeal to the King for money and troops to meet the Ottoman threat. Sultan Murad was raiding the borders more frequently now. Ragul’s appeal had been impassioned and his reasons strong. Everything, he said, pointed to a full scale invasion the following Spring, but Xantho was not impressed. Murad, he said, was only playing at war; he knew Murad, he had exchanged letters with him; there would be no invasion. Ragul stood and surveyed his natural father with disbelief while Xantho smiled and commended him for his zeal and courage. He looked at the Queen for support which she gave in all earnestness, but Xantho rounded on her angrily, asking what business it was of hers. The court was astonished at this open display of dissension between King and Queen who normally were scrupulous about public displays of concord.
Razendoringer was much troubled. Having been admitted — at least partly — to the confidence of Ragul, he was inclined to echo his opinions.
“The Sultan will invade in the spring,” he said. “I know it.” I did not like to contemplate this prospect, so I turned the conversation to other topics. Why, I asked, was the library so shunned?
The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale Page 11