The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale

by Reggie Oliver

  For a few moments I lay half stunned on the step where I had fallen while a battle between the Turks and our men raged round me, but I was shaken into full awareness by the dwarf, who had been seeing to Prince Vlad. Vlad was unconscious from the blows to his head. He had cuts all over him and a number of deeper wounds but his breathing was regular. Together Razendoringer and I dragged him up the steps.

  At last we reached the open air, one of the many courtyards in the castle, and laid down our burdens, exhausted. All around us men were rushing to and fro: news had reached them that the enemy was within the gates, but nobody had seen them. Some clustered round us, asking questions, offering help. We pointed down the staircase up which we had climbed but were too exhausted to speak.

  The next few hours are unclear in my mind, but I know that we took Vlad to the Queen’s apartments. I remember the Lady Dolabella tending his wounds and the Queen dabbling her white hair in his blood, though otherwise offering little assistance. I remember myself falling onto a couch and having my head bathed. I seemed to hear the word “surrender” spoken many times and the question “Where is Prince Mircea?” Then darkness descends, accompanied by an overwhelming sense of shame and loss.

  The next thing I can clearly remember is standing in the Great Hall among a great concourse of Boyars. A bandage is covering most of the upper part of my head and half my right eye. Razendoringer is with me, looking up anxiously at my face from time to time. I manage to give him a smile and he beams back at me.

  I look round to see that the walls are lined with Janissary guards and that none of our men has a weapon. The King is on his throne, looking down at his feet; Alexander beside him has his usual fixed bland smile. Vlad stands a little apart, entirely in black, but neither Ragul, nor Mircea, nor the Queen are there. There is a strong sense of expectancy, also of pretence and strain, as if everyone there were assisting at some unfamiliar ritual.

  Then a fanfare of trumpets, a clash of cymbals; kettledrums banging, as into the hall came a troop of Spahis, evidently staff officers, with jewelled scimitars, then a canopy carried at its four corners by gigantic Nubians under which alone strode Sokolly, the Grand Vizier. For such a large man he carried himself well, walking with long graceful strides, instantly commanding the attention of the entire hall. Xantho rose to greet him, but large as he was, he seemed puny beside the Vizier.

  Sokolly made the most perfunctory acknowledgment of the King’s greeting, then mounted the dais where stood the now vacant throne. Onto the bottom step of the dais came a slight, wizened man of indeterminate age who, I remembered, had been one of the original embassy to the castle. I later came to know him as Haroun, and he was an interpreter. After a nod from Sokolly he spoke thus:

  “In the name of Allah the all merciful — blessed be he! — and his holy Prophet Mohammed on whom be peace, thus says Mehmet Sokolly, Vizier to the most potent Sultan Murad, commander of all the faithful: this kingdom shall be a tributary kingdom to the Grand Turk, allowing free passage to his men at all times and paying him the gift of ten thousand gold crowns per year. By his great clemency, his excellency the Grand Vizier has spared the life and throne of Xantho, third of that name. But he demands the life of his most contumacious servant Ragul, sometime commander of the Transylvanian army.”

  A gasp from the crowd was subdued instantly by a gesture from Sokolly. “In addition, and in earnest of King Xantho’s continued loyalty towards the Sultan, his excellency demands that a hostage be taken to Stamboul, to wit his son and heir to the throne, Prince Vladimir—”

  Even greater confusion than before. I myself clutched my head, dizzy with astonishment. Razendoringer held me steady. I looked across at Vlad who remained quite still. King Xantho merely nodded and Haroun continued: “...his eldest son, Prince Mircea, having perished, bravely defending this castle from attack.” More astonishment.

  At this, four men entered the hall carrying a bier. It was followed by Matthew Verney, looking very priestly in a black velvet gown. On the bier, stiff and white, lay the body of Prince Mircea.

  XXIV

  Ragul was due to be executed the following day. Both I and Razendoringer tried to see him, but we were not even told where he was. Prince Vlad withdrew into himself. It was hard to tell whether he cared or not about his natural father’s fate, but there was something in his nature which chose to withdraw every time he was disappointed in some way and in this dark place where he hid he concocted plans for revenge and triumph. There was also now an aloofness about him which we ascribed to a consciousness of his new status as heir to the throne.

  He was trying to become invulnerable. Those who do that often wound themselves most deeply.

  The atmosphere in the castle was strange and subdued. The place that had been so full of chatter and gossip now held nothing but whispers and silences. Turning a corner, you might suddenly encounter a troop of Spahis, or a vast Nubian eunuch, all rolling eyes and wobbling bellies. The Queen and her retinue had been removed from her apartments, and put in a long deserted suite of rooms in the Grey Turret, full of draughts and spiders, while the Grand Vizier and his harem occupied her former rooms. The King disappeared altogether, though Alexander was to be seen everywhere, ingratiating himself with his new masters. The body of Mircea lay in state in the great hall for a few hours and then was spirited away. There were none to grieve over him but Otrud, the lady of the bedchamber who had enjoyed his favours in the mechanical tortoise, but her weeping and breast-beating made up for the dearth of other mourners.

  Razendoringer and I were assigned to Haroun as additional interpreters, the dwarf because he knew Turkish and I because I was a scholar. Haroun taught me his language quickly. He was an amiable fellow, with an insatiable curiosity about all things that were strange to him. I responded warmly to this side of his character, but could never bring myself to trust him.

  It was from him I heard that Razendoringer and I were to accompany Prince Vlad to Stamboul. In vain I protested that we were free men, not Transylvanians and not vassals of the king to do as he wished with, but to the Turks all captured peoples are property of one kind or another; I and the dwarf were merely spoils of war. I wondered why Verney was excluded from this voyage.

  The day of the execution was hot. A scaffold had been set up in the small courtyard below the Grey Turret. Haroun insisted on taking the dwarf and myself to a point of vantage on the walls where we could see the whole affair. Razendoringer and I demurred but Haroun insisted, declaring that it was the command of Vizier Sokolly himself. Whether this was the truth or not I could not say because Haroun, as I discovered later, had a habit of inventing a higher authority when he wanted his own way.

  Our place on the walls was exclusive to ourselves, but we noticed a number of people had found positions from which they could watch. Sokolly had a throne set up in the courtyard for his own benefit and he was accompanied by Xantho, Alexander and others, but Vlad was not present. Janissaries marched in to line the courtyard. There was a murmur of conversation, unpleasantly like the expectant chatter of a crowd before a play, then the executioner entered with his deputy.

  The executioner, Haroun explained to us, is a most honourable profession in the Ottoman empire. Therefore he is not masked, as he is in Christian lands, and his skills are often passed from father to son. Such was the case with the one who was performing that day, a gigantic Nubian called Olabolika whose son was acting as deputy. This man was the Vizier’s favourite executioner, and with good reason, said Haroun, for he was able to cause as much or as little pain with his strokes of the scimitar as the Vizier desired.

  Executioners of the Grand Turk had a number of extraordinary privileges. Chief among them was the right to enjoy the sexual favours of their victims on the night before their execution. This perquisite, said Haroun, Olabolika had graciously waived in the case of Ragul.

  Impressed by this information, we watched Olabolika mount the scaffold, a great bullnecked, shaven headed Negro with staring eyes. His son who carried
the scimitar was of altogether slighter build, but wiry. Both were smiling slightly, with that complacent look of a conjurer who is about to demonstrate his virtuosity to the ignorant.

  Presently Ragul entered under escort, his hands tied behind his back, his face a mask of impassivity. Like Vlad, I suspected, he had withdrawn from the emotional struggle for existence into some inner part of himself.

  Already, in my minds eye, I saw him treading the dim fields of asphodel in some pagan Elysium, for there was a kind of heroism in the stoic acceptance of his fate, but it was not of an inspiring kind.

  When he arrived on the scaffold he looked straight at Olabolika and perhaps there was a flicker of contempt in the tilt of his chin and the curl of his lip, but no more. Olabolika made a signal for him to kneel, his son pushed him harshly into that position, the executioner took his scimitar and felt the edge; then slowly with both hands he began to raise the sword.

  At this point our attention was diverted by a great cry from the Grey Turret. We saw a white figure flutter on the battlements, then plunge downwards towards the scaffold. It was the Queen who had leaped from the Grey Turret. Olabolika, unmindful of this strange nemesis, steadied himself for his great blow as the Queen, white hair streaming in the wind, seemed almost to fly down towards him, like a hawk swooping on its prey. Then came the impact. She landed almost directly on his raised sword so that he was jerked backwards while she all but impaled herself on the blade. He fell against the edge of the scaffold breaking his neck while she bounced off it landing in a bloodstained heap of white linen on the cobbles of the yard.

  A great gasp of astonishment went up. Even Ragul looked round to see what was happening with a look of faint curiosity on his face, replaced almost immediately by distress and then annoyance. Sokolly rose and with a single gesture commanded that no-one but he should move. He walked over to the scaffold where he took Olabolika’s lolling head in his hands and then released it. Having satisfied himself that the Nubian was dead he examined the corpse of the Queen to which, after a moment of quiet contemplation, he gave a savage kick. When he turned to look at Ragul he met a glance full of savage fury. Ragul rose up and spat full in the Vizier’s face. The crowd gave an audible gasp of astonishment, the Janissary guards edged forwards, but the Vizier put up a hand to command stillness, then, pointing a trembling finger at Olabolika’s wretched son, he indicated that the boy must take up the fallen scimitar and finish his father’s interrupted work.

  So Ragul’s passion returned to him at the last moment, and with human blood once more running in his veins he was dispatched by the executioner’s son. This son was evidently not the master of his craft that the father was and he made a lamentable butcher’s job of his work which took an agonisingly long time to complete. When it was over Haroun turned to us and grinned, showing a set of discoloured and very irregular teeth.

  “That was a most interesting spectacle, was it not? You see! I find you the best place to see everything. How that Queen flew!” How she flew! Yet for all its strangeness it was not an ignoble end.

  A few days after the execution Vlad, Razendoringer and I were on our way in the Vizier’s retinue to the Black Sea port of Constantia. From there we were to take ship to Stamboul and captivity in the palace of the Sultan. Once I had resigned myself to my fate I was looking forward to seeing the heart of the Turkish empire. Vlad remained indifferent, but Razendoringer was painfully distressed and his parting from the Lady Dolabella was even more wretched than the last one had been. It seemed to both Dolabella and Razendoringer that some malign God was torturing them by uniting the lovers only to tear them apart.

  I could not comfort him because in spite of our friendship there was always an element of distance between us. He knew himself to be separate from ordinary men by virtue of his freakish size, and this made the bond with his wife more powerful than I could imagine. Indeed, despite all the cruelties it inflicted, it made that bond indissoluble and finally triumphant. For, unlike Vlad, the dwarf had the courage to show his rage, and once it was out, he was able to live again. If we can curse God then we can forgive him, which is perhaps a way of saying we can forgive ourselves.

  Sokolly was returning by the quickest route possible to enjoy his triumph, while his armies, now that the campaigning season was over, would march back under the command of his generals. Like most men of great energy and enterprise, the Vizier was easily bored. Once the hard work had been done and the victory gained he lost all interest in soldiering and longed for the soft debaucheries of his native land.

  We set sail from Constantia in four vessels and travelled at our leisure along the coast of the Black Sea towards Stamboul. The sea was calm and the journey uneventful. When it suited his whim the Vizier would put in at a port for the night and spend it in carousing, so that our voyage took longer than it might have done. This allowed all three of us to become fully acquainted with the Turkish tongue by the good offices of Haroun and gave us time to prepare for the new and unexpected world we were about to enter.

  Our first sight of Constantinople, or Stamboul as the infidels call it, came one brilliant morning as our ship sailed into the Bosphorus. Dejected as we were, and fearful of the future, our spirits could not fail to be uplifted by the sight of this famous city, “the Mistress of Two Continents”, as some have called it, and “the Navel of the World”. Its seven hills were crowned with mosques and minarets now tipped with morning light while all the rest slumbered in shadow; its graceful slopes clad in cypress groves fell away to where the Marmara and the Golden Horn throw three parts round it a sparkling girdle.

  The port itself, when we dropped anchor, was busy, early though it was. The Grand Vizier had already disembarked and was making preparations for a triumphal procession through the streets, so we had leisure to take in the wonder of the place, and we had never seen a city so vast, both in extent and in the range of its activities. Men traded here from every part of the known world — silk traders from Cathay, silver from India, spices from the Far Islands where men carry their heads beneath their arms and eat all relatives who have passed the age of sixty, olive oil from Greece, oranges from Seville, chattering monkeys from Africa, embroidered cloth from Persia, wool from England. All peoples and all religions were accepted in the market; here the god was not Allah, the all-merciful, but Commerce.

  Vlad leaned over the side of our vessel taking in the scene with eager eyes, but they were not the eyes of youth which loves a sight for its own sake. He was calculating. “So many vessels unattended,” he murmured.

  As we were disembarking we saw a great crowd gathered on the long stone quay. They surrounded a balding clean-shaven young man who was struggling between two of the Sultan’s guard. Another guard held a cage full of animals, another a large sack.

  “What is happening here?” asked Vlad.

  Haroun went over to the crowd to make enquiries. Being a curious fellow himself he was very willing to oblige the curiosity of others. Presently he came back.

  “His name is Salomon, he is an infidel trader of Muscovy furs, and he is being condemned to death.”

  “In God’s name what for? Trading in furs?”

  “By the mercy of Allah, not so. But for writing a most tedious poem of many lines called the Sacred Verses, or some such title.”

  “And is he condemned to death for being tedious?” I asked.

  “Indeed no!” said Haroun, “for among the scribes and wise men of our nation great length and tedium and pedantry is highly regarded. Indeed the more difficult a work is to read, the more highly is it praised, because to praise such a work is to praise oneself for having the strength to read it.”

  “It is so in my country too,” I said with a sigh. “Then why is he condemned?”

  “Why, because one sage who contrived to read the whole of this most wearisome piece of work discovered in it a reference to the Prophet Mohammed — on whom be peace! He found that this son of a diseased Bactrian camel had written down that the beard of the mighty
prophet was red and not, as is clearly set down in the scriptures, black as night and ebony. And for this most disgusting blasphemy he is justly condemned to a horrible death.”

  “And what death will that be?” asked Vlad.

  “He will be tied in a sack with a cock, a mad dog and a snake and then thrown into the Bosphoros. The cock is to represent his vanity, the dog his madness, and the snake the Satanic influence that prompted him to do such a filthy thing. At the moment we are experiencing some delay in the execution of the sentence because the dog was accidentally allowed to eat the cock. They are finding another cock and a madder dog.”

  “But surely,” I said, “if these verses that you speak of are so ineffably tedious, then no one will read them, and no-one will be tainted with the blasphemy.”

  “That is true,” said Haroun, “but since this terrible blasphemy was discovered, everyone has been most eager to read the uninteresting work. Vast numbers of illicit copies are at this moment being made. Soon the streets will be flooded with them and the most frightful insult it contains.”

  “But surely the person most responsible for this state of affairs is the person who discovered the blasphemy, not he who perpetrated it.”

  “Ha! So would you hang the man who finds the murdered body and not the murderer?”

  I had no time to reply to this before an extraordinary event occurred. This Salomon broke-free from his captors, rushed towards me and prostrated himself at my feet. Evidently he thought I was a visiting dignitary, with influence to alter his sentence. I tried to tell him that I could be of no assistance, but the more I spoke, the more he grovelled.

  “Why,” I asked him eventually “did you state that the beard of the prophet Mohammed — on whom be peace! — was red when all the authorities clearly state that it is as black as night and ebony?”