by James Lyon
‘You need to be very careful,’ she cautioned. ‘People are suspicious. Use common sense in all you do. Now, it is late. You should go,’ she said abruptly. She ushered him out of the house, thanking him for delivering the present from Katarina and changed the subject back to her daughter. As he walked out the front door, she admonished him ‘be careful in what you say and do. Be extremely careful with whom you share this information. And watch your back at all times. If anything unusual happens to you, please tell me immediately. Goodnight. May God bless you.’ And she disappeared into the house, leaving Steven standing on the darkened cobblestone, alone amidst the silence of the old fortress.
* * *
Slatina picked up the phone on the third ring. ‘Hello,’ he said, grace and dignity resonating in his voice as he put down his pen and stood up from his desk and stretched.
‘You’re putting him in danger, you know that?’ A woman’s voice flowed smoothly over the crackling hiss of the long-distance line.
‘Mariana, how good to hear from you,’ Slatina answered warmly.
‘Don’t give me that. You know what you’ve done. Now make it right,’ she snapped and the line went dead.
‘Hello, hello?’ Slatina sighed and put down the phone.
‘Who was that?’ Katarina asked, standing in the doorway.
‘Your mother.’
‘My mother? Why didn’t you let me talk to her?’
‘Bad connection.’ He picked up the phone and dialed a thirteen digit number from memory. After several rings someone picked up. ‘Zoltan,’ Slatina spoke in fluent Hungarian. ‘I will be coming next week.’
* * *
Interlude VI: The Chamber: Tuesday, 15 January 1983
The falling bricks and shouting voices had woken them three days earlier. Yet even now they continued to lie in their coffins, floating in the shallow water, too weak to escape through the hole that beckoned tantalizingly so very high above them in the vaulted brick ceiling. Lacking nutrients or strength, they lay dormant. The first hours after the ceiling collapsed felt like centuries.
‘What shall we do?’ whispered a faint voice.
‘Ssshhh. Patience,’ came a barely audible reply.
A third voice chimed in: ‘Wait and watch. They’ll come to us.’
And so they waited. Then some time later they heard it…the faint sound of movement, tiny feet and claws, a scurrying of life. It came from above, closer, closer.
First a whiskered nose: then beady eyes that peered over the edge of the hole, sniffing the air, catching the strong scent of decaying wood, rusty iron, crumbling brick, mildew, moldy flesh and rotting cloth. It edged closer, seeking a way to crawl down over the edge and into the Chamber, only to lose its grip and tumble into the water. The splash sent ripples throughout the shallow pond. The rat swam towards the nearest coffin, grabbed hold of the wood and clawed its way up the sides onto the top of the partially open lid. It sniffed again, sensed the odor of moldy flesh and rotting cloth from within. It crawled haltingly towards the gap between the coffin lid and the edge of the coffin. A hand suddenly flashed out and grabbed the rat. It squealed as the hand pulled it into the coffin. And then there was silence.
The arm reappeared, flung the rat’s carcass away and pushed the coffin lid into the water, sending ripples across the pool.
The rat-eater sat up, an emaciated, deflated balloon of moldy skin, under a dirty mop of long, ragged hair. He wiped the blood from his lips with flesh that hung loose in folds around his hand and arm and picked his teeth with long, yellowed fingernails as his red feline eyes gazed narrowly around.
He looked around the vault, at the other coffins and the hole in the ceiling and began to wail softly, a horrible sound that started low and reached ever higher until the very bricks vibrated, causing centuries of dust to shake free from the walls and ceiling. The sound ended abruptly in a choked gasp, almost a sob. Then the rat-eater collapsed backwards into the coffin.
Minutes later more whiskered noses poked over the edge of the hole, attracted by the wail, and within minutes several dozen more furry bodies had fallen and disappeared into the coffins. The rats continued to come in increasing numbers, now squealing loudly as they poured torrentially from the ceiling into the chamber below, a waterfall of fresh rodent blood for the famished captives, churning the water white and rocking the coffins. And then abruptly the torrent ceased. The eleven grabbed the last remaining survivors from the water and made short work of them, and then gazed at the surface of the small pond, now covered in a blanket of furry carcasses.
All were sitting now, gazing at each other and the ceiling. ‘Manna from heaven,’ the general, Branko, commented wryly.
‘Is it day or night?’ asked the youngest, Ivan.
‘Does it matter?’ answered the eldest, Lazar.
‘I suppose not,’ answered the pedophile bishop, Mihailo. They conversed in archaic Serbo-Croatian.
‘How can we get out of here?’ asked Ivan.
‘We have fed. Be patient,’ said Lazar. ‘It is now just a matter of time. We have food, we have an opening, and we need only discover how to get through it. I sense a door, but it is the part of the wall where the water leaks the most. There are too many crosses here…let us think.’
‘We are only eleven,’ said the baby-faced sweet shop owner, Lynx. ‘They must have killed the Vlach. Our quorum is dissolved.’
‘No, he is alive. If they killed him there is no reason to keep us,’ said the accordion play, Igor. ‘He hid well.’
After a while the Montenegrin doctor, Rastko, broke the silence: ‘Where are our burial shrouds?’
‘I know not,’ replied Lazar. ‘But if the Venetian burned them I’ll hunt him down like the dog he is, and then I’ll reach my hand into his bosom, tear his heart out and suck the juice from it fresh while it’s still pumping.’
‘That sounds quite delicious. But you assume he is still alive…how much time has passed?’ asked one of the Bosnian twins, Hasan.
‘I’ve lost track of time. Does anyone know?’ Lazar answered. The others shook their heads. ‘I wonder who the emperor and the sultan are. Are we in Turkey or Austria or perhaps even Hungary? Perhaps the Hungarians have regained their throne from the Austrians.’
‘I hope we’re in Turkey…the Turks were such easy prey,’ said the small spy, Stanko. ‘And the spices they use in their cooking make them taste quite good.’
‘Yes, Turks,’ chimed in the other twin, Tarik, reminiscing wistfully. ‘They taste so much better than the Germans…how can those Schwabies live on a diet of cabbage and pork? They taste bland and I get gas. The Serbs eat too many onions: that also gives me gas…and the Hungarians: all that paprikash makes for horrible indigestion.’
‘Everything gives you gas,’ Natalija said, laughing. ‘If only we had our shrouds we could get out of here.’
‘Quiet, all of you.’ Lazar was becoming annoyed. ‘We need to escape. The Venetian did a clever job constructing this prison. We are floating in water so we can’t move about and there are crosses everywhere. We must think.’ And he lay down once more and closed his eyes.
A gentle bump against his coffin made him sit up. A small chest was scraping against the wood. He attempted to open it, but the lock held firm, so he tapped the box until he found rot and struck it repeatedly until the wood gave way. He reached in and pulled out an old piece of linen, dark with mold and mildew. ‘The burial shrouds,’ he shrieked triumphantly. ‘He didn’t destroy them!’
* * *
Butterflies make almost no noise, even when flying in groups. These eleven were no exception as they fluttered through the hole in the ceiling, up the corridor and past the marker with black Gothic letters that read IV/500 Kom. Gall. Not knowing their way through the labyrinth, they did what butterflies do so well – they followed air currents down passageways and up ventilation shafts. After half a day of meandering flight through tunnels and galleries, they came upon a drunken night watchman, slouched against a wall just insi
de a gateway that led out, drinking freely from a bottle of homemade sljivovica plum brandy.
And then they had their first real meal in 253 years.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE LAZAREVIC STAKE
Novi Sad: 5-7 May 1992
Tuesday morning dawned loudly. The clamor of refugee children in the corridor woke Steven well before his alarm went off and his head swam in a sleep-deprived haze. At nine o’clock he met a groggy Stojadinovic in the town center. ‘I’m an inveterate night owl,’ the professor yawned drowsily, his puffy eyes hiding behind sunglasses, fedora pulled tightly on his head, as though he wanted to draw the curtains and go back to sleep.
‘Did you ever find anything further about the redemption of vampires?’ Stojadinovic asked sleepily.
‘No. Nothing yet,’ Steven replied.
‘Tell me if you do. It’s an interesting concept.’
A blue city transit bus took them the short ride across the Varadin Bridge to Wasserstadt. They walked uphill past the monastery church of St. George, through a long brick-lined tunnel under the clock tower and out onto the top of the upper fortress to the old barracks, now the city archive, where Stojadinovic introduced Steven to the director, an old classmate of his. After a courtesy cup of Turkish coffee, the director took them to the archive’s catalogues and excused himself.
‘Let’s start with the years immediately before and after the appearance of the 4th Grenadier Company at the Kalemegdan,’ suggested Stojadinovic excitedly. ‘I’ll begin with 1733 and work backwards, and you begin with 1730 and work forwards.’ Steven nodded in agreement, every bit as excited as Stojadinovic.
Steven ordered the Petrovaradin commander’s Tagesbuch – logbook – and occupied one table, Stojadinovic at a different table. As Steven turned the pages of the large leather-bound folio, he could see it consisted of hand-written daily entries on yellowed parchment by the fortress commander, Marquise von Herrenhof, whose meticulous hand had recorded events largely in German, with occasional notations in Latin: construction contracts with local guilds, artisans and tradesmen, contracts for supplying food for the garrison, notes of troop movements and parades, visiting dignitaries, and decorations for distinguished service. Miscellaneous documents, such as instructions from the Imperial court in Vienna, had been pasted to blank pages. It was a dry bureaucratic document.
Steven turned each fragile page with a ruler, careful not to damage the brittle binding. He read of daily life in the fortress: how much food, wine and beer the troops consumed; fights between the garrison’s Hungarian Hussars, the Petrovaradin Regiment and the irregular Serbian Hajduk detachment; merchants cheating on deliveries; tavern-keepers overcharging the troops; an outbreak of syphilis; complaints about drunken soldiers. Steven quickly lost himself in the minutiae of 18th century fortress life and forgot entirely about the 4th Imperial Grenadier Company’s elusive commander Captain von Zlatinow.
‘Have you found anything?’ Stojadinovic’s voice abruptly pulled Steven back to the twentieth century.
‘No, not yet.’
‘I think I’ve found something…keep reading…I must find some other documents,’ Stojadinovic turned and walked out of the room towards the catalogues.
Steven returned to von Herrenhof’s Tagesbuch, spending less time on trivia and more in search of von Zlatinow’s Grenadiers. And then he came across a journal entry for Thursday, September 10th, 1730, at the end of which the author had written:
Arrival today of the IV Kaiserlich Grenadier Kompanie via flotilla from Vienna. The boats unloaded substantial quantities of sealed crates. It is a reinforced unit, the men are large, all are veterans and in good health, and have new equipment and uniforms. They are under the command of Captain Marcus von Zlatinow, a Venetian mercenary. He presented me with a most confidential document written in the Kaiser’s own hand, the contents of which I am forbidden to discuss. Suffice it to say that His Imperial Majesty the Kaiser has given von Zlatinow carte blanche to act in His name: Von Zlatinow given highest military rank in the border regions. All fortress commanders, officers and civilian administrators are to follow his orders on pain of death. He is answerable only to the Kaiser. He will undertake a special construction project in Hornwerk. He will also undertake special expeditions into the newly conquered lands. von Zlatinow deposited twenty four large crates of gold bars with me for safekeeping, for which I issued a receipt to him for the Societas Draconis and stored them in the fortress treasury. Each crate can be lifted only by eight men. IV Grenadiers billeted in the Long Barracks separate from the other troops; von Zlatinow and Lieutenant Lazarewitsch billeted in Officers’ Quarters.
Steven stared in shocked disbelief. He had finally found von Zlatinow. No wonder Count von Meyerling in Belgrade was so upset; ordered about by a mere captain with a letter from the Kaiser granting enormous authority. And the gold…probably worth a fortune by today’s standards, all of it belonging to the Order of the Dragon, which meant that not only was the Order alive and functioning more than 300 years after its founding, but was operating with the blessing of the Kaiser. Obviously von Zlatinow was associated with the Order, and judging from circumstantial evidence, von Zlatinow’s mission seemed to be hunting vampires. Steven rested his chin on the palms of his hands and stared at the wall, trying to put together the pieces of this rapidly expanding puzzle. Did this mean the Order had some connection with fighting vampires? But why would this Kaiser and his predecessors devote such significant resources to hunt a mythical creature? he asked himself.
He turned his attention to the September 11th entry from von Herrenhof to the fortress quartermaster to disburse supplies to the 4th Grenadiers from the fortress stores, and to write contracts for procurement of fresh supplies. Nothing unusual there: vegetables and meat, bread, flour, beer and wine, new beds, mattresses and bedding.
The entry for Sunday, September 13th, made only one mention of the 4th Grenadiers. Von Herrenhof had written cryptically: "the entire Kompanie attend mass together at the Church of St. George," as though worth noting. Reflecting on this, Steven recalled his discussions with Professor Nagy in Budapest and the professor’s words came rushing back to him suddenly: ‘why is it called after the Dragon…why not the Order of St. George…especially since the members of the Order wore the cross of St. George at all times…after all, the Dragon represents the evil one, Satan…why name your order after your adversary...they were formed to fight against the serpent himself, Satan.’ If Nagy was correct, then it made sense for vampire hunters to have St. George as their patron saint. After all, he slew an allegorical Satan in the form of a dragon. Steven’s head spun with the possibilities.
In an entry dated three days later, Steven found another passage:
I have discovered that von Zlatinow met in secret with the master of the masons’ guild and signed a contract. He has also reached a secret agreement with a master locksmith. Work is to be carried out at the Hornwerk. My officers and I have been forbidden from observing or noting the location of the works under penalty of death or from discussing it with the soldiers. The regular garrison is forbidden from entering the Hornwerk until the works are completed, and the IV Grenadiers now stand guard duty there. This is most unusual and completely out of keeping with all protocol. I have written a letter of protest to the Hofburg and dispatched it by express rider. Von Zlatinow has also requested that we procure three wagonloads of Hawthorne wood.
Steven devoured every word. So von Zlatinow was constructing something in secret underneath the fortress in the Hornwerk that required brick masons and a locksmith, a secret room or passage perhaps. But for what purpose?
Von Herrenhof next mentioned the 4th Grenadiers on September 25th:
Today the wagons of Hawthorne wood arrived. The Grenadiers began sharpening them into long stakes. The fortress blacksmith has been ordered to attach the stakes to pikes with iron bands.
The arrival of the Hawthorne wood excited Steven. According to all the folk tales, only a Hawthorne wood stake cou
ld kill a vampire, and here the entire company was making long stakes. Clearly von Zlatinow and his troops planned to slay vampires.
There were no further mentions of the 4th Grenadiers or von Zlatinow until October 7th, when the commander’s entry showed a change of attitude:
IV Kaiserlich Grenadier Kompanie has drilled regularly every day since arrival and they march and fire superbly, even over rough ground. Never have I seen tighter ranks and lines or a better formed square, and all without the aid of a drummer. They respond rapidly to Lieutenant Lazarewitsch’s commands and do not hesitate in the least. Von Zlatinow commands as befitting a man of noble birth and sets a superb example to the men, not hesitating to step in and demonstrate how things should be done. They are of superior quality with the extremely high discipline and morale one expects from the German soldier, a sharp contrast to my undisciplined Magyars and Serbs. When off duty they do not mingle with the Serbs or Magyars and avoid public drunkenness and quarrels. They are truly a credit to his Majesty. I have written to the Hofburg requesting Imperial Grenadiers be assigned to the permanent garrison.
“Lieutenant Lazarewitsch.” Could that be one of Katarina’s ancestors? Steven was busily scribbling notes in his notebook, when a hand on his shoulder caused him to jump and yelp from fright. Others in the reading room looked at him with annoyance, and he turned to find Stojadinovic standing over him, smiling broadly.
‘Come outside, we must talk,’ he whispered softly. ‘You may leave your materials here. No one will touch them.’
They found a table at the fortress’ terrace and ordered drinks, enjoying the view over the Danube and Novi Sad. They basked in the pleasant spring weather and squinted in the bright sun, oblivious to the tremendous human suffering going on in neighboring Bosnia and Croatia.