by Dan Davis
“It is three days, Walter,” I said. “We will be back here in no time and thence to exile.”
“Just us?” Eva asked. “The Order.”
I nodded. “Just us, and Serban, if you can find him.”
***
The monastery at Snagov was on a small island in the middle of a long, narrow lake and we crossed to it by an ancient boat moored on the shore for just that purpose. The people in the village said it was used to ferry supplies to the monks, who they spoke of in hushed tones.
Other than the stone buildings of the rather small monastery, the island was green with fruit trees and the kitchen gardens where monks or lay servants hoed the earth. It was actually quite lovely and I felt peaceful just looking at it and decided that no matter what the monks had to say on the matter, I was glad that I had come.
Vlad had not really understood my desire to visit, when I had gone to him before we left Târgoviște.
“If you are abandoning me, Richard, at least have the courage to say so.”
I frowned. “You think that I would skulk away like a coward? Is that truly what you think?”
He sighed. “No. But why ask them about immortals? They have never mentioned anything to me about it and I have been there many times.”
“You have?”
He puffed out his chest. “I gifted them a new bell tower, a chapel, and a new roof. I even offered to build them a bridge to the mainland. They declined.”
“Very generous of you, I am sure. I heard a rumour that they have some knowledge of immortals. All I will do is ask them to share it and return here.”
“Why would they have such knowledge?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps an old text in their possession?”
Vlad snapped his fingers. “That will be it. They have a magnificent library there. The monk in charge of it, decrepit old fellow, blind as a mole but sharp up here. Very well, then, I shall see you when you return. If they give you any trouble, remind them of the bags of florins their prince bestowed upon their house.”
“I will do so,” I had replied.
There was a monk in his black cassock waiting for us on the island landing as we moored the boat. He was a young man but he had a rather magnificent beard.
“You are welcome, my lord,” he said, smiling but hesitant.
“No doubt you are wondering why I have come,” I replied. “I have questions regarding certain legends and I am told that you men here know the answers.”
He frowned and opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. The monk looked over his shoulder at the monastery buildings and then past me out over the lake, still frowning. “Perhaps you should speak to the hegumen, my lord,” he said, finally. Hegumen was their word for the abbot.
“Perhaps I should,” I said, smiling. “Well, lead the way, brother.”
As we set off toward the buildings, Stephen hurried up behind me and whispered in my ear. “Actually, the common form of address for a monk here is father, not brother.”
I turned around to tell him to shut up and saw Serban was on the dockside still. “Serban, what are you doing? Come on, I need you.”
He slumped sullenly up the bank. “Someone should guard the boat, sir.”
“Guard it against these dangerous monks, Serban?” I asked. “Come on.” Still, he hesitated so I grasped him by the shoulder and shoved him into motion in front of me.
The handsome buildings were of a pale golden sandstone and the trees, and fruit bushes were neatly pruned and the pathways smartly swept. Evening sunlight glowed from the walls of the new bell tower. Before we entered the monastery, three monks emerged from a dark archway and came to meet us. The foremost of them was a man of middle age, his beard tinged with white.
“Ah, here is the abbot now,” the monk from the dock said.
“Welcome, my lord,” the abbot said, as we drew to a stop in the long shadows. “I am Abbot Ioánnis.”
“I am Richard Ashbury, a soldier in service of Prince Vlad.”
“Ah,” he said, his eyes widening. “I have heard so much about you.”
“You have?”
“You have come far and arrived late. It is almost vespers and I am sure you and your men will require refreshments. Do you intend to stay for the night?”
“If you would allow it, father, and if you have space. The villagers will put us up if not.”
“We have a rather fine new hospital building with space enough for all of you with some to spare. It was enlarged due to the beneficence of our generous prince. Come, I shall escort you there myself.”
He led us around the perimeter to the hospital which had beds and even a dining table where guests could take meals separate from the monks’ refectory.
“Abbot Ioánnis,” I said as my men spread out in the dormitory. “May I state my business here?”
“If you wish to do so,” he said.
“It is somewhat of a strange question to ask but I have been looking for certain stories.” I trailed off.
“Stories?” he prompted, a smile on his face.
“Stories of a rather strange nature. You see, I am looking for tales of men who drink blood.”
His smiled faltered and his eyes darted around. “Oh? What could you want with stories like that, my lord?”
I sighed, sensing that I had perhaps wasted my time on the ramblings of a mad old woman after all. “I was told that you collected such tales here. It may be nonsense and if so, I apologise. Have you ever heard of the word strigoi?”
He peered at me, his mouth slightly open. “Well—” he began before breaking off, staring behind me. “Is that you, Serban?”
All of us stopped what we were doing and turned around to see Serban slouching in the doorway, his head down.
“Serban?” I said. “Come here.”
He came forward, almost dragging his feet with every step.
“It is you, is it not?” Abbot Ioánnis said. “Praise Christ, you have returned. Gracious, it must be, what, thirty years?”
“Returned?” I said. “What is the meaning of this?”
Serban bobbed his head. “Father Ioánnis. Long time. You are abbot now, I see. That is well.”
“Oh,” the abbot said, chuckling, as if that was unimportant. “So, it is you who has brought my lord Richard Ashbury to our house. How wonderful.”
“No, no,” Serban said. “It was not me. I did not bring him.”
“Ah,” the abbot said, his face falling.
“Serban, you serve me and I command you to tell me it all, now.”
He shrugged. “Not much to tell. I was here. Then I wasn’t.”
The abbot scoffed. “Oh, Serban, you feel guilty, I am certain. Please, do not. My lord Richard, allow me to speak of it. There is really not much to tell. One day, a soldier arrived on our shore, terribly wounded. He managed to tell us that he was looking for a place to die. Well, we are not unskilled in the arts of healing and in time, the soldier was made whole again. He stayed after and we spoke of God and His son Jesus Christ. You see, the soldier’s body had been healed but his soul was yet wounded from the battles and horrors he had seen. For a time, the soldier embraced life here. He became a novice, wore the cassock and carried his prayer rope and recited in prayer with us. He confessed his sins and, my lord, there were a great many sins to confess, as is the way with soldiers, and I had high hopes that we would welcome him as a full brother.” Abbot Ioánnis smiled. “But one morning as we rose for orthros, we found that the soldier was gone. And we never saw him again. Until this joyous moment.”
I stared at Serban, who was looking at his shoes. “You sneaky little sod!”
The abbot chuckled. “Many novitiates end their time at a monastery in such a fashion.”
“I know that,” I said. “But why did you not tell me this at any point, Serban? Is your shame really so great that you could not speak of it?”
He looked up at me. “I knew that you had to come here. I did not know how to speak of it properly. In
the right way. But Ioánnis has done it well.”
I shook my head. “If only your battlefield bravery was matched by your moral courage, Serban.”
“Please, my lord,” the abbot said, “do not be overly firm with Serban. I can understand his hesitancy. But he need not fear us. We mean him well, always. Now, you are looking for stories of strigoi? Then you must speak to Theodore. Your men should remain here and I will escort you to the library.”
Vlad had not been lying about the library at Snagov. The walls were lined with shelves packed with scrolls and there were more codices than I had ever seen in one place. Some of the books were richly ornamented and some even encased in gold and jewels. One wall was lined with windows that opened on to a view of the long lake beyond and there were two monks bent over copying manuscripts. In the corner, sitting by an open window with his face half turned to the view, sat an ancient monk with an enormous white beard.
Abbot Ioánnis dismissed the two scribes and called out to the elderly fellow. “Father Theodore. I have brought with me one of Prince Vlad’s soldiers named Richard Ashbury, the Englishman. He comes wishing to ask you if you have any stories of the strigoi that you may relay to him. Why he wishes to know this, I cannot say, because he has not told me and I have not asked him. Would it be well for him to speak with you about this?”
Theodore turned from the window and stared, glassy eyed, in my direction. The man was quite blind.
He dragged himself to his feet and I was surprised to find he was rather tall and, though his back was bent and his frame was frail, it was clear that his shoulders and chest had once been broad. Theodore surprised me then by offering his hand by way of greeting and when I took it I found his hand was even larger than mine and his grip was like iron.
“Richard Ashbury,” he said, his voice thick with a strange accent. “I am Theodore. Welcome.”
Beside me, the abbot spoke up. “Father Theodore, you will never believe who Richard has brought with him. It is none other than our old—”
“Leave us, Ioánnis,” Theodore said, turning his cloudy eyes on the abbot, who immediately left without another word. “Come and sit by my window, Richard.”
He strode back to his seat and eased himself down into his chair with a sigh, indicating that I take the chair opposite it, also by the window. The evening breeze ruffled the edges of the ancient monk’s snow-white beard.
“Thank you for meeting with me, father,” I began but he just spoke over me.
“What can you see, Richard?”
“Out of the window? Well, I see a small courtyard outside, well paved, with a low wall surrounding it. Beyond that is the graveyard, going down to the water’s edge. A few trees there, looks like alder and a magnificent dark green pine, the top of which is lit by the sun. The trees are not enough to obscure the view of the long lake beyond, however. The water is clear and flat and hardly rippled by the wind. I see the sun setting off over the right bank where there is woodland and fields. I see sheep on the far bank and three shepherds, all boys, throwing stones into the water. Smoke from the village drifts across and catches some of the sunlight high above. It is peaceful. No danger. Everything is as it should be.”
He smiled as I spoke and when I finished, he sighed. “Yes, that is what I see, also. You have good eyes, brother. A soldier’s eyes. I would wager you watch always for danger on distant horizons, am I correct? Of course I am. And that is why you wish to know of strigoi, is that it? You fear these creatures?”
“Fear them? No. I would like to find them. If they cause others harm, I would kill them.”
He seemed amused. “You would kill them, would you? You know that they have strength beyond that of mortal men, do you? So how would you do that?”
“I find cutting their heads off usually works.”
Theodore scowled. “You have killed strigoi? Where? When?”
“I do not know if they were strigoi. What I do know is that I found them everywhere from England to Palestine.”
The ancient monk’s voice rose, incredulous. “And you killed them?”
“Most of them. So far.”
He held himself still. “Well, Richard, if you are an expert killer of strigoi all over the earth, why would you seek stories from a simple old monk?”
Sighing, I sat back and looked at the lake. “All the ones I killed so far were created by one man. But I have heard there are more in these parts who, I assume, were not created by him. I would like to speak to those men and if you have word of them in your manuscripts then that might help me to do that.”
Theodore eased himself back further into his chair. “You call them men. And yet you also say that you kill them. Is that not murder?”
“They are men, certainly. The ones I killed have all been murderers, also. Murderers who toiled at sedition and treachery and attempted to gain control of kingdoms so that they might rule as immortals for a thousand years. These I killed. If that is murder, then so be it. But you called them creatures. Perhaps we speak of different things.”
Theodore sighed. “They have many names. All people have their own words for what these men are. The Wallachians call them strigoi. The Croats call them mora and the Czechs name them pijavica. In my homeland, they were called vrykolakas. And so on. But they all describe people who are turned from human into one who must drink blood to live. And they come only at night because the sunlight hurts their flesh and their eyes. Sometimes they are terrifying monsters, other times they are tragically cursed people. But they most certainly all describe the same thing.”
“You seem to be an expert,” I said. “I had assumed you would need to refer to some ancient codex. How is it that you know so much about them?”
He smiled. “I know so much about a great many things. All my life, I loved learning. Even when I was a soldier.”
I had to suppress a laugh. “You were a soldier?”
Theodore frowned. “I was a fine soldier. I will wager I killed more men than you ever have, Richard the Englishman.” He sighed. “But I was even better at fighting for lost souls. Alas, my time is almost up. I spent so many years in scriptoria and libraries like this one that I have wasted away into this frail creature before you. Yes, my time is almost up. If you learn nothing else from me, learn this. Never become a scholar.”
I smiled. “Hardly much danger of that. But tell me, what do you know of the strigoi of Wallachia? How many are there here now, today? How might I track them and find them?”
“You do not fear them?”
“If anything, they should fear me.”
“Because you wish to kill them all.”
“No, not at all. If they live peacefully, I would have no quarrel with them. I merely wish to know how they came to be.”
“What do you mean, son?”
“All strigoi were made into what they were by another. Do you know about this?”
Theodore sighed. “The strigoi drink the blood of the vampir.”
“The what?”
“The vampir is the immortal lord who creates the strigoi.”
“He is one man? Where is he?”
“No, no. He is not one man. There have been more than one vampir. No one knows where they come from but only they can make a man into a strigoi.”
“Well then, yes, that is precisely who I seek. How can I find them?”
He hesitated for so long, staring out at the dusk, that I thought his attention had wandered. “I doubt even the strigoi out there know where the vampir are.”
“You know something,” I said, leaning forward. “There is something you are not telling me. Do you know where I can find one of these strigoi?”
Theodore turned his blind eyes to me and smiled. “It has been a joy to speak with you, Richard. Please do return another day.”
“Thank you for seeing me,” I said, annoyed that he was hiding the full truth. “I will come again if I can but it may not be for a long time.”
“If God wills it, I will still be alive. And if not,
I wish you peace.”
“I am a soldier,” I said, standing. “Peace is the last thing I want.”
When I returned to the hospital, my men were eating. I sat at the table and gulped down two cups of wine.
“How did it go?” Eva asked.
“I am a vampir,” I said.
“You did what?” Walt called out.
“The monk in the library knows all there is to know about nothing useful at all. I am sorry, my friends, this was a waste of time. In the morning, we will ride for Târgoviște and then into exile.”
***
It was not long before Radu III Dracula was recognised as Voivode of Wallachia by most of the boyars. He was cunning in a way that Vlad never was. Word was spread by his agents in advance of his arrival that under the rule of Radu III, Wallachia would remain completely free of occupation Turkish soldiers. What was more was his promise that the devshirme would never be paid. There would be no Blood Tax under Radu’s rule, no sons of Wallachia would be taken by the Janissaries.
William’s devious hand was behind it, there could be no doubt. Only a friend of the Turks could get such concessions from them in order to secure his throne but the peasantry of any nation are a simple sort and they did not question the whys of this boon. All they heard was the promise of freedom from occupation and the freedom to raise their sons in peace.
And what man or woman in all the world would fight against that?
The only other option for the country was to retain their hero Vlad Dracula who many still loved but who could promise nothing more than a reign of relentless repeated invasions and further destruction of the land.
Before we had even fled far we heard that the people were calling their new leader Radu the Handsome. We did not get close enough to see his beauty but we were not far off. He and his soldiers pursued us right through the mountains and it was a close-run thing. First we raced up the valley of the River Arges and sought shelter in Vlad’s castle at Arges. Radu’s men were so close behind that we barely made it before they were encamped below the castle. By the end of that day they were bringing up small cannon with which to blast through the walls.