The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer

by Lucille Turner

  ‘Where is the Grand Vizier?’

  The head janissary ran up the steps and came along beside him.

  ‘Across the straits, Excellency. In the fortress.’

  ‘Good.’

  Grey and turquoise in the smoke, the Bosphorus churned past the Horn and he took the barge across it, standing at the prow. He stripped down to his shirt and threw his topcoat to the guard. Halil Pasha was hiding in the tower. The Grand Vizier understood how the army worked, but he did not know how to hold it together in the thick of a fight. He was like his father, a talker. Let him talk his way out of this, thought Mehmet. If someone had roused Janos Hunyadi from his lair at Corvin Castle, it could only be one person. Vlad Dracula had imagined that he could frighten his father into stripping him of his status simply because he had killed Aladdin, but of course the plan had failed. His father was no fool, he knew that three brothers are two too many. It would only have made the sultanate weak to have family disputes over who should be the heir, to say nothing of the women in the background scheming and conspiring for their sons. Once Belgrade was taken, he might consider passing an edict to solve the matter once and for all. But first, the Grand Vizier.

  Before he had left Edirne, the head janissary had let something particularly interesting fall into his lap. It was the report on Vlad Dracula’s failed janissary training. His father would have seen it, but so would his Grand Vizier. The pasha knew all about Vlad Dracula’s interesting condition. Pity that he had not told him sooner, but then he had always suspected that the sons of judges were a dishonest bunch.

  He climbed the tower stairs.

  ‘It was you, Excellency, who did not wish me to inform His Highness your father about the incident with Vlad Dracula, not I!’ The Vizier hurriedly recomposed his face.

  Mehmet pulled up a chair and dismissed his private guard. ‘My business with my father was not your concern. What is my concern is that a minister of the imperial court worked for Vlad Dracula’s release in the full knowledge that he had no intention of even one gesture of fealty to the sultanate. Quite the opposite in fact, his sole ambition was to take his father’s throne for his own purposes.’ He pointed his finger in the Vizier’s face. ‘And you protected him, My Lord. Do you realise what that signifies? Treason, that is what.’ He stood up. ‘You were in his hand from the very first day. I saw it. Pandering to this and that, fetching a physician, allowing him to train with that Kastrioti. Little wonder he started to have such a high opinion of himself.’ He glared at the Vizier. ‘He thought he could do what he liked.’

  ‘And you do not, I suppose?’ Halil Pasha replied, his voice steady. ‘Or was the death of Azize Hatun’s son not one of your preferred outcomes?’

  Mehmet leaned back and folded his arms against his chest. ‘You are forgetting I am Sultan. I can do as I wish.’

  The pasha did not reply.

  ‘Come along, My Lord,’ he said, impatiently, ‘Vlad Dracula was sick. What was wrong with him, exactly?’

  No reply.

  ‘Very well, I will ask another question, one you might find easier. Who killed Vlad Dracula’s family?’

  The pasha’s shoulders fell slightly. ‘You know the answer to that. Janos Hunyadi.’

  ‘But not just Hunyadi, I think?’

  The pasha brushed it off. ‘The Holy Roman Emperor, the Pope. It’s all the same thing.’

  Mehmet smiled and shook his head. ‘Vlad Dracula has made his peace with his father’s killer and is preparing to defend Brankovic’s fortress at Belgrade. But he won’t succeed, will he? We know that.’ He gave the pasha a sly look. ‘Not if he has the Devil’s trance.’

  ‘The Catholics call it the Devil’s trance,’ said Halil Pasha, a shard of fear lodging in his face, ‘but they don’t know what it really means. I didn’t bring the matter up because I felt that the Draculesti brothers had suffered quite enough already.’

  Mehmet shifted forwards, his elbows on his knees, his eyes hot. ‘Had they? But not as much as we will suffer now, I think. So, this Devil’s trance, what does it mean, exactly?’

  Chapter 63

  Giurgiu fortress. Vlad shielded his eyes with his hand, gazing southwards at the grey walls beyond the Danube River.

  ‘You know this crossing?’

  ‘Yes. There should be barges and a local sanjak guard. Bulgars. But I see no signs of anything. You?’

  Hunyadi leaned on the pommel of his saddle. ‘It means nothing. The guard will still be there. Reinforcements could be just an hour’s ride away.’

  ‘How far to Belgrade?’

  ‘By river? Two days, perhaps three. Mehmet will sail his ships through the delta to here. Here is where you stop them.’ He turned. ‘Do you think you can do it?’

  Vlad gazed over the strip of shining water. ‘How many men can you give me?’

  ‘A thousand, more if I can get them.’

  ‘Five hundred is enough if you will let me choose them.’

  Hunyadi smiled. ‘You cannot have everyone on the end of a string, Dracula. What we need now is a place for men and cavalry. Somewhere with a shelter or a barn this side of the river.’

  He nodded. ‘I think I know the place. The farmer gave us shelter once before. I see no reason why he would not do again.’

  ‘Lead on then.’

  Behind them was the Danube plain; ahead and on their left, the river widened after the crossing. The fort was at their backs and they rode with the sun in their faces. The ground was soft underfoot and the air a wash of balmy light. They veered off the riverside track towards a group of scattered buildings enclosed by a fence. There was one gate in the fence and it was wide open, hanging from its hinge at the base. A cockerel strutted out from underneath one of the outbuildings, but other than that, nothing.

  ‘The place is deserted,’ said Hunyadi, dismounting.

  Vlad slid off his horse and planted his feet on the ground. ‘I believe that Giurgiu fortress was taken and lost by my father during his final years.’

  ‘That is true,’ Hunyadi said, turning back. ‘You think the farmer fled because of it?’

  ‘I see no other reason. The land is good.’ He picked up a fistful of soil and ran it through his fingers.

  ‘There’s straw in the barn, plenty of it.’ Hunyadi hung his reins on the fence. ‘Shall we try the house?’

  Vlad pushed open the door and stepped inside. The air inside the farmhouse was dank and repellent. He looked around and shivered.

  ‘What we need is light and fire,’ said Hunyadi. He pushed back a woollen drape from the window. Light streamed inside the room, settling on gossamer webs and dust.

  ‘Why not make a fire? I will find the storeroom.’ Hunyadi disappeared.

  He pulled a tinderbox out from a nook beside the hearth, laid the grate and lit it. The flames took hold of the tinder and spat into life. Relieved at the sight of them, he passed a hand over his face and tried to seize his thoughts. There were four empty chairs round the table at his back. He pictured the figure of his father sitting down on one of them, but all he could remember was the ghost of a fear and Radu’s injured leg.

  ‘Tuica! It seems that we are saved.’ Hunyadi emerged from the back of the farmhouse with a bottle and two copper cups, which he set upon the table. ‘You look as though you need it.’

  He did. ‘Captain, there is something I have been meaning to tell you. Perhaps now is as good a time as any.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Hunyadi filled his cup.

  He hesitated. A feeling of urgency bit into him. It pushed him to tell, but at the same time it was vowing him to silence. He thrust it aside and gathered up his courage. ‘I have an affliction. I am not unwell, but I am not what you might call well either, not in the normal sense of the word.’ He reached for the cup and wrapped his fingers round it. ‘Even from childhood I understood that something about me was wrong. My father k
new this, I think, although we did not discuss it directly.’

  Hunyadi sat in one of the farmer’s chairs, toying with his cup. ‘But you did discuss it?’

  He swallowed a draught of tuica and paused as the liquor sank into his throat.

  ‘If an unspoken doubt is discussion, then yes. If an unexplained warning is a conversation, then yes, we spoke of it. But the truth of the matter, Captain, is that until I became a hostage of the Turks I did not realise that I was what you called a strigoi.’

  Hunyadi did not stir, or could not. Vlad did not know which.

  ‘When I say I have an affliction, it is what is commonly called the Devil’s trance. Perhaps you have heard of it; it too has many forms, some less mortal, others more.’

  Hunyadi leaned forward. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because I think it better for you to know what you are dealing with.’

  Hunyadi touched his cup and turned it. ‘I know what I am dealing with. The standard of the dragon and the wolf. The son of a man I admired.’

  Vlad looked up. ‘Then you will not withdraw your patronage?’

  Hunyadi shook his head. ‘When we spoke about your father I counselled you to kill your name. I will not use it now, not against you.’ He leaned forward. ‘When I make a pledge, Dracula, I keep it. Now I ask only the same from you, and not just for my sake. Whatever you may think of the Catholics, remember only this: keep faith with your father and your brother. Hold Mehmet at the river; do not let his ships through. And when it is over, you will have your father’s throne. Strigoi or not.’

  Chapter 64

  His dead father’s concubine threw back the hood of her cloak and swept past the guard of his tent.

  ‘You do not have the right. Your father had a contract. If you break it, you will have every soldier in Western Christendom at your door.’

  Mehmet watched the chest of Mara Brankovic heave and fall, fascinated. He would have liked to press his hand against that pale white skin of hers, just to see how it felt.

  ‘Madam, I don’t know what you think you are doing here, but you are not in your place.’

  ‘I am in my country. If Serbia is not my place, I do not know where is.’

  It was odd, Mehmet considered, how women seemed to think that with just one word they could stop an army. The Greek stories were full of such women. His father had never thought him well read, but he had read enough to suit his purposes. Of course Murad had wanted a scholar. Perhaps in the end it had suited him to make his father think he did not have one, as it had suited him to make his father think he could not take a woman. If he had wanted a woman, he could have taken one easily enough, even one like this with a sting to her tail.

  ‘When Belgrade is taken, you will still be in your country,’ he said, rubbing his neck with the tips of his fingers.

  She threw herself into a chair and ordered water.

  ‘You are in the red tent of the Sultan,’ he said. ‘I think we can do better than water.’ He turned to the guard and asked for coffee, fruit and honeyed figs.

  There was no need for her to become agitated, he said, when she had the protection of the sultanate. She was still a hatun; she always would be.

  ‘And what about Djem?’

  What about him? Rivalry weakened an empire, made it vulnerable. But she had no children, so why complain?

  He arranged a bowl with fruit and set it down before her. This was what he was. He had sixty thousand men in his wake. Here they were, sitting in a tent a day’s march from Belgrade, and they had all the best fruits of Anatolia on a dish.

  ‘You will never take Belgrade.’ All these men around him with their tents and their fires and their pilaff would be dead in two days, she said. He had underestimated the resilience of his adversary.

  ‘We shall see,’ he said calmly, opening an apricot. The soft flesh filled his mouth. ‘Just because my father could not manage you does not mean I cannot manage your city.’

  ‘You have forgotten something else,’ she said, her chest reddening. ‘Vlad Dracula.’

  ‘But I assure you I have not forgotten him, not at all,’ he said. ‘I have very much remembered him.’

  Her fingers gripped the table. ‘You think you can do what you like just because you are Sultan. You can’t. God will not allow it.’

  He dipped his hand in a bowl of rosewater. Did she know who she reminded him of? Halil Pasha. May God rest his soul. There was another who seemed to think that the Draculesti sword wielded some sort of power. Had she not learned, after all these years in the seraglio, that the Osmani had eyes even in the ceiling? Fortunate for those other friends of Dracula, the Greeks, that he was a benign man. He had every intention of giving them a church. Not the Hagia Sophia of course, that was far too big considering the numbers. Most had converted to the faith in any event. His father would have been pleased.

  ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘He would have been horrified.’

  He sucked the skin of his apricot and set it aside. He might have given his permission for her to leave the palace, but if he chose to, he could revoke it at any moment, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  He watched her leave the camp and told a scout to see that she was followed. Then he walked around talking to the soldiers, a word with this man and that one, just enough to remind them that this was God’s fight. It was God that had incited him to haul his cannons all the way to Belgrade, and God that would set the tinder to the barrel. But even so, when he returned to his tent and waited for the dawn, he was worried. There had been reports of rats in the food supplies. He did not like rats; they were dirty and foul. Some of the janissary guard had fallen sick; others had even died. It was ill-timed, a bad omen. If his father’s old soothsayer had not been such a poor prophesier, he would almost have been tempted to call him, but since he had vowed that God was on their side, he did not like to appear ridiculous. Besides which, he suspected, deep down, that a cannon was more reliable than either God or a soothsayer. Nothing could compete with the finality of Chinese fire. It was a pity Vlad Dracula had chosen to throw in his lot with the Catholics. He that sowed wheat with the Devil would only get his chaff, and once the Devil knew exactly what he was dealing with, as they soon would, the son of Dracul would have to reap the harvest of his name.

  He called for a scribe and marbled paper, so that the cardinals would be in no doubt of the legitimacy of his note. He would begin with a warning, which was the only way to get the attention of a cardinal. Then he would elaborate. A little exaggeration could not do any harm. His late father had rid his palace of a demon. Now the demon was in their army and with the support of his dubious friends may even take the throne of Wallachia from underneath their noses. As a gesture of goodwill, he was informing them of the risk that they were running. There was no particular gain on his part, since Vlad Dracula’s affliction made him far more dangerous to his friends than to his enemies. Were he in their situation, he added, watching the quill of the scribe as it crawled across the page, he would have locked Dracul’s son up in the deepest gaol he had, and thrown away the key. Regrettably the late Sultan, his father, had chosen to be generous. He, Mehmet the Conqueror of Constantinople, would never have made such an error.

  Chapter 65

  To My Lord Count Dracula, on this Thursday, 22 July 1456; Belgrade.

  It is with great joy that I tell you of the victory of Janos Hunyadi and his men over Mehmet’s army. The fortress has withstood the siege and the citadel is safe. Hunyadi has told me that if you had not held the river, Mehmet’s fleet would have passed through the Iron Gates and both the river and the citadel would have fallen into Turkish hands. You have repaid my trust in a way I would never have imagined, and I thank you for it with all my heart. But still, I worry. Your brother Radu has asked me again to plead with you for his return to Targoviste since the throne of Wallachia is once again in Drac
ulesti hands. Now that Mehmet has been forced to retreat, I am certain that if a new treaty with the Sultan could be devised, his release could be brought about. If you will not do this for him, I beg you to do it for me, since I am convinced that it is the only way to dispel the uneasiness I have felt ever since your sudden departure from Edirne.

  Yours in friendship,

  Mara Brankovic

  Wrapping his hand around the amulet against his chest, Vlad rolled the letter into a thin scroll and placed it in the drawer of his father’s desk. He could not reply to it. It seemed he was the only one to know that Mehmet would rather give up his sword than give up his most useful hostage. If he were to beg Mehmet for his brother’s release, Mehmet would use it against him. The Sultan wanted nothing more than proof of weakness, and he had no intention of giving it. His feelings must be guarded, his deepest thoughts hidden.

  He had searched the grounds of the Palace of Targoviste for the graves of his father and Mircea; there was no trace of either. He had stood in the empty hallway beside the salon with the crimson drapes, the hearth and the window over the courtyard, and listened for a sign, for God, for something, but there was no sign or he could not see it. He had found the basement key and opened it, expecting dust, a memory, or a message. But his father’s basement was empty; there was neither codex, nor mappa mundi nor scroll. He had placed the carved emblem of the dragon and the wolf upon the basement desk, climbed the stairs, crossed the familiar courtyard past the watchtower and the arena with its ghosts. Now he was galloping up the hill towards the Monastery of Saint Nicholas.

  ‘Vlad Dracula. I have been expecting you.’ Friar Anton gestured to a chair in the courtyard of the monks. ‘I am glad that you have come, very glad. The last time I saw you, you were nothing but a child, and a difficult one at that. Now I see you are a man. Your father would be proud.’