by Victor Foia
Vlad laughed. “At least you didn’t say ‘like a dog.’ But if you caged me, you’d be left with only these two simpletons for company. Wouldn’t you miss me?”
Mehmed turned to his men with a menacing look. “You can’t say a word of this to anyone, understood?”
Mehmed didn’t back up his order with a threat, as was his custom. His confrontation with Zaganos in Galata gave the boy a new self-assurance he now frequently wore in public, as one wears new boots to break them in.
The next day Mehmed behaved as if nothing had happened.
“I like visiting historical sites,” he said. “If you weren’t sent off to Amasya I’d have you come with me to see the ruins of Troy in the month of Shawwāl.”
“I thought you’d be in school until Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, in April,” Vlad said.
“I’m allowed a break after Ramadan. Did you know the Turks descend from the Trojans?”
Nothing in Vlad’s knowledge of history substantiated this claim. But what did that matter? Shawwāl fell in February, about four months from now. If he could postpone his departure to Amasya until then, who knew what chance for escaping might materialize?
“Does Hector’s blood truly flow in your veins?” he said, feigning a bit too much admiration.
Mehmed appeared offended. “You’re mocking me, as if I made up that story. I’ll show you a Latin manuscript in Bursa, called Gesta Francorum. It demonstrates the Turks’ Trojan origin.”
“That explains your obsession with Constantinople,” Vlad said, this time doing his best to sound sincere. “It’s the place to avenge Troy on the Greeks, isn’t it?”
The question seemed to mollify Mehmed.
“Revenge, of course, but much more. The sultan who conquers Constantinople will be the rightful heir to the Roman emperors.”
Vlad found Mehmed’s convoluted logic laughable, but he concealed his amusement.
“Your visit to Troy is like Alexander’s visit to the Oracle of Ammon in the Libyan desert. It seems that like he, you’re planning to ask the blessing of the spiritual world before confronting your ancestral enemy.”
Mehmed’s face shone with delight. “You understand me better than both my father and my brother. They’d laugh to hear me mention Troy.”
“I’d like to be there when you summon King Priam’s spirit. Why don’t you keep me in Bursa until the month of Shawwāl?”
“How could I?” Mehmed whined. “I’m only—”
“You’re the Governor General. Who’s going to challenge you?”
“Zaganos has orders to see you locked up in Amasya before the crusade starts. You are our insurance your father won’t be joining King Norbert and the Pope against us.”
“Oh, but the Christians never set off to war before Saint George’s Day,” Vlad said. “That feast is on April 23, three months after Ramadan. I’ll have plenty of time to visit Troy with you and still be in Amasya before the start of the crusade.”
“But Lala Zaganos—”
“Zaganos will do what you tell him to,” Vlad said. “You’ve showed him in Galata who’s in charge.”
Mehmed smiled at the recollection, then his face fell. “Oh, it won’t work. Father’s coming to Bursa for Şeker Bayramı, the Sugar Festival, that follows Ramadan. He’s already wound up like a catapult over our little adventure in Constantinople. If he finds you in Bursa, he’ll have me exiled to some desolate village in Rumelia.”
“Your father’s concerned with your education. Tell him you’ve kept me as your study companion.”
Mehmed pondered the suggestion then shook his head, dejected. “Father’s been disappointed with my previous tutors, because they let me do whatever I wanted. So now he’s picked for me a new one with the reputation of a taskmaster: Mullah Gürani, a detestable Kurd who’s already appointed all my instructors without consulting me. Worse yet, he’s handpicked my schoolmates, too. Gürani’s never going to let me add a companion of my own.”
Vlad wasn’t ready to concede defeat. “Someone who’s stood up to murderers holding a knife to his throat, isn’t one to be ordered around like a child. Don’t let anyone tell you with whom you should study.”
When Mehmed appeared unconvinced Vlad winked at him. “Does Gürani know his new pupil might become heir to the Roman emperors?”
This dart hit the bull’s eye. Mehmed returned Vlad’s wink, then broke into mischievous laughter. “You’re right. We’ll see whose word is weightier. Gürani has come all the way from Egypt just to ‘tame’ me. He’ll discover he’s the one being tamed.”
5
THE HUNCHBACK’S SHACK
October 1442, Târgoviște, Wallachia
The night reawakened Alba’s earlier dread. He tried to escape it in sleep, but a violent twitch in his upper left eyelid kept him awake. It felt as if a locust had sunk its claws into the corner of his eye and was tugging at it with unswerving regularity. Every now and then his hand would swat the imaginary tormentor, only to have the fluttering go on uninterrupted.
What if something goes wrong?
At first he dismissed the possibility, parroting Helena’s assertion that nothing could go wrong, if everyone played his role as prescribed. His own part was easy, so he couldn’t botch it. All she wanted him to do was ride at dawn to his vineyard in the company of his groom. But what if Julius made a mistake? Or one of his men? Wouldn’t that bring the entire family down?
On the one hand, he was happy Helena had chosen Julius, not himself, to get inside the dungeon. But it irked Alba that she was so tight-lipped about his own role. What was the purpose of his ride? And how was his presence at the vineyard going to help with Nestor’s escape?
“Don’t concern yourself with the logic of my plan,” she’d said when he pointed out that his contribution to the enterprise appeared meaningless. “Just pay attention to the timing of your departure. Start off too soon, and you’ll have to wait by the gate for the lifting of the curfew. That would be bad, as it would draw attention to you.”
“Why would my leaving town at dawn make anyone suspicious?” he said. “With the grape harvest in full swing, many other boyars will be doing the same.”
She dismissed his comment with a wave of her hand. “Start off too late, and you’ll be still inside the walls when the morning watch sounds the alarm. Then—” She made the gesture of fingers sliding across her throat.
He reminded her she hadn’t told him when he was supposed to take off.
“Your groom knows,” she said then clamped up and wouldn’t utter another word.
Pshaw, the groom … that malodorous cur she’d foisted upon him about a month ago. “I want him to accompany you every day, wherever you ride,” she’d said, making it plain she expected Alba to obey. At that time, he thought the man’s job was to spy on him, and he laughed at her jealousy. Now it galled him to learn the groom knew more than he about the plot.
He’d just begun to sink into unconsciousness, the locust departed now, when the groom’s voice reached him through the darkness. “Come master, it’s time.”
Startled, Alba sprang to a sitting position and clutched his chest. A sharp stitch had lodged in his heart. The fellow had the nerve to enter the bedroom without knocking. You’ve earned yourself twenty lashes for this impudence. “Is my horse ready?” he said, but got no answer. Only the stench the groom left behind assured Alba he hadn’t imagined the man had been in the room.
Alba had lain fully clothed, so it took him only a minute to reach the yard. There, he found his horse already saddled. There was no light in the eastern sky, and he concluded rain was in the offing. He gave a passing thought to his grapes, which risked damage if left much longer on the vines.
The groom had the horse’s reins in one hand, a lantern in the other. When he made no attempt to help his master onto the saddle, Alba decided to increase the miscreant’s beating to forty lashes.
The groom led Alba along the empty thoroughfare toward the market gate. About a hundr
ed yards before the guards’ barracks, he turned into an alley vaguely familiar to Alba. When the groom stopped and tied the horse to a scrawny tree in front of a cottage, Alba remembered how he knew the place.
“This is the hunchback’s shack, isn’t it?” he said, but the groom ignored the question and disappeared inside the cottage, taking the lantern with him.
The hunchback had been fined once for not declaring the revenue he made from giving room and board to itinerant laborers. Alba, as Lord Treasurer, had come in person to witness the whipping the man received as a complement to his fine.
When the groom failed to return immediately, Alba was seized with panic. Helena had warned him not to be late leaving the town, and here he was being delayed by a man of such inconsequence. He slid off his horse and kicked the cottage door open.
“How dare you run your private errands on my time?” he shouted. Then his voice froze, as he was faced with a tiny room filled with people in bloody uniforms of the guards.
“You weren’t supposed to see this, Uncle Dan.” Julius’s reproachful hiss came he as pounced upon the door and shut it noiselessly. “Aunt Helena said you’d lose your nerve if you did.”
“What happened?” Alba managed to say, his throat dry. He looked around the room and recognized four of Julius’s close companions. They’d begun to strip off their uniforms and put on workers’ clothes streaked with paint and caked with plaster.
“Everything’s going according to the plan,” Julius said, he too now changing clothes.
“But—the blood?” Alba said.
Julius gave a coarse chuckle. “The dungeon guard chose to die rather than let Nestor go.”
His companions snickered.
“Helena said nothing about killing anyone.” Alba realized now how irreversible the course of events had become. His head pounded like a bell clapper sounding a fire alarm.
“Do you think it matters we’ve killed four soldiers,” Julius said, “once we’ve stolen King Dracul’s prize possession? He’ll have our heads if he catches us, murders or not.”
Julius pointed to a corner of the room, where Alba saw his groom helping Nestor out of his prison rags. The prince appeared in a state of shock. His eyes were bulging and saliva trickled down his unkempt beard.
The groom stripped off his own hooded cloak and put it on Nestor. Alba noted that the prince and the groom were of an identical height and build. With the hood on, Nestor would be mistaken for Alba’s groom, especially in the dark. Helena had taken that into account when she’d replaced Alba’s old groom, who was too diminutive. No better place to hide the fugitive than in plain sight.
That woman thinks of every detail, he admitted to himself, full of rancor. Who’d question the Lord Treasurer for leaving town at first light with his groom, as he’d been doing every day since the grape harvest began? Helena was right to claim Alba’s role in Nestor’s escape was crucial.
His fear, until now diffuse like the stink of a distant swamp, gained the immediacy of an iron maiden crushing his body. He was the only one who could be caught red-handed in this stupid affair. Julius and his men seemed ready to bolt and then melt away in the countryside. Helena? She’d disclaim any knowledge of her husband’s doings. But Alba? How could he claim innocence with Nestor as his groom?
Julius must’ve seen the terror on Alba’s face, for he said, reassuring, “Pay no mind to the killings, Uncle. At least those four witnesses won’t be able to testify against us.”
Instead of quelling his fears, the mention of witnesses further heightened Alba’s anxiety; he felt the urge to urinate. “What about the hunchback?”
“He won’t be talking either,” Julius said with a smirk, and his eyes darted to the cold fireplace.
Alba saw there a large bundle stuffed above a pile of half-burned logs.
“And my groom?” he whispered, leaning close to Julius. “Can we count on his silence?”
“Good man, that one,” Julius said with great warmth. “He’s done everything as told. We’ve got nothing to fear from him.” Then he nodded at one of his companions.
Alba looked away. When he returned his gaze upon the groom, he saw him lying prone on the floor.
The bell in the watchtower rang the lifting of the curfew.
“Perfect timing, Uncle,” Julius said. “Ride out of town leisurely, like someone with no worry in the world. I’ll take the prince off your hands at the vineyard.” He flashed Alba an impertinent grin, slapped him on the back, then left the cottage, followed by his cohorts.
Nestor shuffled over to Alba and reached out to him with trembling hands. “I’ll never forget—”
“Shut the fuck up, man,” Alba growled. “You’ve caused me nothing but heartburn since I first laid eyes on you.”
Outside the cottage Nestor crouched on all fours next to the horse, and Alba mounted using him as a stool. When Nestor rose, he clutched Alba’s hand and covered it with kisses. “I won’t forget what I owe Lady Helena, when I become King of Wallachia,” he whispered, tearful.
Alba wiped the back of his hand on the horse’s mane then kicked Nestor in the chest. “I take all the risk and you give the credit to my wife?”
Back on the thoroughfare they joined a stream of townsfolk on their way to the market outside the walls. Alba began to relax at the thought that he had only a few hundred yards to cover, and he’d be out in the fields. There, he could abandon Nestor and gallop off, should a sign of trouble emerge.
Then, from just ahead, he heard the cadenced footsteps of the morning watch heading in the opposite direction to relieve the night guards at the dungeon.
Nestor became so unsteady on his feet, it seemed only his grip on the horse’s reins kept him upright.
“Don’t stop, you fool,” Alba hissed at him, leaning over his horse’s neck.
When the squad passed them, four soldiers and an officer in the same uniform Julius and his people had worn, Alba bit his lip till he drew blood. He calculated it would take the guards about ten minutes to reach the dungeon, where their colleagues lay slaughtered and Nestor’s cell empty. By then he’d be outside the walls.
Almighty God, You who know the righteousness of my ways, have mercy on me, he began to pray silently, then stopped. That line of reasoning might prompt God to take a closer look at Alba’s recent doings. No, I take that back, Lord. Just help me get away safely this one time, and I’ll cover the cathedral’s altar in solid gold.
Or, gold foil, he thought the moment he found himself clear of the portcullis.
6
STERN WARNING
October 1442, on the road to Bursa, Ottoman Empire
Following the debacle he’d suffered in the Imperial Council, Omar expected to be jailed and ultimately executed. When days passed and no one troubled him, he concluded the authorities didn’t take seriously the injunctions pertaining to raids against countries of Dar al-Sulh.
In July he was summoned to the palace, where one of Zaganos’s men grilled him on details of his trip to Wallachia. But there was no talk of detaining him.
He spent the summer working as a helper to a carpenter building houses in his neighborhood. In the evenings he’d go to Üç Şerefeli Mosque where people gathered to discuss current events. It was there he learned in August of the duel Dracula was to fight a week later to prove he hadn’t lied to the Imperial Council. A palace groom, whom Omar knew from youth, added a troubling detail to that piece of news. If not killed in the duel, the Wallachian was going to be taken to Bursa by the sultan’s son, who was returning there to resume his governorship duties.
For Omar the thought of Dracula’s dying in a duel was devastating. So was the possibility of his being sent away from Edirne, when Omar had no means of following him.
He spent the night praying.
Spare the life of my enemy, Ya Muntaqimu, Oh, Avenger, and help me follow him wherever he goes so I might kill him in Your name.
He repeated this prayer six hundred and forty-two times, for maximum e
fficacy, as his mullah had taught him in childhood.
The next day he was too tired to work and decided to spend the time praying at home. But his plan was upset by the same individual who’d interrogated him on Zaganos’s behalf a month before.
“The Third Vizier wants to see you,” the man said when he showed up at Omar’s cottage just after the dawn prayer. He’d come on horseback and brought along a spare mount. “We’ll be riding out in the country.”
“I’ve gathered enough evidence to know the Wallachian’s accusations against you are true,” Zaganos told Omar.
They were alone in a ramshackle building on a side road overgrown with weeds.
“Unbelievers are liars, My Pasha,” Omar said.
Zaganos ignored him. “By raiding Dar al-Sulh territory you’ve forfeited your life.”
Omar’s head became light and his right ear started to buzz. The Third Vizier’s chilly tone left no doubt he meant what he said.
“There is no greater disgrace for a Muslim,” Zaganos said, “than to die without avenging the death of his relatives at the hands of the infidel. When his soul departs his body, it’s left outside Heaven’s gates to roast for eternity on a bonfire of shame and regret.”
Hearing his failure judged by such an important personage gripped Omar’s heart like an icy claw. “I live only for the chance to kill those who’ve martyred my brothers, Zaganos Pasha.”
Zaganos’s thoughts seemed to be drifting elsewhere. He paced the room, chin sunk onto chest, crushing underfoot the husks of sunflower seeds that littered the floor. “Though you deserve to die,” he finally said, “I’ve decided to spare your life. Can you guess why?”
Uncertainty choked Omar’s joy at finding himself reprieved. He scrutinized Zaganos’s face for a hint of what he was expected to say, afraid a wrong guess would cancel the vizier’s clemency. Nothing but cruelty showed in Zaganos’s black eyes.
“So I might avenge my brothers?” Omar said.
“You’ve allowed a boy with fuzz for beard to butcher them, and think you deserve a chance to make good on that?”
