They sat in silence for over half an hour and Vlad hoped his father forgot the church ruins that had riled him. But just then, Dracul sat up from the blanket he’d been lying on and said with a sigh, “The hell with it. It’s not something I thought I’d ever discuss with my children. But... He gave Vlad a pleading look.
He wanted Vlad to say he wasn’t interested. For a moment Vlad relished his father’s discomfort. Then he said, “It can wait if you don’t feel like talking.”
“I know you won’t hear it from Michael. He promised your grandfather never to speak about it, but others might—”
“How’s Opa involved in this?” Vlad spoke louder than he intended and his voice broke. Embarrassment at squawking like a crane made his cheeks burn. “And Uncle Michael? Even he knows about the church?” Now he had to find out the mystery of those ruins.
Dracul stood and urinated into the swamp. Then he went over to his mare, made a perfunctory check of her hooves, and rubbed her down with a rag. Realizing his father was stalling made Vlad even more eager for the story.
“I used to live in these parts when I was a boy,” Dracul said in a low voice, after he resumed his seat. “I was born over there in fact.” He pointed with his thumb in the direction of the forest.
Vlad realized he’d never asked himself about Father’s childhood. “In that church?”
“There was a hamlet there at the time. Father insisted Mother move there when her time came.”
If Vlad knew little about his father, he knew even less about his grandmother, dead for many years now. No one ever spoke about Oma around him. Once, he asked Mathilda if she was German like his mother, but all his governess would say was, “Marissa’s a Wallachian name.” Then she changed the subject, and Vlad’s interest wasn’t strong enough to persist. Marcus ferreted out from somebody the fact that Oma was their grandfather’s mistress. Only later did Vlad understand that made his father a bastard. But no one seemed to care about that. Kings’ bastards were still royal blood.
“Did Opa live in that hamlet too?”
“Oh, the place wasn’t fit for a king. Besides, your grandfather lived mostly on his horse in those days, always fighting the Turks.” Dracul poked at one of the ducks with a stick. “Check on those birds, will you? I haven’t had a bite since noon.”
Stalling again. Vlad tapped on the clay balls with the pommel of his dagger and concluded the ducks were ready. He gripped one of the balls with a rag and knocked it against the heel of his boot. The shell cracked open, exposing the duck’s steaming flesh. The charred feathers and skin remained embedded in the clay. He gave the duck to his father and took the other for himself.
They ate in awkward silence. Dracul picked at the bones with determination, seeming bent on getting the last shred of meat off them. Now and then he’d take a sip from a wineskin. He gave no sign of willingness to continue his story, and Vlad feared the opportunity to learn the mystery of the church might’ve slipped away. After crushing the last bone with his teeth and sucking out the marrow, Dracul stretched back on his blanket and appeared ready to sleep.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Vlad said, in a tone he hoped would hide his disappointment. The moment he stood to leave, Dracul resumed speaking, and Vlad sat again.
“When the disaster happened, Father wished he’d been living with Mother,” Dracul said in a hushed tone, as if talking to himself.
“What disaster?” Vlad’s voice cracked again and he hated himself for betraying his surprise. He waited for his father to continue, but Dracul remained silent, his mind elsewhere.
“I turned ten that day,” Dracul resumed finally. “Mother kept her promise to let me go fishing by myself, as my birthday gift. Till then Michael accompanied me everywhere I went, since Father had appointed him my bodyguard. He was Father’s sword-bearer at the time, like Baba’s mine now. Mother and I conspired to send Michael to your grandfather with an errand, so he wouldn’t insist on coming with me. To this day Michael’s racked with guilt over his absence.”
“Something bad happened because he wasn’t there?”
Dracul gave no sign he heard Vlad. “I walked to a spot about a stone’s throw from here. Me, alone, like a grownup. After a morning of getting nothing but nibbles, I finally landed a trout. I was admiring the fish when I noticed movement among the trees on the opposite riverbank. ‘Akincis,’ I thought, and nearly dropped to my knees with fright. Turkish raiders, a small band of them. I’d never seen a live Akinci before, just dead ones. But I recognized them by their outfits. I ducked behind some reeds, but it was too late. They’d already seen me.”
Vlad’s pulse quickened. He’d heard stories about these raiders. They arrived without warning, pounced upon villagers, and left havoc in their wake.
“I knew they couldn’t cross the river at that spot. The water’s too fast, it would carry them downstream. They must’ve known that too, for they dashed upstream to look for a ford. There was one a couple of miles from here. I started running, thinking ‘I’m done for. They’re going to catch me and take me away.’ We all knew raiders favored young boys as plunder. Easy to transport and easy to sell. The sultan’s Janissary corps is insatiable for young Christian recruits. We also knew the Akincis liked to... Dracul faltered.
The air was cold but Vlad had begun to sweat, thinking of Akincis roaming through these very places in search of slaves. But he wanted to impress his father with his self-control. “You don’t need to explain, I know what they do to little boys,” he said. Vlad had heard Marcus joke about sodomy as a Turkish sport, but understood only vaguely what it entailed.
“I was about half a mile from the entrance to our village when I heard the Turks’ hoofbeats behind me. I was so terrified, I froze. Right there, in the middle of the road. Then, out of nowhere, Mother appeared a hundred yards in front of me. I screamed, ‘Akincis!’ and she stopped. I still see her, though it’s been thirty-three years since then: wide-eyed, openmouthed, clutching at her breast in panic.” Dracul sat up, his breathing labored. “She pointed at some shrubs at my right and yelled, ‘Hide, child, hide!’ I bolted for the bushes. When I looked for her from my hiding place, she’d disappeared.”
Vlad became aware he’d been biting the knuckle of his thumb and crossed his arms to still his nervousness.
“Two minutes later the Akincis, four in all, thundered past me in a cloud of dust. The earth shook at their passage, so hard it made my teeth chatter. I buried my face into the grass and covered my ears. It did no good, I could still hear them. Then, the hoofbeats stopped. Through the branches, I could see that the riders had stopped and were doubling back, looking around. When they got near me, they began to argue. One pointed to the forest, another to my hiding place. I could hear their guttural sounds and smell their sweat. Then one Akinci headed my way. My heart stopped, and I... I wet myself.”
Vlad busied himself with reviving the fire, to hide his discomfort.
“That moment I heard a shriek. Mother’s. The Akincis forgot about me and charged at her. I saw her step out from behind a bush, waving her arms at them. Fear gave me wings, and remembering how she’d screamed for me to hide, I dashed to the forest for cover. I saw the Turks ride in circles around Mother, laughing and hooting. I was barely ten years old. There was nothing I could do but watch.”
Dracul stopped talking and let his chin drop to his chest. When he resumed speaking, his voice was barely a whisper. “Then they did what she must have known they’d do, when she decided to sacrifice herself for me.”
A painful knot swelled in Vlad’s throat. Twice he started, and twice he choked before he could say, “I know about rape too.” That was another lie, for his knowledge of rape was on par with that of sodomy.
“The Akincis tore her clothes off and... I wasn’t as grown up as you, so I didn’t understand what they were doing. But I could tell they were hurting her.” Dracul squeezed his temples between his fists and let out a groan. “I couldn’t bear it anymore, so I turned around and ran deep
er into the forest.”
Now Vlad understood why no one wanted to talk about Oma. A woman raped was a woman dishonored. And when the rapists were Turks, it had to be even worse. One part of him rebelled at taking in any more details of Oma’s suffering. Yet this might be the only chance he had to learn the full story. “Did... did the Turks sell her into slavery?”
Dracul gave a tortured sigh. “Oh, they would’ve, but when they got done with her, Mother appeared dead, so they abandoned her there on the side of the road. Father’s men found her two days later.”
Dracul’s voice had turned hoarse. Vlad handed him the wineskin, and he took a draft while Vlad said, “What happened to the village?”
“I never saw it again. But they told me the Akincis burned down everything, the church, the houses, and all the outbuildings. Since then the place has been known as Satan’s Wrath. Nobody remembers the old name anymore.”
“And the people who lived there?”
“The Turks killed the old folks and took the young ones as plunder.”
“How did you survive, Father? You were by yourself in the forest.”
Dracul shook his head, as if he found his own story hard to believe. “Call it a miracle. A blind monk found me that night and took me to Father’s castle at Argesh Court. Perhaps he was insane as well. He called me ‘Dragon,’ and claimed it was his duty to keep me safe. He also gave me Mother’s Bible he’d somehow rescued from the fire. That was the only thing of my mother’s I’ve ever owned. And even that got stolen at the time you were born.”
Akincis, murders, fire, revenge, a blind rescuer, a stolen Bible. “Marcus will think I made up all of this—”
“No.” Dracul’s body stiffened. “You aren’t telling him any of this. Your brother’s too hot-blooded, he can’t get war out of his mind. He learns about Satan’s Wrath, and he’ll be pestering me from here to Judgment Day to break the peace with the Turks.”
Vlad knew other kings in Europe saw war as the only means of dealing with the Turks. He couldn’t understand why his father alone insisted on peace. But this wasn’t the time to peel that onion. “What happened to the monk?”
“Once he handed me over to the castle guards he vanished, and I never saw him again. All I knew was he called himself Theodore, but folks nicknamed him the Old Man of the Forest. People say he still lives in a mountain cave and wolves feed him. But that can’t be true. The man would have to be close to a hundred years by now.”
Dracul fell silent and Vlad’s mind wandered to the scene he imagined must’ve taken place when his oma was discovered, half-dead, just steps from where he sat now. “Opa had to’ve been terribly angry,” he said. “What did he do about the Akincis?”
“He caught up with them before they could cross the Danube.”
Of course. Opa would’ve unleashed his entire army on that one small party of Akincis. “He killed them all, didn’t he?”
“He did better than that: handed them over to your grandmother’s justice.” Dracul’s face became a hard mask. “She had them stripped naked and tied to the trees. Then she cut off their cocks and balls with a paring knife.”
The image sent a sharp pain through Vlad’s groin. “When did Oma die?”
Dracul threw Vlad a resentful look that puzzled him, and didn’t respond at first. “She’s been dead to the world for thirty-three years,” he finally said, and turned his head away.
It was obvious Father didn’t want to talk about his mother anymore. Time to change the subject. Searching for the right one, Vlad stood and gathered a handful of dry branches from around the campsite. When he threw them over the old embers, a shower of sparks shot into the air.
“Uncle Michael told me Opa sent the two of you to Emperor Sigismund’s court in Nuremberg. When was that?”
Dracul’s growl told Vlad he’d hit another sore spot.
“It’s curious how neither one of your brothers has ever asked me questions about my childhood. But here you are, grilling me as if I were a captured spy.”
“Radu’s too young to know, and Marcus too frivolous to care,” Vlad said, and was relieved to see a smile creep to his father’s lips.
“Well, at least Nuremberg’s no secret. Father sent me away a month after the incident. Said it was for my safety. Something to do with an old prophecy—” Dracul stopped with a jerk of his head, as if he caught himself saying something unintended. “The damn fire’s almost out,” he said, and poked in the cinders with a stick.
The fire was doing just fine. Why was he temporizing?
“My safety? Some meaningless old prophecy? The reality was, Father couldn’t stand the sight of me after what happened to Mother. Who could blame him?”
Dracul tossed the stick to the ground, wrapped himself in his blanket, and lay with his back to Vlad.
“I’m sorry I made you recall those things, Father,” Vlad said, but Dracul didn’t respond. Yet wouldn’t anyone be upset, if forced to relive such memories?
Throwing his riding mantle over his shoulders, he trudged back to the road. He spotted a stunted willow out in the open and decided to make it his watch post. He unsheathed his sword and planted it into the ground, ready in case of danger.
His father’s story had left an imprint on Vlad’s mind that he believed would never fade: something akin to the dent made by a battle-hammer in a breastplate, that no amount of pounding would take out entirely. In light of what it represented, Satan’s Wrath wasn’t just a ruin. It was a shrine.
Why did his father keep it from Vlad for so long? And why had he never returned there? And wouldn’t want Vlad to, either.
Even as he said this to himself, a thought intruded on him.
“There’s something there for you to see.”
Without reflecting, Vlad tossed his mantle to the ground and took off running, in the direction of the church.
“Something you must see.” The thought repeated at intervals, relentless, obsessive. “Something you must see.”
Vlad entered the forest at Satan’s Wrath at full speed, barely seeing his way in the moonlight. He bumped into trees, slipped on rotten leaves, and got snagged by prickly vines. Yet nothing would slow him. By the time he reached the glade where the ruins stood, he was drenched in sweat and out of breath. He dropped onto the steps of the church and waited for the pounding in his chest to ease.
Oma had lived somewhere nearby. The thought stirred in him an unexpected feeling of closeness to her. He knew practically nothing about his own mother, who died giving him birth. Mathilda and Michael, who served as surrogate parents, thought it wise not to talk about her. As for his father? He was too busy being king to speak to Vlad about a mother the child had never seen.
Now that Vlad had learned of his oma’s courage and fierceness, she began to fill a void in his heart his mother couldn’t. She walked to this church for daily mass; watched Father play in this glade; cooked his meals in their house, somewhere over there. As he peered at the far side of the glade, imagining Oma waving at his father, he realized with a start there was a hut there he hadn’t noticed before.
Just as he sprang to his feet, more frightened than curious, a puff of wind brought the smell of burning wood. What was he doing here? Rigid with fear, Vlad willed himself to turn around and run away, yet an unyielding force drew him toward the hut.
As he approached it, he saw a sliver of light shining through a crack in the door. His heartbeat, barely recovered from the run, quickened again. A few more steps, and he found himself leaning against the door’s rough planks, his eye fastened to a knothole. He held his breath as he struggled to focus on what he might see inside the hut.
A fire burned in the hearth and gave the room an amber glow. An empty cot in a corner. A tree-stump table with a clay pitcher on it. Was there someone inside? He found another knothole he hoped would give him a better view. As he pressed his eye to it, he smelled the fetid breath of someone on the other side of the door. Then he realized a white, rheumy eye, lit by the reflected light
of the fire, was staring back at him.
His heart exploded with terror, and he stood paralyzed, unable to breathe.
“Ninety-one years I’ve been waiting for you, Son of the Dragon.”
The voice from behind the door had an otherworldly resonance, such as Vlad had never heard.
“Praised be God in Heavens, my prayers have now been answered.”
“It’s Father’s blind monk, Theodore,” a voice screamed inside Vlad’s head. The Old Man of the Forest. But it couldn’t be! His ears pounded like war drums and the veins in his temples throbbed, threatening to burst. The same monk who called Father “Dragon.” Now he was calling Vlad “Son of the Dragon”?
He tried to step back from the door, but his hands seemed glued to it. It was a dream, he reassured himself. A dream, that was all. But he knew that, as inexplicable as this might be, it was real.
“Come take the amulet, your promised token of the fallen star,” the disembodied voice commanded. “Then go forth and fulfill the prophecy. Your deeds will be remembered for all ages. It’s your destiny, written in the Book of Life.” The voice seemed to become weaker with each word, as if the vital force in it was draining out. “No man may change a word of the prophecy. The punishment for doing that is eternal—”
Vlad heard a scraping sound, followed by a thud, as though the person on the other side of the door slid and tumbled onto the floor. Moments marked only by Vlad’s thumping heart passed, and no other sound came from inside.
With effort that left him lightheaded, Vlad tore himself from the spot and plunged into the forest. Later, he couldn’t recall the mad run back to the campsite, just that when he got there, not a shred of energy was left in his legs. He slumped to the ground and leaned his back against the willow just as his father’s steps approached, crunching the dry reeds on the path. Vlad closed his eyes and strained to quiet his ragged breaths that threatened to betray him.
Son of the Dragon Page 4
