The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale

by Reggie Oliver

  I can barely describe the scene which met me as I came out onto the castle walls. Men, sober mature soldiers, who had seen carnage and known the sorrows of life, were cowering in corners; others were running about distracted. For the air was speckled with flying heads, some of men, some of women, some of infants and young children. One narrowly missed me, careering into the wall beside me. The noise it made when it hit the wall was peculiarly horrifying, perhaps because it was so commonplace; it was like the sound made by an overripe fruit — it might be an apple or a peach when you drop it on a stone floor: a soft thud followed by the squirting sound of liquid being expelled. My face was spattered with gore. I wiped it away and followed Ragul and Xantho.

  Through a number of courtyards and down several flights of steps we went, then climbed to the battlements of the outermost wall of the castle. There one was safest from the bombardment of heads for they were aimed over us now, into the heart of our stronghold. The Turks were launching them from catapults. In front of them a forest of bodies stood impaled on stakes.

  Behind the catapults and the encampment, smoke rose from great fires. Ragul and the King stared over the battlements, united for a brief moment in mutual horror and astonishment, then Xantho gave a great roar of anger, turned and ran down a flight of steps bellowing unheeded and incomprehensible orders to his soldiers. At the bottom of the steps was a courtyard across which he had started to run when he was struck in the small of the back by another flying head and was pitched onto the cobblestones. There he lay, still roaring, until he was noticed and carried off by some of the palace guard.

  Ragul, who had been watching this scene in a kind of trance, suddenly seemed to come to his senses and ran off in the direction of the main castle keep.

  After some searching I found Razendoringer with Vlad and Mircea leaning over the battlements of the outer wall, watching the last of the heads being hurled over them. Mircea’s face showed a curious childlike fascination; Vlad’s was harder, at once less vicious and less innocent.

  “For every head,” he murmured softly, “I will make them pay with two of theirs.” Mircea laughed, whether at the extravagance of this boast or the prospect of further carnage I could not say. I told them that the Queen was unwell and wished to see them. Without hesitation they turned away from the wall and followed me. On reaching the Queen’s apartments we found that Ragul had arrived there before us in an utterly distracted state.

  “Where is the Queen?” he shouted.

  He followed us to her chamber, making pathetic enquiries as to her state the whole while. Razendoringer, whose influence with him was stronger than the rest of us, insisted that he remain outside her room, but his attempts to persuade Ragul to return to his command were vain.

  When we entered the room the Queen was sitting up in bed and Dolabella was binding her midriff with a linen bandage. The dwarf looked up, outraged at our intrusion, but she had no time to speak as the Queen immediately cried out to her children. She was as pale as a corpse and she clutched a crucifix in her hands while, propped on a chair beside her, was a blackened icon encrusted with silver depicting the dormition of the Virgin. She beckoned her sons over to her.

  “I am dying,” she said feebly.

  “Pardon me, your majesty,” said Dolabella, “but you are not dying. With a little rest, you should be fully recovered in a few weeks.”

  “Silence, dwarf!” said the Queen with surprising vehemence. “I am mortally wounded and soon will be burning in the flames of purgatory for my sins.”

  “Who wounded you, mother?” asked Vlad.

  “Do not ask,” said the Queen. “Come here. There is little time. Tell me that you forgive me.”

  “For what?” asked Mircea.

  The Queen lifted her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. “You understand, Vlad, don’t you?”

  “No, Mother,” said Vlad.

  “Perhaps,” said the Queen, “I have loved too much.”

  “Oh,” said Mircea. “I see what you’re talking about. We all knew about that, including Father in the end. Well, if you ask me, there’s only one crime in the world, and that’s to be found out.” He uttered this piece of secondhand cynicism with a good deal of complacency as if it was his own original thought. Despairingly the Queen sank back on her pillows and pretended to go to sleep.

  “I forgive you, mother,” said Vlad, much puzzled by all this. The Queen’s eyes remained closed, but she waved him dismissively away. The words she would have preferred to hear were: “There is nothing to forgive.” But Vlad, like most young people, suffered from the illusion that conversation is not a game but a means of communication.

  Outside the door Ragul was still clamouring to see his beloved, but I came out and told him that she needed rest and that any agitation would induce a fatal decline. He nodded acceptance of this absurd proposition and finally went away to defend Castle Dracula from the Turk.

  After these incidents the rest of the day was comparatively peaceful. The heads, which had belonged to the refugees who had so unwisely encamped around the castle, were buried, not decently but usefully in the castle’s kitchen gardens.

  The following day I awoke late to find my room shaking. As I rose, I wondered what the enemy had given us today. I heard a boom, then felt a second vibration. I dressed quickly and went to the guard house near the Queen’s apartments where Vlad was captain. He was standing with Ragul by the window, gazing across the walls to the Ottoman camp.

  “They have forged their great guns,” said Ragul. “It is only a matter of time. These walls are strong, but they are old and not built to withstand cannon like that.” Another boom and we saw a huge ball, the size of a calf, smash into the battlements of one of the upper ramparts, scattering men and masonry with horrifying ease.

  “Then we must destroy the guns,” said Vlad.

  “How?” asked Ragul irritably.

  “Make a sortie, at night,” said Vlad. “Our friend the Rat King will help us. And Bellorius must come too.”

  I was staggered. “But why?” I asked.

  “Bellorius, you are a historian. Don’t deny it. I’ve seen you scribbling. And without historians there is no history.”

  This is true. Power may seem to have greater substance, but she is lost without her sister Glory. Fear is the lowly handmaiden to both these goddesses; and she was the only one of the three with whom I was ever on intimate terms.

  XXIII

  There are many kinds of fear. There is the sudden fear which turns you hot and cold and will drive you to instant action, and there is the creeping fear which grows on you in an evil place or in the presence of a wicked person. Then there is a third kind of fear which wears you down, turning you finally into a beaten, subhuman creature who wants only to feed and sleep and lie lifeless till the summer comes.

  It was this third kind of fear that I, and the other beleaguered inhabitants of Castle Dracula, knew during the following day. The guns boomed incessantly. The whole place shook as if we were being subjected to repeated earthquakes.

  I had some leisure. Vlad and Ragul were planning their secret attack on the guns while Mircea was making a show of commanding the castle garrison, though he would frequently break off from his military exertions to restore confidence among some of the ladies of the bedchamber. Meanwhile, despite the numbing terror that I felt, my curiosity was yet strong enough to make me visit the walls and see the great Ottoman guns in action. So, accompanied by Razendoringer whose wife was still tending the Queen, I made a tour of the battlements.

  Castle Dracula is built on a rock which, on the South side, falls almost sheer into the Borgo pass, its main entrance being on the Western side, and it was in front of this Western aspect that the Ottoman army was encamped. In the centre of the camp, surrounded by a palisade, five massive guns were mounted on wooden carriages. Their barrels, almost thirty feet in length were tilted at an angle exactly between the vertical and horizontal and they were restrained by great ropes pegged to the earth so th
at they would not shift too much in the recoil from the blast. The barrels were trained at a certain section of the wall near to the main gateway, and they had done their work. When we visited the Western wall we saw that the battlements there had been turned to rubble so that they could not be effectively garrisoned, though the wall itself had stood firm.

  Each time another ball struck, the whole of the West wall shivered. Below us we could see a group of Janissaries massing for an assault on the wall with ladders, but our men were prepared. Reserves had been drawn up so that as soon as the bombardment ceased they could rush to the injured part of the defences. On the wall itself a gallant corps of engineers was attempting to repair the battlements even as they were being blasted by the Turks.

  “How will we get to the guns when once we have made our sortie?” asked Razendoringer. The same question had occurred to me.

  At that moment the bombardment ceased. The Turkish kettledrums boomed, the cymbals clashed and a score of trumpets screamed out a fanfare. With a great roar the blue-coated corps of Janissaries rushed up the slope towards the castle and placed their ladders against the shattered walls. White plumes nodding, they began to swarm upwards. Now the battle proper was joined as our men hurried to take up positions where the ladders were placed.

  I could see the tiny figures of Verney and Alexander, dancing with excitement and quite oblivious of the danger, take up a position of vantage and launch their Greek Fire against the ladders. One of them, with its burden of invaders, was consumed in flames, but no other was in range of their weapon; meanwhile, all along the walls now, our men were encountering the flower of the Turkish army.

  Razendoringer was leaping up and down with excitement. “Come!” he said. “We must join the defenders. It would be shame merely to watch at a time like this.” It was no shame to me: I was born to be a spectator; but the dwarf tugged so hard at my sleeve that I went with him, out of loyalty to my friend rather than to the cause of Transylvania or Christendom.

  Turks were now commanding the battlements in some places, but the devastation they had caused by their own cannon shot impeded progress and effective deployment. This gave our own men, inferior though they were in skill and numbers, the advantage in a defensive position. The battle was evenly matched for a while until isolated groups of Janissaries began to break out of the main area of assault. Before we realized what was happening, Razendoringer and I were running towards a group of Turks who had managed to occupy an undamaged section of the ramparts. I saw them hurl down a guard who was in their way. There was nothing for it: I drew my sword and Razendoringer aimed his crossbow.

  The first Janissary fell to a bolt of Razendoringer’s crossbow. There were five of them now, and for a moment they hesitated, not knowing which way to go. We were on a part of the walls where only one, or at the most two, could walk abreast. In this slight pause the dwarf fixed a second bolt to his bow which prompted several of them to start forward. Taking advantage of their confusion I advanced quickly and slashed with my sword at the leader of the group. He reeled back, knocking one of his companions clean off the wall and a bolt from Razendoringer’s crossbow settled for a third.

  It was now two against two, but two trained warriors against an unwarlike scholar and a dwarf. One Janissary advanced, his moustachios quivering with fury, his great scimitar poised. He swung it downwards, I leapt out of the way, knocking down Razendoringer as I did so, at which he commanded me to stand my ground. Then the man struck again and this time I parried. The scimitar bit into my blade and I felt the shock of his blow down my left arm. I tried to twist his sword to one side using his own strength, as I had seen fencing masters do, but he was too experienced for that. His steel bore down on mine like a great weight. I was being crushed by brute strength. When I saw him draw his dagger with his left hand I felt close to death. I lashed out with my foot and kicked him in the stomach. Howling with rage he withdrew slightly, thereby giving me time to escape him, disengage my sword and make a thrust, which was at once contemptuously parried. But then he howled again, for Razendoringer had taken his axe to one of his legs. I thrust once more and this time was not parried. My sword pierced just below the ribcage.

  By now the second Janissary had come up, but his assault was deflected by the fall of the first. Seeing himself at a disadvantage he ran back along the wall, but was laid low by another of Razendoringer’s bolts. At which I heard a cheer behind me. Mircea and a troop of reinforcements had been watching this absurd stand from one of the towers. They then swept past us along the walls to attack the Janissaries in the flank.

  By nightfall every living Turk had been driven from the wall. It had been a bloody conflict which had resulted in the loss of several thousand of the enemy. We had lost four hundred, but they could afford to lose thousands more than we could our hundreds, and, more importantly, the guns were still there.

  The following day battle was joined on the same terms. The Turks were again repelled, but at greater cost to us because Sokolly used fresh troops while ours were weary. News of my stand on the wall with the dwarf became the stuff of good-humoured legend. Laughter and admiration were equally mixed; our six dead expanded to twenty, but I did nothing to correct the rumours.

  We had little else to laugh at in those days. That evening Vlad sent me a message to the effect that the raid on the guns would take place that very night. I and Razendoringer were to present ourselves at the guardhouse by the Queen’s apartments at a quarter to midnight.

  Before this I decided to visit the Queen who had kept to her room and the company of Lady Dolabella since her wounding. It was given out that Xantho had been injured in battle and was confined to his chamber. Affairs of state, such as they were, were conducted by Alexander. The absence of the King seemed ominous to me.

  I found the Queen sitting in a chair while Dolabella read to her from a book of tales about ghosts and spirits. Though pale and drawn, her manner was unnaturally bright and vivacious, but her hair had turned almost white. Dolabella looked up at me with a warning glance.

  “Do you have news for me from Hell?” said the Queen.

  “The Castle is still safe, my lady. Our men fight bravely.”

  “They’ll soon be in Hell with me. Is my place reserved? Have they made my bed red hot? Dwarf, take your paws off my arm. I’ll have enough devils to paw me when I reach the pit. You needn’t tell me. I have seen it. When I die I come to the sea which is boiling. Men and women are dying in it, but they never die. They sail me across it in an iron boat and their spiders crawl over me with hot needles for feet. Then I come to the island which is really the naked body of a great devil, ten miles long, covered in sores and smelling like a midden. There on the thigh is a bed of iron, as hot and red as flames and there they bind me down with a black body beside me. Soon I will be there. No time left. Only punishment.”

  With that she leaned towards the fire, picked up a burning coal and was about to put it in her mouth when Dolabella and I threw ourselves on her. The coal dropped from her blackened hand and she began to howl whether from pain or frustration at not killing herself I could not tell. The next minute she was weeping, pleading for mercy and to be given time to repent. She begged me to forgive her for bringing the Ottomans to Transylvania which God was punishing for the sins she had committed. I replied that God would not do such a thing and that the evil lay with the infidel Turks themselves but she looked at me as if my remarks offended her. Her sins engulfed her, therefore they engulfed the world.

  Dolabella and I tied her to her chair as gently as we could, then went outside her chamber to talk. The dwarf looked tired.

  “I have sat with her almost all the time since her wounding. Her body has recovered but the mind is sinking. The other ladies come in and out with food but they will not stay long. They know that to be a Queen’s lady now carries no honour or power but they cannot be entirely blamed. In war we must think only of ourselves or our country.”

  I told her of her husband’s courage.

>   “Of course he is as brave as a lion,” she said somewhat dismissively. “But tell him that I have been fighting a war here too. Three times Her Majesty has tried to take her own life. Tell him I need to see him. What have we dwarfs to do with your ridiculous wars?” I said that I would tell him to come and see her at once but that we were to go on a dangerous expedition that night.

  “I suppose there is no point in trying to dissuade him.” I shook my head.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “That is the difference between us. I am nothing but a dwarf and I know it. But there is something in him that still wants to be six feet of heroic idiocy with blood on his sword.”

  At a quarter to midnight a small group of us met in the guardhouse. Razendoringer was the last to arrive, red faced, having overstayed his time with Dolabella. Among the party I was surprised to see Verney. Vlad’s eyes blazed with excitement; Ragul seemed nervous and out of sorts.

  There was a pile of Janissaries’ uniforms in the corner, salvaged from the battles of the last few days and we were asked to put them on. Tears in them had been crudely sewn up, but not one of the uniforms was free from bloodstains. Then we were invited to darken our skin and stick moustachios of horsehair to our upper lips with Gum Arabic. I have rarely felt more uncomfortable than in that dead man’s battle dress, with my upper lip deformed with gum and limp strands of black hair.

  By devious staircases and musty passageways we made our way down to the lowest galleries of Castle Dracula where on turning a corner I was startled to find, squatting against the walls and idly talking, a whole regiment of Janissaries. But my fears were soon allayed when I saw one of them nervously pressing his moustache back into place. The regiment then formed an orderly column at the head of which we marched along the corridor until we came to the domain of the Rat King.