by James Lyon
The next day didn’t dawn, as much as it gradually grew less dark. He crawled from bed and walked to the bathroom to find lukewarm water, soap that burned his skin, sandpaper masquerading as toilet paper, and bath towels only slightly larger than washcloths. After his morning routine of pushups and sit-ups he ate breakfast in a socialist-chic dining room that probably looked shabby the day it was remodeled in the 1970s. Breakfast consisted of a barely palatable hard-boiled egg, two pieces of bread with a slab of butter and marmalade, accompanied by a metal cup of warm milk with curdled skin floating on the surface. Steven was the only guest at breakfast, and the waiter spent most of the time glaring over his bushy moustache, frustrated at having to work over the holidays.
After breakfast Steven put on his winter coat and fur hat, left his hotel room and slogged through the lightly falling snow into the city, still groggy from jet lag. Map in hand, he took the subway to the Pest side to an old neighborhood near the National Opera, to a crumbling Habsburg-era apartment building. Steven walked through the main doors into the courtyard, tripped over snow-covered garbage, and entered a stairwell. As he climbed the dark unlit steps, the sounds of conversations, domestic arguments and television mingled with the smell of paprikash, urine and human feces. Reaching the fourth floor, he walked around the open walkway, holding tightly to the wobbly rusted iron railing, taking care to avoid sheets of ice. He stopped and knocked at a door. There was no answer.
As he knocked again, faded blue paint from the door came off on his glove. Steven heard a shuffling sound from inside, saw a light appear in the transom above the door, and heard the lock click. A white-haired man opened the door part way, looked out at him from under bushy white eyebrows, rubbed his red nose and barked something unintelligible in Hungarian.
‘Guten tag,’ Steven answered. He hoped the man spoke German. ‘Sind Sie Professor Doktor Nagy – Are you Professor Doctor Nagy?’
‘Ja, Ich bin Doktor Professor Nagy – Yes, I am Doctor Professor Nagy.’
‘Ich habe für Sie ein Brief von Professor Doktor Marko Slatina – I have a letter for you from Professor Doctor Marko Slatina.’ Steven handed him an envelope.
Nagy opened it and read it slowly. He then looked at Steven and said in thickly accented English: ‘It is cold outside. Please do come in and make yourself at home.’ He opened the door. ‘Permit me to take your coat.’ He stripped it from Steven’s back and placed it on a coat rack before he could react. ‘Marko wrote me about you. I expected your arrival much sooner.’
Nagy’s house slippers and woolen sweater made him appear overstuffed. He ushered Steven down a short hallway to a tiny sitting room that appeared to also serve as a sleeping area and study, cleared a pile of books from a folded sofa bed and placed them on an end table hidden under even more papers and books. A television glowed silently as folk dancers in colorful Hungarian costumes leaped cheerfully across the screen, accompanied by a radiator hissing against the wall.
‘Sooooo,’ Nagy drew out the word as though it had several syllables. ‘How is my dear friend Marko?’
‘Professor Slatina is well,’ Steven said formally. ‘He asked me to give you his warmest regards and thank you for the hospitality and friendship you’ve shown him in the past, and said that he appreciates your correspondence.’
‘Aahh, that is too nice of him. He is a good man, you know? I recall him fondly from happier days. He could certainly turn a young lady’s head, you know. May I make you some tea?’ Steven nodded. ‘Would you like black or chamomile?’
‘Chamomile, thank you.’
Nagy disappeared into another room, and Steven watched folk dancers gyrate across the TV screen. He waited through a short harvest dance, as well as a longer courtship dance. Why do the women folk dancers wear red rubber boots? he asked himself. Nagy finally returned bearing a silver tray with old porcelain cups, steam rising from the surface. ‘Sooo, tell me now, what you are doing.’ He enthusiastically passed a cracked sugar dish to Steven.
‘Professor Slatina arranged a fellowship from the Balkan Ethnographic Trust. I’ll be spending the next twelve months in Serbia. If things calm down I might go to Croatia, perhaps even the Dubrovnik archives, if the siege lifts.’
‘Hmmm, the Balkan Ethnographic Trust. Never heard of it. But then the communists kept us far from the academic mainstream. Too much knowledge was always dangerous, so they tried to limit people’s access to all types of information, forcing them to place all their faith in the infallibility of the party. In his letter Marko tells me that he wishes you to examine certain documents in the national archive. Unfortunately you have arrived between Christmas and New Year, and everything is closed. The archive will remain closed until the end of the first week of January. And even if you wait until then, there may not be much heat, as they are short of funds.’
Steven looked dismayed.
‘However, not to worry, I have already taken care of things through some connections and have had photocopies made,’ Nagy smiled triumphantly. ‘But first you must finish your tea, and then we shall turn to business. Egészségedre’ – Cheers!’ He lifted his tea cup.
Nagy spent the rest of the day going through photocopies of old documents with Steven, most of them in Latin, most relating to the medieval Hungarian kingdom during the reigns of Sigismund I, Janos Hunyadi and Matthius Corvinus. Steven was exhausted from jet lag, the stale air of the cramped apartment was tiring him and the silent folk-dance marathon had a distracting, yet hypnotic effect. As they pondered royal charters, land deeds, grants, endowments, testaments and other documents, he became increasingly confused…noble houses, royal blood lines, treaties, marriage alliances, wars with the Turks, feuds between nobles, court intrigues, international diplomacy, the Holy Roman Empire… He wondered how 15th century Hungarian history was relevant to ethnography and the study of monsters in folklore. As jet-lag hit he fought to stay awake and rapidly lost interest. He repeatedly asked for more tea, but by 3:00 PM his head was swimming and his eyes lost focus as he began to nod off.
‘Wake up young man,’ Nagy nudged him. ‘We are here to study, not sleep.’ Steven excused himself, and asked if they might continue the next day.
He went back to the hotel restaurant and ordered a bowl of fiery red fish paprikash stew with black bread, under the scowling moustachioed supervision of the same waiter who had served him breakfast, then returned to his room and plunged immediately into a deep sleep, only to wake up around 3:00 a.m. Jet lag, he thought. He lay in bed for hours, trying futilely to sleep. Sometime around 5:00 a.m. he drifted off, only to dream that he was the King of Hungary, sitting on a throne in the middle of a university lecture hall, surrounded by moustachioed nobility, all staring at him and speaking in a strange language while jumping back and forth performing folk dances. He tried to get them to quiet down, but to no avail. Finally he stood to address the nobles and noticed that he was clad only in underwear and red rubber boots, which caused the nobility to laugh at him. He picked up his royal scepter to strike out at them, but it somehow transformed into the steering wheel of his battered Toyota Tercel, and he was now driving Katarina home to her dorm in the middle of the day. As he stopped the car she smiled, squeezed his hand, kissed him on the cheek, and whispered softly: ‘Clean the pots and pans with dishwashing liquid, then dry them with a dish rag.’ He then dreamt that Professor Slatina was giving a lecture on the best way to prepare meals made from serpents, dragons and Vojvodina wine. Steven awoke, confused and disoriented. ‘I’ll never eat fish paprikash again,’ he swore to himself.
En route to Nagy’s apartment he purchased a kilogram of coffee and a bottle of Tokaji wine, which he presented to the professor. Given Nagy’s obvious poverty Steven suspected he didn’t have much money for coffee, and Steven hoped the coffee might help keep him awake. Nagy was waiting anxiously, papers in hand. ‘Today we will review documents pertaining to one of the more interesting phenomena in Hungarian history, and I am certain it will keep you awake. And you will not need coff
ee. You see this document here? What can you tell me about it?’
Steven squinted at the handwritten Latin text. ‘Well, it looks as though it is the founding charter of a knightly order…it is dated 12 December 1408 by Sigismund I, King of Hungary. The co-founders consist of twenty one Barones, which I assume to be nobility or Barons. Now this is interesting… Barbara von Cilli is listed as a cofounder,’ he exclaimed. ‘Isn’t this unusual to have a woman belong to a knightly order, much less co-found one?’
‘Yes, most unusual,’ Nagy agreed.
‘And who is Barbara von Cilli?’
‘The second wife of King Sigismund. She was the daughter of a Slovenian nobleman. But she is tangential, unless you like stories of lesbian vampires,’ Nagy smiled as if sharing a secret.
‘A lesbian vampire?’ Steven woke up suddenly as lurid images from puberty flashed through his head.
‘Yes. After the death of Sigismund, Barbara moved to Bohemia, where the Habsburgs accused her of drinking human blood during Holy Communion and holding sexual orgies with young girls. I am certain that someday Hollywood will make a movie about it. But that is beside the point,’ Nagy gestured at the photocopy. ‘Please, would you continue with the document?’
‘It is called the Societas Draconis, the ‘Society of the Dragon,’ it has as its emblem the Signum draconis, ‘Sign of the Dragon,’ and its motto is O quam misericors est Deus, Justus et Pius, “O how merciful is God, Just and Faithful”.’ He thought to himself: ‘Haven’t I seen that somewhere?’
‘Professor Nagy, why are we examining this particular Order?’ Steven asked.
‘The younger generation is so impatient. You have no concept of the work required to get good answers,’ scolded Nagy. ‘Marko asked me to educate you about the history and importance of the Order. Did he not tell you? No, of course not, he likes his little surprises. You will find that out in the course of your research. Now, let us examine other documents to discover more answers.’
They spent the remainder of the morning examining documents pertaining to the Society of the Dragon. During their brief lunch break Nagy turned on the television and they watched a 100-piece Gypsy all-violin orchestra perform Strauss, Liszt and Brahms in a madcap, enthusiastically undisciplined fashion that reminded Steven of a sprint to the finish of the Tour de France or Spike Jones playing the Blue Danube Waltz. But the musical chaos was a welcome relief from the folk dancers. Lunch was homemade and modest: cucumber and ham sandwiches served with plain yogurt, followed by steaming cups of strong Turkish coffee. After they drank their coffee thick sludge remained in the cups. Nagy turned his upside down on his saucer, waited a few moments, removed the cup and pointed at the brownish-black streaks on the saucer and in the cup.
‘You know, Steven, there are women in the Balkans who can read your future from the patterns they see in the sludge.’
They continued reading documents all afternoon, and Nagy had to help Steven with the more difficult passages of Latin. The work was tedious, but Steven stayed awake and focused, thanks largely to the strong Turkish coffee. Around 5:30 PM, after they had put away the photocopies and Nagy had brought out some sliced kobasica and cheese and poured them each a glass of Tokaji, he asked Steven: ‘What have we learned thus far about the Society of the Dragon?’
‘Well,’ Steven said, ‘it’s a rather murky organization. Although the charter dates from 1408, it appears that it may have been in existence as early as 1381, or perhaps in 1387 at the time Sigismund was in exile.’ He looked to Nagy for approval.
The professor nodded and smiled. ‘Continue.’
‘It was called by several names depending on the time period.’ Steven thumbed through his notes. ‘Various documents refer to it as Societas Draconis - the “Society of the Dragon”, Fraternatis Draconem - the “Brotherhood of the Dragon”, Ordo Draconis - the “Order of the Dragon” and Societatis Draconistarum – once again the “Society of the Dragon”. And judging by the two different spellings of the words ‘society’ and ‘dragon’, I’d say that I’m not the only person who had difficulty with Latin in school.’
‘Yes, yes, quite right. In Hungarian we call it Sárkány Rend - the Order of the Dragon. Please continue.’
‘Each member had two different capes, one dark green, and the other black. They wore the black cape on Fridays to signify penitence, and the green cape the remainder of the time. They also wore a cross around their necks with the Order’s motto on it. They were supposed to wear the Order’s dragon insignia prominently at all times and to include the Order’s insignia in their coat of arms. There was an inner circle of 24 nobles and an outer circle with unlimited membership. It had some rather interesting members. There is Hrvoje, the Duke of Spalato in Dalmatia; Stefan Lazarevic, the Despot of Serbia; and I noticed that Vlad II, Vojvoda of Wallachia, was made a member of the inner circle in 1431…isn’t that Dracula?’
‘No. Dracula was Vlad III, Tsepeş. This was his father, Vlad II, who was known as Dracul. The name Dracul means ‘Dragon’ in Romanian and Vlad got his nickname because he displayed the Order’s dragon insignia. His son, Vlad III was called Dracula, meaning ‘of Dracul.’ It was also a play on words, as the Romanian word for ‘devil’ is almost identical to the name ‘Dracul,’ and may have reflected the Romanians’ true feelings about the behavior of their Vojvoda.’
‘Oh.’
‘Now, tell me, what was the purpose of the Order?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘Excellent, excellent. Your honesty is most admirable. And you stand in good company. You see, no one really knows the reason the Order was founded, and part of the answer may depend on when it was founded and by whom.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Excellent, excellent. Please bear with me. If the Order was founded in 1387 or 1408 by Sigismund then we may believe that its purpose was to strengthen Sigismund and the Luxembourg dynasty’s claim to the throne of Hungary, and there is no question that he used the Order to do just that and buy off his nobles. But he also used it to protect Hungary’s southern borders against the Turks. In some instances we see both motives at work, such as when he granted the famed silver mines of Srebrenica to Despot Stefan Lazarevic in 1412. At that time Hungary held title to the area, but had long ago lost effective control of it to local magnates, backed by the Bosnian kings. Sigismund deeded the mines to Stefan under the conditions that they be placed back into production and that the crown received a percentage of the proceeds. The induction of Vlad II into the Order is also an example of how he attempted to pacify a potentially troublesome nobleman and form a bulwark against the Turks.’
Steven nodded his agreement: ‘It makes sense. The king wanted to unite his nobles around him and strengthen his position on the throne, so, he formed an exclusive by-invitation-only club with 24 members, and bought off the nobility by giving them deeds to lands that are rightfully his, but over which he has lost control. I see nothing wrong with that explanation.’
‘Well, you see, actually much is wrong,’ Nagy was now getting excited. ‘Firstly you must ask yourself what it means if the Order actually existed before Sigismund came to the throne in 1387. As you have seen there are references to it as early as 1381. I am told that it may have existed further south in Serbia even earlier than this and that several of its members may have been killed at the Battle of Kosovo Field on St. Vitus’ Day in 1389. Thus, it may well have been an already existing Order that Sigismund took over and used for his own purposes. Remember, this Order is quite unusual in relation to other medieval knightly orders in that it had no headquarters or regular meetings that we are aware of. We must also ask about the name.’
‘What’s so unusual about the name?’
Nagy closed his eyes and began reciting from memory:
And there was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cas
t out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
‘That is from the Revelation of St. John, the twelfth chapter. They overcame the dragon by blood…the blood of the Lamb. So if the Dragon is associated with Satan, why is the Order called after the Dragon. Why not the order of St. George, especially since the members of the Order wore the cross of St. George at all times? After all, the Dragon represents the evil one, Satan. Were they in fact Satan worshippers? Why name your order after your adversary?’ Nagy waved a forefinger.
‘Didn’t some African and indigenous American tribes believe they could take on the powers and attributes of their enemies by eating their hearts?’ Steven interjected. ‘Perhaps this was something similar…name yourself after your enemy in order to take his power and defeat him.’
‘That is precisely my point,’ Nagy enthused. ‘It is entirely possible that they were not originally organized to fight against the Turks or to strengthen the Luxembourg dynasty. In fact, they do not appear to have been visibly organized at all. Or, if they were organized, it was as a secret society about which little knowledge has survived. And why would they be organized in secret? Because they were formed to fight against the serpent himself, Satan. Therefore they took upon themselves the name of their adversary.’ He stopped, pondered what he had just said, and added: ‘but these are simply the musings of an old man. The only evidence I have is circumstantial. Whatever the purpose of the Order, it is well concealed to this day.’
Both sat silently for some time, sipping their Tokaji. Then Nagy asked: ‘Tomorrow is Sylvester. Do you have plans?’
