The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer

by Lucille Turner

‘We attend the chapel at the Monastery of Saint Nicholas. It is enough.’

  ‘The Orthodox chapel is not mine.’

  His father moved around the room. ‘If you want a Catholic in my seat, Father, you had better put one there.’

  ‘That is not the point, Highness.’

  ‘Then what is?’

  ‘Your other son.’

  A wave of anger travelled up the stairwell. Vlad felt it pull him down the stairs.

  ‘He’s in the countryside, near Giurgiu, where he needs to be.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you brought him to court, where he can be administered to?’

  No longer able to resist the need to enter, Vlad placed his hand on the salon door and pushed it open. Father Popescu turned. His father looked up.

  ‘How are you not in your chamber?’

  ‘I heard talking. I wanted to see who it was.’

  His father’s face composed itself. ‘Please go back upstairs and remain there until I give you permission to come down again.’

  Father Popescu stared at the floor. Vlad bowed, walked backwards a few paces as they always did in the presence of their father, and climbed the stairs again. Satisfied at having seen his father’s face, he paused at Mircea’s room on the first landing. The light of the lamp glowed through the crack at the foot of the door, but inside there was silence. His brother was sleeping through Saint Andrew’s Eve as if it was just another night. But it wasn’t; besides being the night of the upyr, the spirits of the departed, Saint Andrew’s Eve was also the night of Zalmoxis, legendary ruler of the Hun-conquering Goths, their ancestors. In Wallachia, some people believed that the wolf-king Zalmoxis had never existed at all, and they called his night Saint Andrew’s Eve instead. But to him it felt more like a betrayal.

  He tried the handle of Mircea’s door to see if the servants had locked him in as well. They had. Not that they needed to; Mircea was not fearless, nor would he have been able to carve the likeness of a key from a piece of wood to open a lock. He preferred to sit with their father and talk about Aristotle and the Greeks. ‘The Greeks are scholars,’ Mircea said. ‘We need them.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone,’ he told him, ‘I can get you at the end of a sword in three moves.’

  The world did not belong to scholars; it was full of lies and trouble, and unless Mircea learned to use a sword better than a quill, he would never survive it. Vlad tried to tell his brother this but Mircea didn’t want to hear.

  He entered the chamber he shared with Radu. His younger brother slept like a dormouse, never waking except when it was dawn or when he was afraid. He was not afraid now, even on Saint Andrew’s Eve. That was because Radu knew that he would protect him. He always had, even from Mircea, who sometimes liked to tease their younger brother. But what worried Vlad now were the letters the priest had brought and the wave of anger that had floated up the stairwell. Nobody provoked a Draculesti; the servants knew it, even the noblemen of Wallachia knew it. When the boyars came to call about a law that needed changing or a tax that had not been paid, they chose their words carefully. He closed the door of his chamber and leaned his back against it. What bad news had he been banned from knowing? One part of him thought of returning downstairs when the house was quiet again, and finding out. He knew where their father kept his correspondence. It was in the drawer of his desk, or else it was behind the small red curtain in an alcove of the wall above the hearth. But another part shrank from it. He did not want to rouse another wave of anger. He didn’t like the look his father wore when he was angry. It was a knowing look, as though his father had been expecting trouble all along, and he was at the root of it.

  He slotted the key into the palm of his hand and kept it there. There was power in the possession of a key. A key was like a sword; it slid between two worlds, the living and the dead, and let the bearer through.

  Chapter 3

  The Muslim Turks were at Dracul’s throat. They pressed a knife to his skin, saying, if you do not pay us what is due, we will take away the favours we have given you. Your fiefdom will be sequestered; your throne will be seized; your strength will be broken. You think you are a prince, but you are not a prince. You have the trappings of one, the appearance of one, the status of one, but that is all. You think the Hungarians, the Magyars in the north, are your friends and that the Catholics will save you, but they will not save you. Only cunning, perhaps, will save you; perhaps duplicity will set you free. But be warned. Duplicity has its consequences. Reputation is everything, and yours is already ragged. How long do you think it will hold – a year, a month or a week?

  Dracul loosened the collar from his neck. It bore the imprint of the dragon, the sign of the oath that bound him to the defence of Western Christendom against the Turks, but the sign had been his family emblem all along. It was embedded in the history of his family. Dragon and wolf, Dracul and his hound. Except that now his dragon felt more like a wood rat. It gnawed relentlessly at his will. It devoured his reputation one piece at a time. The visit of Father Popescu the night before had taken another chunk, and now he must submit to the presence of a Turk on Wallachian soil. Murad II, the Osmani Sultan, and a man for whom the word compromise did not exist, was sending his treasurer, the Defterdar. And they would have to welcome him like a bunch of serfs.

  ‘The Serbs are giving the Turks a new imbursement, did you know?’ he muttered. ‘Brankovic is putting his daughter in the Sultan’s bed. Now there is a payment of tithes for you.’

  Cazan, his first officer, pulled off his gloves and shrugged. ‘What would you give him, your girl or your city?’

  ‘Since I do not have daughters, the question is irrelevant,’ said Dracul, frowning.

  Cazan had been patrolling the forests on the borders of Wallachia, picking up Bulgarian recruits who had escaped the hands of the Turks. The Rumani liked a chase and Cazan was true to their people’s Gothic ancestry: a hunter at heart. It reminded Dracul that he needed to have a word with the boys. Just the other day his first officer had offered to take his sons hunting and since Radu was too young and Mircea was not interested, that had left only Vlad. Dracul did not like the instinct that drew Cazan to his middle son. If Vlad must hunt then it would be with him, but even then it was not a sport he wanted to encourage. The boy was growing up fast but the interest he showed in his studies was far too weak. On the other hand his progress with a bow was quite spectacular. It worried Dracul, even if somewhere in that part of him that would always be Rumani it thrilled him just as much.

  ‘Well,’ Cazan continued, ‘if Brankovic lets the Turks into Belgrade, that will be the end of it. The Ottomans’ supply route will run all the way to Vienna.’

  Dracul said nothing. He knew the fear was real. Even the Catholic Pope knew it, which was why the Pope had taken Janos Hunyadi, the Hungarian renegade, under his wing. The thought of Christendom being lost to the Turks was bad enough, but it was Constantinople that worried Dracul. The Greek Emperor was running out of chances and Rome knew it. The Turks also knew it. The Turkish Treasurer, whose thirst for coins was no more satiable than his appetite, was on his way even now to see him. Of course he did not doubt that the Treasurer’s visit was no mere collection of tithes. It was about fealty. A test. If he failed it he would lose his hold on the Sultan. Constantinople would fall, and the Greek world with it, unless Rome stepped in to save it. And that was a chance he did not like to take.

  He dismissed Cazan and watched him leave the salon. Cazan was brave enough and the best guard he had, but he did not see the world as he, Dracul, did. Cazan’s mother was a rusalje, one who passed between this world and the next. They had met one day, the day he had taken Cazan as his first officer. The woman had dropped to her knees and kissed his hand for the sake of her son. Only when she had risen did she give him her message. Keep them close. She looked at his own sons, who had attended his investiture along with the noblemen of the country. When
the ceremony was over he had asked Cazan to see her escorted from court.

  It was time to put an end to the old ways of Wallachia. The past wearied him. It tapped him on the shoulder. Remember what you are. Remember what it means to be Rumani. So he had made up his mind: Wallachia must change and he must change with it. He pulled out the letters Father Popescu had given him. As much as he was willing to climb the hill to the Monastery of Saint Nicholas, that Orthodox haven of peace and wisdom, he was in equal measure unwilling to attend Mass at the Catholic Chapel of the Holy Virgin, outside the palace wall. An Orthodox Greek would look into the soul of a man and help him with his demons; a Catholic would judge him for them. There was no salvation in Rome, only men jostling for dominion. And ever since that dominion had passed from the Empire of Old Rome to the clergy of the new one, the Crusades and all they stood for had become yet another travesty of faith. Were it not for the fact that he needed the Catholics and that the Greeks of Constantinople needed them even more, he would have told them to go to the Devil. He did not deny that there were men among them who sought the light as he did, Father Popescu for instance, but Popescu and others laboured under the yoke of a bunch of hypocrites, cardinals who sought only to preserve the Church, not serve it. He smoothed out the first of the letters the priest had brought.

  We did not know that our father was a strigoi; he died twenty days ago. Then one week after the burial, one of my brothers died. Soon afterwards, the youngest one died suddenly. When we found out from a neighbour that it was our father who had caused the deaths, we knew that we did not have much time. So, that night, in the company of a pious man, we went back to find him…

  He closed his eyes and shuddered. The words of a child, the mind of a Rumani. What was done to a known strigoi was unthinkable: exhumation, defamation. Rumour and fear – Wallachia was full of it. The Rumani were blighted by their history. The cardinals knew it; they were watching his seat with covetous eyes, waiting for their chance. One false move and the hammer would fall. Father Popescu also knew it; he had come here last night because it was Saint Andrew’s Eve, because he wanted to see if he, Dracul, was out of doors or in. For all the years of his childhood Saint Andrew’s Eve had been an annual trial, a fearful struggle. The Christian Church had named the day for their saint to drive away the terror, but the Night of Zalmoxis was older by far than any Church; it was as old as the Goths and he felt the pull of it as Popescu knew he did. To venture out of doors on Saint Andrew’s Eve was close to a tacit admission of strigoism for those that were suspected. Spirits gathered in the darkness; the streets of Targoviste emptied as if a plague had struck. Wolfsbane was hung at the thresholds of houses. Few would open their doors and most would bar them shut. The legacy of Zalmoxis was such that a strigoi had to be invited in; it could not come unbidden unless it knew the house and the inhabitants within were blood-relatives. And if they were, no wall of stone or flesh would keep it out. It was why Popescu had arrived at his door in such a condition. You had to give the man credit for his courage.

  He rolled up the note the priest had brought and placed it on his desk beside the objects he kept there: his amulets, his talismans and his superstitious barricades. Then, because a pious man did not need a buttress, he thrust the amulets into a drawer, picked up the note and threw it in the fire that was banked up in the hearth. The paper took light at once, purified by the flame. He let it burn to nothing on the bloom of blistering wood. He had other things to do. People to administer. Borders to watch.

  Chapter 4

  Edirne, capital of Ottoman-ruled Anatolia

  Murad wondered, as he closed the Book of Muhammad’s Revelations, what had been passing through the Prophet’s mind when he announced that men should be the protectors and maintainers of women. Women did not need protection. Protection implied fragility, and women were not fragile. What women needed was not so much protection, as remoteness. They needed to be kept at arm’s length, beyond the fourth door.

  ‘What are you saying exactly, Madam?’

  ‘If it will make you angry with me, I will say nothing at all.’ The Sultan watched Azize throw up her chin, the one gesture that still made her beautiful, and try to be stubborn.

  He sighed. ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘What do you mean, nothing happened? I thought you said she was perfect?’

  Once again his son would be the subject of talk. Gossip over an heir was not what was needed. What was needed was virility. Virility was essential and it was verified on the divan.

  ‘Bring her in. Let’s have a look at her.’

  The attendant opened the door to the lithe figure of a white-skinned, dark-haired girl who was undeniably pretty.

  Murad stood up. The servant rushed forward to move his chair and he paced around the girl slowly.

  ‘She is Georgian.’

  Murad nodded. ‘She is fine, very fine.’ He noticed she was shaking like a leaf. ‘Take her out, and see that she eats something,’ he murmured under his breath. ‘She’s thin as a twig.’

  Still, thin or not, she was more than good enough for an initiation. She did not appeal to him, but there was no reason why she should not appeal to Mehmet. The pout of the young was lost on him; it was a portent he had learned to evade.

  He sat down again, suddenly exhausted. Azize stood behind him and began to rub his shoulders. She was good at it, always had been.

  ‘I cannot let him strip girls to nothing and then push them off his plate,’ he muttered, closing his eyes.

  ‘I know, dearest.’

  ‘Why didn’t he like her?’

  ‘It is not her fault; he didn’t like the one before.’

  Murad nodded, his head on one side. ‘Didn’t he even make an effort?’

  ‘He will only make an effort if it suits him. You know Mehmet.’

  Murad stiffened, remembering that this was a woman at his back, and that every woman hates the other’s son. ‘That’s enough.’ He straightened up fast.

  ‘If you want my opinion, he needs a little more encouragement.’

  ‘Two virgins instead of one,’ he mocked.

  She pressed her mouth against his ear. ‘Words instead of silence. You need to talk to him.’

  He turned his head, irritated. There was nothing wrong with silence. It did no harm to anyone. The fourth courtyard would benefit from more of it. There was far too much chatter in the seraglio, the maze of small yards, corridors and chambers in the centre of the palace where the women lived. Chatter meant gossip and gossip meant disorder. He did not like disorder; it had a tendency to spread. The women passed it on to the eunuchs; the eunuchs passed it on to the gatekeepers and the gatekeepers passed it on to the guards. Before you knew where you were, you had a conspiracy in the making. Conspiracies were dangerous; they brought down dynasties and overthrew sovereigns. He wanted an ordered legacy, an irreproachable one, not the one he saw at night when he closed his eyes and felt the creep of fate and circumstance. Mehmet, he reassured himself, would be at the head of such a legacy, even though a part of him doubted that he could be. He considered again the character of his son, a favourite occupation since he had made the boy his heir. Mehmet was not hard to frame. He knew what he wanted – no doubt about that. What he didn’t like was someone else wanting it more than he did. Perhaps that was it.

  ‘The girl is too keen. She is too…’ he gestured for a word ‘…obvious.’

  Of course Mehmet was not so subtle. But he did not say that. He also had to admit – but only to himself – that Mehmet had never needed encouragement on anything, from the cradle thus far.

  ‘Find me a girl with a little more…remoteness.’

  ‘A remote one?’ Azize looked at him as if he had asked for the children of eunuchs.

  He watched her leave, preoccupied by everything. He would have liked to set store in astrologers, if only for someone to tell him t
hat this boy, the only one he had of age since the death of his Aladdin, was the one. He also would have liked to haul in the Timekeeper and ask him to explain why it was that he, Murad, had not yet beaten the Greeks. He wanted to think that it was not too late, but he suspected that it was. Battle wearied him. He could no longer face either the prelude or the aftermath of it – the early dawn when the air was thick with fear and questions, and then the sea of corpses. He would have liked an easy battle, but there were no easy battles as there were no easy answers. Why, for instance, had he not taken Constantinople himself when he had strength and vigour to do it? The city of emperors continued to elude him, and yet he had coveted it all his life. Its wealth was immeasurable. To take it would be an unequivocal act, the anchor that he needed for the ship of Mehmet. Of course it was not easy. The Palaiologos brothers knew that they were sitting on a rock of steel. They had practically shackled themselves to it with their chain across the Bosphorus Straits. And then there was the city wall, the unassailable buttress of death. Trying to break through that had been like beating down a door with a turban. To scale it was the dare of a lunatic.

  Besides which, he was getting too old. If fate had been kinder to him and he had taken Constantinople twenty years ago instead of letting the Greeks get the better of him, he would not be in this state of almost lowering himself to the fantasies of the Timekeeper, with his predictions and his hard-to-swallow planetary calculations. There was every chance the man would tell him that the Greeks, with their Pythagoras and their Hippocrates and their endless Aristotle would win the day again. Then he would be put out of measure. How quick they were to brush aside the conquests of his forebears – Samarkand, Babylon and Baghdad – in favour of the conquests of their Alexander, the perfection of their Homer and the wonders of their cities. Without the mills of Samarkand, on what paper would Aristotle have written his treatises? And without the Sumerians with what script would he have consigned his thoughts to paper in the first place?