The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer

by Lucille Turner

  Chapter 29

  Murad had spent the day reading in the gardens. He began with the Koran. When he had read as much as he felt was fitting, he picked up a copy of Homer. His Greek was good, but the words caught him out here and there. Piety, for example, bothered him. Was it service to the gods, or submission to the gods? He abandoned Homer for Plato. He read Plato until the sun reached the zenith of noon, by which time the word ‘soul’ had begun to worry him. Mind, spirit, and desire. Reason, will and appetite. Three contradictions in one body. Which would prevail? Which would the gods allow to prevail? Would Mara the Stubborn prevail over him, or he over her? Would he, in point of fact, prevail over anything? There had been no word from Mehmet. No letter of apology, no humility, no asking for advice. And on top of it all, his desire remained unsated.

  How it had come to this, he was at a loss to understand. He had been on the verge of simply walking into her room and laying down the law. Nobody would have stopped him. Nobody in fact but himself, which was the worst thing about it. He had never forced himself on a woman and was not about to start now. Besides, that was not how he wanted it. Not like that. He threw Plato aside and wondered when he would receive a letter from his son. Or more specifically, how long he could bear the wait.

  He could not, in any case, wait forever. Despite his decision to leave Mehmet in charge, he was already restless, already worried. The Defterdar, who had followed him all the way to Manisa in the hope of changing his mind, had become like a fly he wanted to swat.

  ‘So,’ said the Defterdar, drawing near in the manner of a confidant, ‘what will you do if she disappoints you?’

  Such remarks he could easily dismiss. They were pleasantries men made when they were not enamoured. He had made them himself, more often than he could recall. But other comments were harder to swallow, perhaps because he knew they were true. When he had suggested to the Defterdar that he was considering abdication in favour of his heir because he was worn out, the Defterdar’s face had taken on an air of panic. ‘Abdicate? He is a fine boy, Mehmet Celebi, but have you thought it through? What will happen when it comes to light that he does not know what he is doing?’

  ‘He will learn what he has to learn when he has to learn it.’ A fine boy, Murad considered, masticating the Defterdar’s description. You never heard the absolute truth from an advisor, even a good one. Everyone trod carefully with him, except her.

  ‘And the army?’

  ‘The generals know what they are doing. They will direct him.’

  ‘A ship full of crew and an absent captain,’ muttered the Defterdar.

  Murad pursed his lips. He would have his way in something. Mehmet had to learn humility. Humility came with failure. Failure it had to be – or success would never follow.

  The page informed him that there was a letter. He left the alleys in a hurry, returned to the kiosk and looked at it, there on the platter. A note from his Grand Vizier, Halil Pasha. What would this one say? Another supplication for his return? The Grand Vizier and he were born to differ. It was an unbreakable habit. He picked the letter up, unravelled it, and read.

  May God preserve and keep you. I send my greetings, and so on.

  I trust Your Highness is well reposed and profiting from the gardens of Manisa and their beauties. There is nothing more precious than the pleasures of a garden, as there are no concerns more onerous than the preoccupations of empire. One must act as balm to the other.

  Murad grimaced. But what did he expect? The Vizier would hardly rejoice. He stared at the word balm. He would not have picked that one.

  I would draw Your Highness’ attention to the news enclosed separately, which will, in my humble opinion, make it evident that Captain Hunyadi will push down before the calendar month is out.

  He thought of precious gains slipping away. How much was his son’s arrogance going to cost him? He braced himself for the rest.

  When I informed Mehmet Celebi of the state of affairs, he kindly mentioned that he would look into it. I cannot help but wonder how long we must wait before he finds what he is looking for? Your Highness will recall the warning I gave earlier in the season? But of course, Your Highness knows best. We must be patient…

  Blood rose to his head. Was there anywhere else he could send Halil Pasha? Somewhere further away?

  You asked me to watch the progress of the hostages of Egrigoz, and I have done so. The elder brother has begun his instruction with Professor Gurani, and his progress is, I am told, adequate. He is also displaying signs of a strange affliction, which even I am at a loss to understand. It is a curious condition, exhibiting as much weakness as strength, and I have to say that the fortress guards are becoming increasingly nervous about it, or more precisely, him.

  He read this twice over. Weakness and strength? Then the boy was turning out just like his father. His mind went back to Dracul’s fingers around his throat in the Chamber of Stone. Unnervingly strong. And yet how quickly the strength had died away. But the evil eye perhaps had not?

  Vlad Dracula. The Defterdar had marked him out as trouble. He, Murad, had come away from their meeting with only one impression: that the boy had begged the release of his brother but not himself. And now Halil Pasha could not seem to make up his mind as to whether he was sick or dangerously well, or both, and that made no sense at all. He sighed and read on.

  Mehmet Celebi has been keeping a close eye on the younger of the Draculesti brothers in particular. I believe he is using the boy for running errands, although I must confess that the nature of these errands does not fall inside the sphere of that which would be considered habitual for most of us.

  Blood draining from his face, Murad stared at the page. The impulse to rip the letter into pieces and cast it to the watercourses was strong. Mehmet was dissolute, and there was nothing he could do about it. He closed his eyes and prayed for an end to discontent, but all he saw were memories of grief. His rose garden. The blooms, the passing of the blooms, his walk through the gardens on the night of Aladdin’s death. He could have wept forever, but he didn’t. The tears had dried up, and he had loathed himself for it.

  He stared inconsolably at the cypress trees. He was weary of the past. What he needed was the future. To know he still had one. He was also starting to feel that there were two things in his life that unsettled him and that needed to be either dealt with or removed: one was the evil eye of Dracul, the other was the uncomfortable thought that fortune, or destiny or the Fates of the Greeks were not working in his favour. Something had been thrown off course; he had to set it right.

  He called for the Imperial Chamberlain.

  ‘The soothsayer of Bursa, is he still alive?’

  ‘The dervish? As far as I know, Highness.’

  ‘Tell him that the Sultan commands his presence at the Palace of Manisa.’ The seed of impatience took root. ‘Today,’ he added. ‘And when you have seen to that, ask the servants what she is doing up there. Tell her that the Sultan can no longer be kept waiting.’

  The Imperial Chamberlain set off as charged. Murad sat down. If Mara Brankovic wanted him to release her brothers, she had better earn the right to talk about it.

  Chapter 30

  Vlad pushed a page of perfect Turkish towards Ahmed Gurani. ‘As I said before, I am a fast learner.’

  Gurani stared at the script, looked into his eyes and drew his own away. ‘It does not give you the right to anything.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked. Must the Turks have dominion over all of them? Are they not both hostages? Did the bond of exile not make them allies?

  Gurani could not disagree with that, he said, except that he would hardly call himself a hostage. ‘I have chosen my exile,’ he said. ‘Your family chose yours.’

  Vlad quelled a wave of anger. There was a pause, during which he felt Gurani’s mind break open and reveal itself. There was the Mongol army. Horses kicking up the dust. The
night of terror. Crossing the Euphrates in a raft. Two years of hunger.

  He moved closer, sensing opportunity. ‘Mehmet’s brother – what became of him?’

  Gurani resisted. ‘You don’t know anything about Mehmet Celebi. Even the servants of Edirne don’t know,’ he said, suddenly scornful. ‘They don’t see further than their noses.’

  ‘That is true.’ He leaned into the table. ‘But the guards do, and you do.’

  Gurani glanced at the bag beside his seat.

  ‘The whip will make no difference; you cannot use it on a Draculesti, remember?’

  A line of perspiration trickled down the side of Gurani’s face. He smirked nervously. ‘If I tell you, you will tell others.’

  Vlad crossed his hands. ‘Do you know what happened to me when they shut me up in the tower? Did the guards tell you that too?’

  Gurani shuddered. ‘The trance.’

  ‘Then you will tell me what happened to Mehmet’s brother.’

  Gurani took a piece of cloth from his belt and wiped his brow. ‘He was Aladdin. Mehmet’s brother. A good boy, not like Mehmet.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Mehmet killed him.’ Gurani’s face knotted up; his tight eyes glittered. ‘Oh yes, killed him for the sultanate, for the throne of his father. And now…’ he clicked his finger and thumb ‘…he has it.’

  A weight dropped into Vlad’s mind. A memory of Mircea, the basement and the sword. He clawed past the memory and came back to Mehmet. ‘How did he kill him?’

  Gurani pressed the cloth to his mouth then dropped it on the table. ‘Easy, isn’t it,’ he grinned. ‘Faster than a whip and stronger than a trance. But nobody says anything, because his father does not want to know. What do you think of that, Vlad Dracula?’

  Vlad returned to his chamber, flanked by two guards. Radu was not there. He sat on the edge of the bed and tried to absorb what, deep down, he had already suspected. Little wonder that Murad had pronounced the name of his progeny so cautiously at Edirne on the day of their arrest. He turned; the door to his chamber was being opened. But it wasn’t Radu; it was the Grand Vizier. Halil Pasha entered, dismissing both the guards.

  He looked around. ‘Your brother is not here?’

  Vlad shook his head.

  ‘Then that is just as well,’ said the Vizier, somewhat uncomfortably. ‘There is a matter I wanted to talk to you about.’ He gestured to a seat at the desk, where Vlad had written the letter to his father the night of their arrival. His father’s codex lay beside it. The Vizier’s eyes flicked over his arm, still smarting from the Turkish sun.

  ‘You have been making better progress with your studies. I wonder now if you are ready for the next stage of your training here.’

  ‘What is the next stage?’

  ‘Understanding our ways. Discipline. Acceptance of the faith.’ The Vizier touched the spine of the codex on the table and looked closely at him over the rims of his spectacles. ‘I see you have been reading the apocryphal texts. Oh yes, Dracula, I have read all your scripture, even your Book of Job. Which is why I am particularly interested in what you think of it.’

  ‘It is my father’s book, not mine.’

  ‘Then you do not accept it?’

  ‘I do not accept what it says.’

  ‘You do not accept the judgement of God?’

  ‘God took a gamble with Job, and in every gamble there is a winner and a loser.’

  ‘And who is your winner?’ The Vizier studied him closely. ‘God’s adversary, I suppose. In which case, you have misunderstood the book.’

  Vlad did not reply. The Vizier hesitated, thoughtful.

  ‘It is not easy for you or your brother, and I sympathise with your predicament. But you, at least, do not have to lose. If you take a vow of fealty to the sultanate, you will be sent to Edirne for training as a janissary.’

  ‘And Radu?’

  ‘I will see that your brother is safe.’

  He shook his head. ‘I will not leave Egrigoz without him.’

  ‘Then you are a fool.’

  ‘Am I? Perhaps not such a fool as the Sultan, Mehmet’s father. He thinks he can build a dynasty with Mehmet, but the only thing he is building is a pack of trouble.’

  The Vizier stood up. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You do not accept God’s gamble, but your gamble with the Sultan’s heir is far more dangerous. You ask who will emerge as winner; I do not think it will be either God or you, and I do not think it will be his father the Sultan either.’

  The Vizier called for the guards and turned back firmly. ‘I am not Ahmed Gurani, Dracula: you cannot threaten me. What is more, an insult to His Highness is punishable by death. If I overlook it this time you should consider yourself fortunate.’ The Vizier shut the door behind him, and left.

  Halil Pasha descended the tower stairwell thinking about princes. He should have the boy charged with slander against the Sultan. He should, but he knew he wouldn’t. Was it pity that stopped him? If it were, then at least compassion could be considered a worthy sentiment, but it wasn’t compassion. Not really. He searched around for something else, something that would take the place of fascination, and found it. As the son of a judge, he had been brought up on the tenets of truth, and Vlad Dracula had spoken the truth. He had hit his target with alarming accuracy. Murad was taking a gamble with Mehmet. Did Vlad Dracula then suspect that his brother had fallen into Mehmet’s hand, or was there something even more sinister at the root of his suspicion?

  He loosened the collar of his cloak a little. The idea of attributing Job’s fate to a gamble by God with Iblis, his adversary, had not been his first reflection on Job, and yet, there again, it did seem to strike a chord of truth. It also struck a chord of terror. That was the thing with the Apocrypha of the Christians: it was, at the root, a frightening legacy, one that Christendom would rather forget about. Why was Dracul, Vlad’s father, keeping it alive in the mind of his son? Was it as a mark of resistance against the cardinals of Rome, or had Dracul hoped to give a lesson to his son through the story of Job? If he had, thought Halil Pasha wryly, it had fallen on barren soil. Worse still, Vlad Dracula did not see that salvation came from God, since God was not, in his view, on the winning side. By the boy’s reckoning, he was on nobody’s side. Halil Pasha shook his head; if Murad heard such a thing, he would lose sleep for a season. He would probably have Dracul’s son put to death. He wondered what was wrong with Vlad Dracula’s arm. Under normal circumstances he would have had a look at it, but this time the boy had gone too far. For his own sake, he must be brought back into line.

  What was more, he would have to warn Mehmet to be more guarded. The son of a vassal had taken a shot at the empire; even if it had been a true shot, that didn’t make it any more acceptable. Another conversation with Mehmet was necessary, he thought, fighting back anxiety. Still, he owed it to Murad, or at least to the security of the sultanate, to guide the heir along his way. He turned right instead of left along the corridor that led to Murad’s old apartments, hoping against hope that Radu Dracula would not be in them, but knowing, irrefutably, that he would be.

  Chapter 31

  In the open-air salon of the pavilion of the first courtyard of Manisa Palace, late in the afternoon, Murad received the soothsayer of Bursa. The dervish wanted to smoke. The charcoal was lit; the dervish bent forward and blew on the glowing embers inside the burner above the water bottle. Murad glanced at his rags and badly wound turban and wondered if he would be better off taking advice from the Timekeeper of Edirne. Still, the Timekeeper was not here, and it was well known that in a dervish the outward signs of poverty were the mark of greatness of mind. Or at least that was what was said.

  He noticed that the dervish was almost scrutinising him. He was also sitting too near, and only just at the appropriate height. He looked away for a moment, to delay the sign of interes
t. The dervish lowered his eyes and slotted the tube of the pipe to the bottle.

  ‘You may speak what is on your mind, dervish,’ he said, at last.

  ‘I imagine, Excellency, that you want something from me other than the sight of these poor rags?’

  Murad cleared his throat. ‘I do.’

  ‘Then, if Your Excellency permits, I will begin.’ He sucked on the pipe and put it aside. ‘You ask me here to give my opinion about a wish that is unsatisfied?’

  Was it so obvious, he wondered, thinking of the moments of the past few weeks. He lifted his body a little higher. ‘I have asked you here because it amuses me to speak to every one of my subjects, from a merchant to a servant to a soothsayer.’

  The dervish placed a hand to his chest and bowed. ‘That is very gracious of you, Excellency. What shall it please you to speak about?’

  ‘The Greeks,’ he said.

  The dervish sucked on his pipe, prodding the charcoal. ‘And what about the Greeks?’

  ‘What do you know of them?’ The soothsayer of Bursa had a reputation for being learned, but the man was not part of the ulema, the official order of Islamic scholars; he was a tarikat, a renegade, an independent Sufi mystic. Still, that was why he had called him in. He did not want to listen to a bunch of lies recited by a kisser of hands. He wanted the truth.

  ‘Aristotle, Archimedes, Plato…? I am happy to discuss all of them, although perhaps one at a time.’

  Murad shifted on his cushion. ‘What about the gods of the Greeks? From the point of view of a scholar.’

  ‘From the point of view of a scholar, the gods of the Greeks held great power. Even a king was subject to them.’

  He thought of the Koran. So many interpretations, so many questions. One God. ‘I do not see it. There were too many of them.’ He waved his hand. ‘There is only one leader, as there is only one God.’