by Dan Davis
“It frightened you.”
“No. By God, no. I wanted that for myself. I wanted men to shiver as I passed them in the hall. I wanted soldiers to shake so hard when I addressed them that they dropped their spears and fumbled to pick them up again. But Radu is not like me. His enchantment turned to fear when William revealed his true nature.”
“He told you of his immortality?”
“Later, yes. Before then, he turned his attention on Radu by humiliating him in public whenever he committed the slightest error. William would instruct him in the sword in good humour until Radu made an error, at which point William would strip him and whip his bare legs bloody, all the while proclaiming him to be entirely without merit. And at night, in private, William would come to him and whisper sweet words and embrace him and cover his hair with kisses.”
“By God. He forced himself upon him?”
“Forced, perhaps or manipulated my brother into allowing it or even desiring it. I do not know for certain. Radu, in his shame, would not speak of it nor hear it spoken of. Whatever perverse delights he felt, it became clear later that William was in fact preparing Radu for Mehmed.”
“I do not understand.”
“Sultan Mehmed lies with many women. It is his duty to get sons on them. But his passion has always been for young men and the older sorts of boys. You see, my brother was always fine featured. It was often said that his face was more beautiful than that of a ripe young woman, with skin as smooth as silk, his limbs elegantly proportioned and supple as an almond sapling. Grown women and girls fell in love with Radu on sight but he was not allowed to go to them. Instead, William first made Radu his own, body and soul, and then sent him into the tent of Mehmed to win his heart.”
“To spy on Mehmed?”
“To fill Mehmed’s head with whatever William wanted, I suspect. Men are uniquely vulnerable when sated in the dark of the night, do you not think? It helped to secure William’s place by Mehmed’s side when old Murad died.”
“William had been advising a succession of Sultans already before Murad.”
“Yes and each time the transition between one lord and another was the most dangerous time for him, threatening to undo everything that he had done before.”
“He told you this?”
Dracula took a deep breath and turned away from the scene before us to look back at the village where his men lounged and laughed in the sun. “I attempted to help Radu. I urged him to resist, to fight every time, every night, to fight even if it meant his death. That is what I did to survive. When William attempted to discipline me in public, I would harangue him in turn and call him a traitor to his people and a pathetic servant who should bow down to me, who was of royal birth.” Vlad smiled to himself at the memory. “Sometimes he would make a joke of it. Other times he would strike me or beat me badly. But next time I just fought all the harder, even when William crushed the bones of my sword hand in his fist. Even when he broke my ribs one day and my jaw the next, still I fought. Radu would not. Or could not. He was younger, of course, and weaker in his heart. Always. And so I gave him up. He would not save himself and so I would not save him. How can one respect a man who does not respect himself? His weakness was contemptible.”
“Not all men will choose death over subjugation.”
Vlad replied without hesitation. “All true men would certainly choose death over dishonour. Only the slave chooses slavery over death. All slaves have chosen their slavery.”
“Is it not better at times to live so that one may take revenge?”
“If one chooses that path, he must know that he will never be whole again. He will never be a true lord.”
“Forgive me but how is that you then continued to live amongst your enemies?”
“I was a prisoner, not a slave. I was never subservient and all recognised me as a king.”
“They intended for you to become their king. A client king, subject to the Sultan.”
“They did. But always I knew I would fight them to the death rather than kneel and call them lord. And I wanted William’s power in order to free my people.”
“His power to fill men with terror?”
“That, and the terrible power of his limbs. When I witnessed him tear a man’s throat out with his bare hands and bathe his face in the blood, I knew that he possessed a great magic. It was unnatural. Perhaps evil. And I wanted it.”
“And you got it. How?”
Vlad looked pained and glanced at the sky. “It grows late. We shall return to Poenari and feast.”
I wanted desperately to know it all but I knew it would be a difficult thing for him to speak of. No doubt, Vlad wanted time to compose himself and to fortify his heart with wine. And as impatient as I was, I wanted that too.
“I will see you there, my lord,” I said.
When I walked back toward my horse, Rob strode over with a stiffness to his hunched shoulders that told me had important news to impart. What it might be, I could not imagine.
“Richard,” he said, keeping his voice low. “There’s a woman in this village. A very interesting woman. You should speak with her.”
“Oh?” I said. “Pretty, is she?”
He sighed. “Please, follow me.”
***
The house was tiny, out away at the edge of the village and with a small patch of woodland behind it. With a steep thatched roof and a stone wall around the lower course and plastered wattle and daube walls above, the neat garden was surrounded by a hazel fence.
Walt and Eva lounged beside the open door on a low, stone bench. Both sipped on a cup of something.
“What is this?” I asked them as I approached.
“Rob made a friend,” Walt said. “But we can’t understand a word she’s saying.”
“Why do we need to understand what she is saying? Who is she?”
Stephen stomped from the door with a scowl on his face. “She is a hardnosed old crone and we are wasting our time, Rob. She knows nothing at all.”
From inside the house came the sounds of someone banging around.
“She knows,” Rob said. “If only we could understand what she was saying.”
“Did you find Serban?” Eva asked.
“You know what he’s like,” Walt said. “Workshy old bastard sleeping it off somewhere.”
“Richard speaks the Roman tongue like a native,” Rob said. “He can question her.”
“Will one of you fools tell me what is happening here?”
An old woman appeared in the doorway. Her hair was tucked under a scarf, and she wore a vividly white shirt beneath a sort of embroidered waistcoat and a long, plain skirt down to her shoes. She scowled up at me and threw up her hands.
“So, you have come? What is wrong with you that you send these fools to me to ask their foolish questions when they will not listen to the answers? Well, I suppose you had better come inside, if you must.” She held up a bony finger. “I warn you. If you try to take my blood, or turn me into a strigoi, I shall cut off your head, do you understand?”
I dragged my eyes from her outstretched finger and looked into her dark eyes. “I understand, good woman.”
She scoffed and disappeared into the darkness.
“You could understand her fully?” Rob said.
“Of course,” I said. “You speak the same tongue as she does well enough. And Wallachian is almost the same language as Italian, which you speak like a native. It is not so far away from Latin. What is wrong with you lot?”
“But her accent is so strong to be indecipherable,” Eva said. “And there are the peculiar words these mountain folk use.”
“She refuses to speak slower,” Walt said. “Just won’t bloody do it.”
“You are all hopeless,” I said, ducking to pass through the doorway into the dark house.
I took off my hat as I entered, only to find myself whipped across the face by a great bunch of dried herbs.
“What are you doing?” I said, fending off the next
blow from the old woman.
She clucked her tongue and thrashed me on the hand and arm, then on my body, sending pieces of dried plant matter into the air and onto my clothes. She muttered some sort of spell or prayer under her breath as she did so. Apparently satisfied for a moment, she threw down her bunch of herbs onto the table and grabbed a head of garlic which she crushed together in both of her hands and held up to my face, muttering the spell once more. The pungent smell filled my nose and I moved away, wafting at the stink.
“Aha!” she said, “you are strigoi. I knew it. The herbs do not lie.”
“Are you finished?” I said, looking around the room. Her house was a single room, with a table, a fire place, a sideboard, a bed, and not much else. It was spartan to say the least, but it was impeccably clean.
“No!” she said, fishing something out from beneath her waistcoat. “Not finished.”
She whipped out a small crucifix on a leather thong and dangled it before me. “Take this iron into your hand and close your fist about it.”
I sighed and did as she commanded, holding the simple little thing in my closed hand. “Is something supposed to happen?” I asked.
Eyeing me warily, she sidled over to her table and took a seat on one of the benches. “You will hold the iron cross in your hand until you leave, do you understand?”
“Fine, fine,” I said. “May I sit?”
She nodded and indicated the bench across from her. On the table was a jug and two cups. Crudely made but with a blue bird upon the jug and a pattern in the Greek style on the cups.
“My friends asked me to come here to speak with you,” I said, looking at the herbs on the table and still smelling the crushed garlic. Amongst the bunch of dried herbs I recognised the yellow flowers of wolf’s bane and the leaves of belladonna. “And I can well imagine what it is that they wish for us to speak about.” She watched me closely and said nothing. “My name is Richard.”
“I will not tell you my name.”
“Another method of protection against evil?” I asked but she only glared. “Thank you for welcoming me into your home. That was quite a welcome. Do you do the same for all of your guests?”
She grunted. “Only the ones that are dead.”
“Dead? My dear woman, I am not dead.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Do you receive a lot of dead visitors?”
“Not as often as I would wish,” she said, speaking quietly.
I sighed, hearing my friends muttering outside in muted conversation. A bee flew in through the window, flew around the room in one quick circuit and then flew out again. It seemed increasingly plausible that the old woman was not in the full possession of her wits but Rob had summoned me for a reason and he was not a man prone to flights of fancy.
“Do you know stories of immortal people? Those that live forever, and who are very strong, and who drink blood?” I watched her for a response as I spoke but her scowl did not waver. Her brown eyes were so dark they were almost black and her eyebrows knitted almost together above her axe-blade of a nose. But it was not an unpleasant face for all that. “You seem to know spells and herb craft to ward yourself against them. Can it be that you think me and my men are immortals? Surely, if you truly thought that was the case, you would not have let us in. So, what can you tell me?”
She lifted her small, pointed chin to look down that nose at me. “I know that you are one of great power. I see it in your eyes.” She jabbed a crooked finger at the doorway. “And I know that your friends are the lesser creatures. Yes, yes, I know this. Do not deny it.”
“What do you know of it?”
“Why do you ask what you already know?”
I tapped my fingers on the table, smiling at her scowl. “Well, how about this, then? Would you tell me how you know about these people? What tales you have heard.”
“Oh,” she said, waving her hand in the air. “Everyone knows. Everyone. The tales are told to all children.”
“What are these tales?”
She reached forward and poured a cup of water for me and filled her own before drinking from it. “I was born in the west. By the Iron Gates. There were stories about the strigoi and I knew they were true because my mother and father never lied to me. But I never expected to see one.” She took a drink of her water and I noted her hand was shaking. “My husband was from here. He came with his father across the hills many times with their wool and it was a good match. My husband was a good man. A good man. We lived well. We had a daughter and I was going to have a son but he died. One summer, a man came through, claiming to be an apothecary but he had little enough to sell and we thought him nothing but a vagrant. He had a monk with him, though, so we thought he must be right enough. The vagrant asked if he could collect leeches from the pond and we saw no harm in it and both men were put up by the blacksmith and his wife.” She stopped to cross herself and then she stared past me to the open door and the colourful, sunlit world beyond.
“They were blood drinkers?” I prompted. “The leech-collector and the monk?”
She glanced at me, seeming surprised I was there for a moment before nodding and continuing. “In the morning, Rab and Maria were found dead. Their children found them, both their throats torn and bloody. Both drained of the blood.”
“And the vagrant and the monk?”
The woman nodded. “Gone.” She sighed. “So we thought.”
“They came back?”
“They never left. I do not know where they went in the day but at night, they came and they killed us. We barred our doors and we listened to them outside, knocking on the door and the shutters and laughing. Some nights would pass and everyone would be safe in the morning. But every two or three days, another would be found dead. I picked and hung herbs. We made crucifixes and placed them around. At night, we prayed together over our child. My husband wanted to fight them. He said he knew how to kill them.” She peered at me sidelong.
“How does one kill them?”
“Iron.”
I lifted my fist up. “Held in the hand?”
She scoffed. “That merely traps them. To kill them, you must drive a rod of iron through their heart. Or elsewise cut off their heads.”
“Yes, I find cutting off the heads to be the best method.”
“You mock me,” she said, planting her hands on the table and getting to her feet.
“I do not,” I said, with sincerity. “The iron rod, I had not heard of before. Please, do go on.”
Warily, she sat down. “My husband said that was why they had killed Rab first. He was the blacksmith. And my husband went there to find iron with which to kill the strigoi. But it was all gone. They had taken it all. Hidden it. Buried it. There was nothing else for it, he said. He would not wait around until we were killed. He would take the ploughman’s riding horse and ride down to Arges. If he left at dawn, he could be back with soldiers by nightfall.”
“Then what happened?”
“He did not return. They came for me that night. They hammered on my door and my window, they attacked the thatch. My girl, she cried and wailed. But my husband had strengthened the house everywhere. New timber across there, and there, do you see?” She pointed up at the roof above. Instead of the underside of thatch showing, the inside was lined with sturdy planks. The shutters and the inside of the door were likewise crossed with old oak an inch thick. “They cursed me. They said they had my husband and they were going to kill him slowly and then they would come back for me.”
“And then?”
“They did not return. I never saw them again. I raised my daughter alone. She lives in Domnesti now, with her family. She visits me, sometimes, but her leg is bad.”
“You never saw them again? Why did they leave?”
She looked at me. “Who can say?”
I had the sense she knew something more but was hesitant. “Is there anyone else in the village who might know?”
She smiled with genuine amusement and just for
a moment I had a glimpse of her as she might have been in her youth, before grief and loneliness had taken her. “All who survived the strigoi are now dead. Their grandchildren or new people live here now. They all think me mad. Even my daughter. It was the Turks that raided the village, mother, she would say. The Turks or the Serbs. My baby, who I covered with my body and prayed over while those blood drinkers shook my house, my dear girl grew up to be a fool. But that is what happens when a girl grows up without a father. I beat her as best I could but it takes a man to do it properly.” She waved her hand in the air, as if she could chop away the words she had spoken.
“Why did you tell me this?” I said. “Why did you speak to my friend Robert about it?”
“Would you pour me some more water, sir?”
“There is none in the jug, my dear woman,” I said.
“The pail,” she said, gesturing at the sideboard behind her, a high bench along the wall where she prepared her meals below shelves with her pottery and utensils. A bucket sat on one end. “Fill it for me.”
Putting down the iron crucifix on the bench, I dipped the jug into the water in the bucket and poured the woman a glass of water. She nodded her thanks and sipped at it while I took my seat opposite her.
“You are a great lord,” she said. “A soldier for the new prince.”
“I am.”
“You command those blood drinkers outside?”
“What makes you call them that?”
“I know it. I can see it in you. In all of you.”
“That is not possible.”
She smiled and pointed through her doorway. “I saw him. Your man, the one handed soldier, he had his servant bleed into a bowl, behind my cow shed.”
I looked out at the ruined shack beyond the woman’s garden. “Our servants are bled regularly for their own health. The most sanguine of them require it or else they forget their duties. That is all.”
