Vlad (36 page)

Persuasion

Dracula was alone. He sat at one end of a short, rectangular table. As Ion came in he didn’t look up, just continued to stare into candlelight. Only when Ion sat in the chair held for him at the opposite end of the table were those green eyes lifted to fix on him, though there was no recognition in them, no acknowledgement, nothing. Unnerved, Ion accepted the goblet of hot wine the servant handed him before he withdrew; but he did not drink.

To escape the stare, he looked at the table. It was uncluttered. There were two pots, both steaming; one held the wine, heady with the scent of juniper; the other gave off a whiff of stew, game probably, the hint of rot that went with a hare or rabbit properly hung. There were metal bowls, knives, spoons, two candelabra and a languier. The metal tree was an oak in winter, the fissured bark and barren branches skillfully crafted. Flame-light flickered on the snake tongues that hung there.

Finally Ion looked up, met those expressionless eyes. He pointed at the languier and spoke, over-loudly, to end the silence. “You still fear poisoning then?”

Dracula stirred. “I fear nothing,” he replied, his voice low, “but I do not believe it is my fate to be murdered thus. So I call upon the snake to detect any poisons for me. And the unicorn.” He raised his goblet, turning one side towards Ion and the light. “I have a piece of its horn here. As do you.”

Ion looked down, saw the striations of the horn embedded in the silver mug. “Expensive,” he said.

“My wife’s.”

“Does she not join us? She and your son?”

“My son has gone into Pest to carouse with his friends and show off his latest scar. I hear he has not bought a flagon in years, for all pay to see the Dragon’s claw marks on his skin. That is a lot of wine, for the boy is easily distracted, as you saw.” Dracula lifted his goblet, drank. “And my wife will visit but not eat. One of the other boys is sick and she will not leave him long…and here she is.” Vlad stood, smiling. “Come in, my dear, and meet an old…friend, Ion Tremblac. Ion…this is Ilona.”

That name! It had hardly been out of his mind since he first set out; as if he felt her beside him every step, her wounds crying out for a vengeance he could not take. So he couldn’t help the slight stagger as he rose, as he turned towards the impossible.

Yet no ghost stood there, just a woman. Her face was as white as the snow
beyond her walls, dark eyes bright within it, her nose long, her cheekbones sharp. She had no eyebrows, as was the custom in the court at Buda, and her forehead was high under a coif where a hint of her black hair was held. The contrast to the other Ilona, the one forever in Ion’s mind, was marked. Yet if she was not beautiful, as she came forward into the candle-light, Ion could see the kindness in her eyes.

She stretched a hand before her. He bent, kissed. “You are welcome, sir,” she said, Hungarian words in a warm voice, “I have heard much of you.”

Ion, rising from the kiss, was disconcerted. What had her husband said of him? Ion had told his own wife little of the man he’d once loved, and it was often shouted out after too much wine, or from the depths of sleep, hate-wracked and vile. “I…I wish I could make your better acquaintance, lady.”

“I hoped it, too. Soon perhaps. But I have one sick child and one…” She reached behind her and suddenly there was a face at her hip, with hair and huge eyes the color of hers, of night, a boy of about four. He peeped around her, staring up at the stranger, before his glance darted to the table, the snake tongues upon it, and then onto his father.

“May I touch them, Papa?” he whispered.

“Yes,” said Dracula. “But mind! They may still bite.”

His son crept around, reached up, flicked a tongue, laughed. His father stretched a hand past him. “Aiee!” he yelled, jerking his hand back. “Look! It has taken a finger!”

He thrust one hand out, stump foremost. The boy squealed delightedly, as his father mussed his hair, then ran behind his mother once more.

She clutched him, smiled. “You will come and see Mircea?”

Vlad nodded. “I will come. Later. When my business here is done.”

“Business,” she echoed, a frown coming. “Do not…” She broke off, turned to Ion. “Do not keep my husband too long, sir.”

“I will not, at your request, lady.” He bowed.

She inclined her head, and left the room, shooing her reluctant son before her.

Vlad, still standing, looked after her. When he spoke, he reverted to the language of their land. “She is a wise woman. Her words, the ones she does not speak, caution me.”

He gestured to the soup pot and a servant came and filled the two bowls, handing one to each man. Dracula pointed to the door and the man left. Then he sat and immediately began to eat.

Ion sat. “Caution you against what?”

“Against you. And what you would persuade me to do.”

Ion had picked up his spoon. Still, he did not eat. “And how would she know what that was?”

Dracula snorted, took another mouthful. “She is the King’s cousin. A Szilagy of Corvinus’s own family. So she is my wife and a Crow, too. And she knows what crows do—let someone else do their killing for them, then show up to feast on the scraps.” He looked over a full spoon, paused before his mouth. “And are you not here to ask me to provide Corvinus with a supper?”

Ion still had not eaten. Now he laid his spoon down. “I do not serve King Matthias,” he said, “but Stephen of Moldavia.”

Dracula slurped. “Whom Matthias hates and loves, and fights and embraces depending on the wind from Constantinople. And now the Great and the Crow need each other again. And between them they have decided that they also need the Impaler.”

“I do not think you understand—”

“I understand everything,” Dracula shouted, his face thrust forward, green eyes bright between the dangling frames of bone-white hair. “Remember, I have been Corvinus’s prisoner for thirteen years, ever since he betrayed me, betrayed the crusade, by failing to march to my aid; since he ordered letters forged claiming that
I
was the betrayer. And used a man I thought was a brother in that betrayal.” He threw his spoon into the bowl. “Four years I was at Visegrad, an embarrassment, waiting for my murderer to come. But then the wind changed. Crow fought the Great, fought the Turk, and the Impaler was useful again. Not to use his
speciality
.” A half-smile came. “Just to threaten it, against whomsoever Corvinus chose.” He waved a hand. “My prison changed. He even gave me a companion for my cell. Kept me close—but not too close, across the river—to be trotted out, exhibited like a monster, a grotesque at a country fair.”

He rose, crossed to a chest, threw it open, delved within. “I’ll show you something.” He moved back to the table, and flung down a packet of papers. “Pamphlets,” he said. “First made by my enemies in Brasov and Sibiu after my fall. They had good reason to hate me, those Saxons, after the way I broke their hold on Wallachian trade. And the Hungarians—some of them even my brother Dragons—helped spread these pamphlets throughout the world to justify their betrayal.” He lifted one, held it under Ion’s nose. “Have you read any?”

Ion pushed the paper away. “They are in Prince Stephen’s court, as elsewhere.”

“So you know what they say of what we did. What
we
did, Ion.” He slapped a pamphlet down. “This tells of the thirty thousand I impaled at Brasov. Do you remember how long it takes to impale a man?”

“I rememb—”

“Thirty thousand! I’d be there now, still hefting wood.”
Slap
. Another pamphlet thrown down. “This talks of the mothers whose breasts I cut off, their babies’ heads thrust into the holes. Remember that?”

“No, I—”

Slap
. “And this one tells how I cut off
boyars
’ heads and used them to grow cabbages. Cabbages!” he yelled. “I don’t even like cabbage.”

He was standing over Ion, breathing hard. Then he leaned on the table, used it to support him as he walked back to his chair. He did not sit, just rested there on his knuckles before continuing, quietly. “I know I did many…questionable things. I also know that many things were done in my name. For all I had to do was slip the leash and let the beast run free.”

“The beast?”

“‘Who is like unto the Beast? Who is able to make war with him?’” Dracula leaned forward. “The Book of Revelations. I read it constantly. For it tells us that if the Devil runs free, thousands follow him, imitate him, even seek to exceed him. The Devil…or the Devil’s son.” He pointed. “And all who have damned me with these writings for their own ends know this also to be true: when the Cross of Crusade is raised above the host, the beast comes and shelters beneath it. And then everyone does things that others might…question.”

He laughed, the sound harsh. “So I have become a tale to amuse fat burghers over their suppers, and to hush their children with terror when they will not sleep.” He lifted his goblet, drank, set it down. “All I did, all the measures I took for Wallachia, against thieves and traitors and Infidels, come to this.” He jabbed a finger at the pamphlets. “Me, reduced to a blood-sucking monster.”

Finally, he sat, stared before him. Ion watched him, uneasy now. This was not the man he remembered. Not even the one he hated. Dracula, for all his myriad sins, had been a man who justified nothing that he did and never blamed others who acted in his name. Who was this…this white-haired husk, railing against a world that didn’t understand him?

He was about to speak, to provoke, to test if there was yet some core to the man, when Dracula spoke again. “And now you have been sent to ask what my cousins the Great and the Crow have already asked and I have already refused—for the monster to be released from his chains. Again.” He picked up his spoon, began noisily to swallow soup. “For what? So they can write more lies about me to frighten their children?” He raised his white eyebrows to the room. “This is all the kingdom I need now. I read, I think, I watch my sons grow. I have five servants, two horses and one beautiful goshawk, who provides our supper this night. Everything I want, I control. Out there…I can control nothing.” He glared. “So tell me. Why would I give that up? For what?”

Ion had been warned. By Stephen before he set out; by Matthias when he arrived. The Impaler had grown old, and tired of blood. He looked down at the pile of pamphlets. They were, in the main, as Dracula had said, sensational exaggerations. But they were based on truth—the truth of innumerable sins. And sins, as both men knew, could be forgiven—if they were atoned for. One sin, especially.

So Ion leaned forward, spoke softly. “I will tell you, Vlad Dracula, why you will do this. You will do it for Ilona.”

Dracula’s eyes, which had opened wide with his questions, his justifications, now hooded. He sat back, “Ilona?” he muttered.

“I do not mean…” Ion waved a hand to the door.

“I know who you mean,” Dracula said sharply.

A silence came between them as both men stared, and remembered. It ended when a snake’s tongue, too close to flickering flame, crisped and fell from its metal branch.

Then Ion spoke again. “Do you still go to confession?”

“My confessor is here. I keep him still…nearby.” Dracula was staring down at the table. “But I only talk. I do not, cannot confess. What penance could I do? Walk barefoot to Jerusalem? I would not get a mile before someone stuck a knife in me. No, there is nothing. No forgiveness for my sins.” He met Ion’s gaze. “That one, or any other.”

Ion shook his head. “You are wrong about penance. There is one, there always has been.”

Something flickered in Dracula’s green eyes, in his voice. “What penance?”

“Crusade.”

“Oh,” said Dracula, slumping back. “I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work. To crusade is not enough. You must either win or die. I failed to do either.”

“But this time we
can
win.” Ion stretched out a hand. “Moldavia and Hungary are united as never before. Corvinus
will
come this time. More, he will lead. And Wallachia will thrive again, under the Dragon banner.”

Vlad shook his head. “You forget that it already does. For my brother rules, and he is a Dragon’s son, too.”

“But this is the news I bring, Prince.” He used the title for the first time and deliberately. “For your brother rules no longer. Your brother is dead.”

Dracula blinked. “Who killed him?”

“God.” Ion shrugged. “He had lost most of the land you ruled. To
boyars
, Turks, pretenders. All he had left was Guirgui, the fortress you took by stealth and courage. He drew up the drawbridge, safe from his enemies.” He swallowed. “But not from God. The disease that had been visited upon him years before ate his flesh, destroyed the beauty that had once lured a sultan. An apt punishment for the fleshly sins he committed with Mehmet. In the end, Radu the Handsome had no nose, no ears, half a jaw…”

Dracula lifted a hand. “Enough! I know you see a sinner, punished. But all I see is a brother, whom I loved, dead. Horribly dead.” He brought his half hand to his mouth, kissed the stump, whispered, “Radu.” Then he raised his eyes again. “So who rules now in Targoviste?”