Vlad: The Last Confession (15 page)

“He stays with me.”

“Alas, prince, we must keep one of you.”

He let Radu’s arm slip, watched him cross back to the comfort of Mehmet, who was making no effort to hide his triumph. One Dracula would ride at the head of a Turkish army. One would remain, a hostage still…and something more. And as Vlad looked between the Sultan and his heir, as he gazed for a last time at his brother, he repeated his oath to himself but spoke different words aloud.

“When do I leave?”

First Reign

Targoviste, December 1448, nine months later

Ion Tremblac stood twenty paces before the gates of the Princely Court in Targoviste, staring into the rain. It fell in sheets, had long since transformed his cloak into a sodden lump of wool. He had stood there as the storm approached in clouds that obliterated the stars, in wind that came first as caress and finally as blows that made him stagger. When the storm broke, the few other observers fled. He could not until all hope was gone. If he kept his vigil, withstood all that God threw at him, perhaps the Almighty would relent and send the messenger.

But the Western Road was empty. No man with any sense would be upon it tonight. Only someone with a pressing need and a message to deliver. Bringing either hope or despair.

Ion reached up, pushed aside the sodden hank of hair that hung into his eyes, pulled it back, a gesture as natural to him as breathing and the reason he kept his hair so long. It was not the brand of a criminal he bore upon his forehead; but it
was
a brand and he hated it.

There! A rent torn in the clouds by the swirling wind, a glimpse of moonlight, snatched away. But in its momentary glare, he saw a horse rear up, heard a whinny of terror. The beast skittered in a circle, then plunged on towards the gates. Ion, in the thrill of answered prayer, had only a moment to leap aside. Just before the gatehouse the rider struggled to command the maddened beast. Finally, the horse settled and its rider slumped down across its neck.

“What news, friend?” Ion came forward, took the dangling reins, a hand raised to stroke, to calm.

“Only that it is a cruel night, Ion. And that we should all be in our beds.”

He’d expected a man and a stranger. He was twice wrong. “Ilona,” he cried, reaching up, helping her down. He held her with one arm as she slumped wearily against him, called for a groom again and again until finally one appeared, a boy of no more than ten. Handing over the reins, he said, “See to this horse.”

The boy, his shoulders hunched against the storm, his eyes wide, seized the reins, ran off. Putting his arm around her, Ion half-walked, half-carried Ilona into the lee of the gatehouse.

“You are soaked, Ilona.”

“Strange,” she murmured, “I don’t know why.”

Then she laughed. That laugh, first heard through latticed walls in Edirne a year before, had never been forgotten by the man who looked at her wet face now, so different from the one he’d first glimpsed and instantly loved as a barge carried it away from him. No paint now, nothing plucked, framed by hazel hair that fell, soaked and unbound, shadowing hazel eyes. As with the laugh, it was not a face to forget. Ion hadn’t. And he suspected that the man upstairs, for all his cares, hadn’t, either.

“Come,” he said, taking her arm, “we must find you dry clothes.”

She resisted the pull. “Is he here?”

“Ilona—”

“Is he?”

“Yes. But he won’t see you. He won’t see anyone but messengers.”

“He’ll see me,” she said, moving towards the great wooden doors. “If you tell him who it is.”

Ion did not follow. “He’s different, Ilona. So much has happened to him. Things he won’t talk about. And now he waits to hear if his army marches for him or against him. If he will still sit on the throne at midnight, having sat upon it for less than two months.” He stepped closer, reached for her hand. “Wait for a better day.”

“I have waited for those two months to be summoned,” she replied. “Two months with nuns, praying and stitching, stitching and praying. God’s life,” she laughed, “I understood why I should not ride through a land at war, that my prince had other concerns. But now, one way or another, that war may be ending. No better day will come.”

He tried again. “Your clothes.”

“If he will not see me, I will change them. If he will see me…” She shrugged. “…Well.”

Whore, he thought, pushing past her suddenly, throwing open the doors that smashed into the walls
beyond. What could he expect? They’d rescued a concubine, hadn’t they? What was that if not a whore?

Then he slowed, let her catch up, though he did not look at her, not even when she tucked a hand under his arm. For he remembered how the whole of Dracul’s court had tried to corrupt her in the year since the captain had delivered her. The Dragon was one; had her appointed Maid of the Chamber to his own wife to keep her accessible. But Ilona had gently, firmly denied all, from the Voivode down…down to Ion. In desperation, he had even asked for her hand, a great honor to a tanner’s daughter from a
boyar
’s son. He had been gently, firmly refused. She had been waiting for one man. For one night. This one.

As they passed through the palace, Ion was aware of two things. The emptiness of corridors that should be thronged with soldiers; and a certainty growing within him that the man who waited above would reject what all others had desired. He had not lied when he told her Vlad had changed. When it was proven, when she was rejected, Ion would be waiting. Suddenly filled with hope, he began to walk more swiftly.

At least there were guards still outside his chamber, two nervous youths who lowered their halberds as soon as they rounded the corner. “It is I,” said Ion.

The halberds were raised. “Pass, my lord.”

There was a chair to the side of the door. Ion took Ilona’s hand, lowered her into it. “Wait here,” he said. “Keep her here,” he added to the guards. Then he knocked on the door. After a while, he heard a grunt within. He pushed it open, stepped through, was about to shut it again. Then didn’t, left it ajar.

—

Vlad stood at the table where he’d stood most of the night, his weight resting on fists placed either side of a map. He had long since lost feeling in the knuckles. But he did not move them, offering this little hardship, this small suffering, alongside his prayers. Perhaps the combination would conjure an army from the inked contours of his realm, his Wallachia, spread before him. An army that would rally to the Dragon banner. But the only one he kept seeing, marching from the west, was the army of his enemy, his cousin, Vladislav of the Danesti clan—joined now with his own, the one he’d sent to intercept him.

What had he done? How had he failed? Two months before he’d swept into Targoviste under that same banner. He hadn’t even had to unsheathe the Dragon’s Talon. The people lined the streets and cheered. The
boyars
knelt before him in the Bisierica Domnesca and swore allegiance. He hadn’t been crowned. The Pretender, Vladislav, still had the crown, the circlet of gold that the Prince of Ungro-Wallachia must wear. But his nobles told him he would have it soon enough. One of them, the most powerful, Albu cel Mare, “the Great,” had sworn he would bring it, with Vladislav’s head still wearing it, within a month. Vlad had dismissed his Turkish allies, for the Voivode of Wallachia had to stand alone. He had stayed in Targoviste to consolidate his rule, dispatching Albu and three-quarters of his army to the western passes.

That was his great mistake. For though Vladislav and his protector Hunyadi had fought and lost to Murad at Kossovo Polje, the Field of the Blackbirds in Serbia, two months before, Vlad had received no reports of their deaths. He had dispatched Albu cel Mare before he found out they were still alive. And there, on the western reaches of his realm, Hunyadi had his fortress of Hunedoara. There he would have gone, there cel Mare would have met him—and Vladislav Dan. Pretender no more. King again…if the man whose boots Vlad heard now was not bringing the granting of his prayers.

“My prince.”

Vlad looked up, tried to read an army in Ion’s face as he had tried to find one on the map before him. Failed again. “What is the word?”

“Nothing new.”

“But I heard a horse. Who came? Or…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “…Who else left?”

“Someone did come. She…”

“She? Who?”

“Ilona.”

Vlad rubbed at his eyes. “Who?” he repeated.

“The concubine?”

Vlad looked down. For a moment, he just stared. Then he said, simply, “Oh.”

“She asks to see you.” No reply. Ion felt hope grow. “She has ridden from the Sisters of Mercy at Rucar, where she has been sheltering with your stepmother.” Still nothing. “Do you wish to see her?”

Vlad suddenly sat down. Ion could see the swollen redness in the hands that now covered the face. “No,” came his muffled voice, “I will see no one but a messenger from the…I will see no one.”

“My prince!”

Her cry came from the open doorway, where the two guards were struggling to hold her. “I told you to keep her out there,” Ion said, stepping forward, arms wide. “The Voivode will see no one.”

One soldier passed his halberd to the other, bent and wrapped both arms around Ilona’s waist. She shrieked, kicked out; the man yelped, squeezed harder.

“Leave her,” said Vlad rising.

“I will deal with her,” Ion said desperately, moving forward. “Come, Ilona—”

“I said, leave her,” Dracula suddenly roared, “and leave us.”

“But, my prince—”

Ion couldn’t finish his sentence. Vlad’s grip on his throat prevented it. He had the taller man up on his toes, fingers like steel bars driving into the skin. “While I am yet Voivode I will not be questioned, only obeyed. Do that, or desert me like all the others, I care not which. And return only if either a messenger comes from the west or my enemy does.”

With that, he bent at the knees and threw Ion backwards into the guards. The one released Ilona, who sank to the floor. Then all three men stumbled out, closing the door behind them.

Vlad went back to the table, sat, and gazed again at the map before him. Ilona, still on the floor, watched him and, for a time, did not, could not, speak; all she’d planned on saying was lost upon seeing him. Ion had been right. Though she’d only studied him once before, in that moment in Edirne before the boat had drifted
beyond sight, she could see that he had changed. The way he held himself. The focus of his stillness. The boy was gone; or rather, she realized in an instant, the boy had been taken away.

“Prince,” she whispered finally.

He started, raising one hand as if to ward her off. “I’d forgotten you were there,” he said.

“It is different for me, then,” she said, rising. “Since you offered me a choice in Edirne, there has not been a single moment of any day that I have forgotten you.”

She moved to him and he watched her come, no expression in his huge green eyes. When she stood beside him, she glanced past his face to the map. “Is all lost?” she asked.

He traced his fingers over the contours of his realm. “Yes,” he replied softly, then looked up at her. “You are first person I have admitted that to. Before I have even admitted it to myself. Why is that?”

“Perhaps because telling anyone else would be handing them a weapon to use against you. But I have no power, so a weapon is useless to me.”

“Perhaps.” He stared down again. “Do you know Albu cel Mare?”

She nodded, shuddered, remembering the huge and lecherous man kneading bruises into her thigh under the Dragon’s table, his wife upon his other side.

“I am almost certain he was one of those who murdered my father,” Vlad continued, “and buried my elder brother alive in a place I have been unable to find.”

“And yet you gave him your army?”

“I had little choice. The
boyars
side with whom they can gain the most from. I thought I’d offered him enough. So I accepted his kiss of peace, though it burned my face as Judas’s kiss must have burned our Savior’s.” He reached up, touched his cheek. “And he told me what I needed to hear—that he would bring my cousin’s head upon a stake.” He shivered. “While my father’s head is lost in some midden, providing scraps for dogs. Dogs like him.”

He lowered his face into his hands. After a moment, she reached for them, moving his fingers aside, laying the tips of hers upon his forehead, moving them through the thick, black hair. Feeling them, he remembered Tokat, her touch in the cell, the brief release of an imagined kindness. The reality of it was different. Not…kind. He took her hand, pulled slightly, she bent…and water ran from her head onto his.

“Lady,” he cried, standing, “you are soaked.”

“It comes with riding through a storm.”

“We must get you dry clothes. Come…”

He turned towards the door, as she dropped her fingers onto his mouth. “I do not need other clothes, my prince. I only need to get out of these ones.”

He looked at her and the feeling of the moment before returned, doubled. He pressed his mouth back against her fingers, breathing out, and she ran them over his lips, pushing the lower one down. He bent, lifted her, arms under her knees; hers went around his neck. “There is a fire here,” he said. “It will warm you.”

“It will,” she laughed, “but I suspect you will warm me more.”

“How old are you?” he said, smiling as he carried her towards the flames.

“You asked me that once before, in Edirne. I am a year older than I was then, so seventeen. The same age as you.”