Vlad: The Last Confession (41 page)

In his confessional, Ion appeared not to have heard, to be gazing at shapes within his eyelids. At Petru’s nod, the young guard reached in and pulled him out. He hung there, his weakened legs not supporting him, so the soldier let him slide onto the floor.

Ilona rose unaided, stood before the confessional, turning to see the man beside her for the first time. His voice, his weeping, his mad laughter had prepared her a little—but not for the wreckage she now saw. “Oh, Ion,” she murmured, kneeling, winding her arms around him. Tears squeezed between their tight-pressed eyes.

“And you, hermit…Father,” Petru corrected himself. The man he’d thought of as just another lonely madman had been a priest once. Like the Abbess, he would be harder to kill for that reason.

The hermit did not move, his head still lowered, only his jaw and mouth revealed under the hood. He was smiling slightly, and then Petru remembered the madman not the priest and said, more sharply, “Get up.” Annoyed, he turned, nodded at Bogdan who came forward. But as he did, the hermit rose, took a step
beyond the confessional, stood there as still as he’d been sitting, head downcast, hands at his side.

It would be better to kill them where they’d killed the monks. Even if they were not going to use the sluice—for there must be no danger of these bodies ever being found—it was still best to keep the bloodstains in one area. Besides, up there near the dais was where they dined; and his wife, since her pregnancy, was easily nauseated. “Come,” said Petru, calm again, “to the feast.”

They moved away, and he followed.

Ion had begun to drag himself slowly. Bogdan stepped in, grabbing an arm, pulling. The second soldier took the other arm. The third walked beside Ilona, and Petru saw that the eager young fool already had his knife out, albeit hanging at his side. You didn’t spook animals bound for slaughter, and that was doubly true for humans.

It was then that the hermit spoke. “Wait,” he said.

His voice was low, the word softly spoken. Yet it carried, and everyone paused. At the door, Horvathy straightened. In the silence of the hall, the only noises came from outside, of men preparing horses for departure. And
beyond it, the cry of a single bird.

“
Kree-ak
,
kree-ak
.”

The hermit turned to it slightly, then turned back as, on Petru’s nod, the older guard left Ion and came towards him. The man did not have his commander’s subtlety. “Come on, you,” he barked, reaching and stepping in, then stepping back and looking down. “What?” he asked, puzzled. And then he sat down suddenly, one hand wrapped round the knife that was inside him.

The hermit stepped around him. It had happened so fast that none of the guards were quite sure what they’d seen. It was Petru who reacted first. Drawing his sword, he shouted, “Stop,” took a step forward. But the hermit ducked low under the rising blade and closed with him, placing his left hand in Petru’s armpit, reaching with his right to the sword-hand, twisting it hard against its inclination. Petru grunted in shock, in sudden pain, dropping the sword. The hermit caught it as it fell, his grip on it reversed, the blade pointing back behind him.

The others began to move. The younger guard threw Ilona down, leapt for the wall, upon which hung a crossbow, a quarrel ever in its groove, a ward against sudden attack. He seized it, as Bogdan screamed, “Let him go,” drew his own sword, ran forward. But the hermit moved into Petru, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest, pivoting as he did. The sword was still held in that reversed grip and it preceded the spinning bodies but not enough for Bogdan to see it properly, or do anything about it. His leather jerkin did nothing to resist the steel. He shrieked, dropped his own sword, staggered back, fell, clutching at the weapon the hermit had released.

Petru jerked, nearly freed himself from the grip. “No,” he screamed, as the guard levelled the crossbow and snapped the trigger, just as the hermit stepped back, pulling Petru close.

The bolt passed through Petru’s throat, taking his next command and, a few moments later, his life.

The hermit let the dying Spatar fall. He landed close to where Bogdan lay. The lieutenant’s hands were wrapped around the grip of the sword whose blade projected a forearm’s length from his back, as if he were deciding whether to pull it out or not. Then, before he could choose, he fell sideways and closed his eyes.

The hermit looked back. The guard who’d first come for him was still sitting up, but his eyes were also closed and he was no longer struggling. The younger guard dropped the crossbow, took a step back, realized there was no way out there, tried to come forward. But the hermit stepped towards him, bending to pick up the knife the youth had dropped when he’d reached for the crossbow. “Help! For the love of God, help me!” the youth wailed at Horvathy. But the Count had not moved, could not. And those above were no doubt expecting such cries, and ignoring them. When he reached the far wall, as the hermit came closer, the guard realized that there was only one place left to go. With a last, despairing cry, he threw himself down the sluice.

The cry continued for a little as the man fell down the mountain; then it was suddenly cut off. The bird’s cry came again, then that too ended sharply. And when it did, the four people left alive all looked at each other.

“Who…?” whispered Ion, though he knew, even if he could not believe it.

Horvathy knew, too. Suddenly, clearly, without question. And it was he who breathed the name.

“Dracula.”

“Yes.” The reply came softly from within the hood.

“No,” said Horvathy, dropping the parchment rolls he held. He only had a knife in his belt. After what he’d just seen, it didn’t seem enough. So he moved fast toward the dais, to the central chair, to the sword lying across it. He lifted it, turned…

…and Dracula was standing a sword’s length away. “That’s mine,” he said softly.

Horvathy raised the sword before him, lifting the point till it was a hand’s breadth from the other man’s face. “Don’t…” he whispered.

“Don’t take what’s mine?” Dracula said.

As he spoke he stepped in, and Horvathy could not thrust, strike, cut. Could do nothing but look in the man’s green, reddened eyes; watch him as he reached up, took the grip and pulled the weapon from the Hungarian’s hands.

Dracula stepped back, lifted the sword high, squinted along its planes. “He has done good work, the blacksmith of Curtea de Arges.” He smiled. “And now I feel whole again.”

He looked back at Horvathy. And the Hungarian saw what he expected to see in that green stare—death. And seeing it, fear left him. He felt calm and he said, “Do what must be done, Dracula. For you send me to join my wife.”

But Dracula shook his head. “Your wife was a pious woman, I heard, Count Horvathy. No doubt she sits now at God’s right hand. While you are bound somewhere else. To that special circle of hell reserved for traitors.”

Fear returned. Horvathy raised a hand. “Brother Dragon…” he said.

“You called me that once before,” said Dracula.

The stroke came fast, from the high plane. It was halfway through his body before the Count fell to his knees, held up only by steel. His one eye remained open, though, when Dracula stooped to stare into it. “And I am not your brother,” he whispered as he jerked out the sword.

Then he turned and looked back at the two other people alive in the room.

From the Dead

Ion’s eyes were clear at last; yet he was unable to believe what they saw. He had only ever known one man who could kill the way he’d just seen these four men killed. That man was dead. Ion had seen his head impaled on a spike.

Then the answer came. Whoever…whatever…was laying the sword again across the arm rests, was walking towards him now, was that man’s
varcolaci
—the undead, risen from his grave, come to feast on the flesh of men.

Yet the hand that now dropped upon his shoulder felt real enough, with its three fingers, its thumb, its stump. His own hand closed over it as he whispered, “Vlad.”

“Yes,” Dracula replied, reaching down, lifting the frail prisoner, half-carrying him back to the confessional, lowering him into it.

“No!” Ilona was weeping as she came forward. “No! It cannot be. Mother of God defend us all, for you are dead! Dead! I buried you.” She gave a last great cry, ran forward, reached up, threw back his hood…and gasped. For no living corpse, ripped from the shroud she’d sewed for him, looked back. The face was not rotten, worm-eaten. It was older, certainly, lined, and everything she had known to be black was white—hair, eyebrows, beard—but it was his face,
beyond any doubt. And she knew, suddenly, certainly, that no night crawler stood before her but a man of flesh, the man she had always loved.

“I buried you,” she sobbed again.

Dracula looked down. “You buried my son. And it was his head that rotted upon the stake on the walls of Constantinople.”

“No!” said Ion, shaking his head. “I saw them cut you down…”

“You saw a huge Turk slice off a head. But you never saw beneath the Turk’s helmet…to Black Ilie, whom I’d sent away the night before, to dress as a Turk one last time, to do this last service for me.”

Ilona staggered forward, till she too could sink onto her confessional’s seat. “You killed your own son?”

Dracula shrugged. “I did not. He died, as he wished to, in battle. For a cause. His father’s cause.”

“But…why?” Ion shook his head. “Why?”

“Because I decided to live—to see what a life I could control would be like. A cave for a kingdom, a hawk my only servant.” He nodded. “And it was good. For a time.”

“For a time?”

“Yes. And then…” He frowned. “And then last year I went to sell a fledgling at the autumn fair in Curtea de Arges, as I always did. A drunk stood up in a tavern and began to read a new pamphlet, more lies based on some truth of my life. Others in the tavern shouted him down—for this is my part of the country and its people have always loved the Draculesti. But I thought of those
beyond, in places where they have never even heard of Wallachia, laughing in their palaces, their inns, their houses. And I realized that these…tales were not only damning my name, they were damning the Order I belonged to, blunting what had been the very spear-tip of Christendom. Instead of a crusader, I’d become a monster—and worse than any traitor.”

Ion shuddered. Yet Dracula didn’t look at him but past him, to the widening pool of blood, the dead Hungarian at its center. “I wanted what Horvathy wanted, a Dragon resurgent. I wanted my sons, when they came of age, to ride proudly under its banner and with their father’s name. But I did not know if what I wanted was possible. I was…confused by the lies that had been told, could no longer see what I was, what I’d been. So I decided to ask the people who knew me best to confess. And those who stood to gain the most to judge.”

“Confess?” echoed Ion. “There never was a confessor, was there?”

“Only once, in Targoviste, that night when…” Dracula looked at Ilona, then above her. “What would be the purpose? No man could judge my actions and their reasons. Only God could.”

“So all this…” Ion clutched the side of the confessional. “…You arranged?”

“I had kept the seal of the Voivode of Wallachia, so I could draw up any documents I chose. I knew the secret ways of the dishonored Dragons. And I had enough gold—for I have been training and selling goshawks now for five years.” He nodded. “It is easy enough to arrange such things—when you understand both the hunger and the terror of men.”

Outside the hall, the sounds still came of preparations for departure. Dracula listened for a moment. “I do not know if it will be enough. The Cardinal will take the testimony to Rome, along with his opinions. Perhaps the Pope will think it expedient to have this sinner redeemed, to have his name and his Order rise. Perhaps not. It is not something I can control. I have done all that I can.”

“But how will they explain this, my prince,” Ilona said, swallowing as she pointed to the bodies.

A half-smile came. “A falling-out over spoils? Over a sword, maybe?” He pointed to the Dragon’s Talon on the chair. “Hungarian versus Wallachian, Roman versus Orthodox, as it ever was, while the Turk rejoices?” Dracula nodded. “But we will be gone, and they will think us disposed of, like the scribes. For there are other ways out of this castle, out of this very room, that only I know.”

He went to the door, passing the Count’s body, its lake of blood, drew back the bolt that Petru had shot. “They will be coming soon,” he said. “They will be wanting…this!” He stooped, picked up one of the rolls of parchment there. “‘The Last Confession of Dracula.’ Do you think it will make a good pamphlet? Will the people of the world frighten their children to sleep with my true tale?” He smiled. “Perhaps it is not bloody enough, eh?”

A cry came again, a hunting bird. Crossing, Dracula put the paper down upon a chair, reached within his jerkin, pulled out a gauntlet, pulled it onto his left, maimed hand. Then at the arrow slit, he leaned into the opening and gave a loud cry—“
Kree-ak! Kree-ak!
”—as he thrust his hand through the gap.

They all heard what could have been an echo but realized was a response. Dracula suddenly bent, as if pulled outwards. Then he slid back. On his fist sat a goshawk.

As Dracula brought it back into the room, the bird blinked at the two people sat there, then craned its neck down towards the meat Dracula pulled from a waist-pouch beneath his habit. “My beauty,” he whispered, then looked up because Ilona was rising.

“You called me that once. You could not call me that now.”

He watched her limp towards him. “You will always be beautiful to me, Ilona.”

Ion was rising, too, slipping off the seat, dragging himself forward. “And me, my prince? Am I still your servant? Or will I only now and forever be your traitor?”

“No, Ion. As I hope for forgiveness, so I must forgive.” He nodded. “You did what you had to do.” He glanced at Ilona. “For love and for hate. But you always were, and are, my only friend.”

Using the table edge to pull himself almost upright, Ion half-stood. This close, he realized his sight had indeed grown better for he could see, as if through a mist, the faces before him. Peering, he could even tell the color of their eyes. Ilona’s, that had bewitched him so long ago, still hazel. The goshawk’s red. And Dracula’s? That surprised him, for they were no longer just green but red also. “What now?” he said.

Dracula raised his other hand. “Listen,” he said. “Do you hear them?”

They tipped their heads. Men shouted above. A horse snorted.

“Hear what, my prince?” Ilona asked.

“The bells on Mehmet’s standard. He has raised his horsetail
tug
before the walls of Constantinople. He is going to war.” He turned to Ion. “Do you remember our game of
jereed
, Ion? The wager we made?”

Ion rubbed his eyes. “No…wait, yes! Your foreskin against…a bird, wasn’t it?”

“A falcon. And Mehmet never honored the wager. So it is time to make him.” He leaned forward and his red eyes shone. “Mehmet owes me a hawk.”