Vlad: The Last Confession (7 page)

The Snatch

He’d seen her. He didn’t know if she’d seen him.

As he preceded the
palanquin
down the street, Vlad smiled. He hadn’t really seen her, of course. Never had. She’d been encased in latticework when they’d talked. She was wearing a metal veil now. He wondered what she looked like beneath it. What if she was hideous? What if that rich voice emerged from the face of an aspiring crone?

He shook his head. It seemed unlikely. Mehmet’s tastes were known to be peculiar but Vlad had never heard that they ran to the ugly. Besides, how she looked should make no difference to him. She was a lady from his land, in peril. And though he had listened to many wonderful tales in his time with the Turk, it was the legends from his childhood, sung before his father’s fire, that he still loved best. And in the courts of the Christian world it was tales of Arthur and his knights that inspired. He saw himself as Lancelot now, pledged to a Guinevere.

But would the tale have been different if Guinevere had been a hag? Would Troy have fallen if Helen’s nose had a wart on the tip? It shouldn’t matter. Didn’t. Only his promise mattered, and how he fulfilled it. Nothing else.

There were two routes to Mehmet’s
saray
. One obvious, one less so. Vlad needed the
palanquin
to take the latter.

The long, twisting Street of Nectar ended in a fork at a fountain. A wider avenue led to the left, though it was somewhat narrowed by stalls on each side and people bunched around them, buying provisions for their suppers. The other way, narrower still, led slightly uphill past a
mescid
, a small mosque, and, perversely, a row of taverns right next to it. Glancing up that lane, hoping all was in readiness there, Vlad slipped into the throng before the stalls. He had no precise plan, other than chaos. But how to cause it?

The first stall belonged to a seller of watermelons, whole or by the piece. Tied to it by a rope was a donkey, who stood in the way of such creatures, one rear hoof on its tip, eyes glazed in its lowered head, chewing on nothing. Dull beast, Vlad thought, hearing above the haggling and clink of coin the steady approach of booted men, the cry of, “Make way there!”

He glanced back, saw the silver headdress and heron plume of the
bolukbasi
, the guards’ officer, twenty paces away. Biting his lip, he looked before him again, and thought of something. Drawing his
bastinado
from his belt, he lifted the donkey’s tail and shoved the forearm’s length of stick up the animal’s arse.

He had his desire. Instant chaos. A flying hoof missed his head by a wing-beat. He leapt back, into the shelter of a doorway,
beyond the reach of flailing hooves. He was still hit by the things that started flying—bits of its master’s stall that the donkey destroyed; melon—yet since the beast was tied to the stall, it was also dragging it into the center of the roadway.

From beneath flung debris, Vlad looked at the guards, halted just ten paces away at the junction. Over the din of braying beast, screaming owner and panicked purchasers, the
bolukbasi’s
voice still carried: “Clear the road there, dolt!”

The watermelon vendor—an old man with a humped back—took a pace towards them, bent over, hands clasped before him in supplication. “I will try,
effendi
, but this animal, cursed of Allah…”

It was all he could say before the donkey kicked him, catapulting him into the stall opposite, bringing half of it down. His own was dragged further into the street by the raging animal, who finally broke free and went galloping away, the snapped-off strut scything into bystanders.

Surveying the wreckage, the
bolukbasi
shook his head and bellowed an order: “This way!” Then he led his men up the other road.

Vlad let them get twenty paces ahead, then followed.

“Are you ready?” he whispered.

—

“Nothing?”

Radu shook his head. He’d been down to the junction for the fourth time. Dropping onto the stool beside Ion he muttered, “Maybe they’ve already passed the other way.”

“No. Vlad would have come to get us. He knows we have little time.” Ion looked again at the
mescid
beside the tavern. The
muezzin
had ceased his call to prayer only a few minutes before. Because it was a Friday, hostages were allowed to remain in town till prayers were over. Stay
beyond that, and they would feel more than a touch of an
agha
’s
bastinado
.

It was not only the hardness of the stool that made Ion shift. He turned and looked through the bobbing heads of the tavern’s occupants to see Aisha, the-yet-to-be-attained, with a wisp of brown hair damp upon her forehead. He watched as she wiped it with a red kerchief, saw a man grab the cloth from her and ostentatiously suck it, to hers and others’ laughter.

Ion groaned, and Radu mistook it. “I know! If he does not come will these not answer the
muezzin
’s call and go to their devotions?”

“These?” Ion forced his gaze away from his beloved. “These are Bektashi. They have other devotions.”

“I thought they were janissaries?”

“They are.”

“And all janissaries are Moslem, are they not?”

“Yes. Wherever they are from, to join the
ortas
they have to come to Islam.”

Radu frowned, staring. “And doesn’t the Qur’an forbid the drinking of spirits and wine?”

“It does. Your brother could quote you the verse. But that does not stop many drinking. They say that even the Sultan, Murad, is given to bouts of over-indulgence. And many janissaries belong to the Dervish cult of Bektashi. Moslem but different. These of the…” He squinted at a bare calf muscle, the elephant tattooed there. “…Of the 79th
orta
have adopted Bektashi ways. Unveiled women.” He glanced sourly at the laughing Aisha. “Unbound hair. Drinking.”

“But…?”

Ion raised a hand. Allow the flood of Radu’s questions to begin and it would never stop. “Go to the crossroads again.”

“But I just came back.”

“Go!”

“Who is the prince’s son here?” Radu grumbled, but rose.

Ion glanced into the tavern again but couldn’t see Aisha. Gone to fetch more
raki
probably. He had bought several jugs—“tinder for the flames,” Vlad had said. He had a plan for everything, from winning at dice to stealing fledgling hawks from a nest. But Mehmet’s concubine was not a baby bird up a tree, to be taken just after its first moult. Ion could only hope that what had been planned would happen soon, before prayers he could hear being sung in the
mescid
next door ended, and the first stroke of the
bastinado
fell on their upraised Christian backsides.

Then he saw Radu running up the street. Behind him a silver heron’s plume bobbed above the crowd. Rising, he did as Vlad had told him.

“Look,” he shouted, “here come some of Mehmet’s arselickers!”

—

Vlad, ten paces behind the
palanquin
, heard the shout, saw the first of the tavern’s clientele spill out from under its awning—and smiled. The rivalry between the janissaries and the palace bodyguards was intense. Both were elite troops, the Sultan’s chosen. But the
peyk
—halberdiers of the guard—were nearly all Turks and freemen; the janissaries were all Christian converts and still slaves, despite their status. This worsened the enmity between the groups and would, he hoped, help his cause.

He moved till he was within one donkey-length of the covered litter; till, through the folds of his headscarf, he could see the
bolukbasi
of the
peyk
in profile. The man was straining to ignore the comments on his manhood, his parentage and his predilection for bestiality. Vlad knew he had his orders, could not allow himself to be drawn into the tavern brawl Vlad needed. He also knew that if one did not start on its own, he would have to start it.

The guard marched forward in step, lowering their halberds at a snapped command. For a moment, Vlad thought they might escape with nothing but insults, until a huge man stepped into the roadway…and lifted up his shirt.

“See how smooth my skin is!” he called. “See the luxuriance of my hair.” He ran his fingers up a thick blond mat, from groin to chest. “Show us yours,
effendi
. Let us compare beauties!”

Vlad knew the man. His slave name was Abdulkarim, “Servant to the Powerful.” But he was known to all by his name and the land of his birth: Sweyn the Swede. No one knew by what byways he had come to be the Sultan’s soldier and slave. But all knew what this baring of skin meant. For Mehmet, in his two years as sultan, had adopted Greek customs as well as their dress. To surround himself with men who were happy, he had their spleens cut out; thus removing, from those who survived the operation—and many did, the Persian surgeons were so good—the very seat of moroseness.

It hadn’t seemed to work for the
bolukbasi
. “Out of the way, intemperate dog!” he bellowed, grasping the hilt of his sheathed sword. “Before I remove your spleen and half your guts with it.”

“Oh, terror!” cried the Swede, fanning himself with his raised shirt. “But tell me! Could you not also remove a few hemorrhoids?” With that, he turned about and bared his arse.

More jeering. More laughter. For a moment, Vlad thought that the
bolukbasi
was going to draw his sword and thrust it up the tempting target. But then the Swede straightened, robed and, to great cheers, began to move out of the roadway. The officer turned, and gestured his men forward.

Vlad looked around, desperately seeking he knew not what. He saw that some of the younger janissaries were still clutching three-legged stools, willing the fight. Even as he watched, though, these were being reluctantly lowered.

So Vlad bent and snatched one up. He too had seen the tattoos of the
orta
that held the tavern. “Elephants!” he cried, and hurled the stool straight at the
bolukbasi
’s head. He saw it come, ducked enough so it thumped into his helmet not his face. But the sound of wood on metal rang like another battle-cry. A wave of stools, mugs, jugs came crashing over the guards. Many struck the
palanquin
, which had been hastily dropped by men protecting themselves. Screams came from within it.

“To me!” yelled the
bolukbasi
, blood running from the blow to his head. His men rallied to him, halberds swatting aside thrown wood, points lowering towards the janissaries.

Vlad had moved to the shelter of the far side of the litter. Ion and Radu joined him there.

“What now?” Ion shouted.

They were on the opposite side to the door. Vlad peered through the lattice. He could see two shapes within. “This,” he said, drawing his dagger, plunging it in just below the roof.

Screams came from one woman inside, but were suddenly cut off as if smothered. Ion joined in the cutting on the other side, sawing down through the thin wood. By the time he reached the bottom, Vlad was already cutting along the edge of the roof. When he reached Ion’s cut, the three jabbed their fingers in to the gap, and pulled.

The wall of the litter gave with a loud rip. And there, on its floor, crouched a masked and painted
houri
, her hand clamped across the mouth of a servant. Through the veil of coins, eyes glittered.

“Come,” said Vlad, speaking Osmanlica, “swiftly now. And you…” he added, looking at the prone maid, touching the hilt of his dagger back in its sheath, “…silence or death!”

Clasping Ilona’s hand, he drew her from the wrecked
palanquin
.

Beyond it, the
peyk
had begun to march into the tavern. Wood had been surpassed by steel, bruises by blood. All were focused on the fight, on surviving it, so none saw the four shrouded figures slipping away.

—

Nestled beside the new stone bridge that Murad had built over the River Ergene was a sprawl of jetties, flat-bottomed barges bumping against them. With night falling, and workers drawn to mosque or tavern, few observed their passage to a certain pier.

“You’re late!” called Alexandru, the captain. “I was just about to cast off.” He looked at the veiled woman. “This her?”

“Yes.”

“Then get her aboard, so we can be gone. It’s dangerous enough what you have been about, Vlad Dracula. And my ship has orders to sail from the port of Enez in two days, with or without me.”

“Here is what I promised you.”

The captain weighed the bag in one hand. “Seems light.”

“It is. Half what I promised you.”

“Half? Now, wait—”

“My father will give you the other half when you deliver her…and this letter.” He handed over a sealed roll. “Besides, you say you do not do this only for silver?”