Dracula (A Modern Telling) Page 11

  “I will visit as soon as I can. They’re calling me a guest of the Sultan’s court, but I think it will not be better than a hostage. I may not see you for some time.”

  She kissed me, hard, and then proceeded to gather as many of their important items as she could. We loaded the wagon and I said my goodbye to her younger sisters as I placed them inside. You could now hear the slow march of the armies. Armies back then played drums with their march, both to place soldiers on the same rhythm and also as a psychological tactic to unnerve an enemy with the slow approach of battle. We stood silently and listened to the drums a while.

  “Please come with us,” she whispered to me.

  “There is nothing in the world I would rather do … but I cannot. If my father cannot take back his throne, we will be cast out and hunted by Abel’s men until we’re all dead. The only way my father can take his throne back is with the help of the Moslems. I must go, but I will come for you. Across oceans of time, I will come for you.”

  I kissed her then and it was as if time had left us. I lost track of where I was and I did not want it to end. But at the last, she was the one that pulled away. She was always stronger than me.

  I helped her into the wagon and Grigore spurred the horse. I walked alongside it as long as I could.

  “Grigore, she is my very soul.”

  “I know, young master. She will be waiting safely for your return. I promise it.”

  When the wagon gained speed and was on the outskirts of the village, it began to pull ahead. I saw her little sisters waive to me and blow kisses, and Elizabeth turned to me and mouthed something … I was unable to see what it was. It was the last thing she ever said to me, and to this day I do not know what it was.

  For a noble, it was easy to escape the castle and the approaching horde. It is a trend of history I think: the poor suffer the worst for conflicts started by the rich. We fled in a caravan and went far into the mountains. The Carpathians back then, before the days of the helicopter and the tractor, may as well have been the bottom of the sea. Man could not survive in either environment on his own.

  We watched from a mountaintop as the army devoured the village. I had been correct to send Elizabeth away. Many of the huts were set on fire and I could see droves of women taken by the army and forced to march with them. Pay was little back then and for a soldier the greatest attribute of war was the ability to plunder the land and people. So they took the women and left the children with the men as they marched to the castle. My father had to make it appear as if he were fighting and so masses of his army died defending the castle. When the fighting was over, as it was in no more than a few hours, Abel and his generals walked in to claim their prize. What I would have given to see his face when he found an empty castle.

  We turned then, and left my homeland.

  Our pace was steady but comfortable. Our path was treacherous, some of the trails no more than a few inches wide with drops of thousands of feet on either side. Abel’s men would not search far and so we were not afraid of them. The forest, in certain regions, grew cold, and at night I had just a fur blanket and a fire to keep me warm, which would have been enough had the vicious winds not kept extinguishing the fire. After ten or so attempts, we decided we would have to sleep without the comfort of flame.

  After a night of little sleep, we awoke and had a breakfast of cold meat and wine. I ate little for I didn’t want to march through snow and sand and rock with a full belly. But soon, within days, we were out of the mountains and on the open plains, headed for the Sultan’s court.

  Radu was with me, as were about sixty or seventy men seeing to our safety. My father was going elsewhere and took the bulk of his men and split from our group, my mother riding with him.

  Radu and I barely spoke. My mind was completely occupied with calculations of when I would be able to see Elizabeth. It would take, by my estimation, at least a year for my father to take back his castle. Once that was complete perhaps a fortnight — if my father was wise — to get the Moslems everything that was promised them for their help. Then my father would have to request for us from the court. This was tricky, as he very well may have decided that it would be better to have his sons in an ally’s court, but in the end I knew he would request us back. Though he perhaps had twenty children, maybe more, we were his only two legitimate heirs. He would need us.

  One night, out on open, grassy plains, I lay on my back and watched the stars. Little wind was upon us so the fire burned fiercely and toasted my feet. Radu was drunk and I could hear him in his tent. I saw a young girl of perhaps no more than ten run out of the tent completely nude, weeping and holding torn clothing to her chest. Radu flew out of the tent in a rage and gave chase. The men there with us found it funny and were laughing. “The little master’s got a man’s erection all right,” they would say.

  Radu jumped on this poor girl who I assumed had been taken from a nearby village. He flipped her over and spread her legs and I knew he would ravage her right there. I jumped to my feet and sprinted at him. Without a word, I tackled him to the ground. The impact made us both grunt as we flew onto the grass. He was so drunk he did not realize it was me. He was shouting for the guards to get me off of him and they were simply laughing. Most people, those guards included, did not believe my father would be able to come back into power. As such, the men did not defer to us. We were two spoiled brats to them that were about to be taught a lesson we deserved beneath the Sultan’s whip.

  The young girl stood and ran. When I saw she was gone, I rolled off Radu and to the side.

  “Are you mad!” he screamed. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “She was just a young girl.”

  “So what? She’s a whore. They’re all whores. All girls, all women, their duty is to pleasure us.”

  “That is not their duty.” He pulled out a sword that he kept tucked into his waistband. I pulled out mine and jumped to my feet. He thrust at me and I parried and spun around, cutting his hand. He shouted in fury as he wildly swung for me over and over. I was able to move quickly enough as he telegraphed every swing.

  In one powerful thrust, the tip of my sword entering the wound on his hand again, I knocked the sword out of his hand and the tip of my blade was at his chest over the heart. “We will die, damn you, but I will not die a monster.”

  He scoffed and walked to his tent.

  We began our march again and most of the following days were spent enduring heat and humidity. We would stop at small villages and restock our supplies and then march again. I did notice something one night however, when all the men were gathered around the fire for a meal: we had lost at least ten of them. It was a trend that would continue as we progressed. The men did not fear my father any longer and had already been paid. They simply began to abandon us.

  The capital of the Ottoman’s had just recently been switched to Constantinople after the Moslem conquest of the city. It was where we were heading, and the quickest way was over the Black Sea. We had chartered a ship but it was no longer there. We were forced to take a barge that had been converted to a slave ship. Radu and the handful of men that were left with us took up quarters below deck and I saw then the true wretched state of slavery.

  Mothers and daughters huddled in corners to avoid the ravages of the slave masters, and the other slaves. People ate their own feces for lack of food…. I had never seen anything like it. Though we had serfs and servants, this was something unlike any I had experienced. It pained me and filled me with terror that this was how the Sultan treated those deemed inferior.

  The journey across the sea was pleasant as there were no storms. Though Radu and the men stayed below deck, I stayed above with the slaves who were propelling the ship with giant oars. I sat near them and listened to them speak in their strange tongues. I had been taught both Greek and Latin but these slaves spoke neither. Their language was more sung than spoken and I thought it sounded poetic along with blue sky and fresh sea air.

  Whe
n we arrived at Constantinople, I had pictured a city much like Budapest, which had been the largest city near me. But I was not prepared for what I saw.

  Walls were as high as giants, and the city itself parted and allowed ships through the center on a canal. The buildings were massive and beautiful and the city showed few scars from the siege that had just occurred. The Ottomans, it seemed, had planned to make Constantinople their capital before they ever invaded and had left the city nearly wholly intact.

  We docked, and as the slaves were brought off the ship we joined them and quickly separated ourselves. I watched their faces as they were dragged off to the markets. Christians at this time had banned slavery. It was purely a Moslem institution and would be so until the founding of America. I saw a young girl whose mother was picking up clods of dirt and rubbing it into her hair. I did not understand it at the time, but now I understand she was making the young girl less desirable. For the men that would buy her only had one purpose in mind.

  A man, a soldier in ornate blue and silver garb, greeted us and one of the men with us spoke to him in what I assumed was Ottoman Turkish. The man turned to us and said, “You will go with him.” He said nothing more and we asked nothing. We simply began following the soldier into our new lives.

  My brother and I were taken to a large house. We were sat in a room without instruction and left to ourselves. We sat a long time. Though Radu and I had our differences, we were the only people we knew in a foreign land and I felt a kinship to him then that I had not ever felt before.

  “I don’t like this place,” I said. “I don’t like that father did this.”

  “It was the only way to get his throne back.”

  “The Moslems are heathens. They care nothing for life. He shouldn’t have made deals with them.”

  The doors opened and a harsh-looking man with a black beard walked in. A large sword was at his hip and he looked us over before speaking.

  “The Sultan will not be meeting with you. You will stay here in this house. You will be fed and taken care of but you will not leave.”

  Though he spoke my tongue, he did not speak it well and I guessed at what he had said. But when he left a slave came and brought with her fruit and cheese and bread. As we ate, another man came, this time with a boy in front of him. The boy was wearing silk robes and a strange-looking tube-shaped hat that appeared to have diamond flecks in it.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  Instead of the boy speaking, the man behind him said, “This is Mehmed, son of the Great Sultan Murad.”

  Radu instantly stood and fell to one knee, bowing his head low. I continued to eat.

  The boy finally spoke in Greek and said, “I have come to see the princes of Wallachia that are to have our aid. I have heard your people are warriors but you do not look like warriors to me.”

  “No man appears as much to your Grace,” Radu said. “We are your humble servants.”

  I stared at him as if he’d gone mad. I couldn’t believe he’d so quickly given himself over.

  The boy nodded. “He shows me respect, as is proper. You will show me respect too.”

  “Respect is earned,” I said. “I thank you for your hospitality in accepting my brother and I, but respect is something different. In my land, guests are honored.”

  “It is so in my land as well. But you are not guests. You are hostages, sent by your father to ensure that my father receives what he was promised. As such, you will bow your head to me.” He stepped forward and thrust his sandaled foot out. “You may begin by kissing my feet. An appropriate gesture for someone in your stature to someone in mine.”

  I looked at his foot and then took another bite of cheese. When Radu saw that I would not comply, he bent down and kissed his foot. The boy laughed and said, “Good. You, you will come with me. Your brother can stay here.”

  Radu stood and followed him out without even looking back at me. After that, I was alone.

  That first night, I slept on rugs and watched the crowds of the city out of windows that had no glass. The noise of the city was like a modern-day Manhattan. There were carts and horses and soldiers, and slaves and hawkers of all manner of goods and transports and camels. Not that I could have slept in such a place anyhow, but that night I certainly did not sleep at all. I thought about my sweet Elizabeth and her beautiful sisters and I hoped Grigore had done what he had promised.

  The next morning, I found what was little more than bread and water laid in the front room. I ate a little and then attempted to open the doors to go outside, but they were locked. As I had suspected, I was little more than a prisoner. That day, I decided I would spend the days planning for my return to my beloved Carpathians. I had spent a few hours daydreaming when the doors were then unlocked and an old man entered. He was tall and thin and his hair was gray. His eyes appeared so white I thought him blind but decided against it when he maneuvered around the furniture in the room.

  “I am Ahmad,” he said. “I am your tutor.”

  “What do I need a tutor for old man?”

  “You are to read the Quran and study our language. Very few of us, you will find, speak Greek or Latin.”

  He walked to me and sat down but his eyes did not move and I realized I had been mistaken: in fact, he was blind.

  “But I must tell you something now, young master,” he said. “You must show respect when you are here.”

  “The Turks have slaughtered my people for decades. It is … difficult to be objective.”

  “I am not Turkish myself. I am a slave brought from Greece. But I tell you that your life can be made very miserable. These heathens care nothing for the word of Christ and think nothing of extinguishing the candle of one of his flock. You must not provoke them like you did with young Mehmed. He is the Sultan’s son and can have you killed at any moment.”

  I sighed and stared out the windows. My loneliness and the overwhelming feeling of being a stranger among strangers overtook me. “I do not understand why I am here. My father has sworn, and has made me swear, that we will fight the Moslems until our last breath. And yet he has sent his only two heirs to be servants among them.”

  “If you wish to be successful at politics, you must be amoral. There are only issues, not people. And if it benefits you to side with a people to solve one issue, then the prude politician must do it. Your father is such a politician. Ideology means nothing to him. Power is everything, and keeping or getting back that power is his life’s purpose. And if that means befriending today the enemies he had yesterday, so be it.” He reached out and searched for me, his hand resting softly on my knee. “Do you understand?”

  “No, I do not. This is cowardice. My father was too much of a coward to fight and so he enlisted the help of the Turks.”

  “You mustn’t say such things. You see there are—”

  The door suddenly opened and the man from yesterday stood there. “Mehmed the Magnificent wishes to see you now.”

  “The magnificent?” I asked. “Yesterday he was just Mehmed. What has he done since then to become magnificent?”

  “I suggest you watch your tongue lest I cut it out, young Christ follower.”

  I didn’t say anything else as I followed the man out. We went to an awaiting litter of men and climbed into a carriage. The men hoisted us up onto their shoulders and began to carry us through the great city. I said nothing until we arrived at our destination and then I asked only where my brother was.

  “Go inside,” was his reply.

  When I went in to what I can only describe as a palace, I was taken to a small room in the back and told to wait. Outside were posted two guards. Inside the room was nothing but rugs and pillows and I lay back and stare at the ceiling.

  Time passed agonizingly slow and minutes turned to hours. I attempted to ask the guards how long they wished to keep me, but they refused to speak and so I sat still and tried to think of pleasant things.

  It wasn’t until nightfall that someone came for me. By then, I
was very hungry as I had eaten only a few bites of bread in the morning. The man that came for me walked me through palace gardens lit with torchlight to a large room where a banquet was taking place. It was for all intents and purposes an orgy, but because the Moslems could not openly have an orgy, everyone had their clothes on, and instead of wine, grape juice was served. Mehmed sat on a gold throne surrounded by women, a harem of his own making, and next to him sat Radu. I entered the room and was delivered to them. As I approached, I stopped in my tracks. Behind Mehmed stood a man, dressed in silk, his hands behind his back. His skin was white as marble; he had ruby-red lips and long fingers, the nails elongated.

  When I saw him that first time, it was as if everyone else in the room had frozen still and only he and I remained animated. He looked at me with his piercing emerald eyes, and smiled, revealing small, pearl-white teeth. He was, to this day, the most beautiful man I had ever seen.

  “Hello, Brother.”

  I was standing in front of the throne and Radu was addressing me, but my eyes were locked on the man who was standing behind the throne, who was now on his way off to the side and away from us.

  “Boy, did you not hear Radu the Great address you?”

  I looked to Mehmed, who was clearly drunk. “Since yesterday, you have become magnificent and he has become great. It must have been a very eventful day.”

  “Such insolence. Who do you think you are speaking with, boy?”

  “He’s always been such,” Radu said. “Ignore him.”

  Mehmed looked me over and said, “Go and eat. You will not be invited to such banquets again, boy.”

  I turned away from them, looking for the man I had seen. When I didn’t see him I found a table that was unoccupied except for a man and a woman engaged in conversation. I sat away from them and saw the man’s hand up the woman’s gown. Before me on the table was a variety of meats and quail eggs and fried rice and chicken and fruits. I reached for a leg of chicken, my stomach growling, when it felt as if ice were encircling my wrist. The cold shocked me and I was unsure what had occurred until I noticed the white hand draped over my skin. I looked up to see the man that had been standing behind the throne.