A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula (16 page)

How long did it take to walk to Ilona’s apartments and back? Where was Szelényi?

Vlad pushed his letter aside. He was in no state to concentrate on it, let alone do it justice. He rose from his chair, stretching prodigiously. He needed to be in the open, he needed to ride for miles, to run on his own legs for miles, to best someone, anyone in sword play. Or in a straightforward, unarmed fight. He slammed his fist into the nearest cushion.

When Szelényi got back, he’d make him take him out of this closed-in hell. It was worse than Tîrgovi
ş
te.

Hurry, damn you.

Szelényi’s familiar knock sounded at the door, heralding his slightly breathless entrance. To Vlad’s disappointment, he still carried the letter to Ilona in his hand. Striding to the prince, he held it out like a prize.

“The lady answered.”

Vlad’s heart soared. Seizing the letter, he shook it open and read the single line she’d written under his:

“There is nothing you can say.”

What in hell does that mean?

Frustrated, he tossed the useless note on to his desk. “Count, would you care to ride out with me?”

“Of course. I’ll have them ready the horses.”

As Szelényi left once more, Vlad picked up the letter and gazed at it harder, as if willing it to reveal something more. Like what had happened to Ilona between her escape and her first marriage.
Yes, her
first
marriage. I
will
make another for her!

Her writing was just as he remembered it—hasty, almost to the point of a scrawl, and yet perfectly legible, free of elaborate loops. Firm.

He realised there was hope in that line. Perhaps not the hope he’d been looking for, but surely it told him she wasn’t sinking back into indifference and vagueness.

“I stopped paying attention, Vlad, but I was never stupid.”

Vlad had the feeling that, distressed or not by the king’s infernal procrastination and wavering, Ilona was paying attention again.

All he had to do was find a way to make Matthias change his mind, to make their marriage possible.

Chapter Thirteen

Transylvania and Wallachia, 1457-1458

“He’s coming, he’s coming!” The servant gasped, collapsing in a breathless heap on the floor. “Save yourself, lady, take your lady mother and run! Everyone must run!”

“Stand up and explain yourself,” Ilona said severely. Although the man’s hysterical fear could not but communicate itself to her, making her stomach lurch and twist, she knew better than to act on his fear without any facts.

She was alone in the comfortable hall at Horogszegi. Her mother, recovering from some fever that had laid her low all summer and autumn, was in her bedchamber, resting. Mihály, inevitably, was in Hungary, and Miklós and his wife absent as usual on one of the larger estates. And so it fell to her, peacefully embroidering a shawl as a gift for Maria, to act on this new crisis.

“Who is coming?” she demanded as the man hauled himself to his feet, still overexcited but with a touch of the sheepish behind the wildness in his eyes.

He uttered, “Dracula!”

Before she could prevent it, one arm closed across her leaping heart. Her other hand nearly made it as far as her hair before she forced it to drop back to her side. The needle fell, dangling from her work.

“Vlad Dracula? The Prince of Wallachia?” she said, to remove any possible doubt.

“Of course!”

“Don’t be silly,” Ilona reproved. “The prince will not harm us or anyone on this estate! He is my father’s friend and ally. You are spreading stupid fear where there should be none!”

All the same, she had to admit that the man’s behaviour was at least partly Vlad’s fault. He’d led several punitive raids into Transylvania, to help Mihály quell Cilli-inspired revolts and to punish the German towns for their fickle harbouring of pretenders to Vlad’s throne. The German towns had long played that game, of course, and the princes had been forced to put up with it, doing no more than writing strong letters of protest or curtailing the town’s trading privileges in Wallachia.

Only Vlad went a step further, using military intervention, and if the carnage he left behind was ridiculously exaggerated by the towns to evoke the sympathy of Hungary, well, it was still horribly efficient and thorough.

Mihály was back in control of Transylvania, thanks largely to Vlad’s help and the fearsome reputation he was accruing—much according to plan, Ilona thought cynically. But his raids had never come close to Horogszegi before. There was no need.

“Are you sure it’s the Prince of Wallachia?” she asked the man doubtfully.

“He’s not as easy man to mistake!” was the indignant answer.

Ilona frowned at him for insolence, and he tried visibly to pull himself together. “It’s him,” he said firmly. “And a huge, wild army. Oh my God, he’s at the gate! My lady, what’ll we do?”

“Let him in,” Ilona said dryly. “With all respect. He is a welcome guest in my father’s house!”

Not entirely convinced by her calm good sense, the man seemed inclined to dawdle, to debate the sense of allowing such a man entrance, but before he could go and obey her, Ilona heard the sound of voices below. Something thumped loudly, and booted footsteps sounded on the stairs, leaping up them, surely, two or more at a time.

Ilona and the servant stared at each other, each wondering if somehow Ilona had got it wrong.

The door burst open, and Vlad Dracula strode in.

At once the room filled with his size, his presence. Though he wore no armour, there was something unmistakably martial about his dark clothing and long boots. His father’s sword and several daggers clanked at his belt. His long, black hair flowed over his leather-padded shoulders.

Ilona stood up, immediately drawing his gaze. His furious dark eyes slammed into her like a blow.

“Prince,” she managed. “You are most welcome, though you take us by surprise.”

The fury darkened, retreated enough for a gleam of sardonic amusement and, perhaps, shame. “Forgive my—sudden—entrance. Your people denied any of the family was home, and I knew they were lying.”

“That’s the price you pay for
a few atrocities from the past
. May I know why you’ve come?”

A smile had begun to play around his lips and eyes. “I suppose I must have come to be chastised again.” He hesitated. “You must know there is no danger from me. Neither I nor my men will harm anyone or anything of yours.”

“I’m aware of it. They”—she indicated the servants now gathering in the doorway, staring at Vlad with popping eyes—“are not.”

“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I need to speak to Mihály, and this seemed the easiest way.”

“He’s in Buda.”

Turning away, Vlad looked as if he would slam his suddenly closed fist on the table. With an obvious effort of will, he relaxed his hand.

“I understood he would be here.”

“He was detained in Buda. He still plans to come home, but we don’t know when. Jakob, have them bring wine for the prince, then go about your business.” The man bolted, looking back over his shoulder as if unsure whether it was right to leave her in the company of the terrible prince. Vlad kicked the door shut in the faces of the other servants and walked towards Ilona.

She regarded him in what she hoped was a sensible and mature way. “Why did you need to speak to my father so urgently? Can I help?”

A short laugh escaped him. “I don’t know—can you?” The smile was back, teasing about his lips and eyes, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that the anger hadn’t left, was merely controlled—for the time being.

He said, “Perhaps you know I have been in correspondence with your father.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“About you.”

Her breath caught. The unwelcome colour began to seep into her face as she turned away.

He said, “You didn’t know?”

“I know there was a letter from you.”

A letter proposing a marriage between the prince and Ilona. Mihály had told her that much, sending her into a state of blissful shock. She hadn’t dared to hope that those few moments in his arms, his kisses, would lead to anything further. Men flirted with attraction; they married politics and power. And Mihály’s position in either was still uncertain. Though that fact hadn’t made her father grab at the offer. Instead, he’d told her about it, brooding, frowning at her without really seeing her.

“Historically, Wallachia is not stable,” he’d mused with regret. “Vlad might change that. If anyone can, it will be him. But a marriage for you… Interesting. I’ll discuss it with your aunt.”

In an agony of anticipation she’d waited and waited for anything further to be said on the matter, and nothing ever was. Gradually, the fever of longing died to a dull ache, because she imagined Vlad had lost interest, found a better marriage to pursue, although she heard nothing about that either. Maria kept her informed of court intrigues from time to time, but even she had said nothing.

And so Ilona went back to waiting.

Vlad said, “I came for an answer.” His implacable voice reached deep inside her, filling her with hope once more, because he hadn’t forgotten, had, in fact, cared enough to come riding furiously out of his way with an army at his back just to get his answer.

Ilona repeated, “He’s not here,” and it came out as a whisper.

“What did you say?”

She cleared her throat. “I said, he’s not here.”

Vlad took a step closer to her. “No. What did you say to your father? I know he cares for you deeply, would be reluctant to give you where you didn’t want to go.”

Perhaps, Ilona thought ruefully. But she’d have to make a spectacular fuss and have the reasons listed in writing with evidence. And even then she doubted it. She tried to drag her wayward thought back into line, to remember the question he expected her to answer.

She said, “I didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask me.”

Her head was turned away from him, gazing at the door, willing the servants to come with the wine, terrified in case they did before…
before what?

She felt his fingers under her chin, gentle, yet shocking and impossible to resist as it turned her face up to his.

“I’m asking you now,” he said softly. “Do you want this marriage, Ilona Szilágyi?”

Heat flamed under his fingers, flooded her. “Don’t make me answer that,” she whispered.

“Why not?” His hooded eyelids swept down on a flash of something that looked like pain. It wrung her heart, forced her to blurt the truth.

“If I admit it, I admit so much more that I couldn’t live with if…”

The long, black lashes snapped upward. “If what?”

She took hold of his wrist, trying in vain to dislodge his fingers from their hold of her chin. He said, “If I don’t love you?”

Her hand fell away, leaving her helpless. She closed her eyes, afraid once more, not of him but of herself.

He said low, “Tell me, Ilona. If you don’t want it, I’ll never trouble you with it again. If you do, you have to tell me. Do you want it?”

She gasped, forcing her eyes open to meet the blaze of his. “I want it,” she whispered, and the light in his dark eyes seemed to flare. His lips curved upward. The fingers on her chin moved, caressing, making her shiver. He bent his head, and her lips, remembering, parted for him of their own accord.

The door whisked open, and abruptly Ilona was free. Vlad stood in front of her, instinctively protecting, which made her want to laugh and cry with pride.

Especially when her mother’s voice said, “Ilona? I hear we have a guest… Why, Prince, how wonderful to see you again.”

***

“He’s
dead
?” Ilona stared at her aunt in disbelief.

“I just said so,” snapped Erzsébet, but not in temper, merely to get it out of the way so that her mind could race ahead, thinking, planning.

King Ladislas, known as the Posthumous because his father—
“If it was his father!”
Erzsébet always said cuttingly—had died before his birth, had suddenly died himself.

“But he was so young…”

Erzsébet’s lips twisted. “László was young too.” It was a grief neither forgotten nor forgiven, but overwhelming it was, clearly, the future.

“What will happen now?” Ilona said. But she knew the answer. Her father and Erzsébet would fight to make Matthias king far sooner than anyone had expected.

And if they won, if Matthias was elected King of Hungary, then she, Ilona, would be the king’s cousin. It was, no doubt, the least of anyone else’s concerns, but that couldn’t stop her own personal, wayward thoughts—that at last she would be a worthy wife for the Prince of Wallachia.

And from Mihály’s point of view, surely now of all times, as he struggled against the next inevitable Habsburg candidate, he needed to cement his alliance with Vlad Dracula.

***

Carstian and Stoica glanced at each other, then back to the prince, who was still gazing at the letter as though stunned. Stoica, who had spoken for Vlad at the recent peace negotiations between the town of Brasov and Mihály Szilágyi, had been reporting the favourable outcome for all concerned—except, of course, for Dan, the most troublesome pretender to the Wallachian throne, who’d finally been evicted from his refuge in Brasov—when the messenger intervened.

“Bad news?” Carstian hazarded at last.

“Bad?” Vlad dropped the letter. “Damned if I know. Ladislas is dead.”

“The king? Dead? How?”

“Apparently of natural causes. Last month, in Prague.” Vlad reached for the wine jug and rattled it on the table. At once, a servant appeared and poured cups for each of them.

“I don’t see that it’s bad,” Stoica said judiciously. “If the Habsburgs gain the throne again, we’ve lost nothing.”

“It may lose us Mihály Szilágyi’s favourable influence,” Carstian pointed out. “But I don’t believe the Habsburgs
will
win. If you ask me, the Hunyadi boy will be elected in a wave of glory because of his father’s memory.”

“If the Szilágyis have anything to do with it—and they will—that’s exactly what will happen,” said Vlad.

“But that is the best thing possible for us!”

Vlad knew it. It would give the German townships in Transylvania less excuse and less cover for troubling him. And he would have the greatest friend possible at the Hungarian court in Mihály Szilágyi, who undoubtedly would govern in the name of the king until Matthias came of age.

He just prayed that Mihály had sent his messenger with the marriage contract before the king had died. Because if he hadn’t, he would inevitably start looking ridiculously high for Ilona. Always in search of more power or even security should anything go wrong with Matthias.

Vlad understood that. It was what he would do himself. And that made him fear the worst.

Rightly, as it turned out. When a messenger finally came from Buda, bearding the prince in his hall at Rucăr as he held audiences with petitioners, he brought not the contracts but a letter from Mihály Szilágyi excusing himself from entering such negotiations at this busy juncture. Although he valued nothing more highly than Vlad’s continued friendship, his first concern had to be matters of state.

“Negotiations?” Vlad raged, sweeping everything off the table in one violent sweep of his arm. Abruptly, the room fell silent. “We’d done all the damned negotiating! Several times! And now…”

He broke off, reining in the full force of his vile temper for the benefit of the others in the room waiting to speak to him. And yet he wanted to maintain that anger, that fury, because it kept out the despair.

Ilona was further from his reach than she’d ever been. His stupid, childish dream of a life partner who was also his friend and his lover should never have been allowed to exist. He was a prince with a country to rule, not a snivelling boy to weep over lost love.

And yet all he really wanted to do was weep and howl all his pain away. Preferably in Ilona’s arms.

He laughed harshly. “Happy Christmas. Bring the next petition.”

***

The boyars hadn’t forgotten Easter. They knew his generosity was occasionally barbed. It was why he made a special effort to make the Christmas feast enjoyable for all. Not to curry favour after his cruelty but to remind them of the difference. Under his regime, the rewards for loyalty were as great as the punishment for betrayal.