A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula (17 page)

And so, after being the perfect host, eating, drinking, dancing with his guests, he had left them to it and retired to his lonely quarters to get blind drunk.

He succeeded in that too, as he discovered when he rose to his feet and stumbled to keep his balance. Perhaps he should just fall into bed and finish the flagon there. At least that way, no one would find him sprawled unconscious on the floor.

On the way to his bedchamber, he became distracted by the moon, beaming in through the narrow window, and paused to admire it. He hoped Ilona gazed at it too and thought of him. What was she doing? Celebrating with her family…if they took the time away from advancing the cause of Matthias’s election.

Vlad sprawled on the bench beneath the window and rested his burning forehead on the wall’s cool stone. Once he’d been naïve enough to hope for Ilona by his side this Christmas. Missing her was like an ache he could neither lose nor assuage. Not with work, not with wine.

Maybe he should go out in disguise to some low tavern and pick a fight. Grimly amused by that idea, he grabbed the jerkin he wore for hard riding and left the room. Not that he’d any real intention of carrying through his drunken fantasy. But the fresh cold of the night air called to him.

By the time he reached the stairs, he had better control over his wayward limbs and was able to walk down with almost his normal pace. Annoyingly, the first thing he thought of at the door was that in the spring, he’d taken Ilona out this way and kissed her in the moonlight.

He hadn’t really thought she’d let him, and her response had both surprised and delighted him. And knowing Ilona, he’d believed then there was more than the thrill of dangerous flirting in her heart.

He still believed that. Was she suffering as much as he? He couldn’t wish that for her, and yet anything else maddened him.

Hauling the door open, he wanted desperately to be rid of this feeling, this agony, before it consumed him.

A faint, fluttering behind him made him turn his head. Someone slid under his arm and for an instant, he thought, incredibly, that it was Ilona. He could swear she smelled of Ilona.

But it was quite a different pair of eyes that peered up at him, half-anxious, half-teasing. “Your Highness? Is everything well?”

Maria, he recognised. Maria Gerzsenyi, Countess Hunyadi’s little spy, Ilona’s friend. What business did she have smelling of Ilona?

Drawn, he lowered his head and located the distinctive scent to her shoulders and lower—a rather beautiful embroidered shawl pinned over her breasts for modesty, yet still revealing enough to set a tortured man’s blood on fire.

“Your shawl is beautiful,” he observed. He didn’t even slur his words.

“Thank you!” she said breathlessly. “Ilona sent it to me as a Christmas gift. She does such lovely work.”

Vlad laughed and placed his hand over the shawl. Beneath its soft texture, he felt her heart beating like a bird’s. He put his lips to her ear. “What do you want, Maria? To come to my bed?”

Her breath came quick and uneven. “To serve Your Highness any way I can,” she managed.

“Oh, good answer.” He bent his head and pressed his lips over the scarf and the wildly beating heart beneath. He closed his eyes and imagined it was Ilona. The woman began to speak, but he hushed her, inhaling before he raised his head and claimed her willing lips.

“Don’t talk,” he said into her mouth. “Don’t talk.”

She didn’t.

***

It took the letter some time to find her, since she was in Buda with Countess Hunyadi. Matthias, duly elected as King of Hungary, was everybody’s darling. And Mihály Szilágyi, his uncle, was appointed governor for five years to guide the young king’s first steps in ruling his domain.

To Ilona, it was almost amusing to be treated like royalty. To
be
royalty, even if only on her little cousin’s account. She wondered if Vlad would come in person to swear allegiance to the new king and felt her breast constrict with longing. Mihály, however, whenever he mentioned her marriage, never did so in conjunction with Vlad’s name. With more than a hint of indignation, Ilona realised he was too sure of Vlad now. Vlad was his ally with or without the marriage, so Ilona was a far more useful bargaining tool elsewhere.

And when she tried to broach the subject with Mihály, she realised he was no longer listening to her. Both he and his sister had bigger issues to consider than her opinions of lesser men. So, frustrated at every turn and still, interminably, waiting, Ilona was delighted to see Maria’s ornate if slightly childish handwriting among the letters from home. It was always a joy to hear from Maria, and now, sometimes, her letters gave her the added secret pleasure of domestic news of Vlad.

She waited until the countess went for her afternoon rest. Then, enjoying her brief gift of solitude, she took the letter with her to the fireside and settled down to get warm among the wintry draughts of Buda Castle to enjoy it.

She even smiled at Maria’s opening rush of words. Something, clearly, had happened to excite and please her volatile friend. But because Maria tried to tell her so many things at once, it took Ilona some time to decipher it. At first she thought she’d misunderstood completely and went back to the beginning. But slowly, horrendously, the truth began to form in her mind.

Something cold pinched around her heart. It hurt. That must be what hurt. Maria’s happy words faded into blackness before her eyes. Ilona lifted the letter and dropped it into the blinding flames.

***

Vlad Dracula took the tiny baby into his arms and gazed down at him in wonder. It didn’t seem possible that any living creature could have fingers so small. He became fascinated by the child’s perfect, miniature ear.

“Your son,” Maria murmured. Vlad spared her a smiling glance—she too looked tiny and exhausted in the huge bed, yet happy enough to be purring like a cat—before returning his attention to the baby.

“Mihnea,” he uttered. “That is a good name in my family.”

Reluctantly, he surrendered his son to the waiting nurse. Mihnea made a tiny, grunting sound that tugged at his heart.

Maria said, “You are pleased with our son?”

He sank onto the bed beside her and smoothed the damp hair from her face. “I am well pleased,” he admitted. “And grateful.”

Maria smiled and turned her head to kiss his hand. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I am so lucky, so blessed.”

Vlad rose to his feet and left her falling asleep. The euphoria of his son’s birth lingered and with it the surge of affection for his mother. In many ways, taking Maria as his mistress was not the cleverest thing he’d ever done. She was sweet and good-natured, but though far from stupid, she had no interest in the things that mattered. Like governance and alliances and balancing power within the country and without. Besides, Vlad was well aware that he couldn’t have chosen a mistress more guaranteed to wound Ilona Szilágyi.

He hadn’t done it for that reason. In fact, after the drunken night in Tîrgovi
ş
te, which he could barely remember—beyond a shawl and the aching smell of Ilona—he had resolved not to repeat the experience. He had taken Maria for the wrong reasons, and his best excuse was the desperation of his body, which, for some romantic reason of honour, he’d kept pure during all the protracted negotiations for Ilona. But he was an intensely physical man, and he’d been unable to stop himself from finally seeking release when opportunity offered. And this child, Mihnea, was the result.

He didn’t think he’d set eyes on Maria for the next two months, until she came to him privately one day and told him she was pregnant by him. Cynically, he’d doubted that—until he looked into her eyes and read a genuine love he’d done nothing to inspire.

Startled, he’d swallowed the words with which he’d meant to dismiss her and asked her instead what she wanted to do. She didn’t ask him to marry her, which, fortunately, saved him the trouble of refusing. Instead, she fell into some inarticulate story of her youth and how she’d been misled by a man before and given birth to his child, which had been taken from her. And again, the grief and misery in her face had been genuine. Further questioning had elicited the information that Ilona and Countess Hunyadi had helped her then, and how Ilona had kept her secret and been her only friend.

But the point of her story was she couldn’t bear to give away another child, nor suffer the shame of a nameless birth. And so he’d acknowledged the child and made her his official mistress. God knew it was no hardship to make love to her.

In fact it would be hard to force himself to leave tomorrow morning for his new castle at Poenari, but there were matters to attend to there before winter set in.

Returning to his hall to announce the birth of his son to the waiting court, he found a familiar messenger skulking in the doorway.

Wordlessly, Vlad held his hand out and received the document. He clapped the man once on the shoulder and nodded to the boyar Iova to pay him. Then, striding to the table amid the expectant silence, he swept up his cup and raised it high in an enthusiastic toast.

“To my son, Mihnea! May he have a long and happy life!”

They roared out their approval and drank deeply. His line had an heir, to keep out his Ottoman-dominated brother Radu as much as the hated Danesti clan.

Satisfied, Vlad sat and opened his letter—which cast rather a blight on his happy day. Mihály Szilágyi had been dismissed from his position as governor and the young King Matthias had taken up the reins of independent government himself. Worse, he’d arrested Mihály and imprisoned him.

“That,” Vlad said with a shiver of prescience, “is not good.”

Chapter Fourteen

Tîrgovi
ş
te and Poenari, Wallachia, 1459

Mihály Szilágyi said, “Come with me to Wallachia.”

And here she was. Although it was the last place in the world she wanted to visit, she couldn’t refuse her father, especially not after he came home from prison, a changed and chastened man. He had endured prison before, of course, and escaped none the worse for his ordeal, but somehow it was different to be turned on by your own nephew, the boy you had brought to power. And so Ilona didn’t even try to talk him out of it. Part of her was even touched that he wanted her company again.

All she did do was suggest her mother came too—but, still low from last year’s illness, Countess Szilágyi remained at home. When Ilona remarked casually that she would prefer to avoid the court and perhaps spend time with Maria, Countess Hunyadi snorted.

“She is not a fit companion for an unmarried lady of the royal family.”

“I believe she is considered perfectly respectable in Wallachia,” Ilona returned calmly. “Her son is just as acceptable as an heir to the prince as the child of any woman he actually marries.”

Erzsébet sniffed. “Maybe. In Wallachia. Besides, if you ask me, Maria will be wherever the court is.”

Mihály’s purpose, now he was again in Transylvania, was to discuss with Vlad the parameters of their alliance. Matthias, in an attempt to cow the prince or to replace him, had again sent the pretender Dan to the Transylvanian town of Brasov, to act as a focus for Wallachian discontent and rebellion. Vlad would not be happy about that.

Ilona’s purpose, if she had one beyond restoring the spark of enthusiasm to her father, was to avoid Vlad. But if she couldn’t, then she knew she would deal with that too. A year and a half without him or the hope of him had returned her to full strength and common sense.

Despite that, she couldn’t help her profound relief when they discovered Maria to be alone in Tîrgovi
ş
te. Vlad, apparently, was in the south, organising the construction of a new fortress around the villages of Bucharest.

Mihály set off at once after the prince, leaving Ilona with Maria. They watched from the rain-spattered window as he rode away. Then, almost gleefully, Maria tugged at her arm.

“Come and meet Mihnea!”

Prepared, Ilona went with her gladly to the nursery where the seven-month-old baby sat amid a collection of bright toys, gurgling happily while his nurse watched over him. When they entered, he reached up his arms immediately to Maria, and something constricted Ilona’s throat.

Not jealousy or pain. Just simple longing.

The child put his arms round his mother’s neck and from that position of smug safety smiled at Ilona.

Her heart melted.

She was twenty-one years old. She would have to marry soon and have a baby of her own to love. It was, Aunt Erzsébet said, the consolation of many women given in marriage to unpalatable husbands, and for the first time, Ilona understood her. Now that she was over her youthful passion, she still hoped for a palatable husband but was realistic enough not to rely on it.

Kneeling on the soft rug, watching Maria with the baby, Ilona said with genuine warmth, “You’re happy.”

“Oh yes,” Maria agreed, dropping a kiss on Mihnea’s bald head. She cast Ilona a wicked smile. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a nobleman’s wife. I prefer the excitement of being a prince’s mistress. Well, this prince’s mistress.” Her smile faded, and, after glancing at the nurse, she said in Hungarian, “You don’t despise me, do you? For what I’ve done?”

“Of course I don’t.” As the old pain threatened to grip her heart again, she strove to drive it off.

“I’m treated just as a wife here,” Maria said anxiously. “The prince shows me every respect, and if he isn’t…”

“Isn’t what?” Ilona prompted, against her better judgment. God knew she wanted this conversation over with.

“If he isn’t faithful, I know he loves me best.”

She supposed the jealousy was inevitable. She was prepared for that. Even for the indignation on Maria’s behalf. What she hadn’t expected along with them was the fierce surge of satisfaction that Maria couldn’t make him faithful either.

Unworthy, Ilona…

“I’m glad,” she managed to say as she jumped to her feet. Impossible to stay still. She added dubiously, “He doesn’t flaunt other women in front of you, does he?”

“Of course not,” Maria said, shocked. “I never know anything about them, except that they exist. Otherwise, he would be in my bed more often.”

I can’t hear any more of this.

“I’m sorry I haven’t written recently,” she said, plucking from the air one of the many things she had to say to her old friend.

“Of course, you’ve had so many troubles! I’m so glad to see your father free and powerful once more.”

Powerful? Mihály’s trouble was at least partly that he felt himself completely powerless and at the mercy of the child he’d intended to guide. They all were.

***

Vlad reined in his horse at the top of the hill and gazed with satisfaction out over the many lesser hills and valleys. In the distance, he could make out Tîrgovi
ş
te with its spires and turrets, nestling among the fertile hills and bright blue lakes.

The wind blew his hair out behind him, and he lifted his face into its sharp coolness. Mihály’s horse snorted beside his own.

Vlad said, “We’ll go fishing tomorrow, if you wish.”

A smile flickered across the older man’s lined face. “A day of leisure. How extraordinarily appealing.”

“I wondered if you’d had too many of those just recently,” Vlad said, alluding to his imprisonment.

“Forced inaction is not the same thing.”

“True,” Vlad agreed with feeling.

For a time, they sat in silence, letting their horses rest while they gazed out over the countryside. Vlad never tired of looking. He loved this land, from the tiniest blade of grass to the tallest mountain.

Mihály said, “It’s like a drug. Like poppy juice.”

“What is?” Vlad asked. Though he knew, he needed Mihály to keep talking.

“Power. It consumes you, uses you up, and yet you can’t bring yourself to lay it down. Being without it is like a physical pain. Like watching someone else violate your wife.”

Vlad reached out and slowly pulled his horse’s black ear. “She isn’t your wife. She’s Matthias’s.”

Mihály smiled into the wind. “I know.” He sighed. “I put his son on the throne. I made John Hunyadi’s son King of Hungary. Is that enough to secure my place in history?”

“A mere trifle,” Vlad said. “You put
me
on the throne of Wallachia.”

Mihály laughed, as he was meant to do. Then, turning to look at him, with the smile dying in his eyes, he said, “You are generous to remember any small part I played in that.”

“I will always remember.”

Mihály drew in his breath. “The marriage. With Ilona. I behaved ill, drawing back at the last minute. It was never meant to offend you or show disrespect for you or what you’ve achieved here.”

“I know.”

“God help me, I just wanted to keep all my bargaining power where I could use it.”

“And you still haven’t,” Vlad observed.

Mihály urged his horse forward over the ridge of the hill, and Vlad followed.

Mihály said, “And now it’s not in
my
power any more. The king controls all royal marriages. There will come a time, I know, when he wants to buy your loyalty.”

Vlad’s lips twisted. “My loyalty is not for sale. Ever.”

“Then you are a rare man indeed. For what it’s worth, Vlad, if you still want her, I’ll do what I can to speak for you. When it won’t do you more harm than good.”

Vlad couldn’t suppress the stab of bitterness. If Mihály had only acted on this two years ago… But he wouldn’t waste his time in recrimination or regret. The game was not over yet, and the prize could still be won.

***

Delighted with her purchase in the market, Ilona went directly to the nursery, where, at this hour of the afternoon, she fully expected to find both the child and his mother.

“Maria?” she called, opening the door and walking in. Though she could hear the baby laughing, his usual place on the rug was empty. In her chair close by, the nurse still smiled at her and continued sewing. Before the woman could speak, a movement by the window caught Ilona’s eye. Dazzled her.

Mihnea sat on his father’s naked shoulders, held firmly under the arms while he held on to Vlad’s curls with his stubby little hands and crowed with laughter.

Vlad stared at her, unmoving.

Ilona wanted to die.

His arms and chest were naked, his shrugged-off white linen shirt dangling upside down over his belt, hanging over his hips to his knees. As if he’d just arrived, thrown off the worst of his travel-stained clothes, and come straight to see his son because he couldn’t wait any longer. It was the worst of all possible scenarios and one she had never envisaged, to come upon him in the midst of so domestic and private a scene.

That he was as stunned as she provided no consolation.

“Ilona.” His husky voice drove straight through her. “I didn’t know you were here.” He lifted the boy down from his shoulders, moving him into a more conventional hold. “Mihály didn’t say.”

“I was looking for Maria,” she blurted and at last made her feet move toward the door. “I didn’t know you were here either.”

“I rode in with Mihály only minutes ago. Ilona.”

She was forced to turn, her hand already on the latch. He was walking toward her, shaking her with unreasonable panic. His arms were thick with the muscles of a swordsman. His gaze was on her hands.

“What do you have there?”

The toy she’d bought for Mihnea. With relief, she held it straight out to the baby, regarding it as much as a weapon to ward off his father. It made the odd rattle that had first attracted her attention in the market.

Vlad took it with unexpected interest and turned to deposit both son and toy on the floor. He crouched down with the baby, and Ilona couldn’t take her eyes off his naked back. Not because it was beautiful—although it was, rippling and golden in the sunlight—but because it bore a mass of long, deep scars, like the marks left on snow after a hectic day’s sledging.

Mihnea grasped the small, carved stone toy, which was shaped like a horse and painted white with brown eyes and black lashes and nostrils. As he lifted it, gazing into its eyes, it rattled faintly again. Mihnea frowned and shook it, and the beads within made a noise almost exactly like a horse’s whinny.

Vlad laughed. Mihnea screamed with delight and jiggled up and down on his bottom to the constant wninnying of his new horse. Vlad looked round over his shoulder. “What a beautiful toy. Thank you.”

“I just saw it in the market,” she muttered.

Again she turned to go, but the old curiosity, the old need to understand him, held her captive. She glanced back to find him still crouched with the baby, still watching her with eyes so veiled they looked black.

She blurted, “What happened to your back?”

A lady shouldn’t have seen his back. She certainly shouldn’t have seen or commented upon the scars. But he didn’t seem to mind.

Rising to his feet, he said only, “A legacy of my stay with the Ottomans.”

“They beat you?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“Many times!”

His smile was twisted. “I never took well to discipline.”

Emotion churned inside her. It might have been pity. “You said they were a gentle people,” she whispered.

“They’re not all gentle.”

His eyes held her, and with despair, she felt herself drowning all over again. He took a step closer. “Ilona…”

The door on the other side of the room, the one that opened onto Maria’s bedchamber, flung open, and Maria bustled in.

“Vlad,” she crooned, walking toward him with both hands held out. Then, taking in the vision of his seminaked form, she dropped her arms in horror. “Vlad!” she exclaimed in quite another voice. “That is a most improper state in which to greet Ilona!”

Vlad’s lips quirked. “Oh, I don’t know. Ilona is quite used to being greeted by me in an improper state.”

Then he remembered. He remembered looking at her
like that
.

Thank God she was older now and wiser.

“I’m sorry,” she got out. “I’ll leave you alone.” And finally she fumbled with the latch and opened the door. She fled.

***

“I admire what you’ve done here,” Mihály said. From the tower where he stood between Ilona and Vlad, he gazed out on the village of Poenari, at the dramatic cliff that dropped in an almost sheer line from the castle walls to the River Arges. It was one of five towers which guarded the Transylvanian border, commanding views over vast swaths of mountainous land—harsh, spectacular, and curiously beautiful. This was, apparently, Vlad’s favourite.

“I’m fond of it,” Vlad acknowledged. “I come here as often as I can.”

Beyond the prince’s stern profile, Mihály turned his head. “I meant this new prosperity, the land you’ve opened up, the safety of your roads and your towns.”

Vlad inclined his head without either pride or modesty. It was only what he had set out to do.

Mihály added, “I didn’t mean the castle. Though it’s very fine, I’m still not convinced of the morality of your building methods.”

From Vlad’s faint, twisted smile, Ilona surmised that not many men would have had the courage to state such an opinion to him.

Of course, he had a deserved reputation for harshness, not least because his most frequent form of execution was impalement, a barbaric cruelty admittedly still practised in many other countries too. Ilona didn’t like to think of it, though she had heard his subjects speak of it with both relish and perverse pride. Vlad’s policy of “a few atrocities” appeared to work. In all their travels here, Ilona had seen no evidence of crime or of punishment.

Vlad said, “The castle was an interesting experiment. Of course, they couldn’t build it alone. I still needed engineers and experienced builders, but the prisoners made reasonable labourers, in the end.”