Dracula (A Modern Telling) (16 page)

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 str
anger 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 coward
ice. 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 carr
y 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, B
rother.”

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.

“Do not eat,” he said.

“I’m hungry.” I attempted to pull away from him but his grip was unlike anything I had ever felt.

“It is a trap
. Do not eat or drink anything.”

“Get away from me.”

He leaned in close, his eyes flickering in the dim light. “Do not eat. You must trust me.”

Somehow, I did. Though I
was famished, I did not eat or drink. The man was wandering the room, mingling with the guests, but at one point he came over and sat down next to me.

“You must relieve your bowls,” he said, “and urinate. Right now. There is privacy just outside. Do it now
. Go!”

I didn’t
even hesitate. I ran outside and found what would now pass for toilets but were really just stone blocks with holes cut out of the top so that excrement fell into a ditch in the ground. I did as was instructed and then went back inside. The man was nowhere to be found so I went to sit at the table again when two arms wrapped around me. Guards had taken hold of me and I looked back to Radu and Mehmed and they were laughing as they watched.

The guards dragged me out of the banquet as I fought with all the strength my young body could bring forth, but more guards were added as they saw I was struggling. They pulled me to a side room and pinned me down to the floor, at least two of them sitting on top of me. They undressed me from the waist down. I thought they meant to rape me, something that the Moslems were known to do to their prisoners. But they did not. Instead, they retrieved an
… item, something the shape of a cylinder with a pear bottom. They lubricated it with oil and pushed it into my rectum. I was screaming incoherently at this point, but that only made them laugh harder.

After that, when I was to the point of fainting with the sudden pain, they tied my hands and legs together and then flipped me over onto my back, at which point they used a thin piece of silk or velvet to tie off my penis, much like a tourniquet. I screamed more, but was numb from pain at this point. The men stood up, laughing to the point of urinating
themselves, and locked me in the room.

I don’t know how long I was in this room. I
can’t imagine the unbearable pain I would have been in had the man at the banquet not warned me. It was still excruciating beyond belief and most of that time was spent sobbing on the floor, unable to sleep, but it could have been worse.

One day
, guards came and untied me. They pulled the object out of my rectum and untied my penis. I soiled myself right then, which made them chuckle as they lifted me and carried me out of the room. Standing there, waiting for me, was Mehmed.

“I trust you see I can do whatever I wish with you.”

I looked him in the eyes. “One day, far in the future, you will regret that.”

He laughed. “Idiot boy. I spare you for one reason only: your brother.”

I knew this to be false. I don’t think Radu would have spoken out to protect me. I think Mehmed was unable to kill me because his father had forbidden it. It was advantageous for the Turks to be allied with us as well. They wanted footholds in Europe. The Moslems of the time felt it was their destiny to conquer and control the world, and Europe was the starting point. If they could conquer Europe, the rest of the known world would fall easily.