A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula (3 page)

One didn’t order Countess Hunyadi. One could only suggest and hope curiosity would do the rest. And if she had gone to him, if she had passed on Ilona’s wishes, what did he say, how did he look? How did he feel? Relieved. The Vlad she remembered would always honour old promises, but now she’d released him. He could marry, or not, some other cousin.

Whom?

It doesn’t matter to me, or to him…

And she, Ilona, could go home to Transylvania and live out the remainder of her days in the quiet domesticity she had finally found. Great lives and great events would go on, uninfluenced by her, unaware of her existence. And in time, she’d get the peace back. She would…

The castle was stirring. Not just the servants baking and cleaning and lighting fires. She could hear the gentle clip-clop of horses being exercised across the courtyard. Not the king at this hour, but perhaps one or two of his more active courtiers.

Yes, there they were, two of them, with servants and soldiers riding behind. In silence, the two courtiers rode side by side, skillfully controlling the natural exuberance of their mounts, forcing them to a sedate walk at least as far as the castle gates.

They sat very straight in their saddles, one in particular presenting an eye-catching posture, at once graceful, proud, and strong. If you could tell so much from one broad, erect back. Ilona frowned, blinking in the dim dawn light as if that could help her see more clearly. Her heart began to thud against her ribs.

Is it Vlad? Is it him?

He wore a round black hat with a red feather at the side, and from under it long black curls
flowed around his shoulders and partway down his powerful back. Ilona swayed, her fingers gripping the sill for support.

Just so had she watched him ride away from her after their very first meeting. The horse
had been different—her uncle’s, not her cousin’s—and his garments had been rough and worn, but he had held himself with the same pride, ridden with the same perfect confidence so that she’d almost imagined he was as splendid as he’d wanted to be.

The rider stopped. His horse snorted, and his companion paused too, glancing back at him in quick interrogation. The man who could have been Vlad—
please God, don’t be Vlad
—began to turn his head.

Frozen, Ilona couldn’t move, couldn’t run, couldn’t even fall out of sight onto the floor. Panic held her paralysed.

His head continued to turn, his neck twisting so that he could look upward. Unerringly, he gazed at her window.

Holy Mary, Mother of God.

Vlad Dracula, exiled Prince of Wallachia. Even over this distance, vitality blazed out of his face.

He won’t see me; he can’t recognise me…

The full lips didn’t smile. But his gaze, rooting her to the spot, didn’t move on. His head dipped, acknowledging her, and at that, she grasped her hair in despair. Her other hand flew to her throat, and she fell back so that she couldn’t see him, couldn’t visualise his failure to recognise her, or worse, his horror at what she’d become.

Her mouth opened in a soundless cry of loss. She pushed herself up against the wall under the window and, for the first time in ten years, let the past consume her.

Chapter Two

Horogszegi, Transylvania, 1451

The summer had passed without war or the threat of it. To Ilona, thirteen years old, it always seemed like a time of permanent sunshine, when the adults were not too occupied to play, when the children themselves played without fear and without the pall of politics waiting to engulf them as it would do all too soon. In some ways, it was her last summer of innocence.

She had spent most of it on the family estate at Horogszegi, with her mother, brother, and sisters. With the autumn, her father, Mihály, came more frequently, as did her uncle, the great White Knight, John Hunyadi, viceroy of Hungary, and his family.

Of course Hunyadi was married to Mihály Szilágyi’s sister, but even then Ilona was aware that the ties between the two men went far beyond the loyalty of duty or family.

With war temporarily in abeyance, Hunyadi himself was merely harassed by recalcitrant noblemen. He allowed himself the occasional bouts of rest and healing at the Szilágyi’s home and always departed in better humour than he’d arrived.

The day that changed everything for Ilona was an unseasonably warm one toward the end of October. After receiving a messenger, John Hunyadi emerged into the garden and threw himself down on the wooden bench beside her father. Mihály Szilágyi, from his comfortable seated position was playing a vigorous four-cornered game of catch with Ilona, her brother Miklós and little Matthias Hunyadi, who was only about eight years old.

John Hunyadi said, “The wretched boy is here now!”

Ilona, who had learned early to pick up the difference between threat and mere annoyance, wasn’t worried, just interested in the strange combination of amusement and frustration in her uncle’s voice.

“Who?” her father asked lazily, hurling the leather ball well above Ilona’s head.

It was too high, but she refused to give up. Miklós began to run in from his corner, sure he would catch it before she did. Ilona leapt, one hand stretched up to its limit while she used the other to balance. The ball slammed into her hand, and she gave a crow of triumphant laughter, dropping back to her feet with the ball secure.

Her father smiled.

“Dracula,” said her uncle, with a wave of his hand that was not quite disparaging. He regarded the “son of the dragon” as a nuisance, but even he couldn’t quite dismiss the boy who had, at the tender age of seventeen, walked into the country which had deposed and killed his father, and simply taken the throne while its legitimate prince was occupied in war elsewhere. Without spilling a drop of blood, he’d made his presence felt all over the region. Even though he’d been ejected a couple of months later, he’d warned the world that Vlad Dracula, son of Vlad Dracul, was out to get his throne back.

Ilona liked the nicknames by which father and son were popularly known. It gave them a sort of mythical glamour that appealed to her, even though she knew the actuality was rather more mundane: the late Vlad Dracul had once been made a member of the Empire’s Order of the Dragon—
dracul
in Romanian—sworn to oppose the infidel, which he’d done off and on for much of his turbulent life. Conversely, the son, Dracula—son of the dragon—had used infidel Ottoman troops when he’d briefly snatched the Wallachian throne.

“What’s he doing here?” Mihály asked, watching indulgently as Ilona’s throw to Matthias was intercepted by the larger Miklós.

“Well, when I say ‘here,’ I mean he’s in Transylvania. He crossed the border two nights ago with Stephen of Moldavia, who wants my help to restore him to his throne.”

“Yes, but what does young Vlad want?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Rumour says he blames me for the death of his father and wants my blood. I’m afraid he’s doomed to failure there too. I’ve told Brasov and the other cities not to harbour either youth.”

“Probably safest,” Mihály agreed. “Vlad’s father was unpredictable, to say the least. From his career to date, I imagine this son is cut from the same cloth.”

Unfortunately for Ilona, who rather admired the daring tactics of the young, one-time Prince of Wallachia, Matthias chose that moment to fall over Miklós’s feet, and she had to stop listening in to the adults in order to pick the boy up and rebuild his wounded pride in the face of Miklós’s blatant laughter.

“Come, let’s go and find László,” she suggested, restoring peace at once to the two boys who had only their hero worship of Hunyadi’s elder son in common.

László was then about twenty years old and handsome enough for Ilona’s sisters to flutter around like moths to a flame. It occasionally bothered their mother, since they were full cousins to László, but Ilona suspected that half the attraction of such a crush was its safety. They could practise flirting with impunity—and so, to be fair, could László.

But that afternoon, the amusements were more childish: a boisterous game of tag, at which Ilona excelled, even against the athletic, long-legged youths like Miklós and László. At thirteen, she had no compunction about picking up her skirts and leaping over fences and younger children, dodging and swerving to avoid being tagged, hurling herself onto benches, boulders, or tree trunks to be safe. And since her mother and aunt had begun to groom her for staid adulthood, it was doubly exhilarating.

Flying across the slightly wilder, bumpier ground that led up to the high garden wall, with László ever closer to her heels, she swung around the big oak tree, feinted to the left, then, when László fell for it, she dashed back the way she’d come. At least, she tried to, but without warning, an obstacle dropped into her path as if from the sky, and she cannoned into it with enough force to rattle her teeth.

Somewhere, she recognised that the obstacle was a person, but it didn’t give or fall or even allow her to. Hands at her back and shoulder steadied her, and she found herself gazing breathlessly up at a handsome stranger.

He was young, no older than László. Large, dark green eyes framed by long, black lashes stared back at her with blatant curiosity. They seemed to flash in the sunlight, blinding her.

Then he moved, urging her behind him as László stumbled to a halt.

The stranger drawled, “Are you in need of assistance?”

Even then, his voice did something to her. Deep and low, it seemed to reach far inside her and turn her awakening body outside in. And in her confusion, it took a moment for her to realise what he meant, that he was addressing
her
rather than László.

As the stranger’s hands fell away from her, she blinked from him to her glaring cousin and back again. A touch of hysteria bubbled up with the laughter. László, flushing with all the embarrassment of a young man being caught in childish pursuits by a possibly dangerous contemporary, took an aggressive step forward at the stranger’s implication. His hand even reached to his hip for the sword that wasn’t there.

In response, something leapt in the stranger’s eyes. Though his hand never moved, he
did
wear his sword. A rather fine one, with an elaborately carved hilt that sat oddly with his worn and dusty clothes.

Ilona said hastily, “Of course not. We’re playing tag. László is my cousin.”

The stranger took a quick breath and bowed as though to an equal. “I am delighted to meet your cousin.”

László frowned, clearly as flummoxed by the change of manner as by the greater mystery of who the devil this man was and where he’d come from. And why. The other children were running over to join the crowd, Ilona’s older sisters hastily gathering their dignity back around them as the stranger bowed to them.

His cloak, hanging off one shoulder, was spattered with mud. Beneath it, his tunic showed signs of mending. His long boots, reaching up over his knees, were good quality but looked well-worn. He wore no jewels. There was certainly nothing about his dress to impress, and yet no one doubted his importance.

“Won’t you introduce us to your friend, László?” Katalina said, gazing modestly up at the newcomer from under her eyelashes. Ilona wanted to slap her.

“Can’t,” said László baldly. “I’ve no idea who he is.”

“Forgive my oversight—I have been most remiss,” drawled the stranger. Even then he had a way of turning the most civil or even bland statements into insolence. Only you couldn’t put your finger on how or why. He bowed with unsurpassed elegance. “I am Vlad, son of Vlad Dracul, Prince of Wallachia.”

The air crackled. The dangerous stranger smiled around his stunned audience. It wasn’t a nice smile, and it was aimed, mostly, at László, who saw the threat as quickly as Ilona. László’s eyes dilated. Before he could suppress it, he made one quick instinctive movement to place himself between the children and Vlad.

But he couldn’t. Vlad still stood close enough to Ilona to be touching her, and Matthias, unaware of the stranger’s history, had given in to natural curiosity and was fingering the carved hilt of the prince’s sword. László stilled.

In some trepidation, Ilona turned her gaze up to Vlad. She could feel tension thrumming through his body. This was the son of the man who had once had the nerve to imprison John Hunyadi himself. A young man with many grudges and scores to settle, a man brought up from the age of eleven by the cruel, infidel Ottomans. Only minutes ago, her father had called him unpredictable.

With his eyes still locked to László’s, he moved one hand, brushing Matthias’s stroking fingers aside, and drew the sword from its scabbard.

Ilona, afraid to look away, held her breath and prepared to hurl herself in front of the child. She sensed rather than saw László sway forward as if desperately gauging his time to strike.

But she was watching Vlad’s face; she recognised his fierce joy in thus holding them all in his power. Relief poured off her in a cool sweat. He wouldn’t hurt them. If he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t be taking this much pleasure in their fear of it… Would he?

Vlad drew the sword free. László launched himself forward, but, ignoring him, Vlad turned the sword away from Matthias, pointing it straight up so that he could display the full glory of the carved hilt and glistening blade to the younger boy. Oh yes, he was enjoying this.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

László skidded to a halt.

“Ooh yes,” breathed Matthias.

Vlad said, “It was my father’s. A gift from the Emperor Sigismund, along with the Order of the Dragon.”

Rumour said one of his father’s loyal boyars had ridden from Wallachia to Adrianople in only five days in order to pass these gifts to his heir. Presumably along with the news of the death of Vlad Dracul and the terrible murder of this youth’s older brother, Mircea.

Ilona regarded him with increasing fascination and saw, among other things, that she’d been wrong. He wasn’t actually handsome at all. The strong bones of his face were too prominent, providing too many shadows and hollows for openness. His eyes were too heavily hooded, the lashes too long and thick for manliness, his nose too long and sharp, his lips a little too full with the faint outline of a long, dark moustache above. She thought he began to smile at Matthias, but a movement beyond him distracted her, and she saw that László, taking advantage of Vlad’s distraction, was about to make a sudden attack.

Several thoughts chased instantaneously through Ilona’s mind, not least how tragic—and damaging—it would be for László and Vlad to kill each other here. Especially when the Wallachian presented no real threat, whatever impression he was trying to create. And yet she couldn’t say,
Leave him alone, László, he’s harmless
. She was well aware how insulting that would be to both of them.

So, from more desperation than she hoped appeared in her voice, she blurted, “You might want to take that off to play.” She waved one hopefully careless hand at his sword and the scabbard at his hip.

Again, László paused. Vlad’s intense gaze flickered to her in some bafflement.

Well, I’ve started now.
“Last one in the game is It,” she said serenely. Without looking, she knew both her sisters and László now wore appalled expressions.

The menacing Dracula, however, drew in a breath that might have held laughter. At once his lower lip clamped over the upper, as though to hide it. But his eyes still glinted with something that looked like amusement. They held hers, considering, while he slowly resheathed the sword.

At least some of the tension in the air vanished.

“It,” he repeated.

Had he never played tag, then? This serious, desperate prince… There seemed to be a storm in his dark green eyes, a brief battle of dignity versus temptation. Ilona began to smile.

“It?” Vlad’s hand lifted, forefinger extended, and poked her in the arm. “Not anymore.”

“That’s cheating!” Ilona objected, feeling her face flush with genuine indignation. Before he could expect it, she lunged at his chest, but he sidestepped, avoiding her touch and dodging hastily the other way as she tried to compensate. When Ilona leapt at him, he stunned her by jumping backwards over the bench behind him. Matthias and Miklós began to laugh.

Ilona regarded him from narrowed eyes. Either he was a stupid player—the smart move would have been to jump
on
to the bench, which was “safe”—or a contemptuous one, and she would not permit the latter. Hoisting up her skirts, she flew after him.

Vlad Dracula, the would-be Prince of Wallachia, turned tail and ran. Ilona’s siblings and cousins howled with glee, all except László, who stood still and bewildered as the younger ones raced around him both for a better view and to avoid Ilona’s tag. Ilona, however, had no intention of tagging anyone but Vlad. It had become a point of honour, all the more appealing because of the hilarity involved in trying to catch him. Ilona, it seemed, had met her match.

He wasn’t just quick but agile, even with his long cloak and cumbersome sword swinging against his hip and legs. Within the space defined by the erratic, weaving circle of children, he leapt and dodged, feinted and swerved until finally she cornered him in front of the bench that backed onto the old willow tree. Ilona never used that bench to be “safe” except as a last resort; the roots of the willow sloped down to the river, and she knew from experience that it was just too difficult to get off the bench until whoever was It got bored and went after easier prey. Ilona had no intention of getting bored. She grabbed for his arm, just as he jumped onto the stone bench and safety.