Blood to Blood (11 page)

She fled into the room where she'd been hiding and flattened herself against the wall behind the door.

"I want to know who is responsible for the drug!" her uncle bellowed. His voice seemed strange to her, menacing. She had never heard him speak in such a tone before.

"He may have bribed someone. We couldn't be with him every moment while we were in the hall," the guard commented.

"Just see that it doesn't happen again," her uncle warned. She heard his footsteps grow softer as he walked down the hall. Before the guard could come for her, she left the room herself, and curious about her uncle's words, peered into her brother's room.

He lay on the floor, one cheek scraped as if from the fall, a long cut on his back. The clothing he had been wearing had been ripped from his body. His expression was dreamy, as if he did not care what had been done to him. But as he focused with difficulty on her face, she saw that his eyes were still alive and so filled with rage that they seemed to glow.

She tried to comprehend what she saw, but before any meaning came to mind, the guard noticed her standing there. Before he could say a word, she turned and fled down the long marble hall.

Her fears had been groundless. She had not been missed. This was due in no small part to her cousin, the son of the man who had visited her brother. "Did you hear what Kemal did?" her younger cousin asked.

Joanna nodded. "I think so," she said. "What could you expect from him?"

"And poor Osman, laughing so hard he began to hiccup. Little Grandma had to take them both to their rooms. Kemal will get it this time."

Joanna hoped not, since he'd saved her from a scolding or worse.

But though her journey escaped notice, the consequences of it did not. That night, for the first time in years, she had another nightmare. In it, she was again stealing down the halls and stairs that led to her brother's chamber. His door was open now, the guards away from their post. She moved closer, heart pounding, and peeked inside. There she saw her brother, starved now to nothing more than skin-covered bones, lying naked, face down on the table. Around him were a pack of wolves, front paws on the table, their nuzzles pressed against him, pulling the meat from his bones.

She cried out, covered her mouth with her hand to stifle the sound and backed away. But it was too late. The beasts had seen her. As they turned their attention from Vlad to her, she saw that her brother was not yet dead. He raised his head and stared at her, green eyes glowing in the skin-covered skull, his form slowly shifting from human to wolf.

She turned and tried to run, but the wolves were faster. One knocked her down. Another pulled at her shoulder, turning her onto her back. They tore at her clothes until finally one stood over her, his paws heavy on her chest, his green eyes glowing. He ripped through her gown until he reached the skin of her belly, and bit hard and deep.

She felt something wet against her legs. Her blood!

She woke screaming, her thighs and back wet. When Little Grandma came running at the sound of her cries and pulled the cover back, Joanna jumped from the bed and looked down with horror at the sight of urine mingled with drops of blood.

"Shhh. It's all right, child," Little Grandma said, stroking her tangled hair. "This happens to girls. It means you've become a woman."

Of course she knew that, but pretended not to; better that than to try to explain the dream and its origin. She buried her face in the folds of the old woman's skirt and relaxed as the woman's hand stroked her long, dark hair.

That evening they held a ceremony for her, a small gathering of her older cousins. As they sat drinking apricot juice and eating sugared almonds. Little Grandma and a younger servant packed her clothes and the gifts her grandfather had given her and carried them down the castle halls to the wing where the older, unmarried girls were lodged.

Though the space was larger and far more beautiful, there was no one to share it, no one to listen to her cries in the night, to wake her from the nightmares of wolves, of battlefields overrun with wolves. She had not one friend with whom she could share her fears.

For a time she thought about her brother often, then less, until weeks passed without her worrying about him at all. She ceased to feel any guilt for not trying to help him. Instead, with no real vanity, she thought only of herself.

Her mother had been insane when she jumped to her death. Young though she was, Joanna was certain the same sad end waited for her.

She was drawn out of her reverie by the sudden shaking of Colleen's hand, the cry of a sailor in the crow's nest far above them.

"Look, Princess!" Colleen exclaimed. "We're pulling into a harbor. Oporto, Portugal."

"Portugal?" Joanna walked to the rail and looked out at the town. Inhaling, she smelled sweet flowers, spices, and the sweat of the men unloading cargo from their ship—bundles of hides and bottles of water from the warehouse where they'd made their arrangements for this voyage.

Joanna leaned over the rail, her attention fixed on a tall young man on the edge of the dock, directing the crew in stacking the bottles on the back of a half-dozen wagons parked there.

Sensing he was being watched, the man turned and stared up at her. Joanna felt suddenly human. Her knees shook, and she gripped the rail to keep from falling. As she did, the man flashed a smile and made a slow, almost courtly bow.

Joanna was scarcely aware of Colleen at her side, gripping her arm to hold her steady until the girl spoke. "He acts as if he knows you," she said.

Joanna stared at the man a moment longer, then turned to the girl. "You are standing beside a legend," she whispered. "There are others, far more than you will ever know."

They stood on deck until the wagons pulled away with their load. Then Joanna let Colleen draw her out of the darkness and into the dim lantern light in the hall below.

That night she lay on the bed with Colleen, holding her close, so close that Colleen shivered from the chill of her flesh.

"There are so many wonders in this world," Joanna whispered. "There are the
strigoi
, mere children compared to the old ones in their mountain keep. There are the werebeasts, their strangeness unknown except in the rays of the full moon. There are the ghosts of my own… and so few of them now, all dwindling quickly in your crowded world."

"And the banshees, the elves, the dearg-dul?"

"I don't know them. But perhaps…" Joanna's voice trailed off, her thoughts lost in the past.

They had hours until dawn, hours until she would sleep. Hours to purge the memory from her thoughts and, hopefully, her dreams.

Colleen moved away from her, turned up the lantern as high as Joanna's sensitive eyes would allow and took up the mending she'd started earlier. They had so few articles of clothing between them that they had to preserve every one until more could be bought.

"Are you really a princess?" she asked after a while without looking up from her work. "That man on shore bowed to you as if you were."

"I was. but that was a long time ago." Joanna settled onto the bed they often shared on stormy evenings. Perhaps it was better to tell it all to someone. There was a legend among her father's people that to speak of a tragedy would lessen its effect. There was wisdom in that, and so she began. "Mezid-Bey was a prince of his empire, and my paternal grandfather, Vlad Dracul, had the title in his for a time, as did my brother before his death. And there was my husband, also titled, though there again I was not directly royal. I was his third wife."

Colleen looked at her, startled though she said nothing.

"What is it?" Joanna asked.

"We don't do that in England. One husband. One wife. Your way seems… wrong to me."

Joanna laughed. The feeling seemed so odd in her throat. When had she last done so? "The wrong husband with the wrong wife would be barbaric too. But yes, it was barbaric in much the same way that watching larger animals prey on smaller ones is barbaric. And I was the smallest of them all… at least in the beginning.

"You see, the oldest wanted to be the only wife but bore no sons. The second wife bore a son and a daughter and so was hated by the first. I might have been her ally, but she was my husband's favorite. And they both knew that I was chosen as third partly to court Mezid-Bey's favor but also because of the blood tie between my brother and I."

"He wasn't a prisoner anymore?" Colleen asked, thinking of the bits of his story that she had already learned.

"Vlad? No. Though the empire… through my family, starved and abused him. they never broke him. They taught him to hate and gave him a hunger for revenge. And later they uncaged the wolf with nothing more than a quick agreement between them. Vlad did what hungry wolves often do and gave back to them far more injury than they had ever dared inflict on him."

Joanna paused and trembled, thinking of the whispers of his atrocities that invaded even the scented gardens and opulent rooms of her grandfather's palace, that place so distant from the bloody wars. She pushed the stories from her mind and took another deep breath. She was getting so good at breathing like they did, of learning their language, of speaking like they did, even of making sounds when she walked so as not to startle the crew. She felt as if every mile she put between her and those lands was a lifetime of separation from that horrible past. Certain she could purge it all in the telling, she went on.

"Kemal was my husband's name. His lands were near Burgas, close to Varna, an area often threatened by my brother. I knew the language and customs of the Romanians, so he married me and took me west to lands that bordered my brother's unstable holdings."

"Did you care for him?" Colleen asked.

In the beginning, Joanna thought she had. That all changed so quickly when on their wedding night, the first night of the journey west, she had joined him in his bed only to be kicked onto the dirt floor because the scent she wore did not please him.

She wanted to be like her brother then, strong and silent, but her tears would not hide, nor would the sobs that followed. He sent her off to sleep with the servants. "I hated him from the start," she lied. "Our marriage was never consummated. For that, I am still thankful."

Again, she lied, though she doubted the act would have altered the tragedies that followed.

"I was sent to live with the servants, some of them slaves from my brother's land. Since I was dressed in castoffs from the two privileged wives, and rarely given a moment of time by my husband, they looked on me with pity.

"One of them had known my father and commented on my resemblance to him. I had been coached to tell the truth about who I was, and so I did.

"They trusted me then, telling me what they knew of my brother and his battles. By now, filled with hate for the one who brought me here, I told my slaves much and my husband many stories that were mostly false. And as I told them, I thought of my brother and cherished the rumors of his every triumph.

"Then Fate smiled on me one last time. My husband's cherished second wife died, leaving not two but three children, one young enough to need her mother's breast. It was not a time to trust servants, so they trusted me instead.

"They were not at all the sort of little tyrants I had expected. Instead, as they warmed to me they showed me love—infinite and beautiful."

Colleen smiled from her own memories. "My brothers were that way. So much younger that I felt like their mother."

"So I was mother in truth to those children, especially the infant, Sophia, who shared my bed as if I had given birth to her. No one else cared for my husband's children as I did, certainly not my husband's first wife, who hated them. Whatever pettiness I harbored retreated. I grew calmer, almost serene, and certainly content as I had not been since my first years in my uncle's gardens."

Her tone must have shifted, because Colleen set aside her work and moved to the bed, sitting close to her mistress and taking her hand. "You don't have to go on," she whispered.

"I must." Joanna shuddered once, but when she spoke, her voice remained steady, strong. "Their lives and my happiness.

I had already doomed. I had told too many lies to my husband and too many truths to his slaves. A surprise attack in early morning of our holy week ended as I had once hoped it would.

"I saw my husband's head on a pike, his first wife stripped of her finery and given over to my brother's guards for their pleasure. I would have followed, but one of the Romanian slaves spoke up for me, explaining to the soldiers who I was. Their attitude changed in a moment. Once I might have felt triumph. Now I had the children to consider.

"I could not protect the oldest boy. He died like his father, but at least was too young to know fear before the pain. I begged one of the Romanian women to claim the other two as her own. She did as I asked, and so we were taken north and west."

"I was well treated on the journey. While the others walked until they were too tired to walk any longer before being allowed to share the soldiers' mounts, I had my own horse from the beginning, as did my servants and the children they claimed as their own.

"We rode for four days before we entered Romanian land, five more before we reached the Arges River and the castle Vlad had built there."

She recalled her first sight of it too vividly. How vicious it had seemed, with its sharp stone walls jutting into the sky, how cold, how gray. The inside had even less life.

"The captain of our troop spoke to my brother first. Then I was brought to him and we were left alone. He pulled away the veil I wore, then forced me to look at him. 'I remember the eyes,' he said. 'What else was there?'

"I told him what I remembered of our first meeting and how I had seen my younger uncle in his chambers. He looked ready to strike me for that, then smiled instead. 'He taught me to be strong,' he said. 'I've always felt gratitude for that."

" 'You were always strong,' I responded, thinking of those whispers about him even when he was so young.

" 'And growing stronger,' he said. Someone entered the chambers where we sat. I heard a woman's laughter, turned and saw her—my brother's wife.

"She was Illona Ilsabeta, a woman of odd, sharp beauty. I seemed exotic to those in my mother's country because of the color of my eyes and the red cast in my hair. With her, it was nothing so obvious. The eyes seemed too wide-set, the nose too straight, the skin a bit too pale. Her hands and feet were large. Later I discovered that her legs were long and muscular. The men in my mother's country would have found her unattractive. In Wallacia, men could not keep their eyes off her.

" 'There are two small children downstairs who are in need of their mother,' she said as she came forward. 'Some say they're yours. Is it true?'

"I was afraid to tell the truth, almost as afraid to lie."

Joanna stammered something about love making them hers as Illona walked forward. She had a knife in her hand, one she held so tightly that Joanna was certain the woman meant to use it on her. Instead, she ripped through the thin linen of Joanna's skirt and the layers beneath it. One hand held her by the neck, the other moved over her belly. Illona's fingers moved between her trembling legs, pulling apart the folds of skin, pressing hard.

"She pressed her hand against my sex," Joanna said. "I cried out in surprise and pain. She laughed again. 'They can't be yours,' she said.

"They brought the children to the hall. They rushed to me, the little girl leaping into my arms like the monkey she seemed… all legs and arms at that age. What followed…" She shivered. Colleen held her close.

"You don't have to speak of it," she said. "Put it behind you, it was long ago."

Joanna shook her head, gulped another breath of air. "Someone—probably Illona—pressed a knife into my hand.

"I wanted to do the deed. I thought I would be merciful and do it quickly, and in doing it a part of me knew I would gain favor with the woman who was undoubtedly mistress of this cold place in the months when her husband was gone. But I could not. Instead, I dropped the weapon and ran, Illona's dark laughter following me down the bare stone hall.

"I spent the night locked with the children in a tower room, listening to them cry with hunger and fear. I tried to calm myself enough to calm them, but each time I touched them to soothe their misery, my own only made theirs worse. Children are too perceptive in those things. In the morning, their heads were raised on pikes beside those of the fallen Turkish officers."

She began to tremble again. Colleen held her close, murmuring words too soft for Joanna's overwrought mind to translate. She was lost in the past, in the days of delirium that followed the execution of the only children she would ever know. She took another gulp of air, but Colleen pressed tightly against her as if to force the means of speech from her lungs.

"You needn't talk about the past. You mustn't."

Joanna pushed her away and continued, her voice shaking, "The war went on and on. My brother won some battles, lost others but led a lucky life for a number of years. Hardly a scratch, though he was often in the thick of the fighting.

"Though I hated Illona, I never doubted that she loved him. When he was gone, she would spend each night in prayer. Her servants were ordered to pray with her, though they had their work in the morning. I was excused. 'God would not heed a heathen's prayers,' she often told me.

"Nor did He heed hers, at least not forever. The battles turned in the Turks' favor. Vlad was wounded, more than once. Frantic, Illona turned to soothsayers and shamans and witches, followers of old religions. They promised protection; then, when she paid them a pauper's fortune, they promised even more.

"She listened. She learned. That last time, when he was carried home, he was not expected to live the night.

"He did, for he was marvelously strong. But the fever was taking hold of him… and of her as well. She abandoned his side, spent the night in the chapel now profaned with symbols of old dark creeds.

"That night, I stayed at his side and held his hand. He was so delirious, he looked at me and whispered her name. I confess that I kissed him more than once, thinking it a small lie when it gave him so much comfort.

"It was nearly dawn when she came to us. I could sense the change in her—the triumph in her expression, the deadly passion glowing in her eyes, the same passion that glows in mine when I am hungry or enraged. 'Leave us,' she ordered and told me to close and lock the shutters and admit no one to the chamber until nightfall. 'Keep watch outside if you must, but follow this command,' she said.

"I would not dare disobey her. So I sat and waited, dozing occasionally since I had not slept for so long.

"It was the last day I would ever be completely awake and free. And I spent it in a dark stone hallway.

"At dusk, she opened the door. I had never seen her look so triumphant. 'Come in, sister,' she said.

"I was instantly wary. She never called me that unless she had something unpleasant planned for me.

"I peered past her and saw my brother sitting up in bed. Though his face seemed pale, his hair damp from sweat, there was no sign of fever. She had found a cure for him, I thought. I smiled at her, real joy in my face, for I thought that as long as he lived, my life would be far less miserable. He would protect me from her.

" 'Go to him,' she said and pushed me forward.

"I dared not disobey. In truth I had never embraced him in all the months I had lived under his roof. I hardly expected him to embrace me, but he held out his arms. Just before I fell into them, I sensed that something was wrong. But it was too late. He had me and I could not move, not even when I felt his teeth rip the flesh of my neck.