Dracula (A Modern Telling) (15 page)

It was at that moment I knew I had found my wife.

Over the next days I would go every morning after training to Elizabeth and we would
take walks to have picnics or I would take her younger sisters shopping at the bazaar for new clothes or toys. We couldn’t spend much time together at first because she had to work, and then I hit on the idea that I would have my servants work her small garden and her field. Every day, I would bring two or three servants and I take Elizabeth and her sisters away from the hut and expose them to things they would not otherwise have been able to experience.

One morning, as I was leaving, I saw Radu in the hallway. He was
drunk, either from the morning’s drink or that he hadn’t yet recovered from the previous night.

“So little brother has a whore?” he said. “Well
, I am the eldest. By right, your whores are my whores. I think tonight I would like to claim my prize.”

I leaned in close to him and said, “If you touch her, I will kill you.”

A slight change came over him when I said this. I think it was perhaps because I was so calm, and I was so serious. I had always excelled in hand-to-hand combat, and though he would no doubt cheat, he had to have understood that I would severely hurt him in the process and he wouldn’t want to risk such a battle.

He simply laughed, and stumbled away.

When I met Elizabeth that morning, my mind was distracted. We had received reports that Abel’s army was on the march. No one outside of my family and a few select generals knew what our plans were — that we would fake a battle and then flee. But for this ploy to work, the villagers mustn’t be made aware.

“What’s the matter?” Elizabeth asked as we lay on a wool blanket under the shade of some cypress trees.

“You must leave. You and your sisters. You must leave this village and not come back until I tell you to do so.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Do you trust me, Elizabeth?”

She kissed me, my face held in her small hands. “With my life.”

“Then you must trust that I know what I’m speaking of. You must take your sisters and leave today.”

“Where would we go? We have no money, no relations, we have nothing but the field and the garden left by my parents.”

“I will provide for you. Enough so that you do not have to worry about money for a long, long while. I have family in Brasov. You will go there and stay with them. I have made all the arrangements.”

Her face, normally sweet and innocent, for a moment lost that innocence. “War is coming, isn’t it?” I did not reply and she nodded. “I’ve already seen one war, when your father took the throne
. I do not want to see another.”

“Then you will go?” She nodded and I kissed her. “Just knowing you are safe and away from a
ll this will bring my heart joy.”

“Where will you go?”

“I must go to the Ottomans. My father has arranged a bargain with them, and until his terms are fulfilled I must stay with them.”

“They’re brutes. I cannot stand the thought of you in their clutches.”

“I won’t be harmed. To harm us is to break their word; no true Christian would ever trust them again.”

She leaned over me and placed her head on my chest. We lay there a long while
. In the distance we heard the low thumping of drums.

Abel’s army was like a swarm of ants. I could see them from the castle’s ramparts. He had clearly received the aid of other provincial governors and self-proclaimed kings. I ran down to the village, a cart with two horses and several days supply of food and water with me. There was only one man I trusted for this task: Grigore. He was what’s now known as a homosexual, but at the time that was not what they were called. I knew Elizabeth and her sisters would be safe with him, for once the prospect of sex is no longer possible, most men are generally good and decent.

“Hurry, boy,” Grigore said. “I don’t plan on becoming fodder for Abel’s dogs.”

I ran into the hut and found Elizabeth and her sisters. The youngest, Sariah, ran to me as she always did and threw her arms around my legs. I bent down and kissed her and lifted her in my arms.

“We must go, right now.”

“Where are we going?” she asked in her sweet little voice.

“Somewhere safe and happy.”

Elizabeth came to me and I could see the concern written on her face though she refused to show it to her sisters. “When will you be able to come?”

“I will visit as soon as I can. They’re call
ing me a guest of the Sultan’s court, but I think it will not be better than a hostage. I may not see you for some time.”

She kissed me, hard, and then
proceeded to gather as many of their important items as she could. We loaded the wagon and I said my goodbye to her younger sisters as I placed them inside. You could now hear the slow march of the armies. Armies back then played drums with their march, both to place soldiers on the same rhythm and also as a psychological tactic to unnerve an enemy with the slow approach of battle. We stood silently and listened to the drums a while.

“Please come with us,” she whispered to me.

“There is nothing in the world I would rather do … but I cannot. If my father cannot take back his throne, we will be cast out and hunted by Abel’s men until we’re all dead. The only way my father can take his throne back is with the help of the Moslems. I must go, but I will come for you. Across oceans of time, I will come for you.”

I kissed her then and it was as if time had left us. I lost track of where I was and I did not want it to end. But at the last, she was the one that pulled away
. She was always stronger than me.

I helped her into the wagon and Grigore spurred the horse. I walked alongside it as long as I could.

“Grigore, she is my very soul.”

“I know, young master. She will be waiting safely for your return. I promise it.”

When the wagon gained speed and was on the outskirts of the village, it began to pull ahead. I saw her little sisters waive to me and blow kisses, and Elizabeth turned to me and mouthed something … I was unable to see what it was. It was the last thing she ever said to me, and to this day I do not know what it was.

For a noble, it was easy to escape the castle and the approaching horde. It is a trend of history I think: the poor suffer the worst for conflicts started by the rich. We fled in a caravan and went far into the mountains. The Carpathians back then, before the days of the helicopter and the tractor, may as well have been the bottom of the sea. Man could not survive in either environment on his own.

We watched from a mountaintop as the army devoured the village. I had been correct to send Elizabeth away. Many of the huts were set on fire and I could see droves of women taken by the army and forced to march with them. Pay was little back then and for a soldier the greatest attribute of war was the ability to plunder the land and people. So they took the women and left the children with the men as they marched to the castle. My father had to make it appear as if he were fighting and so masses of his army died defending the castle. When the fighting was over, as it was in no more than a few hours, Abel and his generals walked in to claim their prize. What I would have given to see his face when he found an empty castle.

We turned then, and left my homeland.

Our pace was steady but comfortable. Our path was treacherous, some of the trails no more than a few inches wide with drops of thousands of feet on either side. Abel’s men would not search far and so we were not afraid of them. The forest, in certain regions, grew cold, and at night I had just a fur blanket and a fire to keep me warm, which would have been enough had the vicious winds not kept extinguishing the fire. After ten or so attempts, we decided we would have to sleep without the comfort of flame.

After a night of little sleep, we awoke and had a breakfast of cold meat and wine. I ate little for I didn’t want to march through snow and sand and rock with a full belly. But soon, within days, we were out of the mountains and on the open plains
, headed for the Sultan’s court.

Radu was with me, as were about six
ty or seventy men seeing to our safety. My father was going elsewhere and took the bulk of his men and split from our group, my mother riding with him.

Radu and I barely spoke. My mind was completely occupied with calculations of when I would be able to see Elizabeth. It would take, by my estimation, at least a year for my father to take back his castle. Once that was complete perhaps a fortnight
— if my father was wise — to get the Moslems everything that was promised them for their help. Then my father would have to request for us from the court. This was tricky, as he very well may have decided that it would be better to have his sons in an ally’s court, but in the end I knew he would request us back. Though he perhaps had twenty children, maybe more, we were his only two legitimate heirs. He would need us.

One night, out on open, grassy plains, I lay on
my back and watched the stars. Little wind was upon us so the fire burned fiercely and toasted my feet. Radu was drunk and I could hear him in his tent. I saw a young girl of perhaps no more than ten run out of the tent completely nude, weeping and holding torn clothing to her chest. Radu flew out of the tent in a rage and gave chase. The men there with us found it funny and were laughing. “The little master’s got a man’s erection all right,” they would say.

Radu jumped on this poor girl
who I assumed had been taken from a nearby village. He flipped her over and spread her legs and I knew he would ravage her right there. I jumped to my feet and sprinted at him. Without a word, I tackled him to the ground. The impact made us both grunt as we flew onto the grass. He was so drunk he did not realize it was me. He was shouting for the guards to get me off of him and they were simply laughing. Most people, those guards included, did not believe my father would be able to come back into power. As such, the men did not defer to us. We were two spoiled brats to them that were about to be taught a lesson we deserved beneath the Sultan’s whip.

The young gir
l stood and ran. When I saw she was gone, I rolled off Radu and to the side.

“Are you mad!” he screamed. “What do you think you are doing?”

“She was just a young girl.”

“So what? She’s a whore. They’re all whores. All girls, all women, their duty is to pleasure us.”

“That is not their duty.” He pulled out a sword that he kept tucked into his waistband. I pulled out mine and jumped to my feet. He thrust at me and I parried and spun around, cutting his hand. He shouted in fury as he wildly swung for me over and over. I was able to move quickly enough as he telegraphed every swing.

In one powerful thrust, the tip of my sword entering the wound on his hand again
, I knocked the sword out of his hand and the tip of my blade was at his chest over the heart. “We will die, damn you, but I will not die a monster.”

He scoffed and walked to his tent.

We began our march again and most of the following days were spent enduring heat and humidity. We would stop at small villages and restock our supplies and then march again. I did notice something one night however, when all the men were gathered around the fire for a meal: we had lost at least ten of them. It was a trend that would continue as we progressed. The men did not fear my father any longer and had already been paid. They simply began to abandon us.

The capital of the Ottoman’s ha
d just recently been switched to Constantinople after the Moslem conquest of the city. It was where we were heading, and the quickest way was over the Black Sea. We had chartered a ship but it was no longer there. We were forced to take a barge that had been converted to a slave ship. Radu and the handful of men that were left with us took up quarters below deck and I saw then the true wretched state of slavery.

Mothers and daughters huddled in corners to avoid the ravages of the
slave masters, and the other slaves. People ate their own feces for lack of food…. I had never seen anything like it. Though we had serfs and servants, this was something unlike any I had experienced. It pained me and filled me with terror that this was how the Sultan treated those deemed inferior.

The journey across the sea was pleasant as there were no storms. Though Radu and the men stayed below deck, I
stayed above with the slaves who were propelling the ship with giant oars. I sat near them and listened to them speak in their strange tongues. I had been taught both Greek and Latin but these slaves spoke neither. Their language was more sung than spoken and I thought it sounded poetic along with blue sky and fresh sea air.

When we arrived at Constantinople, I had pictured a city much like
Budapest, which had been the largest city near me. But I was not prepared for what I saw.

Walls were as high as giants
, and the city itself parted and allowed ships through the center on a canal. The buildings were massive and beautiful and the city showed few scars from the siege that had just occurred. The Ottomans, it seemed, had planned to make Constantinople their capital before they ever invaded and had left the city nearly wholly intact.