The Dracula Chronicles: Bound By Blood Page 17
“I am not here to circle. I have come to swoop.”
“You cannot wait to take the rug from under my feet?”
“If I do not, then another shall do so in my place. Console yourself that I am family.”
“You are nothing to me. You are nothing like your father.”
“My father is long gone. I am my own man.”
“He was my ally and my best friend. He even took my sister as his wife.”
“I am not he.”
“That I know too well. I oft wondered how you are one of our kin.”
“If you have concerns, perhaps you should ask my mother.”
If Florescu were a younger man, he would have struck his nephew down. “I could never consider such a cur of a man as kin of mine.”
Craiovescu did not care. “Say what you will, Uncle. It matters little to me.”
“So what is to happen?”
“I am seizing control of the garrison.”
“You cannot. Sibiu is your domain.”
“If I do not, then all manner of scoundrel might come and sit in your chair. I shall not allow it.”
“You are building for the Wallachian throne. I have seen it coming a long time.”
“It is better than seeing a Draculesti remain there.”
“They are not!”
“Calugarul is a son of Dracul. That is a Draculesti to me.”
“That is why you manufactured this coup, and killed my son?”
Craiovescu gave him a steely look. “I shall forget you said those words. If we did not share the blood of my mother, I would strike you dead.”
“It makes perfect sense. My son and men are murdered. Barely are they in the ground, and you are here.”
“If you are seeking a culprit, then look no further than Varkal Gabrul.”
“He is dead somewhere.”
“Was his body found?”
He waited for his uncle to answer, but Florescu said nothing. “No, of course not. Your men went into the forest after him. At least, Anton did. He and another witnessed the murder of the peasant.”
“You mean Daniul Gravilan? And where is he these three weeks past?”
“Yes. He is at my fortress in Sibiu.”
“How convenient that is for you.”
“It matters not what you might think. He saw it all. Anton remained while he went for help, but ended with his throat cut. The woman they found inside the hut, raped and dead. Varkal is the man who has preyed on the women of Brasov.”
“And is he at your fortress too?”
The younger man ignored the remark. “You can enjoy an easy retirement here in your house. All your needs shall be met. The fortress, and the city, are under my control from this day forward.”
“I am retired!”
“Good night, Uncle.”
He left with his men for the fortress in the city. Florescu cursed him after he was gone. Arrogant bastard, he thought. Your father would turn in his grave if he could see what you have become.
The old man poured his third cup of plum wine. His head felt a little light and his stomach a little heavy. He sat back in his chair. What else did he have left? Nothing but to die quietly. He wished again he could pass away. His body felt tired and his heart felt alone. He had nothing left. Nothing but his nightmares, his one true and constant companion.
He took some time to reflect on his life. With his wine finished, he placed his cup down. Slowly, his eyes closed and he drifted back off to sleep. He saw a naked woman standing at the gallows with a rope around her neck.
TRANSYLVANIA. THE RESIDENCE OF
VINTILA FLORESCU AT BRASOV.
NOVEMBER, 1494. THE SAME NIGHT.
Dracula entered the room soon after Craiovescu had left. Ilona and Varkal stood at his side. As the Captain of the Guard, Varkal had despised Florescu. He felt no different now as he gazed down on the old man.
His father read his thoughts. He knew Varkal was about to kick the old man’s legs to awaken him. When he put a finger to his lips, his son relaxed again.
Dracula looked down at him in his chair. It was the first time he had ever cast eyes upon him. He once vowed to his father that he would avenge the murders of his mother and brother. Although his father had fallen in battle at the hand of Mihail Basarab, he blamed this man for that too.
Images flashed through Florescu’s mind of his mother. He saw a large room of men abusing her one after another on her bed, the room he recognised as the bedchamber of his mother in the palace at Tirgoviste.
He watched on in silence. The same men led his mother naked out onto the piata. John Hunyadi sat high on his horse nearby. They bound her hands behind her back and placed a noose around her neck.
“Look away,” Ilona said to him. “It is not good for you to see this.”
He raised a hand to quieten her. “I need to see it. I have to know.”
Varkal felt a little uneasy. He had treated many women in a similar way in his lifetime. The woman he could see when he looked at Florescu was his grandmother.
He knew Ilona hated him for the man he was, and had not wanted to save him from the noose. She was not one to tolerate any crime against a woman. It gave him cause to worry. His father had only rescued him because of their blood connection. He feared now that if his father could see into Florescu’s dreams, he might turn on him as well.
The rope tightened around his grandmother’s neck and lifted her almost three feet off the ground. Dracula groaned and bit into his fist. It was more than he could bear. Yet, still he watched. He needed to know his mother’s pain. The stories he heard about it had haunted him for all of his mortal life. He had to know what these men had done to her.
A crowd stood around to witness her humiliation and death. She fought it with all her strength. In the end, she succumbed to the rope. Her body swung gently from side to side in the breeze.
A thought suddenly hit him. He had stood in that very spot a couple of days after the city had fallen. A woman hung there from the gallows, naked, as his mother was now. The crows had attacked her face so that he had not recognised her.
He felt weak for a moment, his legs almost buckling beneath him.
“Look away, Vlad,” Ilona urged him again. “Or kill him, and be done with it.”
He glared at her. “Wait a moment.”
They all cast their eyes over the old man again. He stirred in his chair, but did not awaken. His dreams projected an image of Dracula’s elder brother.
“Is that Mircea?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
Mircea rested on his knees with his hands tied behind his back. His face showed the signs of a severe beating. He looked totally distraught and cried out something none of them could hear.
Dracula reached out a hand, as if to touch him. The image changed to a fire on the piata where the hot coals blazed a fiery red. He saw a poker drawn from it and held up against the night. It reverted back to Mircea. His face looked ashen with fear.
“I have seen enough. Strip him down like he did my mother.”
Varkal grabbed the sleeping man by the collar. He lifted him from the chair and threw him down on the floor. The sudden jolt ripped the shirt from Florescu’s back. In the same moment, Ilona tore away the clothing from the lower half of his body.
The images ceased as Florescu opened his eyes. He gasped in shock at the fright of them waking him so suddenly, and looked disoriented. His first reaction was to put a hand down to his crotch to cover himself. When he got his bearings, he saw Varkal standing there.
“Hello, Vintila. Do you remember me?”
He was too stunned to speak. Only then did he notice the two others in the room. He had no clue as to the identity of the woman. The man, although he did not know him, looked strangely familiar.
Dracula picked up Victor’s head from the table and rolled it along the floor until it stopped close to Florescu’s face. “We meet at last, Florescu.”
The old man looked terrified. It occurred to
him that it was this man who was responsible for his downfall. “Who are you? Why have you done this to me?”
“This day has been due to you a long time.”
“You killed my son? Why?”
“I wanted you to know that pain. The same pain you caused me so long ago.”
Florescu turned his head away, as if trying to remember what it was he could have done to the stranger.
“Look at me! Can you honestly say you do not know who I am?”
He felt confused. “You are familiar, but I do not know you.”
“Give him a hint, Father,” Varkal said, enjoying the game.
“Father? That is not your father.”
Dracula kicked him in the ribs. Florescu cried out and rolled over onto his back. “Look again! You spent enough years of your life running from me!”
When the pain had subsided a little, he looked again. “You have a likeness to Vlad Dracul, but he is long dead.”
“His memory functions, at least,” Ilona snarled.
“I wonder if he can remember a night in Tirgoviste,” Varkal said. “Does the December in 1447 come to mind, you snake?”
“He remembers it well,” Dracula said. “He is taken back there every time he closes his eyes.”
“Dracula?” Florescu asked, stunned when he realised the identity of the intruder.
“Yes, I wager you did not expect to ever see me.”
“You are a ghost.”
“A ghost seeking a confession,” Ilona said. “You have one chance to tell all.”
“To tell you of what?”
“What you did to my mother and my brother!”
“I can see you have your own ideas on that. What do you want me to say?”
Dracula looked to his son. Varkal accepted his cue and grabbed the old man by one of his ankles. Without further ado, he tore away a chunk of Florescu’s wasted calf muscle with his teeth.
Florescu screamed in agony, jolts of pain shooting through his body. The chunk of flesh bounced off his chin when Varkal spat it at him.
“Tell me what you did to my family. If you do not, my son shall strip your bones clean.”
“He is your son?”
Ilona grabbed his left hand. She drew a dagger and sliced his palm. “Answer my husband.”
Florescu cried out again. He pressed his wounded hand in against his chest. Blood dripped from it onto his withered skin, forming clots in the wisps of white hair. “What do you want me to say? They were casualties of war!”
Dracula knelt down and punched him in the nose with a straight left hand from close range. It burst and poured blood. Florescu’s eyes watered as his blood ran down over his lips and into his mouth. He turned onto his side and began to groan quietly at the stinging pain.
“What did you do to her?”
“You know what I did!” Florescu screamed. “Kill me, and be done with it!”
“You would like that, I am sure.”
He put a hand to his throbbing nose. “Is that not why you are here?”
“Yes,” Dracula agreed. “You shall die this night, but I intend for it to be slow,” he said, taking the dagger from Ilona.
Florescu looked at him, afraid of his intentions. “So you know,” he said, finding some courage, “I fucked your mother like the Draculesti whore she was.”
Dracula ground his teeth in anger. He ran the blade from Florescu’s sternum to his groin. The cut was only a little deeper than the surface of the skin.
Florescu stiffened from the shock, and his body opened up down the middle. Dracula made a second incision across the inside of his thigh. He then turned sharply and threw the dagger at the first of the two men to run into the room. It hit Aurel full in the throat, and dropped him. Varkal pounced on Alin and relieved him of his blood.
“It is time to leave this place,” Ilona said.
Dracula looked down at Florescu as the old man slowly began to bleed to death. “Where do you want to go?” he asked her.
“Show me the world,” she said, a tinge of excitement in her voice. “Take me to Rome.”
ROME PROVINCE. THE HOME OF VANNOZZA
DEI CATTANEI. THE RIONE TRASTEVERE IN
THE CITY OF ROME.
JUNE 14, 1497.
Giovanni, Cesare, come inside. Dinner is served.”
“Yes, Mama,” the Borgia men answered in unison.
Giovanni turned his head in her direction. “We shall be along in a moment.”
Vannozza left her sons in the gardens. The brothers had argued much that afternoon. They took their discussion to the vines and away from her ear.
“What is it that troubles you this day, Cesare?”
Cesare looked at his brother. He did not want him to see what ran through his mind. “It is not you,” he said, looking away at the vines. “I am tense because of the morrow.”
“You cannot look at me when you say that?”
Cesare turned and glared at him. Giovanni saw a lot of pent-up anger behind his brother’s eyes. It had always been there, for as long as he could remember. These days, it had taken on a more serious edge, and it worried him. “You have always had issue with me,” he said. “Even when we were boys.”
“What do you expect?” Cesare almost shouted back. “It is hard to bear when you are overlooked time and again.”
“We are back to that once more? Father loves you as much as he loves me. It is only you who cannot see that.”
“He does not bestow his grand gifts and titles on anyone, save you.”
“He gave you the archbishopric of Valencia. So what ails you?”
“It hardly compares to a dukedom and Captain General of the papal armies. To make it worse, he wants to give you fiefs in Napoli. It has plunged us into war.”
“So that is what rests at the heart of this. You are afraid to go to war?”
Cesare grabbed him by the collar. “I am as good and brave a soldier as you can ever hope to be.”
Giovanni laughed at the look on his face. “You are always so serious.”
Cesare pushed him away. “It is not right that our father favours you so. He has always favoured you.”
Giovanni tried to put an arm around his shoulder to placate him. “Stop, Cesare. This shall only serve to upset Mama.”
Cesare shrugged him off. “It is as well for you we are in her house.”
His brother recognised the threat. “She has laid on a grand dinner for us. We can talk about this more on the morrow, on our journey to Napoli.”
Many people of note sat at the dinner table. There was never a shortage of dignitaries who sought invitations from the Borgias. On this occasion, Vannozza had only sent out invites to those she thought of as close friends.
Cardinal Monreale sought the attention of them all. He stood up with his goblet of wine in hand. “I propose a toast to the two finest young men in all of Rome.”
“To Giovanni and Cesare,” everyone said, raising their drinking vessels.
Even the toast annoyed Cesare. He hated how everyone touted the name of his brother before his own. His mother looked over at him. She knew him so well. When he caught her eye, he smiled. He surprised her and all those present when he stood up. “To my dear brother,” he said.
Giovanni smiled for their audience. He knew the toast was to impress them. Even with the motive behind the action, he thought it an odd thing for Cesare to do.
“You must be very proud,” the cardinal said to Vannozza.
“I am,” she said, smiling. “How could any mother not be?”
“I know their father, the pope, sees them as his pride and joy.”
Her face soured at the mention of his name. “And so he ought,” she said, a tinge of bitterness in her voice.
A man, donned all in black and wearing a mask, walked up to the table. His presence alarmed Vannozza, and she saw it as an imposition on her party. He leaned on her son’s shoulder and spoke quietly into his ear. Giovanni smiled and nodded. Her son obviously knew the man.
Her eldest son raised a hand to calm her. “One moment, Mama.”
Some of the others at the table seemed to take offence also. No one walked in on a private dinner. But they said nothing. Anyone could see Giovanni knew him.
“Who was that?” Cesare asked him, once he had left again.
Giovanni did not want to discuss it. “He is a friend.”
“I have seen him around a few times of late.”
“As I said, he is a friend.”
AFTER Brasov, Dracula took the others around Europe. It was a most exciting time for Ilona. She had spent a little over four years alone with her husband after her change before Varkal joined them. They used that time for her to adjust to her new life and powers. It was also a period for them to reacquaint.
Ilona longed to travel. She had seen nothing of the world outside Buda. In her mortal life, her duties at the court of King Matthias restricted her. Then came marriage and motherhood. It meant she had rarely, if ever, left the palace.
She took her chance now. Her husband had taken his revenge against Florescu. There was nothing to keep him in his homeland for the present.
They passed down through the Italian states. The main cities heaved with people, and the vast mazes of tiny streets allowed them to go unnoticed. They found these to be the perfect place to meet all their needs.
Dracula managed to keep their stay in Florence short, for it brought back too many memories of Piera. His time with her was one he did not want Ilona to know of. He was glad that Ilona was not as strong as him and unable to have the power to fully read his thoughts, and he could keep it from her. Florence reminded him, too, of the eldest Borgia son. He had seen images of him in Piera’s memory. They all showed how he had tried so hard to seduce her.
He knew the Borgias resided, in the main, in Rome. It pleased him then when his wife developed a love for that city. Their time there he used to good effect. It was a chance to learn the haunts and habits of the Borgias.
It proved easier than he thought to befriend Giovanni. The eldest Borgia son took to anyone who looked like they had money. He was a man of great wealth himself, but his name and money had made him a snob, and he spent his time only with people of a similar ilk. Dracula taught him a lot about politics in a very short time. Giovanni gave his new friend his trust and came to depend on his advice.