Children of The Night

Dream's of Blood and Iron

I watched from these windows these small windows which shed such thin light upon me now . . . I watched from these windows as a child of three or four as they led the thieves, brigands, murderers, and tax dodgers from the cramped jail in Councilmen's Square across the street to their place of execution in the Jewelers' Donjon. I remember their faces, these prisoners, these condemned men: unwashed, eyes redrimmed, faces gaunt, bearded and wild, casting their gaze about them in desperation as the knowledge descended on each man that he had only minutes left before the rope would be set around his neck and the executioner would tumble him from the platform. Once I remember there were three women who had been kept separate in the Councilmen's Tower lockup, and I watched on a brisk autumn morning as they were led in chains out of the Tower and across the square, from the square to the street, and then. down the cobble-stoned hill out of sight of my eager eyes. But oh, those seconds of pure sight as I knelt here on the couch in my father's room which passed as both court and private chamber . . . oh, those endless moments of ecstasy!

The women were dressed in filthy rags, like the men. I saw their breasts through the tatters of rotted brown. The women were streaked with dirt from the Tower's jail and with blood from the guards' rough treatment of them. But their breasts were pale, white, defenseless. I saw glimpses of their streaked legs and pale thighs; I saw the darkness between those thighs when the oldest of the three women fell, legs spread and sliding on cobblestones as the jailer dragged them squealing and wailing on the long length of chain. But it is their eyes that I remember most . . . as terrified as those of the male prisoners I had. seen, so wide that the whites showed around the dark irises, like the sliding eyes of mares being forced forward after smelling fresh blood or the presence of a stallion.

That was the first time I felt the excitementthe rise of thrill in my chest as I watched the sure knowledge of death descend on these men and womenthe excitement and the throbbing purity of sensation. I remember falling, legs too weak to support me, on my father's couch at this very window, heart pounding, the images of those straining, doomed men and women burning fresh in my consciousness even as their actual cries echoed and diminished on the cool air wafting in through Father's open windows.

My father, Vlad Dracul, had sentenced those people to hang. Or rather, he had confirmed the sentence with no more than a nod or flicker of his hand to a subordinate. Father had created and now enforced the laws which had condemned those women, those men. It was Father who had brought that great terror down upon these people, Father who had summoned that palpable throbbing of Death's wings in the square below.

I remember lying there on the couch, feeling my heart slowly return to normal, feeling the first flush of embarrassment at the strange excitement . . . I remember lying in this room and thinking, Someday I shall have that power.

It was in this room when I was four that I first drank from the Chalice. I remember every detail. My mother was not present. Only Father and five other men I had never seen before, all robed and cowled in their greenoverred Draconist ceremonial garb, were in attendance that night. I remember the bright tapestry behind Father's throne, set out for this night onlythe great dragon curling in a circle of gold scales, its terrifying mouth open, its wings widespread, its mighty claws curved into grasping talons. I remember the torchlight and muttered ritual of the Order of the Dragon. I remember the presentation of the Chalice. I remember my first taste of blood. I remember the dreams it brought me that night.

It was in this room when I was five, in the Year of Our Lord 1436, that I heard my father declare his intention to the court of seizing the land and title of his dying halfbrother Alexander Aldea, thus making Father the first full prince of Wallachia. I remember the sound of horses' shod hooves on the winter air beyond my nursery window, the creak of leather and deathhollow clank of iron against iron as the cavalry passed our windows that December night. I remember how I loved the richness of the imperial city of Tirgoviste, I remember the sensuous feel of the Italian, Hungarian, and Latin words I learned there, each new syllable as rich as the taste of blood in my mouth, and I remember the excitement behind the dry history taught to me by my boyar tutor and the old monks there. And I remember how short that wonderful time was to be.

I was twelve years old when my father gave me and my younger halfbrother Radu as hostages to the Turkish Sultan Murad. Perhaps he had not planned to do it as we rode to Gallipoli to meet the Sultan, for Father was also seized by the Sultan's men only minutes after we had reached the city gates. But Father later swore an oath on the Bible and Koran not to oppose the Sultan's will, and our continued role as hostages was part of that oath. Radu was only eight and I remember his tears as the escorted wagon bore us away from Gallipoli toward the fortress of Egrigoz in the province of Karaman in western Anatolia.

I did not weep.

l remember how cold that winter was, how strange the food, and how the manservants who looked after our wants also locked the door to our apartments when the early twilight settled on that mountain city. I remember the shock of the Sultan's people when the Ceremony of the Chalice was explained to them, but they accepted it as just another barbarism of the Christian faith. Their jails were filled with criminals, slaves, and prisoners of war waiting to be disposed of; so finding donors was not difficult. Later we were taken to Tokat, and later still, to Adrianople, where we lived, ate, traveled, and grew into manhood in the Sultan's company.

The Sultan Murad was a cruel man, but less cruel, I think, than Father had been. He treated us more like sons than Father ever had. I remember once the Sultan touching my cheek after I had excitedly shown him the sweep and soaring pounce of a falcon I had helped train. His surprisingly gentle touch lingered.

By the end of my six years there, I was thinking in Turkish more often than in my own language, and even now, as strength ebbs and consciousness dims, it is in Turkish that I form my halfwaking thoughts.

Radu was always handsome, even as a young child, and was beautiful by the time he showed the earliest signs of manhood. I remained ugly. Radu licked up to the philosophers and scholars who tutored us. l resisted their efforts to instruct us in Byzantine culture. Radu abandoned the Chalice even while I found need to drink from it weekly rather than monthly, then daily rather than weekly. Radu gained the awards and caresses of our jailors and tutors; l suffered their whippings. By the time he was thirteen, Radu had learned how to please both the women in the seraglio and the male courtiers who came to our apartments late at night.

I hated my halfbrother, and he returned the hatred with added contempt. Each of us knew that if we survivedand each of us, in our own way, was filled with full determination to survivethat someday we would be enemies and rivals for our father's throne.

Radu followed his path to the throne by becoming the minion of Sultan Murad II and harem boy to his successor, Mehmed. He stayed in Turkey until 1462; at twenty-seven, Radu was still beautiful, but could no longer be considered a harem boy. Promised my father's title by the Sultan, he found it claimed by someone more daring and resourceful. He found it claimed by me.

I remember the dayI was sixteenwhen word of my father's death reached us at the Sultan's court. It was in the late autumn of 1447. Cazan, my father's most faithful chancellor, had ridden five days to Adrianople with the news. The details were few but painful. The boyars and citizens of Tirgoviste had revolted, urged on by Hungary's rapacious King Hunyadi and his Wallachian ally, the boyar Vladislav ll. Mircea, my full brother, had been captured in Tirgoviste and buried alive. Vlad Dracul, my father, had been hunted down and murdered in the marshes of Balteni, near Bucharest. Cazan informed us that Father's body had been returned to a hidden chapel near Tirgoviste.'

Cazan, his old man's rheumy eyes moistening more than usual, then presented me with two objects Father had asked himasked as they fled toward the Danube with the assassins on their trailto give to me as my legacy. This legacy consisted of a beautiful Toledo forged sword presented to Father by Emperor Sigismund in Nuremberg on the year that I was born, and also the gold Dragon Pendant that my father had received upon entering the Order of the Dragon.

Setting the Dragon Pendant about my neck and holding the sword high above my head; the bright blade catching the torchlight, I swore my oath in front of Cazan and Cazan alone. “I swear upon the Blood of Christ and the Blood of the Chalice,” I cried, my voice not breaking, “that Vlad Dracul will be avenged, that I will personally drain and drink the blood of Vladislav, and that those who planned and committed this treachery will lament the day when they murdered Vlad Dracul and earned the enmity of Vlad Dracula, Son of the Dragon. They have not known true terror until this day. So I swear upon the Blood of Christ and the Blood of the Chalice, and may all the forces of Heaven or Hell come to my aid in this solemn purpose.”

I sheathed the sword, patted the weeping chancellor on his shoulder, and returned to my quarters to lie awake and plot my escape from the Sultan, my vengeance on Vladislav and Hunyadi.

I lie awake now, realizing that as blades of Toledo steel are forged in the furnaces and crucibles of flame, so are men forged in the crucibles of such pain, loss, and fear. And, as with a fine sword, such human blades take centuries to lose their terrible edge.

The light has failed. I will pretend to sleep.