Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (books to read romance .txt) 📗

      As you will see, my thinking in all this was basically correct. Even if never, in my highest flights of fancy, did I guess correctly just what the king would ultimately decide my right place was to be…

      What you will find set down in today’s history books is that the Tower of Solomon remained my prison for the next eleven years. The historical experts, who in other respects often behave as if they are perfectly sober, relate that during that time I was often granted the special boon of having small animals brought living to my cell, that I might entertain myself by torturing them and impaling them on miniature stakes. This quaint behavior must have so impressed the humanist Matthias that it was during this very period that he decided to arrange my marriage to his sister. At the same time, to punish her for consorting with such a beast as Drakulya, he had her name obliterated from all the family records. (And it is true, that historians can now find out hardly anything about her, save the mere fact of her existence, and our marriage.) When eleven years of this idyll had passed, Matthias decided for unknown reasons that it was time for a change, abruptly brought me out of my cell—whether my bride had meanwhile been locked up with me is left to the imagination of the reader—and in due course restored me to my former eminence as Prince of Wallachia.

      Now, I ask you. Does it require prolonged reflection, penetrating intelligence of the first order, to infer that the above scenario lacks something, that it might perhaps profit by correction?

      Truth is hard to attain. But let me at least try to restore to the record a little sanity. After the move to Visegrad, the king saw me more frequently. At each audience he probed me deeply with searching young eyes, eyes rapidly growing wise beyond their years with the experience of statecraft. At each meeting now he asked me many questions. What did I think about this particular military problem? Supposing I were the king’s chief adviser, what course would I recommend in that political difficulty? What was George of Podebrady up to, and how about the Germans? Should women be encouraged to read and write? He interrogated me in areas philosophical and moral, he sought to know my mind on matters of theology and art. Always I strove to answer truthfully, weak though my knowledge was in many fields. I wanted to appear to His Majesty as neither more nor less than what I truly was: loyal and capable, yet prone, as all men are, to human imperfection.

      The key conversation between us took place one sunny day in the early spring of 1464, when I had been about six months at Visegrad. My guards, whose gradually improving courtesy had fed my hopes, on that day positively bowed as they came to escort me from my now well-furnished cell. I was led into a part of the palace that I had not previously visited, through rooms where some of Matthias’s growing legion of painters and bookworms were at work. The king himself was waiting for me in a large chamber, magnificently furnished. Its broad shelves contained more books, all hand-copied of course, than I had ever seen before in my entire non-bookish life.

      At this meeting the king for the first time dismissed his soldiers completely. We were for all intents and purposes alone, there remaining in our sight only a couple of graybearded researchers at the end of a long gallery, doddering the remainder of their lives away over manuscripts.

      The young king’s smile lay thinly across his prominent jaw. “Drakulya, we have heard it said that you are a completely fearless man. Nor have we ever seen evidence of dread in you, not even on that first day when you stood before us in chains.”

      To my surprise, His Majesty had spoken not in Hungarian or Rumanian, our usual vehicles of discourse, but in Italian. His slow, mechanical pronunciation gave me the impression that he might have learned the little speech by rote.

      Puzzled, I bowed to him, and made shift to answer in the same tongue. “My life’s ration of fear was used up, Majesty, before I had a beard to shave.”

      Smiling, evidently pleased by my reply, the king relaxed the conversation into Hungarian. “The Turkish prison, yes. Well, it is the Turks who fear you now, Kaziklu Bey. I remember well the bags you used to send me, Lord Impaler, stinking to high heaven by the time I got them, filled with Turkish noses, ears … but never mind that now.” He paused. “There are certain Christians who dread you also.”

      “A few may have good reason, Majesty. Most certainly do not.”

      “And, by the way, we have sometimes wondered why it is that you have never presumed during these talks to remind us of our father’s friendship for you. It might be expected that a man in the position of a prisoner could hardly fail to do that.”

      I bowed again. “It had never occurred to me that such a friendship could possibly have been forgotten by Your Majesty.”

      “Ha. And some say you are no diplomat. Well.” And Matthias stared at me, thoughtfully, as only kings in the age of kings could stare, his eyes a regal gray above his still almost beardless cheeks. “Of diplomats we have enough at present. Of army officers too, it seems. Although rumor has it that the Sultan himself intends to lead his armies this year, in Bosnia, as I mean to lead my own against him … you see, I trust you with a military secret. Though I suppose it can hardly be a secret any longer. Oh, you are an excellent field commander, Drakulya. But if I gave you a command old jealousies would come to life again, old enmities would be rekindled. I have a lot of Germans in the Black Army, you know.