Walachia 1462
In the city of Tîrgovişte, its prince and protector was thwarting the force of the oncoming warriors of the Ottoman Turks. During this period in history they were a threat, having killed the last of the emperors of the Eastern Christian Empire, Constantine XI Palaeologus and took Constantinople in 1453, the capital of Byzantium. They also seized most lands in Eastern Europe and imprisoned or destroyed princes and kings. Remarkably they did not enforce the people of the Christian lands to revert to Muslim, of course though the fear of that was imminent. By the time they had reached Tîrgovişte, the Turks had already taken over much of the lands south of the countries Hungary and Walachia, the southern plain of today’s Romania, and were on their way to seize Walachia.
The prince of the city of Tîrgovişte, the capitol of Walachia during this time, was Vlad III Ţepeş (the Impaler). Better known to us, though not to the people of his time, was his nickname Dracula, which is Romanian for “son of the dragon/devil”. Ţepeş wasn’t a very tall man, but he was built strong, with a thin, pale face, a thin upper and a thick lower lip, and a heavy, dark mustache that curled at the ends. His nose was long and thin, and his almond shaped, dragon green eyes were menacing with dark arched eyebrows defining them. His hair was dark auburn, curly and soft, with the length reaching down past his shoulder blades.
During a cool, moonless September night, Ţepeş, along with the soldiers that he himself had trained, were trying to keep the Turks and their military leader that Ţepeş had known all too well, his brother Radu cel Frumos (the Handsome), from capturing his city and burning it to the ground. Because Ţepeş was a very brave and protective leader, he was the main reason that the Turks hadn’t yet captured Walachia. It was that particular night that he began to feel pressure from his brother and his army whilst his own army dwindled. It was the force of the Turkish army that led him to the decision of taking his most trusted men to leave to his place of refuge, his mountain retreat in the Transylvanian Alps, his castle. He gathered up these men quickly and afterwards they rode their horses secretively in the dark night to his castle, careful to not let anyone know of their leaving. Just previous to the escape, he had sent out messengers to the king of Hungary, King Mátyás Corvinus, to tell the king of his retreat and his need to meet with him at Braşov to talk about acquiring more men for his army that was melting away.
While they traveled along the Argeş River on secret trails, they were unaware that his brother, who had acquired knowledge of his escape, was inconspicuously following them. When Ţepeş had arrived to his castle in the very early hours of the morning, he was oblivious to the knowledge that the Turks had begun setting up camp on the opposite bank of the river, on what is known as the Bluff of Poenari. The bluff had an ample view of his castle, and from there they had set up their cannons. Though their cannons and guns were not quite strong enough to destroy the incredibly thick walls of the fortress, the Turks were persistent and were to use as much force as they could come sunrise.
During that night, while most of the Turkish army slept and even some of the watchmen having dozed off once in a while, a Walachian slave of their capture quietly and carefully climbed up to the top of the bluff in the dark, moonless night, with bow and arrow in hand. Attached to the arrow was a letter to warn Ţepeş of the oncoming attack. With very careful aim, he shot the arrow through a dimly lit window on the main tower of the castle, and with seemingly incredible accuracy, extinguished the candle that had been sitting on a table in that room. When he had seen that the candle was relit, he thought he had seen what appeared to possibly be the silhouette of Ţepeş’s wife, Irina, in the window and had a notion that she was reading the letter.
It was indeed Ţepeş’s beautiful pink-cheeked, dark curly haired, blue-eyed wife. That window was to their private chamber. She had been trying to set back to sleep Ţepeş’s son, Vlad IV, after he had been awakened by a nightmare. The little boy, not even four years of age, was not hers. Ţepeş had never married his blood mother, who was only a mistress of Ţepeş’s until little Vlad was born, who then died after she had given birth to him. Seeing that Vlad needed a mother, he had married his present wife and she had taken care of little Vlad ever since, though they never had a child together.
When the arrow had shot through the window, it startled her and woke up little Vlad just as he was starting to fall back to sleep. She sat him down off of her lap and onto their bed, then got up off the bed to go relight the candle and pick up the arrow. When she had picked up the arrow, she removed the letter off from it, unrolled the letter and began to read it. The more she read, the more her rosy face had become white with dread.
She said with fear in her voice, “Vlad, stay on the bed for a minute, alright, sweetheart?”
The blonde-haired, brown-eyed, chubby faced boy nodded his head, puzzled as to why his mother seemed frightened.
She then left the room to go find her husband to show him the letter. It wasn’t more than a couple of seconds when she had found him. She was descending down the tower staircase as he was ascending it no more than several feet from the door to their chamber. Though he had been at the castle for at least an hour, he was still dressed in his armor and carried with him his helmet in his hands when she showed him the letter.
She said to him very frantically, “Vlad, my lord, my husband, an arrow had shot through the window to our chamber, and on it was attached this letter, warning us to leave the castle before the Turks attack in the morning. What if they capture us and make us their prisoners and torture us? I could not let that happen to me and I would rather have my body be eaten by the fish in the Argeş than become a prisoner of the Turks!”
And before Ţepeş had time to respond, she ran up the spiraling, narrow staircase of the tower and, without hesitance, hurled herself from the donjon window, her body rolling down the precipice of the mountain and into the river, leaving a pool of red blood in the water around her. (And from that day on, that part of the Argeş had become known by the peasants as Râul Doamnei, “the Lady’s River”). Ţepeş ran up the stairs to the empty donjon, his armor clanging, and looked out the window from which she had jumped. He could not see his wife on the rocks of the river below, with her white nightdress and body bloodied, but he could already see the hurt look upon his son’s face.
Ţepeş came to grasp the severity of his situation. Though he was more at ease about it than his wife, he decided to quickly organize a small escape party and plan his and his son’s escape, since taking his own life was not part of his philosophy. He left the donjon and went back down the stairs to his bedroom and told his son the gruesome thing that his mother had done to herself, hoping that it would put fear into the boy and make him hate her for doing such a foolish act. Ţepeş hated to tell lies and hated liars, so he had told Vlad the horrifying truth instead of protecting him from it. The boy began to cry as Ţepeş picked him up and carried him down the stairs to the main floor of the castle.
He gathered up some of his men to the main hall and told them, “Find me the Dobrin brothers from Arefu so that they may show me the way to Königstein Castle. That way, my son and I can escape from the Turks fire and wait for King Mátyás Corvinus’ arrival to Braşov so he may help me to replenish my depleting army.” The men left right away, and Ţepeş, holding his son tightly in his arms, was hoping that Mátyás of Hungary would help him by giving him some soldiers and by protecting his son.
In the meantime, while he waited for his men to return, he had taken his son back up to his room. He lit a few more of the candles and sconces in the room while telling his son why they had to leave the castle, being much more subtle in explaining than he had in regards to his mother‘s death. Afterwards, Ţepeş began to dress his son up in some peasant clothing that he had saved in his room for just such an emergency. He then sat down on the edge of the bed and sat his son next to him. He took off a gold neck chain from around his neck, and hanging from it was a pendant with his emblem on it. The pendant was circle-shaped with the front having the Walachian eagle on one side and a comet with a crescent upon it on the other side and between them was a long and twisting dragon biting its tail. Inscribed on the outer part of the circle read, in Old Slavonic: ‘Vlad Voevod through the grace of God is Prince of Ungro-Walachia and the duchies of Amlaş and Făgăraş.’ He then took a very sharp knife from his belt and carved out on the bare back-side of the pendant in Cyrillic Romanian ‘băiatul meu Vlad’ (‘my son Vlad’).
He placed the large and heavy pendant around Vlad’s neck and told him, “Vlad, no matter what happens to us, I want you to keep this forever and wear it as much as you can to remember me, do you understand?”
“Yes, father, I understand. I’ll always remember you.” his son responded in a small, timid voice.
Ţepeş himself then dressed in peasant clothing so that they would not be as noticed as they would be in their own royal garments when they were to escape the castle. Soon after, he picked up his son again and carried him back down to the main hall to wait for his men.
So, what are your opinions on the first three pages of my story? Anything in need of changing? This story is very lengthy, about 306 pages long. I put in quite a bit of research into this novel, took me nearly ten years to get it to where it is now. I mixed in a lot of fact with the fiction along with folklore. Looking forward to your input.
Karen
