Who was the man behind the legend? In Prince Drakulya, Paul Doherty traces th e life of the infamous figure in a thrilling mystery. Perfect for fans of C.J Sansom and Ellis Peters. Dracula has always been a fascinating yet terrifying figure. But the legend of the human vampire is based on horrifying reality: Dracula (or more properly Drakulya) was a real person, a Prince of Wallachia (now part of Romania) who struggled for personal and political survival during the sinister intrigues of I5th century Europe. Discover him through Rhodros - the friend who knew him best. Rhodros accurately describes Drakulya's influences: his harsh imprisonment by the Ottoman Turks, his manipulation by the subtle and brilliant Ottoman court, and his lust for vengeance against the nobles responsible for the deaths of his father and brother. When Drakulya finally breaks free from his captors' influence he returns as ruler of his own country to wreak horrifying revenge... Don't miss the gripping sequel: The Lord Count Drakulya. What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: 'Paul Doherty's books are a joy to read ' ' The sounds and smells of the period seem to waft from the pages of [Paul Doherty's] books' 'Mr. Doherty's research is only topped by his imagination '
Release date:
June 6, 2013
Publisher:
Headline
Print pages:
192
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Mysteries of Alexander the Great (as Anna Apostolou)
A MURDER IN MACEDON
A MURDER IN THEBES
Alexander the Great
THE HOUSE OF DEATH
THE GODLESS MAN
THE GATES OF HELL
Matthew Jankyn (as P C Doherty)
THE WHYTE HARTE
THE SERPENT AMONGST THE LILIES
Non-fiction
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF TUTANKHAMUN
ISABELLA AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF EDWARD II
ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DEATH OF A GOD
THE GREAT CROWN JEWELS ROBBERY OF 1303
THE SECRET LIFE OF ELIZABETH I
THE DEATH OF THE RED KING
It is dark outside. I can see that through the prison window high in the wall, my only hour glass for the time and the seasons. There is an evening breeze, a welcome relief from the stench of this cell which draws the rats who, every night, regularly check to see if I am still alive. There must be a moon. I can hear some lonely wolf howling its protests at it, drowning the squeak of the long-horned skull-faced bats who soar through the night. I know that I am going to die. For me, there will be no pardon or remission, and I find I do not really care. I have lived a long life. At sixty-two one could even call me a survivor. I have seen the empires of the east and the west and tasted the best and worst of each. I have seen the famous rise and fall, as well as sights that you would only expect to see in the very gates of hell. Rows of bodies, young and old, male and female, impaled on thick, light brown stakes. Heads rolling and bobbing in the dust, eyes staring, tongues out. I have seen the crash and clamour of battle. The silken luxury of court and the subtle intricacies of clever men. I have felt every sensation any living man could expect to experience and all because of the Prince I served. Yes, because of him they are going to kill me. In fact, they are going to kill me because they maintain that he was not a man but a devil.
I must pause. They want a confession from the beginning, so . . . My name is Rhodros. I am a Greek by birth, a Rumanian by adoption and the lifelong friend and servant of him they term Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler, Kazikulu Bey, son of the Dragon, the scion of Satan, that Lord of Darkness, the Lord Count Drakulya, Voivode of Wallachia.
Yet, I hurry, even dead, the Prince draws me on and I must go back to the beginning. I was born a Greek on the island of Rhodes and captured by Ottoman Turks when I was only a child of nine or ten summers. The Ottomans had brought their long, sharp-beaked ships into one of the many small ports and harbours of the island. They came for wood and provisions but stayed for plunder. Their assault on my village was sharp, quick and decisive, attacking at dawn, just as the sun rose. They surrounded the village, their kettle-drums beating and their green banners flying. The attack was led by yellow-coated Janissaries whilst their officers stood on a nearby hillock and watched its progress. Each hut was razed to the ground, the old being immediately killed, the women methodically raped and then the able-bodied survivors herded together, ropes were thrown round our necks and we were ordered to march back to their ships. No one came to help us. My mother had died in childbirth. My father, the local priest, was rash enough to offer resistance and so died at his own altar, his throat cut from ear to ear. I remember feeling shocked but not sad at this, as my relationship with my father was negligible and, with all the selfishness of a child, I was more curious about what was going to happen to me. Naturally, I had heard stories about the cruelty and the rapacity of the Turks, and was fearful of either a short life or a lingering death. Circumstances proved it was neither.
We were bundled aboard galleys and within days I was delivered to the slave markets in the principality of Karaman in Western Anatolia. Life aboard ship was pleasant enough. I was physically examined by an eunuch, whose black, blank eyes, flabby fingers and sharp questions about my health frightened me more than the yellow-coated Janissaries or the fierce-looking seamen, who manned the sails and directed the hooked galley in its swift progress back to Turkish waters. I remember seeing these rowers grasping the oars, their muscle-bound backs straining under cruel whips, and I became frightened that I too would be forced to join them. I eventually confessed my fears to the eunuch, but he laughed and explained that I was not a convict and the Turks needed young, strong, intelligent Christians for their armies, to serve their great sultan, Murad II, friend of Allah and the Scourge of Christians, who had vowed to take the fabulous city of Constantinople before he died. The eunuch was right. I did not join the oarsmen, but he was wrong in other things. Murad never took Constantinople and I was never trained in the Turkish army. Instead, once I arrived in Karaman, I was examined once again by a slave master, an ex-Christian, an apostate priest, who questioned me carefully and appraised me knowingly. Afterwards, I was kept apart from the rest of the slaves and, following a brief conversation with a fierce-looking Turkish captain, the slave master informed me that I was to be taken to the fortress of Egrigoz to be trained as a clerk and scribe for the garrison there.
I was quite happy with this change of life. The village on Rhodes had been dull and I now had seen more in a few weeks than I had in my young life. My Turkish captors were not as cruel as village gossip and allegations had painted them. They were cultivated men. Superb horsemen who admired courage and intelligence, and endowed with a vision of themselves as the world’s conquerors.
The villages and towns I passed through were clean, well ordered, and I was treated well for a slave; fed, clothed and looked after with a certain amount of affection. When one of the escort soldiers became drunk and attempted to become familiar with me, a curse which afflicts many of the Turks, the man was beaten and after that I was left alone. I was young, strong and determined to adapt to the best of my capability. So impressed was I with my new Turkish masters that I even relaxed, and that was a mistake. The Turks are like children. Clever, brilliant and gentle once they have established their supremacy but if this supremacy is ever challenged, then the consequences are terrible. Just before we reached Egrigoz, I was given a fair example of this. There was a number of captives being sent to the area and among them were two young Bulgars. They openly resented captivity and they made no secret of their determination to escape. One night they were foolish enough to implement this scheme, attempting to cross a nearby river but they never even reached the water. They were captured and awakened the whole camp with their shouting and screaming. The next morning I looked round the village to see where they had been held captive, or for their corpses if they had been summarily killed. I asked the captain of our escort but I could not understand his answers. When I pressed him further, he simply tapped the side of his nose and smiled knowingly, telling me to rejoin the rest of the group for our morning meal of milk and the tough rye bread provided by the villagers.
We then recommenced our march but, before we had travelled a mile outside the village, we came across the two Bulgars. They were still alive and I almost fainted when I saw what the Turks had done to them. Our route was bordered by poplar trees and the Bulgars had been impaled on one of these trees. Two of the stoutest branches had been pruned and sharpened and the Bulgars impaled, the stakes forcing themselves up into the young men’s entrails so that death was certain but very slow. Pools of blood and excrement dripped beneath them and I was so sickened and revolted that I had to be helped along by one of the Turkish soldiers. He became concerned and, lifting me up, told me to lie face down in one of the carts which carried provisions and arms. He stroked my hair, speaking soothingly in a broken mixture of Greek and Turkish. The message was simple. I was not to distress myself but to remember the lesson of what had happened to those who disobeyed their Turkish masters. I learnt the lesson well that day, vowing never to try and escape but to accommodate and adapt myself to Turkish customs.
Eventually, after a steep climb up the south-eastern slope of Mount Kociadag, we reached Egrigoz. If I had entertained any hope of escaping, then this fortress would have convinced me otherwise; dominating the approaches into the Balkans, it was surrounded by mountains and thick forests of oak, pine and beech. The area was virtually impassable except by well known roads and routes and over these the fortress kept very careful watch. The fortress of Egrigoz was under a provincial governor, Barach. An Anatolian by birth, he was now a fanatical Muslim. Short, fat, with a wispy white beard, he looked a genial uncle but appearances were deceptive. He had eyes like obsidian flint and a heart even harder. He was ruthless and cruel, and made this obvious when he first addressed us in the dusty courtyard of the fortress.
“Prisoners,” he announced. “You are now servants of the great Murad, Sultan, Conqueror, Defender of the Faithful. You are Kepuknen, the Sultan’s slaves. You are his; body, soul and mind. Serve him well and fear nothing, but betray the trust he has in you and I will personally crucify you on these castle walls.”
We had no reason to doubt him. We had entered the main castle gate under the decomposing body of some miscreant who had clearly forgotten the great trust the Sultan had in him. Once Barach had finished speaking, our escort left us and we were broken into groups, I and other young boys being hustled into a room at the base of the central tower. We were ordered to squat in a cold damp corridor under a watchful guard and then interviewed in a small but luxurious cell by one of the eunuchs, a Wallachian Kayzan, who had lost his nation and his testicles many years before. Like most eunuchs he was bald, very plump and almost glowed in ostentatious dress, inexpensive costume jewellery and even cheaper perfume. His flesh was white, though tinged with a yellow sallowness, and his small black eyes pierced the rough puffed tissues of skin. He finally interviewed me, running soft podgy hands lightly over my body, muttering softly to himself. I cursed him in Greek and nearly fainted with fright when he suddenly stopped his examination, stared at me and then began to talk Greek with an accent so peculiar to Rhodes that I thought he was mimicking me.
“Why are you cursing me, boy?” he demanded.
“Because I am afraid,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Because,” I answered, “I do not know what will happen to me. I do not want to happen what . . .”
“Has happened to me?” he interjected.
I nodded and expected the worst. Yet Kayzan was not angry. He simply stared at me and then laughed like a girl, head thrown back, as he rocked to and fro on the thick purple carpet, clapping his hands so that the bracelets on his wrists jingled and danced. Eventually he stopped and became grave.
“You are too old for castration,” he replied shortly. “But what good are you? A stable boy? A soldier?” He paused and squinted at me. “Maybe a decoration for our main gate.” He watched my terror rise, and suddenly rose swiftly for a man of such bulk and towered over me, his jewelled hands now concealed in the sleeves of his voluminous silken robes.
“No,” he grumbled. “You will be called Rhodros. You have a quick mind and you shall be a clerk.”
So began my long stay at Egrigoz. The fortress was well built, not just the wooden stockades you Roman peasants call a castle. Egrigoz was fortified with stone hewed from local quarries and built on a natural plateau on the side of the mountain. It was a septagon, the focal points being the seven rounded towers or donjons, each of these connected by the outer wall. The largest donjon covered the main gate and controlled the main pathway up to the castle. The walls were reinforced with brick to withstand enemy fire, as well as being protected by the conventional crenellated battlements. The courtyard was immense, containing makeshift huts, outhouses, stables and smithies and served as both as a parade ground and execution area. Whilst in the centre was a deep well which provided the clearest water I have ever drank. I also learnt that there were secret places, grottoes beneath the castle, dungeons and store houses. They also served, as I later found out, as a natural temple for Kayzan and his attempts to master the black arts.
The castle was a miniature example of Ottoman administration. Barach was the commander with overall control of a mixed fighting force. This included a group of the Janissaries, under a young officer, Selim. The Janissaries were fanatical fighters; born as Christians, they had been taken from their parents when very young and sent to Edirne on the Black Sea for education and indoctrination. The Janissaries would obey Barach but reluctantly, as they owed allegiance directly to the Sultan. The rest of the military force was comprised of regular infantrymen or Yayas, and Musselmen, men who formed part of the local Timur, holding land direct from their commander, Barach. These farmed the rich valleys in return for military service and formed an uneasy alliance with the professional Janissaries who tended to look down on them.
The civil administration was nominally under Barach, but a Council of eunuchs oversaw and administered the many departments of the castle. Kayzan was part of this, with direct responsibility for records, and I was assigned to his service. He was an expert teacher and I was an able pupil with a gift for languages and I soon acquired a working knowledge of Greek, Latin, Turkish as well as the local lingua franca and dialec. . .
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