Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

I needed to speak to my driver, so we made our way back to the ruined prison. It devolved that the archaeologist kept a little boat below the church and could row us over, and that he would prevail upon the owner of the restaurant to find local rooms for us. Georgescu stowed away his gear and dismissed the assistants, and we returned to the church in time to see the abbot and his three monks, equally black garbed, processing into the church through the doors of the sanctuary. Two of the monks were elderly, but one was still brown of beard and stood firmly upright. They walked slowly around to face the altar, the abbot leading with a cross and orb in his hands. His bent shoulders carried a purple-and-gold mantle that caught the glow of the candle flames.

At the altar they bowed, the monks prostrating themselves full-length for a moment on the stone floor-just over the empty tomb, I noticed. For a moment, I had the horrifying sense that they were bowing not to the altar but to the grave of the Impaler.

Suddenly an eerie sound rose up; it seemed to come from the church itself, to curl out of the walls and dome like mist. They were chanting. The abbot went through the little doors behind the altar-I tried not to crane for a glimpse of the inner sanctum-and brought out a great book with an enamelled cover, tracing his blessing over it in the air. He laid it on the altar. One of the monks handed him a censer on a long chain; this he swung above the book, dusting it with an aromatic smoke. All around us, above and behind and below, rose the dissonant sacred music with its buzzing drone and wavering heights. My skin crawled, for I realized that at that moment I was closer to the heart of Byzantium than I’d ever been in Istanbul. The ancient music and the rite that accompanied it had probably changed little since they were performed for the emperor in Constantinople.

“The service is very long,” Georgescu whispered to me. “They woon’t mind if we slip away.” He took a candle from his pockets, lit it from a burning wick in the stand near the entrance, and set it in the sand below.

In the restaurant on the shore, a dingy little place, we ate heartily of stews and salads served up by a timid girl in village dress. There was a whole chicken and a bottle of heavy red wine, which Georgescu poured liberally. My driver had apparently made friends in the kitchen, so that we found ourselves utterly alone in the panelled room with its fading views of lake and island.

Once we had warded off the worst of our hunger, I asked the archaeologist about his wonderful command of English. He laughed with his mouth full. “I owe that to my mither and father, God rest their souls,” he said. “He was a Scottish archaeologist, a mediaevalist, and she was a Scottish Gypsy. I was raised from a bairn in Fort William and worked with my father until he died. Then some of my mother’s relatives asked her to travel with them to Roumania, where they came from. She’d been boorn and bred in a village in western Scotland, but when my father was gone she wanted only to leave. My father’s family hadn’t been kind about her, you see. So she brought me here, when I was just fifteen, and I’ve been here since. When we came here I took her family name. To blend in a bit better.”

This story left me speechless for a moment, and he grinned. “It’s an odd tale, I know. What’s yours?”

I told him, briefly, about my life and studies, and about the mysterious book that had come into my possession. He listened with brows knit together, and when I was done he nodded slowly. “A strange story, no doubt about it.”

I took the book from my bag and handed it to him. He looked through it carefully, pausing to gaze for long minutes at the woodcut in the center. “Yes,” he told me thoughtfully. “This is very much like many images associated with the Oorder. I’ve seen a similar dragon on pieces of jewellery-that little ring, for example. But I’ve never seen a book like this one before. No idea where it came from, then?”

“None,” I admitted. “I hope to have it examined by a specialist one day, perhaps in London.”

“It’s a remarkable piece of work.” Georgescu handed it gently back to me. “And now that you’ve seen Snagov, where do you intend to go? Back to Istanbul?”

“No.” I shuddered, but I didn’t want to tell him why. “I’ve got to return to Greece to attend a dig, actually, in a couple of weeks, but I thought I’d go for a glimpse of Târgoviste, since that was Vlad’s main capital. Have you been there?”

“Ah, yes, of coourse.” Georgescu scraped his plate clean like a hungry boy. “That’s an interesting place for any pursuer of Dracula. But the really interesting thing is his castle.”

“His castle? Does he really have a castle? I mean, does it still exist?”

“Well, it’s a ruin, but a rather nice one. A ruined fortress. It’s a few miles up the River Arges from Târgoviste, and you can get there rather easily by road, with a climb on foot to the very top. Dracula favored any place that could be easily defended from the Turks, and this one is a love of a site. I’ll tell you what -” He was fishing in his pockets and now he found a little clay pipe and began to fill it with fragrant tobacco. I passed him a light. “Thank you, lad. I’ll tell you what-I’ll go along with you. I can stay only a couple of days, but I could help you find the fortress. It’s a great deal easier if you have a guide. I haven’t been there in a wandering moon, and I’d like to see it again myself.”

I thanked him sincerely; the idea of striking out into the heart of Roumania without an interpreter had made me uneasy, I admit. We agreed to start tomorrow, if my driver will take us as far as Târgoviste. Georgescu knows a village near the Arges where we can stay for a few shillings; it isn’t the nearest to the fortress, but he doesn’t like going to that village anymore as he was once almost chased out of it. We parted with a hearty good night, and now, my friend, I must blow out my light to sleep for the next adventure, of which I shall keep you apprised.

Yours most affectionately,

Bartholomew

My dear friend,

My driver was indeed able to take us north to Târgoviste today, after which he returned to his family in Bucarest, and we have settled for the night in an old inn. Georgescu is an excellent travelling companion; along the way he regaled me with the history of the countryside we were passing through. His knowledge is very broad and his interests extend to local architecture and botany, so that I was able to learn a tremendous amount today.

Târgoviste is a beautiful town, mediaeval still in character and containing at least this one good inn where a traveller can wash his face in clean water. We are now in the heart of Wallachia, in a hilly country between mountains and plain. Vlad Dracula ruled Wallachia several times during the 1450s and ‘60s; Târgoviste was his capital, and this afternoon we walked around the substantial ruins of his palace here, Georgescu pointing out to me the different chambers and describing their probable uses. Dracula was not born here but in Transylvania, in a town called Sighisoara. I won’t have time to see it, but Georgescu has been there several times, and he told me that the house in which Dracula’s father lived-Vlad’s birthplace-still stands.

The most remarkable of many remarkable sights we saw here today, as we prowled the old streets and ruins, was Dracula’s watchtower, or rather a handsome restoration of it done in the nineteenth century. Georgescu, like a good archaeologist, turns up his Scotch-Romany nose at restorations, explaining that in this case the crenellations around the top aren’t quite right; but what can you expect, he asked me tartly, when historians begin using their imaginations? Whether or not the restoration is quite accurate, what Georgescu told me about that tower gave me a shiver. It was used by Vlad Dracula not only as a lookout in that era of frequent Turkish invasions but also as a vantage point from which to view the impalements that were carried out in the court below.