Vlad: The Last Confession Read Online Free Page A

Like so many tales told of him I did not believe it. Until I found…this.” He pulled a candle from his pocket, went and lit it at one of the reed torches burning in a sconce, returned. Lowering the light, still smiling, he said, “See, my lord. And feel.”
    Without thinking, Horvathy did both. Knew instantly what jutted from the mortar between two bricks.
    It was the jawbone of a child.
    He snatched his hand back, leaving a speck of his blood on the begrimed baby tooth. He had heard the story of the castle building, too. Like so many told of Dracula, it had always seemed unlikely. Like so many, it was undoubtedly, at least partly, true.
    Janos Horvathy, Count of Pecs, glanced back down the hall at the three confessionals. The tales that were to come from them were going to be similar. And worse. Far worse. Suddenly, all the hope he’d had when he first received the facings from the Dragon’s sword, the hope that had sustained him across the snow-clogged valleys of Transylvania to this remote fortress in Wallachia, slipped away. What tales could emerge here that would exonerate such evil? What confession could be told that would free the Dragon order of its disgrace—and him of his curse?
    He raised his finger to his missing eye, placed a spot of blood there, too, rubbed it away. “Send the rest of the sword to the blacksmith. And call them. Call them all.”
    With a bow, Petru turned to obey.

– III –
     
    Confessions
     
    The first to come were the scribes, tonsured monks, each carrying their stand of inks, their parchment and quills, their little knives. They went to the priest’s side of the confessionals, placed their equipment upon the shelf, pulled down the hinged writing table that Petru had had fitted, then, settled, drew the curtain.
    A moment later, Bogdan, second-in-command at Poenari, appeared. He had been sent to rendezvous with the Count’s party a day’s ride away and guide them to the castle. During the journey, Horvathy had asked him about the prisoners he had collected, by order of the Voivode—the first of whom Bogdan was now half-carrying into the hall. This man—a former knight, Horvathy had been told—crouched for a moment in the doorway, unable to stand upright after five years in an oubliette , a cell that was half his height tall. It accounted for his walk, like a crab upon a beach, and his near-blindness, for he had almost never seen the light. It also accounted for his scent, which even a thorough scrubbing in the horse trough in the castle yard had barely begun to diminish.
    Aided by Bogdan, the prisoner pulled himself onto the seat of the first confessional, squatting there, his knees drawn up under the shift he wore. A light came into his eyes, as he inhaled the aroma of incense and polish. He reached up and touched the grille, then gave a gurgle of joy. Bogdan drew the curtain.
    The second prisoner, the woman, was also clothed in a shift. Bogdan had told how he’d gone to the convent to seize the abbess, and had found no reverend old lady but a naked lunatic, thrusting a woven plait at him. He had not taken it—all knew that was the first way a witch ensnared her victim. He had not paused to study her nakedness. He had simply wrapped her in blankets and thrown her into a cart.
    Her head was uncovered now, and beneath the stubble her skin shone in the firelight. Her eyes were bright, too, as she took in what was before her. Bogdan did not touch or guide her. Petru, standing before the dais, pointed to the middle confessional, stepping well back as she passed. When she had settled, he drew the second curtain across.
    And finally came the hermit, a reeking pile of hair flopping forward over his downcast eyes, his thick beard moving around his mouth, words formed on hidden lips, soundlessly. Since Petru had captured him himself—in a cave within the very forest surrounding Poenari Castle—the man had not spoken.
    Petru looked up at the Count. “Now, my lord?” Horvathy nodded