The Historian (75 page)

―‗Well,‘ I reminded him, ‗we know from the letter that the Janissaries were looking for the same relic, so it had some value for the sultan also.‘

―Stoichev considered. ‗True, but the Janissaries looked for it after it was taken safely out of the monastery.‘

―‗It must have been a holy object with political power for the Ottomans, as well as a spiritual treasure for the monks of Snagov.‘ Helen was frowning, tapping her cheek with her pen. ‗A book, perhaps?‘

―‗Yes,‘ I said, excited now. ‗What if it was a book that contained some information the Ottomans wanted and the monks needed?‘ Ranov, across the table, suddenly gave me a hard look.

―Stoichev nodded slowly, but I remembered after a second that this meant disagreement.

‗Books of that period did not usually contain political information—they were religious texts, copied many times for use in the monasteries or for the Islamic religious schools and mosques, if they were Ottoman. It is not likely that the monks would make such a dangerous journey even for a copy of the holy gospels. And they would already have had such books at Snagov.‘

―‗Just a minute.‘ Helen‘s eyes were wide with thought. ‗Wait. It must have been something connected with Snagov‘s needs, or the Order of the Dragon, or maybe the wake for Vlad Dracula—remember the ‖Chronicle―? The abbot wanted Dracula buried somewhere else.‘

―‗True,‘ Stoichev mused. ‗He wanted to send Dracula‘s body to
Tsarigrad
even at the risk of the lives of his monks.‘

―‗Yes,‘ I said. I think I was about to say something else, to meander down some other path of inquiry, but suddenly Helen turned to me and shook my arm.

―‗What?‘ I said, but by then she had recovered herself.

―‗Nothing,‘ she said softly, without looking at either me or Ranov. I wished to God he would get up and go outside to smoke, or get tired of the conversation, so that Helen could speak up freely. Stoichev glanced at her keenly, and after a moment he began to explain in a droning voice how medieval manuscripts were made and copied—sometimes by monks who were actually illiterate and encoded generations of small errors in them—

and how their different handwritings were codified by modern scholars. I was puzzled about why he was going on at such length, although what he said held considerable interest for me. Fortunately, I stayed quiet during his disquisition, for after a while Ranov actually began to yawn. Finally, he stood up and made his way out of the library, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. As soon as he was gone Helen seized my arm again. Stoichev watched her intently.

―‗Paul,‘ she said, and her face was so strange that I caught her around the shoulders, thinking she might faint. ‗His head! Don‘t you see? Dracula went back to Constantinople to get his head!‘

―Stoichev made a little choked sound, but too late. At that moment, glancing around, I saw Brother Rumen‘s angular face around the edge of a bookshelf. He had come silently back into the room, and although his back was to us while he put something away, it was a listening back. After a moment, he went quietly out again, and we all sat silent. Helen and I glanced helplessly at each other and I got up to check the depths of the room. The man was gone, but it would probably be a matter of a short time before someone else—

Ranov, for example—heard about Helen‘s exclamation. And what use might Ranov make of that information?‖

―Few moments in my years of research, writing, and thought have prompted for me such a sudden access of clarity as that moment when Helen spoke her guess aloud in the library at Rila. Vlad Dracula had returned to Constantinople for his head—or, rather, the abbot of Snagov had sent his body there to be reunited with it. Had Dracula requested this ahead of time, knowing the bounty placed on his famous head in his lifetime, knowing the sultan‘s penchant for displaying the heads of his enemies to the populace? Or had the abbot taken this mission upon himself, not wanting the headless body of his possibly heretical—or dangerous—sponsor to remain at Snagov? Surely, a vampire without a head couldn‘t pose much of a threat—the picture was almost comical—but the disturbances among his monks might have been enough to persuade the abbot to give Dracula a proper Christian burial elsewhere. Probably the abbot couldn‘t have taken upon himself the destruction of his prince‘s body. And who knew what promises the abbot had made Dracula ahead of time?

―A singular image drifted back to me: Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, where I‘d strolled that recent sunny morning, and the gates where the Ottoman executioners had displayed the heads of the sultan‘s enemies. Dracula‘s head would have warranted one of the highest spikes, I thought—the Impaler finally impaled. How many people would have gone to see it, this proof of the sultan‘s triumph? Helen had told me once that even the inhabitants of Istanbul had feared Dracula and worried that he might fight his way into their very city. No Turkish encampment would have to tremble again at his approach; the sultan had finally gotten control of that troublesome region and could set an Ottoman vassal on the Wallachian throne, as he‘d wanted to years before. All that was left of the Impaler was a gruesome trophy, with its shriveled eyes and tangled, blood-caked hair and mustache.

―Our companion seemed to be musing over a similar picture. As soon as we were certain Brother Rumen had left, Stoichev said in a low voice, ‗Yes, it is quite possible. But how could the monks of Panachrantos have gotten Dracula‘s head from the sultan‘s palace? It was indeed a treasure, as Stefan named it in his tale.‘

―‗How did we get visas to enter Bulgaria?‘ Helen asked, raising her eyebrows.

‗Bakshish—a lot of it. The monasteries were quite poor after the conquest, but some of them might have had hidden stores—gold coin, jewels—something to tempt even the guards of the sultan.‘

―I pondered this. ‗Our guidebook for Istanbul said that the heads of the sultan‘s enemies were thrown into the Bosphorus after they had been displayed for a while. Maybe someone from Panachrantos intercepted that process—that might have been less dangerous than trying to get it from the palace gates.‘

―‗We simply cannot know the truth about this,‘ Stoichev said, ‗but I think Miss Rossi‘s guess is a very good one. His head was the most likely object they could have sought in
Tsarigrad
. There is a good theological reason, too, for their having done so. Our Orthodox beliefs state that as far as possible the body must be whole in death—we do not practice cremation, for example—because on the Day of Judgment we will be resurrected in our bodies.‘

―‗What about the saints and all their relics, scattered everywhere?‘ I asked doubtfully.

‗How are they going to be resurrected whole? Not to mention that I saw five of Saint Francis‘s hands in Italy a few years ago.‘

―Stoichev laughed. ‗The saints have special privileges,‘ he said. ‗But Vlad Dracula, although he was an excellent Turk-killer, was certainly not a saint. In fact, Eupraxius was quite worried about his immortal soul, at least according to Stefan‘s tale.‘

―‗Or about his immortal body,‘ Helen pointed out.

―‗So,‘ I said, ‗maybe the monks of Panachrantos took his head to give it proper burial, at the risk of their lives, and the Janissaries noticed the theft and began searching, so the abbot sent it out of Istanbul rather than bury it there. Maybe there were pilgrims going to Bulgaria from time to time‘—I glanced at Stoichev for confirmation—‗and they sent it for burial at—well, at Sveti Georgi, or some other Bulgarian monastery where they had connections. And then the monks from Snagov arrived, but too late to reunite the body with the head. The abbot of Panachrantos heard about it and spoke with them, and the Snagov monks decided to complete their mission by following with the body. Besides, they had to get the hell out of there before the Janissaries got interested in them, too.‘

―‗Very good, for a speculation.‘ Stoichev gave me his wonderful smile. ‗As I said, we cannot know for certain, because these are events at which our documents only hint. But you have made a convincing picture of them. We will get you away from the Dutch merchants, eventually.‘ I felt myself flush, partly from pleasure and partly from chagrin, but his smile was genial.

―‗And then the Ottoman network was put on guard by the presence and departure of the Snagov monks‘—Helen picked up the possible story—‗and maybe they searched the monasteries and discovered that the monks had stayed at Saint Irine, and they sent news of the monks‘ journey to the officials along their route, perhaps to Edirne and then to Haskovo. Haskovo was the first large Bulgarian town the monks entered, and that is where they were—what is the term?—detained.‘

―‗Yes,‘ Stoichev finished. ‗The Ottoman officials tortured two of them for information, but those two brave monks said nothing. And the officials searched the wagon and found only food. But this leaves a question—why did the Ottoman soldiers not find the body?‘

―I hesitated. ‗Maybe they weren‘t looking for a body. Maybe they were still looking for the head. If the Janissaries had learned very little in Istanbul about the whole thing, they might have thought that the Snagov monks were the transporters of the head. The

‖Chronicle― of Zacharias said that the Ottomans were angry when they opened some bundles and found only food. The body could have been hidden in the woods nearby, if the monks had some warning of the search.‘

―‗Or perhaps they constructed the wagon so that there was a special place to hide it,‘

pondered Helen.

―‗But a corpse would have stunk,‘ I reminded her bluntly.

―‗That depends on what you believe.‘ She gave me her quizzical, charming smile.

―‗What I believe?‘

―‗Yes. You see, a body that is at risk for becoming undead, or is already undead, does not decay, or it decomposes more slowly. Traditionally, if villagers in Eastern Europe suspected vampirism, they would dig up corpses to check for decomposition, and ritually destroy those that were not decaying properly. It is still done sometimes, even now.‘

―Stoichev shuddered. ‗A peculiar activity. I have heard of it even in Bulgaria, although of course it is illegal now. The Church has always discouraged the desecration of graves, and now our government discourages all superstitions—as well as it can.‘

―Helen almost shrugged. ‗Is it any stranger than hoping for bodily resurrection?‘ she asked, but she smiled at Stoichev, and he too was charmed.

―‗Madam,‘ he said, ‗we have very different interpretations of our heritage, but I salute your quickness of mind. And now, my friends, I would like some time to study your maps—it has occurred to me that there are materials in this library that may be of assistance in reading them. Give me an hour—what I do now will be dull for you, and slow for me to explain.‘

―Ranov had just come in again, restlessly, and stood looking around the library. I hoped he hadn‘t caught the mention of our maps.

―Stoichev cleared his throat. ‗Perhaps you will like to go into the church and see its beauty.‘ He glanced very slightly toward Ranov. Helen immediately got up and went to Ranov to engage him in some slight complication, while I fished discreetly in my briefcase and pulled out my file of copies of the maps. When I saw the eagerness with which Stoichev took them, my heart leaped with hope.

―Unfortunately, Ranov seemed more interested in hovering over Stoichev‘s work and conferring with the librarian than in following us, although I devoutly wished we could draw him off. ‗Would you help us find some dinner?‘ I asked him. The librarian stood silent, studying me closely.

―Ranov smiled. ‗Are you hungry? It is not yet time for the meal here, which is supper at six o‘clock. We will wait for that. We will have to eat with the monks, unfortunately.‘ He turned his back on us and began to study a shelf of leather-bound volumes, and that was that.

―Helen followed me to the door and squeezed my hand. ‗Shall we go for a walk?‘ she said, once we were outside.

―‗I don‘t know whether I know how to do anything without Ranov, at this point,‘ I said grimly. ‗What will we talk about without him?‘

―She laughed, but I could see she was worried, too. ‗Should I go back and try again to distract him?‘

―‗No,‘ I said. ‗Better not. The more we do that the more he‘ll wonder what Stoichev is looking at. We can‘t get rid of him any more than we could a fly.‘

―‗He would make a good fly.‘ Helen took my arm. The sun was still brilliant in the courtyard, and hot when we left the shadow of the immense monastery walls and galleries. Looking up, I could see the forested slopes around the monastery, and the vertical rock peaks above them. Far overhead, an eagle banked and wheeled. Monks in their heavy, belted black gowns, tall black hats, and long black beards came and went between the church and the first floor of the monastery, or swept the wooden gallery floors, or sat in a triangle of shade near the porch of the church. I wondered how they endured the summer heat in those garments. The interior of the church gave me some insight; it was as cool as a springhouse, lit only by twinkling candles and the glimmer of gold, brass, jewels. The inner walls were ornately gilded and painted with images of saints and prophets—‗Nineteenth-century work,‘ Helen said confidently—and I paused before an especially sober image, a saint with a long white beard and neatly parted white hair gazing straight out at us. Helen sounded out the letters near his halo. ‗Ivan Rilski.‘

―‗The one whose bones were brought here eight years before our Wallachian friend entered Bulgaria? The ‖Chronicle― mentioned him.‘