A Matter Of Taste Read online

  Angie decided that it would be hard to imagine Matthew Maule failing, once he had made up his mind, to put a woman at her ease. Mentally putting herself in the other woman’s place, she would have expected to feel a certain embarrassment in this situation. But any tendency Elizabeth might have started to display in that direction had evidently been already overcome. The fair skin of her face was lightly flushed and she was smiling.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she remarked, giggling.

  “Very little, I should think,” Uncle Matthew, looking and sounding fresh as a daisy, reassured her. “Please, sit down. Would you care for a spot of brandy?”

  John, looking terminally groggy, murmured something, something that was going to have to serve as his good night to the world at large. Now he was tugging gently at Angie’s arm. Her head spinning faintly, she allowed herself to be guided back down the hall to their assigned bed and bath. John softly closed the bedroom door behind them.

  Five minutes later, Angie was sitting up in the double bed, still wearing her bra and panties, listening to her lover brush his teeth behind the bathroom’s half-open door—new toothbrushes in sealed wrappings, along with a few other toiletries, had been provided. And Angie had just made the irritating discovery that she was probably going to have trouble getting to sleep after all.

  Not that Uncle Matthew and his new girlfriend out in the living room were noisy; even when Angie listened, she was unable to detect any sounds at all from that direction.

  Just out of sight, John ran water in the bathroom sink, spat, rinsed, and spat again. At last he appeared, in his undershorts. He looked tired, but not quite ready to collapse instantly.

  He cleared his throat. “Honey?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a tape recorder over there.” He gestured economically toward a table against the room’s far wall.

  Angie turned eyes too weary for curiosity in that direction. “Yep, there sure is. Inform me of its relevance.”

  “Uh, the point is, that Uncle Matthew was saying a while back, while you were out of the room, that the tape in the machine holds a kind of story that he’s working on. He suggested that maybe, if you were to listen to the tape, it might answer some questions for you.”

  “A story. He’s working on. Then he’s some kind of a writer?”

  “Yep. Among other things. At least he’s collaborated on some books.” John came over and bounced down on the bed, flat on his back. He closed his eyes and sighed The bed was comfortable.

  “Is the one he’s working on auto-biograph-ical?” After all that brandy, Angie experienced a momentary pride in what she felt was flawless pronunciation.

  “I dunno. I guess, if he thinks it’s relevant. Not that you have to listen to it tonight—but if you feel like it in the morning—”

  But she was already out of bed and approaching the machine. Suddenly weariness could be fought off yet a little longer. The temptation to have some questions answered was irresistible.

  When she located the proper switch and turned the tape player on, there was a moment of faint, hissing background noise, seeming to provoke a renewed rattle at the snugly sealed windows. And then she found herself listening to what was undeniably Uncle Matthew’s voice.

  Chapter Two

  And the damnable machine is running now. Recording properly, I trust. At last. The miracles of modern electronics.

  (The sound of a deep breath.)

  Let me begin the narration of this particular segment of my life upon the day of my assassination. That momentous event took place in early winter, toward the end of the year of Our Lord 1476. The scene was a cold and soggy battlefield not many miles from the city of Bucharest, an arena of snow and mud freshly littered with the bones of brave men—these being in the circumstances indistinguishable from those of some men not so brave.

  Wet snow had fallen on that morning, and here and there across the trampled field the whiteness of new snow still persisted on the ground, shreds and untouched spots of purity amid a mire of horse manure, something like a warrior’s virtue. The picture was enriched with mud and blood, and speckled with the blackness of crows, that old Corvinus symbol, who were attending in considerable numbers to see that good food was not wasted. Also contributing to the visual composition of the scene were the dun and silver of the scattered bodies of men and horses and their equipment—some of both species had been armored. Here and there the brightness of a fallen banner caught the slowly declining light of a gray winter afternoon.

  (Another deep breath, almost a sigh.)

  To tell the story that concerns me here, I need describe neither the devices of those banners, nor the causes which they represented. Suffice it to say that the battle in which those men and banners fell had been an honest one, as battles go. It might not be strictly honest for me now to claim victory for the side that I commanded. But many of us had survived, and we had been left in possession of the field.

  Against the treachery that followed, however, I was not so successful.

  As the scene I intend to describe opens, the forces loyal to me—save for a handful of frightened camp followers, unwilling to do anything but watch—had already been drawn away, by deliberately falsified reports. And three traitorous officers, reinforced by a handful of men-at-arms they had suborned to their cause, had caught me alone, away from my Moldavian bodyguard. With drawn swords those three had surrounded me and set upon me.

  At the last moment I was not completely taken by surprise. More than one of the attackers felt the bite of my own blade before I was disabled, and at least one of my chief opponents—his name was Ronay—was rather seriously hurt. Oh, I was good with the sword, yes, but not that good. Much of the credit for my prolonged survival against such odds was due to the reluctance of the common soldiers to attack me. Those men were still almost too much afraid of me to be of any use to traitors.

  Alas, at three to one the odds were still too great. Let me name the foul three here: they were Ronay, Basarab, and Bogdan, the last-named the chief instigator and leader of the plot. In my capacity as Prince of Wallachia I had trusted all three of these vile men, had treated them as my comrades on the field of battle. All had been loaded with honors and with material rewards.

  Nay, I will go further. Almost, my attitude had been that of a father or an uncle toward them. The traitorous trio were all young, and I was well over forty. But when they came to kill me, they had no easy time of it, for all that.

  Even as I fought, grunting and gasping for breath, my feet slipping in snow and mud, I made a silent, mighty vow—nay, it was more than a vow—that I would never die until I had avenged myself upon these three for their treachery.

  …and now, more than five hundred years later, trying to tell my story, trying to grapple with my own beginnings, I relive as in a dream that struggle to the death upon that field of fading light. Peering toward those distant figures through the haze of centuries, nay, through the fog of death itself, I am no longer able to say with certainty which of that day’s far-off events I observed with my own eyes, and which I have come to know of only through the words of other witnesses.

  The first serious wound I suffered on that day was made by Basarab’s sword, when his point came into my left side, under my cuirass.

  From that moment on the three of them were certain that they had me. Ronay could afford to retreat, nursing his own hurt. Bogdan and Basarab began to play with me, making sure to keep me between them—though at first it was a cautious game they played, knowing me to be still deadly dangerous.

  I fought on, though weakening, ignoring their jibes and insults, saving what breath I had for fighting. But I could not face two skilled opponents at once. One of them would stab me, from behind, and then the other. I suffered at least half a dozen additional wounds before I was no longer capable of resistance.

  Bah, I have no wish to dwell upon the grisly scene of my own butchery. Yet still it must be told.

  When I fell for the last time, going to my knees, unable to rise again, unable any longer even to raise my weapon in defense, someone struck me with a sword hilt from behind and sent me sprawling. Then someone else’s boot kicked at my sword, until it had been knocked out of the reach of my weakening fingers.

  More kicks and shoves, with booted feet, turned my bleeding body over so that I lay face upward. I was trying to reach the dagger at my belt, but my knife too was yanked away. Then a sharp blade came stabbing into my unprotected groin; the muscles of my lower body spasmed uncontrollably. Pain fashioned a sound, that I suppose must have been almost inhuman, and drove it upward from my throat.

  The body on the ground continued to gasp for breath.

  “Hold his head still.” This was the voice of Bogdan, still panting, issuing an order. I could perceive his face, fierce and triumphant, looming over me.

  In a moment someone—I thought it was Ronay, come back to savor my last moments—was crouching just behind me, knees vising my head in place. My arms no longer moved; my muscles and my strength were gone; all I had left was nerves and blood.

  The point of Bogdan’s sword loomed close to my face, approaching my eyes. Elsewhere I have related how my whole life’s allotment of fear came to be used up before I was old enough to have a beard. So here, let me say simply that it must have been without fear, with hatred only—say rather hatred glowing with a helpless rage—that I gazed up at him. Perhaps I would not have turned my head had I been able.

  “I will not die—” I told him, choking on my fury, and my own blood, and could not find the breath to say the rest.

  “Oh, no?” The swordpoint feinted even closer to my eyes, then moved a small handsbreadth away. “Not yet you won’t, good Prince Drakulya. Not this moment. But soon. Very soon.” br />
  I understood that Bogdan had spared my sight because he wished me to continue to see what was happening. Perhaps he craved also to see in my eyes at last some expression of yielding, of despair, at least of fear. In that hope, at least, he continued to be disappointed.

  In the next moment I could feel the cold steel of Bogdan’s blade slide inside my left cheek, the sensation transforming itself into the heat of fresh pain as the blade ripped its way out.

  “What words of defiance now, Drakulya?”

  I would have given him some, had I not been choking, more seriously than before, on my own blood.

  “The end of your triumphant smile at last, good prince. How I have longed to see it wiped away! And now, why should I leave you a nose, to carry in the air so arrogantly? Half a one will serve you just as well, for the short time of breathing you have left.”

  During the course of my next few gasping, gurgling breaths, Bogdan’s sword did a fair job of cutting and peeling away a sizable portion of my face. In the background I could hear Basarab laughing.

  Suddenly Ronay, speaking in a low voice, pausing at intervals to grunt with the discomfort of his own wound, ventured to suggest that since the Sultan was going to pay them a good price for my head, it might be as well to leave my face at least recognizable.

  Bogdan made a sound expressing doubt. The suggestion had come somewhat too late.

  I will not die!!

  (There is a pause on the tape.)

  * * *

  Ah, the images fade, true memories blending imperceptibly into the knowledge of things that I could only have imagined, heard later from the lips of some other eyewitness, or reconstructed by logic.

  Or—is it possible? Possible that, in some way I still cannot understand, my soul—if it is permissible to use the jargon of modern physics—that my soul, I say, quantum-tunneling the barrier of death, I might have observed every detail of my own butchery, my spirit hovering out of the body though not yet fully detached from it?

  I WILL NOT DIE!!!

  * * *

  Pain could no longer elicit the smallest outcry from the body, and it had ceased even to twitch under the ministrations of Bogdan’s blade. Presently I ceased even to breathe. Shortly after that, some providential distraction, probably a report that my Moldavians were near, drew my enemies’ attention away. (Let me add parenthetically that before succumbing to this distraction, Bogdan, turned back, suddenly suspicious, taking no chances, and cut entirely through my neck.)

  The distraction, I say, was providential, because as soon as my enemies were out of sight some of my loyal though humble friends among the camp followers mentioned above, displaying considerable courage in the midst of their grief, made a brave effort to preserve my poor clay from the further indignities that the traitors and eventually the Sultan would certainly have inflicted upon it.

  This effort naturally required that they substitute some other body for my own—the mere disappearance of my corpse would not have been acceptable to the traitors. (Though now that I think back on it, what a delicious superstitious fear it would have provoked among them!) The near obliteration of my face, to the point where my loyal friends themselves had difficulty in recognizing me, made their task considerably easier.

  Also a great help to them was the fact that my corpse lay on a recent battlefield, surrounded by fresh candidates for substitution.

  A selection was quickly made from among these, and a partial change of armor and clothing was effected, no easy matter in itself—have you ever tried to dress a corpse? Quick cosmetic surgery was performed upon the face of my replacement—his hair and mustache were already an approximate match. Body build was generally similar. Height is irrelevant among those who have become permanently horizontal. And given the muddy condition of the field, one of its occupants tended to look a great deal like another anyway.

  * * *

  To shorten a somewhat lengthy episode, which I am finding increasingly painful to relate, let me say at once that the replacement was a success. When Bogdan and his two close associates came back, they abandoned with scarcely a glance the hacked-up torso and limbs they thought were mine, picked up by its dirty hair the head of pseudo-Drakulya, and at once packed this grisly object away in a cask of salt to start its journey to the Sultan. There was, I suppose, hardly any point in trying to clean the flayed thing up. Much later I heard that the trophy was indeed exhibited upon some palace gate or wall, the head of the dread Lord Impaler, Kaziklu Bey, brought down at last, only to be so elevated among his enemies.

  But from that day of my assassination, it was long, long, before the Sultan ever entered into my thoughts again.

  Meanwhile my own body, unhappily disjunct, had been conveyed from the field by my friends in greatest secrecy, bundled in its two pieces upon the back of a mule. Darkness had fallen long before the corpse reached a place of sanctuary, where another friend or two appeared to clean it up and lay it out for honorable if secret burial.

  This sanctuary where my remains had come to rest temporarily was a farm not far from the battlefield, and also not far from the island monastery of Snagov.

  A rough plank table had been constructed, in some outbuilding, for the job that had to be done, and on this my body was laid out supine, head just a little distant from neck stump, a tall candle at my feet and another near my detached head. During the following preparations, these candles took turns in extinguishing themselves, for no good reason that I could see. Perhaps there was more of a draft than I could feel.

  * * *

  Two of the farm women did most of the actual corpse-washing. Meanwhile a handful of other people came and went, to marvel and to grieve.

  And, of course, to pray over my dismembered body. The prayers as I recall were for the most part Catholic, for I had been and remained a dutiful convert from the Orthodox faith into which I had been born.

  Among the topics of conversation addressed by those preparing me for burial was the fact that my grave would probably be only temporary, that the late unhappy prince would want to be moved someday to a prepared vault hidden beneath a certain castle.

  But for the present all concerned would be satisfied, could I but be laid peacefully to rest in some soldier’s grave, unmarked and shallow, humble as most such are, and lonelier than most. Somehow I was to be accorded at least the minor dignity of a plain wooden coffin, the best my friends could manage, and the sounds of its construction resounded through the night.

  One at least of my mourners had come from the nearby monastery, where, as he said, only he and one other were aware as yet of the fact that my body had been saved, and my funeral preparations were quietly under way. The two who knew the secret would try to keep it, but the speaker considered it inevitable that eventually the story would spread through their ranks.

  He also mentioned that Ronay had sought shelter in the monastery for treatment of his wound. I had richly endowed this establishment, as well as several others, whilst I was still capable of breath, and when I heard this it seemed to me ungrateful of its abbot now to thus comfort and encourage my enemies.

  Shortly after the monk had spoken of Ronay, the people in attendance on my corpse had a bad few moments, when both candles inexplicably went out at once. Fortunately for their peace of mind, a fire was available—a small one in a brazier, no one wanted to keep a corpse too warm—and the darkness never became absolute. The tapers were easily relighted.

  To begin with, the butchered body was stripped of its begrimed and bloodstained garments, the borrowed ones along with whatever items of its proper clothing it still retained. Most of these being hopelessly damaged, they were taken to another room to be consigned to the fire. Parenthetically I may add that I was oddly touched, later, when I heard that a few scraps of bloodstained cloth had been retained, in the manner of holy relics, by some of the humble folk who had considered themselves happy and fortunate under my rule.

  A little later, by chance, all of the attendants were out of the room at the same time, probably getting more water and cloths. As the first two returned, they stopped abruptly, and the more timid one smothered a little outcry.