hair was now bound up under a scarf, and who naturally had changed out of her uniform. While the newcomer stood looking a shade hesitant and awkward, Uncle Matthew helped her out of her cloth coat as if it had been a mink, and indicated with gracious gestures and murmurs that she ought to come in and make herself comfortable.
Introductions were soon made. John and Angie, one after the other, shook hands with Elizabeth Wiswell. Angie thought she caught the faintest whiff of garlic, barely detectable, from the other woman. Well, if you worked in a restaurant, she supposed, that must be one of the least worrisome of the occupational hazards.
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-biographical?' 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 2
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.
