voices were raised in even greater panic.
On this chill night a fire still smoldered in the house, faint coals giving enough light for the adapted eyes of breathers, my companion and our victims, to see what was happening and about to happen to them.
Breathing bodies wrapped in blankets lay everywhere, on the floor and furniture. My entry, at least, had been so swift that some were only struggling to their feet whilst others had not yet stirred. The axe in my right hand did deadly execution, whilst with my left, picking up a chair, I fended off the first blade thrust at me.
Across the large room, Corella had got in through the window. Once well inside and on his feet, he slew and parried with remorseless goodwill, displaying a formidable aptitude for the job.
It was soon obvious that the true number of our foe lay somewhere near the midrange of our intelligence estimates, and that their eagerness for combat was no greater than we had expected.
Soon the handful who had taken up arms against us were all cut down, and we changed our tactics to search-and-destroy, routing out thieves from under furniture and blankets and dispatching them on the spot. With all the doors and windows barricaded as they were for the night, escape from the house was no easy matter, requiring more time than our hosts had readily available. In the end only two or three of them got clear, to be picked off neatly by our efficient troops outside.
Of approximately a dozen occupants of the house, only a woman and a girl survived. I saw to it that they were left unmolested. Our men, when they had a chance to see the inside of the house, looked at Corella and myself in awe.
At dawn, when we were ready to leave the scene, Michelotto and I shook hands. Thus began our period of mutual respect.
By the middle of the year of Our Lord 1502, both Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci had come, for different purposes, to spend considerable time in the company of Duke Valentino.
The writings of Machiavelli that were to make him famous were still in the future. At this time he was a rising Florentine politician in his early thirties. A sly, calculating man, yet filled with the desire to see his beloved Italy stand united and respected among the nations of the world. Physically he was thin and pale-faced, with high cheekbones and a piercing glance. He spoke little, but gave an impression of deep thought.
I suppose that for a time it seemed to Signore Niccolo that the Borgias might accomplish a united Italy. In any event, Machiavelli attended Cesare in the capacity of an emissary from Florence; and he was a witness to the Duke's bloody vengeance on his mutinous captains at Sinigaglia, December 31, 1502.
Leonardo da Vinci was now a graybeard about fifty years of age, serving in Valentino's train in the capacity of an engineer, with his main or exclusive job the observation and development of military projects.
On several occasions during my attendance on the younger Borgia, I was able to converse with Machiavelli. In the course of our conversations, we frequently spoke on the future of Italy, and I heard Machiavelli's hopes expressed that Cesare might be the prince destined to create a real nation out of the squabbling principalities and towns of the peninsula, or out of the central Romagna, at least.
Everyone agreed that Cesare was going to need his father's continued help if he were to have any chance of succeeding in such a grand design. Father and son together made a truly formidable team. And fortunately for the son's ambitions, there was no sign that the father was going to do anything but keep spending, intriguing, and conniving furiously in an effort to insure the success of his favorite surviving child.
I also had, during that same epoch, more than one good talk with Leonardo. We two had met once before, when he was a twelve-year-old apprentice in the studio of Verrocchio in Florence. I thought it most unlikely that the successful artist and designer would remember me now. But he did—in a way. After all, he had once sketched my face.
I seriously doubt that Leonardo truly recalled the circumstances of our previous meeting. Rather, I think, he was puzzled, and thought he remembered me from somewhere, but could not place a man of my apparent youthfulness that far in the past.
The artist was chiefly occupied in the Duke's service with studying and designing fortifications. Cesare Borgia was unfailingly interested in the subject, though rarely if ever in his brief career did fortifications do him any good. He was several times faced with the problem of attacking them.
And then there arrived the day when, by sheerest accident, in the course of my duties in the service of Duke Valentino, fate brought me face-to-face with Bogdan.
The scene, improbably enough, was a simple country road, not far from a Franciscan monastery. On that day I chanced to be engaged with Michelotto in another honorable skirmish, part of our ongoing effort in the cause of good government, suppressing bandits within the towns and territories now accepting papal rule.
Michelotto and myself, in the guise of two portly graybeard merchants—someday I must compose a treatise on disguises—had achieved the little ambush that we sought, and engaged four robbers in a spirited debate at twilight, exerting our greatest eloquence to persuade them to give up their evil trade forever. In the course of our discussions I had been clubbed from behind with a broken spear shaft, and this wooden weapon had had effect. Not too seriously, but seriously enough to cause a Franciscan monk, who I heard called Fra Francisco by one of his companions, to come to me to inspect my wound. By this time those of the enemy who were still on the field required only spiritual help.
Corella, when he saw that I had been hurt, looked first surprised, then somewhat concerned, and then relieved, to see this proof that I was not, after all—as he must have begun to think—some kind of superhuman immortal. He took a seat on the far side of the road and began to refresh himself with wine.
The hands of the elderly monk were gentle as he probed the back of my head, sponging away a minimal amount of blood, checking the swelling. I did not see his face clearly until my treatment was concluded. Then, to my amazement, I was able to recognize, despite the changes wrought by age, the countenance of Bogdan.
The remainder of my disguise was wiped away, and the murderous traitor saw my face clearly at the same time that I saw his. I saw the color drain from his cheeks and he took a step or two backward. A moment more and he sat down, upon a roadside stone, as if afflicted by a sudden attack of dizziness. The companion who had come with him, another monk, expressed concern.
'Brother Francis? What is wrong?'
The monk who was sitting on the stone only shook his head. Brother Francis.
Almost thirty years had passed since Bogdan and I had last looked upon each other, and he, at least, had undergone great visible alterations. Not that he had degenerated into a human wreck like Basarab—on the contrary, this greatest and bitterest enemy of mine looked hale and well for a man of his present age, somewhere around fifty.
My former comrade and deadly, sadistic enemy. There was nothing really so strange in my running into Bogdan by accident, after I had searched for him so many years.
The last survivor of the trio of my enemies sat for a time at the roadside as if stunned. Then he closed his eyes, bowed his head, and prayed aloud.
When he had concluded his prayers and looked up again, he saw me standing over him. He spoke to me, his hoarse voice lapsing into the language of our homeland.
'You are Drakulya—and yet you cannot be. Vlad Drakul has been in his grave for more than twenty years.'
I nodded slowly. 'He has been there, in his grave. He has been in many graves, but never yet to stay.'
His eyes, in horror and disbelief, probed mine. 'What are you saying?'
'Only what you already know, but do not wish to believe. That I am Drakulya, and you are Bogdan. Once—is it possible?—you were my trusted comrade. Then you became Bogdan, the traitor, who took great pleasure in my slow death. Bogdan, who thought he had sold the head of Drakulya to the Sultan. But that was not to be. For a quarter of a century you have escaped my vengeance. But no more.'
Bogdan could only stare at me, shaking his head. It was obvious that, although he now recognized me, still he did not believe. He was searching for an explanation.
'You are Bogdan,' I said to him remorselessly. 'And I know, we both know, what manner of filth you are. What is this pretense of robe and tonsure?'
'I was that man, Bogdan, once,' he admitted, after a long pause. Still he maintained his unbroken stare at me. 'That unspeakable traitor, murderer, thief, and lecher. But Christ had mercy upon that man, mercy even in the uttermost depths of his sin and degradation. And now, for fifteen years, through the Lord's mercy, that wretched Bogdan has been no more.'
