My voice was as quiet and monotonous as his. No one else could hear what either of us was saying. 'Say rather, that soon he will be no more upon this earth. Soon he will have been sent to hell.'
Once more my enemy bowed his head and prayed.
Perhaps his prayers gave him strength, for when he raised his head and looked at me again, his gaze was less obscured with fear.
'I see who you are now,' he said at last, speaking with the relief of a man who has solved a mystery. 'I begin to understand. There is indeed a great resemblance, and you, young man, must be Drakulya's bastard. Perhaps you were born only after he died; in any event you must have been so young that you can never really have known your father Vlad Drakul. He can scarcely be a real memory to you at all. Others must have brought you up, taught you to spend your life in vengeance—why have you come to Italy?'
'To find you. And now I have succeeded.'
My enemy, sitting on his rock, took thought. Now it seemed that he was more concerned for me than frightened for himself. 'I must tell you that your father was a man who worked much evil in the world. Well, he paid for his sins heavily in this world, and it is not for us to judge his condition in the next. Daily I pray for his soul.'
'You—' In my outrage, I could not speak.
'I pray daily for your father's soul,' my enemy repeated simply. 'He had great faults. Yet he also did much that was right and good—he could inspire such loyalty—'
The treacherous monster seemed much moved. To my great confusion and anger, I found myself increasingly at a loss for what I should say to him. This monk who sat before me was not at all the Bogdan I remembered. And yet at the same time I knew him for the same man. When he spoke the same voice sounded in my ears, only the words were different.
Now he was asking me in kindly tones: 'How much of your young life have you already wasted, seeking revenge?'
'Tracking down Ronay took me only a matter of hours, once I put my mind to it. Basarab took a great deal longer, but I found him as well. You have taken a very long time to find, but you are the last, and you are still alive, and I am not too late.'
He shook his head. 'Ronay died almost at the same time as your father. I think someone—'
I stepped forward and seized him by the shoulders of his robe and pulled him to his feet. 'Fool! Fool! Imbecile, utter and contemptible! I say to you that I am Drakulya!' I fear that at this point I must have grown somewhat incoherent, beginning to snarl and rage at my defenseless adversary, accusing him of a whole list of monstrous crimes. Perhaps he was not even guilty of them all.
By this time Michelotto had moved closer, and was watching and listening with ever greater curiosity, despite the fact that most of our argument was in a language alien to him. Obviously he was beginning to enjoy the scene hugely.
Once again Bogdan grew troubled by my behavior, but this time in a sad and thoughtful way.
Half turning his back on me, he started to pack away his medical kit, meanwhile addressing me over his shoulder. 'All that you say of the fool and traitor Bogdan is true enough. He was a mighty sinner, committing all the unspeakable crimes of which you accuse him, and more. He lied, he stole, he devoted himself to piling up earthly treasures. Worse, he murdered and tortured and raped—worst of all, he forgot God.
'But for all those crimes our Heavenly Father has granted him forgiveness. Not because he possessed the least merit of his own. Rather the One who takes all sins on Himself has granted him new life, as Brother Francis.'
'Hypocrite! Brother Rat! Brother Shit! I have granted you no forgiveness!'
Now my victim, alarmed, cast down his pack and turned to face me once more. 'My son, in Our Savior's name I beg of you to overcome this obsession with vengeance. Not for my sake, but for your own. It is your own soul that you are now placing in great peril. Someday you too will perish.'
I beg that the reader will understand me. Had this been unctuous hypocrisy on Bogdan's part, it would not have stung me so. I would have taken him in my grasp on the spot, and enjoyed his slow dismemberment. But despite the names I called him in my anger, I could not escape the conviction that the aged, gentle Brother Francis who stood before me was perfectly sincere—or as sincere as any mortal man can be. In fact, Bogdan existed no more, and this was someone else who tried to save my soul. My greatest enemy had escaped my vengeance after all, and it was that I found unbearable.
In my most monumental angers I am often quiet.
'You say that someday I will perish?' I asked him softly. 'Nay, that I have already done, as thou must know.'
A moment later, in the grip of uncontrollable rage, I struck him down without a moment's warning. Have I spoken yet of the augmented strength I possessed in my new life? Yes, but perhaps I have not made the matter sufficiently clear. I was a strong man in my breathing days, and my body had grown twenty times as powerful since the lust for life and vengeance had brought me back from death.
Under the impetus of a blow from my right arm, the body of Brother Francis flew tumbling into the air, came down at some distance, and only ceased to roll ten paces from where he had been standing. The Franciscan cowl, falling over the crushed skull, was already soaking red when the body came to rest. There was not, could not be, any need to strike again.
Michelotto in the background grunted his awe and admiration. This he followed with a similar sound, softer and more thoughtful, but just as easy to interpret; definitely a criticism. He had understood a few words of the argument, and if this killing was for the purpose of revenge, over some ancient wrong, it certainly lacked artistry.
But I had little thought for Michelotto then. Slowly I went to the fallen body in the monk's habit and stood over it. Bogdan's arms and legs were twitching still, but that meant nothing. Certainly he was dead. Quickly and all but painlessly. All my plans—for how many years had I been dreaming of revenge?—all gone for nothing.
The truth, and I could not escape it, was that Bogdan had escaped me many years ago. This meddling elder, who had counseled me so sincerely regarding the welfare of my soul, was someone else.
Brother Francis.
Now, when it was too late, I could think of a thousand more cunning ways in which I might have proceeded once I had found my enemy. I might have tried to find a way to revive the soul of Bogdan in my foe, and then to ensure his speedy and direct passage to hell. I might have been inspired—no doubt it would have been by the devil—to work some trick, such as a sudden disappearance, to make my enemy think that I was indeed an evil spirit.
But—to meet him, to encounter him at last, and in that moment to realize that I had no plan ready! No plan ready, of all the hundreds, thousands of revengeful schemes, each more painful than the last, that I had dreamt of through the years…
What had I really been thinking of all that time?
I could have improvised. I might have assured the traitor that I had been sent from hell to collect his soul, that he was not forgiven after all, that Brother Francis was a fraud, that he was Bogdan still, and Bogdan, after all, was going with me down to hell. I might have…
But as matters stood, I had simply killed him. I, Drakulya, legendary even in my breathing days for the symphonic fury of retaliation with which I responded to all wrongs—
And every day, for fifteen years, he had prayed for my soul.
I had my full revenge at last. All the revenge on the three traitors that I was ever going to get.
And small satisfaction have I ever had from it.
Chapter 16
The man who sometimes used the name of Matthew Maule picked up one of the lightweight poolside chairs, a folding construction of thin tubular metal and plastic webbing, and carried it back with him into the sheltered aisle behind the row of tall live plants. Carefully he positioned the chair to face the early night's magnificent play of high fog and distant lights outside the forty-fourth-floor windows. 'Sit down and rest for a time, Margot.' His tone was all tender consideration. 'Presently the giddiness will pass.'
Mrs. Hassler's response could have been described as a moan, were it not so filled with the tones of
