Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty Read Free Book Online Page B

inlay.
    One additional inlaid item I did not recognize—a stunning ruby placed in the middle of the cross where Jesus’s heart would be. I turned it over, and on the back was written the Slavic phrase
Spasi i Sokhrani
.
Save and protect
. At the bottom was inscribed a pair of dragon’s feet.
    The neck chain, fashioned in the same silver, was sized to allow the crucifix to suspend directly over my heart. This was the relic I was to wear at all times during my trip.

T o understand Romania is to accept that its history is driven by its position on the globe. Assuming the head-shaped country faces west, the Carpathian Mountains are the brow and mutton-chop-style sideburns sweeping south and then west at the country’s midpoint. That mountainous land is Transylvania, and it takes its name by combining two Latin words,
trans
and
silva
, meaning
land beyond the forest
. Descending the Carpathian foothills, one finds the Moldavian Plain pointed east toward Asia and the Wallachian Plain south toward the Balkans. My destination was where the range makes its turn west, to a castle in a mountain pass near the town of.
    Transylvania, together with the Moldavian and Wallachian Plains, formed the three principalities that ultimately united to become Romania. The Danube River forms its border with Bulgaria to the south, and the Black Sea touches a piece of its eastern border.
    Latin was our connection to home. The Carpathians were the northeast corner of the Roman Empire, and its language became the foundation of the Romanian tongue. The Roman Empire, whittled away over a thousand years of skirmishes from a long roster of invaders, slowly turned the Mediterranean over to the conquering Muslims. But as the Ottoman Empire expanded north through Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and the rest of the Balkan Peninsula (which Mara so aptly called the “corridor of war”), they were turned back on the Wallachian Plain and failed to annex above the Danube River. Hence Romania could claim to be the land where Christianity held off the Ottoman Turks.
    I cross-referenced the lineage tree in Stoker’s notes, the one written by the left-handed assistant, against two history books from my shelf in an effort to understand his story’s lore. With annotations of battles and dates of rule, the tree did not appear to be Stoker’s work. More likely, it seemed the author looked at the chart, picked the most ruthless of the bunch, and selected him as his villain.
    Dracula’s family started with Vlad I, to whom the Hungarian emperor bestowed the Crusader’s title of Dracul, from
drac
, meaning
dragon
, or Order of the Dragon. He ruled the Wallachian principality with one interruption for a dozen years ending in 1447. His job as prince was to keep the Ottomans on the south side of the Danube. Vlad I had at least three known sons, in age order: Mircea, Vlad, and Radu. At that time, principalities weakened when princes died, leaving thrones open to challenge and rearrangement. Vlad I aligned himself with the Ottoman sultans when his neighbors weakened, and vice versa. Discovery of his mixed allegiances ultimately led to Vlad’s imprisonment by his sultan neighbor, who held sons Vlad and Radu hostage in an attempt to sideline Vlad I. Not one to stand idle, Vlad I returned to the warpath, alienating the two sons left as captives, and finished out his rule until he was reportedly executed, along with eldest son Mircea, for double-crossing those who had bestowed upon him the prince’s title.
    Vlad I’s second son, the Vlad who was left as a hostage, once freed, added the customary
a
to the end of his father’s name, becoming Dracula, and ruled under the name Vlad III, the interim ruler unrelated to the family. Vlad III reigned ruthlessly over the Wallachian principality that extended from the southern Carpathian Mountain passes down to the Danube. Impalement was his preferred manner of execution, and allegedly one of his forms of domestic entertainment. Known to