Son of a Dragon

December 21, 1502

My dearest brother Stefan, 

It is with a heavy heart that I write to you, brother. Our mother passed peacefully in her sleep last night. 

By the time this letter reaches you at your studies in Venice, she will be buried in the family graveyard beside father’s rose garden. Anna and the girls are grief-stricken, of course, but they know Mother would have whispered, “Our hearts remember the names our tongues forget.”

I am comforted with the knowledge that our mother was well-loved by us all. Our mother never let the world define what was possible, or who she could love. Our father’s story is proof of the transformative power of Zsofia’s love. You will learn soon that it matters who names you a monster.

The solicitors will be here tomorrow for the reading of her will. She has left her personal savings to the girls and any future children you, Andrei, or myself, have. If Andrei never has children, Mother left a gift for the church. The press was transferred to the three of us years ago, so there is no change to our financial situations. Although, I will say again how well our press would do in Italy. Mother mentioned a certain Italian heiress in your last letter to her.

I know the trip is long, and the wolves grow bold this time of year, but Mother has left you another inheritance. Your true inheritance; our mother’s truth. She has left you our family letters that can be read only here, where they can remain safe. Andrei and I were old enough to remember our father softly. Mother could not bear to let go of his truth, even to you, for fear she would lose all she had left of him. 

She also knew it was not a truth meant to be kept from a son about his father. Do not judge her harshly, brother. You will learn that kind of love was the real prize.

Hurry home, brother. Your loving family awaits your safe return with a warm hearth and heavy hearts. 

Your devoted brother,

Mercia

…..

January 21, 1487

Dear Stefan,

Today is your 11th birthday and you are out riding the horse you got for your birthday from your Uncle Stefan. He and your brothers spoil you, but you are such a sweet and considerate young man it is hard to stop them. You are the light that we all knew could one day be true.

I thought about telling you about your father today. You were so earnest in your questions about the myth of Dracula and was it fair of us to earn our fortune on a man’s misfortune? I told Andrei and Mercia it was because I did not want to burden you yet, but they know the truth. 

I was afraid to tell you, afraid that if I finally told you, the last of your father would float away from me. 

Your father was eleven when I met him, just as you are today. Your uncle Stefan and I had been sent to the Ottoman Palace as Hungarian political hostages, and companions for Mehmed, a few months before your father and Radu arrived.

Even before that first day I met him at the palace, I had heard of the Voivode of Wallachia. Vlad Dracul had joined the Order of the Dragon and stories of his valor and enlightenment flew across the countryside. By the time your father arrived at the palace, he was defiant in his divine right to be Voivode of Walllachia as the Son of the Dragon.

At first, he was determined to show his rage to anyone he could. It was Mehmed’s mother, Huma, who finally taught him to control his anger. She ordered the eunuchs to cover his head in the executioner’s hood and had him tied to a column in the harem for the girls to torment. I waited for hours before I approached him that first time, my heart racing in my ears. 

Your father says he felt his soul settled into place as I placed my hand over his heart. I say he was delirious from hours tied to the marble column with a hood over his head. He learned, and in time your father joined us in the garden under Huma’s watchful gaze.

We spent the next five years in Mehmed’s endless garden together. The tutors were there to prepare the boys to serve the Ottoman Empire. I was permitted to study alongside them because Huma allowed it. Mehmed was older than your father by less than a year and he never let him forget. As the future Sultan, our lives revolved around his whims. Your father and Mehmed battled with wooden swords from one end of the garden to the other, Radu keeping Mehmed’s points and I kept your father's tallies along a rock at the creek. 

Radu and the future Sultan were inseparable, and Vlad and I were not included in their private world. After Stefan was returned to our native Buda to marry into a family indebted to the Ottoman Empire, your father became my whole world. He loved to lay beside the creek and listen to me make up stories about the Son of the Dragon in the languages the tutors were teaching us. Huma would plan extravagant picnics and plan our lessons with the eunuchs each evening. I was an avid learner and Huma and Vlad enjoyed listening to the eunuchs teach me mathematics and astronomy. 

Our clothing and belongings were carefully selected by Huma, as well; we knew it gave her joy to care for us, but to this day I blame her for your father's extravagant tastes. She spoiled your father and I shamelessly. We were all naive to think anything beautiful could survive outside of Mehmed’s garden.

Huma’s protection extended to my apartments, which were behind hers. As a political hostage, I lived in the harem, but Mehmed’s mother separated me from the role of the other young girls in the harem. No one approached my door that she did not permit, and I had limited access to the harem. I did not understand the safety she gave me; I saw only imprisonment and shadow. It is only now that I understand the full extent of her unconditional love for me. 

When the news of your grandfather’s death reached the palace, a year had already passed and your father was inconsolable with guilt for our happiness, when he should have been grieving. Your father was furious at Mehmed when he found out that his brother and mother had been murdered, as well, and no one had told them. Radu sided with Mehmed and the Empire once and for all that night; it was the first time that your father and Mehmed truly fought. 

It would take your father years to learn that those twelve additional months together in the garden had been a blessing from the universe.

After that night, your father and I understood that our fates were prewritten and we were walking the steps laid for us long ago by others. Your father was released to return to Wallachia with the backing of the Ottoman Empire. None of us believed that Vlad Dracula would be anyone’s puppet, but no one wanted to face what that truth really meant.

The first night I said goodbye to your father, I was a political hostage in a harem in the Ottoman palace, which meant that we would never see each other again. We agreed that night, I would continue to tell my tales of the undead Voivode coming for his enemies in the night and he would sign his letters Dracula, so I would know he thought of me when his letters made it into the palace. 

My dearest Stefan, your father would have been so proud of you. I like to imagine that he is out there, even now, racing across the hills with you on your new horse, his wings stretched protectively around you.

I hope when you read this letter that you forgive me for my secret. And that you do not blame Mercia or Andrei, as I have sworn them to secrecy. As much as I love you, my darling son, I am not yet ready to let your father’s story go.

Your devoted mother,

Zsofia

…..

April 4, 1493

Dearest Stefan,

You left this morning for your studies in Italy before dawn. I watched from my window as you and your brothers rode down the driveway. We are so proud of the young man you have become. You looked just like your father in the cloak that Stefan bought you for your journey, your uncle knows well your father’s weakness for fine clothes.

I know I should have told you of your father before you left. You are a man now and have a right to truly know who your father was and why he could not stay here with us. But I am a coward and still unable to speak his story aloud for fear it will fly away.

After that final confrontation with Mehmed, your father and I were reunited together in Buda. It had been fifteen years since your father had ridden away from the palace in his favorite indigo cloak when the Sultan sent word I was to be returned to your uncle in Hungary. Those years had hardened the boy I knew into a man who was now sculpted with guilt and shame. At first, he would sit in our apartment, hiding from the daylight, locked in the silence the harem laws had taught him to protect himself with. I did not know how to hear the man in front of me after a lifetime of living with only Huma and the eunuchs.

Your father’s guards allowed my independence and the noble visitors sought me out for my translation skills. The printing press was gaining even more popularity and brought news from across the world in new languages. It was a story that brought your father back to me. Your father enjoyed my skill with languages and he would listen to me for hours, his head in my lap, as I shared the details of change crawling towards us.

After a few months, his words returned, slowly first, at night where the sunlight could not see them. He would lay in my arms and I would listen. He held the worst of his truths from me, not from shame but from compassion. There was no need for both of us to carry the memory of atrocities that should never again be given words. I knew the brutal world we had been born into and never pushed, even when I felt it close off another small piece of himself from me. I loved the parts he let me, and held the parts he did not.

We spent hours in the garden off of our apartment tending the roses that grew along our prison walls. Your father declined the offer of a larger prison after your brothers were born because he did not want to leave our flowers. I loved to tease him that he could charm the white roses to bloom red. After your brother was born your father became the boy I remembered in the daylight. Outrageously vain, he would spend hours picking our clothes and furnishings for our apartment. The servants and guards were all devoted to your father, and they arranged extravagant picnics in our garden, where he played for hours with Mercia and Andrei. 

At night, his darkness would return and he would talk, but his words changed from guilt and shame to resolve. He tried to explain, but I would not understand, at first. My heart would pound in my ears, and I would sob while he held me. And then after we were pregnant with you, he was so sure you were a boy we could name Stefan. He loved your uncle like he was his own brother. Then his tone changed and I finally had to accept his truth. 

After thirteen years of imprisonment in Hungary as an undead myth, he needed to face the rest of the story that was written for him long before the Order of the Dragon. It was the only way his sons could be free of the lineage that brought only sorrow.

My dear son, your father left you and your brothers a letter. I pray you read it through the eyes of a son who sees a father who chose to protect him - in the only way he could.

Your loving mother,

Zsofia

…..

December 21, 1476

To my beloved sons,

The hour is late and you are all safely asleep in your beds as I write this. Tomorrow I leave at dawn. My bag has been packed and Zsofia has already moved the household to your new home outside of Buda. For the first time in thirteen years, I will not be a political prisoner of the Hungarian government. And Zsofia, my soul, will be free for the first time in her life. Your mother has been dreaming of her own rose garden since she was a girl.

My sons, listen well to your mother. She has always known that the real power is in who gets to tell the story. Always tell your own stories, my sons. My story was written long before I realized the price of that choice. Lineage and fate gave me brothers, and our quest for entitled power tore us apart. Lineage and fate has made you brothers, and I would protect you from the curse of expectations. The best way to protect you all now is to finish the story that ended thirteen years ago. 

The night I became the undead monster of your mother’s stories.

These years with you both, and your mother, were more than I deserved. I have done terrible things for reasons I thought mattered. It was too late I realized that your mother’s love was all that had ever mattered. It was because of that love that my reputation grew to monstrous proportions with those first stories she sent out to reach my ears and terrify my foes.

It is your mother’s genius that will protect you both, and Stefan, your mother swears the baby is a boy, and who would dare prove your mother wrong? And your Uncle Stefan is a fine man who has been as much a brother to me as to your mother. The new printing press is bringing with it a new world and your mother is well prepared for her next journey. She has been telling the story of the Son of the Dragon since we first met in the palace, the day she became my heartbeat, and is excited for her own press.

The hour is late and I ride to Wallachia at dawn to finish the story Mehmed and I began long before we were born. The myth of Dracula will protect you.

Your loving father,

Vlad

P.S.

Take care of your mother for me, please, my sons, she hates to be alone. I will be waiting for you all in the River of Stories.

…..

October 4, 1505

Dearest Mercia, Anna, and my beloved nieces,

Today Lucrezia did me the honor of making me a father and allowing me to name our daughter after our beloved mother. It is with the greatest pleasure that I introduce you to Novella Zsofia. Mother would have been so proud, already her tiny namesake screamed the bats from the castle rafters. I can’t wait for you all to meet them both.  

The press continues to thrive here. Dracula’s story has carved out a successful following, Lucrezia and I plan to open a new press in Milan. My clever wife has a cousin who can run our daily operations there. “The river stirs and the dragon will fly once more,” she says.

I miss you and Anna and the girls, we are hoping to make the trip next summer to visit. I think often of the last time we were together, Mercia, and I take heed to your advice everyday. Lucrezia and Novella are my world. 

I understand now, brother, just what a wonderful father you have been to me. You raised me to be the man you knew our father would want me to have the chance to be. I finally understand that Andrei chose a life of silence in deference to his God because he could. 

Choice is the blade that cuts through the stories already told

Love to you all,

Stefan, Lucrezia, and Novella Zsofia