Bound & Bound – the Curse and the Captives – - 36. Chapter 36: Under the Floor

Chapter 36: Under the Floor

Laszlo allowed tears to run freely down his face.

He knelt silently in the chapel late at night. His hands were folded tight in prayer, and his heart was knotted in disgust.

'It was wrong,' he thought. 'To kill those wretched, but valiant men. Wrong to let Gretza manipulate my sense of duty and valour.'

Noises intruded on his solitude.

He glanced around. The sputtering glow and hissing sound of lit torches illuminated a ghastly scene.

Unable to sleep, he had gone in search of Louis and immediately found the boy curled up and dreaming in his antechamber. He stroked the loyal page's cheek, and roused him with words of "We have work to do."

Together they had laboured in secret to stir a small crew of Romanian men; the men who with crowbars had pried up several of the chapel's paving stones. Now Louis was supervising as they excavated dirt from a pit in the middle of the holy place. They were careful that the soil would not roll back into the open area.

The lord's gaze rotated, for laid out to the left of the altar were the shrouded corpses of Junayd and Ahmed. He had taken off his sword and placed it as a sign of respect between them.

Against his wife's wishes, he had covertly ordered that the men's severed heads be retrieved from the depths of the well. Also against his wife's laughing scorn that the bodies should be fed to the pigs, he had their reassembled remains sewn up in fine linen burial cloths.

Now the dead awaited a decent burial, and for Laszlo to grow a spine.

In the back of his thoughts an echo intruded. "Laszlo," it said. "Laszlo…" It insisted. He tried to block it out.

The lord of the place rose to his feet. He wandered over to one of the paving stones and stood there a moment as Louis silently joined him. Laszlo was considering what he should do to signal who will be buried beneath his chapel floor for all times.

He picked up a maul, and used the pick end of this hammer to chip into the underside of the stone. He scraped and struck at it, ignoring the tears that fell to consecrate it, and at the end rose to his feet to admire a rough but clearly cut crescent moon. He looked at Louis, saying, "They should be interred under the sign of their faith. It is only correct."

His young man and confidant placed a hand on his shoulder to signal that he thought the lord had done well.

Laszlo peered into the pit, and saw the Romanian men had dug deep enough. "Come on, Louis. Help me."

The lord of the place ushered the gravediggers out, and he and Louis got in themselves. As they stood motionless, eyes locked on one another, Laszlo felt his heart was drowning in a powerless rage. Any and all love he had once harboured for Gretza had been thoroughly grounded on the shoals of hatred. If might as well have been his former love for the woman that he was preparing to bury with the corpses of the Turkish captives; men whose lives he had capriciously allowed his wife to take.

The Romanians lowered the body of Junayd. Laszlo let him slump over his shoulder, and allowed Louis to take the dead man's feet. Together they carefully laid the body to rest.

Ahmed's corpse followed to rest on his shoulder, but as he turned for his lad to assist, he heard that faint and insistent voice again – a man's voice – his voice. "Laszlo," it said. "The time is now."

He shook his head and suddenly felt Ahmed's full weight. The lord allowed Louis to grab the feet, and slowly they deliberately placed the professional soldier so that his head position matched that of the dervish, and so that their sides were in contact from shoulder to waist.

Now they would be together in death as they so lovingly seemed in life.

"Louis, my sword."

"My Lord..?"

"Fetch it for me, please."

Louis reached up his arms, and two Romanians hoisted him out. The young man ran and grabbed his master's weapon – his lord's most prized possession. He jogged back and handed it down.

Laszlo knelt, and positioned his sword hilt to be by Ahmed's hands; this man was going to be buried with the honours afforded to any valiant knight being interred with dignity. From the crouched position, he looked up and saw the fairly startled faces of the work crew, and then alighted onto the proud expression his comrade wore for his actions. Laszlo feared he might be going mad, but still there was the light of an honourable path to be seen and to follow, if he was brave enough.

He stood, and the men helped him ascend out of the shared sepulchre.

"Louis," he intoned quietly, placing his hand on the lad's shoulder. "There is a lot of work to do tonight. I want you to stay here and ensure that no stone is out of place; I want no particle of dirt showing. By morning, everything must appear as if nothing had happened in here tonight. Do you understand?"

"Yes – " Louis hesitated.

"I need your avowal that you will make this happen, Louis."

"No, I mean, yes My Lord. But, I only wish to know what it is you will be doing now. I fear that His Lordship should not be on his own."

Laszlo bit his lip in concentration. Should he tell the lad what he was planning on doing next..? The voice called to him, "Laszlo – come to me, now." The lord of the place understood that what was about to happen was only ever partially a question of freewill, and a great deal of predestinated fate. In either case, he was ready.

"Louis…" His fingers moved up to the boy's cheek. Laszlo spoke low. "I may need your assistance later on this night. But for now, I require you here and doing this duty in my stead. I may, also…"

"Yes, My Lord?"

"We may need some further assistance."

"From whom?"

"From, Gretza's chief lady-in-waiting."

To Laszlo's eyes, Louis looked momentarily shocked, but the young man's features soon took on the rock-hard determination of one who's suddenly given the opportunity to align his own deepest ambitions and desires with another's. "We have spoken, sir," he reassured Laszlo. "And Maria is ready to serve Your Lordship in any capacity necessary to ensure the safety of our futures."

Laszlo quickly kissed the boy's mouth, and turned to bedraggle himself towards the chapel door. "Stay here, lad, until I can fetch you – or until the morning light breaks."

"Yes, My Lord."

Lord Laszlo listlessly removed one of the torches, and exited the chapel.

The courtyard was quiet. Guards paced the turrets and loggia in silent wait for wrongdoers, but he realized with a flush of pleasure that not a man of them would lift a finger to try and prevent anything Laszlo might do.

His feet dragged slowly across the court, his destination? The door opposite the yard from the chapel – the Knights' Hall.

He heard the voice calling to him again, and Laszlo answered it with a faint whisper. "Yes. I am coming to you."

The lord's eyes drifted up as the licking flames of his taper singed the Gothic tracery of stone above the grand passage into the hall.

The heavy oak of the chamber door, with all of its blackened iron straps, creaked open as Laszlo pushed on it.

The hall was still. Not a shadow of movement which was not being cast and animated by his flickering torch moved anywhere in the room. But in that light, all things seemed eerily alive. The marble columns flashed veins of crimson and brown, the ribs of the vaulting seemed to inhale and respire the ceiling with slow, painful contraction, the rushes on the floor all seemed to come alive like a field of living grass.

He strode across that rush-covered floor, which softened his step, and feared that his nerve to put wrongs to right would not be able to sustain itself for as long as he needed it to.

The voice in his head encouraged him as if it had just been privy to the man's thoughts as well.

"Good, Laszlo," it said. "I can hear your footfalls; do not be afraid."

The lord of the place stepped up to the niche with the built-in stone steps and the heavily-strapped door to his oubliette.

He crouched down, threaded a finger through the ringbolt and lifted the hatch cover. It rose with a continuous creaking groan, and it was a sound that sent a shiver down Laszlo's spine.

"Free me," the voice said again within his head.

With one hand, Lord Laszlo grabbed onto a ladder rung and stepped into the pit of foul-smelling blackness.

His torch flame dimmed a bit as he descended into the oxygen-poor air below his great hall's floor.

At the bottom of the ladder, he stood on a precipice, and slowly made his way to its edge to peer over. His flame was too feeble to cast any illumination into the bowels of the fetid pit below where he stood, but he knew he must go down there.

He cast about with his taper, looking for something attached to the perimeter wall. He found it, and sent the knotted rope ladder over the side.

He started to descend with knowing trepidation. What lay at the bottom of this abyss would determine his entire future, and if it was to be long, or end here and now.

One step followed the other as he slowly lowered himself towards his destiny; his fears of not doing as he was bid were greater than those leading his downward passage into his waiting fate.

At the bottom, Laszlo had to adjust to the eye-watering stench of human depravity that choked the atmosphere like sin weighs a thinking man's moods. But he did adjust, and as he slowed panned his sputtering light into the arching roundness of the deeply sunk corners, he was finally able to perceive the figure of Vlad Dracul sitting with his back pressed against the wall, and the man's legs pulled up so his elbows and forearms rested on his knees. Laszlo's attention was immediately drawn to the prince's visage, for it was horrible. Dirt or muck smeared the man's cheek and forehead; his hair was a tangled mass of grimy locks, and so was his dishevelled beard and moustache.

Through that derogation though, the eyes of this powerfully-minded man still shone with callous clarity.

Laszlo planted the torch in the centre of the radius by sinking the shaft end into the soft earth. He then sat opposite the prisoner prince, on the other side of the pit directly in front of him.

"Free me," Vlad said softly.

Lord Laszlo slowly shook his head

"What do you think you have to leverage the situation with, Laszlo?"

Still, the lord made no answer.

"Speak, Corvin. Raven got your tongue?" The captive laughed like a man who had not done so in months. His rasping chortle turned into a brief but intense consumptive coughing.

Laszlo's eyes grew round, for what he witnessed was almost like the other man willing himself to stop his body's fit of reaction, and the prince's body did so. The coughing ended in a deeply centered effort to inhale renewed strength and determination to his frail lungs.

"Vlad, matters are out of my control. Why have you summoned me; why have you continued to torment my every waking and sleeping moment by summoning me down here?"

"Why, Corvin? The question I asked you with all of those contacts to your mind in the hidden quiet of your day and night were similar ones. I asked you 'Why?' Why imprison me when it is your territory that is coveted by the Turks, and when I am the only man strong enough to stand as buffer between your Hungarian colony and the Ottoman Empire. Why do this to me?"

"I…I…have no answer for you, except that others thought it best."

Vlad scoffed, "Others? You mean your wife, obviously. But things have changed within you; things that have brought you to be confronting me at last. I do not need your words confirming it, for I already know your turnabout has something to do with the execution of those two Turks. She has driven you to do a personal thing that you did not want; you are changed now."

"You know my mind and my heart."

"Then free me."

"I cannot envision what freeing you will do for me. Your vengeance will be swift."

"It's your vengeance which I most wish to see."

Laszlo puzzled. "My vengeance..? Against whom?" An odd thought fleeted across the back of his sight: a young man who resembled him, but who was more immature, was reaching out to him. It seemed to Laszlo to be a child of his, and thus to strongly be a part of him that could survive long after him in the world.

Vlad opened his mouth, and a silent howl of amusement seemed to echo all around Laszlo's head. "You have been wronged by her as much as I have, Laszlo. Do you want to see your wife's treachery? Do you think you need proof?"

"Proof..?" puzzled Laszlo. "Of my wife's treachery…against…me?"

Prince Vlad exhaled a breath, a small one a man will make naturally when confronted by the extent of another man's blissful ignorance.

The prisoner slowly lifted his arm. At the end of it, Laszlo's sight was caught and hooked on the flickering motion the prince's fingers made as seen through the torch light. Lord Laszlo's mouth opened slightly, his lips parted for his tongue to moisten, for they had suddenly become parched, and his mind drew itself up into a blankness that felt like comfort. Vlad's minute hand movements were soothing and inducing a certain clarity of focus for the lord. Within his head, an image from earlier today played itself out.

He and his wife were in her chamber; Laszlo's hand was placed on his wife's belly, and in that touch, he had almost felt something like a charge repelling him from that woman's womb. Stunned at how he perceived a thing too dreadful to be fully allowed into his active consciousness, his suppressing mind made him retreat to the window; retreat there as if to be closer to the source of some deeper truth. How could such a child be his? That question he knew to ask immediately, but hesitated to speak such in the light of day, say such a thing to his wife directly. Staring out the window, towards the light and warmth of the seeming freedom just outside of Gretza's control, he felt an actual child of his would reach out and connect with him from the hollows of his wife's blessed ventris. But it had not; it had repulsed instantly, and what did that mean? It meant that whatever was in the depths of that woman, it was not the fruit of a sacred union. Whatever was in there was unholy in its very conception.

Laszlo blinked. The newborn heat of determination arising from the idea of being shown the truth, no matter what horrible secret it covered, gripped his heart in anticipation. His gaze shifted to Vlad's dark eyes, which were sparkling with intrigue.

The prince was no archangel here to announce the outspread glories of an impregnation of his wife by divine seed, but he was the very demon of a man with a black heart and wings neatly folded to cover an evil intent. Fitting it thus was that such a revelation should occur in the foul depths of a depraved cess like this, but Laszlo was prepared for the truth, either revealed through the window of light, or the murk of shadows.

"Show me," Laszlo demanded.

A small grin of something like admiration played about Vlad's mouth for a moment, and then the prince's hand again caught and held Lord Laszlo's attention.

The small, hypnotic movement there, animated and simultaneously stilled by the living lens of flame centered his soul once more. From within the sputtering matrix, a vision built itself.

Laszlo was walking silently through the corridors of the state apartments late at night. He glanced down at his hands, at his arms and body. He wore his dressing gown and nightshirt. Ahead of him was the door to his wife's antechamber. He seemed to glide without the use of his feet, and glide too did the massive oaken door once he neared it. It swung noiselessly apert for him as he entered the room.

All was still, bright moonlight shone through the leaded glass and the portal to Gretza's bedchamber was standing closed.

Sounds – carnal sounds – drew his attention. He drifted towards the inner door and it too opened without making a single obtrusive protest of sound. As he approached the portal, the lustful grunts and shuddering of carnal excess sickened his stomach.

He passed through the doorway. He inched his way towards his Lady Gretza's bed.

A man was on top of her; his hips thrusting into her deeply, each time forcing her sluttish hands to dig into and latch into the man's upper thighs and backside; each time forcing her lover to penetrate her more profoundly.

The air of the lady's chamber reeked of the woman's excitement, as did the sweat coming off of her prostrate body and breasts.

Slowly, Laszlo's phantom form moved away to stand by his wife's side; to stand in a position where he could see the face of the man cuckolding him with his whore of a spouse.

His eyes widened with amazement. It looked to be the soldier slave, and yet, as Laszlo centered his focus better, there seemed to be something fuzzy about the image of the man. He blinked, and the outlines of the man's massive body diminished; it was almost as if a thinner man, a gaunt man, was wearing the guise of a Herculean outfit.

Laszlo concentrated again on the face, and as the man on his wife began to make signs and portends of climaxing, the visage began to shift right before his very sight. The projected appearance of the Turk transformed into the soiled and rancid-smelling reality of Vlad's body.

He witnessed his wife's recognition too, and then to his genuine horror, she allowed the incubus prince to inseminate her.

The child within her belly was the devilish spawn of a powerful spectre – the spectre conjured by the very man before him now.

Rage nearly blinded him, but rage coalesced to one intense focal point, his wife. He blinked and Vlad's hand withdrew.

Laszlo raised his head to the black shadows over his head and let out the primal yell of a man betrayed. He could hear that cry echo off of the stone vaulting of the Knights' Hall far above their heads.

Vlad clamoured to his feet. "Let me out. Together is the only way to put things right. Together against the hordes of invaders, together to defeat your wife's evil and powerful sorcery."

Lord Laszlo rose too. Through his tears of bitter betrayal, Vlad's words echoed with blistering force. They also coalesced into the distilled liquor of one-hundred-proof determination.

That angry resolve became a single word shouted through his head over and over again: "Revenge; revenge; revenge!"