“Soomething amiss?” He peered over the wall.

I pointed. “Could it be a Gypsy camp?”

He laughed. “Noo, not so far from civilization.” He followed this with a yawn, but his eyes in the glow of our dying fire showed bright and alert. “It’s peculiar, though. Let’s go have a look.”

I didn’t like this idea in the least, but a few minutes later we had our boots on and were creeping quietly down the path towards the sound. It grew steadily louder, a rising and falling, an eerie cadence-not wolves, I thought, but men’s voices. I tried not to step on any branches. Once I observed Georgescu reach into his jacket-he did have a gun, I thought with satisfaction. Soon we could see firelight flickering through the trees, and he motioned to me to creep low, and then to squat next to him in the underbrush.

We had reached a clearing in the woods, and it was, astoundingly, full of men. They stood two rings deep around a bright bonfire, facing it and chanting. One, apparently their leader, stood near the fire, and whenever their chant rose to a crescendo each of them lifted a stiff arm in a salute, putting his other hand on the shoulder of the next man. Their faces, weirdly orange in the firelight, were stiff and unsmiling, and their eyes glittered. They wore a uniform of some sort, dark jackets over green shirts and black ties. “What is this?” I murmured to Georgescu. “What are they saying?”

“All for the Fatherland!” he hissed in my ear. “Stay very quiet or we are dead. I think this is the Legion of the Archangel Michael.”

“What is that?” I tried to just move my lips. It would have been difficult to imagine anything less angelic than those stony faces and rigid outstretched arms. Georgescu beckoned me away and we crept back into the woods. But before we turned I noticed a movement on the other side of the clearing, and to my increasing astonishment I saw a tall man in a cloak, his dark hair and sallow face caught for a second by the light from the fire. He stood outside the rings of uniformed men, his face joyful; in fact, he seemed to be laughing. After a second I couldn’t see him anymore and thought he must have slipped into the trees, and then Georgescu pulled me along up the slope.

“When we were safely back at the ruin-weirdly, it did feel safe now, by contrast-Georgescu sat down by the fire and lit his pipe, as if for relief. ”Good God, man,“ he breathed. ”That could have been the end of us.“

“Who are they?”

He tossed his match into the fire. “Criminals,” he said shortly. “They are also called the Iron Guard. They are sweeping through the villages in this part of the country, picking up young men and converting them to hatred. They hate the Jews, in particular, and want to rid the warld of them.” He drew fiercely on his pipe. “We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered, too. And then a lot of other people, usually.”

I described the strange figure I’d seen outside the circle.

“Oh, to be sure,” Georgescu muttered. “They attract all kinds of strange admirers. It won’t be long till every shepherd in the mountains is deciding to join them.”

It took us some time to settle to sleep again, but Georgescu assured me the Legion was unlikely to scale the mountain once they’d begun their rituals. I managed only an uncomfortable doze and was relieved to see that dawn came early to that eagle’s eyrie. It was quiet now, still rather foggy, and no wind moved the trees around us. As soon as the light was strong enough, I went cautiously to the crumbling vaults of the chapel and examined the wolf’s tracks. They could be clearly seen on the near side of the chapel, large and heavy, in the earth. The strange thing was that there was only one set of them, which led away from the chapel area, directly out of the sunken beds of the crypt, with no sign of how the wolf had made its way in there in the first place-or perhaps I simply couldn’t read its trail well enough in the undergrowth behind the chapel. I puzzled over this long after we had breakfasted, made some more sketches, and set off down the mountain.

Again, I must stop for the present, but my warmest regards go out to you from a faraway land-

Rossi

Chapter 47

My dear friend,

I can’t imagine what you’ll think of this weird and one-sided correspondence when it finally reaches you, but I’m compelled to continue, if only to make notes for myself. We returned yesterday afternoon to the village on the Arges from which we began our journey to Dracula’s fortress, and Georgescu has set off for Snagov, with a hearty embrace and a squeeze to my shoulders and the wish that we may be in touch again someday. He has been a most genial guide and I shall certainly miss him. At the last moment I felt a pang of guilt at not having told him everything I’d observed in Istanbul, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to breach my own silence. He wouldn’t have believed it anyway, and so I should not have been sparing him any mishaps by trying to persuade him of it. I could imagine all too well his hearty laugh, his scientific shake of the head, his dismissal of my fantastic imagination.

He urged me to travel back with him as far as Târgoviste, but I had already resolved to stay a few more days in this area to visit some of the local churches and monasteries, and to learn, perhaps, a little of the region that surrounded Vlad’s stronghold. This was the reason I gave to myself and Georgescu, in any case, and he recommended several sites Dracula would undoubtedly have visited in his lifetime. I think I had another motivation, my friend, which is the sense that I may never again come to such a place, so remote, so far from my usual researches, and so piercingly beautiful. Having resolved to use my last free days here rather than hurry to Greece ahead of schedule, I’ve been relaxing a bit at the tavern, trying to improve my bits of Roumanian by attempting with poor success to talk with the elders about the legends of the region. Today I walked the woodlands near the village, coming upon a shrine that stood alone beneath a tree. It was built of ancient stones with a roof of thatch, and I thought its original part might have been there long before Dracula’s troops galloped these roads. The fresh flowers inside had just wilted, and candle wax had pooled below the crucifix.

As I was returning towards the village, I met with an equally startling sight-a young village girl who stood motionless in my path in her peasant dress, for all the world like a figure of history. As she showed no sign of moving, I stopped to speak with her, and to my amazement she presented me with a coin. It was clearly very old-mediaeval-and showed on one side the figure of a dragon. I felt sure, although without proof, that it must have been coined for the Order of the Dragon. The girl of course spoke only Roumanian, but I managed to learn from her that she was given it by an old woman who came down to this village at some point from the river cliffs near Vlad’s castle. The girl also told me that her family name is Getzi, although she seemed to have no inkling of its significance. You can imagine my excitement at this: I was in all likelihood standing face-to-face with a descendant of Vlad Dracula. The thought was both astonishing and unnerving (although the girl’s purity of face and graceful demeanor were as far as possible from anything monstrous or cruel). When I tried to return the coin she seemed to insist I keep it, which I’ve done for now, though I shall certainly try again to give it back. We arranged to talk further tomorrow, and I must desist now to make a sketch of the coin, and to study my dictionary in the hope of being able to ask her more about her family and their origins.

My dear friend,

Last night I made a little further headway in speaking with the young woman I told you about-her name is indeed Getzi, and she spelled it for me with the same spelling Georgescu gave me for my notes. I was astonished by the quickness of her understanding, as we tried to converse, and found that in addition to great natural gifts of perception she can read and write and was able to help me look up words in my dictionary. I enjoyed watching her mobile face and bright, dark eyes fill with each new comprehension. She has never learned another language, of course, but I have no doubt she could do so with ease, had she the right instruction.