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The wail cut through the first pale light of an early morning like a dagger, more reminiscent of the howling of an injured animal than any sound a human being could make.
By the time the muezzin called from the minaret, the whispers had already made their round about the Ottoman court: The younger of the two Transylvanian princes had been found dead in a pond in the garden, beside him on the shore an empty goblet full of opium.
Mehmed didn't know what to think. It was a shock too great for words, or voice, or even thought.
If it had been just anyone, any other of the future janissaries, he could have washed his hands of it, dismissed the incident as something unfortunate, but unavoidable, a way to sift out the weeds from amongst the grain that would one day defend the empire. His empire, in time.
But Radu hadn’t been just anyone. Radu wasn’t someone he could wash his hands of. Radu was…
Mehmed had no words for it, for those large, bright blue eyes and the way they watched everything that went on around him, at a slight angle, because Radu tilted his head slightly to the side whenever he was watching the drills, the court, prayer, the other recruits, his brother or Mehmed.
He had no words for the deft, witty observations Radu made in the process, no words for his shy sweet smile that took the bite out of every quip. No one could be angry with him for long, not even his hot-headed older brother.
He wasn’t a fighter, but he could have grown into someone just as useful, if Allah had so ordained it.
To think of his lifeless body adrift in the still, green water, eyes closed forever in an eternal sleep, hurt more than Mehmed could ever have imagined.
Crushed like a cherry blossom in too rough hands. The thought should anger him, and perhaps it would, in time, but now… the numbness and the shock were still too great.
He should have seen it coming, everyone should have seen it coming. Radu had always been an extraordinary pretty child, and he had grown since he and his brother arrived in Edirne, grown enough to arouse interest. It had only ever been a matter of time before it happened.
Whispers had it that he had been sneaking back to bed late at night, limping, stifling small sobs into his sleeve. Truth was that he had grown silent and sullen, folding in on himself in his lessons, drawing his knees up to his chest as if to protect something already lost.
It wasn’t uncommon. Most boys at court were introduced to love that way, certainly most of the janissaries. Radu’s brother had been as well, Mehmed would bet on it. Their reactions varied from anger to fear to resignation, some returned their lovers’ affection in time, some didn't, but all of them endured, and so had Radu, until last night.
Mehmed could not get the image out of his head. It angered him, even though shock numbed him to it now, it angered him in a way it wouldn't have, if it had been anyone else, for a reason he dared not truly think of.
Mehmed had shared the first kisses of youth with Radu, a wonderful and terrible thing, a dangerously soft kind of affection. Was it love? It could certainly have become love, in time. It might as well have been.
But the one who had broken Radu so? That had been someone else. Someone else had crushed him like a cherry blossom in his too rough hands, and robbed the world of him. Mehmed dared not think of who it might have been.
The day passed, and the images stayed with him. A violet moon rose in the sky, the thin scythe only days away from the new moon.
He couldn't forget the still green waters, the slender body floating among lotus and reed, small fishes playing in the swirling black strands of Radu's hair.
He couldn't forget the goblet, wine sweetened with honey and laced with opium, for a peaceful, dreamless sleep that would never end.
The thought made him feel sick. He couldn't sleep.
He slipped silently from his bed and passed the inner courtyards. Dim smoky moonlight gleamed on the lead-thatched roof of the imperial mosque.
Radu had been laid out on a bier inside the imposingly beautiful building, as was the Christian custom of his homeland. The imam had argued that the boy ought to be buried immediatly, as recommended in the Q’uran, but Radu’s brother had fought him tooth and nail to insure their tradition would be followed, even if it was just for one night. Radu would be buried come morning.
The chill of autumn had already decended on Edirne, and the old man couldn't name a reason necessitating an immediate burial, beside the word of the prophet. Certainly not enough reason to contradict a grieving brother, brash and half-wild even at the best of times.
It had been the older prince who had found Radu dead, Mehmed suddenly remembered, it had been his wail that had woken the palace as he clutched his little brother’s lifeless body to his chest. Someone had had to drag him away snarling and cursing, before he relinquished his hold.
The inside of the mosque was cloaked in deep and silent shadows, and only a small, pale sliver of moonlight fell in through a window.
Radu’s hands had been crossed over his chest, Mehmed noticed. Someone had brushed his hair, too. Like this, dressed in all the finery befitting his station, one could almost believe Radu was merely asleep, his soft features so deceptively calm and relaxed and seemingly at peace.
Mehmed’s heart skipped a beat. If I were to kiss him, he thought, his eyes would flutter open and his cheeks would flush, and he would smile.
It hurt more than he could have ever imagined. It hurt like a punch to the stomach, making it hard to breathe.
Laid out like this, Radu looked like a child. For all the quiet dignity of the practice, it made him seem younger than he had ever appeared in life, small, vulnerable, defenseless. Even the supposedly gentle death he had chosen for himself couldn't disguise the injustice of it all.
Mehmed cursed the sudden protectiveness that welled up inside him. Whatever else it was, guilt or regret or love, it was also entirely and utterly useless to feel. There was no protecting Radu now. It was too late for that.
You should have done that while he was still alive, he thought. You could have. You are the prince. You could have kept him safe.
Shut it.
Taking Radu's hand in his, he couldn't help notice how still and cold he was, nothing like the warm, lively presence he had been in life.
“What are you doing here?”
The words broke the silence suddenly, seeming way too loud for it.
Mehmed whipped around, jerking his hand back as if he burned himself on Radu's too pale, too cold skin.
Vlad’s body in the doorway was all angles, all rage and darkness. He shoved Mehmed roughly against the stone tiles, his sword an inch away from Mehmed's throat.
“Did you take him too?”, he snarled.
“No.”
It was as honest an answer as he knew how to give.
For an embarrassingly terrifying moment, he thought Vlad might not believe him.
But then he stepped into the greyish, sickly moonlight and the illusion broke. The older prince’s eyes were dry, but sorrow was etched into his face either way.
“I came to bid him farewell.”
Something in Vlad's suspicious dark gaze softened slightly at the words. Mehmed swallowed a sharp comment about how Vlad was entirely too late to protect his brother from anything. What good would it do? It wasn’t as if they weren't feeling the same guilt already.
They stood in silence for what seemed like an eternity, at the bier of a dead boy they had both loved. They weren’t close, and they had never been, but Radu's death linked them together now, would link them together forever, and still neither knew what to say.
It was Vlad who finally broke the silence.
“I’m glad you're here”, he mumbled. Mehmed didn't reply. He could hear Vlad swallow heavily next to him.
“I loved him. I loved him, more than anything in the world, but we… we weren't close. Not like we used to be. I didn't believe him when he said you cared for him. Seems like I was wrong.”
The night was cold, and yet, Mehmed felt his cheeks heat up. But he couldn't lie about it, not now.
“I did. Care for him, I mean. More than I ever thought I could care for anyone.”
Radu, looking up at him with something like awe in his big, blue eyes, his sweet lips parting oh so easily under his. The memory came unbidden. Mehmed pushed it away. The guilt wasn’t so easily silenced, though.
“I should have protected him.”
“There was nothing you could have done. Not when it was your father who…” Vlads voice was sharp, but not unkind, despite his uselessly balled fists. Not to him, at least.
Right. There was a reason Mehmed hadn't wanted to think about who might be to blame for Radu's death. He didn't want to think of that night of his father hosting the beys of Anatolia, of Radu's pleading eyes when the sultan had called on him then. He didn't want to think of his sweet young love, all alone with the sultan and his rowdiest enforcers, for hours, all of them emboldened even more by copious amounts of sinful drink. He would kill the old man, if he did think about it for too long.
The silence seemed to go on forever. It was an eternity until Vlad spoke again.
“I just… I wish I could give him a proper burial.” A Christian one, was what he meant.
“There is St. George’s Abbey just outside the city walls.”, Mehmed heard himself say, much to his own surprise.
“It’s been abandoned for a while now, but we could still bury him in the churchyard, if you so wished. We might even find…”
“No.”
The hard white lines of Vlad's already pained, stony face tightened even further.
“If we found one, we would have to explain how he died and why we need to bury him in secret in the middle of the night. No priest would say the proper prayers for him then.”
“We could still bury him though. The Christian way. You can say the prayers, and he can rest in sacred ground, isn’t that how you say it? That should count for something, shouldn’t it?”
“We?”
Mehmed could extricate himself from this. He should. He was a prince, not a gravedigger. There was nothing he could do for Radu now, who was beyond the reach of pain, one way or another. But he wanted to be close to him, until the last moment. He couldn't let Vlad bury him alone as if he was the only one who had loved Radu. Mehmed couldn't wash his hands of him.
“Yes. We.”
Vlad slowly nodded. “Wait for me here. I’ll be back shortly.”
He disappeared into the darkness. Pale, sickly, violet moonlight fell in through the door, only for the second it took Vlad to close it behind him. And Mehmed stood there, alone, waiting, in the darkness. Alone with the body of a dead boy, too sweet for this world, driven to suicide.
Vlad's people told stories of the dead rising from their graves. Would Radu do the same? Was there a chance he’d see him again?
He looked down at Radu’s face again. Shrouded in darkness, he looked almost asleep. Merely asleep. Would he open his eyes if Mehmed kissed him?
Before he could do something exceedingly stupid, though, Vlad had returned. He carried an assortment of odd items with him, a bag of peas, a candle, a long strip of paper with a quick, crude drawing of Mary and her child and another figure on it, as well as a small diptychon with an icon of Christ.
He put the strip across Radu's forehead, the icon into his hands along with another slip of paper, something Mehmed thought to object to, but didn't. They silently wrapped Radu’s small, lifeless body into a bed cloth that would serve as his shroud. Mehmed heard Vlad mumbling about it being “a pauper’s burial”, but decided not to grace it with a word. They had to make do with what little they had. Both of them knew it.
Vlad tugged the bag and candle into his belt, apparently for some obscure later use, before he bid Mehmed to pick up the bier.
They carried Radu out of the palace swiftly, and saw no one.
Only when they walked the silent streets of Edirne did Vlad begin to whisper a prayer, in a sort of sing-song voice, as if in lieu of actually singing.
“Holy God, holy strong, holy immortal, have mercy on us.”
After a time, Mehmed began to tentatively repeat the words after him.
The crumbling walls of the abandoned abbey were covered in ivy, like a leafy fur. In the shade of an ancient yew tree lay the withered gravestones. There weren’t many people buried here, mostly the monks that had once called this place their home. Mehmed hoped that they would be good company for Radu. He suspected Vlad thought the same, in secret, but Mehmed was glad he didn't mention that. The sickly moon peeked through the branches. It wasn’t a very beautiful night. Vlad lit the candle and placed it on a nearby headstone.
While they dug, Vlad prayed.
“Lord, Prince of all, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Thou wantst all men to be saved and come to realization of the truth. Thou wantst not the downfall of the sinner, but that he turn to thee and live.
Now we plead and beg thee: Free the soul of thy servant Radu of all bounds and curses, forgive all his sins he may have done from the days of youth, knowingly or unknowingly, in word or deed, those he confessed and those he might have forgotten or kept silent about for shame of them, for thou alone freest those in bondage and raisest up the fallen, thou hope of the hopeless, who can forgive every sin of those who trust in you.
Merciful Lord, command that he be free of the bounds of the flesh and the sin and take the soul of thy servant Radu and let him rest among the saints in their eternal dwelling place by the Grace of your son our lord, god and saviour Jesus Christ, with whom thou be praised alongside your holy and life-giving spirit, now and forever and into all eternity. Amen.”
Mehmed's throat felt too tight to speak. He hoped Radu would find peace, no matter where he was now. It wasn’t beyond him why Vlad placed such a fervent emphasis on the forgiving of Radu's sins.
If you robbed him of his place in Heaven as well as his innocence and his life, father, I shall bury a knife in your gut for true, he thought. Surely even as judgemental a god as the Christians believed in would not be so cruel as to let someone suffer for what had been done to them rather than by them.
Vlad kissed his brother’s forehead and Mehmed, tentatively, allowed himself to do the same. Together they gently placed Radu in the shallow grave, arranging his limbs to give the appearance of sleep.
At long last, the peas were strewn around the body. Vlad grabbed a loose, heavy stone from the fallen dormitory, motioning for Mehmed to help him place it on Radu's chest as gently as possible.
Mehmed could feel tears welling up.
“No”, he whispered.
It was to prevent Radu from rising from the dead. And Mehmed couldn't help but hope for that. For one more chance to hold Radu, one more moment with him.
Vlad looked at him, with something almost akin to pity.
“It is better that way. Whenever someone returns as a vampire, they aren’t the same. It’s a fate worse than death.”
He looked down at the small body, cradled in the earth like a babe in its mother’s womb.
“He wouldn't want that. If the choice is between death and a living death that sucks the life from those you love, who would pick the latter?”
With a heavy heart, Mehmed helped Vlad put the boulder on Radu's chest.
“All we can do is take precautions, and make certain that he should want for nothing.”
Vlad solemnly blew out the candle and placed it in the upper corner of the grave.
“Then let us swear that we shall be brothers from now on. That we shall put aside what was for his sake.”
Mehmed's throat was clogged with emotion after the words had spilled out. Had they done that earlier, perhaps they might have saved Radu. Had they not posed him an impossible choice, a situation in which he needed not fear to disappoint either of them, he might have trusted them, seen another way besides a goblet full of opium.
But it was too late for that. They could only make amends and look to the future. To look back would break him, and he doubted Vlad felt any different. A swift cut with his dagger, across his hand.
Vlad took both his dagger and his hand. Their blood mingled, a few drops falling to the dark earth. Brothers they would be for Radu's sake, and Mehmed hoped he was happy for it, to see them united. That brotherhood would be the legacy of the boy they had both loved.
In silence and darkness, under a violet moon, they shoveled the grave dirt over Radu’s body, hands burning. They had no gravemarker, no headstone. Not even a wooden cross. But in time, flowers would grow from the grave, poppies and hyacinths. Mehmed hoped so, at least.
A single star peeked through the clouds, one that hadn't been there before.