Chapter 8: Crossroads
"I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself."
-Petrarch
Lisa rushed down the castle's steps without a backward glance. Her satchel contained all her belongings and nothing more despite the tempting offer she'd found in her room: a pouch of coins sitting on the letter that bore her name in fluid, scholarly writing. In the succinct letter that made no allusion to what had occurred the previous evening, Țepeș had predicted her intent to depart that morning and urged her to accept the gold to secure lodgings and perhaps bargain for safe passage. He'd concerned himself with the smallest details of her trip: that she should take provisions from the larder, that she was welcome to any books or scrolls she wished to take. Reagents and medicines from the laboratory were at her disposal, as well.
At the end of the letter he had written:
You need only say my name and I will come to you.
She crumpled the letter although it hurt her viscerally to watch his words of admonition, concern, and generosity disappear under her angry fist. As much as she wished it were otherwise, the feelings she nurtured for Țepeș could not be as expediently discarded as the letter. Still, the gesture was unequivocal: it solidified her intent to leave.
Upon awakening in the darkened room that morning, she had grappled with the coherence of the previous night as if the events had leached themselves into her memory from a strange, hallucinatory dream.
Was any of it real? She examined her neck in a small mirror, turning her head to and fro. Although the skin was tender, there was nothing that betrayed the violence of her recollection of the previous evening. Her fingers prodded the aching area lightly.
A shiver coursed over her at the memory of his breath, his full lips shaping kisses over her neck, his tongue flicking over the raw skin soothingly until the sting he'd inflicted earlier all but faded.
She stared long and hard at the gold on the table as she stood by the open door, her satchel slung decisively across her shoulder. It was a rare instance where her pragmatic side was trumped by pride. She slammed the door shut on her way out of the room and down the staircase, avoiding the kitchen and its larder. When she coursed down the main hall, the awareness that she had decided to leave for good did cause her to falter. When she slipped out the door into the blinding light of day, she braced an arm across her abdomen to prevent herself from doubling over with grief.
As she climbed up an incline that would bring her back to the road she had wandered off of to reach the castle, she finally turned her head to stare at the castle.
He had tried to warn her, she realized. From the beginning. All those conversations they had had about the risks of knowledge. But it hadn't been enough.
What would you be willing to do to attain such knowledge? Will you accept the risk?
The questions acquired a taunting timbre in retrospect.
He had unsettled her to her very core. Sorting through all her jumbled emotions only revealed a multitude of unraveled threads—she would have to contend with everything: from what to believe in moving forward to whether he had preyed on her. She rubbed her neck as if stirring up the courage to follow through with her decision.
And still, despite everything, she could not quell the profound, hollow ache that struck her when she tore her gaze from the solitary castle in the distance.
"How much?" Lisa took offense at the innkeeper's straight face as he announced the cost of lodging at his modest establishment for a night. She amassed some of her coins in her palm and presented them to him. "This is all I can offer. Will it do?"
He examined her money with poorly concealed disdain. He flicked two silver coins aside.
"Hm. We do not accept aspri here."
Lisa frowned.
"But what about the rest?"
The man shrugged.
"That won't even buy you a stall in the barn."
"Be reasonable now: where am I supposed to go? There is nowhere else!" she argued incredulously. She tried not to let thoughts of Țepeș' pouch of coins, abandoned in the comfortable room she'd left behind, taunt her.
"Aah! You can go the devil, for all I care!" The man finally snapped impatiently, tired of Lisa's persistent haggling and turning his attention to the prospective patrons lined up behind her.
Some might say that's where I have just come from, Lisa thought sullenly, stepping off into the muddy street.
Refugees from the south had flooded the town in a desperate scramble to outrun the Ottomans and she was sure the innkeeper would be able to make better-heeled folk pay his opportunistic rates. The town was only a day's trip away from Făgăra and its famous walls, where the Wallachian boyars were rumored to be amassing their forces to fight the Ottomans.
Outside the town walls, people pitched makeshift camps for the night with whatever they had. Lisa carefully wandered among the tumultuous scene, wary of sprawled bodies and outstretched limbs over limited space. There was a general sense of confusion—the outskirts of town was hardly a place to find any respite from the chaos. Lisa walked out further, closer to the edge of the forest, where the crowd had thinned out. She approached a smaller encampment—what appeared to be a sălaşe of nomadic Rom. She made her presence known by nodding as she walked past the small band huddled around the fire. A quick glance tallied at least two children running around a tent and an older man speaking to six or seven hooded figures. They all fell silent as she passed, observing her deposit her belongings on the ground nearby.
Her shabby cloak was a flimsy barrier, but protection nevertheless, between the damp ground and herself. She propped her head on the satchel; it was a familiar routine by then. Soon after she curled into herself, the Rom eased back into their interrupted conversation. She couldn't begrudge them their wariness. She blinked sadly into the starless sky: her decision to leave the convent had been spurred in part by the fact her abbess had seen no contradiction between preaching the Gospel and keeping Rom slaves.
The older man's voice had a soothing quality. Lisa tried to eavesdrop only because she felt lonely, but found that she had settled too far away from the group to maintain any sustained comprehension of the conversation unfolding. She pulled her cloak tighter around herself as if trying to stave off the unease that awaited her.
She couldn't help being acutely aware of the passage of time. She had been forced to ignore the first stirrings of that familiar restlessness that surfaced when day slipped into dusk.
Old habits are the most difficult to conquer.
When she began to wonder about Țepeș, what he was doing in his immense fortress at that moment, she rose into a sitting position, bracing her legs and burying her head in her arms.
Who are you? She thought, pained. How can you exist—how can you even be? You go against everything…Everything YOU taught me. She winced. So many questions that only you can answer…I do not know where to begin.
I've lost my direction, my path.
I've lost you.
If she whispered his name, would he know?
Would he come?
If he came to her, would it be a summons? Would she be, at last, a witch for conjuring…Never mind that! For consorting with—
Oh, Father Vasile would finally be vindicated, she thought, defeated. I can't even begin to imagine…What if everything the Church has been preaching is actually truth…?
She groaned audibly despite herself and the voices further down from her fell silent again.
"Hello?" a firm, melodious voice called out.
She raised her head. The older man was waving his hand, beckoning to her.
"You," he called out. The hooded figures had turned to look at her. Even the children had stilled their game of tag around the tent. "Do you wish to join us?"
She stared for a moment, uncertain.
"Are you unwell?" the man called out. She heard the rustling of robes; two of the figures had begun to move in her direction.
"I am fine!" She did not want them to approach any further.
"We heard you cry out," a woman's voice replied. "Are you in pain?"
"It is nothing."
"Perhaps we can help?" the suggestion was tentative, almost timid.
"Thank you, but I assure you: nothing is the matter." She took a deep breath. "I would know: I am a…healer."
"Heh! Some of the worst patients we have ever had were healers," the older man stated. She could hear the smile in his voice. "Come join us, regardless. This is no place for those traveling alone. There is safety in numbers."
"Come warm yourself by our fire," the woman's voice called encouragingly. "We have some wine and palincă."
Well, that may be just what I need, Lisa decided, standing up and brushing the grass and dirt off her cloak.
"Oh, you think we are Rom?" the older man uttered with surprise after some introductory conversation. "No, no—we are not Rom. Although we often cross paths, as fellow nomads, we are not Rom ourselves." The man gazed into the fire. "Theirs is not a lot we envy. We hope to do them justice in our tellings."
Lisa took a swig of palincă, grateful for the unexpected companionship, for the way the biting astringent taste of alcohol chased away the sharp fragments of her disparate thoughts.
"Tellings? Are you performers?" Perhaps, she thought, they were mummers.
The man grinned.
"We are performers…of a sort, you could argue. Except that the stories we tell are the stories of the people of Wallachia."
Lisa passed the bottle of palincă to the man sitting beside her.
"We are called Speakers," he continued. The others around her nodded. "Have you ever heard of us?"
"I may have, but I regret that I don't really remember," she admitted apologetically.
"It is all right. There aren't many of us, which makes our mission all the more urgent."
"So, you are storytellers."
"More like history tellers." The man smiled. "We preserve the stories and oral traditions of the people…for the people."
"You travel about collecting stories?" she wondered.
"We collect stories, traditions, genealogies, songs…and we keep them. We teach them formally to our children, who will succeed us someday, so that the chain is never broken. I am the Elder of this clan," he explained. "I am Mircea." He briefly bowed his head at her. She returned the gesture.
"Lisa from Lupu."
"Ah! Elisabeta?" the man asked.
"No…Just Lisa. My mother was Elisabeta."
"Elisheva, Oath of God," he entoned softly. "An auspicious name."
His gaze probed her.
"This is my wife, Sypha." He indicated the woman beside him. She lowered her cowl and nodded at Lisa. Her dark hair flecked with white was shorn close to her head, giving her a definitively more masculine appearance. Her features, however, were delicate.
"Nice to meet you."
"Sitting beside her is my future son-in-law, Radu." He pointed to the young stout man with short, sleek blond hair. "Radu was named after Radu Negru. A stunning likeness, no?"
The group laughed and Lisa joined the brief moment of detente with a smile. There was nothing negru, or black, about the young man. She imagined it was something he was teased about often.
"And then, sitting beside him, is my younger daughter Sypha." The young woman also lowered her cowl. Like her mother, she wore her hair cut short. Her light blue eyes were large and expressive. Elder Mircea went about the small circle introducing her to the remainder of the group: Florica, Dorinel, Liviu, and the two boys, Eugen and Matei. He introduced the final figure. "My mother-in-law." He leaned in closer to Lisa. "Care to venture a guess at her name?"
The older woman turned her head toward them, her gaze frosted white with what Lisa recognized was suffusio, the ailment that afflicted the lenses of the eyes, resulting in impaired sight.
"I…" She glanced around the fire at the friendly faces observing her. "Sypha?"
Laughter broke out again and the youngest Sypha crossed her arms crossly.
"Tata, I'll have you know that if Radu and I someday have a daughter, we will name her Sypha, as well!"
Sypha's betrothed turned a bright shade of crimson while the party's laughter grew louder. The Elder raised his hands appeasingly.
"Yes, yes—and an excellent name it is! As the saying goes: good things are meant to be repeated."
Lisa welcomed the bottle of palincă when it was passed around again.
"Lupu, Lupu…You are quite a ways from home! What brings you all the way here, if I may ask?" the Elder asked.
The same that prompts your questions: curiosity.
"I was completing my apprenticeship," she stated vaguely.
"A healer is it?" the woman named Florica quickly interrupted. "I am a healer, as well!"
Lisa smiled. "Any interests or specialties?"
The woman grinned.
"Midwifery."
Lisa fought back the urge to repeat her question. As a woman, Florica's interests and what she was allowed to study might not have always aligned.
"Will you stay here or will you travel further north?" she asked them.
The Elder glanced at his companions, as if silently gauging the group's consensus.
"We follow history. We witness the events that shape our identity as a people. The upcoming battle is a curious one, with so much at stake on all sides. You see, its outcome will seal the fate of the last heir of a great house. It may also give the Ottomans a new foothold in our lands. But it could result instead in a thunderous defeat and redefine the position of various nobles in Wallachia. We identify such moments as crossroads of fortune. Here we must remain."
"We also must remain for those who have no voice, for those who may need aid in harsher times, in any shape we can offer." Liviu, large but soft-spoken, explained. Lisa nodded.
"Yes. I understand." She fingered the strap of her satchel pensively. "I think I will remain here as well. This battle sounds larger than I imagined. I am sure the town will need all the aid it can obtain."
She engaged in friendly conversation with them, surprised by how far and wide the Speakers had traveled. She found herself growing silent and listening more as their stories grew more fascinating, often digressing into the past to make assorted connections. The palincă helped dull some of her thoughts and put her more at ease. She knew eventually she'd have to confront what had happened, but right then she chose to be lulled by the Speakers' tales, by places she had never seen, people she had never met— and never would— and it mattered little because they brought her such solace, invaded the space of her mind, pushed back all that would inevitably catch up to her, earning her a small reprieve.
When she peered up again from lingering in her thoughts, she met the oldest Sypha's cloudy gaze.
She stared back, unsure of how much the woman could perceive behind the veil of her damaged eyes. Perhaps it was a deep-seated compunction that prompted her to politely smile at the woman. She did not respond. Instead, she remained still, alert, as if her senses were attuned to cues of a more subtle nature. The opaque eyes darted, as if trailing invisible movement.
"Răscruce," she uttered. Crossroads.
Lisa imagined that perhaps all that talk of battlefields, fate, and crossroads was unsettling the older woman, even if she was a Speaker. "Răscruce," she repeated to Lisa, more urgently.
Her daughter, the second Sypha, reached for the woman's wizened hand.
"Ssh, Mama," she called gently.
"The She-Wolf who hails from the north will, to the Land, the Great Darkness call forth. Lady of the Crossroads, heed our plea, only you can lock the gate, only you can turn the key. For you alone are the seal, you alone can heal," the woman recited the words in the same fervent but soft breath rosaries and prayers of supplication were declaimed in.
She concluded her strange prayer with a fretful cry.
Lisa blinked in mild confusion.
"Mama!" In the Elder's wife voice, a tone of concern and admonition.
The other Speakers exchanged bewildered looks.
"I apologize if she has startled you. All this traveling must wear on her bones—and yet, we know there is nowhere else she would rather be than with us," the Elder's wife quickly interrupted the strange silence that had gripped them.
"If she is unwell, I would be happy to be of aid," Lisa offered, her mind easily overcoming the slight torpor of drink, recalling what she had learned: Galen had referred to "morosis", one of the symptoms of advanced age, and one of Țepeș' books had mentioned how it was related to cerebral atrophy—
"That would be very kind of you. Perhaps tomorrow—although I am hoping some sleep will help restore and settle her." The woman cast a meaningful glance at her daughter. "Sypha, help me with your grandmother. It is late."
The woman might as well have issued an edict: the remainder of their band began to take leave for the evening. As they retreated into the closely erected tents, the Elder remained in the circle, stoking the fire, prodding the logs with a long stick.
"I hope my presence isn't an imposition." Lisa felt somehow she was to blame for the evening's abrupt ending . The Elder beheld her with kindly eyes.
"We do not believe in things such as impositions. We believe everything has a time and reason for happening…and sometimes, we are offered glimpses of what prompts those fateful workings."
He dislodged one of the logs burning beneath the pile, poking it toward the side of the burning heap. A spray of embers flew up into the air.
"Sometimes, we are offered glimpses of those fateful workings because there just may be an opportunity to change the course of certain events."
"Răscruce?" Lisa asked with the same measure of affability. "As travelers, I suppose the symbolism of such places, between lands, neither here, not there, would permeate much of the Speakers' imaginations."
The Elder chuckled.
"Well…Yes…I suppose you are right. We do meet an ungodly number of crossroads during our travels, and if we're lucky, Radu will read the map correctly." He winked and it was her turn to smile, more at ease.
"I do not believe in fate," Lisa continued. "I believe that what you call fate is merely an effort to create a coherent narrative of all the choices and decisions one makes while living."
"That is not incorrect," the Elder nodded. "But Time is as mysterious as it is wondrous." His expression grew more serious. "Did you say you are from Lupu?"
"Yes."
Mircea did not raise his eyes from the fire.
"It's interesting."
Lisa tilted her head, waiting for his explanation.
"Doamna Sypha doesn't speak very often. But when she does, we listen." He contemplated her curiously. "What she recited is what we've always believed is a very old rugăciune. It is something those among us believed came from the Romans, because of the reference to the She-wolf, you see. But now…I am not so sure."
Lisa shifted uncomfortably.
"I wonder if we have not confused rugăciuni with profeții."
Prayers and prophecies…Lisa closed her eyes. Only a day before she would have easily ascertained those were two things she did not believe in. Instead, the fissures in her certainty only widened.
"I wonder," he repeated pensively.
"I regret I cannot be of help in this matter: I know very little of how such things work. And forgive me if I seem rude, but my skepticism is such that I am inclined to think of such things as coincidences."
"There are no co—"
"No coincidences. Yes, you've told me as much. In this matter, we'll simply have to agree to disagree," she offered amiably.
"Events have been set into motion regardless of what we believe. The signs have been posted; they billow in the winds of memory." He contemplated her with fatherly concern. It touched her just as it made her wary. "I can't help thinking…A few among us sensed you bear a burden—which is why we felt we needed to reach out to you. But now, if I think more carefully, perhaps we are merely performing the steps that have been laid out for us by those with the gift of foresight. It's fortuitous that we should cross paths, Lisa of the northern village of the Wolf: could this prophecy be about you?"
She could feel her heart sink at his words, the long-believed convictions she clung to about the world crumbling, turning to ash.
It wasn't the darkness or the silence that were oppressive.
It was he and his awareness of himself.
His eyes shot open at the first signs of dusk, as they had for so very long. It was a summons he no choice but to heed.
He moved heavily, lethargically. He consulted his mind's eye, aware that he was so ancient, so powerful, there were no other beings he needed to confer with, no demiurges to strike bargains with in order to see his heart's desire. He was absolute. The vision was summoned quietly, from within him, as he prodded the strong link he had established between Lisa and himself by consuming her blood. Night creatures stirred throughout the castle, reclaiming their realm, no longer constrained to the shadows.
Lisa had rejected his peace offerings: the pouch of coins had been left untouched on the table, his letter crumpled up beside it.
But worry tempered his wounded pride.
He learned exactly where she was as the flashes of her surroundings flooded his plane of vision as if he were seeing out of her eyes.
And there was more; there was more he was able to sense.
The confusion she harbored only increased. The more she attempted to make sense of what had transpired between them, the more distraught she grew.
What if everything the Church has been preaching…?—her anguished thoughts echoed poignantly from the distance to him. She had so many questions. When he searched deeper, the revelations were bittersweet—they were as painful as they were tender: she still loved him, even as she fled from him.
Ah, Lisa—we are the answers to the questions we never knew we had before.
He recalled her vivacious sky-blue eyes, the fair hair that glinted like his last memories of sunlight.
Say my name. He stared into the dark, starless night. Call me to your side.
A/N: I was not expecting to be rewarded for sneaking in broccoli (history!) into the pudding (this story?)…Thank you!
A few notes on terms used here:
aspri= Silver coins minted and circulated in Romania up until the mid 1400s, when production was halted due to a shortage of silver and the growth of trade in general, which brought in other valuable currency. Anyone who couldn't calculate a service tip in several currencies died (ok, that part I made up—I was just projecting my own panic).
Doamna= A title like Mrs., but perhaps not as formal…or better, *not only formal*. It may be used to indicate respect toward someone older.
Făgăras= "Built in 1310 on the site of a former 12th century wooden fortress (burned by the Tartars in 1241), Fagaras was [. . .] considered one of the strongest fortifications in Transylvania."(From RomaniaTourism dot com ) Făgăras is in Brașov county and features plenty of Saxon influence (Barbarians from modern-day Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.) They invaded different parts of Romania. Cool fact: they get their names from a unique knife they were known to carry: the seax.
Radu Negru: Radu the Black was a famous Wallachian prince. He's actually considered the founder and leader of Wallachia (1290s) and has become the subject of many folktales and legends.
Rom or Roma= also known as "gypsies" (a corruption of "Egyptians", since many folk believed they came from Egypt). According to historical research and some clever DNA testing, it's been concluded that the Rom originated in India and traveled into the west. In Romania they were (and are) discriminated against. Having no homeland, no centralized government or political representation powerful enough to protect them, the Rom were persecuted and enslaved during the Middle Ages. There were nomadic Rom, who were allowed to travel and perform services in the name of their masters, and Rom that were forced to remain at their masters' estates—treated like property and traded like ordinary objects. Convents and monasteries had Rom slaves working for them. The Rom weren't freed from slavery until the 1800s. If you'd like to read more (like, way, way more), read this excellent book, available FOR FREE for your betterment and ultimate edification: It's called The Roma in Romanian History by Viorim Achim and published by Central European University Press).
sălaşe= The word has several meanings. It can mean clan, family, but originally it literally meant "tent." It was also a word associated with the Rom.
Suffusio= Original medical term for cataracts.