Chapter 16: Anima Mundi
"What is the body? That shadow of a shadow
of your love, that somehow contains
the entire universe."
- Rumi
For several nights, Lisa listened to Țepeș tell her stories, unveiling that world that only weeks earlier she had believed impossible to exist. From him, the implausible acquired a logical and realistic hue. He bridged the chasm between crass superstition and science.
"Why silver?" she wondered, as they wandered together down a long hall of the castle, deep in conversation. "The folk stories always mention the importance of artifacts made of silver," she emphasized.
He walked beside her in the cool glow of white-headed lamps that revealed the soaring vaulted ceilings and stark pillars lining the passageways and curved stairwells.
"When facts are not fully understood, they are conveyed incompletely and inaccurately altered during subsequent retellings. Superstition is a simplification, albeit a distorted one, of reality. It's an opposite…an inversion, like a mirror image, for like science its aim is to explain, predict, and sometimes even control various phenomena," he mused.
She smiled: she enjoyed hearing his explanations, his elegant thoughts, realizing he had pondered all those same questions long before her.
"Yes, but what is the truth behind silver warding off evil?"
"It depends."
"Now you are being elusive." She chastised him teasingly.
"It is all in how you approach the question—whether scientifically or metaphorically."
"Metaphorically?" Her brow furrowed as she began to consider that unexpected angle.
He offered her a grin before he opened the large door lined with filigrees of geometric motifs at the end of the hallway. The chamber was cavernous: stark, cold, and gloomy.
"Where are we?" She turned about, surveying the room.
Țepeș appeared to turn a brass knob on the wall and a mechanical whirring broke the silence. Large panels began to rise, creaking, unveiling long windows that spanned almost the entire height of the walls. Placed so close to each other, the windows offered an almost continuous, unimpeded view of the valley below. A ghostly, silvery light flooded the rounded room.
A tower room, she gathered, approaching one of the windows under Țepeș' watchful gaze. Beyond the glass, a full moon loomed overhead.
"Silver has long been associated with the moon," he began, startling her from a momentary reverie. "Early alchemists noticed that silver requires the shroud of night for reactions to take place. Its derivatives—solutions and salts—must always be stored in darkness, sealed away in opaque containers, or they will spoil in the daylight."
Lisa strolled slowly along the windows, mesmerized by the view, her fingertips trailing over the cold stone parapets.
"That makes sense: most supernatural beings are said to be nocturnal." She peered over her shoulder, searching his face. "But if silver shares properties with the moon and nighttime, why is it so effective against night creatures? Don't they share the same propensities, if not properties?"
He let out a quiet laugh.
"No: it is not the metal that affects them, you see. A sword, a dagger—all those are effective weapons, regardless of what they are made. Most night creatures can be felled by someone determined and skilled enough. If the weapons are made of silver, all the more...poetic. Sometimes, knowledge that a weapon contains or is made of silver is what imbues a reluctant warrior with courage in the face of staggering odds."
She nodded slowly. "I see."
"But there are also other reasons silver is considered effective against evil." He leaned against the stone wall by the door, his eyes never straying from her. "Silver possesses properties that purify and cleanse…More interestingly: it has been used by nobles to—"
"—Indicate the presence of poison in food!" Lisa turned around, excited. "Hence silver plates, spoons, goblets," she marveled.
"Yes." He grinned again. "Although it is not always effective…poisons can be concocted from so many different reagents…However, silver tarnishes when putrefaction is present."
"Of course! It reacts to sulfur," she completed, pleased at having found the connection. She took a few steps back to lean against the opposite wall. "Brimstone," she murmured. "Evidence of the devil's presence."
They fell silent for a moment.
"And is true?" Lisa asked in a tone that was as playful as it was provocative.
"What is?" he finally asked, uncertain of what she sought from him.
"Does the devil smell of sulfur?"
Țepeș spanned the short distance between them in the blink of an eye.
"Verify for yourself," he invited her, leaning close to her. "What is your conclusion?"
"I think you flatter yourself," she retorted smirking, crossing her arms, although her heartbeat had quickened at his sudden closeness. "You are not the devil," she stated pointedly.
His expression grew somber and for a moment he appeared lost in thought. He stood straight again, but did not step away. Instead, he glanced out of the nearest window.
"Besides, is there such a thing as the devil?" Lisa asked.
"As much as there is a God. But there have been many contenders for the title," he retorted brusquely.
Her question fueled his apprehension.
He was the Dragon, perceived as the devil himself among those folk and his legend cast a long and sinister shadow across the land. If she hadn't paid it heed before, she would be unable to avoid it then.
A hollowness threatened him. She was ignorant of what atrocities he had perpetrated during her rescue that night. Perhaps she believed his sanguinary ways had been banished to the past, to long-gone days as a warlord, to the days when he was a ruler of men, to an existence in which he had abandoned such savagery as he grew more enlightened and learned. She had an incomplete, inaccurate understanding.
He had thought it would be enough for her to know what he was, that it would quell the demanding disquiet within him.
She remains here in this castle, believing me her savior, her rescuer. But when she learns the truth of what I have done…What I am capable of…
And what can I say in my defense? I regret none of it.
His expression hardened.
She will leave me once more.
This time, forever.
Lisa's gaze lingered over his strong profile, the sleek black hair that grazed his broad shoulders, the somber handsomeness of his patrician face.
Creature, monster…devil.
I cannot, perhaps to my detriment, reconcile this man to the idea of pure evil. He has said it himself: the reality is far more complex.
He is flawed, as we all are—and, despite the entrapments of power, earthly and otherwise, still fundamentally a being I recognize all too well:
I see a man.
"Am I under scrutiny? Are you searching perhaps for my horns?" The question was insolent, but his tone was sharp, filled with derision.
She bristled, hating that he could withdraw like that from her, recognizing behind his words the deep melancholy that held him in its thrall. She feared he would become unreachable…and always when she suspected he needed her most.
"I'd be more prone to believe in hooves!" she finally answered, exasperated. "Your manners and attitude at times make me wonder if you were raised in a barnyard!" she scolded him. He eyed her bewilderedly as she continued. "You promised we would discuss matters in a civil, honest manner—seeking comprehension rather than stirring ongoing misunderstandings. When you act this way—"
"You seek directness and honesty? You are the one circling evasively around me, avoiding hearing what you fear."
Her eyes widened and she pushed away from the wall.
"I do not fear you!"she declared.
"Then ask the questions you know you ought to be asking me. The ones you are avoiding because you fear the truth contained in my answers."
"I am nowhere done asking anything!"
"Here: ask me what happened the night I found you in that crypt."
Her stomach sank.
"I arrived prepared to wage an old war."
Despite the tightness in his chest when she backed away from him, her expression grief-stricken, he could not stop that downward fall. He revealed how he had found her wounded and unconscious on the floor, how the conjurers, daggers unsheathed, preparing to bleed her, despaired and frantically tried to banish him when he stepped between her and them. He did not spare her the violence of their demise nor the pleasure he took in executing it. At the sound of their shouts and shrieks, soldiers had moved the slab over the opening, and poured into the crypt. Upon sighting him, they had charged him, weapons drawn. At the end of the onslaught, the walls bled and the air had grown foul, reeking of slaughter. He had pursued the monks, who had frantically attempted to scurry away like the vermin they were when he emerged from the ground, determined and focused in the meting of his wrath. They had believed their hysterical and fervent pleas for God's intervention would be deterrents against his fury.
Even when the tears sprouted and her hand cupped her mouth, he did not spare her the description of how he had marched triumphantly through the church destroying anyone who stepped into his path. He extended his deadly campaign, flinging the church doors open, summoning nightmarish creatures from the recesses of his rage to aid him in wreaking destruction on the town. A warning cry echoed throughout the streets and he had relished it. Any armored fool that rushed him he had severed from life as brutally and as gruesomely as he could.
"Men are all alike: vainglorious, unworthy, and doomed," he uttered, lost in the hellish scene summoned by his memory.
Lisa's chest heaved at his words. She took in the extent of the horror he had perpetrated.
In my name.
Because of me.
First Liviu.
I do not know how to bear the burden that I was the reason he was killed.
And now…how many more?
She began to tremble when he finished his story, his final words echoing in the empty room. It had grown smaller, oppressive.
"You killed them…All?" she asked incredulously. "Destroyed the entire town?"
"Tell me Lisa: I showed those men mercy before, against my best judgment, and they took it as a sign of weakness. They sought to use you to ensnare me. They had no regard for you, your humanity. Why should I have any regard for theirs? If they died, it wasn't for a lack of warning but because they struck against me and suffered the misfortune of not killing me first."
Tears blurred her sight.
"But a foot soldier merely follows orders. Those soldiers did not deserve—"
"What will it take," he cried, "for you to see that whether those wretches live or die, it makes no difference? Their lives are insignificant! Worthless! Their demise is the only thing notable about their existence. Vile beings: 'es quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris," he rasped between his teeth, echoing the curse he'd uttered as he'd departed the smoldering agonizing village.
"All those people," she continued quietly. "You slaughtered even the helpless, those not responsible for anything that had happened? Why, Vlad? For what purpose? How is that just?" she pleaded. He stood before her, immutable, as formidable as when she first sought to convince him that he should share his wisdom and knowledge to dispel ignorance and superstition in the world.
He had balked at her back then as well.
"Those conjurers declared war against me. Do you think they would have spared you? Do you have any concept of how necromancers extend a sacrificial offering's suffering? How they abuse a corpse? And you would ask me to forgive them? Spare them?"
Her mind raced. Conjurers, necromancers, prophets and Speakers…Magic suddenly permeated everything. Mircea had told her about another facet of the world where people consorted and trafficked in magic…
Magic is just a tool. Like science, it can be abused. It is only as noble as those wielding it, she realized.
"There were innocent people seeking shelter in that church. There were wounded soldiers and healers aiding them. There were people there I had only met briefly, but whom I considered friends already," she told him, tears rolling down her cheeks. "No one deserved to die: that will never amount to justice, in my eyes."
"Those wretches—I made no note of them!" he declared.
She brushed her sleeve over her eyes.
"Are you saying you spared them?"
"Unless they tried to attack me, I left them be."
"And the Speakers? Did you—" she wondered.
"I do not recall encountering any of them, those propagators of lies. They are the record keepers of misguided and false glory."
Hope seized her.
"Vlad! Are you telling me you spared the non-combatants?" she prodded.
He said nothing.
"Did you?" she asked imploringly. "Tell me, please."
"If you seek to find a modicum of solace in the assumption that I took pity on those people, allow me to dispel that immediately: I am telling you that the only reason there isn't a crater in the ground where that cursed town sits is because tending to your injuries was more urgent."
He drew his cloak around himself, towering over her in his blackness.
"Do you still believe I am not the devil? That I am unworthy of the title?" he challenged her.
She rubbed her temples, troubled.
"It was my fleeing in the first place that brought this all about," she admitted miserably.
"You would shoulder such a burden? Or feel any semblance of remorse over those miserable people's demise? Perhaps the blow to your head was more damaging than I surmised."
"Perhaps in striving to help me understand you, you have neglected your efforts in trying to understand me: I have told you, time and again: I cannot remain indifferent to suffering. I will never condone it, never, as long as I live, Vlad!" she cried.
"Not even your own suffering? Those cowards earned their sentences the moment they believed they could best me!" he raged. "You would have denied justice its course?"
"For me to look at anyone and wish death upon them…" her voice trailed off. "To decide they do not deserve to walk this earth. To deny them the right to live and experience life in all its plenitude— I do not see myself as any better and, if anything, I remain more committed than ever to share what I know, to help those who need aid. My foes aren't people, Vlad, but the intrinsic beliefs, superstitions, and ignorance that menace our world, our very existence. I am convinced such thinking, such beliefs are what prompt people to behave so cruelly toward each other. Such a mindset…It is something that can only be dispelled with patience, with time…with knowledge… and kindness. And it may not always be welcome or understood…but at the end of it all, I do not believe that my efforts are wasted."
"You are wrong."
"Perhaps I am…But I prefer to inhabit the world I believe in than the one you believe in."
Her words struck him.
"In time you will see all your care and concern wasted, turned against you," he warned bitterly.
"You speak as if I sought a reward. I seek none except to live my life as truthfully as I can and to alleviate suffering. And now I must somehow contend with all that I helped set into motion, the consequences of my disastrous acts…And they are not few. I cannot change what happened, undo what has been done. You were wrong to lash out so violently." She shook her head sadly and he closed his eyes when she turned away from him.
He recalled his prescient words to her not too long ago, when she had asserted, with so much conviction, that he would never hurt her.
He had agreed, but uttered, "But I will."
Now she would leave his side, any good he had ever offered her, abandoning him for the endless ages with his hatred, his only constant companion, as she went forth into that world, vulnerable and fragile as were all mortal beings, with that numinous light she possessed that would undoubtedly be misunderstood, regarded with suspicion, arousing fear and envy…
"…But I do not believe you to be the devil, Vlad," she continued, turning around and approaching him after a moment, a tinge of emotion in her voice. "You have a deep awareness of what the boundaries of good and evil are, even as you willingly cross them. I do not know that an agent of true evil would care to make such a clear distinction, to be so meticulous in choosing its targets. If anything, you have demonstrated a fierce, if not overzealous, sense of justice."
He lowered his eyes.
"You are woefully mistaken," he announced.
"Then it is fortuitous, for you, that I am...That I disagree with your perception."
She sought his hand, clasping it tightly. He allowed it, unable to foist her hand off his, craving her closeness. Their fingers entwined tightly. "Your deeds may have been monstrous…but you, Vlad: you are not. Your wrath, all this death—it does not need to be so. This is not a path you need to trail any further."
She remembered Mircea urging her to heed the prophecy, depositing so much faith into the ancient words, trusting that they possessed the secret to help them chart the course to right the world.
The Lady of the Crossroads, the one who can seal away the Dragon's wrath and all the danger he represents to our world…
Mircea had led her to believe that fulfilling that prophecy would require a confrontation…and ultimately, Țepeș' demise.
But right then she believed she understood that prophecy in a way that had eluded Mircea…but perhaps not the oldest Sypha.
You alone can heal, the old woman had insisted on that fateful night. Heal herself of that stubborn blindness of all that she refused to see and believe in…But there was more.
I am the seal: as such, I must hold and contain, protect and preserve.
I have this, now—this life I must give live fully and give meaning to.
One lifetime to help heal him: to change how Țepeș saw humanity. And that would be how she would stay his hand, quell his wrath. That was the path she would choose to travel, wherever it led.
No more bloodshed, no more violence or hatred.
In that way, she would fulfill the prophecy.
They stood in silence, in reverence for the feelings their touch had summoned. His thumb caressed the back of her hand.
"Lisa," his voice was almost a whisper. "I have roamed this earth over several lifetimes. I am immortal, but never has that weighed on me as a penance as much as it has now."
She sought his eyes, their sheen otherworldly in the dark room.
"Why? What do you mean?"
"The thought of my ongoing existence is unbearable if you are not by my side," he confessed.
She released his hand only to touch his cheek, caressing it tenderly with the back of her fingers. He closed his eyes, mystified by the intensity of his emotions.
"Stay with me, Lisa of Lupu," he asked in a hushed voice, savoring her delicate touch.
Yes: one lifetime, she thought, moved by the admission contained in his words.
I would like to share it with him. A gift to each other.
"I am with you already, Vlad Țepeș Dracula—you are always in my thoughts," she murmured. "And in my heart."
At her words, he would no longer hold back; he stepped forward and cupped her face with both hands, tilting it upward, seeking her lips, hungrily, urgently.
The large hands pulled off the blanket she had wrapped about herself like a shawl. It dropped to the floor where his heavy black cloak had fallen moments before with a muffled thud. She stood in a daze before him as he impatiently wrested off his sash, his tunic, and sat down on the edge of the bed to remove his boots. He began to unlace his trousers and she let her eyes rove over the pale broad shoulders, the muscular arms, the chiseled chest. She ventured a small caress, running her fingers down the cool, taut chest. His head snapped up at her touch, his lips parting, his eyes peering at her, hooded. He tugged her closer, kissing her again, finding that rather than satisfy that longing, with each flicker of his tongue, those tender kisses only grew bolder: from a sweet profession of affection to an expression of desire.
Their lips clicked softly, their breaths mingling tantalizingly. He spread his legs wider so she could stand between his thighs, against him. He held her tightly, burying his face in the soft chemise, inhaling her warmth as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He reached lower, for the hem of the garment, raising the skirt up slowly, his hand trailing up languorously while he kissed her breasts over the gauzy fabric, feeling her quiver in his arms when his mouth grazed her nipples, how her knees buckled slightly and she leaned into him when his fingers brushed past her thighs. She helped him yank off the chemise over her head. He took a moment to lean back and admire her before grasping her by the waist abruptly. When he tried to pull her down to the bed with him, she winced slightly. His brow furrowed in confusion before his gaze grew serious once more.
He placed his hand carefully beneath her breast and traced the outline of the large fading bruise over her ribs. He cast her a contrite glance.
"I am sorry," his voice was low.
She ran her fingers through his hair reassuringly.
"Here—"
He lowered his head and reverently placed a kiss on the mottled skin over the injury.
At the seductive touch of his lips on her bare skin, she shivered.
He leaned back into the bed and as she attempted to lie beside him, he deftly maneuvered her so she was lying on him.
"What is this?" she protested amusedly as he clasped close. "You would have me repent for three years?"
He grinned and kissed her instead of replying—a deep, provocative kiss that she broke away from with a sharp breath as his hand began to tugg off her modest undergarment. He adjusted himself beneath her, his hips pushing lightly into hers as he finished undoing his trousers. She could feel his length, strong and virile, against the heat of her own throbbing sex. Her legs parted slightly, searching for more.
She straddled him, hands splayed over his chest, their bodies moving in unison, in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. He steadied her, a hand spanning over her thigh, the other slowly stroking her between her legs, so soft and silken against his fingertips even as he felt himself enter her in that tantalizing caress that only grew more intense with each steady thrust. Her eyes fluttered shut and his own lust heightened in response to her. But when he nuzzled her ear and his lips suckled her neck, she tensed instinctively.
He immediately released her and they held still for a moment, both their chests heaving.
When she saw the unchecked devotion in that dark gaze, she relented.
You will never hurt me. What matters is not who you were, but who you are. Now.
She embraced him tighter as they lost themselves again in those fervent kisses, the rocking of their hips against each other. When his tongue lightly flicked at the base of her neck in a languorous kiss, she tilted her head back, unafraid.
He sucked her skin, the old, savage thirst dogging him initially, but easily thwarted by a far more profound need.
Her trust and faith are a reclamation, he thought, mesmerized, desiring to be worthy of them, of her, to claim her love, overcome by the magnitude of his feelings, his impending unraveling spurred by her own.
Lisa's back arched as she was seized by the intensity of her release, her body pulsing, a burst of pleasure surging and coursing through her. He drew in a sharp breath, seduced by her flushed, parted lips, the faint, breathy keening, just before he closed his eyes, holding down her hips firmly and bucking into her harder until the first blissful, ecstatic shudder overcame him.
"Do you not sleep?" She lay nestled in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder.
"It is not quite sleep…By any means." He brushed willowy strands of golden hair off her face.
"How much longer do we have?" she whispered.
"The night will not last much longer," he lamented, slowly stroking her back.
"Where will you go?" She raised her head to search his eyes.
He looked at the face he loved so completely, that had eluded all the misgivings, precautions, and distance he had sought to impose between them.
"I will show you," he assured her. "But not tonight."
"Is it somewhere I can go with you to?" It touched him that she was missing him before he had even left.
"No," he stated, heavy-hearted at the thought of having to leave her side and that sweet intimacy they had finally secured, to venture into those foreboding depths beneath the castle. "It is no place for you."
I accept that darkness is mine, and mine alone, to bear.
I've edited (read: thrown away and rewritten) this chapter so many times that I'm going cross-eyed. It was difficult because I didn't want to write anything too explicit—it just seemed gratuitous to do so, but at the same time, they're on fire for each other. But while they're sexually attracted to each other, they're so also so in love—so how to best convey the emotion embedded in the physical act ? And yes, I am also this indecisive when ordering at restaurants. Writing sexy scenes is so damned difficult for me. But writing unpleasant scenes is also a challenge. Right now I'm so tired that writing my name is near impossible. WHAT A FUN, RELAXING HOBBY THIS IS! (Gaaaah!) But it's done: Vlad and Lisa have crossed that threshold and I'm getting better at this since it didn't take my usual 35 chapters to get there…
Some notes:
Anima Mundi: a concept of deep interconnection in alchemy: ". . .an intrinsic connection between all living things on the planet, which relates to our world in much the same way as the soul is connected to the human body." (Wikipedia)
"Es quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris" Gensis 3:19, that famous passage that states that "you are dust and to dust you shall return." The phrase"ashes to ashes" is often associated with the Biblical passage, but it isn't actually in the Bible. It was added to the Book of Common Prayer in England as part of funeral services. But that happened only in 1549. I am sure, with his propensity to burn things to the ground, that Dracula would have approved of the poetic edit. Plus, David Bowie's song wouldn't have the same vibe if it was "dust to dust" instead of "ashes to ashes". Also: "Funk to funky" isn't in the Bible.
Sexy times: So, church theologians liked to regulate everything, including how people had sex. Anything other than strict missionary was considered sinful, and even doing it in the missionary position could be perilous if the couple was enjoying it too much. Albertus Magnus, whose writings Lisa mentioned in a previous chapter she is familiar with, decided to set the record straight, listing which positions were not damning to one's soul ranked in the order of how "natural" they were. First was missionary, second was side-by-side, third was seated, fourth was standing, and fifth was from the back. Forget woman on top—that was just subversive and would require that a woman repent for three years. More info on AO3.
Silver used as an amulet against evil: Pretty much what Vlad and Lisa talked about here. It is an ancient metal and interestingly enough, it has some fascinating antimicrobial properties. Reacting to sulfur, which is associated with hell and the devil (because hell was believed to be beneath the earth, which people had figured out was hot, and such places where the earth spewed its guts tended to smell of sulfur, aka brimstone) is just a cool connection that added to silver's mythos. There is a lot on silver, folklore, and its esoteric roots. I found a little blurb that kind of condenses all the main points very succinctly on AO3, for those interested.
Underwear in the Middle Ages: Lisa had some underwear beneath that chemise. But that might not have been common. Verrrry controversial topic among some medievalists. It is accepted that men definitely had braies and other cloth wrapped around themselves. But women? It's less clear. Some historians argue that women usually wore nothing beneath their dresses and chemises, unless it was that time of the month, when they might have fashioned some kind of undergarment to hold rags in place (although other historians state that women simply wore nothing and bled right through…but honestly, I personally think those historians might be guys who don't get the mechanics of the event and I find that theory really hard to believe—also, as one of my sources below notes, most record-keepers at that time were men, stewards, or sometimes literate religious men who helped keep tally of the household's items…I'm guessing women weren't eagerly offering accounts of their undergarment inventories to them). Anyway. Modern conveniences! Like underwear. For those, I am grateful. For more details on "less is more", go check out the links at AO3.