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state of rage that grew ever colder and more pure, I rode at a good speed for
an hour along the road that led in the opposite direction from Florence, but
caught no sight of the one I sought. Nor would any of the folk I questioned in
passing admit to having seen Helen ride that way with her secret lover, with
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that faceless, unidentifiable figure in the groom s stammered story, a man who
would be glad to settle for losing part of his nose when I caught up with him.
As for what I mean to do to Helen . . . I do not remember making any specific
plan of vengeance then. But it was well for her that morning that I could not
find her.
Of course I might well be pursuing in the wrong direction, and after an hour I
turned round. It then naturally took me another hour to get back to our Pisan
cottage. I had sent some of the servants I considered most trustworthy to
scour the neighborhood in other directions, and these were back before me.
They trembled when they announced that they had nothing helpful to report.
Their fear was wasted, for when I looked at them I believed that they had
really tried.
What was I to do? Missing spouse or not, honor and wisdom alike forbade me to
postpone by so much as half a day the start of my long trek to Bosnia. The
king s orders had been explicit, and the urgency of his need apparent in them.
I did what little packing I had to do, and concluded the business of closing
down the small household. In all this I
was surrounded by servants who moved in a desperate, counterproductive hurry.
My servants in my homeland had sometimes tended to be that way also. Whenever
I glanced at these folk or spoke to them they dropped what they were carrying,
or shook so that their fingers could not tie a knot. Matters were not helped
by the gurgling moans, drifting in from the stables, of the groom with the
runny nose. Once or twice I was on the point of going out to quiet him.
A quick inventory disclosed that Helen had left behind the greater part of her
new wardrobe, including items I had
bought to please her, as well as the lavish gifts of the Medici. I directed
that the servants should share these out among themselves, which acted as a
tonic to their morale. As far as I was able to determine, my fugitive wife had
taken with her no money, or very little; and no jewelry or gold of any
particular value. There was no telling, of course, what contribution of wealth
her mysterious escort might have brought to the escape.
At last my eye, searching the vacated rooms for any bits of important business
left unfinished, fell again upon the painting. My first impulse at that moment
was to draw my bloodied dagger and hack the thin panel into splinters. But a
moment s cool thought held me back from any such rash demonstration. Not for a
moment had I considered permanently giving up the search for Helen. When
eventually I should be free again to look for the woman who had so basely used
me (as I then saw the case) and then deserted me when her fortunes had
improved, such a close likeness could very well, I thought, prove invaluable.
So, I delayed the start of my own long journey enough to send the painting
back to Piero in Florence. Along with it I dispatched a brief written
explanation of what had happened, and a request that he should keep the
picture for me until I either returned or sent for it. To this I added a plea
that the Medici use all their powers to try to find the woman for me whilst I
was away at war; and that, should they succeed, Helen be held in some secure
convent against my return. To some degree I shared my king s misgivings about
convents; but given the society we dwelt in, no better alternative was
apparent. Also it galled me, as it always has, to have to ask anyone a
favor but again I could see no better course available.
All this was quickly done. Before midday, a few scant hours after my wife s
desertion, I was on the high road out of Pisa, in the company of a few
mercenaries I had recruited locally, still growling oaths into my mustache as
I rode.
My plan was to go overland, passing the Alps before snow flew. I wanted to
avoid the uncertainties of taking ship upon the Adriatic at that season. And
besides, if it must be admitted, I had then and have now no particular liking
for the sea. Unfortunately for my plans, the first snow of the season reached
the high passes simultaneously with myself and my small escort; it cost us a
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slow and dangerous struggle to get through.
What with one delay and another, I did not reach the scene of the summer s and
autumn s fighting until almost midwinter, by which time military operations
were nearly at a standstill, King Matthias had withdrawn himself and much of
his army to Buda. On the whole, the campaign had gone better than I had
expected for the Christian cause.
Mohammed II, in personal command of sizable forces, had invested the fortified
town of Yaytsa early in the fighting season, but the timely arrival of the
Black Army with the King of Hungary at its head had soon broken the seige.
Historians, if there be any quick ones in the present audience, may wish to
note that the generally unreasonable preference shown by European rulers for
mercenary troops during the following few decades can be traced back to this
victory by Matthias s well-trained hirelings.
I had missed all the glories of this warm-weather campaign, such as they might
have been. But I was not too late, while carrying out a mounted
reconnaissance, to take part in a snowy skirmish of more than ordinary
stupidity against a Turkish patrol similarly occupied. From this brawl I
escaped with my honor and my life, my horse and my sword, the dagger which had
once been left on a pillow aimed at my head and a slow-healing thigh wound
that temporarily made any further martial activities on my part out of the
question.
I rested in camp until I felt able to sit a horse again, then set out for
Buda, progressing by slow stages through a landscape that grew more familiar
as I went. I had not been invited to present myself before the king; but then
I had not been forbidden to do so, either. Indeed, I had heard nothing at all
from Matthias since my leaving Pisa. So I
judged that some kind of a personal report was necessary, though I did not
look forward to delivering it.
It was already the early spring of 1465 when at last, still hardly able to
stand, I appeared before His Majesty in his palace. Matthias looked older;
kingship and the Turks were aging him rapidly. He received me in private as
before, but with a lack of warmth that was immediately noticeable.
Where is she, Drakulya? Word reached me months ago that you had lost her.
It was I who had sent him that word, of course. I do not know where she is,
sire. I tried to explain the circumstances as best I could.
He cut me off with a gesture. I see you have a wound there that prevents your
fighting. But you can travel, or you would not be here. So take yourself to
Italy again, and find her. It would have been wiser for you to have stayed
there last year and seen to the matter. She is your wife now, and I hold you
responsible.
Such are the ways of kings, and the difficulties of trying as loyally as
possible to serve them. We dissolve now to a shot of me galloping madly
right-to-left over the Alps. No, of course in actuality it was not that
quickly done. This time the king was not so eager to provide me with letters
and with gold. But eventually he had to admit that if I were to go, it were
best that I succeed; and if he wanted me to succeed he had better give me all
the help he could; and by the time he was convinced of this my leg was better,
well enough to try the mountains.
Officially, you understand, I was all this time still imprisoned in the Tower
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