TWO WEEKS INTO her captivity, Lada was fairly certain Matthias was poisoning her. She could barely eat what they gave her. As often as not, she threw it up. Though why he was choosing poison, she did not know.
No, she did. It was a coward’s way out. She only wished he would increase the dosage and finish her off instead of this lingering torment. Perhaps it was God’s punishment. She had given him the tools to take the throne, and he had poisoned the sickly child prince to get there. Now she would die the same way.
Though if God were interested in punishing her, she had a great many sins worse than enabling Matthias. Had she reached too far? Killed too many? Disregarded the advice of those who truly cared about her?
Sometimes she felt them, here, with her. Nicolae in particular. He said nothing, but when she awoke from her dreams of the bloody banquet when she had killed all the Danesti boyars and begun the journey that led to this cell, she could only remember the way he had looked at her. The way he had watched.
He had known, even then. And he had warned her. Radu had warned her, too. Everyone had warned her, and she had defied them. And she had won!
And now she was here.
All her rage had bled away, leaving her perpetually cold. She followed the small patch of sun that made it through to the floor. It was her only companion. She tried to move as much as she could, afraid of losing her strength and fighting ability, but a heavy lethargy of both body and soul pulled at her.
The eighteenth morning she lay on the floor, curled into a ball to fit as much of her body in the square of sunlight as was possible.
“Child, why are you in your underclothes?” Oana exclaimed.
Lada stood and rushed to the door. Oana stared back at her through the hole.
“You are alive!” Lada grabbed the bars. She had lost track of her nurse when they had been ambushed in the throne room. She had not allowed herself to dwell on that, but her relief at seeing Oana’s wrinkled and worn face was almost overwhelming. Now that she knew Oana was not dead, she felt how deeply that death would have wounded her. She took a deep breath, pushing her fingers over her eyes, then reaching back to the window.
Oana put her hands over Lada’s. “I am alive, yes. They tried to get information from me, but I am an old woman who knows nothing and can barely speak Wallachian, much less understand Hungarian. All I know how to do is sew. I have certainly never been privy to any of your plans.”
Lada grinned, relieved that at least Oana was doing well in captivity.
“And now?”
“Now, at the insistence of Mara Brankovic, who has written several times, I have finally been permitted to bring you your food. Matthias says you are not eating much.”
“He is poisoning me.”
Oana peered down at whatever she carried. “I will eat some of it. Then we can know for certain.”
Lada shook her head. “No reason for us both to die.”
“Lada, my child, I have been with you since you were born and I do not want to live after you die.” She leaned against the door and picked at Lada’s food.
“Tastes fine,” she said.
Lada wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Do you have any weapons? Those will serve me far better than food, poisoned or otherwise.”
“They checked me very thoroughly. Actually, it is the most interested any man has been in my body for nearly twenty years now. I invited him back to my chambers, but he did not seem to understand.”
Lada laughed, unable to help it. She was more profoundly grateful for Oana, here in the midst of her despair, than she had thought possible. She would even consent to having her hair combed if such a thing were possible through the door.
Oana glanced casually to the side. “Good. The guard does not speak Wallachian. He did not so much as flinch at my filthy implications.” She began passing the food to Lada. “I feel fine. I will let you know immediately if I die, though.” Oana stopped, staring into the dim cell. “What the devil is that?”
Lada followed Oana’s gaze to the tableau she had built along the edge of her cot.
“Oh. The guards think it is funny to bring them to me. They say it will remind me of home and keep me from getting too sad.” Several rats had been impaled on tiny stakes and pinned into grotesque positions. The stakes, unfortunately, were too small and flimsy to serve any practical purpose. “They are trying to upset me, so I display them instead.”
Oana wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Pass them here. I will get rid of them.”
Lada leaned against the door to rest. She needed to move more, to be active even in these confined conditions. “I will keep them. I can show no weakness to these worms. But enough about my cell. Tell me what is happening out there.”
“You will not like it.”
“Tell me.”
“Radu is in Tirgoviste. He has put Aron Danesti on the throne.”
Lada’s jaw ached, but she could not unclench it. “Our men in the mountains?’
“We hear nothing of them, which is good. It means they have not been found or betrayed us.”
“And what of the rest of Europe? How do they respond to Matthias’s bold move in taking me prisoner?”
“No one knows.”
Lada sighed. She had hoped that Mara would tell Radu, or someone who would spread the news. But Mara was Mehmed’s, and would do what she was told because that was how she stayed free and powerful. How different the world would be if only merit and skill were rewarded, if only ambition created results. Instead, it was a tangled mess of threads. Lada had tried so hard to stay out of that web, to owe her power to no one. But the closer she got to transcending the strands that had bound her throughout her whole life, the more the web tightened around her.
Oana continued. “As far as everyone else knows, you are still hiding in the mountains. Or underneath the beds of small children who refuse to obey their parents. But at least Matthias cannot kill you and risk the ire of your fan the pope.”
Lada pushed her head against the wood door, wishing the planks would part and allow her through. “Does the pope know where I am? Is there help there?”
“No. He thinks you are hiding as well.”
“How do you know all this? Have you taken a lover here? Are you playing spy?” Lada could not imagine such a thing, but then again, Oana was always surprising her.
Oana laughed, a deep, guttural burst like Bogdan’s. Lada was hit anew with longing to be anywhere but here. To be back in the mountains with Bogdan. At least she had made him stay there. He would have died, otherwise. She clutched the locket, which they had let her keep. It comforted her, knowing Wallachia was waiting. Bogdan was waiting.
Comforted and drove her mad in equal measures. What good was she to anyone here?
“I did not find any of this out myself.” Oana shifted to the side, cocking her head subtly to the left. Lada leaned against the opening and looked at where a man was sweeping the floor under the dispassionate gaze of a guard. She did not spend much time looking out the window, feeling it made her appear weak, but she should have paid more attention to who was out there.
Unlike most people, Lada had trained herself to notice that bland, blank face.
Stefan.
“He began working here two weeks before you were captured. They suspect nothing. I should go now,” Oana said with a smile. “You hold tight.” She reached a hand through the opening and rested one dry palm against Lada’s cheek. Lada watched her leave, careful to pay no further attention to Stefan.
For the first time since she had been locked up, hope fluttered in her chest. It was as small and fragile as the rodents twisted in macabre death by her bed.
38
Tirgoviste