But then the end of the letter soured some of her pleasure. Please take care to avoid antagonizing our neighbors. Let me know when you have new terms with the sultan. I am most curious to hear them.
Glowering, she threw his letter in with the boyar demands.
“From Matthias Corvinus,” Stefan said, passing her a slender letter.
Lada did not know when he had entered the room, but would not give him the pleasure of reacting to his stealth. She was still cross with him for failing to meet her at Nicolae’s estate. “Read it. I do not care to.” She picked up another letter, more nonsense from a wheedling boyar.
“Matthias wants to meet. He says you have much to discuss.”
“I have nothing to say to him. We both got what we bargained for. As far as I am concerned, our relationship is over.”
Stefan held out the letter to her. “We want him as an ally.”
“‘We’? I do not want him as anything.”
Stefan did not lower his hand or change his impassive expression. Growling in frustration, Lada snatched the letter and set it next to herself, but not in the pile for burning. “Very well.”
Stefan picked up another letter. “This one is from Mara Brankovic. She is—” He paused, eyes scanning the air as he retrieved one of the thousands of bits of stored information he carried at all times. “The daughter of the Serbian king. Widow of Sultan Murad.”
Lada opened this letter with more curiosity than she had felt about any so far. Mara’s handwriting was perfect and elegant. There was not so much as an ink spot out of place. Lada read the letter twice to make certain she understood it. “Mara has gone to Constantinople and joined Mehmed’s court as one of his advisors. Have you ever heard of such a thing? She was so eager to escape Edirne, and now she goes back to the empire of her own free will?”
“I have never heard of a foreign woman advising a sultan.”
Lada frowned, looking over the words. “It is smart of him, though. She is brilliant. And, as Serbian royalty, she has connections and can deal with Europeans better than he could. She is a perfect choice for soothing relations.” Lada leaned back, tapping the letter against her leg. Mehmed obviously benefited, but Mara was not the type to get into any situation she did not want to. Her marriage to Murad had been forced, but she had made of it what she could. And she had gotten out, to return to her family.
Ah. There was her motivation. She was still young enough to be enticing for a political marriage. This move and position put her entirely out of her father’s power. She was, for all intents and purposes, free forever now. Clever woman!
“What does she want from you?” Stefan asked.
“Hmm?” Lada looked up, stirred from her memories of meals with Mara, during which the older woman advised her how to use society’s demands to create a position of stability. Lada did not care for her methods, but she could not deny that Mara knew what she was doing. “Oh, she asks me to visit Constantinople. She makes it sound like a social call. ‘Come and visit the palace! We will eat, take a walk around the gardens, discuss the ways in which you should let Mehmed and his horrible empire continue to dictate your life!’ I wonder if she thought of this on her own, or if Mehmed asked her to write, thinking our past connection would sway me.” Lada did not know which she preferred to believe: that Mara was trying to manipulate her—she would not doubt it, or be bothered by it—or that Mehmed was trying to get to her through any means possible.
But if that were the case, surely Radu would have been sent. Or at least written. She had not heard from him since his letter telling her of the fall of Constantinople and his new title of Radu Bey.
Maybe his absence meant that Radu was finally out of Mehmed’s control. Because Mehmed would never neglect an advantage like Radu—not if he had a choice.
“We should write my brother,” Lada said, picking up another letter.
“To ask him to come back and help?”
“No.” She threw the letter aside without looking at it. “I have learned how to handle the boyars on my own. I do not need him for anything. But he may be a useful source of information about Mehmed.” Lada could accept that as the reason. The other, smaller reason was that she missed him. She had feared for his life in Constantinople, and wondered what had happened to him there. She did not like feeling this way. Radu was the one who missed, who mourned.
“From the pope,” Stefan said, passing her another letter. “He curses the infidels and calls down destruction from heaven on their empire. And then he urges peace.”
“He should make up his mind.” Lada tossed the pope’s letter into the pile for burning. “Would that I had a country without borders. Would that I had an island.” She stood and looked at the rest of the letters. Demands and requests, alliances and enemies, the subtleties of politics of a dozen countries and an encroaching empire screaming for her attention.
She gathered them all and threw them in the fire. The remains of parchment dust and sealing wax were easily wiped away on her breeches. “I am going to the stables. It is a lovely afternoon for a ride.”
Two weeks later, the Turkish ambassadors showed up unannounced and uninvited, complete with a Janissary escort. Lada had her own men line the room for a show of power. They outnumbered the Janissaries three to one. Her men, several of them former Janissaries, looked on coldly.
Lada lounged on her throne, one leg draped over its arm. She tapped her foot impatiently, bouncing it through the air. She could see in the puzzled looks and shuffling posture of the ambassadors that her lack of decorum made them nervous.
She smiled.
“This is Wallachia. Remove your hats out of respect.” Neither the Janissaries in their cylindrical caps with white flaps, nor the ambassadors in their turbans, made any move to follow her order.
The lead ambassador, an older man with a silver beard and shrewd eyes, raised an eyebrow dismissively. “We bring terms of your vassalage from our sultan, the Hand of God on Earth, Caesar of Rome, Mehmed the Conqueror.”
Lada tapped her chin thoughtfully. “What a burden, to be the hand of God! Which hand is it, I wonder? God’s right hand, or God’s left? If Mehmed cleaned his ass with the hand that is the hand of God instead of his own hand, would he be struck down for blasphemy?”
Many of her men in the room laughed raucously, and Lada flushed with pleasure. But Bogdan had his eyes averted. He hated it when she spoke this way about God. It was a good reminder. She had no use for God, but most of her people did, and anything that held faith and belief was a source of power. She had seen what Mehmed had accomplished because of his steadfast faith. She had seen that same faith steal her own brother from her. Faith was power. She knew she should not dismiss anything that gave her power over others. She sat up straight. “Our god, the true God of Christianity, is without form and thus without hands. We reject your sultan’s title and his authority. You have no purpose here. Leave.”
“There is something else.” The Janissary captain stepped forward. He was compact and broad, years of training evident in every move. She had almost forgotten how perfect the Janissaries were. It made her uneasy, thinking back on the men she led now. They were nothing compared to these soldiers, who were trained from childhood to be weapons of the sultan. The captain continued, “On our journey here we passed through Bulgaria. It appears there have been some conflicts along your border. Several Wallachian villages were burned.”
Lada could not believe she was hearing about this now, from an enemy instead of her own people. She hated that he was showing her he had more information than she did. “I have not had reports of this yet.”