Chapter Text
The notice of excommunication arrived a week before the massive impalement of Ottoman soldiers that would go down in history as the Night Attack at Târgoviște, delivered by a papal legate whose retinue was mostly made of fellow boyars rather than other emissaries from Rome. A horrible black wax with the papal seal stared up at Mircea Belmont, and that there was no burst of flame or stench of sulphur when he broke it was an actual surprise. There was only the horrible tension of so many eyes watching him read the words of Rome and the official decree that, As of the delivery of this notice, yourself and your family are no longer permitted to receive sacraments, attend church services, or claim to be members of the Holy Church. Review and repeal of this excommunication may only be done at the pleasure of the Holy Father as he sees fit.
It was an easy thing to place the notice down on the table that sat beside the largest chair in Great Hall of the Belmont estate. It was even easier to meet the eyes of all that were studying Mircea, waiting. Gauging his reaction. Wanting to pounce on any little thing.
His eyes settled not on the legate, but his fellow boyars. He knew them. There was Matei Grădișten, whose land sat besides the Belmonts’ and who was as close an ally as any. Andrei Ursu, one of Vlad III’s staunchest supporters, stood not inches from the legate, a cold look in his dark eyes enhanced by the dark green of his clothes. There was the one man only ever known as The Grecu thanks to his family’s late arrival in Wallachia, and half a dozen others. Mircea did not pick one in particular to stare into the eyes of. He was not so ignorant of politics as to assume that there was only one notice to be given here. “You wouldn’t all arrive here as an escort. Am I safe in assuming that either our esteemed prince or my fellow boyars have drafted a decree that requires my attention?”
The Grecu flinched for a moment. Andrei’s stone face revealed nothing. Matei’s eyebrows knit together, and there. That was the tell that Mircea needed, although it brought no comfort. The group had to consider. Determine if they should tip their hand.
“We will have to,” Andrei said, trying to make it sound like this entire series of events was a real surprise. Shit. How long had he known? How long had any of them known? “The Romanian Church is too newly reconciled with Rome to risk not addressing the excommunication with one of Wallachia’s oldest families, Belmont. You understand.”
Mircea’s face managed a thin smile. “Of course. We were heavily invested in the Council of Florence, after all.” The calmness remained, and Mircea’s blue eyes moved to focus on the legate himself.
“This is latae sententiae?”
The legate was a young thing with a wispy beard, likely the son of some minor Italian noble who wanted to rise in the ranks of the Papal State. His face was just evening out like any twenty-something, although perhaps twenty was generous. A year or two younger seemed a better guess, likely the same age as Mircea’s second-youngest, Ioanna. The legate nodded, certain and calm.
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you carry a message back to the Holy Father from an excommunicant?”
A pause came from the legate, but after a moment, he nodded. “If I can see you pen the correspondence.”
“Very well. And you’ll want me to have a servant go fetch paper and pen rather than have me step away to do it?”
“Please.”
A soft rustle from the far corner of the Hall meant someone had overheard enough of the discussion to get the requested items. It also happily informed Mircea that a small crowd had gathered in the far entrance to the Great Hall to witness this meeting, contributing to the sudden spike of tension in the room. To turn around was to make this into an even greater scene than it was already, and Mircea could give no satisfaction on that front. It’d invite all to view the head of the Belmont home as lacking control in the moment.
It took no time to pen the response once paper and pen were brought, along with a candle, wax, and the seal of the Belmonts. To beat back the Devil is no sin, it read in part. This family has supported the Church not only through fighting back what lurks at the edge of Europe, but in the Church’s reunification efforts as recent as the 1436 decision which brought Wallachia back to the fold.
In truth, it was a brief of a long legal fight yet to come. As Mircea poured hot wax onto the paper, he began to calculate the time it would take to go to Rome. Who among his children were best suited for managing the hunt while he was absent, how Trevor’s training might continue, and a dozen contingency plans should anything go awry or Dracula decide to fall upon the estate once he heard that it was without a primary defender.
Partings took longer. There were rules of formality to observe in seeing out guests, and Mircea pointedly did not rush through it. He himself closed the front door when the group left, and he’d be a liar if he denied finding the click of the lock especially satisfying.
No one was behind him when Mircea turned around. His eyes moved left to where the east wing began, and the figure of his wife standing against the stone archway that led to it.
Alexandra’s family was no less old and noble than the Belmonts, capable of tracing lineage back to before Radu Negru made Wallachia into Wallachia. She was all sharp lines, even after carrying four children who had survived to adulthood, and her cat-green eyes always betrayed her emotions. They were currently full of concern tempered with the knowledge that letting a real emotion out right now was a poor choice. Daylight hours meant servants still flitted about, and needing to discuss the delicate matter of excommunication meant that no prying ears could overhear what was to be a too long and too heated discussion.
Mircea nodded twice, then turned on his heel. Half an hour later, he stood beside the index deep in the Belmont Hold, watching his wife read the notice of excommunication.
“Those fuckers!” she concluded, slamming the paper down atop the index and then cringing from the sheer force of paper being smacked atop a thousand page hardcover book. Trevor was starting to sound like her these days. “And bullshit that Andrei and the other boyars don’t have a draft of what they’re going to pin to the door tomorrow. They’re going to take the obști the red hot second they get Vlad III to agree to it, if they haven’t already.”
“From what I can tell, our current leader is too focused on the Ottomans to be dealing with a small matter like this,” Mircea said with a heavy sigh. “They’ll probably just have all the other noble houses agree to it and that’ll be that and--”
Alexandra frowned, eyes moving from her husband to the books around them. “How quickly do you think it can be passed through?”
“Two weeks if we’re lucky, a week if we aren’t. Messengers have to cross the countryside for them to coordinate, and the movement of the Ottomans and the Voivode’s army may delay them. We need to start preparing now. I believe this is designated emergency response plan 548.”
“I thought that was ‘Dracula figures out a spell to pull the entire estate to the same place he has the castle’?”
Mircea shook his head. “That’s 547. Both of them involve evacuation, easy to get them confused. 548 is for human-related issues. I’ll stay down here to pack the essentials outlined in that plan; you need to focus on the material in the house so as not to rouse suspicion.”
Alexandra began to walk away from the index, boots scuffing against the stone floor, but paused. “Does the plan say when to inform any children?”
“Not until we depart. They’ll know something’s wrong, but the details could still be shared with people who shouldn’t know. Even sending Mioara and Irina back to their husbands’ homes right now could be an issue.”
“Brutally practical,” Alexandra said with a sigh. “As ever.”
An apologetic noise responded, coupled with, “I know.”
Mircea sighed only when he heard the doors of the Hold close, echoing down and down through the shelves of books and artifacts collected over the centuries. He had no time to let out a tirade of swears as his wife had, there was only packing and preparing to lead his family to safety. There were strongholds built into the Carpathians, made out of the fear that one day Dracula might triumph over Wallachia and the Belmonts would need a place of refuge.
Wrong enemy.
The Morning Star was at the top of the list of items to be saved, and as Mircea walked towards the space of shelving that hid the whip, he let the scene in the Hall play in his mind. The charges included black magic. Abandonment of duties. Failing to be loyal to the Church. This to a family that had ridden on Crusades. Who had dedicated their lives to fighting the Devil’s creatures and holding back the worst darkness. Who remained a part of the Church even as the rest of Wallachia turned to other interpretations of the Word of God. Who kept Christian principles in all of their work, even the mundane management of lands.
Mircea was five the first time he rode out of the Belmont estate to visit the obști. His elder brother (killed on a hunt at age twenty-three thanks to a night creature biting out his heart) Ștefan took him at their father's request. Mircea sat in front of his brother on a dark grey horse, thrilling at the movement and then letting awe take over.
He'd not left the estate grounds till then, and knew only them and the surrounding woods, where game flourished. To see open fields was a revelation.
"We own all of this?"
Where their father was a no-nonsense man who laughed rarely, Ștefan let warmth and joy radiate off of him. "Yeah, Mir," he said, moving one hand from the reins and ruffling Mircea's hair. "Father told you that, I know he did."
"Yeah but--hey!" Mircea swatted at the hand. "You'd yell if mother did that to you!"
Another laugh. "Oh, called out by my own family! And technically, we may own the land, but that's the least important part of it."
The sound of church bells in the distance chiming in the hour muted the question of, The least important part?, and Mircea's eyes remained focused on the road ahead until, after what seemed an eternity, he and his brother (and a cart of supplies driven by a servant) arrived in the smallest hamlet plaza that one might ever see. It was only a well with enough room on all sides to fit a cart. There were maybe a dozen buildings present, all thatched roofs and wooden walls to keep out the horrid heat of high summer.
"Okay!" Ștefan said brightly, dismounting the horse with the energy and flexibility of any fifteen-year-old. "Mir, you need to watch. When we're done for the day, you have to tell me what you saw. Got it?"
Mircea nodded affirmative. "Can I say hi to people?"
"No, Mir, I brought you here to be a weird little antisocial goblin." Ștefan was terrible at deadpanning, as even that had a laugh threaded through it. "Of course! People here know of you anyway. It'll be good for them to meet you properly."
"How?"
Ștefan grinned. "That's part of what you have to tell me on the ride back. Miss Maria? We were able to find some spare seeds in our storerooms; do you have a minute to discuss how much your family will be planting this year?"
The people there liked Ștefan. Mircea knew that instantly, because no matter who passed by, they called to him. He knew their names and he asked them questions in turn. So many questions about plants and cows and chickens, some questions about attending mass or - ugh. Someone's grandma two towns over. A few of them waved to Mircea, and those who waved were given introductions.
"Our youngest," Ștefan said with pride. "Father thought I'd be a better instructor for this."
An older woman who had three children in tow laughed at that introduction. It was her words that made Mircea remember it all the years later, because she had patted Ștefan's wrist in a warm and friendly way, a way no boyar would traditionally allow. "Your father's a good man, but smarter for delegating this time around. How's your eldest sister getting on in Gresit?"
It wasn't until workers began to return from their day labor in the fields that they began to make their way back to the estate. Mircea waited quietly for his brother to follow through on what he’d said would be asked by the end of the day, and after they had cleared the village, the query came.
Ștefan's voice was as good humored as ever, but there was the rare twinge of seriousness in it. “Based on what you saw me and Aurel do today, what is important for a boyar to know about their obști?”
“Names,” Mircea said with confidence. “Everyone’s names. And stuff about their cows.”
“Mmhmm, stuff about their cows is very important. Why?”
Mircea knew that too. “Everyone needs milk. And that’s why you ask about chickens too, because everyone needs eggs. And you asked about seeds because everyone needs bread! Wait, we didn’t go to a mill today--”
Ștefan’s laugh was quieter. “I’m going to the mill tomorrow. But what else, Mir, why ask at all?”
“They’re our lands, so we have to know about them! And these people know the land best!”
It was said with the certainty only a child could have. Mircea puffed out his chest, and laughed when his brother pushed it back down very gently.
“You’ve got half of it. They’re our lands, but what about the people?”
“Oh.” Mircea paused. Frowned. Frowned harder. “Like how we fight Dracula for everyone’s sake?”
Mircea couldn’t see Ștefan nod, and so his older brother followed the gesture with, “Exactly. People moved to the obști because Leon and his sons were able to protect them, and not just from Dracula and the night world.”
“So from people who make father extra grumpy by the time they leave?”
Ștefan let out an undignified noise that the horse went so far as to reply to. “Exactly like that, Mir. We protect all of Wallachia as Belmonts, but we protect the people who live on our lands for the same reason. You want to come to the mill with me tomorrow?”
Mircea nodded, turning around just enough so his brother could see the real excitement on his face. “Yeah!”
He had loved going to the mill and seeing how it all worked. Mircea still made the journey every so often, as it carried warm memories with it. He hunted fewer monsters these days, as their presence and Dracula’s own had waned over the past decade and change. Dracula had stopped trying to attack the estate about a century ago. A Constantin Belmont recorded that the vampire had declared the whole thing boring and ineffective after an escape from the Castle, but Constantin was noted as a bigger drunk than usual in the family and prone to exaggeration.
The charges kept ringing in Mircea’s mind as he tried to focus on the task at hand. Find the Morning Star, too quickly became, Abandonment of duties. Failure to be loyal to the Church.
The call for a crusade. Vlad III had reacted favorably to the idea three years ago, excited for the Holy Father’s excuse to destroy the Ottomans. A number of boyars had gathered at Andrei Ursu’s home to discuss the matter, seated around a great oak dining table with a feast before them. Oh, there had been other things to discuss, but the Crusade was at the heart of the matter.
Andrei directed the conversation. “So Belmont! Your family did their fair share of attacking infidels before they even moved into Wallachia. What say you about the Voivode’s support for a new crusade?”
“Hm?” Mircea looked up from his side conversation with Matei about new walls to delineate where their borders were. The issue was not enough rocks and the recent trampling of a field by a pack of wolves (werewolves technically, but Matei didn’t have to know that) on both their sides. “Oh.” He didn’t quite deflate when he realized the question, but the distaste was impossible to disguise. “That.”
“Try again, but don’t include Vlad in it!” came the cheerful and deeply drunk voice of Petru Albastru. “Anything involving the Drăculești is asking for a contrarian’s answer!”
Another laugh chimed in from across the table. “Aye. Remember how Vasile Belmont broke a chair into a stake when he heard someone call Vlad’s father Dracul and ran for the nearest window?”
“Ugh,” Andrei groaned. “Yes, because he leapt through the window that’s right behind me and my father had to sue for money to replace it!”
“If I recall though, that was the only thing he broke,” Matei cut in.
Mircea smiled at that, pausing just long enough to wipe a strand of brown hair out of his way. “We all learn to leap out of windows without breaking bones at an early age,” he said, aiming for drier humor. “Can’t tell you the specifics though; family secret.”
The topic turned from there, but Mircea noted the lingering frown on Andrei’s mouth in that moment. He had never hidden his support of the Drăculești, nor his distaste for the Ottomans. Anything that combined the two and provided an excuse for violence was a blessing in Andrei’s mind. He was a skilled field commander now.
Mircea turned a corner, knowing he had the right set of shelves. This was a frequently used section, with little dust clinging to the books and a few boxes along the bottom. The one for the Morning Star was unique and--
--and staring right at him. Immediately, Mircea knelt down and went about opening the thing. He had only done it once before, when the body of his father returned home with a gouged neck and the Morning Star wrapped around it to try and ward off Dracula’s honor guard. They had been moving on the Danube to....well. No one knew at the time, and the truth of it had died with Vasile. The Danube had remained untouched since.
Vasile. Not the tallest Belmont born, but one with the rare blond hair of Leon and the source of Mircea’s own intensely blue eyes. (All of his children save Trevor had their mother’s green eyes instead.) What Vasile lacked in stature he made up for with a stern figure that cut through what he called boyar bullshit and struck fear into the night world. More than any Belmont in the last five generations before him, he took the crusade against darkness seriously and was feared for it. Any wooden object within reach could be a stake at a moment’s notice. Every piece of metal upon his person was pure silver, and there were always flasks of holy water at his side. His gait was heavy, suffused with purpose, and as grey flecked his hair and beard, Vasile’s figure became even more terrifying.
He was a man made to hunt monsters. He was not a man made for politics, where his stern nature and bluntness invited no friendships. He never wore fine clothing, even when receiving guests, and had to be wrestled into even letting men in to discuss business other than night work.
Mircea was ten when he witnessed that fact for himself. Ștefan’s death meant he was the only boy in the family still alive, and that it would fall to him to act as the next boyar when his father died. When Vasile sat in the Great Hall receiving visitors, Mircea sat beside him, absorbing everything he could. How his father sat just so with the fire roaring behind him, dressed in black trousers and a simple shirt, dyed a light grey. Deliberate gestures made to unnerve others he met with. The way chairs were arranged in a haphazard semi-circle, with some pushed a few inches inwards and others held back. It suggested a recognition of hierarchy, but no particular care for the specifics. The semi-circle was a powerful tool in Vasile Belmont’s hands.
“Surely you understand the importance of what we’re trying to accomplish, Vasile.”
Vasile gave a gruff, disapproving grunt to the group’s apparent leader, some boyar named Theodrick. “Supporting Radu II, yes. Who will doubtlessly do something massively dumb, fuck up the country further, and speed along the Ottomans’ work to turn Wallachia into a vassal state.”
Another man frowned. “You care so little for your countrymen, Vasile?”
“For you, no,” Vasile said with an inelegant shrug. He crossed his legs, the wear of his boots on display for all to see. He could afford new ones, he just never bothered. “How many times has Wallachia dealt with this, hm? One term it’s Dănești, the next it’s Drăculești, and the trade-off continues because the boyars run from one end of a scale to the other as it suits their petty needs. How’s your obști, Radu? Good harvest this year?”
Radu Grădișten scowled in response. “You know my landers suffered this year, Vasile.”
“Because you’re fucking around with this group instead of paying attention to your people. Now we’ll help because we’re good neighbors and because Matei needs to inherit land and not a dust pile, but I’m putting a condition on it: stop coming to me every five months because the Voivode was wrong about something in a public declaration and must be overthrown.”
There was a scoff from Theodrick. “And what, leave you with your monsters?”
“Ideally.”
“We apologize for wasting your time, Vasile,” Theodrick said with a heaviness that meant, I’m so disappointed in you. It was a servant that saw the group out, leaving Vasile happy to reach over for a map that sat besides his chair instead. It showed all of Wallachia, broken into the domains of all the boyars. The words Dănești, Drăculești, and ??? were marked. Dark splotches marked recent sightings of Dracula.
“Mircea, is the rain cleared up?”
“I think?” Mircea had engrossed himself in the proceedings, blocking out all other things. Observation was the only way his father instructed when it came to dealing with boyars. Never individualized lessons. No assigned books on Wallachian law. Only the chance to watch Vasile be rude to nearly every nobleman who dared to speak about something other than Dracula.
“Get your whip and meet me at the path to the woods. And thick boots, Mircea. It’ll be muddy.”
Muddy was an understatement. The woods had become a swamp in the heavy rain, and the large fake beast that his father had cobbled together from fallen trees stood in the worst of it. Both of them were caked in muck by nightfall, and greeted by an unhappy group of servants who would have to clean the garments - never mind Mircea’s mother who was beside herself with the mess and the level of risk.
Mircea picked up the Morning Star, and felt his arm threaten to fall to one side. It was all metal. It had a soul inside of it. It was a weapon made of loss, and now it’d see another. So long as it kept seeing losses, that was all that mattered.
Mircea rose with the chain in hand. “Traveling case,” he murmured, eyes focused on the lower shelves. “It has a separate traveling case, where is--”
“Next shelf, other side,” came a female voice. It was young and sharp and belonged to Ioanna, who stood behind her father with the notice of excommunication in hand. “We’re onto 548? You left this on the index, so I assume I have to catalog it.”
One of the great Belmont traits passed down the generations was the stare that immediately measured up a man or beast and cut them down to size. To be on the receiving end of it was always unpleasant, and Mircea knew how ridiculous this all looked from the outside. A seventeen-year-old girl dressed like a boy with trousers and light red tunic, waving a papal excommunication around while her father, dressed in heavy boots and thick trousers that contrasted with an ornate blue robe and its many embellishments suited to his part as a boyar among his fellows, stood there holding an ancestral whip. It wasn’t even ridiculous, it was just stupid.
He opened his mouth, but Ioanna simply held up a hand. “548 involves not telling anyone about the situation, excuse understood. I won’t tell Trevor or anyone else. Do you want help with the packing list or not?”
“--Yes. It’ll take less time.”
The list took all of two hours to assemble, working together. As the Hold’s current manager and the one Belmont who had a memory to rival the Speakers, Ioanna knew where everything was, and kept bringing item after item out. It was like when one of the hounds brought in a kill, looking proud as anything that they found the rabbit or bird or deer, but Ioanna had no need of praise. Her body language had the same set sternness as Mircea remembered his father having, and perhaps that was the right attitude. Nose to the grindstone to get everything done and escape before anything else could happen. No wondering about how it came to this. Only a focus on the present and the immediate future.
Packing it all was an exercise in perfect spacing, and Mircea knew he had the right spatial skills for it. He left Ioanna to stand at the index writing down the new information about the notice of excommunication. Working in silence was ideal right now, and eventually everything was forced into two trunks. They were left by the entrance so that they could be fetched at a moment’s notice. The Morning Star though, that would be left lower in the Hold. Hidden but in an obvious place to family members, in case a mob breached even this far down. Leon Belmont’s greatest weapon could not fall into the wrong hands.
Once they emerged from the Hold, both Mircea and Ioanna went about the evening’s business as normal. Ioanna seated herself beside one of the fireplaces with a book about Dracula’s castle she needed to review. Mircea went to the room that served as his office and penned correspondence. Business as usual, no hint of something awry. Dinner was served, and Trevor happily regaled all present with his tale of hunting that evening’s venison. Mircea smiled wryly at the energy of the story, ignoring the little Belmont part of his brain that murmured approvingly of his son’s tracking skills.