doors behind the altar - I tried not to crane for a glimpse of the inner sanctum - and brought out a great book with an enamelled cover, tracing his blessing over it in the air. He laid it on the altar. One of the monks handed him a censer on a long chain; this he swung above the book, dusting it with an aromatic smoke. All around us, above and behind and below, rose the dissonant sacred music with its buzzing drone and wavering heights. My skin crawled, for I realized that at that moment I was closer to the heart of Byzantium than I'd ever been in Istanbul. The ancient music and the rite that accompanied it had probably changed little since they were performed for the emperor in Constantinople.
"The service is very long," Georgescu whispered to me. "They woon't mind if we slip away." He took a candle from his pockets, lit it from a burning wick in the stand near the entrance, and set it in the sand below.
In the restaurant on the shore, a dingy little place, we ate heartily of stews and salads served up by a timid girl in village dress. There was a whole chicken and a bottle of heavy red wine, which Georgescu poured liberally. My driver had apparently made friends in the kitchen, so that we found ourselves utterly alone in the panelled room with its fading views of lake and island.
Once we had warded off the worst of our hunger, I asked the archaeologist about his wonderful command of English. He laughed with his mouth full. "I owe that to my mither and father, God rest their souls," he said. "He was a Scottish archaeologist, a mediaevalist, and she was a Scottish Gypsy. I was raised from a bairn in Fort William and worked with my father until he died. Then some of my mother's relatives asked her to travel with them to Roumania, where they came from. She'd been boorn and bred in a village in western Scotland, but when my father was gone she wanted only to leave. My father's family hadn't been kind about her, you see. So she brought me here, when I was just fifteen, and I've been here since. When we came here I took her family name. To blend in a bit better."
This story left me speechless for a moment, and he grinned. "It's an odd tale, I know. What's yours?"
I told him, briefly, about my life and studies, and about the mysterious book that had come into my possession. He listened with brows knit together, and when I was done he nodded slowly. "A strange story, no doubt about it."
I took the book from my bag and handed it to him. He looked through it carefully, pausing to gaze for long minutes at the woodcut in the center. "Yes," he told me thoughtfully. "This is very much like many images associated with the Oorder. I've seen a similar dragon on pieces of jewellery - that little ring, for example. But I've never seen a book like this one before. No idea where it came from, then?"
"None," I admitted. "I hope to have it examined by a specialist one day, perhaps in London."
"It's a remarkable piece of work." Georgescu handed it gently back to me. "And now that you've seen Snagov, where do you intend to go? Back to Istanbul?"
"No." I shuddered, but I didn't want to tell him why. "I've got to return to Greece to attend a dig, actually, in a couple of weeks, but I thought I'd go for a glimpse of T?rgoviste, since that was Vlad's main capital. Have you been there?"
"Ah, yes, of coourse." Georgescu scraped his plate clean like a hungry boy. "That's an interesting place for any pursuer of Dracula. But the really interesting thing is his castle."
"His castle? Does he really have a castle? I mean, does it still exist?" "Well, it's a ruin, but a rather nice one. A ruined fortress. It's a few miles up the River Arges from T?rgoviste, and you can get there rather easily by road, with a climb on foot to the very top. Dracula favored any place that could be easily defended from the Turks, and this one is a love of a site. I'll tell you what - " He was fishing in his pockets and now he found a little clay pipe and began to fill it with fragrant tobacco. I passed him a light.