Dear readers,

Some six years ago I left the world of fan-fiction. I had not meant to make it such a permanent break. What for me had begun as a diversion had become a distraction at a time when life changes and upheavals required my full attention, and so I stopped writing for some time, meaning to take it up again when I felt able. A few years ago some of you very kindly wrote to me, asking me to consider a return and offering some very kind words about my work that I still treasure. I am sorry that I abandoned you with so little notice and that it has taken me so long to make good on my private promises to attempt a comeback. I never thought that creative fiction was something I could do, and so to know that these experiments have brought you enjoyment is truly encouraging; to know that what began as a selfish exercise to amuse myself has meant something to you is humbling. I don't expect that most of you who began this "journey" with me are still around, but if you are, or if you are a new reader, I hope that you will enjoy this new chapter and those that I will try to write after it. I can't promise you regular updates, but I am feeling again like I have something to say and, time and inspiration permitting, I will try to say it. As always, reviews and constructive feedback are very welcome. Thank you for reading, and a special thank you to any of you from back in the day who may still be lurking about. Happy Halloween!

-AEM

P.S. I wrote part of this chapter six years ago and part of it this past week. Any guesses as to where the break occurs? I'm curious if it shows. :)

Chapter 14: Iscariot

I am not what I am.

-William Shakespeare

Trust in those who offer you service, and in the end, my maidens, you will find yourselves in the ranks of those who have been deceived.

-Attributed to Margaret of Austria

"In 1448," the Count went on, "the Sultan released me and I went home to find everything had changed. My mother had died only a few years into my absence and my father and brother were freshly buried, murdered by the boyars. Would you reproach me, highness, if I told you I did not grieve their passing? They scalped my father," he said dispassionately, "and, as for his favorite son, they told me he had been blinded with hot irons and then buried alive. I know I ought to have felt some sadness, but I felt only relief. They were gone and with them their treaty, and now I could come home with my captors' blessing. I was a man at seventeen, and voivode.

"Valerious was there, of course. The new king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, had made him a knight while I was away. But, aside from him, the house was empty; Radu, my sniveling fop of a brother, chose to remain behind in Turkey, and so it was only the two of us in the beginning. As I was not yet of age, he took it upon himself to adopt me. Valerious was nothing if not a shrewd politician, my dear, and he feared me. You see, the tides had turned while I was away, the treaty with Murad was broken and we were allied once more with Hungary against him. My father's pro-Turkish policies no longer had any place in Valerious's schemes, and I later came to believe—I believe still—that his murderers were in Valerious's pocket. And then I returned, my father's son who had grown up at the Ottoman court with Ottoman customs and Ottoman thoughts. 'Welcome home, my boy, come and let me look at you!' he said and examined me from every angle—my clothes, my hands, my expressions. He was looking for signs of Turkishness.

"But I did not see his suspicions. I thought he might be for me what my own father never was. I mistook his attentions for love. I know now that he kept me close because he desired to control me as he had not been able to control my father. Perhaps he thought he could remain regent forever, perhaps he thought that the boyars would elect him voivode in my place…I will never know. Some few months later, Gabriel Van Helsing arrived in Tirgoviste from Rome. Of course, he called himself Gabriel Hellmann then. 'A companion,' they told me, he was to be my companion, to amuse me and help me to reacquaint myself with my home and my station. He would educate me in the ways of the world." Dracula laughed contemptuously, as if disgusted by something. "Do you know how foolish your enemy is, my dear? I did not realize that he was a spy until the end."

The book I had absently been holding fell from my fingers with a clatter and my cheeks burned as I hastily snatched it up and returned it to the table at my side. I wanted to speak, to ask him how it could be true. How, spy or not, Van Helsing could have been living when he was, and how my ancestor had wronged him, but I dared not—I dared not even breathe.

The Count did not look up.

"Everything I did, every gesture, every word I uttered he reported back to Valerious." A wry, ironic smile still hovered on his red lips. "I suppose he opened every letter, too," he sneered. "But I did not see. He was older than I was, of course, he was a man of the world, and I worshipped him. I believed we were the best of friends.

"As I grew to become a man and a prince, he was always at my side—I fear, highness, that I am boring you," he said suddenly.

"No indeed," I whispered, and it was no lie. I was far from bored, anything but bored; I was riveted. I don't think that even Velkan himself could have pulled me from that chair, from that library.

"I will not burden you with tales of my rule," he drawled as if he had not heard me, looking irritated. "Surely you have heard them all, at any rate. So I will not try your patience with stories of life at court, of battles with the armies of Mehmed, the new brat Sultan, of my struggle to restore order…"

"You mean you will not make excuses!" I snapped. I was picturing the fragmented stake in my father's study, the boys he had burned. Did they scream? Did they cry for their mothers? I had let him draw me in with his sad tale of imprisonment and loss and now I was angry that I had been so naïve.

"Excuses?" he echoed mildly.

"All those people…"

He sighed and pressed his hand to his brow. "You are now ruler of your people, are you not?" he said softly. I nodded. "And do you not fear for your position? Do you not worry that they will not obey you? That they will cast you off and take another more worthy sovereign?"

A shudder ran through me; he had struck at my most secret and terrible fear. I nodded once more. There was a pause, and then his expression darkened and he spoke again, quietly and deliberately: "I say that a prince should never flinch from acts of ruthlessness which are necessary for safeguarding the State and his own person, and watch that he does not come to be afraid of his own shadow."

I pondered his words for a moment, torn between indignation at his nonchalance and awe at what he had said, which I somehow knew to be the truth.

"And so I grew up. And now you wish to know what was the great wrong your family did me. Tell me, dear one, what do you know about where your family came from?"

"What do you mean?" I asked him, confused. My family came from Transylvania like his family, just as my father had told me, just as the Count himself had told me.

Dracula raised an eyebrow: "You must know that you did not magically begin with Emilian, as if sprung from the Root of Jesse. Have you never looked at the records in your father's library? I would have thought that a girl so curious as yourself would have pored over them long ago. You seemed to have little trouble, I recall, helping yourself to the rest of my belongings in Boris's possession."

"How did you know—"

He reached out and tapped my temple gently with a long forefinger. "Like a book…" he murmured, and trailed his finger down the side of my face to caress my cheek. Spellbound, I stared at him as he gracefully laid his white hand back in his lap; my skin tingled and burned where he had touched it, like the earth coming alive again after the long winter.

And then the meaning of his words hit me; I think I paled visibly. How many secret things must I have confessed to him when I thought myself alone in my head? I felt more violated than I had ever felt in his presence before, more ashamed and frightened by his invasion of my mind than I had ever been by his trespasses on my flesh.

"How dare you," I whispered.

He laughed richly. "How little you trust me. You forget, my dear, that unlike your dear Gabriel, I am a gentleman and a gentleman would never betray the secrets of a woman." His lips curved upwards and he looked at me meaningfully: "especially a beautiful woman, who must naturally have a great many secrets."

Aghast and humiliated, I could only sputter at him nonsensically. He leaned back lazily in his seat, looking extremely pleased with himself. "Always so bashful…" he murmured, and shook his head.

"Now, where was I…ah, yes: your many-times grandfather. He was a Valerious, as was his father before him, but his mother was not. His mother's name was Helena Danesti."

"You don't mean—" I forgot I wasn't speaking to him.

"Yes. Family. Helena was a distant cousin, issue of that wretched clan of usurpers that had been eying my father's seat of power for years, and his father's before him. So now you begin to see: two men, one young and orphaned, one mature and powerful; one legitimate, one not quite; both Basarab."

He spoke without emotion; his eyes alone betrayed the storm that was brewing. "And then, shortly after I returned, Valerious married. She was a pretty little thing no more than sixteen, a Hungarian girl, then living in Transylvania. And what do you suppose her name was?" He paused, more for effect than courtesy, for he must have known I had no answer. "It was Caterina Hunyadi."

I sat frozen, reeling from the shock.

"Her name was Caterina Hunyadi," he continued quietly, "the youngest daughter of John Hunyadi, father to the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus and, himself, voivode of Transylvania. And now do you see?

"Yes, you see what I—naïve, stupid boy!—did not: the noose slowly tightening, the web quietly spun, the trap neatly laid. You see Valerious and his child bride, each alone unable to strike at me but together…together their children could lay claim to my throne and unite the two kingdoms, Transylvania and Wallachia. Together they could rule them both.

"Have you never wondered," he said coldly, "how your family came to rule Transylvania? You have Cata to thank for that."

"But how did he—"

"How did it stand?" the Count interjected. "How did Valerious, a mere courtier, make such an advantageous, royal match while I, the true heir, remained unmarried?"

I nodded.

"I suppose," he shifted uneasily in his seat, "that the match could have been arranged before my return from Turkey, after my father's death but before my release was secured. It's possible that Caterina was first considered for me…at any rate, Valerious was Lord Protector and regent over a land in crisis, I can imagine Cata's father must have been eager to help his neighbor keep the peace. And you forget, they knew nothing of me—only that I had grown up at their enemy's court. Perhaps," he sneered, "they wanted insurance."

How I wanted him to be wrong! How I wanted him to be a liar, the words he spoke to be scandalous untruths…but I knew in my heart that they were not. Why would he lie to me now when he had me in his power, what did he stand to gain? No, I thought miserably, as I had so many times already that night, he was somehow telling the truth. And the strands of the web, as he called it, were becoming clearer—the web that my family had spun. We had betrayed him; we were still betraying him.

But, I warned myself, this did not absolve him of all his crimes. Yes, perhaps we had wronged him, gravely even, but he had sold his soul and offended so much more wholly and grievously in death than we could have done in life; how would he defend himself on that score?

And then there was Caterina—"Cata" he had called her. It was familiar. Yet he could not have known her as a child; to him she must have been nothing more than the wife of his chancellor, at most, the wife of his adoptive father—his stepmother. It must have been odd, I realized, for him to call "stepmother" a girl younger than he. But there was something else in the way he said her name, a softness and then a sharp bite. Had he loved her once? I think he did.

"In the end, I suppose, it matters little," he remarked dryly. "Before I was able to awake each morning believing I was truly home, Cata and her dowry were installed in Valerious's house. And he waited.

"Several years passed. I came of age. I grew, I learned, but these are the politics for which you have such distaste. One day word came that Valerious had concluded negotiations with the Elector of Saxony and I was finally to be married. Valerious showed me her portrait. Johanna was a tiny girl and frail, even littler than Cata, with hair so pale it was almost white and great solemn grey eyes. I suppose a more genteel man would have called her dainty. But she was to be mine and at last I would be a man.

"Gabriel came bursting into my chambers, as was his fashion, snatched up the wine and a goblet from the table, drained it, and thumped them down again. 'Vladislaus, old man, I hear congratulations are in order! Come for a ride with me and I will tell you about women.'

"When we set off from the castle that afternoon I could tell something was different. The air was crisp and the snow crunched merrily under the horses' hooves as we made our way down to the village. The sun shone on the scarlet doublets of my bodyguard following close behind and glinted off the hilts of their swords. In the tavern the landlord pressed platters of roast meat upon us, genuflecting and stammering, and flagon after flagon of wine. Gabriel was in high spirits as he pontificated about the bawdy houses of Rome and the fabled courtesans of Venice.

"'You forget, my friend,' I said at last, 'that I was a boy at the Darüssaade—the Sultan's harem in Adrianople. I am not wholly ignorant of what goes on between husbands and wives. Or between men and women, at any rate,' I added with some mischief, 'for a wife is a rather different creature from a woman, is she not?' Gabriel roared.

He was still laughing when we stumbled out of the inn into the lengthening shadows of twilight. The streets were curiously empty as we rode back through the town towards the track up the mountain; normally at least a handful of locals came out to catch a glimpse of their prince. I remember I thought it strange. As we passed a ramshackle old house on the very edge of the hamlet, Gabriel's hand stilled upon his mare's reins.

"'Do you truly wish to know how to keep your lady wife?' he called over to me. 'Why not ask the old wise woman? Have her divine your future bliss!'

"'Really, Gabriel, I wouldn't have thought you went in for such superstitious rot.'

"'If you do not believe it then there can be no harm," he said primly. 'Oh come, it will be such a lark.' And before I could stop him he had sprung out of the saddle and was rapping on her door. 'Old woman! Old woman! We seek—" he slurred—"we seek otherwordly intercourse!'

"Suddenly the gypsy woman appeared in the empty space of the doorway and I hastily snatched the hood of my cloak over my face, lest she recognize me, and motioned to my guards to stay at a discrete distance. I did not think she had yet seen them. Warily, I dismounted.

"'My friend here,' Gabriel gestured grandly at me, 'is to be married. And so we must know, will the match be a happy one or full of misery? How many children will they have? We are but desperate, blind mortals! Have pity, madam! You must understand why we beg you to look into your glass and consult your spirits, that we must know what the fates have in store for him! Will you wish him joy? Or warn him away from certain doom?'

She stood impassive for a moment and then, blinking, stepped back. 'Come.'

We moved past her into a dark room thick with wood smoke and a whiff of something sweeter, sharp and green. At first I could see nothing, but as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I perceived a cramped, cluttered chamber, every surface littered with all manner of curiosities. There were bottles and jars with strange contents, beakers and siphons, a cage with three cooing doves, ancient astrologers' instruments, shards of crystal, and heaps of books and scrolls. Bundles of herbs hung drying from the ceiling and in the midst of them something that resembled the shriveled paw of a wolf, the terrible claws still long and jagged. A kettle steamed above dying embers on the hearth and through its vapor I discerned the glittering gold of an icon.

"'Sveti Kiprijan," she said, noticing the direction of my gaze. 'Cyprian, the great magician of Antioch and patron saint of necromancers. With him is Sveta Justina. They keep the Devil at bay, and the darkness far from what we do here.'

She ushered us to a low table and reached to light a taper. As the light flared up I saw her clearly. She was a shrunken, gnarled creature, with wispy hair hanging wildly about her shoulders, and she bent heavily over a walking stick. But her clothes were of fine brocade and her eyes, deep and black, burned alert and vibrant in her pinched face.

"'So,' she said softly, 'you seek to know your destiny? Are you sure that is wise, good sir?' Gabriel made some cajoling motion and I rushed to quiet him. She was studying me as I sat with my cloak still drawn close about me. 'No,' she continued, 'I see now. You are a skeptic and your friend here thinks this is all some great amusement. You desire some demonstration.' She reached for my hand and turned it over in her bony fingers, tracing the scars and calluses left by Murad's janissaries. 'You are no pampered princeling.'

I gasped and moved to pull my hand away but she held fast. 'You have known pain and darkness. You have been frightened and alone. You have journeyed a great distance and will journey further still. You have seen things you should not, for your tender years, and you will yet do things you should not, but that you must. Terrible things.' She peered at the lines incised on my palm and paused.

"'Well?' barked Gabriel impatiently, winking at me, 'will my friend and this bride of his fall madly in love and have a bucket full of strapping great sons or what?'

"Her eyes sharpened. 'What do you know of the chiromancer's art?' she said placidly and without rancor. 'You think me a charlatan. Others are not so kind, they call me witch, heretic. But your great philosopher Aristotle believed that lines are not written into the human hand without reason, that they emanate from heavenly influences. I believe most men of quality regard Aristotle to have been a wise man, do they not?'

"The mood shifted somewhat as she drew me closer to her, the coins at her waist jingling as she did so. 'Ah,' she sighed, her breath sour upon my face; her tone became saccharine. 'Very well. You will indeed be wed, I see it here.' She pointed somewhere below my third finger. 'At least twice over.'

"At this Gabriel gave a hoot. 'There you are, old fellow, if you don't like this one there's hope for you yet!' I shot him a forbidding glance. Something about the old gypsy woman's words had intrigued me.

"'Whether they are to be happy unions I cannot say, for you keep your love close about yourself and the defenses of your heart are not easily breached. They will not give up their secrets to a poor fortune teller. I see children, oh yes, many children. Power, great power. And a long life, almost unnaturally long, see how the line wraps around almost to your wrist. But hold a moment.' She froze, unblinking. 'How very peculiar.'

"Gabriel shifted uneasily in his seat. 'What is it?' he asked, all traces of jollity gone from his voice. 'Speak, woman!'

"'How very strange indeed. An anomaly...' Her gaze was dark as her eyes met mine above my outstretched palm. 'They are all broken. Every line is slashed, every single one. See here, all these tiny fissures, life, heart, head, fortune, all fractured and mutilated. You stand at a crossroads, at the edge of a great abyss. You have one foot hovering over the edge already. You must take care, sir, lest you should fall.'

The ensuing silence was long and thick. I had never put much stock in augury, the court astrologers, the mystics in their cloisters, but there, in that cramped chamber with a shrunken gypsy woman bent over my hand, I was suddenly afraid.

"'Better call the wedding off, then, eh?' Gabriel said at last, only a slight tremor to his voice betraying his discomfort. He leaned to elbow me in the ribs. 'Never did like the look of her myself. Dangerous creatures, wives.' He made to rise from his chair. 'Well what do you say, my friend, have you had enough prophecy and doom for one evening? I dare say there will be some lighter entertainments up at the-' he corrected himself- 'at home tonight, or at least some cards.'

"But as he fished in his purse for a coin she laid hold of his arm. 'Why, sir! Surely you wish to have your fortune read, too,' she said with a voice warmed by something that might have been avarice, or perhaps something else. 'You cannot mean to depart ignorant of what the future holds.'

"He appeared to blanch a little. "Now I really don't—" he began.

"'A love affair, perhaps? Riches? Glory?' she pressed him.

"By then I had somewhat recovered my composure. This was just the mad old crone's game, I reasoned. To spin tales of peril and destruction to entice moneyed gentlemen and frivolous ladies into opening their purses, a coin to remove a curse, another to secure good fortune. I chided myself for being so foolish. If I should reveal myself, if she but knew whom it was she sought to swindle, she would not dare...

"'Well this is rich,' I said, grasping to regain some of the evening's earlier levity, 'you are a blackguard, to hustle me in here to listen to how the fates have conspired against me and then to try to sneak away unscathed. I already knew you had no honor, but have you also no valor? You needn't worry that your confessor shall hear about it,' I added.

"Gabriel still looked vaguely ill but he allowed the gypsy woman to seat him once more and to pry his palm from his side. Her breath left her lips in a hiss as she caressed it.

"'You, too, illustrious sir, will be blessed with long life. You, too, have journeyed a great distance and will go further still. You are seeking something. You once—' she faltered. 'You once committed a great wrong.' She fell silent, and then her eyes seemed to flare in recognition. Gabriel reeled back as if he had been burned, wresting his hand from her grasp.

"Suddenly he was yanking me up from my chair and towards the door. 'Let us be on our way at once!' he cried. 'We should know better than to listen to this blasphemy and you, old witch, you ought to take care lest you be thrown in the stocks for your slander, or worse—burned!'

"As I crossed the threshold of the hut she appeared beside me, falling to her knees and seizing hold of my hands. Her words came in a rush: 'There is a darkness about you still, I see it; it clings to you. You may seek the light, but you are shadowed.' For one dreadful moment I thought she might reach to push the folds of my cloak back from my face, but she only continued to wring at my hands. 'Something has followed you here from whence you have journeyed, something stalks your footsteps. I cannot see his shape; he is shadowed like you, but he is there! You walk with death, sir, and he has wrapped you in his shroud. Oh, dearest sir, please—I beg you to have a care!'

"And as she persisted in grasping at me the hood of my cloak abruptly fell away, uncovering my head. The woman froze, her face a perfect mask of horror. She whispered a single word.

"'Strigoi!'

"I remember very little of the trek back up the mountain, of the conversation at the evening meal, the food, the wine. When, at last, I sought my bed sleep evaded me, so disturbed was I by what the gypsy woman had said and by Gabriel's reaction to it. And so in the darkest hours I found myself pulling on my boots and spiriting through the corridors, rousing a groom to saddle a horse, and picking my way alone back down the mountain. There was no moon.

"And then I was hammering at her door, beating upon it, crying out. She appeared suddenly, as she had earlier that day, framed in the doorway, this time in her nightdress and clutching wraps about her bosom, looking for all the world like a death's head encased in graveclothes. She regarded me fearfully.

"'My friend,' I stammered, 'what would you not tell him today? What was it you saw?'

"She made no answer. All at once I was pushing past her into the hut, dragging her behind me, and my hand was about her neck, the other reaching for my dagger and pressing it hard against the papery flesh.

"'You know who I am,' I growled. She barely managed to nod with my blade hard against her throat, her eyes wild. 'You know the cost of disobedience. You saw something, something that troubled you. Speak, I command you! If you value your life you will tell me what you saw!

"She put up a hand. I released her, panting, sweat clammy on my brow. For a moment we stood suspended. Then she gestured at the low table we had occupied that afternoon. Feeling badly about my conduct, I offered her my arm; she took it, and with some effort, sat down. As I took my own seat, I registered a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. A great tabby cat was crouched beneath Gabriel's empty chair, its yellow eyes like lanterns in the gloom. I waited.

"'What do you know about him, this friend of yours,' she said, 'where does he come from? What does he do here?'

"I thought for a moment. 'He came to us from Rome, he is some sort of diplomat. I believe his people hail from the west, near Cologne. He said once he had been in Lombardy and Avignon. He is very continental. But he has been with us for years, he is my dearest companion!'

"She was shaking her head.

"'He had impeccable letters of introduction, all was in order,' I insisted, 'my lord uncle trusts him implicitly, as do I. I won't hear a word said against him.'

"'Oh sir,' she whispered, 'my lord, you must beware.' She worried at a thread that had come loose from her shawl. 'I know you think me a common old fool, peddling cheap fortunes and love charms to the village maidens, but my father was a great magus and his father before him. He once showed me a book that had come from Alexandria, from the emperors' great library, an ancient book.'

"'Go on,' I said softly.

"'It was a book of necromancy and physiognomy. It contained the destinies of famous men, their star charts and impressions of their palms. There was the Pharaoh Ramses, Constantine, Jerome, many kings and sages and holy men, and others who were not so holy, Attila, Nero, and Alaric. Among them was one that I never thought I should see again, until this afternoon, when your friend came to my table. I saw it only once, but I shall never forget it so long as I draw breath. It is seared onto my very soul.

"'It was the hand of Judas Iscariot.'

"The next morning word reached the castle that the old gypsy woman's hut had burned to the ground during the night. No trace of her was ever discovered, but near the ashes of the structure some of the village children found the cat with its throat torn out."

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Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed our latest installment of Story Time with Vlad Dracula. And now, as ever, please review! Reviews do have a way of making me want to write more...

A note on punctuation: Some of you may find my use of double quotations marks at the beginning of most paragraphs confusing. They are there because, while this chapter is largely narrated by the Count, the story as a whole is narrated by Anna and so she is listening to him speaking to her.

A few historical notes in case you care: I should hope that it goes without saying that any characterizations of Muslims and Islam in these chapters are fitting historically but not at all in line with my own personal beliefs and attitudes. I could go on at length about the many positive things that the Ottomans brought to Europe, including open trading, the preservation of numerous ancient texts (that survived in Arabic translations while the Green and Latin originals were lost or destroyed), cultural exchange, medical knowledge, etc. and about the peaceful nature of most contemporary Muslims. Given the rampant fear-mongering and mischaracterization of Islam in the media with the growth of ISIS and other extremist terror groups, I felt it necessary to clarify.

As I indicated in earlier installments, I have based a good part of the mortal Dracula's life on Vlad III of Wallachia, i.e. Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), whose nickname "Dracula" likely inspired Bram Stoker's vampire, although the historical figure himself did not. Obviously I have taken some major liberties. But the biography of the real Vlad Dracula is super fascinating, and well worth reading up on. He was, for example, a hostage at the Ottoman court with his brother Radu. There he studied logic, the Qur'an, and literature, and became fluent in Turkish, a skill that he later used to sneak into Ottoman military camps, disguised as a Turkish officer, and murder the soldiers. Pretty badass if you ask me.

Also like I said (I think?) last time, Vlad III was never voivode of Transylvania. I had him acquire the title here in order to increase his ties to that territory and help explain why Dracula hangs out there and not in Wallachia. Caterina Hunyadi, likewise, is totally made up, as is Helena Danesti. The families are real, and their connections to the house of Basarab are real, but those characters are my invention. Much of the court machinations and intrigue, including the power struggle between rival factions of the house of Basarab, and the almost schizophrenic building and breaking of alliances between Wallachia and Hungary/the Ottomans adheres closely to historical reality, although heavily embellished with the addition of fictional characters and affairs. I've also seriously fudged the chronology in some places (in 1448, for example, Matthias Corvinus was only five years old).

If any of you are interested in who is real, who isn't, or any of that stuff, feel free to shoot me a PM.

Credit: Lastly, the Count's line about safeguarding the state is lifted from advice imparted to Elizabeth I by Wallsingham in the film Elizabeth and his vow not to reveal the secrets of a beautiful woman comes from The Tudors; all other writing is my own.