Sofia (33 page)

“How...how can I do that?” Esmikhan asked. She had to ask, for the very thought was unthinkable to her. But she said it as if apologizing for her stupidity. She knew no way around the matter which to Safiye, with her superhuman powers, seemed so easy.

“You simply open your mouth and tell your khadim where you want to go. A fine pasha’s wife you’ll make if you can’t bid eunuchs.”

Now I was caught in a vise between those two looks, the devastating seduction of Baffo’s daughter’s eyes, and the doe-like pleading of Esmikhan’s. Was my lady really going to ask me to do such a thing? Yes, she was. She could not resist. But at a deeper level, I read her plea, “Take care of me, Abdullah. Think for me. I am in over my head and must depend on your strength.”

It was not my place to speak until spoken to, but I decided something had to be said before Esmikhan did bring the request forth from the confusion of her mind and then anything I said could only be interpreted as insubordination.

“It is curious,” I murmured, as if to myself, like no more than Esmikhan’s conscience. “For all these days, your overtures to your friend have been soundly ignored. And now, suddenly, Safiye makes such demands of your friendship that she expects you to put it above the charity of Allah.”

The almond glance Baffo’s daughter sent me was coated with poison. She sank back into the roominess of her sedan, a cabin which, at Murad’s insistence, would carry two in a snug embrace. It was borne between two horses who would not blush or blink if their burden rocked vigorously on route. I took her withdrawal as a retreat, but I should have known better. Before I knew quite what was happening, Safiye had enticed Esmikhan in after her and given orders to her eunuchs.

“See?” I heard from the muffled interior as the door snapped shut. “I will go back toInönüwith you, Esmikhan.”

My hand went instinctively to the great curved dagger that is as much a eunuch’s uniform as his fur-lined robe. But was I to use it against another woman and her eunuchs? That seemed ridiculous. Foolhardy, in fact, in the face of those particular eunuchs. Murad had hand-picked a trio of monstrous hulks, thinking, no doubt, that a brute physical siege would be the greatest threat to his favorite. They hadn’t the brains among them to ward off the simplest stratagem. They were as obedient as lapdogs to their mistress; their remarkable musculature must have kept them men enough to be affected by her eyes and her pouts.

So I could do little more than run alongside the sedan saying, “But what about His Royal Highness Prince Murad and the rest of the party?”

I waved my hand in the direction of the next hillock where the people in question had halted. The thirty janissaries in their road-dusty red stood out against the throbbing blue of a clear autumn sky, their division banners limp in the breathless air. Everyone had the rump of his horse and the white featureless wedge of the back of his headdress to us with the discipline of the Sultan’s Friday parade to prayers. If the prince allowed his mistress to indulge in her present fancy and go back to the rear to speak with his sister, why would they gainsay him? The greater discipline they demonstrated now, the more likely they were in time to earn a harem of their own to indulge.

“What will they think? What will they do?” I panted.

To this I received the careless reply, “We’ll be back with them before noon. They will hardly miss us.”

The echo of the hills around, the pleating of my desperate footfalls into the folds of the dried, brown grassland were of more response than our guard.

“The march will be halted no more than a few hours,” Safiye continued to chant cheerily while I had lost my breath to running. “Tonight, when Murad has rested a little, stirred by concern—unnecessary but delightful...Tonight, with me in that silver necklace...I swear by Allah, all shall be forgiven—tonight.”

I stumbled along after the sedan, its drivers and its eunuchs, over the steps we had just covered that morning—up a fair-sized hillock and down into the dry stream bed beyond it. The bed could not always be dry, for its banks threw up a thick growth of oaks and shrubbery. Though a good number of leaves had already been lost and crunched to pinkish powder beneath our feet, the dry, gray branches had the screening effect of harem lattices. The rest of the party could not fathom what was afoot within this sanctuary until it was all but over.

The copse also hid the horses and dusty turbans of a band of brigands.

The brigands were a ragged lot, as bristling with irregular knives and pikes and bows as their homespun woolen shalvars must have felt on their legs. I would learn later that they had, in fact, been following us for days, but the heady threat of the thirty-janissary escort had kept them invisible. A lone sedan guarded by four eunuchs, however, they could swallow as easily as one does a gulp of water on a hot summer’s day.

Two of Safiye’s eunuchs were dispatched at once, and the third incapacitated by an arrow to his right shoulder. I suppose their fearsome size and demeanor made them necessary targets.

Personally, I skidded for cover under the belly of the sedan, pressing up against one khadim as the death whistle left him.

The horses bearing the sedan were gentle beasts; they’d had no training at all for the battlefield, and the smell of blood sent them rearing at once. The sedan rocked dangerously, and the occupants, who were still ignorant of the precise nature of their predicament, knocked against the sides like a pair of beans in a rattle, and shrieked in fear.

My first reaction, like that of the other eunuchs, had been to go for my dagger, in spite of its futility against ten men armed to the teeth. But soon I realized the best thing for Esmikhan’s immediate safety was to calm the horses, which I proceeded to do. The brigands appreciated the gesture; at least they relaxed the tension on their bows. And probably I presented such a harmless figure that they felt easy ignoring me. Their greatest concern now became not to risk any unnecessary injury to prime horseflesh.

As soon as the sedan was steady enough, Safiye opened the door, oblivious of her unveiled face, and seeing no one at first but me, began to rail in a mixture of Turkish and Venetian that I should stop being prudish and let them continue on their innocent road.

Her shrill tones prickled the horses’ ears. The beasts’ eyes rolled and their feet skidded off the ground again. This time Safiye would have suffered more serious injury, for there was no upholstered wall between her and the ground. Fortunately, the leader of the brigands saw the danger, too. He urged his horse as if it had been a glove on his hand, and brought it alongside the sedan in a moment. When she tumbled, Safiye tumbled into his arms. The fellow dragged her up onto the horse in front of him and fought her long limbs and her shrill lungs into obedience with skill, with a length of rope, a kerchief, and also with a grin that declared he had not had so much fun since the adventures of his youth.

His comrades, too, took what enjoyment they could at his antics. But they did not let it interfere with their haste to cut loose the horses, unpack Safiye’s caskets of jewels and clothing, pry off the sedan’s brass fixtures and in general do the work of locusts in half the time.

Soon there was nothing left to unpack but the little princess still cowering in the rear of the sedan, clinging to the handles for dear life, her veils muffling her from head to toe. It fell to a fat brigand to bend in through the narrow doorway and try to extract her. He was so big, he found it difficult to maneuver in the cramped quarters women call home for hours at a stretch. More than once he had to come up for air, red faced and basted with sweat. He looked sheepish about his tactics, which were those of a child trying to get a kitten down from a tree.

“Here, let me at her,” said the dashing young man whom I would learn was the lead brigand’s son. He drew his sword as he shoved the big man out of the way.

“Come out of there,” the young man bellowed, “or I’ll cut your throat.”

Esmikhan whimpered, but she did not obey him, either. That show of force would have brought any man around, but a well-bred young lady, though she may be vague about the details, knows there are worse fates than dying by the sword.

Her whimper brought me to action. “Excuse me, sir.” I hardly flinched when the young man turned his sword on me instead. “If you will allow me one of the horses, sir, I will bring the young lady wherever you wish, and in safety.”

The young man snorted in anger, but he stepped out of the way. He was not stupid. The sword was not making its usual swift progress, and time was running short.

I bent into the sedan and gently took Esmikhan’s hands in mine. Then I carefully helped her up and out. I readjusted a corner of her veils, which were really in no danger of revealing anything, but the gesture helped to reassure her and steadied her feet upon the ground. Then I led her to the horse and lifted her up.

“Oh, Abdullah! I’ve never ridden before.”

She thrashed her slippers in fear. They kicked me in the face and the horse skittered. She tumbled back into my arms.

“It’s been years for me, too,” I confessed. “At least since I’ve been bareback.” I didn’t say, but the thought brought my stomach to my throat:
Who knew but what riding a horse would cause me pain I could not endure?

The young brigand clopped his horse up behind me and tickled my ribs with the point of his blade. “You need some help here, eunuch?”

“We will manage,” I assured him. I kept my face so only my lady could read my terror. She nodded, ready to try again, for my sake.

Sidesaddle clearly wasn’t going to work. But then I remembered that this was no European woman who would expect such niceties. My lady was even supplied with shalvar to make parting her legs easier. And I noticed, besides, that the horse was a gelding.

“It’s you and me together, fellow,” I calmed him, and got Esmikhan up astride.

Then, hitching my robes and getting a good hold of the mane, I took a deep breath and swung up in front of her. The bony ridges of the beast’s withers met my pelvis with a jar. I waited for the pain; there was none.

The young brigand shrugged his amazement, sneered under the vanity of a shaggy moustache at my rumpled robes, but waited no longer to herd us on after the others.

I heard a loud crack followed by a groan behind me and turned to look, nearly losing grip as the horse lurched the opposite direction under me. Our janissaries were now in view, driving to the attack, and the fat brigand had taken a musket ball in the jugular which spurted like a fountain. Esmikhan clung to me tighter and buried her face between my shoulder blades. The firearms with which the sultan’s men were armed could not be fired while riding, but I knew I must concentrate on working the horse and keeping our balance or we ran the risk of getting in the way of a bullet as well.

The young brigand got off our tail long enough not to aid his fallen comrade but to claim the dying brigand’s horse and tie its reins to the rear of his own saddle. He fired one taunting arrow at the janissaries, but we were already out of range. The shrubbery closed behind us like a veil, often close enough to whip my legs. Along with it closed our hopes of rescue.

Within minutes we had come to another stream bed, this one ankle-deep in water. We crossed it, again, again, and again. Then we doubled back and crossed a very treacherous expanse of sheer stone. Within half an hour I would have defied even a hawk to follow us.

For Murad and his party, I’m sure it must have seemed as if we’d vanished from the face of the earth.

By evening, we had ridden far up on the plateau in an area where the gray-white rock folded with the ruggedness of gathers in sackcloth. Tucked into one of these folds, approached only by the narrowest of defiles, was the brigands’ hold. Like a needle lost by a careless seamstress, it could there prick the wearer repeatedly, but finding and extracting the thing would prove no easy business.

I also noticed that these folds of rocks, like folds in a garment, held dampness even when all around them was bone dry. By the time we arrived at our destination, we’d been rained on more than once with enough respite between only to catch a chill in our damp clothes. Dank wet odored the horses and spiked their hair in places like that of a hedgehog.

Yet another foggy drizzle was obscuring all but the horses immediately in front and in back when I realized we would finally be allowed to halt. I’d tried to judge direction by the sun when I could see it, but clouds and then an early sunset brought on by high peaks left me now at a total loss. Distance was a factor, too. Many things could make me misjudge, but every jarring ache in my body as I eased off the horse convinced me. We’d covered more terrain since our capture than the sedan chairs had allowed us in the past four days.

The milling of the horses set loose a soup of mud that dragged at my feet. No food or rest since midmorning: my head reeled. If I’d been relieved that my mutilation hadn’t hurt at first, that was no consolation now. my hips and knees would not unbend and between them pulsed a pain that caused periodic spasms I could not control.

But when I was no longer there for her to cling to, Esmikhan tumbled with exhaustion from the horse. At the last moment, I managed to open my arms to catch her. Dragging my breath in between my teeth with a hiss, I broke the barrier of my own pain and straightened up. Then I carried my lady gently over the muddy yard and into the shelter offered by a small hut before our captors could order me to do so.

The hut was actually quite a bit bigger than it appeared from the outside, else there would hardly have been room for us and all the brigands, too. The miserable heap of human-laid stone surrounding the low doorway served only as a front room to further rooms let naturally into the mountainside as caves.

Two people waited by the fire in the main room for the brigand’s return. The first was the leader’s wife. A very thin woman, she fearlessly faced all those men without a veil and struck even the largest of them away from her soup pot with her spoon. This fierce manner caused Esmikhan to shrink even closer into her veils and my arms. To my lady, such a woman was as unnatural an apparition as a eunuch is to the Occidental.