The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire (2 page)

“I want to inspect her.”

The three women cowered as the man approached; the chains jingled with their terror.

“Well, go ahead. See that she is still intact. Can’t do better than my goods, guaranteed!”

The man ran his fingers slowly over the girl’s breasts, pinching them around the nipples and then dipped his hands under her tunic. He pressed his ear against her belly and groped between her legs as if he were milking a cow.

Tears rolled down the girl’s cheeks but she said nothing.

Suddenly she gasped.

“You satisfied now?” said the vendor. “No more than a sample there, sir. Move your hand away. You might damage the goods with all that handling.”

The buyer removed his hand and grasped her cheeks.

“Tell her to open her mouth.”

“Open your mouth, love. That’s a good girl.”

The prospective buyer stared into the girl’s open mouth. He wrinkled his nose at her breath.

“Her teeth are not good. They smell of rot.”

“Too much of that honeyed baklava the Greeks cook. Feed her yoghurt and make her chew mint. Chases away the smell.”

The buyer sniffed again at her mouth, unconvinced.

“You could pull her teeth,” suggested the vendor. “For what you want, she doesn’t need a tooth in her head, now does she?”

Those in the crowd who could understand him laughed.

“How much are you asking?”

The slavemaster smiled and whispered in his ear.

“What?” said the Turk, outraged. “For that I could buy a Circassian!”

“That’s my price. And not an
akce
less.”

The man spat on the ground. “I waste my time with you, Englishman. I will buy my slaves elsewhere, where foreign thieves do not try to rob me.”

With that, the Turk disappeared into the crowd.

The Greek girl smiled sadly. The other girls kissed her wet cheeks and mumbled comforting words in a mix of languages.

“Enough of that!” grumbled the vendor. “And you do have bad teeth, you Greek dog. You’ve cost me a sale!”

The girls straightened their backs and looked glumly at their worn sandals and now tears trickled down all three faces, speckling the dusty cobblestones at their feet.

A Venetian ambassador and a Russian diplomat conversed in French as they walked along the great blue Bosphorus, their ivory-inlaid walking sticks clicking against the paving stones of the one good road that led to the Bazaar.

As they approached the slave market, the Venetian pulled at his collar and wrinkled his face in disgust.

“They treat these poor women as if they were nothing more than cattle at a fair,” said the Russian. “Deplorable.”

Suddenly, a black lacquered coach, with a crimson crescent moon and star emblazoned on the door, clattered over the stones. The horses’ hooves struck sparks as the turbaned driver reined them adroitly through the mob.

The crowd knew the carriage of Esma Sultan, favorite sister of their glorious Sultan Mahmud II. They were quick to stand back and make way, staring at the fine black horses in their gold-studded harnesses. The curtains were drawn, but everyone knew the Princess reclined inside, spying on the crowd through a peephole.

The driver tightened the reins, as the matched pair of horses pranced in excitement.

The slavemaster opened his eyes wide as he saw a small panel slide open.

An exquisite white hand, filigreed in twisting strands of red henna, reached out, a ring with a ruby the size of a quail’s egg glittering. In the outstretched palm lay a silken pouch that jingled with gold coins.

The driver took the money and threw it at the vendor.

“Send those women to Esma Sultan’s palace immediately.”

“Which palace?”

“On the Bosphorus. And see that they are delivered… undamaged or I will deal with you personally.”

The vendor inspected the pouch and grunted in satisfaction.

“Of course, guv’nor. You can count on it. Tell the—er, Sultaness—you can always count on James R. Rickles, that is.”

Then he approached the driver and looked up with a conspirator’s glance, beckoning the driver to bend near him.

“She want any more?” he whispered. “I can always find plenty more.”

“Get out of the way, infidel swine!” shouted the driver. With a snap of his whip, the horses took off, leaving the Englishman coughing in the dust.

“Fair enough,” said Rickles, straightening his coat in indignation. “It is no secret what she is up to now!” he said in a low voice. “At least I am not selling her a lamb for slaughter.”

Like those young men she seeks,
the slavemaster thought, but did not dare say.

No one said a word. To criticize the Sultan’s favorite sister was high treason, punishable by decapitation.

“She is hunting for young men Christian to take to her bed,” shouted a dervish, spit flecking the side of his mouth. “She is the whore of Constantinople and the Sultan is the pimp who indulges her!”

“Shut up, man,” warned the vendor. “You want your crazy Sufi head poking off a bloody stick at Topkapi? The Sultan’s Solaks there are just waiting for an excuse to take you away!”

“The Sultan be damned for his sins! Allah shall have his revenge!” shouted the dervish.

The Englishman backed away as the Solaks seized the ranting Sufi and dragged him away.

“Why does she not take a Muslim lover, one of her own kind?” whispered the Venetian diplomat to his Russian counterpart. “Surely he would do as well and be more to her liking, circumcised and what not.”

“You have not been amongst the Ottomans for very long, my friend. A fellow Muslim is untouchable, protected by the Sheriat and Koran. It is only the ‘infidels’ she seeks.”

“Surely Muslim men can have sex as easily as any Christian!”

“It’s not the tryst,” said the Russian grimly. “It’s the murder that will follow.”

The Venetian ambassador turned to him, eyebrow raised.

The Russian nodded solemnly.

“By morning, the poor man will be lying at the bottom of the Bosphorus.”

With that the Venetian ambassador made the sign of the cross and kissed his fingertips as he watched the black coach disappear into the dusty warren of roads that flanked the raucous Bazaar of Constantinople.

The day after the drowning, Ivan Postivich was ordered to stand guard all morning and afternoon outside the Royal Audience Chamber. His muscles had grown stiff from the effort of the execution and then standing motionless on guard for hours on end. He could not understand why he had been summoned to the inner confines of the palace, when his usual post was in the gardens, watching the palace walls.

When he prepared to leave at supper for the janissary barracks at Et Meydan, the Sultaness’s private guard told him to remain. Esma Sultan had demanded an audience with him that night.

Ivan Postivich’s eyes widened and he challenged the Solak guard, his voice gruff and savage.

“I am a janissary! Why would Her Highness want the stench of a soldier’s body in the Royal Audience Chamber? I will answer to her brother, our Sultan Mahmud II, who will understand a military man.”

“The Princess Esma, the Royal Sultane, has summoned you,” snapped the guard. “And do not think our Sultan concerns himself with your pride. He holds you in no high regard. Has he not stripped you of your cavalry
command and assigned you here?” He flashed a tight, mocking smile. “What is a Kapikulu cavalryman without a horse?”

Postivich had to fight to control his anger. The loss of his cavalry command was the deepest wound of his life. The unfairness—the shame—that had brought him to this very moment was almost more than he could stand. But wounds are a soldier’s life and he knew he must bear this one.

With an angry wave of his hand the guard dismissed the janissary to the company of the Head Eunuch. This servant was nearly as tall as Postivich himself and held his head proudly erect, in the manner befitting a confidant of the Royal Ottomans. The bare skin of his arms shone in the torchlight, glossy like a black viper newly shed. “You shall be prepared for your audience. I am Saffron.”

Ivan Postivich was led to a courtyard fountain where the Head Eunuch supervised his washing by grunting now and then with satisfaction or swinging a copper lantern towards a neglected square inch of dirty flesh. The night spun away each time the eunuch focused light on the janissary’s newly white skin, the filth rinsing off on the cobbled stones.

Postivich bit his tongue as the eunuch handed him a sponge, insisting he scrub again. The janissary understood the rituals of bathing before entering the royal chambers; he had been raised in a Sultan’s court at Topkapi. But bathing before seeing a woman—this he had only done before sex as was mandated by the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed. A man’s bathing and circumcision honored Allah; that women were spared a soldier’s stinking body and a filthy foreskin was an unintended consequence.

Ivan Postivich dried himself with a fine linen sheet. He tossed it, damp and wrinkled, back to the Head Eunuch.

“Does your mistress require such standards of cleanliness of all her male visitors?” growled Postivich.

“My mistress’s requirements are none of your business, janissary,” said Saffron. “Watch your tongue tonight or you will leave bound in a sack.”

The janissary was finally ushered into the Royal Chamber a little after midnight. Hundreds of lanterns glowed in the darkness of the domed room. Candles from an elaborate French chandelier flickered, lighting vividly colored tiles and casting shadows on the thick velvets of the divans and cushions. The chamber was vast, with intricately carved moldings, perforated cornices rising in white plaster and pearl alabaster. Sandalwood incense burned, a heady scent that spoke of the furthest reaches of the Ottoman Empire.

The Head Eunuch shoved the janissary to his knees as he stared at the opulence of the cavernous room.

“Approach the Sultaness,” he hissed. “Or I sharpen my sword against your neckbones.”

Postivich shuffled forward, his knees scuffing the straw mats laid over priceless carpets. It was a long, humiliating journey to the divan on which the Sultaness reclined, her head listlessly raised from a pillow to watch him approach.

She was indeed the sister of Mahmud II. She had inherited her high cheekbones and auburn hair from her Christian mother, but her aquiline nose was pure Ottoman, a gift of her father, Sultan Abdulhamid, and his forefathers. In the capricious candlelight, her eyes looked black, but were in fact the deep brown of mahogany. Below them, shadows of blue showed through her translucent skin, the telltale signs of fatigue and illness.

The Sultaness raised her chin as he bowed, his head touching the floor that smelled of lemon blossoms mixed with the faintest odor of sweating feet.

“Stand now, janissary.”

Her voice was low and authoritative. It was also female and its register was foreign to a janissary who had lived only among fighting men for the past two decades.

The janissary rocked back on his heels and, keeping his head lowered, raised his body on his massive legs. The Princess must have been impressed with his height as it uncoiled above her, but she showed no sign of it.

“Tell me. Did you—drown a man last night?”

Postivich raised his eyes to meet hers.

“As you ordered, Sultane,” he said. “I followed my orders explicitly. The man was put to death.”

Esma Sultan took a deep breath and held it and looked beyond him, into the shadows where the candlelight did not flicker.

“What did the infidel say?” she finally whispered.

Infidel indeed,
he thought. He could smell her now, a scent masked by the sandalwood and lemon oils, the musk of her woman’s body. Despite the danger, despite the knowledge that this woman was the Sultan’s sister, he felt himself aroused.

The only women he had seen unveiled in the years since his circumcision had been prostitutes. His body was conditioned to the only response it knew.

He cursed the Ottoman emperors, one by one, back to Mehmed the Conqueror, for his body’s mutiny. That an unveiled woman—Sultaness or otherwise—dressed in a gauzy linen tunic, should address a janissary was surely against the Sheriat, the rules of Islam that govern even the Ottoman sultans, with its holy word.