The Sultan's Daughter (20 page)

For all at once my mind couldn’t place Piali Pasha in the Bosphorus where we’d left him anymore. The numbers of men-of-war we’d seen on our trip down the coast suddenly added up to stragglers of the armada rather than the oddities for which we’d previously taken them.

I saw Giustiniani over the side and off towards shore until I couldn’t hear the groan of his boat’s oars anymore.

And then I went to do what I’d thought I’d never have to do again: I went to face my lady.

It was a long, quiet Easter-Ramadhan day when, to the long numbing weight of hunger was added the stupefaction of doubt. It was a day much, I suppose, as that first Resurrection Day must have seemed to the Three Marys who found the Holy Sepulchre empty but as yet had no proofs as to what their discovery might mean. They knew only the emptiness.

Perhaps I could expect a miracle for which nothing yet in personal experience taught me to hope. Experience taught me that even the most beloved of life’s companions assaulted the mortal senses with corruption when they turned to corpses. Was it possible that beyond this time of doubtful waiting, beyond the proofs of sight and sound, a scenario was playing out that would bring a freedom for which all previous freedoms in this vale of tears had not taught me to hope?

Or was what we stood before only, as I had once heard Muslim clerics argue, an empty tomb? The body was stolen. Or the worms worked exceedingly fast. Or the man hadn’t died in the first place, as was reported, but recovered and walked away from his ordeal on the cross. In any case, Isa ibn Maryam, Jesus the son of Mary, was not the Son of God. God—when he was called Allah, at any rate—didn’t work that way. Saints He allowed, and prophets. But life went on as before, unpeopled by divinity. And resurrection was for another plane which never touched this one at all.

Esmikhan sensed my desire to avoid her, although she didn’t (I hoped) appreciate the reasons for it. But I couldn’t avoid telling her in terms as terse as possible—which was easy enough since I knew so little—what was about.

“Turks?” she repeated innocently.

“It’s only a rumor.” I did my best to calm her.

Esmikhan was quite calm already. “You mean Ottomans? We have nothing to fear from Ottomans. I am a princess of the Ottoman blood.”

“Exactly.” In my mind, I was thrashing myself for the lack of care that could have lured me into this position. Had the desire for freedom blinded me so to the dangers? “You are an Ottoman princess on a Christian ship in a Christian harbor.”

Her calm was quite unnerving. “We need only tell my grandfather’s men who we are. We need not fear them.”

“A stray cannonball may not stop to ask for introductions. And it may come from the fortress there”—I indicated the three gray stone turrets marching out to the sea on the right-hand side of our vista in easy firing range—”as easily as from any Muslim ship.”

“Muslims won’t fight without discussion first. My grandfather’s servants will hear the other side with reason.”

I’m afraid my scoffing at that idea was loud enough to offend her. “The time for discussion is past, lady, when there are forty thousand ducats to answer for as well as a small army of runaway slaves.”

“But what has any of this to do with us?” Esmikhan may have been less naive than I had hoped to keep her about the Chians’ latter infringement, for she looked at me hard.

I looked away and ended the conversation with: “Well, it is probably nothing. I see no Turkish ship.”

Not long afterwards, however, we saw a ship leave the island under sail. Only single-masted, it depended heavily on oars in the calm, but the bunting and banners decking it purported some official mission. At first I thought we might be its destination, but the vessel quickly passed by, touching us only with a gentle surge of wake.

“Isn’t that our captain on board?” Esmikhan asked.

I had to agree the man did have the same air, but then every Chian shared the blood. The man who caught our interest along with all his fellows on board this launch was dressed in brilliant red robes of an ancient cut and didn’t spare a single glance in our direction.

Eventually we lost them in the blur over against the mainland coast, which was only visible if you knew what you were looking at. Then the tomb was empty again.

No Christian bell rang at midday, which I found disconcerting, particularly on Easter. Esmikhan was more distressed that we had missed her hour of prayer, but we said them late. I kept hoping to hear bells, and she didn’t want to cheat lest her anxiety to make the hungry day pass quickly leave her a greater burden of leaden hours at the end.

Rising from the prayers gave us the view of the launch returning under the same press for haste, under the same labored power. It dropped anchor near shore, then shoved off again in less than an hour. It followed its wake back to Asia again with a different, even more noble-looking group than the first time.

“Look,” my lady said, our first exchange of words since the brief discussion of prayer time. “Aren’t there quite a number of ships across the straits there?”

Indeed, the lowering sun did seem to pick out more detail on the far shore. And the sleeping bear did suddenly seem to have all claws unsheathed in a bristling of masts.

“I’ll climb into the crow’s-nest to see,” I offered, blinking up the long height against the sun.

“Up there? Oh, don’t. Abdullah, you’ll fall and kill yourself.”

Her concern sparked a determination that caught at the pit of my empty innards. I determined to refuse the image of the eunuch, the wounded boy in need of mothering she tried to press on me with a squeeze of her hand.

“But I’ll have to get out of these first.”

I shed her hand along with my robes down to only the loincloth. In order not to have to think about the pain and shame beneath that for long, I was on the ratlines in a moment.

Less than a quarter the way up, I knew I’d been foolhardy. My feet were as tender as an infant’s, my balance skewed by the lack of practice, my head light from fasting and, with the perverse way it has of doing so, the wind seemed to pick up just to welcome me aloft. But I wouldn’t back down at this point, not for anything, not with Esmikhan’s eyes on me, tearing with sympathetic effort over the hands she clasped across her veil to hold back a scream.

“
Ustadh
.” Esmikhan let out her breath when I returned to the deck. She used the most reverential form of address she could for a eunuch, the one that means ‘master.’ “
Ustadh
, that was very brave.”

I wish I’d something else to tell her, for all that bravery. But I could no more deceive her than my eyes could deceive me—except perhaps as far as my bravery went. “It is,” I had to say, “it is Piali Pasha over there against Çeşme. The entire fleet.”

This did not seem to concern her, however. Something else did. “I...I’ve never seen a man without...without...,” she stammered, gesturing to the upper part of her body.

I laughed skeptically. “Lady, you have Sokolli Pasha for a husband.”

“It’s always dark then.” She blushed, but she didn’t stop staring at me. “And I keep my eyes closed.”

“I am not a man,” I reminded her, and quickly sashed my body out of her sight.

The first thing I decided had to happen was that the long- tailed banners—red crosses on a silver ground—had to come down from the main masts. The white-checkered Genoese flag and the Three Kings in procession had to be hauled in off the stern.

Now the five rather indolent seamen who’d been left on board to keep an eye on things decided to question my actions, as they hadn’t bothered when it was just a matter of a sprint up to the lookout’s basket. The men hadn’t any fear of mutiny; my post as ship’s mate had only been informal at best. They delegated the gruffest of their number for the task and for a moment I thought I’d have to fight him for access to the banners’ ropes.

But all I really had to do was to say the word “Turks” and suggest, “Go up and have a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.” A few blinks towards the east and all five of them were hauling in the Magi at once.

A quick glance over the other options in Giustiniani’s flag cabinet disappointed me. Something about the captain had made me willing to bet he had a Turkish flag on board for such occasions—or for when a little pirating seemed too good to pass up.

“Giustiniani, you’re more honest than I gave you credit for.”

And I cursed him as I stuffed the too-blatant flags into the empty cubicles.

Now I had to ask myself whether, Turkish banner or no, the six of us together could get the anchor up and sail this tub out of harm’s way. The anchor seemed the most difficult thing, but I wouldn’t despair until an attempt was made. The shrouds would only take a little more time than usual, that’s all. I’d shed my robes again and risk their stares in the direction of my vacant crotch to lend a hand.

But then I realized that these men had families ashore at Chios. They were frantic for the return of the ship’s boat so they could go to them. One of the men—the youngest and strongest—even risked the charge of desertion and the chance he simply wouldn’t make it to dive overboard and swim. I don’t know whether he made it or not. I do know that without him my hopes of sailing away diminished, even if I could have talked the others into the idea, which one look in their shoreward-yearning faces told me wasn’t worth the risk.

At the first sign of possible confrontation with strange men, Esmikhan had crept back under her draped awning with her maidservants. Although I had nothing good to report, I took a peek in there as my fruitless pacing brought me nearby. I told myself I went to reassure Esmikhan. But the sight of her, lounging calmly, bravely, trustingly fasting among her cushions, seemed rather to reassure me—or at least fire me with determination to think of something to do to help our situation.

And it did, in fact, give me an idea. Or rather, her shalvar gave me the idea, for she had kicked the white-and-silver-figured fabric of her
yelek
off her knees as she lounged. And a great expanse of the red silk of her gathered trousers was exposed. She was still wearing a very large size of this garment, as her body had yet to shake all of the effects of her pregnancy. There were plenty of cubits of good fabric about the hips and above the crotch, which didn’t begin until below her knees.

I sank to my knees before her cushions and caught her ankle, partly from emotional and physical exhaustion, partly to feel the fabric—which was as excellent as I knew it would be—-and partly to beg before I knew begging was necessary.

“Lady,” I propositioned. “Would you be willing to sacrifice these
shalvar
?”

“My
shalvar
?”

“Yes, and whatever white stuff you might have to spare. Take your needle and make us a banner. Proclaim your faith to the world.”

Where the thought of facing eighty galleys of Turks did not move her, banner-making as a pious Ramadhan activity did. Or perhaps—and why, at such a time, did I delude myself with the thought?—it was the earnest touch of my hand on her ankle.

In any case, I had no sooner stepped out of sight when I heard the unsettling sound of ripping silk. It was too reminiscent. Especially under the circumstances, of the sounds of rapine and looting. So I let my pacing carry me farther away, assured that if once we did get under sail, our topmast, at least, would be prepared.

Pacing stirred the thought up to my mind that I had reason to be grateful I wasn’t depending on Sofia Baffo in this strait. I remembered the Fair One’s vain attempts to make a shirt tor our slave Piero—in a time so long ago that I had had slaves. But circumstances were otherwise quite similar. Or Baffo’s daughter had persisted in making them so dangerously similar soon afterwards by her irresponsible actions.

The contrast of Esmikhan heartened me as the sun set in bleeding bandages over the roofs and rocks of Chios. She and her helpers had made good progress and continued without pause to coax a white crescent and star out of red silk with pinpricks of needles. Riding at anchor lessened the danger of fire. I hung up a chained lamp from the roof so they need not fade as the sunlight did.

The women stopped to pray, to break their last on ship’s biscuit, the dregs of an olive barrel, and tepid, stored water. The pleasanter things promised by Giustiniani and even the citric air of this port itself had come to naught. But Esmikhan allowed no complaint among her women and they went back to their work the moment they were halfway satisfied.

No matter how the four Chians divided the night among them, I determined to keep a watch myself. I certainly hoped the quiet and loneliness of the wait wouldn’t let me forget what ominous portents hung in the air. Fasting urged me towards sleep already. But the menace was clear enough that it spared me that shame, at least, by coming early.

The night’s first watch cannot have seen two hours before I picked what was more than the moon’s reflection out of the gloom. This yellow lantern light approached rapidly with the creak and slip of oars.

An “Ahoy” brought up Giustiniani’s familiar vowels and limited consonants. The Chians threw him a line and soon his shadow and those of six or seven others—enough to raise the anchor, I determined—joined ours on board.

“What’s the news?”

“Is it truly Piali Pasha off the mainland there?”

“Saints help us, have negotiations availed anything?”

“Our wives and children—are they safe?”

But the men’s pleas for tidings went unheeded. Giustiniani’s first no-nonsense words were, “Where’s the capon?”

He had never called me that before—not within my hearing. But I stepped forward to claim that abuse and whatever else he had to give me.

Discovering me made him change the address but not the tone. “Veniero, get your lady and bring her to the boat.”

Certainly his voice meant business, but to save my soul I couldn’t fathom what that business might be. “Beg pardon?”

“You heard me. I’m taking your lady ashore. We’ll keep her in the fortress. Piali Pasha turns away all our suits. He says we Chians have nothing left to bargain with; we must surrender. He underestimates our willingness to fight. Let’s see if he says we have no bargain left tomorrow morning when we send him the delicate gem-studded ear of the Sultan’s granddaughter as a present.”