The Sultan's Daughter (23 page)

“I will not parley with a God-accursed Turk. Not when women and children are at stake.” Dawn glistened on the man’s mad skin of sweat as he peered over the barrel of his own gun, the best little falconet on board. “We’ll all die martyrs first. I’ve got the damned yawl in my sights.”

And martyrs we would have been if a single gun had blown. But I said, “We parley,” reining my voice down as low as it would go. And, out of the corner of my eye, I saw powder stay where it was, even behind the falconet. At the moment, that was the best I could hope for.

“Ahoy!” I heard then from over the bulwarks. While command of the ship was in debate, the yawl had slipped close enough for speech. But the Turks still suspected. The call came in very bad Italian. “Friend or foe? You fly the Sultan’s colors, but your actions—we do not trust.”

Giustiniani didn’t move. His face under the sweat and the sky’s reflected colors had frozen to the white of ice. So I moved instead, stepped from his side to the ship’s.

“Ahoy,” I replied, little concerned now that my voice betrayed me in a squeak. The Turks had easily as many guns in that yawl as we had with us. And they were also manned and primed.

“Ahoy,” I repeated, and the next came in Turkish. “I am—I am khadim to Sokolli Pasha.”

“
Khadim
? To Sokolli Pasha? Don’t believe it.” I heard a mutter among the yawl’s crew. Their weapons, bouncing with the waves, caught dawn like kindling to fire.

“His harem is on board, sirs. Believe me, as one who fasts this day with you. Believe, by my manhood which heathen dogs devoured in the streets of Pera, believe. I am charged with their safety. Please, let me bring them to the vizier. Let me bring them out of the punishment you plan for Chios.”

“You ride awfully low for one man’s harem, khadim. Even for a vizier’s.” Their skepticism was not without humor. I took that as a good omen. Some of the guns sank out of sight.

“Yes. Yes, sir. You’re right. These are…women and children, women and children who have been kind to my lady. For these kindnesses, my lady has chosen to throw the protection of her veils over them.”
Quite literally her shalvar,
I thought, but let the yawlers have time to think about what I’d said aloud.

“We should board and see,” ran the Turks’ discussion. “There may be treacherous Giustinianis among them.”

I heard a groan of fear behind me and realized the captain understood at least enough Turkish to know his own name when he heard it. I pushed my voice to cover his involuntary betrayal: “Sirs, you will not pass a vizier’s eunuch. For Ottoman honor and for the Faith, you will not.” And, in the end, they didn’t. No man swears by the fast who doesn’t keep its rigors. Even less does any man feign a lack of manhood in a eunuch’s dress—unless he’s nothing left to lose.

And so the yawl escorted us around the headland and into Izmir, my lady’s original destination, while in our wake, the rest of the fleet sailed into Chios.

That day I turned my long-robed back upon the sea. Easter had come and gone. There were no miracles, only luck awarded to courage, perseverance—and love. The tomb remained empty, and the Resurrection—somehow it no longer mattered.

Now I must concentrate on getting my lady a child. I couldn’t perform the honor myself, though heaven knows I wished it. There was only one thing heaven had left to me: to get her to Magnesia, to Sokolli Pasha—and, incidentally, to Sofia Baffo.

In history, Safiye was the fairest of the Prophet Muhammed’s seven wives. Sofia Baffo’s harem naming was a coincidence of the similar sound in her given, Christian name and the popular Arabic appellation. The name
Safiye
means “Fair One” and the matriarch’s namesake was the fairest in the imperial harem. But
Sofia
in its original tongue means “wisdom” and I have always considered the combination, the conflict of beauty and wisdom in one mortal body, like the kiss of powder and fire. I have never seen a woman bear a pregnancy quite like Safiye the Fair One did hers. Esmikhan’s every attempt—and it grew worse with each successive one—seemed to overwhelm her, like some great parasitic fungus sapping all the strength from the trunk of a tree. My lady had to devote her every waking thought to the matter of the child within her; there was time for little else. As I had seen, she spared little time even for me.

Safiye, on the other hand, perhaps because she was so tall, never lost the supple grace that was hers by nature. Though it did require her to go about in jackets with but the first two little pearl buttons fastened under the breast, the bulge itself seemed tightly bound to her as a barrel is bound with hoops of iron. It never got in her way. She was always in complete control, and she had plenty of time to fill her mind with other things.

So befell that day in the month Christians call May—for Muslims it was the first decade of Dhu ‘l-Kada in the nine hundred and seventy-third year after the Hijra of the blessed Prophet. Leaving my lady alone with the dregs of Safiye’s harem in the governor’s residence in Magnesia, I made my way to the army’s encampment on Bozdag. Safiye herself hadn’t been in the residence since the four days of Bayram at the end of the holy month of fasting. In spite of her condition, she would not leave Murad’s side, and Murad’s place was with the empire’s battalions.

There is probably no location on the face of the earth where a eunuch feels more out of place than in an army camp—unless it be a battlefield. I know creatures like myself in the time of the Greeks did actually lead men into combat, but that is a calling I cannot imagine. I can only speak for myself, and Bozdag was discomforting enough.

Spring had almost faded from the countryside in ripening grain. Trees stood in the silent state of potential between flower and harvest. The fruit hung undistinguished from leaves and buds unless you cared to look closely.

In camp, however, spring had been pounded from the earth weeks ago. Clouds of artillery practice sulphured it from the hillsides. The overused latrines and cavalry pickets dunged all growth senseless. One phalanx after another of yellow and indigo janissaries or violet spahis marched spring into summer dust on the parade ground. Following their horsetail standards, the troops perfected the martial step: left, right, twist face to the right; right, left, twist face to the left. This gave the impression of stern and constant vigilance to the impassive features under regiment-precise headgear that, acre after acre, held no seeming distinction or individuality.

My master had never had to leave Bozdag to come to Piali Pasha’s aid on Chios. The Chian annexation to the realm of the Faithful was an accomplished fact of a month’s standing. And, much to the credit of the Kapudan Pasha’s patience, the island got off much easier than it deserved. Let it never be said that Suleiman punished unjustly, for the Giustiniani alone suffered, as we in Magnesia heard the tale. Save for those the
Epiphany
brought safe to Izmir—and the man I knew had only daughters—all the rest went in slavery to Constantinople.

Here, a number of Giustiniani sons between the ages of eight and eighteen died martyrs rather than turn Muslim, though they’d already been forcibly circumcised—the worst part of conversion—as an introduction to their tortures. Some of their mothers and sisters still wept over their tale on our return to the imperial harem.

But there are harder things in life than death. I can testify to that.

Thus died the Giustiniani name as artificially as it had, to that point, been growing. The rest of the Chians had already, within that month, been given more freedoms than they’d enjoyed under Genoa and encouraged in every way to bring their industry to the benefit of the empire as well as to their own. That was the tale as we heard it. At any rate, all these soldiers still blotched Bozdag. All these men, primed to the peak, waited just to be shown the enemy—and needed him pointed out quickly before they began to crumble in on one another. I made my way through circle after circle of them. At each sentry I stated my master’s name and was directed closer and closer to the eye of the storm, as it were, the pivot around which all that might spun.

Though Chios hadn’t immediately called him to duty, it was in the springless realm of camp discipline that Sokolli Pasha felt most at home. More than a eunuch’s natural awkwardness in the place, I felt graceless calling the Grand Vizier to a duty he clearly would rather ignore.

I wished my lady would be content, like other wives, that her husband would come when he chose to come. Unfortunately, for all our effort to travel this far, the master had only spent four nights—the same four nights of Bayram as Safiye and brother Murad had—with Esmikhan in Magnesia. Then business had cropped up, then the deep disappointment of her unfilled un-cleanliness. But there were times when she would defy her upbringing for patience and claim a princess’s prerogatives. This was one of them. And I already knew I couldn’t deny her.

I made my way thus far through acre after acre of nothing but men, carrying no more news than that my lady had bathed this morning and was once more willing, anxious to receive her lord. And these were the manliest of men who smoothed their chest-long moustaches protectively as they watched me pass. They guessed my message. This embarrassed me to the very root of all I was missing.

But I was determined to help Esmikhan to her goal in any way I could, and for the moment this seemed the only way to do it.

So at length I approached the field commander’s tent. I distinguished it from all the rest by size, by central placement, by fabric. Rugs and thick brocades of the finest make, patterned all over with stars, moons, stylized flowers, Koranic inscriptions in blues and greens and reds and gold patched together in a busy but harmonious and respect-commanding whole. Pillars of inlaid gold and mother-of-pearl propped the roof up well over the height of the tallest man. My master’s standard dangled seven horsetails in front. This was the place, but a swarm of petitioners and janissaries three deep, planted like so many tulips in their beds, blocked my further advancement.

“Sokolli Pasha?” I asked one more time.

I’m not certain my voice carried to the turban-brushed ear over the buzz of humanity around me. Though the janissaries were perfectly disciplined in silence, the petitioners, a motley crew, were not. In any case, I was directed around to the rear of the pavilion and around to the rear I picked my way.

Here, indeed, the crowd was much less and, to my surprise and sudden comfort, I found another khadim. I walked over to him at once, remarking only after the fact that it was Safiye’s monster, Ghazanfer, a creature in whose presence I never had felt at ease.

“Your lady...?” I meant it only as small talk.

But without a word, Ghazanfer drew back the section of tent he guarded and ushered me inside.

Safiye Baffo nested in a cocoon of rugs and cushions swaddled especially for her between the pavilion’s double walls. The prince’s favorite took up nearly all the space there was, stretching out as she did to better accommodate her larger bulk in comfort. I stumbled clumsily on a rucked up corner of rug. There really was room for only the two—Safiye and her unborn child—in there.

But the Fair One made no protest at my presence. Indeed, she seemed quite pleased to see me.

“Ah, Veniero. This will interest you.” Her succulent lips mouthed the words. And she quickly curled up her feet to make place for me on a cushion next to her.

“I came looking for my...”

Safiye stopped me with a quick firm hand upon my jaws the instant they had sunk within her reach.

“What is this place?” I hissed a whisper of Italian as soon as my tongue was free to do so.

Safiye held one finger to her own lips.

“This is the Eye of the Sultan.” She mouthed the words only, with no pass of breath, and with one hennaed fingertip, parted the curtains in front of us the meanest crack.

I caught my breath when I recognized my master’s back so close I could reach out and tickle the creases in his nape if I’d dared. The Grand Vizier sat cross-legged on a heap of cushions; Prince Murad reigned next to him. Sokolli Pasha wore a high turban of fine white linen that gave him a neat and efficient appearance, and his green robes, though flashing with threads of pure gold, were in other respects purposely somber and restrained so as not to detract from the business at hand.

Between the men’s two shoulders, fine, spring sunshine filtered through the side of the pavilion opened for air across from us. Janissaries lined the tent room, blue and yellow like shadow and light, at attention like so many pillars, these troops whose very name could make all Christian Europe quake with fear. The Vizier’s Divan was receiving foreign ambassadors this day, ambassadors who would be duly impressed by the might and wealth of the Turks and send effusive and cautionary reports home to their rulers.

The total impact of this glorious scene upon my senses and my sensibility kept me from noticing any particulars. Safiye, to whom the pageantry of all this concentrated power was obviously a common spectacle, had noticed at once all the details that made this day different from any others. She caught my arm and pointed. With this force of concentration behind me, I was able to discern that the delegation now being received, struggling with their clumsy white Turkish robes of honor, was that of Venice.

The Venetians bowed with the stiffness of coaching still behind their movements, and presented gifts: lengths of plush velvet, mosque lamps of fine Murano glass, a casket of pearls. They came to protest the actions on Chios, actions which, in my mind at least, were a foregone conclusion.

I found it more interesting to watch Safiye than my former countrymen whose friendship and influence I was now far beyond. A flash of palpitation had come to her cheeks. Did the child move within her? Or was it the memory of the child—herself—and the free, sunny days she had spent in the republic of St. Mark, hitching up her little girl’s skirts, and climbing for apples in the convent orchard? Did the sounds of our native tongue ring in her ears like a call to devotion for the tears of homesickness she had secreted away?