Reign of the Favored Women (6 page)

“Even the Mufti agreed. The Mufti, who is not the Sultan’s slave, who is a free-born Turk, educated in the mosque schools, and who should have no other law than that of the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet—he who should act as a check to any madness in the Sultan.

“‘Although it is true the island has always been Christian,’ the Mufti said thoughtfully, ‘they did pay tribute to both the Mameluks of Egypt and Islam’s first caliphs. It seems therefore justified to take it for the Faith.’ “

Andrea shook his head in disbelief, watching the terrifyingly expressionless face before him. Other griefs—even Sofia—were forgotten for the moment. “Such power in one man! If ever a Doge had a will like that, the Senate has such power that the best one can ever hope for is a very weak compromise. And with other states in Europe, it is much the same. No wonder Europe is so slow in getting anywhere!”

“Except that,” Ghazanfer cautioned, “the place a single man wants to go may not be so healthy for the rest of the world.”

“Well, barbarians on an island like Madagascar—no matter how they may fight—it would do them good, in the long run to be joined to the Turkish Empire.”

“Madagascar? Is that what you thought when I said ‘island’?”

“Of course. It seems only reasonable. It is the next step towards India, which I am sure the Sultan would...”Andrea fumbled. “You did say Yemen, didn’t you? And I reasoned...”

“My friend. You misunderstood me. I never said the master was following reason in his design. This is the dream of a man in his cups.” A rigid sort of sorrow seemed to penetrate the eunuch’s eyes before he announced, “The Sultan has his eye on the island of Cyprus.”

“Cyprus?”

“Cyprus, as you know only too well, grows the best wine in the world, and the quota they have been willing to sell to Turkey in a year has never been enough to satisfy—”

“But Cyprus belongs to Venice!”

“Exactly, my friend.”

The exaggerated patience in the eunuch’s voice reminded Andrea he had little enough right to be championing Venice’s cause. In one of the first waves of emotion he’d ever felt from the creature, he felt disdain. Disdain against himself. Disdain because he, Andrea, was moved—blinded—by carnal lust while a khadim, godlike, was above such constraints.

Still, Andrea couldn’t help but exclaim: “But that is war—on us!”

“Now you are not as casual as you were with the lives and goods of Madagascar. And Cyprus is not so far from Constantinople as that distant land. Why must you Christians always think all barbarians are only eastward?”

“But we have a treaty of peace with the Porte. Hasn’t Selim been told?”

“I have already told you, my friend, what the Mufti himself said about the bounds of honor surrounding that treaty. They are nothing compared to the honor of winning new lands for Islam—now. If you do not believe me, my friend, stop by the house of Joseph Nassey in the next few days. The master has promised to make him the island’s king. Nassey has already ordered the woodcarvers to carve a plate with Cyprus’s coat of arms and ‘King Joseph’ on it. It will swing above his gateway for all Constantinople to see. This is what my lady wanted me to tell you.”

Andrea’s chest flooded with the warmth of gratitude towards Sofia. She had not forgotten him after all. But what she expected in return was still not clear, and he wanted to give her something. The desire to give was, in fact, a physical need. “Is there nothing to be done to stop that maniac?” he attempted.

“And just a moment ago you were wishing the same power for your Doge.”

“But what should we do?” Andrea rocked on the edge of the cot. The rough wood cut deep into his thighs, but he ignored it. “Shall I have the ambassador request an immediate audience?”

“You have never been allowed to see the Sultan yet. What makes you think he would see you now? Besides, you are but men, and we have seen he can terrorize men and pin them to the floor like moths.”

In a rising panic, Andrea reminded himself that his true love was thrall to such barbarians. Is this what she was trying to tell him? He stammered, “No power on earth...”

“Now, I didn’t say that,” the eunuch reminded him. “Those were your words. In our realm, there are one or two powers given the strength to withstand the wild whims of the Sultan.”

“Pray God, what can they be?”

“Well, first, the dervishes.”

“Dervishes?” Andrea repeated impatiently. “The dervishes are mad.”

“They are mad, allowed to be mad with Allah, and are both powerful and incorruptible in that they never have to play by the Sultan’s rules. If a dervish is corrupted to become the Sultan’s lackey, the people are not fooled and he loses his power among them. And if a Sultan dares to wield his laws above a dervish—to kill or imprison the holy man as he may do any vizier or pasha—he will only make a martyr. Even dead, a martyr has power over a Sultan. The more horrible the death, the more powerful the martyr. No, by hanging a dervish, a Sultan only puts the rope around his own neck. Even the janissaries will always follow the drumbeats of a naked dervish before they’ll follow the Sultan’s standard.”

“That is all very nice for a Muslim,” Andrea said, exasperated, “but what am I to do as a Christian?”

“Yes, well, I only spoke of dervishes first so you could see how the system works. There is, of course, one other refuge from the Sultan’s will.”

“And that is...?”

“The harem, of course.”

“The harem! But that’s ridiculous! Those women are his slaves, as much as you are, ustadh. And worse than slaves. They are bound prisoners, never seeing the light of day. Why, no rat in Constantinople is more subservient to the Sultan’s will than the women of his harem.”

“Now you are looking at the harem with Christian eyes, my friend. As if they were your Catherine de’ Medici or England’s Elizabeth, to be judged by the standards not only of Christians, but Christian men as well. Try to see them through my eyes. My eyes, half-man, half-woman, half-Christian, half-Turk, and then you may catch a glimpse of what it would be like to be all Turk and all woman. It is their very removal from the open, brazen affairs of men that gives them such power.

“If Selim were to go about terrorizing his women and pinning them to the floor—as he could, indeed, if he wished—he would lose more than a night’s paramour. He would lose his honor. Every shred of it. A thousand years of military victory could not make up for that loss, for there is nothing more important a man owns than that which is totally out of his hands—the honor of his women. He would make a martyr more powerful than a thousand ragged dervishes because it would be of his own flesh and blood, from the very center of his heart, as we say. He might as well order lepers to sleep with all his women.

“Ah, but here I am trying to explain to you something that is beyond words even as the dervish’s union with Allah is unspeakable. Usually I cannot even talk to my lady about these things. ‘Ghazanfer,’ she sighs, ‘you grow tedious and there is work to be done.’ Often I fear she does not understand the very harem she lives in. She was, after all, born and raised a Christian.”

Here the eunuch paused, betraying uncharacteristic introspection before continuing. “Sometimes I fear she misuses the harem’s power—or, rather, rejects its power in favor of the tactics men use. If she uses that power, she must face the consequences men face, and sometimes I fear...Still, she saved my life. She is wise, good and brave...”

“And beautiful,” Andrea added to complete his version of the vision that today had failed to appear.

“Yes, and the most beautiful woman in the harem besides. Few are such complete eunuchs they are not aware of this. I will not speak against her. And that she would send me to you with this message assures me she has some inkling of how the power of the harem should be used.”

“What does your lady want me to do?” Andrea still found himself helpless of decision in the face of this news.

“That she did not tell me,” Ghazanfer said.

“How I wish I were her slave instead of you!” Andrea burst out. “For I desire nothing more of life than to receive orders from her lips. For I myself seem...witless at this news.”

“Would you take a suggestion from me?”

“Gladly. For you know her mind better than anyone in the world.”

“I think my lady has sent you this warning so you and all of Venice now on the Bosphorus can pack up your things and flee to safety. The Porte, I believe, means to send you an ultimatum tomorrow: Give up Cyprus, or face war. That will buy you some time. You can pretend to think it over. Two days, perhaps, in which to evacuate all people and possessions safely. After that, your lives cannot be vouched or bargained for in this city, whatever the harem’s power. And, perhaps, at sea, you can warn your navy of the coming storm—”

“Navy? What navy?” The words exploded from Andrea’s heart-crushed lungs. “I have been instrumental in blowing the Venetian navy out of the waters!”

The thought brushed his back with a chill. Was his destruction of the Venetian navy connected not only with Chios, but with Cyprus as well? He couldn’t compass the notion.

“Turn your merchant vessels into men-of-war, perhaps...” the eunuch ventured.

“With what? Our munitions turned the night of September thirteenth into day.”

Ghazanfer shook his great white turban sadly. “These details are beyond me.”

But not beyond Sofia.

Did that thought come from the eunuch or from Andrea’s own mind? He squashed it. “Surely she cannot expect me to flee. Flee, like a coward, from the field?”

“The power of the harem is to preserve life. Glory such as a soldier craves is not part of it.”

“But life without honor is—” Well, what was it? Could one such as himself have any honor—or life—left? None, certainly. None without the focus of all he had done—Sofia Baffo.

“You are young, my friend,” the eunuch was saying mildly, as if purposely to contrast their natures. “And full of hot blood. As I told you, the honor of the harem is not the honor of men, although they do hold the honor of men in their white hands.”

“You speak in cursed Turkish riddles!” The young man quite forgot his task of diplomacy. “How can a woman love a man who is a coward?”

“More, I suppose, than she can love a corpse.”

Or a traitor.

Did the eunuch’s eyes read that, or was it Andrea’s own mind that accused himself so? He would not succumb to the thought. He had only done what was necessary. “Well, by God, I do not intend to die in this fray.”

“That will be as Allah wills.”

For her part, Sofia wanted him alive. That was promising; she must still love him. Then a horrifying thought occurred to Andrea and his blood seem to freeze miles from the warmth of his heart. What if she was preserving him alive not for love, but for further use? To order the explosion of more Arsenals. To torture him through years as Selim had done to the young page boy—who had fancied himself spared—only in the end to take barbaric pleasure in pinning the lad through the heart to the rugs on the floor. Was it even possible that this was why the khadim had told him that horrific story, a warning with two separate meanings?

Andrea looked hard at the eunuch and could see no denial of such a motive behind the creature’s eyes. But he read no confirmation either.

Ghazanfer rose to leave the room. “I have done my lady’s will. More than that I cannot say. Salaam, Barbarigo.”

“Here, here!” Andrea shook the fears of Sofia’s betrayal from him as a dog shakes off muddy water. He rose after the eunuch, pulling the locket from his neck. “Take this and give it to your lady—from me.”

Ghazanfer held the fragile thing in his great, torture-flattened hand. “It may be Allah’s will that she never send you another message.”

“It was my mother’s locket, but I do not care. No woman on earth is a better heir to it—and my love—than that woman you serve.”

“Salaam.” Ghazanfer bowed again. “I pray for peace, Barbarigo, both between our countries and within your troubled heart.”

Tucking the locket within his breast, the eunuch turned to leave.

“Tell her—” Andrea called after, convinced now that only Sofia’s well-justified fears for her own safety had kept her away. Fears she had defied for his sake. “—tell your lady I will not leave Constantinople without her.”

Andrea considered his options. He would go and plead peace before the Divan with such power and logic that Sofia would throw all foolish Turkish convention aside and pull back the curtain of the Eye of the Sultan. For, of course, she would be there and, no less than the viziers, be won by his speech. She would leap from there into his waiting arms...

After that, what should happen was not so clear. Yes, there was the problem of the room and a courtyard outside filled with janissaries. But somehow that seemed a negligible factor, once he had her in his arms.

Then there was the scenario in which he stormed the palace walls almost single-handedly, killed the mad old Sultan, and then penetrated the forbidden holy of holies. There she (he would almost write it
She
—divine) would be lying in sorrow and languor on a crimson couch, her golden hair like fire in luscious disarray. She would reach long, white arms out to him, her liberator, her deliverer, her true love. Again, he need not dream further than this point.

More elegant settings stoked the fire of his brain, but practicality had whittled it down to this: an alley beside the little neighborhood mosque-converted-from-a-church a stone’s throw from the palace of the Grand Vizier. If he shifted just right, he could catch a glimpse of Sofia’s sedan through the wrought-iron gates.

A sharp wind scudded straight off the Black Sea to attack his fingers and toes. It put out the moon as easily as one of his bravos had put out the light at the end of the alley just after the lamplighter had passed. Now the only illumination came through the heavy curtains drawn over the second-story lattices of the closest homes.

Andrea blew on his hands to keep them flexible. They must be able to curl firmly around the hilt of his dagger.

The call to evening prayers directly over his head brought a small congregation to the mosque. Andrea found the men who filed past his hiding place slightly unnerving, being predominantly janissaries from the exercise field. Each man carried his own rug under his arm like an open display of his soul. Andrea felt a strong urge to join them, if only for the better concealment of his own soul, one among many. But public devotion would soon make way for the privacy of tents and hearthstones.