Reign of the Favored Women (7 page)

Already the domestic miracle of fresh-baked bread served with cabbage and earthy chickpeas seeped its scent along with a warm, greasy light through the lattice stars and the curtains overhead. It overwhelmed the smell of rankled garbage at his feet. The balconies and jutting bays of the second stories sagged like matronly breasts.

This image made Andrea wonder. Though no man was likely to see the deed, what about the women? Day and men and their liveliness made it easy to forget, but he knew full well that few actions in Turkey went unobserved by the silent sentinels of harem eyes. What would women think? Wouldn’t they rejoice that one of their number was about to be freed?

Earlier, from the Pasha’s gardens, peacock cries had sounded. Now, with a ruffling of feathers, the birds settled. From that lesser house, jutting into the moonlight on his right, he heard an infant wail, very like the fowl, he thought. The mother hushed it. That most intimate of exchanges, surpassing, in some ways, even that between lovers, caught its talons in the pit of his stomach. How separate he felt from the joys of hearth and home!

But by these means I shall \Nin such pleasures for myself, Andrea insisted to his seething brain. From tonight on, I shall no longer be on the outside looking in.

The only problem remained how long they’d waited. Sofia couldn’t be spending the night with her friend, could she? Andrea knew harem doors were universally closed and locked at dark. But he also knew Sofia. She would have her ways around such constraints.

Another gust of northern wind, and the moon shivered out of her gauzy veil again. The faucet before the mosque would have an icicle on the end of its nose in the morning when the pious came. But he would not be there to see the prayerful, made brave by faith, crack the crust and plunge in with the muezzin’s first sleepy call of the morning. The notion gave him a brief pang which w 2ls, he assured himself, only the wind, cutting more to the quick. Andrea drew the cloak tighter about himself. He let his eyes catch heat from the faint gleam of gold trim on the sedan chair seen through the palace gates.

This sight was enough to settle his resolve.

In no more time than piety allowed, the mosque emptied. Then, as if on that cue, the Pasha’s palace disgorged the awaited sedan.

Rather than heading straight back for the Sultan’s palace, the conveyance obliged him vet further by turning down this very passageway. It halted not four yards from where he stood, pressed against the minaret wall.

Finally, wonder of wonders, the bearers were dismissed to go warm themselves in the public house around the corner.

That left only the eunuch, leaning against the sedan door with his arms crossed over his chest, watching, waiting. And perhaps Ghazanfer wasn’t to be counted as the enemy. He had dismissed the bearers, after all. Certainly he hated Sultan Selim. And loved his mistress. He would not care to be parted from her or do an\-thing she did not approve. Once the khadim saw Sofia’s joy at the prospect of freedom and Venice, surely it would not take much to bring him along. Particularly since a eunuch who had failed to protect his charge could not expect the respite of the Seven Towers before he’d find himself at the bottom of the Bosphorus.

Andrea hoped he could keep his minions at bay long enough to give the poor capon a chance.

Yes, the plan seemed God-ordained, just like the .Arsenal plot. Or perhaps, it was merely too good to be true.

The grasping Turkish moon hazily lit the enclosing walls in solid blades and wedges. A low whistle rose from these stacked shadows. Andrea turned his concentration to the task at hand.

A second replied. This whistle was almost lost in the openness where the walls gave way to the huge space of the ruined Hippodrome. The third fellow was closest to the action. His whistle came from down this tortured intestine of an alley, near where it crumbled away altogether. The solid ground under Sokolli Pasha ‘s palace and the entire neighborhood was here revealed to be a sham. Anciently, huge arched supports had leveled the natural sharp incline from the Hippodrome down to the sea. Horses for the Byzantine circus had stabled in these caverns. When the horses had gone, the homeless.

And now...Sofia Baffo.

Andrea worked up spit and pursed his lips to give the final whistle. Coming from the minaret’s foot, it would seem a belated echo of the muezzin.

The instant before Andrea actually sent air through his throat, the signal to fall upon their prey, the mosque doors opened to emit one final worshipper .Andrea hissed his accomplices back again, or hoped he did. The blood pounding in his ears was so loud he doubted he could have heard his own whistle if he gave it. With growing dismay he watched the soldier smoke the moonlit air with ashen breath, then claim the last pair of boots on the sacred threshold.

The footwear seemed black at first. Then it caught a gleam and was betrayed as red. This matched better with the cascade of exotic bird-of-paradise feathers that swung from the janissary’s turban almost to his knees. These features pronounced the man a veteran, a battalion officer, a Chief Soup Maker, that homey title which nonetheless terrorized Christians.

Andrea flattened himself behind the minaret’s curve. Rather than coming up the alley, back towards the Hippodrome, as Andrea had been certain any soldier must, the Chief Soup-Maker turned left when he passed the mosque’s fountain and courtyard.

Walking down towards the ruined stables, the janissary stopped and scowled a moment at the extinguished street lamp. Then, as if he thought. Well, so much the better for me, he went on. He sauntered right past the parked sedan and—did Andrea see aright?—nodded a greeting to Ghazanfer and pattered his fingers familiarly on the shutters. Then he disappeared down into the crumbled arches. Andrea could only hope the man he’d stationed down there had more presence of mind and skills of stealth than he’d credited him with.

One more breath and we go, Andrea told himself. But before he’d drawn that breath, the plan misfired again. Ghazanfer opened the sedan door.

Jasmine burdened the cold air like a warm blanket, lingering in layers. The veil-wrapped woman slipped out of her eunuch’s hands and down the alleyway in the very footsteps of the vanished janissary.

All was silent for a very long moment. Even Andrea’s dithery brain stopped sending him messages.

And then, she screamed.

Andrea was down the alley like a shot, barely stopping to fling the stunned Ghazanfer into the arms of the two uphill accomplices.

At the lip of the subterranean caves, Andrea skidded to a halt. Before him sprawled the body of the janissary, the bird-of-paradise plume pitched heavenward.

And struggling in the arms of the third bravo was Sofia Baffo. The bravo, having left grimy proof of several false attempts on the gauze of her veil, had finally found purchase over her mouth.

“Jesu,” Andrea burst out, crossing himself involuntarily and rather foolishly for the sake of a Muslim soul. “What have you done?”

“You said somebody might get killed,” the bravo answered, his walleye roving in spasms. “Rather him than me.”

“But he has—had—nothing to do with this.”

“Hadn’t he?” Perhaps it was just the defect, but Andrea was certain the bravo was taunting him.

“Let her go,” the scion of the house of Barbarigo ordered, trying to sound in charge. After all, Sofia was listening. More than that, she’d fixed him with the keen edge of her wonderful eyes. Recognition honed there and, was it possible? Hatred? He must cure this at once.

“What? She’s not the one you want? Feels fine to me. Right fine. You don’t want her, I’ll take her myself.”

“Let her go. Let her walk back to the sedan.”

“I don’t know, captain. Doesn’t feel to me like she’ll come without assistance.” Struggles jarred his words.

“Let her go, I say.”

The bravo complied, at least with the hand on the mouth. But the flailing he did with it in the air suggested his release was not so much of his own will but because his captive had bitten him.

Sofia screamed again, and the curses and scuffling coming from behind Andrea, from where Ghazanfer was being held, were not encouraging.

“Sofia, Sofia, it’s me, Andrea,” he said as soon as the bravo’s hand had quietened the scream once more. “I’ve come to rescue you. To take you back to Venice. I’ve got a boat waiting and everything. Just come on back to the sedan and we’ll carry you there.”

In the same moment Andrea realized first that he was going to have to help get the captive into the sedan. Indeed, that he ought to have been lending a hand sooner. And second, that the reason he hadn’t helped out was because he was hesitant to approach that belligerent bundle of silk and brocade.

Andrea approached with caution. At first touch, the jasmine fra-

grance filled his brain. But the fragrance was missing the undercurrent of toothsome almond; gone from her physical being was the warmth and softness of love.

Without doubt, the woman they had captured was behaving very differently from the creature of his dreams.

Then Andrea felt something more: The Sofia he held had a more prominent belly than the tight drumhead on which he was used to beat out his love tattoo.

By Jesu and Maria, she was pregnant.

Was it his child? His head was too overwhelmed to figure very clearly, but he thought it might be. No wonder she was behaving so strangely. Andrea had heard that pregnant women were subject to strange fancies and often didn’t know their own minds. He would have to think for the two—the three—of them.

Between them, Andrea and the bravo wrestled Sofia a couple of paces. Young Barbarigo was trying to be as careful as he could, but he did have to use some force. The woman herself set her feet firmly into the men’s shins more often than she let them touch the ground.

“Here. Let’s gag her with the veil,” the bravo suggested when they stopped to recoup and regain a grasp on their burden. “That’ll give me another hand.”

Andrea nodded dumbly.

The fight Sofia put up against the removal of her veil wounded Andrea in plenty of places, but the jab to his heart hurt worst of all. In spite of—or perhaps because of—his admiration, the bravo was ready to smack her into submission. Andrea stayed the man’s hand, though having to fight on two fronts at once was wearing.

Of course she has been among the Turks so long she has taken on this extra layer of any woman’s natural modesty. Andrea excused her opposition and promised himself as well as Sofia that there was no harm intended.

“Do you think I would hurt you, my love, or—or our child?” he pleaded.

Your child? You think this is your child when I could have a prince?

Andrea seemed to read these words in the glare of eyes over the bravo’s hand, so he didn’t think in that direction any more.

He did, however, keep up the struggle towards the .sedan. His actions were, after all, in her best interest, no matter whose child it was. And he promised himself he could love any child Sofia bore.

Still he could not escape the impression that the wish to remain disguised motivated her as much or more than modesty. Like a thief in the nit, like the two men having a time of it with Ghazanfer who’d both taken the precaution of muffling their faces, Sofia seemed to be masking illegality from witnesses more than beauts fi-om lechers.

But Andrea could waste no more time considering it. Ghazanfer was gaining the upper hand at his end of the alley. A lucky kick by one of the bravos had managed to knock the monster ‘s dagger out of reach and into the deep shadows. That was all that kept the eunuch from giving better than he took, even in that two-to-one match.

“I was beginning to wonder, captain—” The bravo on the other side of Sofia’s contentious form clenched his teeth and panted his exertion. “—whether any woman could be worth this much trouble. For what you paid us, you could have found yourself several dozen obliging whores. But now I see. I’ve got to hand it to vou. She’s worth it.”

Andrea didn’t appreciate the fellow’s sentiments, nor the roving of his defective eve, but the young lover had no choice. No way could he have kept the force he struggled with in his arms on his own.

The bravo swords, oddly enough, seemed to have a calming effect on the maelstrom .Andrea held to him in a parody of the passion he’d hoped for.

Then, into the halt a breath the bravo gave her while he worked the veil into a manageable gag, Sofia compressed these words. “No gag. I won’t scream.”

Andrea had the unease’ feeling she spoke to his accomplice as much as to him, but he pretended otherwise and signed the man to hold off. The bravo shrugged and complied, but kept the gag poised a mere heartbeat awav from where he wanted it to be.

“Why did you do it? Barbarigo, why?” At least she was speaking Italian now, although he didn’t like the formal name with which she distanced herself, “After the .Arsenal—I thought you were my friend.”

“Your friend?
Cora mia
, I love you. I do this because I love you. I do everything because I love you and can bear no one else to have you.”

There was a snort of impatience in her voice. “I mean, why did you have to kill Khalil?”

“Khalil?” Andrea didn’t like the caress she gave the name. Worse, the bravo heard it, too, through the language barrier, and raised a teasel brow over the mad lurch of his eye.

“Him.” Sofia pointed to the ground behind them.

“The janissary?”

“Yes, the Chief Soup-Maker.”

“He has nothing to do with this.”

Andrea didn’t like the recollection nagging at the back of his mind that until very recently, the Sultan’s private army had been sworn to celibacy, living together like monks. Andrea had always found this a very unnatural—and dangerous—mode of existence for men of the sword. Such a life could not help but be dangerous for any women in the janissaries’ neighborhood.

Sofia insisted, “Khalil has everything to do with this.”

“An unfortunate accident. He got in the way. But not one that need detain us. Please, Sofia, don’t let it keep us a moment longer.”

“Excuse me, captain,” the bravo said.