SERAGLIO (14 page)

Galata

Gonzaga sensed that someone was behind him before he heard the footsteps. He turned and peered into the shadows.

'Che Xiè?'

No answer.

But there was someone there, he was sure of it. If it was one of Dragut's men, surely he would have shown himself? Perhaps it was one of his own men further along the wharf. He turned and hurried towards the gangway of the Barbarossa.

The galleot was deserted. The lamps that burned on the fore and main masts threw long shadows across the deck. There was no night watch and no sound from below.

He heard someone on the dock and spun around. Something was wrong. He drew his sword. Four shapes melted out of the shadows, blocking the way back. He composed himself. They must be Dragut's men.

'Which one of you is Dragut?' he said.

'Dragut is not here,' a falsetto voice replied in faultless Venetian dialect.

'Where is he then? I demand to see him.''

'He is getting drunk in Üsküdar. Now drop your sword or we will be forced to take it from you.'

Gonzaga heard the rasp of steel as swords were drawn from their scabbards. 'Who are you?'

'Drop your sword. You don't know how to use it anyway. I assure you these men here are expert.' He uttered a sob of fear and the blade clattered onto the cobbles at his feet. He shouted for his body guards. No answer. He dropped the oil lamp and ran.

Two more men appeared from the darkness and grabbed him before he had gone even five paces. They wrestled him to the ground. 'Tie him up,' the falsetto said.

His hands were pinioned behind his back and tied with rough hemp. He screamed again for help so they stuffed a foul rag in his mouth. One of the men lashed out with his boot, kicking him in the ribs, then rolled him over onto his back.

The falsetto picked up the oil lamp that he had dropped and came over. Gonzaga found himself staring at one of the ugliest men he had ever seen, a fat Moor with one eye, half his face mutilated by some ancient injury. In the lamp light he looked like a devil from hell.

'Antonio Gonzaga,' he said. 'Do you remember me?'

Remember him? His mind reeled. What was he talking about?

He squinted up at this apparition in panicked confusion. He was a Moor, yes, but not wharfside scum like the others. He wore a sable-lined pelisse, embroidered with pearls and silver and he had on soft yellow leather boots. There was a large round pearl in his ear. He crouched down, and removed the sodden rag from Gonzaga's mouth. 'You really don't remember, do you?'

'Of course I don't remember you! I've never met you!'

'No, we never met. But you did know me, and I knew your daughter.'

'My daughter's dead, she was murdered by pirates!'

'Perhaps.'

'Who are you?
Corpo
di Dio, I have money. Do you want money? Tell me what you want.'

'What do I want? I want you to remember, that's all. I want you to think about your daughter, the most beautiful woman I ever saw, that I ever will see. I want you to send your mind back twelve years, to the son of the Captain General of the Republic of Venice.'

Gonzaga remembered then, and wet himself. The monster holding the lamp shook his head. 'Yes, I did the same. It's terrifying knowing that you are utterly helpless, isn't it?' He stood up. 'Take him aboard!'

Gonzaga screamed but one of the men quickly shoved the rag back in his mouth. They lifted him easily, hands and feet, and carried him onto the Barbarossa and down into the hold.

Perfect justice, Abbas thought.

Belowships, in a privateer in some filthy dock. That was how it all started for me.

Abbas hung the lamp on a hook fixed to one of the beams and leaned against the bulwark as the men deposited their whimpering cargo in a lapping pool of tar and seawater. His eyes were starting from their sockets and he was trying to say something through the gag.

Abbas waited until they were alone, then he said: 'I will take the rag out of your mouth now. But if you scream, I shall replace it. Is that clear?'

Gonzaga nodded.

'There.'

The words came bubbling out in a torrent. Like when they pulled that spigot out of me, he thought. ' … I didn't know what was done to you, I swear, I only ordered them to beat you, to discourage you, that's all, if I have wronged you I swear that I will make it up to you, I am a rich man, I have much I can offer you, I am a
Consig
-'

Abbas stuffed the gag back in his mouth. He's like a dog trying to vomit up its breakfast, he thought. Still I understand how he feels. It was like that for me once.

'I might have known that all I would hear from you is lies and vanities. What can you offer me,
Consigliatore
? Money? I have more than I shall ever need. The Sultan and his lady pay all my expenses. I have fine clothes and more diamond than even you could fit in your long pockets. No, what I desire is only what every man is granted at his birth. And you took it away. You cannot give it back.'

Abbas drew a short
killiç
from the sash at his waist. He held it close to Gonzaga's face, turning it in his fist so that the blade caught the reflection of the lamp. 'Look at this, Excellency. A simple instrument. You can cut bread with it or you can ruin a man's life. It depends on the intention. What is my intention, Excellency? Can you guess?'

He pulled up Gonzaga's robe, exposing his thighs and lower belly. He gripped Gonzaga's testicles in his fist, squeezing. Gonzaga's face suffused with blood as he tried to scream through the gag.

'Can you imagine what this is like? Did you imagine it when you ordered it done?'

Gonzaga shook his head violently. Abbas touched the knife to Gonzaga's flesh, drawing a thin line of blood. Gonzaga thrashed on the floor like a beached fish. Abbas jumped up and slumped against the bulwark, sweating. He put the knife back into the sash at his waist.

'No
Consigliatore
, I would not wish such a horror on even my worst enemy, and you are that, and more. I cannot do it, not even to you. I would never stain my own soul with such a sin.'

Gonzaga curled his knees into his chest and rolled onto his side. He started to weep.

'I will show you the mercy you never showed to me. I will give you your life, such as it is worth. Every second that remains of it is yours to savour. In the morning Dragut sails for Algiers. I have instructed him to sell you in the market place in Algiers as a galley slave. When you are chained to a bench, awash in your own filth, working eighteen hours a day at the oars you can think about what you did to me and to your daughter. You will have plenty of time for reflection. Some men survive five years of it before their strength gives out.' Abbas went to the companionway. 'If only you had shown me such consideration! I would have thought it the greatest mercy compared to the future you chose for me! Go with God, Excellency.'

He saluted the Ambassador of the Illustrious Signory of Venice then took the lamp from its hook and left Antonio Gonzaga to the darkness and his dreams.

Pera

The moon had fallen below the seven hills when Ludovici returned. Julia was still awake. She sat by the window staring into the candle.

He put a hand on her shoulder. 'It is done,' he whispered.

He felt the answering pressure from her fingers but she did not reply. After a while he left here there and went to bed, knowing he would not sleep.

The Topkapi Saraya

Abbas selected his own key from the hundreds on the key ring stuffed in his sash. The former Kapi Aga was the last of the white eunuchs to be given the responsibility of the keys. Now the Sultan only entrusted a complete rasé with the responsibility.

He slumped onto his cot. The cat jumped onto his lap, purring, and he petted her absently, his mind drawn inside, to the shadow play deep within his own mind. He removed his turban and put his head in his hands.

Revenge did not taste particularly sweet. It had left an emptiness inside him. What would he do with his suffering now that he could no longer dream of the sweet lure of vengeance? Now his score was settled he must live out the rest of his days knowing that this was really as good as it would ever be.

Nothing could change what had been done.

***

The full moon shimmered on the cupolas and minarets of the Harem like a frost making the plane trees in the courtyards appeared ghostly. The eunuchs guarding the iron-studded doors stood like mahogany statues.

Far above them a woman stared across the Horn, imagining the waving grasses of the Georgian steppe; in the window below a eunuch looked over the Marmara Deniz and thought of the sun-dappled canals of Venice. Abbas and Hürrem both paced the night, souls eroded by loss and longing, each of them a tiny outpost of hell in one man's Paradise on earth.

The Dangerous Window

Topkapi Saraya, 1553

Suleiman had lived nearly fifty nine years and age gnawed at his bones. He spent more and more time now closeted with the
sheyhülislam
reading his Qu'ran.

He had gout, his elbow and knees occasionally becoming swollen and so tender he could not stand the slightest touch and these attacks sometimes lasted as long as a week. He had also developed an edema and had taken to wearing rouge to hide the sickly pallor of his skin. He ate little, usually just some baby goat washed down with iced sherbet.

Hürrem grew more afraid. Suleiman mortality reminded her of her own fragile tenure on life.

She had been patient for so long. Now she was afraid that time was no longer on her side. If something was to be done about Mustapha then it would have to be done very soon.

***

For over a decade now the executioner's sword had been poised over his children's heads. There was nothing even the King of Kings could do to protect his own children after death because his own great grandfather, the Faith, conqueror of Stamboul, had made this bloody
kanun
:

The
ulema
have declared it allowable that whoever among my illustrious children and grandchildren may come to the throne should, for securing the peace of the world, order his brothers to be executed. Let them hereafter act accordingly.

As the years drew on Suleiman was troubled by his own mortality, and the gnawing of doubt. We will never be a great people, he thought, unless we put aside this savagery.

Hürrem, as always, had given voice to his innermost fears. 'I am so afraid,' she whispered to him one night as she lay in his arms.

'Afraid? Of what my
russelana
?'

'Not for me, for my sons.' She laid her head on his bare, smooth chest. 'My Lord, when you die - may that day never dawn! - my life shall longer be worth living so I fear nothing on my own account. But when Mustapha attains the throne the
Kanun
of the Fatih tells him he may execute all his brothers, even poor Çehangir ..'

'We have gone beyond such barbarity.'

'It is not Mustapha I fear. He has a good heart.'

'What then?'

'When he comes green to the throne and discovers his own voice, he will be surrounded by those not as well disposed. We know Mustapha shall be Sultan but who will be his Vizier? Would a dried up prune like Lütfi Pasha show any compassion for poor Çehangir? Could even the astrologers in the House of Time foretell what plans the Aga of the
Yeniçeris
might hatch against Selim, because he cannot ride? What traps might a jealous pasha lay for Bayezid because he is so able?'

Suleiman held her tighter. She was right, after his death she would be helpless, and so would his sons. Mustapha had given his word, and yet …

He was relying on Mustapha's nobility. The boy was no butcher; he was as loyal as he was brave, there was no malice in him that he had ever discerned. His was the just hand for the banner of Mohammed. 'Mustapha is a good man.'

'His mother still lives, and she hates me.'

Gülbehar! When he died she would become the new Valide Sultan, head of the Harem. How hard would she press Mustapha to invoke the
Kanun
of the Faith? 'What would you have me do?'

'Never die.'

He smiled in the dark. 'We all die. It is God's path for us.'

'Then I shall pray I have a voice in the Divan to protect me. Rüstem perhaps …'

Yes, there was wisdom in that; Rüstem Pasha, his son in law would protect his wife and her brothers. He had proved his loyalty with Ibrahim. 'I will think about it.' '

They had said no more about it. But soon afterwards, when Lütfi Pasha died of the pestilence, Suleiman ignored the usual laws of succession and proclaimed his own son in law the new Grand Vizier.

The Man Who Never Smiled became the second most powerful man in the Osmanli empire.

***

Abbas was ushered into the presence of the Vizier, executed his
temenna
and allowed his pages to lower his bulk to the carpet. The purple silk of his robe is as large as the royal tent, Rüstem thought. When he moves it's like a squadron of
Yeniçeris
buggering each other under a blanket.

'May I extend my congratulations on your great fortune,' Abbas greeted him. 'God indeed smiles on you. To be Vizier of the greatest of all Osmanli sultans is a blessing almost too great to comprehend.'

The Infinite had no hand in this, Rüstem thought. 'All thanks and praise to Him.'

'However my mistress has asked me to remind you that though God is great there are times when his Bounty - as His vengeance - may need prompting by earthly angels.'

What a pretty tongue you have, Rüstem thought. 'Tell your mistress I shall not forget her words and that I am exceedingly grateful for them.'

'Well that is why I am here. To discuss the many ways you can prove your kind remembrance of her.'

'Well, she wastes no time in calling in her favours,' Rüstem thought. He clapped his hands and the pages scurried away to fetch sherbets and
halwa
while they settled to their discussion.

***

'You have heard the whispers in the bazaar?' Abbas asked.

'The
bazaaris
do more than whisper, Abbas. They shout to each other in the
bedesten
s how our Sultan has lost all appetite for war. What is there to be done? He finds glory now only in his rebuilding the city. He spends more times with his architects than his generals.'

'We all worry that he is ignoring his duty to God, of course. But could there be those who seek to profit from it?'

Please, Rüstem thought, you and your mistress care as much for his duty to God as you do for the price of melons in the fruit market.

'You have heard these other rumours from the barracks?' Rüstem said.

'Everyone in Stamboul has heard them.'

The trouble has started, as always, in Persia. Shah Tamasp was once again raiding their eastern border, torturing and killing the muftis and flaunting his Sufavid heresies, growing bolder all the time while Suleiman wrote poetry and dictated laws and planned mosques in his summer
yali
s in Adrianople and Çamlica.

Meanwhile his soldiers fretted behind the palace walls, hungry for action, growing more impatient day by day. All they talked of now was their adored Mustapha, waiting in the wings and sprouting the first gray in his beard. That one would not sit around drinking sherbet with his builders, they said. He would have taken us against the heretic Persian long ago. As soon as he takes the throne we will be on the march again, there will be more victories and more plunder.

But not everyone awaited the new sultanate quite as eagerly. It will be the end for Hürrem, Rüstem thought. And when she goes, I go as well.

From somewhere along the colonnaded gardens, a bell sounded the hour.

'What would the Lady Hürrem have me do?'

'Just remember where your loyalty lies.'

Oh I shall never forget that, he thought. It lies where it always did. With myself. 'I am loyal to my Sultan above all things.'

'Against anyone who might seek to bring him down?'

'Of course.'

'Then we rely on you to deal with this current threat to him.'

There is no current threat, Rüstem thought, just the jabber of soldiers and eggplant vendors. But I see what you mean. This is our best opportunity to save our own necks. 'Assure your mistress that I remain her husband's faithful servant,' he said.