Sofia (35 page)

Safiye took it, trying to oblige. “But what is it?” she asked.

“A spindle, stupid girl,” the woman sneered in triumph. Orhan was in the doorway, within earshot, and he could see how stupid this baggage of his was.

“A spindle?” Safiye did not know the word, and held the tool gently but clumsily so that all the previous work on it was in danger of being lost.

“Of all the simpleminded...!” The woman snorted, snatching the spindle back to save her last weeks’ efforts.

Safiye cried out—in affected alarm; there is no chance that she was really wounded.

“And who is so simpleminded but you, peasant!” The brigand shoved his wife away from Safiye with a snarl. “Can’t you imagine that there are women in this world who have never roughened their hands upon a spindle?”

“Useless leaches, dressed in the sweat of others,” the woman snapped back, “as you, Orhan, have said yourself so many times.”

“There are words in the Turkish language this girl knows that would send your simple head spinning, woman. As Allah is my witness, they would set you head spinning with their luxury, though she is but a newcomer to this country and this language.”

“And you are so fluent in the language of luxury,” the woman mocked, in the fury of the moment quite careless of her gizzard. “‘Bath,’ for instance. Now there’s a luxury you’re a stranger to, and I’m sure the fact hasn’t missed the girl. ‘Bath, bath, bath.’ Now whose head is spinning? I dare say you are even afraid of water, for Allah knows, I’ve never seen you come near it.”

The brigand rubbed his missing eye, but only for a moment. In the next moment he had snatched Safiye to her feet, sending the comb flying from her hand. It broke in two upon the floor, but Safiye, who had cried out in alarm at a violent movement not minutes before, said nothing.

“I shall show you who’s a peasant,” the brigand said.

“I bet you’re afraid of water, like a cat,” his wife retorted.

“I’ll show you!” the brigand said again. “I’m every bit as good as a Sultan’s son, and can bathe whenever I damn well feel like it. Not only that, but I can bathe with Murad’s very own attendant—whenever I feel like it. A pox on you, woman.”

And with that he dragged Safiye from the hut.

After the year’s first bout of stormy weather, it had turned balmy again. But this false return to summer and the warm colors of the leaves could not make up for the fact that the little mountain stream, running a hand deep over iron-cold slabs of stone, was kept from turning to ice overnight only by its movement. Even then, with a morning of sun on its back, it was a far, far cry from the blood-heat in which Murad liked to soak. However, Orhan was nothing if not immune to physical discomfort, especially when his pride was at stake. His clothes were off and he was in that water in a moment.

But it was not his wife, long out of earshot, almost out of memory, against whom he railed in that state. “Prince Murad, you’re a woman compared to Orhan, the Crazy One. By Allah, yes, you are.”

Safiye was left standing alone on the banks and I dare say that, braggart though he was, Orhan would have left her there. A mountain stream was his element; with a woman of courtly manners he was a stranger and quite honestly afraid of her. He even avoided her almond eyes as he fumed against her lover, and would have done so till the bath was over, had not a soft noise and movement in that direction wrested his attention. Safiye had removed her robe and stood there in underblouse and shalwars.

“I thought it best,” she said. “There are pearls on it, and surely, master, you would not want to risk having them wash away downstream.”

The brigand saw how the breath of a wind through the sheer underblouse tickled her nipples into tight little peaks and his heart pounded in an emotion to which he was a stranger. He called the emotion fear or shame, and clambered out of the water and onto a sun-warmed stone on the other bank to escape it. More disconcerting still was the state of his manhood, that thing he had boasted of all his life for the great control he held over its virility and it over womankind in general. He sought to hide it from her, but in a moment she had crossed the stream to him.

Even mystics relishing martyrdom will ease into impalement. But Safiye delved coaxingly on, once or twice, before she took him in completely. With her little white knobs of breast bouncing before his face, she whispered hoarsely, “Taste the pearls you’ve stolen from Prince Murad.”

Orhan caught one as a gasp escaped his lips, and his nails clawed against the stone in a tarantella of gratification.

The dervish, his meditation among the trees disturbed, moved silently away, thoughtfully smoothing his scraggly moustache into his scraggly beard. But I myself, who could not escape, heard through cracks in the cavern walls, many other times over the next few days when Orhan reveled in the spoils of Murad.

Esmikhan, bless her heart, was of such a nature that she found it impossible to believe that any woman, Safiye in particular, would ever stay long of her own free will in a place where her honor was even threatened, let alone compromised. Safiye stayed away from us for hours at a time. Well, she was braver than Esmikhan herself, but she wasn’t wanton. I thought it best not to disillusion my mistress; to protect her even from defilement of the mind seemed to be my duty. But, although we were as yet unaware of what it meant for our personal futures, the day did soon come when the young brigand, Orhan’s son, returned from Constantinople.

“But where’s my father?” he asked, growing impatient with the tears and thanksgiving of his mother’s welcome.

His words threw the woman back into the dark gray mood she’d been laboring under for days now. “Villainy!” she spat into the back of the hut. “Your son is here.”

“Coming, coming.” Orhan muttered, impatient, sheepish, and came out of a small side room still struggling with the wide bands of his sash.

The young man looked quizzically at his father, but did not comment as he dove headlong into an account of the success of his mission. He had received no firm confirmation of the Porte’s willingness to negotiate. Indeed, Sokolli Pasha, at the head of a small army, had left the city in the same hour with the intention of taking the brigands as one takes a castle or a town.

“But we know that is impossible,” Orhan said, smiling as he imagined the fastness of his fortress.

“It is indeed,” the son replied. “I left them in Inönü. Beyond that town, they have no clue as to where to go, no more than the prince does who has been sitting there a week.”

“Good. Yes, they will soon be ready to talk. I give them till midwinter—at the latest.”

His deadline grew so much closer that very night; it began to snow.

***

The brigands were up late that night. The young man had brought wine from the forbidden Christian vats of Constantinople, and success tasted sweeter, closer than it ever had before. Safiye sat up, too, wishing she could be in front there with our captors, watching the warm glow flared from time to time by raucous laughter in consolation. Esmikhan herself fell into a fitful sleep, scratching, even in her dreams, at the rawness raised by the bedbugs that had snuggled closer for warmth.

I think I must have dozed as well, at least the grasp on my shoulder in the dark came as a surprise. The empty hand I put up to defend myself suddenly found itself fumbling around the hilt of a dagger.

It was a strange voice, yet a voice strange in its almost-familiarity, that assured me in the darkness, “It’s not your own dagger. I’m sorry. They guard that too well, because of the jewels in the hilt. But I think you will find this more serviceable than that eunuch’s weapon time and form have atrophied to little more than show.”

I realized by this time it was the dervish. He cautioned against unnecessary speech and then spoke on hastily in his hoarse yet mystical whisper. “They mean to give your young lady to Orhan’s son. This very night. You must fight out of it. There is no other way. For the sake of her virtue and your life, I pray Allah may side with you in this.”

I weighed the weapon in my hand and found it heavy and good. It sparked in me feelings of strength and sudden wholeness which I see now were returns to the foolhardiness of youth. But at the time they were gratifying.

I turned to thank my benefactor, but he had disappeared. Surely I would have seen him against the light if he’d gone out the door and back into the main room. But it was too dark to see in the other direction, and even after a few low calls,
“Ya shahim, ya shahim!”
I failed to hear him as distinguished from the stirring of the goats behind me. So I shrugged and went to the brightly lit doorway to observe the situation for myself.

A silence had fallen over the drinking men, and at first I hoped they might have retired for the night or sunken into a stupor over their cups. But it was a silence of heavy anticipation which Crazy Orhan broke with the loud announcement, “Bring in the girl!”

Thus did I learn that the triumphal dishonoring of Sokolli Pasha was to be public, not private. And I realized as two brigands shoved their way past me armed with torches that, dagger or no, against such odds I might not even exist. I could only kill one or at the most two before they finished me off and Esmikhan was left not only honorless, but friendless as well.

“Up, Princess, up!” The men leered with demon faces in the torchlight over her pile of hay. “It’s your wedding night.”

Esmikhan did not yet comprehend their cruel jest as she stumbled past me. Her feet were still heavy with sleep, yet she was conscious enough to weep over the fact that they had discovered her unveiled. That she had clumsily managed to replace her coverings by the time she was hauled by the elbows into the center of the main room’s blinding light was little consolation. Nor could I meet her eyes through those veils to offer comfort, though they pleaded with me to do so. I was as helpless as she.

Directly across the room from me was the door to freedom, and next to it sat Safiye. She had obviously been there quite a while, bare-faced and unashamed in the company of all those men. I guessed she had tasted some of the forbidden wine, too, from the pretty pink glow in her cheeks and the moist sparkle in her eve. Would that they were tears and discomfort for the fate of her friend! But I saw clearly that they were not.

Next to her sat Crazy Orhan, who had given up the place of honor to his son that night. But he had not quite given up control of the assembly with that seat, for he called the next move. “So, my son. To your business! And the best of luck!”

Safiye did not smile at these words as the rest of the company laughed and cheered. But she also did not squirm or look away.

The young man got to his feet and strode up to Esmikhan, vainly trying to huddle in the middle of the room. She was surrounded on all sides, no wall to put her back to, so although she remained on her feet, I could tell she wanted to shrink into the straw mats and rugs on the floor. She looked more tiny and helpless next to that strapping figure of a brigand than I would ever have imagined possible.

The drink and attention made him graceful, that son of Orhan, something of a dancer with a strong bent toward showmanship. He removed Esmikhan’s wrapper and veils with a flourish that even her weak struggles and protests could not detract from.

‘Take that, you swine-eating Sokolli!” Orhan cried, and his men echoed him.

Esmikhan hid her face in her hands as it she’d been lashed with a whip. The young brigand forced these hands apart and, with her chin caught tight in a vise of thumb and finger, he lifted her pretty round face to the light, and turned it full circuit around the room. Esmikhan kept her large dark eyes— I’ve often thought them her best feature—-tightly closed as if against blinding light, but this did not detract from the company’s loud and lusty appreciation of the display.

“O Sokolli, may it burn you as the iron did my eve!” cried the voice of revenge.

Awash with sweat, my hand slipped almost uselessly on the handle of my dagger. But what was I to do? Take this horror as the will of Allah, and amply stand and stare in awe at it? The only other option seemed to be to instantly jump into the center of the room and plunge a knife of mercy into Esmikhan’s heart. I might have time then to turn it on myself. If I did not, a dozen brigand hands would very shortly finish the task for me. It would take a great deal of courage, strength I was not sure I could muster. But there seemed no other way. I closed my eyes and silently called on heaven for the attempt, committing myself to Its hands.

Meanwhile, the ruttish dance went on in the center of the room.

Whimpering like a puppy wounded quite to death, Esmikhan managed to break away for a moment. But two or three pairs of even coarser hands handled her until Orhan’s son came to reclaim her. This time he was careful to hold her much tighter about the waist. And she did not struggle so much except involuntarily and settled to her fate as does a lamb to the slaughter.

The son of Orhan forced his mouth upon hers as he fumbled with the row of pearls on her bodice. One pearl broke off in the process, and there was a scramble for it among the onlookers. But that business had resolved itself in time for all to appreciate the real prize of this activity. Orhan’s son produced it as a conjurer produces an alabaster egg from a basket we thought empty: a round, white breast. That breast could not help but hold itself up in the firmness of youth, though obviously its owner would have made it wither and sag with shame if she could.

The heady atmosphere was sending Orhan to mimic his son on the person of Safiye. Her breasts, too, were exposed and he was already at the drawstring of her shalvars.

Only Crazy Orhan had had a woman in months, perhaps years, and as the audience groaned and shouted its pleasure, I realized that when the son had spent himself at last—he was young and strong and four or five entries were easily within his reach—no power on earth could keep the others from making the revenge their own as well. It would kill my lady, of that I was certain. Yes, better to kill her mercifully now with one blow and what came later to me was of small mat- ter. My life had ended in the dark little house in Pera months ago, anyway. Encouraged by these thoughts. I began to move into position.