Swords From the East (57 page)

But the eye of the Sultan had not fallen upon Azadi as yet, in spite of her slender shape that was like a sturdy young cypress. She had high cheekbones and drowsy gray eyes that softened when she sang love songs to the sleepy white cat. And she had a temper that was like a sheathed dagger of steel.

She had need of it. They fed her in the harem, and the hazaki gave her at times their discarded garments. Yet the small, intimate things that become a woman's treasures Azadi had to garner by her wit, and save thereafter from the thieving blacks. Her only protection was her anger-the eunuchs learned that it did not pay to molest her.

That day she had heard how an infidel devil was to be tortured in the garden outside the Gate of the Birds. Azadi wondered if this captive would have a face like a demon and claws instead of fingers. She knew that, overlooking the garden, there was a screened gallery above the Gate of the Birds. And she persuaded two other girls to steal off during the bath hour, to slip into this unoccupied gallery and watch the torture of the infidel devil.

If they had been discovered there, they would have been beaten by the black eunuchs. So they sat without a sound, all eyes and ears. When Sokol, the ataman, was led off, they crept away, running to their rooms.

Azadi did not go to the courtyard of younger women for the evening meal. She lay among her cushions, shivering, and the white cat whined plaintively, unheeded. After a while the girl took the hand mirror from the locked chest of her belongings. It was a polished silver mirror that had caught her fancy and she had stolen it long ago. To Azadi's surprise, her face had changed. She shut her eyes, and before the eyes of her mind appeared the bare, dark head of the Cossack who did not, after all, have a face like a demon. It seemed to be in the room, looking right at her. And Azadi thought this must be a spell.

She knew the power of spells cast by night birds that flew overhead, and by clever old women who made images of people and tortured them. Painfully, she waited for the spell to leave her. But it did not.

Until suddenly the Tatar girl threw up her head, and drew out her best garments-a vest embroidered with silver thread, blue satin trousers, and a round papakh that perched like a dragoon's cap on the side of her tousled hair. Deftly she combed her long, dark tresses and touched her chin and throat with rose water.

Now the spell was relaxing, and she felt better-since she had made up her mind to see this strange captive again. Her gray eyes shone as she drew the thin veil across her cheeks and struck her hands together imperiously.

"I go to the Kislar Agha! " she announced to the black who appeared in the open door. When he hesitated-for the Kislar Agha was the Commander of Women, head of the entire seraglio-she brushed past him impatiently.

To the Agha, sitting by his water pipe, she explained more. The Sultan, she whispered, had expressed a wish, in the hearing of a certain lovely Circassian who was then very high in the imperial favor, that a girl be sent to talk to the prisoner. The Circassian had commanded her, Azadi, to go-but secretly. Then, afterward, she would tell the Circassian what the prisoner had said, and the tale might please the Sultan.

Knowing Azadi, the Agha was suspicious. "But the Favored of Allah," he pointed out, "desired a Christian lady to go."

Azadi shrugged a slender shoulder. Outwardly she seemed not at all pleased by her mission. "Perhaps," she suggested, "an infidel lady could not talk to this dog of the steppes. 0 my Agha, why was it commanded that I should go to the room of this devil who wreathes himself in smoke?"

The Commander of Women could think of no reason why Azadi should go, unless she had been sent by the Circassian favorite. So, reluctantly, he gave permission that she should be escorted to the cell; but at the same time he determined to question the Circassian.

At the entrance of the tower room Azadi stopped, her heart throbbing. Here was the young Cossack, with his back against the wall, his booted feet on the table. In one hand he held a long clay pipe; with the other he caressed a jug of honey mead. "Yah paikou!" he growled. "Get out, wanton."

A warm contentment crept through the girl. How beautiful he was-how splendid in his strength! Timidly she lowered her veil, and the blood rushed into her throat and cheeks when she bared her face. For a moment the blue eyes of the Cossack fastened upon the clear, gray eyes of the girl. And Azadi felt herself drawn toward him as if toward a fire from which she could not escape.

She sat down suddenly on the stone floor, no longer daring to look at him. Sokol sipped his beer, but his pipe went out. The guard leaning on a spear in the doorway looked at them curiously.

After a while Azadi mustered courage to rise and to fill the Cossack's goblet with beer from the jug. The Cossack's long arm reached out and he drank. There was a dark sear where his forehead had been burned.

Azadi ventured to dampen her clean girdle cloth from the silver rosewater jar that she always carried. Then, before he could prevent, she laid the cloth against his forehead. But she wanted to hear his voice again. "Eh, say," she asked softly, "what name hath my lord?"

"Sokol it is."

"What means that-Sokol?"

"A falcon. You see, little slave, I soar high-I fly far."

Yes, she thought, he was like that. An eagle, a chained eagle. The pride in his dark eyes could not be killed by pain. She wanted his voice to go on.

"Who was my lord's mother, and his father?"

The Cossack grinned, pulling at the tufted end of his mustache. "My mother's the Volga, my father's the steppe. Aye, child, the steppe where Satan pastures his steeds. When they rush past in the night, sparks fly from their hoofs that beat thunder out of the earth. Then there is a storm-eh, such a storm!"

He stroked her head, and put his arm around her, drawing her against his shoulder. Azadi sighed with content. When he kissed her ear and then her throat, she closed her eyes. "What manner of girl art thou?" he wondered.

"I know not," she said simply. And then, eagerly, "Thy slave-I am thy slave. If harm comes to thee, I shall suffer." She knew that now, beyond doubt. "Listen, Lord Sokol! Now I must go. But if-if they offer thee a new torment, take it. Do not fear."

Surprised, he stared after her, as she adjusted her veil and slipped away with a backward glance that caressed him.

That night the Sultan sat late with some officers in the kiosk outside the Gate of the Birds. There were lanterns hung in the kiosk, although the outer garden was dark. Mute servitors came and went with trays.

But no one saw the dark figure of the girl that crept closer to the marble fretwork of the kiosk, listening there until it rose to run forward and fling itself down, trembling hands clasping the Sultan's bare feet.

Startled, Ibrahim looked first to make certain that she had no weapon; then he raised her head to see if he knew her.

Azadi, half dazed by her own presumption, seized the instant to cry out before they could send her off to a lashing. "Hear, 0 Lord of Islam, a message. This slave hath been with the Kozaki giaour."

In surprise, Ibrahim considered her. "Eh, then say," he urged. "What message is this?"

Carefully Azadi had thought it out, praying that she would have courage enough to say it all to the Sultan.

"0 Commander of the Faith-" she forgot the long list of his titles and hurried on desperately, "I have found out that the Cossack is a magician. Tomorrow he will not feel pain. Aye, he will laugh at the flayers and mock thy beard. Yet he is afraid-"

"Thou art Tatar born?"

"Aye, so."

The Sultan knew that Tatars understood many secrets of magic; their conjurers had often caused him trouble. "He is afraid of dogs," Azadi hastened on. "The Favored of Allah may defeat his magic with dogs. Let the accursed unbeliever be taken out and put in front of the hunting pack-"

"Who sent thee to say this?"

"Allah be witness, no one." Azadi's sincerity was beyond doubt. "I have just come from his cell, to give this warning to the Exalted of Allah. The Cossack will run-any man must run from the hounds; then may the Dispenser of Mercy hunt him down like a wild boar-"

"Be silent, thou."

Azadi lay passive while the Sultan pondered. If there was one thing Ibrahim craved above all others, it was hunting. Especially when he was out of humor. That day the Cossack had defied him, and Ibrahim felt that it would be pleasant to watch the man fleeing before the dogs-the Cossack could not mock him then.

He clapped his hands and gave an order to the mute who appeared. "Wake the Master of the Horse. Have him here. And do thou-" he turned to an officer-"order the Agha of the janissaries to lead out his men to the forest. Clear the wood beyond the hunting lodge, and post the ring of riders, as with a boar. And thou-" he glanced down curiously at Azadi, fearful that she would beg a reward-"thou hast leave to go."

Without a word the girl backed to the entrance, lifted hand to forehead, lips, and breast, and turned away into the darkness.

She had taken only a few paces when a hand gripped her shoulder, and an angry voice hissed: "She-devil-shameless one! No command was given thee to go to the Cossack. What hast thou done?"

Azadi recognized the voice of the Kislar Agha, and shivered with the dread that she would be locked up for her presumption. She must not be locked up because it was necessary, now, for her to escape from the palace.

"A trick!" She forced a giggle, and added triumphantly, "It was all a jest of mine. Let me go free and I will say nothing of it. I want to go away from all of you, to my own people."

"Thou wilt go now, this night, and keep a rein on thy tongue?"

"If thou wilt give me gold enough to buy a horse," assented the girl.

"Then, by Allah, it shall be so."

He went himself with Azadi to her room and watched her do up a bundle into which she thrust some of the treasures of her chest. Over her garments she drew a plain dark veil-dress. She bent down to stroke the sleeping cat, and followed the Kislar Agha silently into the darkness.

By then it was early morning and the palace slept-except for the few sentries, who did not cast a second glance at the KislarAgha, followed by a woman in serving dress carrying a bundle.

At the last courtyard, the Kislar Agha turned aside to a postern door, unlocking it with a key from his girdle. When he peered out he saw no human being except a beggar curled up against the wall.

Azadi stepped into the street warily. Thrusting his hand into his wallet, the officer drew out a fistful of coins. Azadi gripped them tight. Then, picking up her bundle, she ran into the street toward a mosque, outlined against the stars by its lofty minarets. But the Kislar Agha touched the beggar on the shoulder. "Thou, Hassan-follow her, and send word to me at the noon prayer."

The tattered form that had appeared to be a blind beggar rose and vanished after Azadi, into the night.

At the noon hour Azadi was riding beyond the walls of Constantinople toward a wood.

When bands of the Sultan's riders appeared in the distance, driving the peasants away from the wood, she urged her horse down into a gully and followed the course of a stream toward the nearest trees, praying that she would not be seen. She had not thought that the Sultan's cavalry would clear the fields near the hunting lodge hours before Ibrahim's coming. Still, it gave her hope that the Sultan was really going to hunt, as he had said the night before.

When she entered the wood at last she sighed thankfully and began to make her way toward the lodge that had been pointed out to her from the city wall. She searched until she found a knoll overlooking the path that led out into the meadows, toward the hunting lodge, a long musket shot away. She knew it must be the lodge because already mounted soldiers and grooms were busied there. Hidden by brush, she could sit on the knoll and watch, while the horse pulled leaves from the bushes and chewed them.

Azadi studied the horse dubiously, wondering if he were really as strong and swift as the dealer from whom she bought him hastily at sunrise had sworn on the Koran that he was, beyond any doubt. He was big enough, but his bones showed strangely through his skin, and he seemed to stand always on three legs except when he lowered his head and wheezed.

Getting a clean cloth from her bundle, Azadi knelt upon it, arranging some of her trinket charms on its edge, and facing toward the southeast.

"Yah Allah," she prayed, "0 God, grant that this horse be swift as the wind. And grant that he will come this way, along the path."

Then, when the afternoon was near its end, she heard the yelping hounds. Men crowded around the distant lodge. They formed in a long line, facing the meadow and the wood.

In front of them appeared the hunting dogs held on leashes-a score of them. Then the Sultan rode up on a white horse, his lofty turban with the three nodding plumes rising above the nobles who followed him. Everything was in readiness, as often before when a giant boar had been loosed, to race toward the wood.

But now a man was led out before the horsemen, the Cossack ataman, bareheaded, in his shirt sleeves. Across the meadow came the sharp beat of kettle-drums. For an instant Sokol looked around. He began to run toward the wood, following the path, slowly at first.

Halfway to the nearest trees he quickened his pace. And Azadi started down the knoll toward the path, dragging the horse after her. Hastening through the brush, she tugged at the rein. She sprang down into the path, and cried out in dismay.

Between the trees on the other side of the trail appeared three men. One was the Kislar Agha on a great black horse, a drawn scimitar in his hand; another was the dealer from whom she had bought the horse, and the third the beggar of the palace gate.

"Little fool," said the Kislar Agha pleasantly. "So this was thy trick-to plot against thy Sultan?" He reined the charger at her swiftly. "Now, instead of gold, thou shalt taste steel-"

Azadi shrank back. Behind her the bony horse wheezed. The curved blade of the scimitar glittered in the sunlight. But the Kislar Agha turned his head, surprised. From far off came the baying of hounds on a scent. And down the path bounded a tall figure, clearing rocks, sweeping through the brush. The Cossack was panting and running as a man only runs from the pursuit of beasts.