The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire (28 page)

“Heart is not something that comes with training, but I shall respect your opinion.”

“If it is a mare you require, let me show you others. I have acquired many foreign horses as gifts from diplomats. I have crossbred them with our Turkish horses and have many strong, big-hearted horses, including mares. But I will tell you now, there is no horse in the Empire who will carry more honor on the cirit field than this stallion—except your own mare, Peri.”

The janissary’s heart fell when he heard his horse’s name.

“This stallion is called, ‘Sultan’s Choice,’ ” continued the groom.

“Sultan’s Choice? What name is that for a horse?”

The Head Groom spat on the stone floor, leaving a glistening spot in the dust.

“This horse was named before he reached Stamboul. It is a British name, and the Sultane has ordered us to use it so as not to offend the ambassador. Here, come! I shall show you some Turkish horses with more appropriate names, horses you can fight on without shame.”

After inspecting over thirty horses, Ivan Postivich settled on three, the stallion Sultan’s Choice, and two crossbreed mares as reserves.

“Tack them up,” he said. “I shall test their agility and temperament. Send your best grooms to the field and we will set up a practice so that I may put this beast to the test.”

The grooms, who stood listening in different corners of the stables, descended upon their master, begging for a chance to ride with or against the giant.

“By all that is good and right under Allah, you should choose me!”

“No, me! I have dreamt of the chance to play with the giant. I have followed all his games since I was a babe in the arms of my mother.”

“No, me! Who devotes more time to the horses than I?”

The Head Groom ignored their pleas and chose ten grooms. Six on each team would suffice to test the horses, with Ahmed Kadir being one captain and he the other.

The Head Groom rode the stallion first, in a trot around the stable grounds. With a firm seat and hand he engaged the horse, ensuring that the animal knew that he was expected to perform and not to lose his head to the mares who would accompany him to the field. When the mares and geldings were tacked and also circled the stable field, Ahmed saw the great beast lower a callused black penis at the mares who neighed wildly to him.

“This is the test,” he said and watched the horseman’s reaction.

The stallion bunched up his neck and kicked out in frustration at the rider’s grip on the reins. His nostrils flared and a bellowing snort spreaded wet mucus in a fine spray. He kicked sideways and threw his powerful neck in the direction of the nearest mare who whinnied hysterically in his direction. His penis began to quicken and soon stuck straight out like an iron rod.

Ivan Postivich shouted, “Let me ride him now.”

The stallion was quivering with excitement. The Head Groom called to Postivich, “Let me ride him a minute more to settle him down.”

“Get down!” shouted the janissary.

The groom nodded and took a deep breath.

“
Kus! Kus!”
he shouted, trying to get the horse to stop. As he dismounted the stallion reared and pulled back, fighting desperately to get to the mares who circled the pasture. His sharp hooves flew out at the men who held him, but they jumped away from the deadly front feet.

“Give me your whip,” said Postivich. “Hold this brute long enough for me to throw my leg over him.”

The groom handed him the whip and held the reins. The stallion’s eyes were ringed in white and he twisted his powerful neck to keep his eye on the mares, ignoring the men who pulled at his head, cursing him as they struggled.

“It is too dangerous when he is in this state,” shouted the Head Groom.

“Leave him in my hands,” said Postivich. “Stallions are all cursed.”

The janissary threw his leg over the horse and the stallion reared straight up. Postivich had to cling to the horse’s long mane to pull himself into the saddle.

“Allah curse you,” he shouted as the stallion tried to buck. Postivich yanked the reins high in the air, pulling the horse’s head up so he could not lift his hindquarters to throw his rider. “This is why I hate stallions!”

Postivich raised his whip high in the air and brought it down hard against the horse’s flanks. The stallion bolted. Instead of reining him in, the janissary sliced the whip through the air again, stinging the stallion’s rump with the leather cord and giving him his head.

The grooms on the mares watched the stallion fly across the pasture, his rider leaning forward, grinning into the wind, bellowing curses and praising Allah in a mix of Turkish and Serbo-Croat, as he raced the horse faster and faster across the field.

At last Postivich pulled the stallion into small cantering circles and motioned to the others to follow him to the cirit field below the walls of the Topkapi.

“His attention will not be diverted now,” he called to the others. “The lustiest mare in the Ottoman Empire could raise her tail to him and his organ would remain as tight in its sheath as a eunuch in winter.”

The grooms roared in laughter and reined their horses towards the field, carrying the jereeds in their hands and feigning battle cries. The cypress and plane trees that lined the road were powdered in their dust as they galloped.

By the time they reached the cirit field, the stallion had lathered up so hot from his excitement and the gallop that white stockings laced his black legs in sweaty foam.

The bunched neck and tense muscles were relaxed now, but Postivich took the precaution of riding him to the far end of the green field, away from the mares. He tied the stallion to the branches of a plane tree, the animal still bellowing.

A barefooted groom came running across the immaculate turf, his ragged clothes flapping.

“Ahmed Kadir, I will attend to your horse,” he said, gasping for air.

Postivich nodded. He wanted to inspect the grounds on foot. Cirit called for quick turns at a gallop, a rider needed to know the condition of the turf and footing.

The field was clipped and freshly irrigated. The loam would be moist but not wet for tomorrow’s games. Servants were walking the field, hunting for holes and hidden stones that might bruise the hoof of a valuable horse.

Postivich walked the perimeter and then made serpentines across the grass, his feet memorizing the turf. It was satisfactory. He had played cirit in all conditions and what was battle except a cirit game with life as a prize and death to the loser?

The janissary remounted the stallion and called for the jereed spears. The teams faced each other, separated by a hundred paces. The youngest rider, a groom named Abdul, rode out past the center of the field and as he neared the opposing side, he threw his jereed at the Head Groom.

The Head Groom dodged the spear, reining his horse sharply to the right at a quick gallop and diving low below the saddle. He immediately straightened as his horse flew down the field in pursuit of Abdul, closing the gap quickly. He flung his blunt-ended spear at the boy, catching him between the shoulder blades.

“Score!” he crowed, but his laugh was cut short as a second groom, older and more experienced, galloped out as soon as Abdul crossed back into his team’s territory.

The Head Groom spun his horse around and raced back to his team, the Turkish boy in pursuit. The rider threw his jereed, but it missed narrowly, sliding over the Head Groom’s back as he flattened himself against the saddle.

Postivich was the last to ride. He spurred his stallion the instant the jereed left the hand of the opposing rider, and before the player had time to finish his turn towards the safety of his team, the janissary’s jereed stuck him hard in the small of his back.

He howled in pain, though the stick was too blunt to pierce his flesh.

“Move more quickly next time,” yelled Postivich, and he circled his horse, changing leads in midgallop, racing back to his team before his opponent had time to pursue him.

The grooms nodded to one another, for they had seen how accurate the giant’s aim was and the ease with which he commanded his horse. And they could see he was not really trying, but only testing the stallion, running him through his paces.

“I propose another game,” said the janissary, reining in the stallion. “My horse and I against all of you using the entire field. You come at me in twos, allow me sanctuary when I cross my line.”

“This is a mockery!” cried a swarthy youth whom Postivich had recognized earlier as a skillful rider. “No man can challenge an entire team.”

“Consider it my Serbian ignorance,” said Postivich. “I want to see how much stamina and intelligence this stallion really has.”

The grooms nodded and the Head Groom had them file back into their rows in twos to take on the giant. The Head Groom took the first turn, reining his prancing mare into the ready position.

“Ready?” said Postivich, reining his horse out to the center of the field. His horse charged forward at a gallop and before the grooms could realize what had happened, a jereed slammed against the Head Groom’s chest.

Two horsemen raced after Postivich, but the stallion was too quick and he crossed the line into sanctuary and immediately circled his horse, a flying change of leads that gave advantage to the stallion, closing the distance on the retreating players.

Two jereeds hit their mark, squarely between the shoulder blades of the grooms.

After thirty minutes of play, the horses stood quivering and the grooms licked their lips, struggling with the dryness of their mouths.

“Enough!” said Postivich. “I will ride this stallion tomorrow and take the Head Groom’s mare as back up. She has an admirable intelligence about her and a sure foot, I can see this without riding her.”

The grooms, their faces streaked with dirty sweat, noticed that the giant was dry faced and content, a smile creasing his face. He leaned over and slapped his sweating horse on the chest with the blade of his giant hand, grateful for a chance to compete at cirit once again.

But the cirit play was not unnoticed and within minutes the Sultan knew of the game. He pushed past his guards to the top of the walls and looked down
on the players. In less than a second he recognized the huge stature of Ahmed Kadir and cursed him aloud.

The Grand Vizier made his way up the steps, panting hard.

“My Sultan! What is it?”

“That traitor Ahmed Kadir, banished from the Kapikulu Cavalry, has the nerve to appear on the royal cirit fields!”

The Vizier, long accustomed to Mahmud’s outbursts, recovered his breath. Then he counseled the Sultan.

“I believe that you banished him from the Kapikulu Orta, Sultan. It was not mentioned that he could never ride a horse or play cirit.”

“Whose horses are they, if they are not mine! All the Kapikulus ride my mounts! I will have his head.”

The Vizier drew in a breath and strained his eyes towards the field. “I do not know all four thousand of your horses, of course,” he said. “But I venture a guess that these are horses of your sister Esma Sultan’s stables. Is she not staging the cirit tournament in honor of your birthday tomorrow?”

Mahmud pulled at his beard.

“There is no woman more traitorous than a sister,” he said. “Especially when she has her own harem and stable!”

“What a buffoonish crew!” laughed the Vizier, squinting his eyes. “Those are common stable boys playing cirit with the giant! What an insult to a great corbaci of the Kapikulu to have fallen so low!”

Mahmud stopped plucking at his beard and smiled at his Grand Vizier.

“Yes, what a delicious insult, my good Vizier! Now I remember why I chose you as my most trusted consultant.”

When he got back to the palace, Ivan Postivich had to pick his way through the wagons and carts full of food and provisions for the celebration the next day. There was a great deal of swearing as the workmen unloaded heavy crates of live fowl that pecked viciously at them when they picked up the cages.

“May Allah curse your gizzards!” growled a Turk, kicking at a hissing goose who had ripped a strip of flesh off his fingers. The rest of the workmen laughed at the bleeding man until they too were pecked and howled curses to Allah in turn.

The bakers and cooks supervised the deliverymen, finding little virtue in their work.

“You are damaging the goods! Look how your dirty peasant hands have crushed that precious head of lettuce! You buffoon, don’t you know the price of these provisions? They are worth ten of your lives put together.”

“Where is the cream! The sun will ruin it! You must put the cream in the cooling pantry at once before it curdles. We shall never buy another drop of milk from your dairy if my yoghurt is ruined from your laziness.”

The gates of the palace were opened wider for a flock of sheep, driven by a dozen barefoot boys. The sheep droppings were immediately swept up by a team of handsome pages. Looking too beautiful to perform such a menial task, they pushed the excrement off the cobblestones and into the gutters and sluiced the courtyard with water from silver buckets.

The deliverymen stopped, despite the curses of the various cooks and eunuchs, to regard the boys, for they were as fine as the harem itself.