The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire (29 page)

As one fair-haired youth bent down with a scrub brush to clean the stones, a burly driver whistled at him from the wagon. The workmen laughed and jeered at the comely youth who straightened up and threw a handful of sheep dung at them.

Another man touched himself, gesturing lewdly at the male servants.

“Stop that vulgarity this instant or we shall never buy again from your master’s stall. He and you both shall be bankrupt and begging for soup at Aya Sofya!” shouted a woman’s voice, as clear as the muezzin’s call. It was Nazip, Esma Sultan’s favorite servant, her face uncovered and her freckled cheeks red with indignation.

The men stood still, frozen the second they saw the bare face of the beautiful Nazip. With hands in midair, or geese pecking their numb fingers, they stood immobile before her beauty.

She spat in their direction. Looking them in the eye, she delicately removed the traces of spittle from her lips with a lace handkerchief before returning to the interior of the palace.

“To work, you brutes,” shouted the Greek cook Maria through her yasmak. She was a large, fat woman who seemed as wide as the wagons and her voice bellowed through her thin veil. “You cursed issue of whores, dream of impossibilities on your own time!” she shouted. “Your hands to the task, you have no time to fondle yourselves!”

A boy whispered, “Has a woman ever dared to say something so vulgar to a man?”

The Turk next to him said, “In the privacy of the home, I cannot pretend that such slurs are not heard.” He threw down another melon to the boy. “Just pray to Allah that this fat one doesn’t remove her yasmak!”

On the other side of the palace, the ice man and his crew were unloading snow and ice from their barge, cold treasures shipped all the way from the mountains of Greece. The sherbets of Esma Sultan’s kitchen were held in high regard throughout Asia and Europe; they were flavored with lemon and almond, ripe melons, rhubarb, roses, pistachio essence, and incenses of the Orient. It was whispered that those who visited her privately in her harem were given the ultimate sherbet—a fantasy-inducing concoction of coconut, ambergris, and cream, laced with opium.

There was a fleet of barges on the Bosphorus, full of red and yellow silks, candles, incense, perfumes, and precious spices. A small British ship raised hazardous waves as it pulled close to the docks to deliver crates of French champagne. Curses echoed across the water as the merchants fought for dock space to deliver their wares.

“You spawn of a Greek whore,” shouted the British sea captain in passable Turkish. “Move your dung carriers out of the way; we have fine wines to deliver.”

“Keep your infidel hands on your own dirty genitals and bide your time!” shouted back the Turks as they moored their boats to the dock and unloaded their goods. “We were here first, you miserable wart on a toad’s rump!”

There was a splash as the British ship’s first mate dived into the water and swam towards the Turks. Within seconds he was on the dock, still blinking back the saltwater when a Turkish workman took a swing at him. The Englishman ducked, then countered with a punch to the Turk’s stomach and followed up by bloodying his nose.

“Teach the dirty Turk a lesson, Charlie,” shouted the captain, he and his crew hooting and cheering at the fight.

The Turk had turned to vomit, his stomach convulsing from the hit. But without pausing to wipe the spittle from his mouth, he spun around and came at the first mate with a knife, blade flashing in the morning sun.

The Brit pulled out his own blade and circled the Turk on the splintered boards of the dock. The air filled with roars in a mixture of half a dozen languages, attracting the Solaks who stood guard nearby.

“Put down your knives,” shouted the commander, pushing through the crowd that had quickly gathered. He raised his scimitar high. “Put down your weapons or I’ll send your heads to Topkapi!”

The Turk understood the threat and threw down his knife, gesturing to his opponent with an open hand to do the same. The Brit stood bewildered, his dagger still tight in his fist.

“What’s the bloke say?”

“He says, throw down your knife!” said a sunburnt sailor with a wandering eye. “Throw down the bloody knife, Charlie or the Sultan will put your head on a bloody stake!”

The first mate kept his eyes on the Turk and the Solak.

“If I put down the knife,” he shouted over his shoulder, “is ’e coming after me with that crooked sword of’ is?”

“If you don’t put down the knife they will all come after you, you idiot. Throw down the knife and be done with it.”

Charlie looked at them warily and threw his blade down onto the dock, so that it stuck quivering in the warped grey planks.

The Solak retrieved the knife and grunted for the workers to continue their work under his watch and scimitar.

“Bloody Turks,” muttered the captain as he moored his boat against Esma Sultan’s docks.

The palace was in an uproar. Everywhere Irena looked there were people carrying cases of food and wine, arranging flowers, cleaning the carpets with long rakes. The rich smells from the kitchen wafted over the grounds and made her mouth water.

Esma Sultan strode about, scrutinizing the work, and pointing out faults. It was clear from her imperious tone that she would not accept anything but the highest standard.

“What horse did he choose?” Irena asked her mistress.

“Your favorite, of course,” she smiled. “Like sister, like brother.”

Irena clasped her hands together like a little girl, thinking that of the hundreds of horses in the stables, Ivan would be riding Sultan’s Choice. He rode mares, almost exclusively, but the challenge and potential of the stallion had won him over.

“I knew it,” she said.

The servant women were aflutter, quarreling and nervous, energized and jubilant. Men sweated and cursed under heavy loads and the entry hall smelled
of cold seawater and fresh oysters, plucked from the Baltic and held in huge metal tanks.

It had been many months since Irena had seen a cirit tournament and now she was more excited than ever. To see her brother finally in his rightful place—on the back of a horse—made her flesh prickle with excitement.

Esma Sultan’s face was radiant. There was not even a shadow of the illness she had so recently experienced.

“God be praised,” thought Irena. Her brother had restored Esma Sultan’s health and given her back her spirit—enough to needle and bait Mahmud, as she always had. Irena had never seen her so jubilant.

I
t was the third night in a row that Ivan Postivich had not been summoned to the chambers of Esma Sultan and he paced the gardens. It was the second night that servants other than Emerald had attended him in the hamam. He had not seen the soft-bodied eunuch at all.

Saffron at last appeared, his white turban atop his black head floating like a disembodied skull in the night.

“Ahmed Kadir, rest for tomorrow’s game. The Princess sleeps tranquilly, her face content with gentle dreams. She does not need you tonight.”

Ivan Postivich nodded stiffly. The eunuch looked at the janissary’s face.

“What’s this, janissary? Do I see disappointment in your face?”

Ivan Postivich hardened his mouth.

“Disappointment? To be relieved of my duty so that I can visit the taverns that beckon, the whores who have not seen my face in a month? I will be disappointed not to perform my duty to the Princess when pigs climb poplar trees!”

The eunuch did not smile.

“Do not forget whom you serve, janissary. Any male who sees Esma Sultan as anything other than a noble Ottoman Princess will be condemned to death. I beg you not to forget this even if some night it escapes the Sultane’s mind.”

Ivan Postivich turned to walk away and called over his shoulder.

“I cannot stop to prattle, Saffron. Excuse me, but there are cups of wine to be drunk and fat whores to caress.” He strode off, gritting his teeth.

The ferryman took Postivich across the Golden Horn to Galata, where the lights of the taverns flickered an invitation across the calm water.

The streets reeked of cheap wine, fried oysters, garlic, grilled eggplant, and olive oil. Christians and Jews stood outside each tavern, calling to the passersby in urgent tones, bragging of the quantities and good value of the wines and of the beauty of the boys who danced in veils within.

Most of the customers inside the sordid taverns were Janissaries. The rooms reeked of stale drink and dirty, sweating men.

Ivan Postivich chose an establishment and the bearded men at the doorway eagerly ushered him into the dark. A Greek boy motioned to a table.

“Fetch me a
boza
,” said Postivich remembering his cirit match.

The Greek waiter hurried back with a foaming glass of boza, a beer with little or no alcohol. He set a little bowl of pistachios in front of the janissary and then disappeared to serve another customer.

Postivich rarely visited the taverns these days. He had come to find the conduct of the Janissaries bordering on barbarous, making his stomach tighten in revulsion. He frowned upon the boys dressed in women’s silks, and scowled as they practiced the art of flirtation, tugging at his tunic sleeves to capture hiseye.

“Away!” he said, shaking one off. He threw up his elbow abruptly, gesturing to the peach-veiled boy to leave him alone.

The boy shrugged but didn’t miss a beat, shaking his hips and flat abdomen at a group of Janissaries next to the giant. They were eager to watch his dance and rewarded his long groping fingers with coins.

The beautiful creatures made fools of the drunken soldiers who lusted after them. While he did not find the boys attractive, Postivich understood how the lascivious moves and veiled faces provoked even the women-loving men. But to hear the soldiers call out lewdly and grope another man’s genitals in public made him turn away in disgust for their betrayal of the dignity of the Janissary Corps and its old, but threadbare honor.

“It comes from sequestering women from men,” said a Bektashi, who had
slipped—determined and unnoticed—through the crowd and taken a seat—uninvited—at the janissary’s table. “We Sufis believe in the inclusion of women. There will always be men who love men, but the situation is exaggerated when there is no real choice. For a woman to dance like this in public would cause a stoning, but a boy? Nothing. So the hypocritical traditions of the Sunnis and Shi’ites keep women caged like prize dogs in heat.”

He took a long draw on his opium pipe. “Come to our tekke lodge and I will show you real women, my friend,” winked the dervish. “Ones who know how to love a man without veils and witchery, but with her heart.”

The janissary continued to eat his pistachios, considering the dervish’s words.

“You are Ahmed Kadir,” the dervish said after a minute, not asking a question but stating a fact from the depths of his stupor.

“I am,” said Postivich, drinking his boza and cracking another pistachio between his teeth.

“The giant,” said the dervish, rocking his head. “The Kapikulu cavalryman who no longer rides, by order of the Sultan.”

Ivan Postivich turned to spit the shell on the floor, already littered with trash and wet sawdust. He knew better than to waste his breath on another intoxicated Sufi but answered him anyway.

“Tomorrow you can see me ride again, Dervish. I shall play cirit at Topkapi for Esma Sultan with my part of my orta.”

“Esma Sultan,” cooed the Sufi, his hand raised laconically in the air. “Esma Sultan. She cools her lovers with the midnight waters of the Bosphorus. Are you not her drowning guard, Corbaci?”

Ivan Postivich resisted the urge to strike the dervish.

“I no longer have that honor.”

“Oh, yes,” said the dervish, his eyes wide, but unfocused. “They say she confesses her sins to you every night. You soothe her soul and she has drowned no one in over a month. Some say you are her priest. Some say you are her lover.”

“And who would ‘some’ be?”

“Those who might know, those who also serve the Sultaness. But understand me, janissary, I have no use for gossip but much use for love. It is in love that we find the godliness within ourselves and others. This is the ultimate act of Sufism, to convene with our god and maker.”