The Lake of Sorrows (20 page)

“For whom?”

Finally, the captain could make out a shadowy figure by the bed. A stray flicker of torchlight revealed Alhi sitting on the bed, half-lost in contemplation of a small object in his large hand.

The captain drew a deep breath. “Yulebahar is bleeding badly. So badly that few people think she will make it through the night.”

Alhi’s answer came in a detached, absent-minded voice. “Poison?”

“Most likely. Poor soul. She did not manage to avoid the envy of her peers in the harem. Murdering, jealous bitches, the lot of them!” There was true acrimony in the captain’s voice.

His Pasha’s was still oddly quiet and detached. “I would have been surprised if noone had tried to murder her.”

“It is revolting. Killing is a man’s job! And killing a silly, defenseless girl is … “

“Something only a woman could think of?” Alhi had risen from the bed and walked over to his captain. Now he put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Poor Tahir. Like all men, when you meet a comely woman, you see her as the soul of gentleness and kindness. You want to lose yourself in her eyes and feel like a small boy being held by his mother.”

Alhi half-turned, seemingly addressing some other person in the room, although Tahir’s eyes were now sufficiently accustomed to the darkness to tell him noone else was there. “But women are not like that at all, are they? Even while they hold you for the very first time, they are only thinking of how they can make that little boy of theirs into a such a fiend that he will make all other men cower before him. A wise decision by Allah. How else could a man be safe? But somehow He forgot to make us stop dreaming of kind and gentle women.”

The sudden, intense yearning in Alhi’s voice made icy tendrils snake up and down Tahir’s back. He stole a glance at the small object in his Pasha’s hand; it was a miniature, and a fine likeness at that, of that temptress Vassiliou woman! He surmised the miniature was one of those presented as gifts to the friends and family of Dimitros Vassiliou at his wedding, a gesture so costly all of Yannina had talked about it, not without snickering a bit at the youthful pride that the newly-wedded husband displayed by his act. The captain wondered who among those friends and family members had betrayed the merchant so - assuming they had given up the miniature to the Pasha willingly.

Alhi suddenly tore himself out of his reverie and tossed the miniature onto a table. “Tell Karayannis to come to me and let me know all about Yulebahar, no matter how late it is. I trust you, Tahir, to find the one who did this. Swiftly.”

“I have already begun searching, my Pasha. Trying to kill a woman pregnant with your child is the worst personal offense against one’s Pasha!” He drew himself up to his full height and thumped a fist against his chest. “I will interrogate the entire harem one by one immediately, eunuchs included. I will find out who were her confidantes. The one who poisoned her must be someone close to her, someone she trusted. She was not
that
gullible.”

“Do what you have to do, Tahir. Just do not forget to tell the doctor to keep me informed.”

Alhi dismissed him with a curt nod. On his way out the door, the captain stole another glance at his master. Alhi had picked up the miniature again. Something in the way he looked at it made Tahir mutter woefully to himself. “Merciful Allah, could you not have settled for letting that Vassiliou siren bewitch only the son
or
the father? Did you really have to let her ensnare them
both?
”

“I
will have her on the bottom of my lake before dawn. And that silly boy of the peddler woman’s — I will make our little Shouhrae a gift of his heart! And of his manhood, too!”

Shouhrae, cold and shivering, had been caught trying to slip past the guards in the harem garden. Tahir’s interrogation had been little more than a perfunctory belting and a few shouted questions, and the truth had come out in a torrent of tears. And she was Yulebahar’s friend, the only one the poisoned girl had trusted! Tahir had brought her before the Pasha in the audience hall, where her repeated confession had been so flooded by tears that Eminee had been summoned to make sense of it. Before long, Alhi had lost his last ounce of patience and ordered the guard captain to throw the weeping girl into the dungeon.

Now his rage thundered off the walls of the cavernous chamber. The few, hastily-lit torches made the Pasha throw giant shadows on the walls as he paced to and fro, clawing at empty air.

Eminee trembled, but stood her ground nonetheless. “They are both silly, my master. Children in love. You do not kill children for being what they are. You scold them, punish them, perhaps - but kill them? That is unworthy of a Pasha. Harshness to the harmless is a sign of … weakness.”

Alhi spun like a wounded beast turning on the hunter. “Oh, is it, now? So I should just pat her on the head and say ‘shame’, should I?” He lashed out, sending his heavy throne crashing to the marble floor. “And can you hear the citizens of Yannina snickering in the taverns and the bazaar? ‘When our Pasha was young, those who had been so stupid as to insult him prayed to Allah he would do nothing more than take their heads. Now his little harem girls sneak in pretty boys at night, to lie with behind his back.’ How long do you think I would remain Pasha when those snickers reached the Sultan? He made me Pasha because I make men tremble, not laugh!”

“The citizens of Yannina know nothing of this and I will see that noone in the harem will remember this tomorrow. Please, my master — two dim-witted children’s little tryst that was not even that. Why do you — “

“The times you women chose for your dalliances! I am going to war, in Allah’s name and Christ’s, too. I cannot spare the time to deal with such frivolous things at this crucial moment.” He jabbed a finger at Eminee. “How on Earth did that little fool lose her mind over a Christian? And how did
he
manage to get himself into the harem to frolic with her, right under your nose?”

Outrage crowded out Eminee’s fear for a moment. “He did not frolic. He did not even set foot in the harem. No outsider ever did! And she is still a virgin. She just knew the boy before she was brought here.”

Alhi spat on the marble. “I do not care if she is young or in love or has opened her legs to the brat or not! This is not a matter of adultery, but of treason. She has sullied my name. She will make an example for everybody else. To the lake with her, but you are right in one respect — not now. It should be in daytime. For everyone to see and remember how treason against the Pasha of Hyperus is punished. They call me the Beast and I will give them a reminder why. One they will not forget in a long time.”

“Please, my master. Reconsider. She had nothing to do with the poisoning.”

He kicked the throne like an ill-tempered goatherd might his dog. “And the poisoning has nothing to do with why she is for the lake!”

“Yulebahar is recovering and the baby is safe, too. You have another son, from a mother young enough to bear you many more. Karayannis reassured you it was so. Allah has let two children live — could you not do the same?”

“Out of this room this instant, woman! Before I charge
you
with conspiring against me, too. You knew what was going on between that little whore and her pretty-boy stud, yet you never told me.”

“I knew you would fly into this rage. I wanted to protect them. And you.”

“You are my eyes and ears in the harem, and you call this to protect
me
, not my enemies? If I cannot trust you, who
can
I ever trust? How many more spies do I need to avoid such humiliations, Allah? I am already paying so many informants that my treasury is echoing with its own emptiness.”

“Your treasury is groaning under the weight of its fat coffers!”

He did not deign to hear her. “Coming to think of it, for all we know, this Alexis brat may be a spy himself. For the rebel Greeks. They grow like weeds nowadays. Independence!”

Alhi stopped his restless stomping in front of a bust of Napoleon that Roche had presented to him. “You may have a brilliant mind, Bonaparte, but oh, the damage you have done with those grandiloquent speeches of yours. Liberty? Brotherhood? Equality? As if all men were born the same, or would even know what to do with their petty little lives without a ruler to tell them. Oh, I know you need your pretty songs, to drive your soldiers to charge right into grape and bayonet. But sooner or later - make that ‘sooner’ - every tin-pot, would-be King or Pasha will be feeding his followers the same drivel, for the same ends.
I,
at least, feed them gold for their blood.”

With a snarl, he snatched up the bust and raised it high over his head - then snarled again, now at himself and slammed the thing back down on its pedestal. “No! Rake or spy, or both, little Alexis will be nailed to the palace gate, less his head and his manhood. And little Shouhrae’s next tryst will be with the dungeon-keeper.”

“That blood-thirsty degenerate? My master - my husband. I implore you. This is fear speaking. Fear that your back is unprotected. It is not, it never was, as long as I have been your wife. And I will never — “

“Fear?” Eyes blazing, he spun and cuffed her viciously. “You are speaking of the Lion of Hyperus, damn you! Go away, woman and send me Tahir. Now!”

Eminee fled, sobbing unashamedly.

Alhi stood motionless in the flickering torch-light for a long time. Then he smashed the Bonaparte bust after all.

“T
raveling seems to agree with you, my son. You look much more …
sane
than when you left.”

Muhtar did not answer his father. They were strolling along the parapets of the palace walls, Muhtar still in full military garb, dusty from a long ride. He had returned from Souli as fast as the ablest courier in Alhi’s army could have done. Behind them, at a respectful distance, walked Alhi’s commanders, eager to hear the Souliotes’ reply and equally eager not to vex their Pasha; his mood had been like the skies above Yannina of late. The storm could still be smelt in the air and although the sun now shone from a cloudless sky, old and wise citizens of Yannina had left their shutters in place.

“The captains of Souli have decided to help you, father. However, not as you expected.”

“Always expect the unexpected with the Souliotes. Those brigands never do what you want them to. What did they have up their sleeves this time?”

“Captain Zavellas will come soon, in time before you leave. But with just two hundred men. He will tell you that these are enough, as they are Souliotes. To them, a Souliote is equal to ten men of any other army.”

“Arrogant and proud to the bone, that’s our Zavellas. Yet he is somehow right. Two hundred Souliotes less for us to fight in their own rocky backyard is better than nothing. Considerably better.”

Muhtar nodded grimly. Generations of Pashas and Beys had tried to conquer the Souliotes and the bones of those Pashas’ and Beys’ armies were now dust among the craggy mountains of the Souliote Confederacy.

“What about their other captain? Botsaris? He was always the suspicious one.”

“He was very skeptical and reluctant to accept. But Zavellas’ decision made up Botsaris’ mind, too — he will stay in Souli.”

“I am not surprised. Botsaris is far more devious. I was counting on Zavellas’ bullheadedness. He did not prove me wrong. Any idea about whom among his men he will bring to our proposed little campaign to the North?”

“Young men, mostly, eager for gold and glory. His son, Fotos, for one. Just turned sixteen and I could not help but smile at the idea of him in battle. But captain Zavellas insists he is a full-grown man and a Souliote soldier.”

Alhi scowled at his son. “I killed my first man when I was but twelve years old, Muhtar. Stabbed him in the back one dark night and took his goats. No, do not give me that revolted look. Your forefathers were goatherds and thieves who lived by the knife — those that survived were more cunning and ruthless than the rest, and that is why you are the son of a Pasha today. And as the son of a Pasha, you must learn to show only the right emotion at the right moment, real or pretended. Your mirth could have infuriated the captain so much he kept the boy at home, or maybe all of his warriors. Having his first-born within our reach will be most convenient. But how would you recognize an opportunity even right in front of your face?” Alhi shook his head. “Your mind explores no other thoughts lately than those about this lady Froshenie, is that not so?”

Muhtar pointedly stared down at the city. “Not any more! Froshenie has gone away. She is no longer in Yannina.”

Had Muhtar looked at his father, he might have caught the sight of the almost panicked disappointment that flared in the Pasha’s face; but it was gone as quickly as it had come, and the ruler of Yannina spoke with a self-assured despot’s detached calm. “So she fled the city. Hmm. Wise woman.”

No answer came from his son. Muhtar was - obviously to Alhi’s well-practiced eyes - struggling to keep his face under control.

“Be ready to leave with the army at any moment, my son. Once Zavellas arrives at the palace, I will handle him myself. Meanwhile, we will have a public spectacle at the lake for everyone to attend and remember.” Alhi marched towards the stairs leading from the parapet down into the central courtyard.

Muhtar trudged after him. “A spectacle? What do you mean?”

His father paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, turning towards his son with a smile of bored cruelty. “You will see. As will everyone.”

T
he banks of the lake were thick with reeds that would hide even a tall man standing. At night, it was said to spew forth the ghosts of all the young women sleeping forever in the arms of the lake, so few men went there after dark - or even before then.

That was why it had long been the favored meeting-place of the rebel
Filiki Eteria
, as Alhi Pasha had his eyes and ears everywhere else.

This night, however, only one of the two men who met there was a rebel.

“I brought you what you need to survive for a few days, lad.” Handing the young man an old, but serviceable pistol and a bag with a bit of food, doctor Karayannis spoke hurriedly; he might not believe much in ghosts, but he believed very much in the Pasha’s ability to make ghosts of the living. “But you will not survive for long if you keep hanging around this lake. Get away it. Get away from Yannina itself. As soon as you can, do you hear me?”