The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (20 page)

With the Prophet’s Banner safely moored and the Sultan’s return duly sanctified by the reading of the sura
of Victory, the stage was set for the hero of the day to take his place on the gold throne set out for him under the eaves of the Gate of Felicity. But instead of her father astride his mount, Saida saw coming through the gates a most curious conveyance: a litter, magnificently decorated for the occasion, held aloft by four sturdy bearers, its curtains pulled back by gold cords to reveal an aging man, perhaps once strong and hardy but now pale and shaking. In complete contrast to every other participant in the procession, he was dressed in a plain black cloak. And, to mark him off even further from the Emirs and the Agas and the Viziers, this poor fellow, hunched over and grimacing, seemed not to appreciate — not even to be aware of — his place of honor.

“Who is that man looking so foolish and dressed all in black? Why does he not wear a fine caftan like the others?” Saida asked Hürrem.

“That is the Padishah’s physician, Judah del Medigo.”

“And why does he dress all in black?”

“Because he is a Jew who does not follow our ways.”

“And why does he ride so close to my father?”

“Because he is a miracle worker. Twice he has saved your father’s life, once at Mohacs and once in Belgrade.”

“You don’t mean literally ‘saved my father’s life,’ do you?” the girl asked over her shoulder, her eyes on the slight, hunched figure below.

“Yes. Saved his life.”

The girl rose to her feet and pressed her eye to the lozenge-shaped slit in the brickwork. “He hardly looks capable of saving his own life.”

“That is because he was laid low by a fever at Guns. But during the first Austrian campaign, this Jew risked his life to save the Padishah from drowning.”

The girl turned away from the scene below to give Hürrem her full attention. “Tell me about this heroic act.”

The lady was only too pleased to oblige. Not without cause was Hürrem known as the Scheherazade of the harem.

“The route back to Buda lay across the Danube,” she began. “Men and horses and weapons had to be carried over the wild river on pontoons that they made right there on the riverbank out of skins. Of course, our Padishah was the first to brave the raging waters.”

The girl nodded. Of course he would be. “But what about the doctor?” she asked.

Suddenly suspicious, the woman turned to look at her. “Why are you so interested in the Jewish doctor?”

Saida answered without a beat, “If this doctor has saved my father’s life, he is a hero to me and I am ever in his debt.”

Hürrem nodded, satisfied.

“Now tell me, how did he save my father’s life?” Saida asked, more casually this time.

“The Padishah’s pontoon capsized in the river. He slid into the torrent, and before anyone realized what had happened, the doctor jumped in after and held him aloft until the Janissaries pulled them both out.”

“Bravo.”

“Bravo, indeed.”

Then, being a woman who did not care overmuch for the role of the echo, Hürrem added, “Now you understand why I told you to salute the old man. But enough of him. Come.” She beckoned the girl back to the sofa. “I feel the need of refreshment.” At the snap of her fingers, the eunuch produced a gilded tray decorated with diamonds and loaded with sweets. “Taste this
rahat lokum.
It will give rest to your throat. The Europeans call it Turkish Delight.”

“But you aren’t having any yourself.”

“The truth is that the moment I heard the Sultan’s music, my stomach went into a convulsion. It has been so long. And the world beyond is full of women.” Reaching for Saida’s hand, she grasped it tightly. “Will he still find me pleasing?” Her touch was icy cold.

Embarrassed by the unexpected confidence, Saida cast about for a change of subject. “The doctor’s son was a pupil in the Harem School,” she heard herself saying. “I knew him when he was a boy.”

Hürrem picked up bits of information the way a beach walker collects stones. “You knew him in school?”

“A little. He was a pupil there before he became a page.”

“What’s his name?”

“It’s Italian. Danolo, I think. Maybe Danilo. I don’t remember.”

“Well, your school chum has come a long way from the Harem School. He’s now a champion at the
gerit
. I have heard about him from my son” — she stopped to correct herself — “from your brother, Mehmet, who thinks very highly of him.”

Saida waited for more, but Hürrem had a new distraction. The Sultan’s band had entered the Imperial Gate.

“Do you know the air they are playing?” Hürrem asked. “You should. If you had spent more time here in the palace — if we lived here — you would know such things. Now that the Sultan is back in residence, they will play every afternoon at the time of the
ikindi.
And everyone in the palace, from the great Padishah to the lowest toilet cleaner, will stop his work and make his third prayer to Allah. Oh, he is such a wonder!”

There was no time to clarify whether the wonder she referred to was the Sultan or Allah himself, for at this moment a quartet of mounted heralds was coming through the Imperial Gate, calling out, “Stand back, the Sultan comes!” And, as if a wand had passed over them, the entire assemblage held its collective breath and fell into a dead silence.

By retreating to the rear of the loggia and craning their necks, the two women in the tower were just able to see the victorious Sultan emerge. A tall, slender figure straight as a pike and deadly pale, he rode resplendent on a milk-white Nogai steed, wearing a triple aigrette stuck into his turban sideways in the Persian fashion.

As always in his public appearances, the Padishah proceeded slowly. His subjects needed time to capture the moment for retelling to their grandchildren. Besides, it would hardly do to have the exalted
ghazi
rip through the crowd shooting arrows in all directions like a wild
sipahi
. What was needed here was gravitas. And to assure that the Sultan’s mount would play its part in that spirit, the horse had spent the previous night — as he always did before a procession — suspended by straps to ensure that he walked with halting gravity.

Slowly, Sultan Suleiman made his way through the First Court, inclining his long neck first to the right, then to the left, acknowledging each individual bowed down before him. He disappeared briefly from view behind the twin towers of the Gate of Salutation and then reappeared in the Second Court followed by seven Arab horses in embroidered trappings set with jewels, led by seven pages as resplendently attired as the horses they led. But, gilded as they might be, they were no match for the Padishah — the
ghazi
himself — who held his victory out to his subjects like a lion holding his quarry in his paws, inviting them to share it.

The moment he came through the gate, Hürrem, now oblivious of her companion, walked slowly to the balustrade, straight-backed like a sleepwalker. Never taking her eyes off the slim, elegant figure on the white horse below, she reached into a small pouch that hung from her diamond girdle and withdrew from it a fine white silk handkerchief embroidered in white flowers by her own hand. And there she stood — a statue — as the Sultan made his progress through his people.

It took some time, but at last he emerged directly in front of the Diwan Tower. There he brought his mount to a halt. What followed unfolded like a tableau, the players coordinating their movements in a smooth arc as if rehearsed.

Dead-still on his mount, the Sultan slowly raised his eyes to the top of the tower. Up on the loggia, a hand lifted a delicate silk handkerchief and thrust it out through the octagonal slit in the brickwork. The Sultan’s gaze was fixed on the small white square waving languidly back and forth in the breeze. Then, with a gasp, Hürrem sank to the ground, the handkerchief waving a forlorn farewell as she pulled away from the balustrade. She had collapsed into a faint, incontrovertible evidence of overwhelming passion.

Having accidentally encountered the world of the French
romans
at an impressionable age, Saida was something of an aficionado of romance. There was always a possibility that the faint might have been calculated. But the princess remained a confirmed believer in knights-errant, princesses in towers, and the primacy of true love over all. Besides, the look that transfixed the Second
Kadin’s
face when she first caught sight of her Sultan-lover could not have been dissembled, not even by the finest actor in the empire.

16

THE DOCTOR’S HOUSE

Mid-afternoon and not a cloud in the sky. A good augury for the next day’s
gerit
contest in which, Danilo reminded himself as he pegged along the Eunuch’s Path, he may now never take part. Still, he kept up his pace, determined to salvage what he could of a disastrous day. And he did manage to circumnavigate the old palace walls in record time. But would he make it to the Doctor’s House before his father? To miss the public ceremonies in the Second Court might just be excused. To fail to meet his father at his own door after a long absence might never be forgiven. Around the turn of the path, the Doctor’s House came into view, easily identified by the heraldic flag bearing the sacred snakes of Asclepius that fluttered from the roof. (The ancient god of healing was another pagan hero whom Judah had no difficulty accommodating in his pantheon.)

To reach the house, Danilo still had to surmount the exterior palace wall. If the old fruit ladder had been carelessly left behind on the palace side, he would have to scale the wall. Definitely possible (he had done it more than once) but a time-consuming climb. However, for the first time that day, Fortuna had smiled on him. There the ladder stood, propped up against the stump of the dead pear tree.

With a brief thank-you to the gods, Danilo disengaged it from its perch and carried it to the wall.

As might be expected, the soldiery assigned to the kiosk that overlooked the hillside had been given the afternoon off to attend the parade. But Danilo was taking no chances. His ears pricked for the sound of a patrol, he mounted the creaking ladder step by careful step, then with an athlete’s grace leapt to a safe landing on the soft grass that lined the inner edge of the Third Court. As he made his way across the garden to his father’s house, he could not help but smile at the memory of certain boyhood pranks he had pulled off with the help of the very ladder that eased his way today.

It took a moment for his father’s servant to answer the bell. And, when the lad did open the door, he did not greet his master’s son with the usual bow and short prayer for his happiness and everlasting good health. Instead, he grabbed Danilo by the shoulder and all but hauled him into the vestibule.

“You are late. Very late. The doctor is worried. Very worried.” The servant shook his head disapprovingly. This unnerved the boy so thoroughly that, when he did come face to face with his father, he was totally unprepared to deal with the opening parental scolding.

“Where have you been? Were you in the First Court to greet me? No. Were you at my door to welcome me? No. One would think that after a three-month absence . . .”

Now, for the first time, the doctor actually looked at his son, saw the condition he was in, uncombed and unkempt, with leaves and twigs tangled in the silk threads of his caftan.

“Your boots are filthy. What have you been up to?”

“It’s my horse, Bucephalus.” Danilo’s rehearsed excuses forgotten, the words tumbled out of the boy’s mouth in a rush. “I sent for the horse doctor, but he was too busy with the Sultan’s parade horses. So I had to stay with Bucephalus myself. He is very sick, Papa. All blown up. And he moans in pain. Now he sleeps, but I think he’s going to die.”

Not a word of apology or regret. But the anguish on the boy’s ravaged face wiped out all his transgressions. The only thing Judah could see was his son’s misery.

“Sit down here beside me. Calm yourself. Let us see if there is anything we can do for the poor animal.” His temper quelled, the doctor fell into the familiar role of the wise physician addressing the fearful family of a sick patient. “This Bucephalus of yours is a well-bred beast. That means he will fight for his life with all his heart. Oftentimes, that will to survive is better than any medicine. Now tell me, how was the horse when you left him?”

Somewhat comforted, the boy was able to answer coherently. “At first he bucked and kicked, and I thought he would break a leg. But I got him up and walking, and that seemed to quiet him.”

Judah nodded approvingly. “If it is colic — and it sounds like colic to me — you have stumbled onto the best remedy.”

“But now he lies there not moving. And his breathing is shallow. And he does not open his eyes for me.”

“Is he still swelling?”

“I couldn’t tell. Oh, Papa, if you could see him. I think the life is draining out of him.”

“Then we must think of how we can restore him.” Judah held out his arm. “Help me to the cabinet. I seem to remember a poultice. Or was it an emetic?”

Although the book cabinet stood no more than twenty steps from the bed, Judah was forced to lean heavily on his son as he shuffled across the room. Now Danilo was able to see the change in his father over the past months: the pallor, the tremor, the feebleness.