The Sultan's Daughter (21 page)

“What are you squawking for, Veniero?”
The
Epiphany
’s captain snapped at me. “Your fate remains the same. The slave-freeing network still operates. At least it does as long as Piali Pasha stays out of our harbor.” Even against the dark I could see how his look grew keener. His earring itself seemed to sneer. “Or do you
want
the Turks on Chios? You
want
this escape route for captives to dry up? You
want
to remain a slave?”

Each “want” was a scourge upon my soul. It had been so long since anyone had consulted my desires in anything, perhaps that part of me had totally atrophied. Did I even know how to want anymore? The heavy disgust in Giustiniani’s voice loaded me with self-doubt. Even if I could distinguish what I really wanted from all that had been foisted upon me, would Giustiniani let me realize it any more than slavery did? His stance—patience contained with difficulty by the arms crossing his chest and backed as he was by a dozen sea-toughened men—this hardly lent me hope.

And the violence so thinly veiled in his word “capon.” My head still rang with it.

Somehow I knew I must speak, and speak I did, repeating my first words, but managing a lower register this time. “I cannot let you do this to Esmikhan Sultan.”

My fingers danced on the hilt of the dagger stuck in my sash, the symbol of my office. But I knew from experience that, like most symbols, it was of little practical use in the real world. “We will do this with you or without you, eunuch. You may stay with her or go. Go to your freedom.”

Giustiniani took a solid step towards me and I countered, backwards, brushing up against the curtains that, besides my emasculated person and showy but useless dagger were the only things that stood between my lady and Chios’ fortress.

“Our families are on that island—” Giustiniani explained the obvious and echoes of agreement rose from the men behind him—and we will do whatever we must to protect them.”

“By God—and, yes, by Allah, too—Esmikhan Sultan is the only family this world has left to me.” I said this with more firmness than I felt.

And when this raised snickers from my opponents, I added with desperation, “At least she never thinks me inferior for a loss that is not my fault. She thinks I have gifts to offer, even as I am. Exactly as I am.” I realized I sounded like a child facing bullies in the alleyway, and my voice rose until it squeaked again at the thought.

Giustiniani’s voice dripped with exaggerated pity. “Yes, well, any man who’d rather live life as a ball-less slave doesn’t deserve to be called a man—whether he is or not.”

“Freedom.” I breathed the word and closed my eyes as if life itself were fading from me into heaven behind layers of cloud.

Times like this before, a dervish had whirled in to save me—a dervish who was really my friend Husayn. A friend of the family since before I could remember, the Syrian merchant had stepped in to godfather me when others had failed. He had taken the ultimate vengeance on my castrator and so was forced to live as an outlaw in a holy man’s disguise. In such disguise, the teeming land of the Turk had disgorged him when I had need before, in the face of both pirates and brigands.

But I couldn’t hope for such a deliverance now, far off in Christian waters. I was on my own.

Isn’t that, after all, what freedom meant?

My eyes remained closed. Without having to strain in the dark to catch sight of the threatening moves of my opponents, my mind opened to other things. Beneath my feet was the comforting rock of the timbers, the lullaby they crooned in answer to the tide. This was the mother I longed for. I felt the tide itself pulsing through the narrow boards. It was rushing in now, towards Fate. The very breath of God in Creation.

My life, the entire world, seemed to teeter there in the balance. But that world also contained—I couldn’t forget—my lady’s life as well.

And then my nose, unconfused by sight, caught the smell of bilge water coming up from the hold. “Strong enough,” as my uncle used to say, “to make a blind man see.” A putrid “hellhole” made sailors rejoice. It meant the hull was sound; there’d be no back-breaking bailing this voyage. Dwellers of the most congested, filthy cities would clear the decks of such a ship. My lady countered it with ambergris and clove-stuck oranges. But seamen were willing to put up with the stench for a little peace of mind and “freedom”—so they called it—from pumping.

I felt crushed by the swells of that freedom. In their loneliness was a hidden enslavement.

And then, still with my eyes closed, I could see. I saw the threat of Giustiniani’s earring. The cross branded itself red in the back of my brain because, along with little else, it had caught the single lantern’s light.

And then, in the darkness of my still-closed eyes, I saw the simple jewelry of the other men. I remembered their trinkets, rather, from the many times I’d seen them before: combing through an enviably hairy chest as the anchor heaved, dangling from the fingers in an idle moment. Perhaps I had even seen some sign of chafing when the Genoese Giustiniani ordered a psalm read. Whatever I remembered, bits and pieces, they all came back to me now, whole and in a flash, on the breath of the incoming tide.

In spite of the show of unity, at least half of the men before me, if they wore crosses, wore the symmetrically armed crosses of the Greeks.

Four years ago, if I’d registered this detail at all, it would have been to condemn these men as benighted heretics. Four years had taught me more sympathy for other points of view, though I could never recommend my way of learning compassion. Genoese were Roman Catholics, in the Pope’s pocket; they ran this island. But the majority of the inhabitants followed the Greek rite. What of them? They made half the ship’s crew. And they had chosen their Greekness no more than I had chosen castration, nor was it much easier for them to shake.

I remembered once having heard the question asked, “How shall we tell Greek from Turk if the matter comes to blows?” It was during some threatened fray in my uncle’s ship along the Adriatic.

To this a Venetian seaman had replied, only half in jest: “Just kill them all. The fact that the Greeks are overrun by Turks only gives positive proof that God is displeased with their blind heresy. This is their deserved punishment.”

I wondered just how much of the Turks’ success in these lands where Catholics had once lorded was due to the Greeks’ displeasure with this ascribed status. At least, they might not care one way or the other who their masters were, Turks being, from their point of view, no worse than Catholic Christians; conceivably quite a bit better.

Genoa, I further remembered, for all her talk of democracy since Andrea Doria’s reforms but thirty years ago, was now little more than an arm extended eastward from Spain. And Spain bespoke “Inquisition” to my mind. Had the Genoese been using
these
tactics to rule this island?

Such twists and turns of logic came not from my mind, not by reasoning, but all at once, in a flash of inspiration, I could only say, or in a panic of fear, and in a much shorter time than I took to tell of it. When reason returned, I clung to this lead; I had nothing else. I opened my eyes and gave it a try.

“Yes, I will go with you. I will bring my lady and go with you.”

Was that a gasp of pain I heard from the curtain behind me? Esmikhan was listening? Esmikhan, who could understand a little Italian? I couldn’t think of that now. I had to forge ahead before the vision left me, before all courage did.

“Yes, for I would certainly rather have the fortress’s walls between her and Piali Pasha’s guns than this flimsy timber. And much rather the fortress than your plaster houses and simple tile roofs under which your wives and daughters cower. For do you think the Genoese are going to let your wives and daughters have a place in the safety of that bastion? Not unless your name’s Giustiniani.”

Good, good. I could feel the shift of that half of the men, as subtle but as perceptible as a change in the tide. And under the awning behind me...No time for that now.

“Or perhaps,” I continued, warming to my subject, “they’ll find you a cozy place in the dungeon—when they’ve charged you with heresy for no greater crime than following the faith of your fathers. Then, who is your torturer? The Turk? Or the Giustiniani?”

I felt another, stronger wave of support, strong enough to urge up a murmur with its motion.

“You think Piali Pasha comes with eighty vessels just to check on things in Chios? That the Giustiniani can fast-talk their way into yet another compromise? That the Turk may be satisfied with other promises? You know what such promises are worth. You’ve listened to them yourselves, but only because you have no choice, not because you are fools enough to believe them.

“The Turk is no fool, either. He knows these are empty promises when he hears them, empty because they are based on the pockets of moneychangers. Will the infidel forget his shame at Malta? I assure you, he will not. Or...”

I swallowed for spittle—desperately—then pushed on. “Or do you hope you can hold off all those galleys full of circumcised janissaries until a fleet can be brought from Genoa to aid the situation?”

“They will come!” Giustiniani barked. The high pitch in his voice pleased me.

“You see? I knew that was part of your captain’s business on shore today, to see a ship off to Genoa. And who’s on that ship? Not your wives. Not your children. Giustiniani’s.”

“He lies. My wife and daughters are still on Chios, sharing their fate with yours.”

“I’m certain some great lords found room for their loved ones. No room for yours.”

“The Genoese fleet will come.”

“Oh, they will come. But that’s a two weeks’ sail, my friends. I’ve done the run myself in better days. Two weeks to Genoa, two weeks back—if there are no delays. A month. How many times can your wives and daughters be raped in a month, my friends?”

I let the murmur rise and caught it on the crest. “Of course, a month is optimistic. The Genoese in the mother city, like Genoese everywhere, prevaricate. If they cared what became of Chios, wouldn’t they have sent funds to buy off the Sublime Porte before now? They’ve had three years to do it. You should be glad the Turk, unlike the Genoese moneychanger, is no usurer. Will the Genoese risk the blood of their sons when they wouldn’t risk a few sacks of ducats? I know how the Genoese love their ducats. You know it, too.”

Hatred for that other Genoese, Salah ud-Din in the little house in Pera, spleened my voice. But that man was dead.
Remember, you washed his mutilated body yourself. Be satisfied.
And, I realized, such untempered hatred might make me seem the madman instead of the voice of reason. Half of my audience, I recalled, was Genoese, too. I did what I could, with my next words, to wash the bitterness away.

“But the Genoese do love their sons. Even they are not so inhuman.”

For some time, Giustiniani had been countering me with only rough guffaws and steps in my direction that alone made me flinch, so certain was I that they’d end in blows. At some point I’d heard him order: “Grab him, men. Stop his Turk-loving mouth.”

As long as nothing came of such defenses, though, I kept my mouth going—like a man swimming against an undertow for dear life.

But now it was clear he could allow me to blather no longer. He must enter the fray or lose it, such was the palpable countercurrent of my words swirling among his men.

“Don’t listen to the damned renegade,” he said. “You all should know what Piali Pasha told our delegation today. He comes only to enjoy the Campos here, our pleasant landscape on Chios.”

It was my turn to snort with scorn. “And you believe that?”

“It’s what the Turk said.”

“You trust such leaders, men, when they believe such things? From the mouth of a Turk, no less.”

“Yes, I believe him “The man’s voice cracked with desperation. “Why do you think they waited against the Turkish shore all day today if their words aren’t to be trusted? We were all pre- pared to give them the usual welcome with flowers and banners—you men saw it. But no. ‘I will not interrupt your Easter solemnities,’ he said.”

“The Roman Easter, men, mark. Nothing was said of the Orthodox holy day. Just where will the Turk be in a fortnight’s time? Having turned your churches to mosques and your wives to odalisques.” That was a shot in the dark and without much basis in logic, if I’d stopped to think about it. But I had to keep stirring the pot, even as I seemed to let Giustiniani have his say.

“That’s what he said, on my honor.”

“But what of the Turk’s honor?”

“‘We are finished with our solemnities,’ we assured him. ‘Come ashore in peace.’ But he wouldn’t—and it’s clear he hasn’t. ‘Tomorrow is time enough to come and enjoy your green gardens and flowing fountains,’ he said.”

“It is true,” murmured one voice in the dark. “Our eyes see for themselves. The Turks linger at the other side of the straits. What is the meaning of that?”

I grasped at straws. “Perhaps they mean to come by night, to have the element of surprise.”

All on board fell silent for a moment, straining to hear confirmation of my words. What seemed confirmed by all the senses proved to be only echoes of our own noises as our ears picked through the silence.

Another murmured in favor of Giustiniani’s view. “Piali Pasha wouldn’t disrupt our solemnities. That shows some civility, surely.”

“What? That he didn’t come and take your virgins in their holiday best? The Turk’s not interested in what your women wear. He’ll take any garment from them fast enough, for what he has on his mind. He—he simply wouldn’t have your souls go straight to heaven, newly Easter-shriven. That’s his plan. The man gives you at least one night in which to commit new sins to taint your eternities. Of course, the Greeks must go un-shriven altogether. I hope, men, you’ve kept an extraordinary Lent.”

The fact of the matter was that I could not explain the admiral’s hesitation. All I knew was, when Giustiniani reiterated, “He comes to enjoy the countryside,” that was ridiculous.

“And can you see it?” I scoffed. “Piali Pasha and all his men, armed to the teeth and picking orange blossom in the Campos to stick behind their ears. Be serious, Giustiniani. I assure you the Turk is earnestness itself. And—and to let you know just how earnest he is, let me divulge some knowledge I am privy to that the Genoese are not.”