The Sultan's Daughter (30 page)

“Oh, he means it, all right,” Esmikhan said. “You know very well my husband always means what he says. He hasn’t a joking bone in his body.”

“Lady, surely if he realizes that this is your own father we are greeting...”

“You think he doesn’t realize that? Abdullah, why else in the name of the Almighty did he marry me if it wasn’t because my father is who he is? It’s quite clear love had nothing to do with it.” Her tears had broken free now and were flowing bitterly.

“Lady, Lady,” I crooned, taking her plump little hands in one of mine and stroking her fine dark curls until she slept.

And in the morning, after prayers, I was relieved to find her in much better spirits. Beyond no concern to miss the procession, she even expressed a desire not to go even so far as Lady Mihrimah’s that day. As little more than an afterthought she said, “But you are free to go, Abdullah, to either place, and be my eyes if you wish.” I felt she was doing me a favor, not giving me an order. Her mind was elsewhere.

Perhaps her cheer had something to do with the squadron of soldiers that had appeared at our front door during the night. I met one of them in the yard. They were under Sokolli’s orders, he told me, the Grand Vizier’s most trusted elite, sent there, “Just in case.” If Esmikhan took their presence as a decent substitute for a letter or other sign of her husband’s care, who was I to contradict her?

There was so little fuss about my going that I had more than enough time to find a good seat at the cousin’s near Yedi Kule. And since I didn’t have my lady to accompany, I could avoid the harem and take my chances with the rest of mankind in the street below.

A high stone wall just at the first bend after the Golden Gate served me well. I watched an hour’s worth of hurried preparations as carpets, flower petals, and palm branches were strewn across the roadway for the conquering heroes and their new Sultan to tread upon.

“They come! They come!” The news ran, and then, I, too, could hear the cheers and the music—the pound of drums, the squeal of horns, and the jarring rattle of the bell standards and the cymbals—keeping time to the march of a million soldiers’ feet, and the reined tripping of the cavalry. A great shout went up and we knew the first rank had reached the Golden Gate.

All eyes were straining up the road with such intensity that not a soul noticed until the crash, and then none could escape it. It looked so innocent and accidental, something that one might see any day of the week in the streets of Constantinople. But this was not any day, and it was no accident. There it was, not twenty paces in front of me, a cart spilling its mountainous yellow contents so carefully, so perfectly, in an ambush clear across the path of carpets and rose petals.

By God,
I thought, startled into Italian.
They’ve put off their rebellion until they’re actually within the city walls. They mean to shake the Empire to its very roots.
Even with such a thought, it was difficult to do more than simply sit and grin at the perfection of the performance.

I saw a pair of figures elbow their way through the crowd to escape the scene of their crime, but they wore heavy black cloaks so it was impossible to distinguish uniform or rank. I could not imagine how any two soldiers could have dropped out of their perfect rows what with hundreds of cheering citizens watching them. I was tempted to believe that what I saw was just a part of a general exodus that began away from the street side: children and the more prudent men drifted indoors in answer to the nervous whispers of their women.

The rest of us shifted uneasily, but stayed to see what would happen—more from indecision, I think, than from any sort of civic interest. I wished briefly that Sokolli Pasha had ordered me to stay home, too, but as it was, there was really no time to think the matter out, else more of us would have had the sense to follow the women and children behind walls. Almost immediately, the first rank of the army, lead by a row of janissaries in feathered turbans and carrying bell standards, turned the corner and stopped in their tracks.

“Upon my word!” I heard one fellow exclaim with a very broad grin. His surprise was sarcastic and rehearsed. “If it isn’t a hay cart.”

“Hay cart! Hay cart!” the cry sped back through the halted troops. Somehow, by the same means, I suppose, the message was relayed forward that Selim and his guard had been halted most tantalizingly just before the Golden Gate, that portal which had stood as a triumphal arch for centuries of his predecessors, Greek and Turk alike, in the Great City. The army gave themselves quite a hearty congratulation and laughed, imagining how the Sultan’s horse must be stumbling and circling anxiously, and his majesty’s great red face sweating under his royal turban like raw meat.

Presently, two viziers came into view, picking their way cautiously on horseback through the clog of soldiers. I recognized the younger man as Sokolli’s second, Pertu Pasha and the older as the veteran Ferhad Pasha. A coincidence of names with this second official reminded me of the young spahi whose courage and endurance had saved the empire—and nearly lost me my lady—barely a month previously. And a sudden chill along my spine made me take note rather belatedly that some of the officers whose backs and turbans I’d seen milling about our door that morning had been wearing the violet of the same elite corps. But otherwise the young officer, still with only the title Bey after his name, had nothing in common with the reverend gray-bearded gentleman who, along with his fellow pasha, controlled my attention now. And the events before me were too riveting to give place to any other concern.

“Come, come, comrades,” the younger pasha said. “Your rebellion is an offense to the majesty of the Sultan.”

“Good!” a voice cried from the crowd. “There is entirely too much majesty in that man.”

And before anyone quite knew what had happened, the second vizier had been tumbled off his horse and into the dust. His turban tumbled after him accompanied by the cheers and a few bits of flying debris from the crowd.

Now old Ferhad Pasha spoke. “If it is revenge you want for any unknown crime,” he said, “pray, take my life and no other. I am old and willingly make this sacrifice for the good and peace of my country.”

The offer was refused and down Ferhad Pasha came, too, suffering no more than indignity. Now anger and violence began to move through the ranks like waves, and to rock the spectators as well. A very dangerous explosion was building—a number of stones had already been thrown, and there were drawn swords—when suddenly my master appeared.

Shoving back the massed soldiers with the butt of a lance, Sokolli Pasha made his way to the head of the column. I saw one particularly unruly man turn on the Grand Vizier after receiving a bruising whack. I think he meant to unsaddle this pasha as well, but before he got close, he was swiftly hit again, full in the face. This time, however, the weapon was not the lance but a small pouch full of aspers, and as the silver spilled to the ground, it was like cool water splashing on the very roots of the fire.

There were many more pouches where that one came from. Sokolli Pasha threw them liberally from a great sack he had slung at his side. The soldiers scrambled for the coins, and even some of the citizens managed to snatch a few, though they were at a disadvantage, being unarmed. Sokolli Pasha’s steed paced forward, up and over the hill of hay with hardly a backward slide. The cart was righted in an attempt to find some coins that had rolled under it. Then it was dragged to one side and soon even the straw had been sifted away. The column was on the move again, faster, if with slightly less dignity, than before.

The spectators scurried back to their places and let their tension out in a sigh that grew to cheers by the time the Sultan and his vanguard appeared. But it was not the name of Selim they called, not that red-faced, bleary-eyed man whose great weight stodgily crushed his little pony, and whose cheap and uncontrollable flesh seemed out of place beneath the intricate luxury of the crimson, tasseled canopy, and the tight, smooth, plumed, and bejeweled turban.

“Sokolli! Sokolli Pasha!” was the cry, and my voice joined all the rest.

I was still cheering when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar sedan chair slipping out of the entrance of the cousin’s harem. Moving quickly alongside with his fingers protectively touching the tightly closed shutters was the unmistakable figure of the khadim Ghazanfer.

Back in the Pasha’s palace, a sacrifice was killed and all the master’s favorite dishes prepared to welcome him home. Esmikhan put on her best clothes and sat in the mabein waiting for his return. Alas, she waited in vain, and the food was cold before it was ever eaten.

As the hour grew late, I sent a boy over to the Serai to find out what the trouble was. He brought back the word.

“The janissaries are in revolt.”

“That was this morning,” I told him. “The master paid them off and they gave it up.”

“But they’re in revolt again,” the lad insisted. “They got as far as the courtyard of the Sultan’s palace. Then they barred the gates and won’t let Selim into his own house. Selim has had to retreat outside the walls again to one of his villas, and Allah knows what is to become of us.”

“What will become of the harem?” Esmikhan asked, wringing her hands. “Do you suppose the soldiers will have the audacity to violate the harem? Oh, how I wish that Safiye were safe back in Magnesia!”

You don’t know how we all wish that,
I thought, but had worse to tell her. “There is a greater fear, lady. My lord Sokolli Pasha is also behind the gates to the palace. They are holding him hostage.”

She sat up that night in her best dress, sleeping in fits and starts, not even bothering to lay her head down on a pillow, wondering (fearing? hoping?) whether she was an orphan, a widow, both, or neither. And I waited with her.

A day, a night, a day, and another night passed in the same way. We heard of perhaps a dozen deaths caused by factions brawling in the streets, but they were just the sort of eruptions, like cankers in the mouth, that indicate a general infection throughout the body. Our gatekeeper’s son got a cuff at one shop and was refused service at another because they knew he was buying for Sokolli’s house. But then at last we pricked up our ears and heard the boom of cannons from the fortress, not in aggressive, but in joyous rhythms, and we knew the rebellion was over. The Venetian fleet had faded back into the Mediterranean and Selim was at last safely installed behind the Sublime Porte. “But at what a cost! What a cost!” My master shook his head wearily. We spoke together in the selamlik upon his final, safe return, and I had to endure several interruptions during our interview from many pressing concerns as he tied up the ends of the rebellion.

“What was the price, my lord?” I asked.

“Well, they ruined the Empire, that’s all. Ruined the Empire. They couldn’t see. All they cared for was their own satisfaction.”

The entire treasury, I learned, was gone. All the spoils from the Kapudan Pasha’s recent conquest of the island of Chios had to be handed out besides a hefty installment of the personal jewelry and real estate belonging to Esmikhan’s Aunt Mihrimah. This venerable lady had made this sacrifice to ransom her drunkard brother and herself and the other women of the Serai harem from disgrace.

“Still, that is not the worst,” Sokolli Pasha said.

“There is more? Allah preserve us, what more could they ask?”

“The treasury is nothing. Taxes will come in, and we will replenish it “my master said. “But they demanded concessions and they got them. The ancient laws have been changed at the very roots. Janissaries are now allowed to marry. Yes, to marry! Not only that, but they may pass their positions on to their sons. And the corps has been opened up to enlistment—to Turks as well. It is the end of the army, that’s what it is. And the end of the army means the end of the Empire.

“I’ll wager if you listen closely, you can hear them—the elite, hand-picked corps that once had no thought but for training and battle, the army that none in the world could defeat—I’ll bet you can hear them in the streets now, wildly scrambling for brides as they scrambled for those aspers on the morning of the parade. No man’s daughter is safe; they will all want a month off for honeymoons, and soon they will delight more in the bandying of sons than of lances and spears. How can you fight barbarian Christians with such a mob, I ask you? It’s gone. The Empire is gone. And I was the one who bartered for her downfall.”

“But wouldn’t you, my lord, delight to see a son of yours join the corps you love so much?” I ventured.

“A son of mine? I have no son.”

“But you might, Allah willing, someday.”

Sokolli Pasha turned away, his exhaustion showing in the crow’s-feet of his eyes, and in the hollows of his temples. “No, I would rather he live a quiet life as a merchant or the owner of a workshop. Especially if he is a scrawny sort of lad, which I suppose any son of mine who might deign to live would have to be. Certainly not the sort I would want protecting this Empire and any daughters Allah may see fit to give me besides. Haven’t we in our present besotted Sultan, son of the great Suleiman, a perfect example of how generations rot in hereditary posts?”

“So far, master, I must compliment you. You have covered for him remarkably.”

“Yes, well, I suppose I can keep the Empire going for a little while longer. If I’m left free to choose good men beneath me. And if Allah favors us. But when I am gone...”

“Allah willing, that dread event is many years hence.”

Sokolli Pasha now turned to contemplate the future’s awesomeness in silence. As focus for his meditation, the Grand Vizier happened to select the old wooden chest against the wall. My eyes followed his idly, and then they were riveted to the spot.

There, on top of the chest, was the blue and white Chinese vase filled with another singular bouquet. The rather large branch of an apple tree arced against the wall. Its leaves had turned and the three apples that still clung to it blushed pink as if the roses, now all withered in the gardens, had bequeathed their color to the apples on their deathbeds. The branch recalled at once the famous lines by Qatran: