Reign of the Favored Women (34 page)

“It grew late and we both knew our time together was at an end. We kicked snow over the last of the coals and I walked with him to retrieve his horse. Then, because I felt myself too dangerously close to tears, I said good-bye and turned at once.

“I had not gone four steps before I heard my name shouted. But it did not come from my stranger. It was in front of me: My grandfather had come into the woods to find me before dark. I had no sooner seen this than a cloud of smoke shrouded the old grey wolf and the crack of a pistol shattered the air like a wall of icicles crashing from the roof in an early thaw.”

Ghazanfer continued, “‘Grandfather! Grandfather!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t shoot. He is my friend.’

“But it was already too late to speak. My friend had been knocked to the ground by the shot and his horse behind him reared and screamed in fear.

“‘Your friend? You little fool!’ Grandfather shouted back at me. ‘The man’s a Turk. A Turkish spy.’

“‘No, no. He’s Hungarian. He was born—’

“‘It doesn’t matter where he was born. That horse, those trappings, that turban, that scimitar. He’s a God-cursed janissary. And a dead one, thank God.’

“No, the stranger was not dead. He moved, struggled to rise from the snow stained with his own blood. My grandfather saw the movement, too, and began to reload his gun.

“‘Get out of the way, boy, and let me finish him off.’

“I didn’t move except to shift my weight from foot to foot and finger the ax handle nervously. Grandfather raised the pistol to sight, found me still in the way, and scowled. But then he thought of something that made him smile as he lowered the gun again.

“‘All right, boy,’ he said. ‘This is your time to prove yourself a man. You finish him off. Yes, you. With that famous ax of yours. Go on. One quick blow between the brows and you’ll be a man. Easiest thing in the world.’

“I turned from him and faced the stranger. I brought the ax automatically to my shoulder. It would look good from behind. But under this cover I bade my friend, ‘Run!’ with voiceless lips.

“When I actually caught the horse’s reins to steady it while my friend mounted, his wounded arm useless to help him, the pretense was over.

“‘Get out of the way, you damned little coward!’ my grandfather cried.

“But, ‘Ride, ride!’ I shouted to my friend and did not move from between them until the trees folded in on him and he was out of range.

“The abuse I received was first verbal but then very, very physical. It was so severe that I more than once wished my grandfather had not been so cautious of my life earlier, but put me quickly out of my misery with a bullet through the head. Nevertheless, when at last I was allowed to crawl off to my loft without supper, I did not mind as much as before. There was the stranger’s good venison in my belly and I was no longer alone with only a wooden picture for a friend. Besides that, I felt for the first time in my life I had won a victory from the old wolf. And I had won it not by being meaner and stronger than he, but by mercy and friendship. It was just as the very effeminate Jesus had said.”

“Was the stranger a janissary?” I interrupted Ghazanfer’s tale for the first time since he’d begun.

“Of course,” he replied. “I know of no other man who could ride four hours through the snow with a wound like that in his arm and come alive to his garrison.”

“So he survived?”

“Yes.”

“But you’d told him all about your family’s anti-Turkish activities?”

“I had indeed.”

“And he returned your favor to him by not telling his superiors what he had learned?”

“No, he told them. Two weeks later our village was raided and all my uncles and grandfather were killed.”

“That must have been a hard lesson for a boy to learn: that people are generally ungrateful, even to those who save their lives.”

“No, I cannot say he did not return the favor. For when the sword, drunk with killing and carried on by its own momentum, was just above my head, he called out and stayed it.

“‘Stop, sir. That’s the boy. Spare him.’ Of course I couldn’t understand Turkish at the time, but I’m sure they were words something like that.

“My friend spoke to his superiors and then to me, describing how I should be taken to Constantinople and trained in the Enclosed School to become a janissary—just like he had been. I felt as if St. George himself had delivered me from my awful family. I did not say no.

“But then, that night, after other likely boys were rounded up and the prettiest girls spared their virginity for a better price on the slave block, the soldiers celebrated their victory with general violation.”

“It is the way of war,” I said. “Every army does it.”

“Yes,” Ghazanfer Agha agreed. “But I had never imagined that men and women come together in that way before, and it was a rude, violent, ugly awakening.

“My mother was among them. I heard her screams over the crusted snow. They were as pitiful as if she had been a helpless child, not one whose hot hand and sharp scorn I had felt so, so many times. I had to plug my fingers in my ears and still could not escape it.

“They stopped short after a while and I thought ‘Peace at last.’

“But I was wrong.

“My friend came and quietly told me that she was dead. She had plunged a sword into her own belly rather than have to accept another man that night, bury all her men in the morning, and then live with herself afterwards. My friend came to tell me I might say a few words of devotion over her if I wanted to. I had no words to say to the bloodied, mangled corpse. But I did speak to the man, my friend, who stood, clumsy with sudden sobriety, over her.

“He still bore his arm in a sling from my grandfather’s bullet, but the only blood on him was hers and that of my kindred slain. My stomach rose at the sight and I was ill on the spot.

“‘Why?’ I choked over the vomit and the tears.

“‘Why?’ He shrugged rather shamedly. ‘We are men.’

“‘And this is what men do?’

“My friend shrugged again. ‘When we see women...’ But he could not explain it more.

“As soon as I was no longer ill, I spoke some very violent and angry words about how I would rather ‘my friend’ kill me than turn me into a butcher like himself—no better than the grandfather he had slain. I no longer had any idealism, not even for the flashy blue and yellow of a janissary. The man, I will say this to his honor, was duly humbled, horrified at war gone out of bounds. But even as a child, I could tell that war always does that, and therefore it should have been no surprise to him.

“When I shouted that I would rather become a eunuch than join ranks with him, he nodded as if he envied me. One quick cut under careful and skillful hands did have its advantages over the haphazard aim of war. When I did not change my mind, he said he would be sad to lose a companion such as me, but he supported me every step of the way and got the best cutter in Belgrade to do the job. He fired two after the preliminaries, unwilling to trust me to just any man with a knife. I went under Mu’awiya the Red. That is how I know of his artistry.

“My friend was there, holding my hand throughout, just as if I were his companion wounded on the field. As I healed, he came to visit me every day and brought me sweets and talked. He chose my name for me—Ghazanfer, bold lion—a name for the battlefield and not the harem where I was bound.

“And when at length we parted, we stood and looked at each other, aware and aching with fear and sorrow at the vast gulf that now separated our stations, a gulf that mortality could never bring together again. If ever Fate did put us in sight of one another, it would be as opponents, not friends, his male world bent on invading mine, and I must see that it did not. But we parted appreciating that without this conflict we would live very shallow and meaningless lives indeed.”

There was silence when Ghazanfer finished. We were devotees who had just shared a mystery of our religion and to speak would be to profane the moment with the mundane.

After a suitable period of reverence, silent even in the thoughts, my mind began to work again, I realized the monument of what this man had just shared with me, this man I’d hardly ever known before. Indeed, I’d often taken him to be neither more nor less than an enemy and a formidable one at that, in spite of his visit during my illness and the dog’s grass potion. I began to rack my brain for some part of myself I could share in return. I found nothing, and felt poor indeed. But rather than leave him empty-handed, I decided to divulge the one bit of information I had on him that was unauthorized.

I said, and hardly as flippantly as it may seem on paper, “Tell me.

Since Andrea Barbarigo has become a Muslim, whom do you visit for your mistress on the outside?”

I didn’t really expect an answer. I didn’t want one. I only wanted to let him know that I knew.

He looked at me closely. “The shopkeeper next door to Kira’s?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“I thought you were there.” Ghazanfer nodded in appreciation. He took a puff or two on his narghile and then spoke a name, “Michael Cantacuzenos.”

I had been so far from expecting a candid answer that I had to ask before I realized that he had just honored me with one more timely piece of information: the name of his current contact.

Michael Cantacuzenos was a Greek, “flotsam and jetsam of the Byzantine Empire” my master liked to say, but he said it good-naturedly. Cantacuzenos was a friend of his and, since Feridun Bey had been forced to flee, my master’s closest confident in the capital, what with Arab Pasha in Cyprus. That was nice for the Christian community, but a sad commentary on the state of affairs in the Divan when the only man the Grand Vizier could trust was someone totally out of the political arena.

The moment Ghazanfer Agha made his meaning clear to me, I instantly saw Safiye’s hand in any number of decisions Sokolli Pasha had made in the past months. My master was incorruptible and my mistress totally uninterested in wielding her influence over him. So Baffo’s daughter had turned to the next closest thing to counteract the weight Nur Banu carried in the Divan with Uweis and Lala Mustafa in the palm of her hand. Cantacuzenos was nothing if not a talker. Sokolli Pasha only ever half listened to him, but that carelessness could make the thoughts seem to arrive in one’s mind on their own.

I nodded congratulations to Ghazanfer on the success I perceived. I also let him know I would not betray this secret—not unless absolutely necessary—and he in turn knew I would not.

Not after what had passed between us that afternoon.

The plague came late that year, but when it came, it hit hard, and in places that had hitherto been spared, at least in common memory. Pestilence hung over the late summer city like a shroud, tied in knots around the harbor and the barracks, where it always lurks, but also pulled in tight, choking bands even around the homes of the wealthy.

The Italians left Pera in droves and as many natives as could sought refuge on the Princes’ Islands out in the Sea of Marmara. Two boats, both sorely overcrowded, collided in rough seas and untold scores were drowned. And when the islands were reached, even there was not guaranteed safety. Some brought the disease with them and it spread in the unnatural conditions of the islands faster, even, than in the fetid streets of slums.

On the islands, too, there is no natural water. The water caught in cisterns and barrels during the winter rains was stagnant by summer, and that caused disease and death of a different and no more pleasant sort.

No. Once again events proved that the best thing to do against the plague was nothing. Best to stay where one was and wait it out, trusting to Allah. Even if a body—the Merciful One forbid it—did take sick and die, there was this consolation. Those that die of the plague, like those who fall on the battlefield in the cause of the Faith or women who die in childbirth for the life of a new infant Muslim, all are counted martyrs and taken at once to sweet-scented gardens in Paradise.

The Mufti, Sheikh al-Islam, was among this year’s victims. An old man, we all knew it would be only a matter of time before the fever killed him; he had no strength to fight it off as youth sometimes has, if Allah wills. But the news seemed to us a great justice, if not an actual joy. His position and somber learning, though evidence of great piety and favor of the Almighty, had always seemed to lack the full assurance of martyrdom since he’d allowed himself to be swayed by Selim into taking Cyprus. Now that the crown of death seemed inevitable and well deserved, our whole household removed to his home. The contagion of such holiness was something no one wanted to miss.

My master sat up in the room where the man lay dying, amidst the smell of sickness and fumes of garlic and sage burnt to ease the way to Paradise if the not pestilence. Here disciples droned a night-and-day recitation of the Koran. The local imam tried out phrases for the eulogy while the old ears were still alive to hear and praise it. And the Mufti’s sons and a host of friends came and went as time permitted them, taking turns sitting at his side, holding his hand, renewing the wet cloth on his forehead, and exchanging conversation on topics hardly different from the somber, reverent ones the man’s dignity had always required.

My master had great respect for the man. Although their opinions in the Divan had not always coincided, Sokolli Pasha appreciated the fact that it was only on a single occasion—when the page boy lay writhing with death, pinned through the heart to the floor—that the Mufti had been influenced by anything but the most pious and learned considerations. That was more than could be said of any of the others.

The Mufti and my master were the only ones left in the high chambers of government who had served under the magnificent Suleiman and remembered what it was like before the word
bribery
was even considered. The choice of a new Mufti lay with the religious institution and not with the palace. Nonetheless, my master could not help but think that the face of the
medrese
had changed since his dying friend Hamid had been elevated. The heavily bearded scholars in attendance at the death told beads not of glass or simple quartz but of lapis lazuli and gold. And Sokolli Pasha recognized among those present some who were little better than the purchased slaves of the Sultan, Uweis, and even Nur Banu.