Reign of the Favored Women (5 page)

“
Inshallah
.” The eunuch committed nothing.

“She must know I did it for her.”

“She does. And is grateful.”

Andrea knew he’d said more than enough. The eunuch remained a godlike judge, though Andrea had always imagined God with more wrath in His eyes—like Agostino Barbarigo. Still he couldn’t stop himself.

“I haven’t regretted it. I haven’t regretted a single action, not for a moment—none of it. Not until now. Now when you tell me—God in heaven!—she will not see me.”

“Rest assured, young sir, you have my lady’s gratitude.”

“But nothing else. Nothing else? Not even the sight of her?”

For two months Andrea had thought of nothing but returning to this room, of renewal of the supreme pleasures he had enjoyed here. Now that it was not to be, this return to the place only evoked the memory of love, aching in its absence. And the warning of that other eunuch, that eunuch who’d said his name was Veniero, who’d said...

Now all he could see was that it wasn’t enough.

A bit of unmeshed logic wagged its loose ends at him, more noticeable now than it had ever seemed before.

If Sofia wanted Chios to remain with the Turk, she could not possibly have ever planned to leave with me. Few mastic profits could be hers in Venice, even if Venice owned the island. Only if she stayed, slave to the dark lusts of that heathen prince—

Unthinkable. Something was missing, that was all. One tiny bit of the web that made his rationale a neat and tidy package—a package presented by God in his favor—that was all. He simply couldn’t see it right now, but he was certain it was there.

No, the only possible conclusion was that Sofia was being kept from him against her will. Someone suspected their attachment, so she was no longer as free as once she’d been.

Perhaps not as safe?

“But it was enough, more than enough,” Andrea heard himself shout. “If she had seen what I saw, heard what I heard. All they ever found of Giustiniani was—the wink of the cross in his unattached ear. The wails haunt me still in my nightmares. Screams and cries I am powerless to help—in my childhood language and hers—”

Andrea managed to stop his mouth and his frantic pacing. His insides wobbled like a child’s top losing its spin and equilibrium. He took a seat to keep himself from falling over.

The seat Andrea took was the edge of the cot which he and Sofia had had no trouble turning into a bower of bliss. In order to make himself sit now on this compacted mattress laid over sagging strings, it was necessary for him to brush a score of webbed associations from his mind. He had to realize that others, many others, had used this room for many purposes. The stench of such purposes seemed to creep out of the plaster and splitting boards to assault his nostrils. He joined himself to the rest of unbenedicted humankind with this thought, and to be no better than the redundancy of the copulating, groveling, self-interested race did not do much for his own esteem.

To even settle himself down to the level of this stone-like creature before him—not male, not female, nor yet quite beast—that was too much to be endured. But having endured news that he would not see the revelation of Sofia, anything else was easy enough to take.

“I suppose there is something she wants you to tell me.” Andrea found the words at last.

“There is.”

“Something more than that she won’t see me, else she simply wouldn’t send you at all.”

“I am merely considering—how much of this you need to know.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, tell it all,” Andrea spouted. “You can give me no greater sorrow than you already have.”

The great eunuch shifted on his little chair with a dangerous creak and there seemed not air enough in the narrow room for the two of them. “The tale has little to do with my lady.”

“Tell it, ustadh, and get it over with.”

The green in the eunuch’s eyes shifted towards the flimsy boarding of the wall over Andrea’s head.

Andrea resisted the temptation to turn and follow the khadim’s eyes, afraid any sign of nerves would make the gelding skittish and drag the story out even longer.

“My lady bade me,” the eunuch began, “relate to you something that happened to me yesterday morning.”

“Nothing else?” What happened to a eunuch could be of little consequence anywhere.

“Nothing else,” Ghazanfer replied. “But attend me first before you turn a deaf ear. Are you aware that I was once guardian to Mihrimah Sultan, Selim’s sister?”

Andrea shook his head. He still couldn’t discern any reason why he should hear the tale, drawn with such difficulty from the huge freak, as if his mind were shut by a door that had not been swung in years. But Sofia, Andrea reminded himself, trusted this creature.

So Andrea worked up more concern in order to say, “I beg you, ustadh, continue.”

“It was almost six years ago now, when Selim, our present master, was as yet only crown prince.”

Andrea noted the eunuch did not recite the customary formula praying for an eternal reign when he spoke Selim’s name. Did this betray treasonous thoughts against the master who owned him, body and soul? It certainly would explain why the eunuch felt a need to confess something he dared not speak even to others of his kind, perhaps to no other breathing soul. Andrea scooted closer to the hard edge of the cot.

“There was in those days a youth among the imperial pages whose fair features and gentle manners won him a friend in everyone he met. He was all but guaranteed quick advancement among Suleiman’s—Allah keep his soul—closest attendants. But then Selim came to Constantinople on an obligatory visit to his father—may Allah rain blessings on our departed sovereign—and it was not two days before Suleiman’s son claimed the child as his attendant as well. And Selim demands a little more of his favorites than our departed master ever did. Alas, the poor boy’s severe Christian upbringing did not allow him to accept the master’s attentions with anything but utter distaste. And, you must know, Selim is not easy on his lovers, be they male or female.

“In his grief, the lad turned to me for consolation. Many’s the early morning he would creep into my room before the hour of prayer. I’d wash the sex from him and—perhaps—if the master had been excitable that night—signs of rougher use—signs of favor many another slave would have been proud to wear.

“Then the lad would cry himself to sleep in my arms. Perhaps I did wrong by this. If I did—Allah is my witness—I meant no harm. Perhaps it was wrong to coddle the boy so. I should have been teaching him clearly: No love a slave enjoys can ever equal the love of his master. Unfortunately and unknown to me, my young friend began to leave Selim for my room as soon as the prince slept, without being dismissed, without learning if his master had further desire of him. One night—and perhaps Selim had been told by jealous tongues to beware—we were discovered thus—like a mother with her babe, and the master thought the worst.”

How could Ghazanfer speak of such things so impassively? Yet he did, reciting these terrors as no more than credits and debits in an accounting book. The eunuch was indeed a monster, humanity cut from him along with the rest of it.

“I was taken to the Seven Towers. Surely you must know of the place on the outskirts of the palace walls, and if you have not heard of the infamous tortures that occur there, I will not disturb your nobility by a rehearsal of mine. Suffice it to say it was in the eunuch’s hospital that my lady found me.”

Andrea found his mind wandering to where Sofia might be now, if she could not be with him. He could not believe Ghazanfer would be sitting there, so intent on his tale, if his lady were any place but safely tucked inside the imperial harem. Although—and perhaps this was what the monster was trying to tell him—a harem might be anything but safe.

Ghazanfer continued, “Selim had determined I was to suffer eternally—eternity, at least as far as he has control over it. I was to be slowly brought to the point of death, then brought to health, then death again, as long as flesh could endure it. The master came several days to watch, and brought my friend—”

Now, with the mention of torture and in spite of his distraction over Sofia, Andrea could not help but find the taciturn eunuch’s tale gut-wrenching and compelling. He shivered, as if the Towers’ shadows touched him, and when Ghazanfer faltered, encouraged him to continue.

“I will tell you, my young Venetian, I’d not been under this treatment long before I was at the point of seeking my own death. It was then my lady found me and, I know not by what magic, contrived to buy me as her own. I was pleased to think Selim had forgotten his jealousy in a new love, and was easily persuaded of the fact.”

Some of what the eunuch must have endured Andrea saw in his ravaged face and much-broken fingers—things that had only repulsed before. And the young man heard it in the tenderness and utter devotion with which he approached reference to Sofia Baffo.

Perhaps, Andrea jolted with the perversity of the thought and studied the eunuch more closely. Perhaps my jealousy of Prince Murad has been misplaced.

“My young friend I never saw again,” the eunuch continued, “except once. That was yesterday morning. My lady contrived to have me in attendance at the minister’s secret war counsel. Through our connections in the kitchen, I was set to serve drinks, and so became a hearer of their every decision.

“All would have gone smoothly. The viziers and generals were agreed that the entire army should be thrown against Yemen to beat those rebels back. The Mufti had given his blessing. But then—then the Sultan arrived.”

“Sultan Selim!” Andrea could not keep from exclaiming.

“He who, in the intervening years, has inherited his father’s place.”

“But I thought he no longer attended either the Divan or the war counsels. That, at least, is the wisdom among the ambassadors.”

“So thought we all, as well,” Ghazanfer replied, “though that your intelligence should be as good may make us reconsider ours.”

Was the eunuch amused or angered? Andrea couldn’t tell and let him continue.

“In any case, from Sokolli Pasha down to myself, none of us could have been more surprised had we seen the Doge of Venice himself enter the chamber. But here came the Sultan with a train of followers. Foremost among them was, of course, Joseph Nassey.”

“The Jew who has been Selim’s companion since childhood?”

“Precisely. What people may not be so free to tell your prying Venetian ears is that Nassey is more depraved than the master. He delights in nothing so much as leading the master by the hand down the tortuous road in all the unfamiliar territory of debauch. It seems clear it was Nassey who set the idea in the Sultan’s head. The Sultan himself is too muddied with wine to put two and two together to come up with any sort of plan at all if something like this irritates him. Without Nassey, whose evil stamina is ever so much greater, Selim would only rant and rave.

“Of what plan do you speak?”

“In a moment. I will get to that in a moment.” It seemed more difficult for Ghazanfer to name the plan than to name his master’s corruption. “First I wish to tell you that besides Joseph Nassey, the master was accompanied by—”

“Yes. Go on.” Andrea spurred the balky gelding.

Ghazanfer looked down and away. “By my friend, the young page. No longer favorite, yet he was still trusted to arrange his majesty’s cushions and to fetch his narghile. We were able to exchange glances across the room, glances which said, ‘Thank Allah, you are still well.’ Nothing more.”

“And the Sultan’s plan?”

“The ministers at first opposed the Sultan’s plan with as much tact as they dared. ‘The scheme is ill-advised,’ they said. They called upon signed treaties for witness, which the Shadow of Allah may not break lest Allah Himself be called a liar.

“As they grew more adamant, so did he, then so again did they. At last Selim lost his temper. Now, our master is not a large man. Having seen him only from a distance, on his horse, in his huge feathered turban and when every head around him must bow, you may have received that impression. But it is false. He is not large, and his complexion and manner are quite pale and womanly, for he takes little interest in the male pursuits of hunting, riding, or war anymore. When he is sober, his small, dark eves seem bland and lifeless. But fired with drink, as he was then, he is a different man. His eyes leap, his flesh burns red, and his mouth spews fire.

‘How dare you?’ he cried to his ministers. ‘How dare you gainsay my heart’s desire. I am the Sultan of Islam, the Shadow of Allah. And you—don’t you know that you are my slaves? I could snap my fingers and see you all boiled in oil before noon prayer today. Your lives are nothing without my pleasure! Nothing!’

“None of us dared move or even breathe at that moment lest it be contrary to his will. And our fear served him as vet another draught of strong wine. Under its influence, he felt—and we did, too—that he had the strength of twenty men. He snatched the sword from the waist of the nearest janissary, then snatched my young friend by the neckband. And as he did, the look of venom with which the master fixed me announced his choice was hardly arbitrary. And I had thought myself so disfigured by my torturers that no one from before could recognize me.

Emotion swam like a fish in the blue-green of the eunuch’s eyes, then froze solid.

“The lad made no resistance—” The eunuch’s tale continued. “—not even a whimper. Had the master asked him, he would have lain down voluntarily. But the Sultan shoved the boy down and pinned him with the sword—through the heart—to the rugs.

“The Sultan spoke. ‘All of you! Grand Vizier, Kapudan Pasha, whatever fancy names you have, you are all my slaves, no better than that crawling worm there, and if it is my pleasure, I could do you all the same at this moment. No power on earth could stop me. Is it my pleasure? Perhaps. First, I must hear your pleasure in this matter we are discussing. Shall we make war on whom I decide, or shall we not?’

“‘Be it according to your word,’ they all concurred as they watched—or tried not to watch—the boy’s last twitch.