CHAPTER XXXVII.
An hour later the Kislar Aga, chief of the black eunuchs in charge ofthe royal harem, was announced.
"Well, Sinam, have any of your herd of gazelles escaped?" asked theSultan.
"None. But Mira Sultana would pay her homage at your Majesty's feet."
"Mira, the Greek?" said Mahomet, the deep color rising to his temples.
Lowering his tone to a whisper, he conversed for a few moments withthe eunuch, who prostrated himself upon the ground, and with harsh,yet thin voice, said:
"Your Majesty is wise, very wise. Your will is that of Allah, theGreat Hunkiar. It shall be done."
Mira was a beautiful woman. The light texture of her robe revealed aperfect form; and the thin veil lent a charm to her face, such asshadows send across the landscape.
Mahomet shuddered, as the kneeling woman embraced his feet. The wordsof her congratulation to the young monarch, her protestation ofdevotion to him as to his father, though uttered with the sweetestvoice he had ever heard, and with evident honesty, sent a visibletremor through the frame of her listener. And when she added, "Mychild, Ahmed, the image of his noble father and thine, will serve theewith his life, and"--
"It is well! It is well," interrupted the Sultan. "Be gone now!"
The morning following was one in which the hearts of the citizens ofAdrianople stood almost throbless with horror. Mothers clasped theirbabes with a shudder to their breasts; and fathers stroked the fairhair of their boys, and thanked Allah that no tide of royal blood ranin their veins. A story afterward floated over the lands of Moslem andChristian, as terrible as a cloud of blood, dropping its shadow intopalace and cottage, and dyeing that page of history on which Mahomet'sname is written with a damning blot.
While Mira Sultana was bowing at the feet of the new monarch,congratulating him upon his accession to the throne, her infant son,Ahmed, half brother to Mahomet, was being strangled in the bath by hisorders. Another son of Amurath, Calapin, had, through his mother'stimely suspicion, escaped to the land of the Christians.
It was late in the day when Captain Ballaban appeared for audiencewith the Sultan. His Majesty was apparently in the gayest of moods.
"Come, toss me the dice! We have not played since I laid aside mymanhood and put on the Padishah's cloak. Come! What? Have you no staketo put up? Then I will stake for both. A Turkoman, the father of myown bride, has sent me a bevy of women, Georgians, with faces as fairas the shell of an ostrich's egg,[72] and voices as sweet as of thebirds which sang to the harp of David.[73] The choice to him who wins!What! does not that tempt the cloud to drift off your face? Then haveyour choice without the toss. What! still brooding?" added he, growingangry. "By the holy house at Mecca! I'll make you laugh if I tickleyour ribs with my dagger's point."
"You made me promise that I would be true to you, my Padishah, and ifI should laugh to-day I would not be true," replied Ballaban quietly."My face wears the shadows which the people have thrown into it."
"The people?" said Mahomet growing pale.
"Ay, the people have heard the wailing of the Sultana."
"For what? Tell me for what?" asked the Sultan with feigned surprise.
Ballaban narrated the story which was on every one's lips.
"It is treason against me," cried the monarch. Summoning the Capee Agahe bade him call the divan.
The great personages of the empire were speedily gathered in theaudience room. At the right of the Sultan stood the Grand Vizier andthree subordinate viziers. On his left was the Kadiasker, the chief ofthe judges, with other members of the ulema or guild of lawyers,constituting the high court. The Reis-Effendi, or clerk, stood withhis tablets before the seat of the Sultan. The rear of the room wasfilled with various princes and high officials.
Turning to the Kadiasker, the Sultan asked:
"What is the denomination of the crime, and the penalty of him who,unbidden by the Padishah, shall put to death a child of royal blood?"
The Kadiasker, after a moment's evident surprise at the question,pronounced slowly the following decision:
"It were a double crime, Sire, being both murder and treason. And ifperchance the child were fatherless, let a triple curse come upon theslayer. For what saith the Book of the Prophet?[74] 'They who devourthe possessions of orphans unjustly, shall swallow down nothing butfire into their bellies, and shall broil in raging flames.' If suchbe the curse of Allah upon him who shall despoil the child of hisrightful goods, much more does Allah bid us visit with vengeance onewho despoils the child of that chiefest possession--his life. Such isthe law, O Zil Ullah."[75]
Turning to the Kislar Aga, Mahomet commanded him to give testimony.
The Nubian trembled as he looked into the blanched face of the Sultan;but soon recovered his self possession sufficiently to read hismaster's thoughts, and said,
"The child of Mira Sultana was found dead at the bath while in thehands of Sayid."
"Was Sayid the child's appointed attendant?" asked the Kadiasker.
"He was not," was the response.
"Let him die!" said the judge slowly.
"Let him die!" repeated the Grand Vizier.
The Sultan bowed in assent and withdrew.
The swift vengeance of the Padishah was hailed with applause by theofficials, as if it had erased the blood guilt from the robe of royalhonor; but the people shook their heads, and kept shadows on theirfaces for many days.
"I tire of this life in the barracks," said Captain Ballaban to theSultan, shortly after this event.
"Speak honestly, man," was the reply. "You tire of me; my heart is notlarge enough to entertain one of such ambition."
"Nay, Sire, but I would get nearer to the innermost core of yourheart, into that which is your deepest desire."
"And where, think you, is that spot?" said the Sultan smiling.
"Constantinople," was the laconic response.
"Ah! true lover of mine art thou, if you would be there. Until I putthe Mihrab[76] in the walls of St. Sophia, I shall not sleep withoutthe dream that I have done it. Know you not the dream of Othman? howthe leaves of the tree which sprang from his bosom when the fairMalkhatoon, the mother of all the Padishahs, sank upon it, were shapedlike cimeters, and every wind turned their points towardConstantinople? My waking and sleeping thoughts are the leaves. Thespirit of Othman breathes through my soul and turns them thither. Go!and prepare my coming. The walls withstood my father Amurath. Discoverwhy? I hear that Urban, the cannon founder, is in the pay of theGreeks. He who discovered a way to turn the Dibrians againstSfetigrade can find a way to turn a foreigner's eyes from the batteredcrown of the Caesars to something brighter--Go, and Allah give youwisdom!"
The reader is acquainted with the immediate sequel of CaptainBallaban's departure, his adventure with the Italian desperadoes atthe old reservoir, and his success with Urban.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] The type of a beautiful complexion according to the Koran, Chap.XXXVII.
[73] Koran, Chap. XXXIV.
[74] Koran, Chap. IV.
[75] Shadow of God, one of the titles of the Sultan.
[76] The niche in mosques, on the side toward Mecca, in the directionof which the Moslems turn their faces to pray.
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