Ottoman

by Christopher Nicole

  Abdul Pasha stared at him in astonishment. He had known William Hawkwood since birth.

  “You have just condemned yourself to death, young Hawk,” he said.

  “I have just condemned myself to life, Abdul Pasha. Go now and tell Bayazid what I have said.”

  *

  He stood at the window and watched the embassy making its way back down the sloping road through the mountains.

  “Those were brave words,” Giovanna said, beside him.

  He turned. She had spent the winter dressmaking and attending to her wardrobe. She now wore a western-style gown, and was filling out again; her cheeks were clear olive. Her hair was a great tawny mass clouding on her shoulder. She was a strong and handsome woman.

  “Brave words cost nothing,” he told her.

  “But you will implement them with brave deeds, when the time comes,” she insisted. “You are the strongest of the Hawks.”

  “I?” He gave a brief laugh. “Compared with my father and my brother, I am a weakling.”

  “Not so. For all their strength they were bound by their acceptance of the Sultan as omnipotent, all-powerful. Neither would have had the courage to defy him as you have done.”

  “It takes little courage to shout defiance, when the alternative is death.”

  “But you have done it,” she repeated. “I am proud of you. I am proud that you will act as father to young Harry.”

  He gazed at her. She was a woman who had suffered much — as much, perhaps, as poor Aimée. Aimée had seemingly been born to suffer. If he could be grateful for anything, it should be for those two months they had spent together as man and wife, and for that brief joyful week when they had loved. It was the only true happiness he had ever known.

  Golkha seemed totally ignorant of anything save the functioning of her body, and since the birth of her daughter she had developed an almost animal-like maternalism, grudging the time she spent with him when instead she could be with her child.

  But Giovanna provided intelligent companionship.

  “Much news reached Constantinople in your absence,” she had told him. “Of how a Genoese in the service of Spain, one Columbus, has sailed across the great ocean and come to Asia. He has proved that the world is round. Is that not marvellous?”

  “Yes,” William agreed, intrigued.

  “And from England, that the heir to the throne is dead. It is said that his younger brother will wed Prince Arthur’s wife, the Princess of Aragon. It is even sanctioned by the Pope.”

  “By that wretch? He is a greater scoundrel than Bayazid.”

  “Nonetheless, the sanction is accepted.” Giovanna came closer. “I do not ask to be your wife, William. I know I can never replace Aimée, nor would I seek to do so. But I cannot live an empty life.”

  No more can I, he thought. And we are the last relics of the Hawkwood family. Save only for little Harry.

  It were best he had both a father and a mother.

  William took her into his arms.

  *

  Giovanna made love almost with desperation. But then, so did William. Both had much to forget, and much to anticipate…not all of it pleasant.

  Aimée was dead. Once he had supposed her lost to him, while knowing that she still laughed and perhaps loved. That had been bitter gall to his spirit.

  But now she was dead. Raped until she no longer pleased her master, and then tied up in a sack and drowned. Aimée was dead.

  He would never love again. But he could make love.

  And Giovanna was a woman born to be loved. She was a true Neapolitan, tempestuous and moody. There were days when she would speak to no one, days when she would break crockery, days when she looked sinister enough for murder. But there were also days, more numerous as time passed, when Giovanna laughed and sang, when she cooked exotic meals, when she played for hours with her son.

  When she was happy. On those days William was happy too.

  He expected her to become pregnant, but she preferred not to, by means of douches and various other remedies which she did not confide to him. He could not blame her. Their future was too uncertain, and Harry was sufficient for her to worry over.

  But the boy was a joy. William very soon indeed came to regard him as his own, delighted in teaching him horsemanship and the use of weapons…instilling in his mind a hatred of Bayazid.

  *

  Every summer, for the first few years following their declaration of revolt, both William and the garrison anticipated a punitive expedition. They did not greatly fear it, but they did not see how Bayazid could let them exist without at least an attempt to bring them down. Every spring William sent spies down to Trebizond, who brought back news of the outside world — but of no great summons to arms within the Ottoman dominions.

  It seemed that Bayazid, lost in his pleasures, was content to forget about them. But also, it seemed, he remained securely upon his throne.

  Thus one summer melted gently into another and William’s pain began to subside. His anger never would. From the viewpoint of either Turk or Englishman the rape and death of Aimée was of less importance than the necessity to avenge his brother.

  But the doing of it was going to take time.

  *

  It was time William used well. His mountain warfare against the Persians and the Circassians taught him the skill at arms he had hoped to learn from his father. Equally it kept his men honed to a hardness and keenness they had not known since the days of Mahomet.

  Slowly, every year, he increased the size of his army. He remembered too well the hastily-raised and totally ineffective levées which had followed Djem to catastrophe. He could not increase the numbers of his Janissaries, because in the Taurus mountains there were no Christian children to be kidnapped, but he could recruit and train a hand-picked body of mountaineers, men who swore allegiance to him and in time would follow him anywhere.

  He had not the handguns to arm them as well, but the mountain Turks were as deadly with their bows as the average musketeer, and once disciplined became a truly formidable fighting force.

  They lived very much off their own, farming the fields in the summer and retreating into hibernation in the winter, complete with their cattle. They made their own clothes and their own bullets. And, as time passed without any move by Bayazid, they began to venture more often into Trebizond, where they were welcomed as friends. They beylerbey even entertained William in his own home.

  Mustafa was gloomy. “I see the dissolution of our empire,” he said. “You are not the only beylerbey who has virtually declared independence, Hawk Pasha. Even I no longer receive instructions from Constantinople. Though I at least still send tribute,” he added morosely.

  William marked him as a man who might possibly be useful when the day came.

  His visits to Trebizond were most useful for discovering what was happening in the world beyond Constantinople. He learned how the boy king Charles VIII had invaded Italy and marched as far south as Naples; how Pope Alexander had formed a ‘Holy League’ to expel the invaders. But the French had only left Italy when disease had shattered their army.

  He learned how Cesare Borgia had embarked on a career of conquest through central and northern Italy, earning for himself the title Duke of Romagna.

  He learned of the spread of a dreadful sexual disease called syphilis from Naples, during its siege by the French. Surely, he thought, a judgement of God.

  He learned of the early death of Charles VIII and the succession of Louis XII in France. And of the launching of a crusade by Alexander VI against the Turks; everyone had to pay a tithe of their wealth towards the raising of a vast army. But it was never raised.

  He heard of the continuing explorations of the Genoese seaman, Christopher Columbus.

  And then in 1503, ten years after he had left Constantinople, he heard that Pope Alexander VI was dead.

  *

  Four years later, forced to flee Italy, after the support of the Papacy had been withdrawn, Cesare Borgia
was killed in a skirmish in eastern Spain.

  Alexander’s successor was, predictably, Cardinal Giuliano delle Rovere, who took the name Julius II. He was a bitter enemy of the Borgias all his life, and after an attempt on his life had even been forced to flee to the Emperor for protection. Now he was back, and the Papacy, which had been reduced to the level of a brothel by the Borgias, was due for an overhaul. It now ceased to present any threat to the Ottoman empire, which was apparently maintaining good relations with its immediate neighbours, happy to be relieved by Bayazid’s indolence from the constant probings of the Conqueror.

  Venice thus renewed her alliance with the Porte, and even proposed a joint Turkish-Venetian conquest of Egypt with a view to building a canal through to the Red Sea, shortening the trade route to India and the East. Venice was alarmed by the progress made by Spanish and Portuguese seamen. The Portuguese sailors, Vasco da Gama and Bartolomeu Diaz, going south instead of west, had rounded the Cape of Storms at the bottom of Africa. Portuguese carracks were appearing in the Arabian Sea, and Venice saw the approaching end of her carrying monopoly unless the intruders could be thwarted.

  But Bayazid turned a deaf ear to the importunities of the Venetian ambassador. He did not care what happened beyond the walls of Constantinople.

  It was in the late summer of 1509 that a messenger toiled up the road to Erzurum with the news that Constantinople had been devastated by an earthquake.

  *

  William Hawkwood and Walid gazed at each other in consternation. It was hard to imagine that mighty city laid low.

  Equally it was hard to decide whether this was the act of God for which they had been waiting.

  The Sultan?” William asked.

  “The Sultan is unharmed, great lord. The Seraglio is undamaged.”

  William snapped his fingers in dismay.

  “But there is much unrest,” the messenger continued. “It is said that the Janissaries have overturned their meat kettles. They are complaining that it is the duty of the Sultan to lead them to war, not to keep them sitting at home to be killed by falling walls.”

  “Now, that is good news,” Walid said. “Which of the young princes will they follow, do you suppose?”

  William knew none of the princes well enough; only that they had spent their entire lives submerged in the shadow of a debauched libertine.

  “I doubt they will follow anyone,” he said.

  “Then, like Mustafa Bey, you foresee the break-up of the empire,” Walid said sombrely.

  *

  To know what to do: it was not the first time in his life that William had been faced with this dilemma. And now he had no one to whom he could turn.

  He was forty-nine years old; and the last fifteen had been by far the most contented of his life. Could he rid himself of the burden of guilt that he had not yet avenged his wife and his brother, he would indeed have been happy.

  He could see Harry Hawkwood growing into a tall, strong youth. As he was tawny-haired Giovanna’s son no less than John Hawkwood’s, his hair was red and his shoulders broad. Already he rode at William’s side on the summer campaigns. If he succeeded to nothing more than the city of Erzurum, and rule over the mountains, he would yet have a great inheritance.

  The others had died so long ago. Yet they must be avenged.

  “We will give the Janissaries a few more months to foster their discontent,” he decided, “and meanwhile prepare ourselves for war.”

  *

  That summer he took almost his entire army through the mountains, meaning to raid for a hundred miles along the west bank of the Tigris, as far as Mosul. There were the usual skirmishes with the locals, but no resistance to speak of until they had advanced some fifty miles, and were almost down into the plains. Then the advance guard of sipahis sent a messenger back to the main body, to announce that they had made contact with a large force of Persians who wished to hold a parley.

  “What have we to say to the Persians?” Walid asked. “They are our enemies.”

  “It can harm no man to listen to what others have to say,” William told him. “Even his enemies.”

  Not wishing to fall into any trap, he deployed his army carefully, keeping the Janissaries close to the river that guarded his left, marching his mountaineers on the right flank stretching into the desert, and covering the whole with a screen of sipahis. Then he rode forward, with Walid and his personal escort, to where the advance guard waited.

  Before him was indeed a considerable force of both horse and foot, but encamped on the bank of the river, with banners flying and tabalcans sounding.

  Between the encampment and his sipahis there waited a piquet of horsemen beneath a white flag.

  Walid advanced to interrogate them, and then returned. “Someone who calls himself the Shah of all Persia wishes to speak with you, Hawk Pasha. His name is Ismail. We have heard of this man.”

  They had indeed. Part of the reason for their successful raids into Persia over the past fifteen years had arisen from the fact that the once-great Iranian kingdom had been split by faction and civil war. Recently, however, word had reached them that a single warlord had been slowly accumulating territory, bringing the rebellious khans to heel. The name they had heard was Ismail. He claimed to be the son of the Sheikh Haidar by a daughter of the same Uzun Hasan whom the Conqueror and Anthony Hawkwood had defeated thirty years before.

  More important than that, his paternal grandfather, Sheikh Joneid, claimed descent from Ali, the fourth caliph. This made him a Shi’ite Muslim, as were the majority of the Persians; as Ali had been murdered, they claimed that all the caliphs since him had been usurpers.

  And so William rode forward to greet the self-proclaimed Shah of Iran.

  He saw a man of medium size, with a clean-shaven chin but upturned moustaches, dressed in a tunic of cloth of gold with tight white leggings beneath, and wearing a turban in which was set an ostrich plume secured with a sapphire brooch.

  “You are Hawk Pasha, the rebel against the Sultan,” Ismail declared.

  “I am Hawk Pasha, defender of the true Ottoman cause,” William replied.

  “You are outlawed by the Sultan.”

  “Yet I am ruler of the Taurus, and all the lands close by. You must be aware of these things, my lord Shah.”

  Ismail stared at him, and then smiled.

  “Come and sit with me.”

  They rode into the Persian encampment, and sat on a carpet in the golden tent of the Shah. Coffee was served.

  “Your warriors worship a false principle,” Ismail observed.

  “They think that of you, my lord Shah,” William replied. “But they are my warriors. Where I point my sword, they march.”

  “And you point your sword against my people. This is senseless, Hawk Pasha. Your sword should be pointed against Constantinople, against the false Sultan who has betrayed and humiliated you.”

  William bit his lip. Did all the world know of it?

  “My sword will be pointed at Constantinople when the time is right.”

  “Is the time ever more right than now? Bayazid is discredited. His Janissaries overturn their meat kettles; his capital is in ruins. He has proved himself a coward. Can you await a better opportunity?”

  William studied his face. “The Sultan yet commands mighty armies, and great soldiers to lead them. More important, he is the Sultan, and commands the allegiance of all men not already sentenced to death.”

  “A sultan who has broken the law of the Anyi is no sultan,” Ismail declared. “If the imams and the muftis lack the courage to replace him, then the task must fall to abler hands.”

  “But those hands must belong to a member of the royal house,” William said.

  Ismail smiled. “You are right, Hawk Pasha. You understand the law.” He clapped his hands, and the inner flap of the tent was lifted.

  A man stood there. He was in his early forties, William estimated, dressed as a Turk, but richly. His features, the drooping upper lip and the cold eyes,
denoted his family.

  William was on his feet in an instant, making the obeisance. “My lord Prince Ahmed.”

  The Prince came into the room and took his hands.

  “Hawk Pasha. My father has grievously wronged you.”

  “You do me great honour, my lord Prince.”

  “I am honoured to be in the company of so great a warrior, Hawk Pasha. And of so great a name.”

  “It is well,” Ismail said impatiently. “Acquaint Hawk Pasha with your reasons for being here, my lord Prince.”

  Ahmed sat down, cross-legged, between them. William sat on his left.

  “My father has sinned against you, Hawk Pasha,” Prince Ahmed declared, “and against the Anyi. He had sinned also against his sons. My brothers are weak men, unable to determine what is best to do. I know what is to be done: my father must be deposed. I mean him no harm, but he has proved himself unworthy of ruling the Ottoman Turks. The Janissaries need but a sign. And who may better give them the sign than the pasha my father has wronged — and who will now march under a royal banner? My own.”

  William glanced at Ismail, and the Prince continued.

  “The Shah, here, who seeks justice in all things, has promised us his support. He has promised money, guns and ammunition. More, he has promised a contingent of his own men. He has promised forty thousand Persians to march beneath our banners.”

  William continued to gaze at Ismail for a confirming sign.

  “I have indeed promised these things,’ Ismail said.

  “You will be the commander of my army, Hawk Pasha,” Ahmed announced.

  *

  “Shi’ites,” Walid said. “That is not good. The people will not accept it. The Janissaries will not accept it.”

  “They will accept it,” William said, “because I will explain it to them.”

  He assembled his men and spoke to them. He reminded them of the patient years they had waited to strike at Bayazid, to replace him with an Ottoman more worthy of the name. He told them that they would never have a better opportunity than now. And he reminded them that the Conqueror, in the furtherance of his plans, had made alliance with Greeks and Christians, infidels all, for as long as it suited him. There could be nothing wrong in a temporary alliance with heretics, if it gave them the victory.