Selim gave another grim smile. “The only good Shi’ite is a dead one.”
“They are my allies,” William protested.
“They are Shi’ites. Did you ask for their help, Hawk Pasha?”
“No, my lord.”
“They were foisted upon you by my brother and his ally, the so-called Shah of Persia. You have no reason to support them.”
“They are forty thousand men.”
“Forty thousand Shi’ites, Hawk Pasha.”
“Who have marched beneath my banner.”
Selim’s teeth gleamed through his beard. “You are an honourable man, Hawk Pasha; that I know. Send your Persian allies home. Tell them to inform their Shah that they are little men, and that if he does not send my brother Ahmed to me I will come to him, and destroy him and his puny people.”
“My lord, that will mean war with the Shah.”
“War is what I wish, Hawk Pasha. War is man’s natural state. I wish war with all the world. If you would ride at my right hand, that must be your wish, too.”
William remembered what he had told Giovanna: that this year would be the most momentous in Ottoman history. He had been right without understanding it.
Mahomet the Conqueror was reborn.
*
The Kislar Agha opened the door and gave a brief bow. “Ya Habibti, the Padishah comes.”
Aimée had been reclining on one of the divans, playing with her lapdog. She sat bolt upright and stared at the eunuch.
“Here?”
For the Sultan to visit the private apartments of his concubines was unknown.
“He is much distressed,” the Agha said warningly.
His name was Ali and he was a friend. She had known him for so very long: eighteen years. He had held the tray with her nail parings and her bodily hair for her inspection on that unforgettable day when she had first entered this palace. He had been a subordinate then, but had succeeded to his all-powerful post on the death of his predecessor seven years ago. She did not suppose there was a living creature on the face of the earth she knew so well, or who knew her so intimately.
Now he had come to prepare her…for what?
*
It was difficult for Aimée to consider any change in her situation, after eighteen years, even if she knew that her life still hung on the whim of her master. No doubt the lives of everyone in the empire hung on that whim, but the inmates of the harem were more readily exposed to his uncertain temper.
Aimée remembered well how some of the other women had disappeared a few years before. No one had known where they had gone — and it was unthinkable to suppose they had been sent out of the Seraglio. As she had been told when she had first entered the palace, there was no escape save in death. Yet no sultan in history had murdered his concubines en masse.
But soon Constantinople had been rife with rumour, brought into the harem by the eunuchs, how a fishing boat had struck a rock and sunk off Seraglio Point, and, when the owner and his sons had dived to the wreck to see what they could salvage, they had come face-to-face with a score of drowned women, manacled together, waving to and fro on the tide.
They had been guizdes, the unwanted ones. Such a fate could never overtake an odalisk, much less the highest odalisk of them all.
Aimée could clearly remember what had happened to her that first day, when she had been taken to the bedchamber of the Sultan.
The Agha had remained to undress his master. Curious as she had been, Aimée had yet been revolted by the rolls of fat. She had begun to grow afraid again when the Kislar Agha had been dismissed. Amazing that she should find reassurance in the presence of a eunuch, who clearly regarded her as no more than a lump of meat.
She had then been stripped by Bayazid, to submit to his maulings and explorations, his entry and his mutterings. That was her fate and she must accept it.
He had been pleased.
“You are exquisite,” he had told her when he had regained his breath after finally climaxing. “From now on your name will be Ya Habibti: My Darling.”
As he had entered her from behind, his weight had caused her knees to collapse, but she had lain still beneath him, fighting for breath. She had been aiming only at her own survival.
*
Understanding had come later for Ya Habibti. She had been summoned to the Sultan’s bed every night for a fortnight. During that time she had been secluded from the other women, served only by her eunuchs and her maids. They told her how it was rumoured that the Sultan was ill, because he called no other woman to his bed. They told her that she was the most privileged woman in the history of the world.
She had not thought so, then. The true horror of her situation had only slowly been dawning on her. To come face-to-face with the fact that she must spend the rest of her life within these four walls… At times she had screamed uncontrollably for William, and had to be restrained in case she harmed herself.
Yet did she really wish William to return for her, when it would probably mean his death — and hers? But not to dream of him, to pray that he might somehow secret her away from the harem, would be a betrayal of her love for him. That at least she could preserve, no matter what course her life took.
But even that became difficult after the first month. Because after a month she was pregnant.
Bayazid had been delighted. His sons were all grown men, and he had long deemed himself impotent.
Now there was even more reason now for secreting her in her own private apartments. The mothers of Corcud, and Ahmed, and Selim, would have given this rival short shrift.
With the birth of her first daughter, her husband William had seemed more remote. When she asked about him from the eunuchs, she was told that William had vanished into the mountains of the Taurus — officially dead. His name was never uttered at the divan.
So this was her Fate. If Bayazid was disappointed that she had produced only a daughter, he had still been proud of his prowess. Within a year she had again been a mother. This too was a girl, which she found reassuring. There was no risk of rivalry for the future sultanate, to threaten her child.
By then, too, the need for concealment was passed. She had retained her private apartments, but had been given the freedom of the harem. This proved a joy. She had now been surrounded by other women, and she had won the special friendship and protection of the Sultan Valideh, Gulbehar — the favourite wife of the Conqueror. Gulbehar had been only fourteen when she had given birth to Bayazid, so even when the Sultan reached the age of sixty she was still only seventy-four, a neat, trim little woman whose wrinkles could not conceal the beauty that had once turned the head of Mahomet.
No doubt, Aimée supposed, that was an age she would reach herself; at thirty-nine she was well over halfway. Would she also still reveal traces of her beauty?
Her life had slipped into a serenity she had never known in her youth. Bayazid had aged and degenerated too rapidly to be a continuing nuisance. He had not succeeded in impregnating her again, and as time had passed he had sought variety. Nowadays she went to his bed not more than a dozen times a year, but even that was more regularly than any other inmate of the harem.
She knew him for a debauched and drunken roué. She knew him for a physical coward: his terror had been pitiful that day two years back when the earth had shaken and cracks had appeared in the palace walls. She knew him to be a mass killer and an utterly vicious creature. Yet, by sheer familiarity, he had become more like a husband to her than William had ever been.
And he was not entirely given to vice. Though his viziers might regard him with contempt because he preferred peace to war, he spent his time in filling the palace with books and art treasures gleaned from all over Europe, although he dared not display any paintings which depicted the human form.
He lavished presents upon her, of jewellery and fine stuffs. He clearly adored her daughters, who had now grown into lovely teenage girls.
Left to herself, Aimée could attend to their education. Left
to herself she could form friendships within the harem, even if the Greek girls and the Bulgars, the Anatolians and the Circassians remained too childish and banal for her to ever seek intimacy with them. She preferred the company of her eunuchs, and in particular Ali.
There could be no true happiness in the harem. But there could be a great deal of contentment.
But now Bayazid was coming to see her in her own apartment — and in great distress. Something terrible must have happened.
*
The Sultan sank on to the divan, his fat dissolving into rolls of shivering jelly.
“I have been betrayed,” he moaned. “I have been betrayed.”
Aimée sat down beside him. “By whom, O Padishah?”
“Selim! The best of my sons. There was a rebellion in the Taurus, inspired by that fiend Ismail of Persia. I sent Selim against the rebels with an army. Now he and the rebel army march together on Constantinople. March on me! By Allah, I am forsaken; I have fathered a brood of vipers.”
“Perhaps you frighten yourself without cause, Padishah,” Aimée said. “You sent your son to suppress a rebellion, and he has done so. If he has accomplished this without fighting, but has instead persuaded the rebels to return to their loyalty, is that not something for which to be thankful?”
“Bah! You know nothing, woman,” Bayazid snapped. “Have you no idea who commanded these rebels?”
Aimée stared at him, a monstrous suspicion starting up in her mind.
“Aye,” Bayazid said. “Young Hawk. Who now styles himself Hawk Pasha.” He threw off her arm and strode to the window, which looked down on the courtyard of the harem. “Hawk Pasha! He is a nightmare risen from the grave to haunt me.”
Aimée’s hand flew to her throat. A Hawkwood marching in arms on Constantinople! William! After eighteen years!
Bayazid flung out his arm.
“He seeks my death, and somehow he has suborned my son. But I will tell you this: before he sets foot in this palace you will die, Ya Habibti. He will never recover you!”
He stamped from the room.
*
Aimée sat motionless for several seconds after he had left. She had never been more afraid in her life.
She was less afraid of anything Bayazid might do to her. He could not be serious; she was Ya Habibti. But the thought of having to face William again…coming to avenge her after eighteen years.
She felt like a young girl. Her heart fluttered and her cheeks grew hot. William was coming.
She made herself think. If, after eighteen years, he wished to march on Constantinople, could it be her he sought? Yet he must know how she had spent those eighteen years. He knew, and yet he came.
She must be alive to receive him. It was her fate, her kismet. She had only survived by believing that utterly. God had led her a merry dance, but at last He was returning her to her rightful lord.
There was no need to be afraid. She was thirty-nine, and she had put on some weight, but not so much as most of the other older women. She was still Ya Habibti, the most beautiful woman in the harem. Her hair was still like fine-spun gold, her skin unblemished.
William would love her once again. Because he was coming for her.
More than ever she relied on Ali; he was her friend. News was of vital importance, and Ali knew as well as anyone what was happening in the outside world. She pressed him for further information.
“They call the Prince Selim the Grim,” Ali told her. “He destroys every man, everything that stands in his way. And now he is past Brusa, and marching on the Bosphorus.”
“Will the garrison here fight for the Sultan?” she asked.
“If he were to put himself at their head, perhaps,” Ali said.
But Bayazid would never have the courage to do that.
“Is it true that Hawk Pasha marches with the Prince?” she persisted.
“It is true, lady.”
“And what of the other princes?”
“They are fled. Ahmed is with the Persians. Corcud has gone to Venice. They are as nothing now, unless Selim dies.”
But Selim could not die; he was bringing Hawk Pasha to her. She was so excited she thought she might die.
*
Constantinople waited.
“The Prince is at the Bosphorus, lady,” Ali reported. “He has summoned his father to surrender.”
Aimée could hardly breathe.
The women of the harem gathered whispering in groups, afraid to say out loud whether they feared or anticipated the deposition of their master. No doubt the people of Constantinople did the same. The night air was filled with sound: a gigantic whisper seeping through the darkness.
Aimée woke with a start, surprised to have fallen asleep. She sat up and gazed at the doorway of her apartment. It was opening.
But there were no lights.
“Who is there?” she demanded, anxiously.
“It is Ali, lady.”
He was not alone. There were two other eunuchs with him.
“What is happening?” she asked.
“The army of Prince Selim is across the Bosphorus. Tomorrow it will enter the city,” Ali told her. “The Janissaries of the garrison have declared for the Prince.”
He had advanced until he stood by the bed. The others remained a little further away.
Aimée’s eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and she gasped in horror at what she saw. The two eunuchs carried a sack, and Ali held a bowstring in his hands.
She propelled herself backwards with her heels and touched the wall.
“No,” she said. “You cannot!”
“I am instructed by our master, lady.”
“You cannot! You, Ali? You cannot.”
“I must obey my master, lady. Come.”
Aimée panted. “My daughters…”
“They will not be harmed, lady. But my master has ordered that you must not fall into the hands of Hawk Pasha.”
“Ali, please…”
“It is better to die with dignity, lady, than to be dragged screaming to the sack.”
He reached for her, and she kicked out at him. In the darkness neither could see the other properly, and her toes struck him in the chest. He grabbed at her ankle and held it for a moment, but she twisted free, and sprang for the end of the divan.
He reached for her again, but she slept naked and his fingers slipped on her sweat-coated flesh.
Though the other two also tried to stop her, she wriggled past them, through the open door, and she was in the corridor. Panting and gasping, she ran for the outer door, which she had never before been through. She knew it was guarded, but the suddenness of her appearance took the eunuchs there by surprise. They shouted in alarm but she was past them, into the main body of the palace.
She knew she was on an upper floor, but she also knew that this building stood against the outer walls of the city itself — the seaward walls where the Bosphorus flowed by Seraglio Point. She was intended for the Bosphorus anyway, but if she could reach there unbound… Memory took her back all of twenty-seven years, to French summers when she and her mother and sisters had bathed in the Seine. She had swum in that wide river, flowing far more quickly than the Bosphorus. Twenty-seven years — but surely she would be able to swim again.
The palace was lit by torches set high in the walls, and Aimée ran straight for the windows at the far end of the upper gallery.
Guards appeared from archways to either side, and began to yell — but mainly at each other. A naked woman running through the corridors was not a sight any of them had expected to see in their wildest fantasies. Her pale skin and floating golden hair told them who she was: everyone had heard of Ya Habibti, even if no man save the Sultan had beheld her for eighteen years.
While they hesitated, Aimée reached the window.
Ali appeared at the far end of the hall. “Stop her!” he shrieked. “Seize her.”
As the guards ran forward, Aimée looked at them in panic, then at the darkness outside. She
had no idea what lay there: beneath her could be gentle water or hard rock.
But it would be better than the bowstring and the sack.
As the first guard reached out for her, she threw herself, out and away from the sill, into the darkness.
***
Once I hated this man, William Hawkwood thought, as he gazed at the one-time Sultan Bayazid II.
But how was it possible to hate such a bent, broken, shameful figure?
Mounds of fat at jowl and shoulder, chest and belly trembled with fear as Bayazid faced his son.
“Go with these men, Father,” Selim commanded.
Bayazid shivered even more.
“You are not to die,” Selim told him. “But the world will not look upon your face again. Go with these men.”
Bayazid shambled forward between his guards. As he came level with William, he glanced at him and shuddered again. He now stood in the Porte and gazed at the ranks of the Janissaries drawn up there. His troops, at whose head he had never marched.
Now they belonged to his son, and for him they would march to the ends of the earth.
Selim the Grim! It was a name well earned, William thought. It would be a name to reckon with.
*
“I am sorry, Hawk Pasha,” the new Sultan said, “but I am forced by circumstances to break my word to you. Your wife is dead.” He gestured at the waiting eunuchs. “These tell me she threw herself from an upper window of the palace rather than be strangled at my father’s command.”
“No man may challenge kismet, Padishah,” William said, “have I your permission to reclaim my house?”
Selim grasped his shoulder, the greatest mark of appreciation that can be shown by a Muslim.
“Reclaim your house, Hawk Pasha,” he said. “But we then have much to do, you and I.”
There were two brothers yet to be destroyed, the Shah to be defeated — and the world to be made aware that a new force had arisen in Constantinople.
“I am at your call, Padishah.” William bowed.
***
He took the ferry to Galata, and entered his father’s house, young Harry at his side. The servants bowed low to him; Anthony Hawkwood’s concubines and John Hawkwood’s Turkish wife stared at him curiously. They had lived alone here for seventeen years; as the wife and concubines of a dead pasha, they had been amply provided for. Now they had a new master.
Ottoman Page 37