Suleiman reached down and without a word took her hand in his. He pulled her gently to her knees and guided her to the cushions beside him. He was touched at her preservation of the traditions of subservience. In the several years of their relationship, Gülbehar had quickly become more informal in his presence. She was allowed free access to his presence, often arriving with little notice and in many cases no escort at all. But those were the days of Suleiman’s governorship in Manisa before he had ascended to the throne. Somehow, from the day of his girding with the Sword of the House of Osman, without specific agreement, their relationship changed. But, here in his tent, Suleiman, relaxed with his Kadin, fell into the role of lover.
Suleiman felt Gülbehar settle onto the divan and nuzzle her body closer to his. Her thigh was warm against him, a faint taste of her perfume barely detectable on her skin. Not a word passed between them, for they had done all their talking earlier in the day. There was little for Suleiman to discuss with Gülbehar outside of the well-being of their baby son and heir, Mustapha.
Now, in the silence of the encampment, the couple tried to feel completely alone. Suleiman, more than Gülbehar, had learned to ignore the reality that there were dozens of armed men and servants within earshot of him at all times. Though the tent walls were thicker and more opulently draped than the ordinary military tent, sound still traveled beyond the limits of his privacy. For Gülbehar, it was hard to relax knowing that her words and sounds would be overheard. The Sultan had always lived his life in such a protected environment, but his eighteen-year-old Kadin was still learning.
For what seemed like a very long time, Gülbehar waited for her master to respond to her presence. She could feel his body slowly relax against her and soon she was close enough to detect the faint scent of spiced lamb. She herself had not eaten that evening, so that there would be no unnatural taste on her tongue or breath. Everything in her day had been carefully designed to please the Sultan. Her future, her whole life, and the life of her child could rest on the whim of this man who had nearly two hundred other women waiting to please him.
Suleiman let out a long sigh, signaling to Gülbehar that he was relaxed and ready for her attentions. She responded to this minute invitation by easing out of her caftan, revealing a rose-colored gauze top that showed the hint of the curve of her breasts and the suggestion of her nipples. Suleiman looked into her eyes and smiled. He placed his hand on her thigh and gently stroked her through the silk layers of her long gown. She in turn placed her hand for the first time that night on Suleiman’s thigh and gently caressed him in return. She could feel his response to her approach in the slight increase in the depth of his breathing. She continued to stroke him until she could feel his erection growing beneath his loose-fitting pants. She stopped for a moment and leaned away to blow out the oil light nearest the divan.
She reached up and started to undo the pearls that held her hair high on her head. The jewelry snagged for a moment, and Suleiman took her hands away to help her himself. The feel of her soft hair aroused him even more than her touching him. When the jewels were free, he dropped them to the floor. Her hair fell around her shoulders and he kissed the top of her head, smelling even more strongly the scent of her perfume.
Gülbehar pulled at a coverlet that lay nearby, covering both her legs and Suleiman’s. Then in the very dim light of the room, she undid the buttons of her top and let it fall away. Suleiman bent down to kiss her bare breasts as she slid the rest of the way out of her many layers of silk. When she was completely naked, she pulled the coverlet higher over her body and enveloped them both in a silk cocoon. The Sultan undressed himself and dropped his own clothing at the side of the divan. They stopped for a moment, holding each other quietly, motionlessly. Still, not a word had passed between them.
Gülbehar relaxed her hold on Suleiman, sliding slowly beneath the coverlet. As she disappeared from sight, Suleiman gave in completely to the feelings that were washing over him. As he felt her mouth and tongue explore his body, all the thoughts of his empire and his coming war faded away.
Gülbehar took her lover into her mouth as she wrapped her arms around his waist. Her fingers explored his back and his buttocks. In the briefest time, Suleiman burst with the pent-up longing that had gone so long unsatisfied. When he was finished, Gülbehar crept up next to him and held his sweating body to hers. She felt him sleep awhile and she slept, too. Sometime later, she woke to feel Suleiman caressing her in the darkness of the room, the only other lamp now extinguished. She responded to him and he grew aroused again and quickly entered her. The two made love through the night, like new lovers. They slept again, and when the morning light brightened the roof of the tent, Suleiman found himself on his cushions, beneath his silk coverlet, naked and relaxed, and alone once more.
Rhodes, the Fortress of the Knights of St. John
May, 1522
When the newly elected Grand Master, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, finally reached the island of Rhodes on September 19th, 1521, he was put ashore at the Commercial Port, near the Tower of Naillac. He looked up to the battlements where most of his youth had been spent. Philippe had been born of a noble family in Beauvais, France, in 1464. He was a kinsman of one of the Order’s most famous Grand Masters, Jean de Villiers. It was de Villiers who had been in command when the knights were driven from their fortress at St.Jean d’Acre in 1291.
Philippe was inducted into the Order of the Knights of St. John as a teenager. Thus, many years before, as a fledgling knight, he had arrived at that very spot, when the fortress was barely recovering from the damage inflicted during the terrible siege of 1480, by Mehmet, the Conqueror.
On the day Philippe returned to his beloved Rhodes, he stood in the shadows of the giant stone walls and prepared to take command of the strongest fortification on Earth. Now, only a year later and a few miles away, Suleiman’s armies, the largest force of fighting men in the world, along with nearly three hundred ships of war, were preparing to bring the battle back to Philippe’s island home.
The fortress was situated at the northeast end of the island of Rhodes. The island itself was oblong, pointing from southwest to northeast, some forty-five miles long and twenty miles wide. A ridge of mountains ran up the middle of the island like a spine, the highest of which rose to nearly four thousand feet above the sea. The port city of Rhodes, itself, was served by two separate man-made harbors. Pointing to the north like an open mouth was the Porto Mercantile, the Commercial Harbor. Its entrance was guarded by the Tower of Naillac on the mainland and the Tower of the Windmills on the outer side along the artificial stone mole. The opening was barely three hundred yards wide, and easily protected with a massive chain and log booms. A second, smaller harbor to the north was the Porto del Mandraccio, or the Galley Port. It was across this port that in ancient times stood the legendary Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Colossus long gone, this smaller harbor was now defended with chain and booms.
Surmounting the harbors on a small hill was the fortress itself. The city was just under a mile square. The walls were of heavy stone, guarded at intervals by towers. For two hundred years, the Knights had reinforced the walls and the defenses of their city. After their successful defense against the siege in 1480, the knights had worked even harder at modernizing and strengthening the fortifications.
Many of the changes had been made to keep up with the latest advances in siege warfare. The original thin curtain walls, designed before the development of heavy cannon fire, merely prevented soldiers from climbing into the city. The new walls had to withstand a constant barrage of huge stone and iron cannonballs, now in general use by the Turks. So, the old walls were thickened and replaced by massive bastions over forty feet thick. The bastions were projections in the fortress walls that allowed wider fields of fire to cover the approaches to the city. Each langue had responsibility for a portion of the defenses, and its wealth dictated the degree to which the position could be strengthen
ed. The already huge ditches, or dry moats, were widened and deepened around the entire fortress. The moats were then encircled by a second perimeter of moats.
The guard towers, which were formerly designed for observation and the occasional use by archers, were pushed out and angled in front of the bastions. The defenders could rain down a murderous crossfire of both arrows and gunshot upon the attackers who might try to breach the walls. Boiling oil had been generally replaced by modern weaponry, and attackers trying to scale the walls would be slaughtered by an enfilade of arrows and shot. By the time Philippe had taken the reins of command, there was not a fortress in the world better able to withstand a prolonged attack.
On Rhodes, as elsewhere throughout the world, the knights were organized by their home countries, divided into langues, or the “tongues” for the languages they spoke. There were the langues of England, France, Germany, Auvergne, Provence, and Italy. Aragon and Castile comprised the langue of Spain.
Though France was by far the most dominant of the langues, most of the men spoke several languages fluently. A great rivalry existed among the knights of the different langues. Jealousies arose from the great differences in the financial resources available to each. France was the richest, and their Auberge, or inn, was the most opulent. Responsibility for the fortifications on Rhodes were also divided among the langues, and there, too, were major differences. The defense posts of the French were the most lavishly built, while weaknesses riddled the posts of the poorer langues, such as England.
The French knight, Jean de Morelle, first encountered the young Greek woman, Melina, in the market outside the city walls. Melina was struggling with a heavy basket of fruit, and Jean had helped her load the basket onto a donkey.
It was the first time Melina had seen this particular knight. She paid little attention to the many men who sauntered through the streets of her town with their black capes and swords. Though the knights had been in Rhodes for two centuries, she still considered them intruders. Rhodes was her town. All the occupying forces over the centuries could not change that.
Without offering much in the way of conversation, Jean had secured the basket to the back of the donkey and prepared to lead the animal for her. While he was busy loading the animal, she examined the craggy good looks of the knight. His face seemed more weathered than his real age would suggest. She knew that all the knights served terms in the galleys and the great ships of their Order. Perhaps so many years of service at sea in the galleys had done that to him. He had dark brown hair and blue eyes. When he looked at her it was hard for Melina to meet his stare. Something made her want to turn away. She fussed with the donkey’s halter so as not to stare into his eyes. Why does this knight make me so uncomfortable? she wondered.
The two walked back into the fortress together, Jean still leading the donkey. She must be Greek, he thought. Her black hair, dark eyes, and olive complexion were strong indications of her heritage. They spoke briefly in Greek, and she had no accent. But, then again, neither did he, and he was French.
Jean followed Melina through the narrow, winding streets. Finally, they turned into the Jewish Quarter and onto the street of the synagogue. The Kahal Kadosh Gadol, the Holy Great Congregation, destroyed in the siege of 1480, had been rebuilt with the help of the knights as a reward for the aid the Jewish residents of the island had provided during that siege. Mehmet’s forces bombarded the Jewish Quarter from the sea, pounding it with stone cannonballs without let-up for five weeks. The walls of the fortress itself had been reinforced with the rubble from the destroyed homes of the Jews.
The Turks had then entered the Jewish Quarter through a hole in the walls. But, just as it seemed inevitable that the Turks would overrun the city and slaughter the knights and the Jews together, something happened. For no apparent reason, the Turkish army turned and fled from the city. The Jews and the Christians could only believe that their victory was a divine intervention; that they had been saved from the Infidel by the hand of God. But, the friendship between the Christians and the Jews on Rhodes was not to last long.
After the turn of the sixteenth century, relations deteriorated. The Christian intolerance for the Jews that swept through the mainland of Europe finally washed ashore in Rhodes. Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson ordered all the Jews expelled from the island. They were given fifty days to sell their possessions and leave. They were also forbidden to settle in Turkey, for fear that the Jews might be used as spies for the Muslims. They could only remain on the island if they accepted baptism, and converted to Christianity. But, the hardest of d’Aubusson’s decrees was that which forced baptism upon all the children of the Jews regardless of the parents’ decision to stay or to leave. Those who left were sent by boat to Nice. Others would be tortured and killed.
The reaction of the Jews to this decree was immediate. The people flocked into the streets, tearing their clothes and wearing them inside out in protest. They covered their bodies with the ashes from their cooking fires, their screams of anguish filling the air. Their leaders pleaded with d’Aubusson, who responded by having all the remaining Jews who had not converted cast into a deep pit. There they stayed without food or water until only a handful remained alive. At the end, these faithful few died repeating their most important prayer, Shemah Yisrael, Adonoi eloheynu, Adonoi echod. Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is One.
The irony was that in the years to come, the knights would continue their piracy on the Mediterranean, and take many shiploads of slaves. Among the slaves they captured were large numbers of Jews. And, by 1522, the Jewish population had reached an even greater number than had been killed or expelled by Grand Master d’Aubusson.
Jean and Melina walked past the synagogue and turned into the next street where her house was located. It was sandwiched between the two houses on either side, and made of rough stone, with small shuttered windows. Every house in the street was almost identical to each of its neighbors. The street was paved with small black and white pebbles. Jean noticed some flowers growing in a small patch of uncobbled street just outside her door. “Did you plant those?” he asked.
“No, they’re wildflowers,” she said in Greek.
Like you, he thought. He wondered why a Greek was living in the Jewish Quarter, but said nothing. Then, he smiled at her and touched the brim of his hat. “Au revoir, Mademoiselle.” With that, he turned and walked back toward the Collachio.
Melina watched from the doorway as he walked down the street. She liked the way the black cape with the white cross outlined his broad back and wide shoulders. He seemed to her a strong man, and he moved more gracefully than she had expected him to. As he turned the corner, Jean paused to look back. She could just make out a smile on his lips. He touched his fingers to the edge of his hat once more. Then he disappeared around the corner. Melina closed and bolted the door behind her, her face lit by a smile.
Two weeks later, Melina was walking from the market to her home. It was a Sunday, and she had just bought a few more vegetables. Jean was leaving the Auberge de France to take up his nursing duties at the Hospital of the Knights. He rounded the corner of the Loggia, and took a long detour to walk past Melina’s house. He slowed as he passed her door on the chance that he might see her again. He had been making this detour several times a day, in hopes that their paths would cross. At night, he could see the glow of light coming from the cracks in her shuttered windows, and his imagination pictured her sitting beside a small fire. He longed to knock on her door, but he never did.
Melina had just turned into her street when she saw the knight walking slowly past her house. He looked over his shoulder to her doorway, and then sped up again. She smiled, for it was clear that he was hoping to see her. Then, when he resumed his pace toward the hospital, he caught sight of her. They were both smiling as they approached. When they were a few yards apart, Jean stopped and took off his hat.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” he said.
“Bonjour, Monsieur le Chevalier.�
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They stood in the narrow street for a moment, both at a loss for words. There was really no easy way for either to say what was on their minds. Finally, Melina said in French, “Thank you for helping me the other day. It was very kind.”
Jean cocked his head and nodded. “De rien.” It was nothing.
Melina could think of no words to say to this stranger, so she smiled and turned to go. Jean quickly said, “Mademoiselle.” Then he stopped, and just looked uncomfortable. She waited. Finally, he said, “I am on my way to the hospital. On Saturdays I work there until Sunday morning.”
“All night?”
“Yes. Sometimes there are a few hours to sleep. But, usually Doctor Renato has a great deal for us to do. Right now, there are a great many patients to care for. Sometimes there are not so many.”
“And what do you do there?”
He laughed. “Anything. Everything. Oh, not surgery. But, I help. Last time, it was very quiet, and I merely made bandages and fed the patients. Sometimes I help the docteur in his surgery. Sometimes I change the dressings. Anything that he is too busy to do.”
Melina took a deep breath. She hesitated, and finally, summoning all her courage, said, “Is there work that I could do there, too?”
Jean just looked at her. He stared into the blackness of her eyes. He was shocked at her boldness. Finally, he came back to the moment and said, “Bien sûr!” Of course! “There are many things you could do. Especially for the women there. They need a great deal of help that we knights cannot give them. Mmmm. Yes, please. I would be most grateful for your help. And, I am sure, so would Doctor Renato.”
Without another word, Melina and Jean turned and began the first of many walks together to the hospital.
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