Hamza turned, hearing the difference in the tone. Saw, even in the poor light, that the younger man was actually looking at him now, not through him. He smiled. “Always. If my house were to burn down, I think this is what I would seize before I ran.”
He began unwinding the jesses from the still-flapping bird, clucking all the while. “This one is called Erol—‘Strong’ or ‘Courageous.’ A name given but not yet proven, eh, my beauty?” As he spoke he slipped the bird free of its perch, managed to get it onto his fist where it gradually settled when Hamza produced a piece of raw meat. He nodded towards another glove and Vlad slipped it on. “That one is for you. A female, so bigger. I think she will never be Sayehzade, the beauty Mehmet lost to you at jereed and never sent. But she may serve the Sultan well.” He smiled. “Her name is Ahktar. It means…” His bird began to flap again. “Be still! Find your courage!”
“Star,” said Vlad, finishing the naming. But as he unwound the jesses, just before he drew the saker onto his fist, he whispered the word again, in a different tongue. One of the very few words he’d spoken aloud in months.
Ilona.
The falcons had had little training, just enough to sit on a fist and take mutton from the finger. So, for a couple of days, the two men spent their time inside the wagon, feeding the birds, talking to them. On the third day, the birds were taken outside and walked about, although they remained hooded. Two days later, at dusk, hoods were taken off for a time, which was expanded on subsequent evenings. Soon they began walking about the camp, out along the banks of a snow-melt stream, Vlad imitating Hamza: taking the hoods off; re-hooding; turning the birds as they walked; forcing them to re-sight. And each night, after they returned the falcons to their mews, they returned to their pavilion, to good, simple food, a glowing brazier and Hamza’s talk on the training of birds and other philosophies of life. Vlad listened, but spoke little.
By the tenth dawn no birds had been taken on the mountaintop. But it was time to fly the ones they had.
“It is the hour of risk,” Hamza said, as they went out in the gentlest light of morning. “We hope the bird will know us enough, trust us enough to return. But there is only one way to be certain.”
They climbed to another, almost bare peak, with just a few trees for cover. Hamza had selected it carefully and they stopped a few hundred paces short of the summit.
“Shall the Courageous One fly first and prove his name?” Hamza said, and immediately began loosening the jesses. Then, gripping them only lightly in his fingers, he removed Erol’s hood. The bird blinked repeatedly, eyes swivelling to take in the sudden expanse. Hamza fed it a small piece of meat. Then, he lifted his arm and flung the bird. “Fly, Baz Shah,” he cried, naming it for the Persian King of Falcons. “Fly!”
The bird flew. Low to the ground and fast, making for the summit and its few trees. They lost its dark shape there, and neither of them breathed for what seemed an age. Then Hamza stepped forward, circling the rabbit skin lure at the end of a long rope, whirling it, calling loudly, “Come, Baz Shah. Come, Courageous One! Return to me!”
For the longest moment, nothing stirred. Then, a black dot detached itself from a branch, transformed from speck to bird by pure speed. And when it struck the lure, it pulled Hamza to his knees.
Erol began to feed. “Praise be to Allah,” Hamza cried, delighted. They watched the bird rend and tear for a little while. Then Hamza stooped, took its jesses, lured it onto his fist with easier meat. Standing, he beamed at Vlad. “Your turn.”
Vlad stepped forward, loosening the straps that bound his bird to him, and he to her. Slowly, he took off the hood. The saker, like the other, blinked, gazed around.
Vlad kept his voice low, so only the bird could hear him. “Go, my beauty. Go, my…star!” And, on the word, he flung out his arm.
They watched the shape change from bird, to dot, to nothing as it slipped over the crest of the mountain. They watched it go and Vlad, sensing it, didn’t bend to lift the lure.
They waited for a while until finally Hamza said, simply, “Oh.” He turned to Vlad. “It happens. To the best of us. To the best of birds. The first time is the riskiest. It…”
Vlad began to walk quickly down the hill. Hamza ran to catch up with him, and was surprised at the expression on his face. Not the tears he expected. Something that all his jokes, talk and enthusiasm had not brought. “You smile?”
“Yes.”
Hamza shook his head, his voice touched with anger. “Is it because it is the Sultan’s falcon? Do you punish him? Or is it that you do not care?”
Vlad stopped, looked up, still smiling. “But I do care,” he said, “Ilona is free.”
Hamza frowned. “Ahktar,” he corrected.
“Oh yes,” Vlad nodded, moving off again. “Her, too.”
– FIFTEEN –
Initiation
Two men awaited them at the encampment. The first was one of the incomprehensible trappers. He brought with him his first success.
“A goshawk,” Hamza cried, delightedly, taking the trussed and hooded bird, examining her carefully, a gray-blue stillness in his hands. “Female, and I would say two years old by her weight.” He looked up. “The Cook’s Bird, they call the goshawk, Vlad. For what it brings to the pot—it will kill again and again and stop killing only when it is exhausted. Her eyes will already be showing a tinge of pink. By the time she is nine they will be entirely red. Filled with the blood of her victims, it is said.” He smiled. “The Sultan will not grieve for his missing saker when he sees this beauty.”
Then the smile went as he saw the second visitor, a man who seemed made of road dust, so entirely did it cover him from turban to toe. “A messenger from Murad,” Hamza murmured. Handing the goshawk back, he gestured the trapper towards the mews and beckoned the messenger into his pavilion.
Vlad, holding Erol now, accompanied the bird-catcher. He struggled to contain the saker. Hooded, too, it could not see the goshawk but it could sense her and, shrieking, it dropped from Vlad’s fist, pulling to the limits of its jesses, wings flapping.
The goshawk went into a separate compartment. Vlad was helping to secure the mews flaps when he heard soft footsteps behind him. He turned—in time to note the worry on Hamza’s face, swiftly displaced by neutrality. “News. I have been summoned back to Edirne and…”
Vlad, feeling his heart skip, guessed at Hamza’s concern and interrupted. “And you return me to Tokat,” he said, his voice harsh.
Hamza shook his head. “No. I am to bring you with me.”
Vlad, concealing his relief, studied the face before him, the trouble veiled in it. He would not ask about it, for the moment. “Do we leave now?”
“At dawn,” came the reply. “It is sooner than I hoped, for your sake. I think you are still…tired.” A smile chased the frown from the face, “At least we do not return with an empty fist, eh? But with news of the fine passage hawk that will follow us, Allah’s gift for Murad.” He rested a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “So tonight, to celebrate, we will feast.”
—
The servants built a fire on the banks of the stream that flowed down the mountain. Water was heated in the large cooking kettles and poured into a wide, shallow hole that had been dug into one bank and then lined with tanned camel skins. At the point where the stream looped, a natural pool had formed.
“First, the cold plunge. Come,” said Hamza, beginning to strip off his robes.
“Must I?” said Vlad, reluctantly pulling off his sheepskin coat, eyeing the green-tinged ice-melt. Though spring’s warmth lingered in the day, dusk brought a reminder of winter.
“It is not my hamam in Edirne, to be sure—to which I invite you on our return—but it will do. Besides,” he said, reaching forward to pull off the gomlek that was halfway over Vlad’s head, “just because we are camping with goatherds doesn’t mean we have to smell like goats.”
And with that he planted a hand in Vlad’s chest and sailed him backwards into the pool.
He had been cold in the dungeon hole. This was a different kind of chill, sudden and intense. He tried to climb out but Hamza had leapt in, blocking his escape. “Camel-fucker, it’s cold!” yelped the Turk. But when Vlad tried to surge past him he pushed him back. “Wait! The more you suffer here on earth, the greater the delights in paradise.”
They lasted a minute, turning blue, teeth rattling. Finally, Hamza stood, looking down. “Come,” he said, “before our manhoods disappear entirely and we are fit only for work at the harem.”
A short stagger to the hole the servants had dug for them, a different kind of pain. The heat was almost unbearable and despite their shaking they could only lower themselves into the water slowly. Eventually, they were up to their chins, steam rising about their faces.
“Ah!” sighed Hamza, inhaling the heated air, fragrant with added oils, bergamot, sandalwood. He reached down. “That’s better. My wives will not have to seek another to satisfy them.”
“How many wives do you have, Hamza?”
“Only two, praise be to Allah. I am allowed two more by His will, and I could take concubines in addition if I desired it. I do not. Women!” he shouted suddenly, tipping his head back. “Blessed are they and a joy to our nights, surely. But the days…Mercy, how they will talk! On and on, for hours. About nothing at all!” He looked across. “Do you not find it so?”
“I…” Vlad flushed. “I have never…”
“What? Never?” Hamza sat up, stretching his arms out along the edge of the pool. “No tavern girl? No cast-off concubine luring you behind her shutters?” Vlad shook his head. “And there’s Mehmet, with his six women…no, five actually, since one went mysteriously missing.” He looked across but Vlad could not read anything in the look and kept his own face still. “Mehmet’s already a father and…you and he are of an age, are you not?”
“I need take Mehmet’s example in nothing,” Vlad said forcefully.
“You do not like him.”
“I hate him. He is a bully and a brute and he…” Vlad hesitated. There was something he hadn’t yet been able to ask. “My brother, Radu. How does he fare?”
Hamza closed his eyes, slipping his whole body in once more. “Well enough, I believe. Mehmet has been…gentle with him.” He opened his eyes again. “But you should not dismiss Mehmet with easy words. Bully? Perhaps. Brute? Sometimes. But he has a mind as educated as yours, dreams as large. And always remember—he will have the power, one day, to do something about them.”
“You remind me that I have none. That I am a mere hostage,” Vlad replied bitterly.
“Another easy word, mere. There is not such a thing. You are a hostage to something important. A prince. A power.”
“But not power like Mehmet’s.”
“Ah no.” Hamza shook his head. “And mark this, my young man: with that power, Mehmet means to conquer the world.”
On these words he clapped his hands. A lurking servant appeared, carrying kese mitts. But instead of entering the pool to scrub his master’s back, the servant handed the scouring cloths to Hamza and retired.
“Here,” said the Turk, passing a cloth over. “Sometimes it is necessary to get our own hands dirty to get our backs clean.”
He crossed the pool, slid in behind Vlad who tensed. But the strokes that came were not lascivious but rough, direct, as brutal as any tellak in the baths of Edirne. His muscles eased under the pressure. When Hamza offered his back, he returned the favor with a vigor that brought groans.
After a while, Hamza reached up, took Vlad by the wrist, halting him. “Come, my young man,” he said softly, “to other pleasures.”
—
Their pavilion had been transformed. The plain sheepskins they slept on had been rolled back, serving as bolsters to beautifully woven Izmiri kilims Vlad had not seen before, dazzling in their shades and patterns. Between the two couches a low table had been set up. Lanterns glowed in the corners, while braziers burned scented oils. The tent was deliciously warm after the chilling walk back from the pool, and thick, silk-lined robes awaited them, along with lamb’s wool slippers.
Hamza clapped his hands and servants brought food. This was different from the plain fare they’d eaten so far: goat meat again but herbed kebabs rather than stew; a rich pilaf studded with pistachios, raisins, dried apricots; breads filled with poppy seed jam, encrusted with rosemary and glazed with honey. And instead of the clear river water they usually drank, they sipped sherbets of orange and pomegranate.
To Vlad’s mind there was only one thing missing and it was his lingering look into an empty cup that provoked Hamza’s question. “You crave wine, do you not?”
“Crave? No. Desire? Well…” He shrugged.
“What was the Koranic verse you quoted so beautifully at the enderun kolej?”
Vlad cleared his throat. The Arabic came easily. “‘They will ask thee about intoxicants and games of chance. Say: In both there is great sin as well as some benefit for man; but the evil that they cause is greater than the benefit that they bring.’”
“Do you believe that?”
“No. But I am not a Moslem. Besides…” He paused.
Hamza leaned forward. “Besides, many Moslems do not abide by the law. Is that what you were going to say?”
“Perhaps.”
“Including, Murad, Asylum of the World, our Sultan, who loves the wine, some whisper, even to excess.”
“But you, Hamza, do not?”
“I do not. But it is not so much about the Prophet’s words, though I honor them.” He smiled. “I simply do not like the effect it has upon men. Some become sloppy, sentimental, loose of tongue. Others seek to fight for no good reason.” He leaned back. “No, if I am going to break the commandments of the Holy Qur’an, I believe there are better ways of doing so.”
Vlad frowned. “What ways?”
Instead of replying, Hamza clapped his hands. Servants came instantly and cleared the remnants of the meal. One brought forward a small brazier, another a metal pot, a third a flask. They bowed, then left.
Hamza had delved into a pouch. He pulled out a brownish lump, held it up, displaying it between finger and thumb.
“What is it?” asked Vlad.
“Other pleasures,” murmured Hamza, reaching forward to crumble it into the heating pot. “Hashish, from Lebanon. Do you know it?”
“Yes. No,” replied Vlad. “Some boys in the kolej went to certain houses in Edirne, but I…” He shook his head. “What is it like?”
“A dream.” Hamza tipped in liquid from the flask. “This is a distillation of the fig,” he said. As the pot heated, he added other things. Vlad could scent nutmeg, clove. Hamza stirred silently and, after a little while, took the pot off the brazier. Then he dipped a bronze ladle in, poured the liquid into two small cups. He lifted both, reached one across.
Vlad sat back, thrust out his palm. “I think not.”
Hamza did not lower the cup. “I offer you only a temporary oblivion. A dream, Vlad. An escape from now. Nothing more.” When Vlad shook his head again, Hamza continued, softly, “I can only guess at the horrors you have undergone at Tokat. I begged Murad Han to allow me to journey and end them. This cup will help the healing.” He nodded. “Trust me.”
He offered the cup again. After a moment, Vlad took it. Hamza lifted his own. “To dreams.”
Vlad followed Hamza, sipping slowly till the cup was drained, enjoying the tastes, those he knew, even the slight bitterness that he did not. “May I have more?” he asked, holding out the cup.
Hamza took it, put it down. Lifting the brazier, he carried it to the corner of the tent. “Wait,” he said. “Lie back.”
Vlad did. For a while, his limbs, which had not even eased in the heat of the water, still held him rigid. Then, quite suddenly, they gave, sinking him into the soft cushions. His mind was clear, though. Very clear. Other than that, and his sudden ease, he noticed no difference in himself, nor any of the excesses students from his orta had whispered about
.
He began to feel cheated. “Is there not something else?”
“Wait. And…look!”
Hamza gestured up. Flames from the brazier’s intricate grille made moving shapes on the canvas ceiling. Vlad stared, focused, lost focus. He felt he was both observing the shapes and beginning to float amongst them.
A voice came. Seemingly from far away. Yet it was clear, pure, like a silver bell striking in a church. “Do you see them?”
“Yes,” Vlad said, his own voice loud to him. “Stars.”
“Stars?” came the reply. “I was talking about the camels.”
“What camels?” But suddenly he could see camels. Two of them, heads close, humps merging and multiplying. And then he was laughing, at the grotesqueness of it, the beasts’ plain stupidity. And the laughter was like a limb that had been long unused, coming into life. Once begun, he couldn’t stop, didn’t want to. He looked across at Hamza. His face! Every part of it had expanded—the beard, the nose, the eye sockets, the extraordinary blue of the eyes. Yet it did not stay the same, did not remain as Hamza. There were other faces…
His father’s. His Savior’s.
“No,” Vlad said, trying to sit up. He shook his head, and then another wave of laughter took him. Just Hamza was there, though his teeth were as big and yellow as a camel’s in his mouth. “You promised me oblivion,” Vlad cried. “I want oblivion! It is my right as a prince!”
“Right?” Hamza cried. “I have your right right here.”
And with that, laughing wildly, he threw himself on top of Vlad.
A collision of limbs. Arms wrapping, fingers gripping, slipping, finding, losing. Hamza was tall, long-limbed, those limbs like steel coils. Vlad was shorter, compact, his strength centered. They strove for dominance, weakened by laughter, then suddenly beyond it, serious, excited by each throw, each tumble that scattered the cushions, blood pounding in their ears like kos drums.
Hamza had him, one long leg thrust through Vlad’s, hands gripping his wrists, pushing down, nose almost touching nose. Then Vlad felt the surge within him, caught it, focused it, used it, twisting up, pushing back. He reached a pivot point, thrust over it, and it was Hamza who was below now, his arms on the carpet, his face a finger’s width away, so close Vlad could see, even in the half-light of the tent, the fine green spirals in the Turk’s cobalt eyes.
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