The Sultan's Daughter

by Ann Chamberlin

  “You won’t be drinking and eating like that in a day or two, will you?” he asked, winking.

  “Ramadhan.” I nodded, not knowing what to make of the wink in connection with the soon-to-begin holy month. Perhaps the man only had a tic.

  “Yes,” he said carefully, as if to say “Make of it what you will.” And he repeated, “Yes, Ramadhan.”

  Watching the shipping, but mostly the hypnotic roll of the sea, we fell to talking, and the cryptic messages fell away.

  The language we used was the traders’ patois. My companion expressed no surprise that I, a khadim, should be conversant in the jargon, mixed like the bastard blood in any Mediterranean port of Turkish, Arabic, Greek, and Italian. Perhaps this fellow’s experience of the Ottoman realm, circumscribed by water and wharf as it must be, made him believe the patois was indeed court Turkish.

  His habit of falling back on the Italian whenever a word failed him helped me to place him in the patois’ stew. That this Italian had Liguria’s whispering silibations and horror of consonants helped me place him even closer. The man was from Genoa. I couldn’t hear that duplicitous dependence on vowels without painful jabs echoing on my person. Such an accent would always recall the man who took my manhood and life from me, the renegade Genoese who called himself Salah ud-Din, with exquisite irony. But even before that, my family had held the Venetians’ traditional hatred against anyone of that city which was our keenest rival.

  I tried not to let my past color my dealings with this man in the present. As always, I dreaded anyone knowing what I had been. And besides, he didn’t seem to hold it against me that I was a eunuch as many another of his kind would. Or did he perhaps not know our costumes?

  Then the sail of my mind recaught his name—Giustiniani—and I navigated to the realization that he was not really Genoese at all. He hailed from the island of Chios which, since Muhammed Fatih’s conquests, was the one eastern outpost remaining to that city across the spine of Italy from my homeland. All Italian Chians called themselves Giustiniani whether they originated from the first colonizing couple or not. I wasn’t certain the name actually had imperial Roman roots, as it sounded. In any case, it gave their settlement and their trading organization a certain familial solidarity. They were a force to be reckoned with in foreign parts. My guess was quickly confirmed. My new acquaintance described how he had set sail with the first clearing of the lanes that year as part of the escort for Chios’ ambassador, come to pay the island’s annual tribute money to the Porte.

  “Actually, he comes to negotiate terms,” Giustiniani confided. “Even with trips to the usurers, there is no way Chios can pay the forty thousand ducats owing.”

  After some exclamation of disbelief and sympathy, I assumed to myself that I had misheard. Such a vast sum was clearly impossible.

  But, encouraged by my sympathy, Giustiniani went on, explaining that since their first offer to buy the Turk’s oversight for a handful of silver less than a hundred years before, the annual dues had steadily risen. The present sum was the culmination of three unpaid years of that steeply inflated tribute. And it was exaggerated by the fact that, whereas the Chians were counting by the Christian calendar, as was their custom, the Porte was expecting payment according to the Muslim book of days, which came round just that much faster every year.

  “And I will not hesitate to tell you—because it cannot be kept a secret anymore—that we have been raising this money for years on the backs of bad investments. No Giustiniani likes to remove fee from his own purse when he can take it from the moneylenders’. “The wink his obsidian eyes gave me imitated the glinting gold cross that dangled from his ear, asking for sympathy if not conspiracy.

  So I hadn’t heard wrong at all. The debt really was forty thousand. And all this posturing after ancient honor was a sham. Whenever we used to anchor in the smile of Chios’ harbor, my uncle had always warned our men to be careful how they cursed the name of Genoa in the taverns on shore. But there had been contrary rumors even then: “Drink up now; you don’t know how long before this harbor is as dry as the rest of the Turk’s realm.” Such rumors were closing in on confirmation, then. The Empire which held the rich and strategic bit of soil bracing the Izmir coast was hardly Roman; it very nearly belonged to the Turk, in deed if not in name. But I kept my thoughts to myself where politics were concerned and spoke of neutral ships instead.

  “Ah, I can see you are a good judge of seaman’s timber.”

  Giustiniani was now showing me the ship, rather pretentiously christened The Epiphany, of which he was master. And some comment I had made in passing caused him now to rub his chin, appraising me as thoughtfully as I had been appraising the keel. I’d seen that the ship was quite unladened, the keel bobbing high out of the Golden Horn’s very ungolden scum. The seams were excellently made and pitched, with a new coat of tar and tallow against shipworm on the hull.

  I wondered what he saw when he looked at my chin, equally smooth and growthless.

  Then he told me. “You can take the sailor out of the sea, but not the sea out of the—”

  The look I gave him was enough to freeze him up like a European river at Christmastide. But I couldn’t hide my knowledge that he was justly proud of his little craft. Though small, no larger than a caravel, she was solid and round-hulled as the best of northern cogs.

  “You’re not looking to sell, are you?” I said in my most solid Turkish. “Because if you are, I must set you straight. Don’t waste your time. I’m not—”

  “By God’s Mother, of course I wouldn’t sell her!” Giustiniani’s emotion confirmed that he was the true seaman I took him for: a true seaman would sooner sell his own mother than his bark.

  “Just idling here,” he said when he was calmer. “Just hoping to scare up enough cargo to fill my hold. To make it worth hoisting her sails once more and be off.” Well, I’d certainly spent enough days of my life at that same task to sympathize.

  “And in a day or two Ramadhan will be upon us,” my companion continued. “A Christian man can’t hope to get anything done for a whole month then, once those cannons start going off every cursed night.” And there was that wink once more.

  But my pulse was already racing with other possibilities. If Chios was not really a foreign port, after all, if it was so close to Izmir, our destination, as in fact I knew it to be, if he were looking for custom...

  I blurted out my quest.

  “So it is a ship you want.” He smiled and the ring bobbed with pleasure in his ear.

  “Only one way. With captain and pilot. For my lady.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m already quite full now. Too full to take on a passenger of quality. I’m only looking for cargo.”

  And for a moment I’d thought we were bargaining. For a moment the Epiphany had seemed almost perfect. I nodded my comprehension, however, as well as my disappointment, and watched the never-disappointing sea.

  Under the Epiphany’s prow, a tender was loading. It was headed out to a French galleon riding at anchor, the wharf for foreigners being so circumscribed that not a third of the commerce could expect an actual berth. I supposed anyone who knew anything about ships was with the Turkish fleet. These fellows were inexpert enough. It was a wonder how they’d ever found their way here, or how they hoped to find France again, considering how unstably they were loading the little craft and their clumsiness with oars and lines. Finally, in a gesture of exasperation as well as instinct, I interrupted the conversation—which seemed to have reached a dead end in any case—to help out with the tangle of one of their ropes. When I returned to the Epiphany ‘s master, his eyes were measuring me with unabashed amazement. Well, I suppose it must have been odd to see a figure in eunuch’s skirts handling ropes. Then I chastised myself, realizing perhaps I’d been a little too expert. If my past were known, how much more shameful was my present state!

  But I read no scorn in those olive-black Chian eyes.

  And suddenly he was talking about how he probably
could farm out most of the tonnage he’d already acquired to compatriots. I heard a quick catalogue of his cargo, destinations and alternatives, that meant little enough to me but which culminated in this:

  “Yes, I think that, save for those spices bound for Chios, I can offer you an empty vessel. A stop at Chios to unload should give your mistress no difficulty, I think?”

  “We would do that anyway, wouldn’t we? On the way to Izmir?”

  “Exactly. And a few crates and sacks of rhubarb and cloves in the back of the hold, these won’t bother your lady, will they?”

  Speaking directly about my lady to a stranger and a foreigner besides was hardly good form for a eunuch. But by suggestion I let him know Esmikhan was of such a modest demeanor that she would never wander down in his hold. Why, he would hardly even realize she was on board. I might have been describing a pet.

  And suddenly, there I was on the Epiphany, feeling the rock of the sea below me, gentle and comforting as the rock of a mother’s arms.

  We spent an hour or more discussing the arrangements. Accommodations must be prepared. I needed to set up a sort of tent so my lady could enjoy the feel of a watery journey without the loss of privacy. Where might her luggage go? Her provisions? How soon could I send workmen to see to this and that? To see that she had every comfort she wouldn’t even notice unless it were missing.

  In fact, once I felt the sea below me, everything was settled. My tongue engaged these dutiful topics, but my mind was ever and again distracted by a thrill that matched the rocking of my feet and pounded with an excitement no more articulate than this: The Sea! The sea! I’m coming home!

  Over the Horn, then, from Aya Sophia and the city’s comb of minarets, the fine hair of the muezzins’ voices drew, mournful, distant as the call of gulls. I gave them as much mind as gulls, caught in the moment’s deeper compulsion.

  And the moment I did ignore the call to follow Allah’s will, it seemed the very wind began to blow a new direction. Certainly Giustiniani began to speak a different tack, laying yet another offer on the table of our bargain. Before I understood quite what he was driving at, however, I remembered one last thing for which his native harbor was world-renowned.

  Chios, sitting as it did at the Turk’s doorstep, yet solidly part of the Christian west, maintained an actual public office which existed only to help Turkish slaves to freedom. Uncle Jacopo and I had never had a fear to anchor there. The Chians wouldn’t help the other way, a Turk off our oar benches. But we knew Turkish ships would demand a very serious storm before they’d be forced into that bay.

  Not only that, but Chian agents were known to wander through the Muslim empire, helping to plot escapes wherever they could. A slave on the run could light a fire on the Asian shore, be seen by the boatmen on Chios, vanish from Turkish lands before daylight. On Chios he’d be hidden where no passing janissary could find him. He’d be fed, given Western clothes, hastened home to the bosom of his kinsfolk. The Chians accepted gratitude, the blessings of Lord Jesus, His Holy Mother—and whatever partial ransom payments the families had raised to offer the Turks.

  “I’m out a mate,” Giustiniani hinted broadly now.

  And I returned with equal candor, “Signore, you cannot want a eunuch for a mate.”

  Giustiniani shrugged one worn-leathered shoulder up to his earring. No, my condition wasn’t news to him. “It might keep me from losing you like I just lost my last one. Run off with his tart, if you can imagine. Decided her thighs were better than the sea and food on the table.” The master’s eyes twinkled. “I don’t suppose I’d have that trouble with you, now, would I?”

  Even I had to chuckle at the notion.

  “But I cannot very well push off with you now,” I said. “Not with Piali Pasha and his flotilla riding like a hurricane upon the Bosphorus.”

  “Of course not,” Giustiniani said, winking.

  Now I understood what the winking was all about, and I winked myself, just at the wonder, the danger, the excitement of it. “During Ramadhan, the Turks will be less watchful.”

  “Less watchful, but more full of heathen demons when they do get a glimpse.”

  I nodded, and winked again. And Giustiniani took that as encouragement to speak of me and the spices off at Chios, after which he would take my lady to Izmir, then come back to reclaim me, in an Italian sailor’s hose and doublet once more.

  And a codpiece? I wondered. I can never wear Italian clothes again without a codpiece.

  He spoke of no greater remuneration than a handful of my lady’s jewels I might steal. When I looked a little seasick at the thought, he came down: “Just work for nothing but your board for three years, and you’ll be a free man. We must only take care that our voyages are all to the west for a while. Yes, a free man with a first mate’s job, standing to inherit this ship and all it contains, for I’ve only daughters waiting with my wife at home.”

  And at home I have my lady ... I suppressed the longing that welled up in my own heart at that thought.

  Night was quite fully upon us when I shook his hand to go. We shook on the deal as well as in friendship, the arrangement to carry my lady, her staff, her belongings, safely to Izmir in a timely and seamanly fashion.

  About the other, I told him, “I’ll think about it.”

  XX

  “By the blessed Virgin, who is this lady of yours?” Giustiniani exclaimed as I took over his ship to Esmikhan’s needs.

  Somehow he learned—or guessed—the truth. I know this because of what happened later. At the time, however, my only reply was the eunuch’s cultivated, tight-lipped smile. Such information was my secret. And, in this case—anticipating Esmikhan’s delight—my pleasure.

  The most spontaneous purchase I made during the hectic week that followed turned out to be the most fortuitous. Amidst the dealings with carpenters and drapers, porters and victualers, I happened upon a Turkish seaman who’d set up such a stall as a square of old gray serge afforded him in a corner of the grain merchants’ port at the edge of the Golden Horn. Under orders to be ready to sail with the Kapudan Pasha at a moment’s notice, I suppose, he wanted to liquidate his holdings to more convenient cash. And he wanted it done without making the trek clear to the bazaar, for Ramadhan was now upon us and everyone on the Turkish side of the water at any rate moved as little as possible in their daily lethargy of hunger.

  If, in my own stupefaction, I had been looking for what he had to sell, I certainly would have gone to the bazaar, where I might have found any number of his fellows with similar bargains to choose from. Or I’d find pawnshop owners who’d have saved both of us trouble.

  Of course, I wasn’t looking for such wares at all. But on the stretch of serge between his often-patched knees, the Turk had a silver crucifix, a rosary of Murano beads, a wooden drinking cup, a tool kit with needles and an awl, and a leather-bound book. These were the effects of a Western sailor—my uncle might have had the same about him when he went down, though nobody had bothered to pluck him clean.

  I couldn’t help myself. I stood and stared at the display while behind me the crowded sounds of the port shed from me like beads of water over a duck’s feathers. The hull after hull of grain it took to keep the Turk’s navy afloat, the Turk’s city alive, hissed like swords being drawn. The slap of sandals on the packed earth in between, the squawk of bargaining—all these might not have existed.

  But I did hear, as always, the compelling creak of rigging and masts that bristled at my back, currying my spine as if I were a horse about to show. It was my name the combined rigging spoke: “Giorgio, Giorgio.”

  Abdullah? Who was he?

  Hardly stopping to bargain, I bought the book from the sailor. That seemed the least likely of all his wares to sell: the crucifix was worth melting down; the rosary’s millefiori glass, attractive without religious connotation. But the book, with its split, salted leather, was worthless on this side of the Golden Horn, worthless to one who couldn’t read the chopped Italic of its letters t
o find the treasure there.

  I opened my purchase briefly, enough to see the imprint, Aldus Manutius, the famous Venetian house. It was a new translation of Homer. Then I left the place quickly before the pirating Turk should read by my face that he’d given me the bargain.

  I bought the book for myself, of course, an act of reclaiming my native tongue, my patrimony, my former life in the midst of building a future for my lady. But then my life got confused with hers. While I was distracted with other details elsewhere, my lady came upon the book packed in a bundle of new purchases I’d made for her.

  And, “Abdullah, what’s this?” she had to ask.

  I couldn’t tell her what I was plotting—Giustiniani and I solidified the details more each time I saw him. And I had pestered her to learn Italian since I’d first known her; she had sometimes expressed curiosity. So that’s the tack I followed.

  Quite to my surprise—and soon, delight—the book rekindled her interest. The little ditties and proverbs I was accustomed to say when occasion demanded, I found she could recite them back to me. Lullabies, folk songs I didn’t even know I’d sung in her presence, she knew them and their vocabularies. And she even remembered most of the alphabet I’d once hurriedly sketched for her: Italian’s sturdy building blocks so different from the winding vines of the Turkish, Arabic, and Persian with which she was already familiar.

  Once we were under sail, I came to realize that what I’d taken for disinterest or witlessness before was neither. Childbearing simply consumed her, heart and soul, and the time between pregnancies had been so short. Now there was no child. We had done our mortal best to put ourselves in Allah’s hands to ac- quire another, but we couldn’t hasten the ship, bring more favorable winds, or call Sokolli Pasha from his duty to the Sultan. So she abandoned herself to me, as she did to the will of heaven.