The Sultan's Daughter

by Ann Chamberlin

  I wondered just how much of the Turks’ success in these lands where Catholics had once lorded was due to the Greeks’ displeasure with this ascribed status. At least, they might not care one way or the other who their masters were, Turks being, from their point of view, no worse than Catholic Christians; conceivably quite a bit better.

  Genoa, I further remembered, for all her talk of democracy since Andrea Doria’s reforms but thirty years ago, was now little more than an arm extended eastward from Spain. And Spain bespoke “Inquisition” to my mind. Had the Genoese been using these tactics to rule this island?

  Such twists and turns of logic came not from my mind, not by reasoning, but all at once, in a flash of inspiration, I could only say, or in a panic of fear, and in a much shorter time than I took to tell of it. When reason returned, I clung to this lead; I had nothing else. I opened my eyes and gave it a try.

  “Yes, I will go with you. I will bring my lady and go with you.”

  Was that a gasp of pain I heard from the curtain behind me? Esmikhan was listening? Esmikhan, who could understand a little Italian? I couldn’t think of that now. I had to forge ahead before the vision left me, before all courage did.

  “Yes, for I would certainly rather have the fortress’s walls between her and Piali Pasha’s guns than this flimsy timber. And much rather the fortress than your plaster houses and simple tile roofs under which your wives and daughters cower. For do you think the Genoese are going to let your wives and daughters have a place in the safety of that bastion? Not unless your name’s Giustiniani.”

  Good, good. I could feel the shift of that half of the men, as subtle but as perceptible as a change in the tide. And under the awning behind me...No time for that now.

  “Or perhaps,” I continued, warming to my subject, “they’ll find you a cozy place in the dungeon—when they’ve charged you with heresy for no greater crime than following the faith of your fathers. Then, who is your torturer? The Turk? Or the Giustiniani?”

  I felt another, stronger wave of support, strong enough to urge up a murmur with its motion.

  “You think Piali Pasha comes with eighty vessels just to check on things in Chios? That the Giustiniani can fast-talk their way into yet another compromise? That the Turk may be satisfied with other promises? You know what such promises are worth. You’ve listened to them yourselves, but only because you have no choice, not because you are fools enough to believe them.

  “The Turk is no fool, either. He knows these are empty promises when he hears them, empty because they are based on the pockets of moneychangers. Will the infidel forget his shame at Malta? I assure you, he will not. Or...”

  I swallowed for spittle—desperately—then pushed on. “Or do you hope you can hold off all those galleys full of circumcised janissaries until a fleet can be brought from Genoa to aid the situation?”

  “They will come!” Giustiniani barked. The high pitch in his voice pleased me.

  “You see? I knew that was part of your captain’s business on shore today, to see a ship off to Genoa. And who’s on that ship? Not your wives. Not your children. Giustiniani’s.”

  “He lies. My wife and daughters are still on Chios, sharing their fate with yours.”

  “I’m certain some great lords found room for their loved ones. No room for yours.”

  “The Genoese fleet will come.”

  “Oh, they will come. But that’s a two weeks’ sail, my friends. I’ve done the run myself in better days. Two weeks to Genoa, two weeks back—if there are no delays. A month. How many times can your wives and daughters be raped in a month, my friends?”

  I let the murmur rise and caught it on the crest. “Of course, a month is optimistic. The Genoese in the mother city, like Genoese everywhere, prevaricate. If they cared what became of Chios, wouldn’t they have sent funds to buy off the Sublime Porte before now? They’ve had three years to do it. You should be glad the Turk, unlike the Genoese moneychanger, is no usurer. Will the Genoese risk the blood of their sons when they wouldn’t risk a few sacks of ducats? I know how the Genoese love their ducats. You know it, too.”

  Hatred for that other Genoese, Salah ud-Din in the little house in Pera, spleened my voice. But that man was dead. Remember, you washed his mutilated body yourself. Be satisfied. And, I realized, such untempered hatred might make me seem the madman instead of the voice of reason. Half of my audience, I recalled, was Genoese, too. I did what I could, with my next words, to wash the bitterness away.

  “But the Genoese do love their sons. Even they are not so inhuman.”

  For some time, Giustiniani had been countering me with only rough guffaws and steps in my direction that alone made me flinch, so certain was I that they’d end in blows. At some point I’d heard him order: “Grab him, men. Stop his Turk-loving mouth.”

  As long as nothing came of such defenses, though, I kept my mouth going—like a man swimming against an undertow for dear life.

  But now it was clear he could allow me to blather no longer. He must enter the fray or lose it, such was the palpable countercurrent of my words swirling among his men.

  “Don’t listen to the damned renegade,” he said. “You all should know what Piali Pasha told our delegation today. He comes only to enjoy the Campos here, our pleasant landscape on Chios.”

  It was my turn to snort with scorn. “And you believe that?”

  “It’s what the Turk said.”

  “You trust such leaders, men, when they believe such things? From the mouth of a Turk, no less.”

  “Yes, I believe him “The man’s voice cracked with desperation. “Why do you think they waited against the Turkish shore all day today if their words aren’t to be trusted? We were all pre- pared to give them the usual welcome with flowers and banners—you men saw it. But no. ‘I will not interrupt your Easter solemnities,’ he said.”

  “The Roman Easter, men, mark. Nothing was said of the Orthodox holy day. Just where will the Turk be in a fortnight’s time? Having turned your churches to mosques and your wives to odalisques.” That was a shot in the dark and without much basis in logic, if I’d stopped to think about it. But I had to keep stirring the pot, even as I seemed to let Giustiniani have his say.

  “That’s what he said, on my honor.”

  “But what of the Turk’s honor?”

  “‘We are finished with our solemnities,’ we assured him. ‘Come ashore in peace.’ But he wouldn’t—and it’s clear he hasn’t. ‘Tomorrow is time enough to come and enjoy your green gardens and flowing fountains,’ he said.”

  “It is true,” murmured one voice in the dark. “Our eyes see for themselves. The Turks linger at the other side of the straits. What is the meaning of that?”

  I grasped at straws. “Perhaps they mean to come by night, to have the element of surprise.”

  All on board fell silent for a moment, straining to hear confirmation of my words. What seemed confirmed by all the senses proved to be only echoes of our own noises as our ears picked through the silence.

  Another murmured in favor of Giustiniani’s view. “Piali Pasha wouldn’t disrupt our solemnities. That shows some civility, surely.”

  “What? That he didn’t come and take your virgins in their holiday best? The Turk’s not interested in what your women wear. He’ll take any garment from them fast enough, for what he has on his mind. He—he simply wouldn’t have your souls go straight to heaven, newly Easter-shriven. That’s his plan. The man gives you at least one night in which to commit new sins to taint your eternities. Of course, the Greeks must go un-shriven altogether. I hope, men, you’ve kept an extraordinary Lent.”

  The fact of the matter was that I could not explain the admiral’s hesitation. All I knew was, when Giustiniani reiterated, “He comes to enjoy the countryside,” that was ridiculous.

  “And can you see it?” I scoffed. “Piali Pasha and all his men, armed to the teeth and picking orange blossom in the Campos to stick behind their ears. Be serious, Giustiniani. I assure you
the Turk is earnestness itself. And—and to let you know just how earnest he is, let me divulge some knowledge I am privy to that the Genoese are not.”

  My own heart had begun to race the instant the idea came to me. I spoke quickly now to transfer that same palpitation to my audience.

  “You face not only Piali Pasha in his eighty ships, but my master Sokolli Pasha as well. That was my business in your harbor, to bring my lady to her husband, who waits at Bozdag with half the Turkish army. He waits only to see Chios fall.”

  The more I said, the more I came to believe it. This was how I would run a world conquest, anyway.

  I elaborated: “Chios must fall before Sokolli Pasha can march north to join the Sultan in Hungary. And I don’t think the Sultan wants a full half of his army too far behind when he crosses the Danube. Piali Pasha won’t wait long. With this intelligence, have you any doubt as to what his purpose is? He is not come a-maying. Piali Pasha’s reinforcements are much, much closer than yours are, my friends. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sokolli Pasha was already at Izmir, perhaps even at Çeşme. My master and his hordes are just waiting for the first ships to vomit their loads of men and arms on your shores, then to come back and pick up more, ever more janissaries to swarm through your streets and your homes.

  “And when the Turks enter your streets, as I promise you they must—tomorrow, dawn, at the latest—do you think they’ll spend much time worrying about my lady? I don’t. I know how Turks treat their women. Don’t you? They trust them so little they must put them in the care of creatures like me—and would sooner see them dead than have a whisper of dishonor about them. So—go ahead. Do what you will with my lady. But trust me. Tens of thousands of janissaries will do what they will with your mothers, wives, and daughters.”

  And I couldn’t resist this last little turn: “Gentlemen, wouldn’t all of you welcome the protection of a eunuch for your women at times like these?”

  XXIV

  Then I stood panting, backed against Esmikhan’s curtains, out of breath and out of words. I had painted a picture so grim that even I balked at it. But having exhausted my brain on this, I had no mind left to plan a remedy to the situation.

  It was into this faltering that my lady stepped. Out of the curtains she came, only the very careful, strict draping of her veils let me—and me alone—know just how much such a move cost her. To step thus before a crowd of strange men and demand their attention on herself? I was silent a while longer just at the wonder of it.

  And she did attract their attention, she certainly did. Of course she looked like little more than a bundle of fabric, but she had taken great care that it was her very richest fabrics that showed. Sparks of gold and silver threads caught the lamplight. A ruby glowed like blood upon one exposed finger.

  But more than the impression of costly treasure, her appearance was striking in its indefiniteness. And in this indefiniteness, each man’s mind created its own particulars. My lady in all her distinct plainness of face might have appeared ridiculous, at best not worth fighting for. As she’d moaned herself as we stood on Ilium, “Allah, in His wisdom, made me no Helen.”

  But as she now stood before us as no woman, she was Every Woman. Each man put aside that swath of silk and in his mind’s eye saw his mother’s face, his sister’s smile, his wife’s tender breast.

  And draped over all, Esmikhan carried the Turkish star-and-crescent banner.

  I could see signs of hasty completion. The stitches began as tiny and neat as any Esmikhan had used—too many times to bear the thought—to make garments for an infant prince. But towards the end, the lengths of thread extended until one hook of the moon and most of the star were merely tacked on. They would serve—through the first gusts of wind, anyway.

  And they served very well now, in the lamplight, in the hand of a woman who was every man’s dearest.

  “Sirs,” Esmikhan said.

  My heart was in my throat. She spoke Italian—Venetian—my own mother tongue. They must understand her, although her thick accent and sometimes stilted or over-poetic choice of words lent a musical, exotic, almost otherworldly quality to what she said.

  “Sirs, your flag is ready. Sail with it, and under it, as Allah is my witness, your families will receive no hurt at the hands of my grandfather’s slaves.” The men couldn’t guess, but I knew. My lady had just about reached the limit of her impromptu vocabulary as well as of her courage. So, with miraculously restored vigor of my own, I stepped into the breech. I took the flag from my lady’s shaking fingers and placed one reassuring, thanking hand at the small of her back, the place only I in all the world would know where to find beneath the bundle of wrappers.

  “Go,” I said. “Fetch your families, your valuables. Enough to start a new life, but no more than you can carry. If Giustiniani won’t sail his Epiphany to safety, if he’s too proud, too Genoese to accept an Ottoman’s gift of protection, I’ll sail her myself. I’ll sail all of you and yours to safety through the very heart of Piali Pasha’s armada. This, by the word of Sokolli Pasha’s eunuch Abdullah, Giorgio Veniero.”

  ***

  Sometime during the hectic night that followed, between hastily rowing men to shore, hastily rowing boat after boat of disoriented women, squalling infants, ill-sorted belongings back and stowing them, I found a moment alone with my lady. The moment I did, I fell to her feet in gratitude.

  “Allah alone can recompense what I owe you, lady. What a brave and timely deed you did.”

  “Nonsense,” she replied, her hand on my turban, then on my chin, trying to raise me. “Abdullah, what you said, when you said I was the only family left to you. Look, I weep now at the thought of it. How could I not do all in my power to aid—what was really an attempt to aid me. Abdullah, what you did, standing up to all those men who would have killed you and then—cut off my ear in a dungeon...”

  She got my face so she could look at it, then pulled away her veil so she could laugh through the tears that lamplight embroidered with gold upon her cheek. “Abdullah, you really must stop all this groveling at my feet. You owe me no such obeisance. You never will. And you know it.”

  When I still wouldn’t rise, she collapsed her form to kneel and bundle beside me. “I owe you,” she said, the instant before our lips met.

  What a lovely, lingering moment was then, each touch untainted by sense of payment due, by looking towards some future goal. All was glorious in and of itself. Each fondle, each caress held perfect existence for itself alone, each touch an independent climax of its own. When lovers promise “for eternity,” they mean only ‘til the need is spent. Then they will roll over and sleep on it. Our ardor, appetite, and food all at once, knew no such conclusion...

  ...But then the world coughing for admittance outside our door intruded. With one last swirling taste of her chin, I rose to go, letting her know there was more freedom in serving her than in all of Christendom, letting her know in truth my service as well as my love was forever. There was nothing left about my person that could even stir for any other.

  ***

  And so, as the Chian sky began to silver, we weighed anchor and unfurled the sails. The predawn breeze was brisker than the previous day had promised; the canvas overhead filled with the crack of whiplash. But still the movement was sluggish. We were terribly overloaded, daredevil toddlers and weeping old women to the gunwales.

  Giustiniani had command. When he’d succumbed to our plan and brought his wife and daughters on board, I thought that was enough assault to his pride. I didn’t need to captain a ship. I had all I’d ever want in the safety of Esmikhan behind her curtains and her veils.

  When my lady had invited the captain’s family to crowd under her awnings with her and her maids—well, that was fine. No time for dalliance in such a throng. Besides, I should keep a watch on deck and on the water before us. I’d have Esmikhan to myself plenty of time in the years to come—inshallah, for the rest of our lives, and even in the unphysicality beyond.

  So I
came to mate our desperate sail to safety that morning.

  Exhaustion fairly nauseated me. More ship’s biscuit to prepare for the long Ramadhan day ahead didn’t help the stomach. But I would sooner cut my own throat than cut ties with Esmikhan by breaking the rules of her fast now. And in their scramble for possessions, few of the Chians had thought to bring any food. I’d eyed a number of chickens and a milch goat with interest—less interest now that I’d stepped in their droppings a time or two. Besides, I’d promised safety to these forlorn souls, and until I was certain Piali Pasha wouldn’t despoil them, I couldn’t very well do so myself.

  Until then, I found distraction in the wind upon my face and a detached scrutiny of Giustiniani’s style and skill. I was glad the smooth hand of God in wind and sails prevented our means of locomotion from picking up their captain’s style, which at the moment was as rough as cullet with guilt and nerves.

  “We’ve got a good start. We know the sandbars in the dark, we native Chians. And the Turks, the Turks are all asleep. We’ll be past them before they have an inkling.”

  He kept muttering things like this over and over as he paced among bundles of belongings and sleeping Chians along the Turk-ward, starboard side of the rail. He said it to anyone who asked, anyone who’d listen, sometimes just to himself. He said it with the inflection of an Ave Maria. Well, those tones were easy enough to pick up. Anyone awake on deck was saying it, if they weren’t murmuring some Greek prayer in its place.

  Had I been captain, I’d have soon put a stop to both of them. The same wind that blew us alongside the Turks would carry the cant ahead of us. But of course I was the irredeemable skeptic. I’d Ave’d myself ‘til bile rose in the dim little house in Pera—and saw that heaven did as it damn well pleased, for all our petitions. Still, how could I begrudge people their comfort where they could find it?

  As long as they left me mine, I thought with a protective glance towards my lady’s curtains, drifting with the same breeze that propelled us.