Honored Senators of the Serene Republic,
As always with these people, all deliberations are held in the utmost secrecy (which is what makes it so devilishly expensive to buy information here). Then, suddenly, a covey of heralds explodes into the streets and announces with a flourish of trumpets that a certain event has happened or will happen. This is especially notable in the case of celebrations — weddings, circumcisions, funerals, etc.
Yesterday, without any notice being given, such an occasion was announced for the day after tomorrow. Two days hence there will be a festival to celebrate the marriage (!) of the Sultan and his Russian Second Kadin, Lady Hürrem.
My informants in the palace swear they had no forewarning of it. But once the word was out, there followed no shortage of explanations. Sires, you understand that, since the defeat of Sultan Bayezit by Tamerlane in 1402, when the Sultan’s wife Despina was made to serve naked at the victor’s table, no Ottoman Sultan has risked such humiliation by marrying the mother of his children. From that time on all the kadins have been chosen from among the Sultan’s female slaves who have produced male children (among whom the Sultan then designates his heir). No primogeniture here. As I have advised you with tedious frequency, my masters, this sultanate is not a European kingdom in any way we would recognize.
Yet, this week, less than a month after the final day of mourning for the Valide Sultan, Sultan Suleiman has taken unto himself as his empress, a Russian concubine called Hürrem. With this move, the Russian seems to have vaulted over the head of her rival, Rose of Spring (where do they get these names?), mother of the Sultan’s first-born son, Prince Mustafa, which makes Lady Hürrem the First Kadin. This marriage will put the first born of the Russian into direct rivalry with the crown prince for the sultancy. It is a measure breathtaking in its elegant simplicity.
No doubt about it, a real marriage ceremony was performed in the palace. Immediately afterwards there began an explosion of entertainment unmatched by any I have witnessed in my years at this court. Bread and olives were distributed to the poor; cheese, fruit, and rose leaf jam to the middle classes. The main streets were festooned with flowers and banners — the scarlet flags of the Ottoman Empire and the green standards of Islam.
There was a public display of wedding gifts from the outposts of the empire: camels laden with carpets, furniture, gold and silver vases, and a hundred and sixty eunuchs to enter the service of Lady Hürrem.
In the hippodrome square, a vast balcony was screened from the crowd by silk hangings and reserved for the new empress and her ladies. From there she could watch the wrestlers, archers, jugglers, and tumblers performing day and night.
Wild animals were paraded along the At Meydani — lions, panthers, and leopards; elephants tossing balls with their long trunks; and giraffes with necks so long they seemed to touch the sky.
In one of the processions a loaf of bread the size of a room was dragged through the streets on a raft by ten oxen while the city’s baker threw little hot loaves to the crowd. And people climbed trees to catch a glimpse of the Sultan or to receive gifts of money or silk or fruit that the Sultan’s slaves tossed into the air.
The bailo concluded his report with a question:
How could such a thing come about? If you believe the gossip down at the bazaar — and I do — this Russian somehow managed to worm her way into the Sultan’s mourning chamber in Topkapi Palace immediately after the Valide’s funeral and has been in residence sharing his grief for the entire three months that he has been sequestered, during which, I am told, she never left his side. She cooked for him with her own hands and dried his tears with her own handkerchief. In the course of which she managed, they say, to persuade him that, with the Valide gone and the Grand Vizier often away fighting, she was the only person he could trust to do his will when he is off on campaign. In short, with this marriage she has not only eliminated her closest rival, she has also, in one and the same moment, taken on the mantle of the dead Valide Sultan, Lady Hafsa.
God must be on this woman’s side. Almost as if she willed it, an uprising has broken out in Azerbaijan among the Sultan’s unruly Kurdish beys, who were supposed to have been permanently cured of their Persian leanings by Selim the Grim some fifteen years ago. So the Grand Vizier, Ibrahim, has had to be dispatched to quell the rebel Kurdish warlords, and I am told that Suleiman will follow his Vizier to Mesopotamia in the late spring. This will create a void at the center of governance, which I hear tell the new Sultana has both the will and the ambition to fill. Leaving us with a de facto substitute Sultan, the newly minted Sultana. Think this: it is but a small step from Sultana to Regent. And a great distance from Istanbul to Baghdad, where the rebellion is centered. In such a case a Regent who is fifteen hundred miles away from the ruler can actually become a de facto ruler himself — or herself.
Surely it would be prudent to prepare for such an eventuality. I would advise a cornucopia of bountiful gifts to the newlyweds, especially novelty items that would have particular appeal to the distaff side. To be dispatched from Venice as soon as possible.
Your faithful servant,
Signed Alvise Gritti, Venetian Bailo at Istanbul
25
INVITATION FROM
THE SULTAN
From: Suleiman, Sultan-Caliph, Protector of Islam
To: Judah del Medigo, The Sultan’s Chief Body Physician
Date: May 25, 1534
Greetings from a grateful Sultan.
Today your son, Danilo, delivered into my hands a wedding present that I recognized at once as a manuscript of Arrian’s Life of Alexander the Great, the Greek king spoken of by us as īskender. Although I know of Arrian’s biography only by reputation, the colophon tells me that this manuscript is one of the treasures of the Gonzaga collection transcribed by your late wife, Grazia the Scribe, during her service to the Marchese of Mantova.
The receiver twice values any gift that is greatly treasured by the giver. Because it was copied in the immaculate hand of your late wife, Grazia the Scribe, this manuscript is such a gift. Be assured, it will occupy a place of honor in my library.
Scholars assure me that Arrian’s life of īskender is the one written closest to his own time and thus, the most accurate. But copies of this rara avis are hard to come by, even for a sultan. And, diligent though I have been in pursuit of it, Arrian’s Life of Alexander has successfully eluded me until this morning when, lo and behold, your son arrived at my selamlik bearing the long-sought treasure in his hands. Now, according to the arithmetic of giving, the value of your gift is doubled yet again by its particular value to me as I set out to follow in the footsteps of īskender and to wrest Baghdad from the King of Persia as īskender did — inshallah.
Be assured your gift could not mean more to any man on earth. I intend to keep it beneath my bed pillow, which is the very place where īskender kept his copy of Homer’s Iliad, the story of his hero, Achilles.
And each evening on campaign, I will have read to me Arrian’s account of what befell the great Greek king when he ventured east to confront the Persian might centuries ago, just as I am about to do.
Of course, in the way of treasures, this one does not yield itself readily to my eager eyes. Sadly, it is written in a language foreign to me. To bring it into the light, I am now in need of a translator who is well versed in both my own tongue and the Latin in which Arrian wrote. I am also in need of a trustworthy secretary to oversee my personal correspondence. This morning when your son, Danilo, placed the manuscript in my hands, I knew I had found my man. Having observed his development during his years in my School for Pages I have complete confidence in your son’s discretion. Trained by you and his mother, he is well versed in the ancient languages. Educated at my school in the palace, he is completely fluent in our native tongue. And even the briefest conversation with him has revealed to me that his enthusiasm for īskender’s remarkable exploits equ
als my own.
So I propose to you, my trusted physician and custodian of my well-being for so long, that your son, Danilo, take your place at my side, not as a physician, of course — that is a place no one else can ever fill — but as my personal interpreter for the duration of the Persian campaign. Note that this proposal does not contravene my previous undertaking to you that I would never recruit your son as a soldier, in spite of his prowess with the gerit. In deference to your wishes, I have thus far honored my pledge. And I will continue to do so. But now it seems that, thanks to your generous gift, there is a valuable service that he can perform for me beyond fighting for my cause. To repeat: this would be a temporary appointment, limited to the duration of the Asian campaign, and would engage him only in scholarly and occasional clerical tasks. And you have my personal assurance, both as a sultan and a father, that the young man will never bear arms while a member of my retinue.
It is unnecessary to point out to you that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your son to traverse the eastern lands in the footsteps of īskender, to engage in an historic campaign, to witness (inshallah) the final defeat of the Persian infidels by the Ottoman Empire. It is a task I have inherited from my noble father, the revered Selim, taken from us before he was able to put finish to the Persian presence in Mesopotamia forever. And note that the young man will remain within the safe haven of the royal tent and under the personal protection of the most powerful ruler in the world.
We none of us wish to be parted from our cherished children. But I urge you to bestow your approval on my plan. Be assured, your son will be grateful for this opportunity all the rest of his life.
I await your reply.
Sealed with the Sultan’s tugra.
For two days after this letter was delivered to his house, the doctor left it unanswered, buried under a pile of papers on his writing desk as if it had never arrived, as if it did not exist. But when Danilo returned from his dormitory at the end of the week to celebrate the Sabbath with his father, the actual presence of his son in the house revived Judah’s latent conscience, and before they set off for evening services at the Ahrida Synagogue, he slid the letter out from under the pile of books where he had — he could hardly acknowledge to himself — hidden it. Was the paper really hot enough to burn his fingers when he slipped it into his pocket, or had he imagined it?
After prayers, father and son stopped in the courtyard of the synagogue to share the customary glass of wine with the other men of the congregation. It had not been a comfortable prayer session for Judah.
Within himself, the doctor had never found it difficult to accommodate both faith and reason without contradiction. But magic was another story. How could he, a Platonist and a rational man, have felt that a piece of paper that was not on fire was burning a hole in his pocket? And to have it happen in a house of worship on the Sabbath . . .
This must stop, he admonished himself. Next thing, he would be seeing jinns skulking under his bed. The moment they were alone, he would take out the Sultan’s letter and show it to his son, Danilo. Once he had made the decision, he was able to give himself over to the object of the evening: to worship God and give thanks for the many blessings he had enjoyed in the past week.
Still, he did not actually reach into his pocket for the Sultan’s letter until he and his son had walked some distance along the Bosphorus and were about to begin the climb to the Doctor’s House in Topkapi Palace. As they trudged up the hill, he had the sense that each step was carrying his son farther away from him. Then the thought crossed his mind that the letter was, after all, not addressed to his son but to him, and that he had no obligation to consult anyone. He could, without troubling Danilo, send a polite refusal citing his ill health and his reluctance to send his only child — his only living relative in the world — into danger. He could even offer to search out a replacement interpreter. And the boy need never know of it. Sending the Arrian manuscript to the Sultan had been a serious mistake.
Next to him, Danilo strolled along oblivious to the battle that was raging within his father. So the boy was somewhat taken aback when the doctor stopped suddenly, uttered a deep groan, pulled a rolled-up piece of parchment out of his pocket, and thrust it into his hand with the hoarse instruction: “Read this.”
Eyes on his son’s face, Judah could see the boy’s rising excitement as he read the contents of the letter.
“He is inviting me to go with him? In his own retinue?” The expression of disbelief mixed with wild joy that suffused the young face confirmed Judah’s worst fears. His son was about to be taken from him.
“I cannot allow you to go.” The words came out of him unbidden. “I cannot allow you to become one of the Janissaries that boast about being the Sultan’s slaves. To think that a son of mine would fall into such —”
“With all respect, sir,” the boy broke in, “I must remind you that I am also the son of my mother. I was suckled on Homer. I knew of Dionysus before I knew of David. I played at being Alexander the Great. My mother read to me a book of his exploits to tempt me into studying Latin. Alexander is as much a part of my heritage as Abraham, Sarah, or Jacob. And this is an opportunity to walk in his footsteps.”
“Point well taken,” Judah said. “I spoke hastily, but I fear for your soul embedded in the toils of this Muslim jihad.”
Now it was the boy’s turn to take a deep breath before he responded. “I admit, sir, that I find a certain affinity for the Muslim pages that I study with in the Sultan’s school. I was surprised to learn how much we have in common, that we all claim our heritage from Abraham, that we all kill our animals by the same ritual, that we all refuse to eat the flesh of a pig, that all of us are circumcised.”
For some reason Judah became almost apoplectic at the mention of circumcision.
“Forgive me, sir; that was only a tease,” the boy said in an attempt to placate his father. “But truly the idea of taking up a new religion has never entered my mind. And in his letter the Sultan agrees that he will oversee my religious practice as if I were his own son, does he not?”
If the boy had spoken resentfully or even cursed, Judah might have summoned up the will to persist. But Judah was not only a man of science, he was also a man of feeling, and he could not summon up a defense against the combination of modesty and sweet reason with which his son made his case.
A silence followed, then finally, “If you want to accept the Sultan’s offer” — each word caught in the doctor’s throat as he uttered it — “I will raise no objection.”
That night, Judah del Medigo dispatched his son Danilo across the courtyard to the selamlik, to deliver to the Sultan his blessing on the venture. And the boy, taking advantage of the opportunity to walk out freely as a messenger bearing a communiqué for the Padishah, carried along with him a communiqué of his own, addressed to Princess Saida at the Old Palace. Throughout the years of hidden communication between them, all contact had been initiated by her. It was much easier to smuggle things out of the harem than into it, especially since she had the assistance of Narcissus to act as her postman.
But this time Danilo could not wait for his princess to fix a convenient time for their next meeting. The date of the Sultan’s departure for the east was set for only a few days hence. So, for the first time, Danilo was faced with a task that had flummoxed generations of illicit harem suitors before him: how to slip a message past the vigilant harem doorkeepers at the iron gates of the Old Palace, who guarded the Sultan’s women like a pride of fierce lions.
While he waited for Judah to compose his missive for the Sultan, Danilo turned over in his mind the disguises, subterfuges, and spurious errands that he might concoct. There was not time enough to corrupt one of the harem eunuchs. Such arrangements took months to establish. What he needed was to get a message through this very night — a hidden message. There came to his mind a piece of advice Judah had once given him: the best wa
y to hide a thing is to hide it in plain sight. He would hide his message in an innocent letter from an old chum in the Harem School, a letter from a lowly page to a princess, a letter of condolence on the death of her grandmother!
Mind you, it was close to four months since the Valide’s death. But what if he had held off out of reluctance to intrude on her great grief? Another of Judah’s worldly maxims came to mind: when inventing a lie, try to include as much truth as you can. What if he was only writing now because he was about to leave on campaign? (True.) And in the Sultan’s entourage. (Also true.)
At first, the harem sentry was completely intransigent. He had his orders: letters could not be delivered into the harem. In desperation, Danilo offered to break the seal and let the guard read the letter for himself.
“Read it and you will see.” He held the letter out with the same hand and the same careless ease that he offered sweet carrots to his horse. Who could turn away from such a tempting morsel? The guard read and found a nicely composed note of condolence from an old schoolmate to the princess, expressing deep sympathy and the hope that, now that her mourning period had come to an end, the princess would go on to live a life of duty and grace in emulation of her revered grandmother.
I know that you will never cease to grieve for her, the message read. But I also know that she would have wanted you to enjoy a life full of love for all Allah’s creatures as she did. The note closed, as was proper, with a formal declaration of the page’s readiness to serve the princess, should she so desire. If there is ever any service or duty, small or large, that I can offer, you need only call upon me at my residence at the Sultan’s School for Pages, from which I will shortly embark for Mesopotamia as a member of the Sultan’s honor guard. To serve the Padishah in the field is an honor beyond my dreams. I can only hope that I am able to live up to the faith he has placed in me by inviting me to serve as his Assistant Foreign Language Interpreter.
The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi Page 21