The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  I do not know when this letter will reach you, Papa. It is my plan to take advantage of the couriers who ride back and forth to Istanbul on the Sultan’s business. Since you stand so high in his esteem, I may work up the courage to ask his permission to send my letters to you in his pouch. That is, if I ever get to see him. I hope this finds you in good health.

  D.

  From: Danilo del Medigo at Maltepe

  To: Judah del Medigo at Topkapi Palace

  Date: June 14, 1534

  Dear Papa:

  Just when I had begun to believe that I was doomed to spend my campaign days studying like a schoolboy for a test that I would never be required to take, a summons arrived for me to report to the Sultan’s tent after the final prayer tonight.

  I will not hide from you, Papa, that I was already trembling when I began to prepare for my first reading session with the Sultan. This I did by reviewing the passages about Alexander that you sent to help me with my translating tasks. But I was so nervous that when I reached for the pages, they dropped from my hand and went flying all over the tent. Lucky for me these tents are carpeted, and no harm was done to your precious manuscript.

  When I arrived at the Sultan’s tent, still shaking, he was seated on a throne of cushions beside a small desk piled high with papers and did not look up. Is that how he treated you, Papa? No greeting? No smile? Was I expected to announce myself? I thought not. How does one behave in the presence of princes? How does one find one’s place as a small cog in this vast wheel that is rolling over Anatolia? Oh, how I wish that I had asked you more questions when I had the chance. Because I once visited a military camp — and a European one at that — I foolishly believed that I knew all about campaigning. Now I find that I do not even know how to ask permission to use the latrine, much less whether or not to open my mouth.

  So there I stood in the Sultan’s presence at last, waiting for a sign. And, to be sure, after several uncomfortable minutes, the Sultan did look up. But he never greeted me. Nor did he smile. He is not a smiling kind of man. He simply put down the last of his papers, withdrew from under his pillow my mother’s translation of Arrian’s Anabasis that you gave to him, and passed it over to me. I am pleased to tell you that he keeps the manuscript in a gold-embroidered bag. And that he takes great care with it. And that, in spite of my shattered nerves, I did not drop it.

  Finally came the curt order: “You may begin.”

  And so I began with the anecdote of Alexander’s taming of the wild horse, Bucephalus. But I hardly had the first words out when the royal hand went up.

  “I wish to hear the Greek’s version of īskender’s landing on the shores of Asia. It is a tale I heard as a child from my blessed mother, may she rest in eternal peace.”

  To which I added, “Amen.”

  To tell the truth, Papa, I was more than a little surprised at the Sultan’s lack of interest in Alexander’s early years. Was this Sultan never a boy himself? Perhaps he is too occupied with the here and now as he walks in the footsteps of Alexander, I thought. But in the course of reading to him last evening, I began to sense that he does feel a kind of kinship with Alexander (whom they call īskender), but that it is more mystical than historical. I believe he thinks himself to be the reincarnation of īskender, born to assert the power of the True Faith over the heretic Persians.

  Lucky for me I was able to render into passable Turkish īskender’s crossing of the Hellespont and the wonderful bit where he leaps off the royal trireme and hurls his spear into the soil of the Persian Empire to claim it as his own. I cannot be certain, but at that point, I believe I heard the Sultan mutter under his breath, “Bravo, īskender!”

  This gave me the confidence to plow ahead to Alexander’s capture of Troy and his homage at the tomb of Achilles. Arrian tells us that Alexander and his boon companion, Hephaestion, placed wreaths on the tombs of Achilles and Achilles’ boon companion, Patroclus. As I read, my Sultan nodded approvingly, if not of me at least of Alexander. But when I came to the word “wreaths,” he reared up on his cushions and his face clouded over.

  “Wreaths!” He spat out the word like an oath. “What about the naked dance around Achilles’ tomb? What about the perfumed oil and the choir of angels?” He aimed an accusing finger at me. “You must have skipped a page.”

  For a moment, I wondered if perhaps I had missed a page — this man speaks with such authority that he inclines you to doubt your very self. But a quick perusal of the manuscript told me that I had missed nothing. Further, I assured him that, in all my readings, I had not encountered any mention of Alexander dancing around Achilles’ tomb. This only put him in a worse humor, which, luckily, he chose to take out not on me but on poor old, dead Arrian.

  “Who is this Arrian anyway?” he demanded. “I was told that he was the most reliable source on the life of īskender. Now I find that I have better information from Ahmedi’s Book of İskender that my mother read to me in the nursery.”

  Who indeed was Arrian? And how much did he really know about Alexander? For that matter, how much did I know? And what did I have in my pitiful arsenal of learning to put up against the bedside fables recounted by the Sultan’s sainted mother?

  Gathering my wits, I ransacked my memory for everything I had ever learned about Alexander’s life from you and my mother, then proceeded to throw at him a mixed grill of names and dates and scribes and scholars — Arrian, Plutarch, Quintus, Diodorus, Ptolemy, I threw them all in. Each of these biographers, I explained, had his own version of īskender’s story. Yet not one of their original manuscript sources survives. What we have today are retellings, each one with its own gaps and errors. Of the lot, Arrian is judged to be the most complete life of Alexander.

  “But we must remember,” I advised him gently, “that Arrian wrote four centuries after īskender’s death, when everyone who ever knew the young king and could attest to the events of his life was long dead.”

  We must remember . . . Had I actually spoken to the Padishah in the imperative? Nobody tells the Sultan what he must do. Even an ignoramus like me knows that.

  I sat waiting for the axe to fall. Instead, I got a quite kindly request to think back over my readings in Latin and Greek about what happened to īskender in Troy. Either the Padishah hadn’t heard my lapse of protocol or else he simply couldn’t believe his own ears. That gave me a moment in which to redeem myself.

  Think, Danilo. Where could the Sultan’s mother have gotten her story of naked dancing? Very likely from the Turkish romance of īskender, translated into Arabic from the Persian and before that from the original Greek. How easy it would have been to mistake a word or a phrase — even a whole paragraph — on such a tortuous linguistic journey.

  “May I ask a question of you, sire?” I asked.

  He nodded his permission.

  “Do you by any chance recall the precise wording in the book that was read to you as a child?”

  “I do,” he answered, quite affably. “I heard many times how īskender and Hephaestion approached the tomb of Achilles on their knees; how, in a gesture of homage, they stripped themselves bare, anointed themselves with sweet holy oil to purify their bodies, and then performed a traditional dance around the sacred site. I can hear my mother’s voice telling it. Every word.”

  His mother’s voice. All in a rush, my own mother’s voice came back to me relating how Alexander made for Troy to honor his hero, Achilles. How he exchanged his own armor for a shield said to have been the one that protected Achilles at Troy. And how, in a traditional act of homage, he and his boon companion, Hephaestion, stripped bare and ran a naked foot race around the tomb of Achilles.

  Apparently, somewhere along the tortuous route of translation, the race had become a dance. Race, dance — not too dissimilar. And in any case, who am I to challenge the word of the Sultan’s sainted mother? So, as I retold my mother’s tale, I replaced her word, “r
ace,” with his mother’s term, “dance,” adding a silent prayer to my meticulous mother to forgive the inaccuracy.

  And when that was done, I begged the Sultan’s pardon for my error, blaming the translators. In Latin, I explained, the word “cursus” is usually taken to mean race, as in a running contest. Almost instantly, I saw the clouds beginning to form again above the Sultan’s forehead.

  “But it can also mean ‘dance,’” I added hastily. And got a satisfied nod in return.

  I had scraped by with my reputation intact. But what about poor Arrian? His name was mud. And on this note, we ended the long evening.

  I suppose I can claim to have survived some kind of test. But one thing fills me with trepidation. Not only does this man want me to translate Arrian on the spot, he wants Arrian to have written the romance of īskender that his mother read to him as a child. And I am not certain that I can perform such a miraculous transformation.

  What the Sultan requires of me is a romantic tale, and Arrian is neither tale-spinner nor romantic. With his text I see the Sultan’s eyes begin to flicker, then close. Arrian is lulling him to sleep. He is a dry bone, this Greek, with no good bits to chew on. And this causes me to lose hope for my future as the Assistant Foreign Language Interpreter. And to curse the day I ever heard the name īskender.

  Your respectful and loving son,

  Danilo del Medigo

  From: Sultana Hürrem at Topkapi Palace

  To: The Ghazi Sultan Suleiman en route, received at Maltepe

  Date: June 14, 1534

  My Adored Sultan and Master:

  Five days without you are like four months. Every day the children ask, “Why is Papa not here? When will he come back to us?” They are too young to understand that their papa is a ghazi, and that when the jihad calls he must obey its summons.

  It ill behooves me to complain of my lot to you who gives his very life out of duty to his people. But since you have raised me to the exalted state of Empress and have honored me by naming me Regent in your absence, you have also, my adored husband, laid upon me a set of grave responsibilities far beyond my meager ability. Not only must I perform as a regent worthy of your confidence, but also as guardian, in your absence, of our much loved children. In these endeavors I am sorely in need of all the support I can muster. We have already learned the importance of a confidential secretary who will be completely loyal to me, and I thank Allah daily for having found such a one in the Princess Saida. She is a pillar of strength to me. But, sadly, though she faithfully makes the journey across town each afternoon from the harem to serve me here in Topkapi, I regret my inability to call on her assistance, should the occasion arise, when I need her in the morning or in the evening. But she is unwavering in her determination to live out a full year of mourning for her grandmother in the Valide’s suite at the Old Palace.

  Surely no man has been more faithful in observance of his mourning duties than you. Yet only three months after the Valide’s untimely death, you answered the call of duty and rode off to war against the infidel Shah of Persia. I have pointed out to our mourning princess that she too has a duty, hers being the care of her younger brothers and sisters as she readies herself for marriage — far too long delayed — to a husband of your choosing, thus giving you, as a future son-in-law, a damat bound to us by blood and also a future vizier of proven loyalty.

  It is not as if she is enjoying her mournful life. I am told that she cries herself to sleep at night, driven to tears by the loss of her grandmother, whose love she still craves but who is lost to her and cannot be restored. The only solution is for her to forego her observances and take up her womanly duties as a wife and mother and the bearer of Ottoman sons.

  Preparation for such a momentous event takes time. The bride’s trousseau must be ordered — think of this: every pearl in the train must be hand-sewn — a palace must be purchased, and a suitable staff assembled for the household of a princess and her husband, the Sultan’s damat. I have begun to assemble a list of worthies for this great honor, so all that remains for you to do when you arrive home — oh, blessed day! — is pick the one you favor, as is your rightful duty, and announce the wedding date.

  Please write or I will die.

  Signed,

  Your Sultana

  At the bottom of this letter is an encrypted message. A quick pass over the page with a lighted taper reveals these words:

  The princess is driven to tears by longing for the one whose love she craves, not a love forever lost but a love being kept alive by a magic taper.

  30

  ELMADAĞ

  From: Danilo del Medigo at Elmadağ

  To: Judah del Medigo at Topkapi Palace

  Date: June 17, 1534

  Dear Papa:

  We have stopped at the base of a mountain for two days to take advantage of the excellent hunting in the surrounding forests. Not only birds abound here but deer, antelope, and even wild boar. When I heard this, I barely slept for thinking of bringing down a large animal with my gerit. Being a member of the Fourth Oda, it did not occur to me that I might not be invited to join the Sultan’s hunting party along with my fellow pages. But as I was readying myself for my first royal hunt, my superior officer, Ahmed Pasha, the Chief Interpreter, pulled me aside to tell me that I must stay behind. It seems that the Sultan’s undertaking to you that I would not bear arms during my service to him precluded my participation in the hunt.

  “But that was in the cause of war,” I protested, to no avail. So at dawn this morning my fellow pages rode off without me, every hoofbeat a blow to my heavy heart. Papa, I know you do not share my enthusiasm for horses or for sport. And I understand that this prohibition against my carrying arms is meant to keep me safe. But must I look forward to a year or more of being singled out from my comrades and kept in my tent like a backward child? If so, it sets me to wondering if the conditions under which I am traveling in the Sultan’s army are perhaps too stringent for me. I am resigned to my alien status as the Jew Page because of my religion, but the prospect of being despised by the comrades I eat with and sleep with and ride with every day as a weakling who cannot wield a gerit fills me with dread.

  That is why I am begging you, Papa, to revise the conditions of my service to the Sultan. At least to allow me to take part in any gerit contest along the road and in any other non-military sports such as hunting. As it is, I lay on my bunk all morning feeling useless and friendless and hopeless. Which is where Ahmed found me and took pity on me. Of course, he dare not disobey his master’s orders, but he did have a suggestion that cheered me up. Why, he asked, did I not use these two days to acquaint myself with the camp?

  “I do have the authority to offer you two days’ leave from your translation work to make a circuit of the camp,” he advised me. “Nobody told me you were not allowed to ride your horse. And I would estimate two days on horseback will give you time to survey the cavalcade from the most forward units at the head to the stragglers at the rear.” Then he added, with a twinkle in his eye, “It is a rare opportunity, my boy, I assure you. I myself did not get a complete view of the line of march until my third campaign. And you may never have this chance again.”

  It was, as an Italian would say, an offer too good to refuse. So I pulled on my boots, filled up my water bottle, saddled my horse, and set off to learn something of this expedition of which I am a part, yet not a part.

  Following Ahmed’s advice, I decided to begin at the rear, then visit every section of the cavalcade from back to front. As if anyone could hope to accomplish this — and see anything — within two days’ ride. It took only a few hours to make me realize the folly of my plan, as you would know from your extensive experience with this army. But then, owing to your loathing of horses and mules, you may well have been happy to just stay in your tent on your days off.

  If so, I will risk boring you by telling you of what I saw toda
y. And please save this letter so that I can bring my adventure back to mind when I am old and nodding by the fire and recounting stories for my grandchildren.

  For the record, our route has taken us not too far from the Granicus River, where Alexander first encountered the might of King Darius of Persia in the year 334 BC. In Alexander’s time, this vast countryside of Anatolia that we are passing through so peacefully was in the hands of the Persians. I made a point of this to the Sultan while reading to him from Arrian last night. We both agreed that it would have been interesting to visit īskender’s ancient battlefield at the Granicus. But sadly, said the Padishah, we must move on. Duty calls. However (I remark this for your ears only, Papa), it seems that duty does not call as loudly for a visit to an historic battleground as does the hunting horn.

  Myself, I would have been happy to follow Alexander’s way all along the Ionian coast to Caria province, where he stopped to consult an oracle. But it turns out that the Sultan has his own oracle to consult — a Sufi mystic called Rumi, whose grave and shrine are at Konya. Is it not interesting, Papa, that these two great leaders both chose to go out of their way to make certain that the gods were on their side before setting off to conquer Persia? But I am getting away from my purpose . . .

  As you know, the camp is planned like a city strung out in a long line of compounds, each unit fenced in by pastures and stables for the animals and assembled into neat rows of tented streets, and each street bordered by trenches, with the Padishah tucked securely into the very center of the line protected by Janissaries at both ends.

  Our next-door neighbors in the line of march, a brigade of Janissaries, had already lit their fires when I crossed into their encampment, which appeared astonishingly quiet and peaceable. Nowhere did I see garbage or filth or evidence of gaming or drunkenness. It was hard to believe that I was standing in the midst of a bivouac of battle-hardened foot soldiers, and even more amazing that such tranquility continued to prevail, even while their Janissary captains were up on the mountaintop hunting with the Sultan. In my recollection of the Imperial camp outside of Rome, neither the Duke of Bourbon nor his co-captain of the German landsknechts was able to command such a high degree of order, even while standing directly in front of their men issuing orders.