For a moment, I thought of avoiding the hunt by feigning a fever. But I am such a bad liar that I was bound to be found out and disgraced. All I really needed was a quick lesson in pig-
sticking. A few good tips like, what is the best moment for the thrust, what part of the body to aim at, how close you have to get — some things I know in my bones about gerit tilting but which may not apply to pig-sticking. Yet for the lack of them I could end up not only disgraced but dead.
Then it came to me. There in the tent in the middle of the night I heard my mother’s voice reciting, in unison with me, the portion of The Odyssey where Odysseus comes back to Ithaca after an eleven-year absence and can’t get his wife to recognize him. She asks for proof that this ragged, grizzled old man could possibly be the handsome, heroic husband she sent off to Troy a decade earlier.
Odysseus turns to his old nurse and reveals a scar on his leg from a wound he received in a boar hunt when he was a boy.
“Oh yes!” she says as she caresses the scar. “You are Odysseus! Ah, dear child! I could not see you until now — not till I knew my master’s very body with my hands!”
She then describes the hunt in which the boy was wounded. That is the canto that Mama made me memorize and I remember it to this day.
Before them a great boar lay hid in undergrowth,
In a green thicket proof against the wind
or sun’s blaze, fine soever the needling sunlight,
impervious too to any rain, so dense
that cover was heaped up with fallen leaves.
Patter of hounds’ feet, men’s feet, woke the boar
as they came up — and from his woody ambush
with razor back bristling and raging eyes
he trotted and stood at bay. Odysseus,
being on top of him, had the first shot,
lunging to stick him; but the boar
had already charged under the long spear.
He hooked aslant with one white tusk and ripped out
flesh above the knee, but missed the bone.
Odysseus’ second thrust went home by luck,
his bright spear passing through the shoulder joint;
and the beast fell, moaning as life pulsed away.
As I repeated the words aloud to myself, I realized that I had actually picked up a few pig-sticking tips from old Homer. I had learned that boars use their tusks the way we use the gerit, for one massive thrust. What this said to me was, better be very careful with your aim because you may not get a second chance at this beast. Odysseus was lucky. He missed his first go at the boar and was wounded. Still, he lived to kill his prey. Then again, he had the gods on his side. I couldn’t count on either luck or the gods. But I did have a strong feeling that my mother was watching over me from heaven as I made my way to join the hunting party.
It took an entire morning for us to climb up to the shelf where the forest began. Toward the last of the climb the pitch was so steep we had to dismount in order to unburden the horses. We were followed by a detachment of muleteers, each leading a string of pack animals to carry back to the camp enough wood and meat needed to roast and feed the thousands of mouths waiting below. We must have looked to them, as we headed to the peak, like the longest snake in the world, slithering up the mountain. The odd horse took a fall, but almost all got up there safely. And, of course, mules are almost as good as goats at climbing rocky cliffs.
Luckily, we managed to reach the clearing in time to gather up a quantity of firewood before dark, to be sent down the mountain so that fires could be started below. We even had the time to roast the birds that the hunters had flushed out at the edge of the treeline as soon as we arrived. Fresh melted ice, fresh-killed quail, and a bonfire of juniper branches — we already had our share of bounty and the serious business of the hunt had not yet begun. That task was, of course, the wholesale killing of large animals — some bears but mostly boars — with which the forest was reportedly teeming. Our guides also reported that these animals were stronger than oxen and ferocious in protecting their young.
We kept the fires in our makeshift camp burning all night, but even so in the morning water that had been left in cups near the fire was frozen over. Not at all balmy weather, but we hadn’t climbed up there for a picnic. We were there to provide food for an army, and that business began without delay by the light of the rising sun.
As promised, the woods were literally teeming with wildlife — running, jumping, hooting, crowing, swooping. A hunter’s paradise. We had been told to use arrows on the smaller game and save our gerits and the lances for the big animals. I myself killed four piglets that walked in front of us in a single file just as we entered the woods. We hardly had time to truss them up and call for the muleteers when along came four more. These I left to my fellow marksmen. When the first one fell, it was wounded but not dead. Then the other three gathered around it as it lay kicking and squealing on the ground and just stood there until one of the Janissaries rode over and finished them all off, bang, bang, bang. Unlike those of us trained for competition, the Janissaries are all skilled and enthusiastic shooters.
So it went all day, the mules hard-pressed to keep up with the kill and no resistance on the part of the animals. But on our way back to camp, when we had turned our horses loose to graze in a clearing, we spotted a sow herding a clutch of calves. This female turned out to be quite a different type of pig than the males, who had seemed more bewildered than hostile. Possibly, like me, they had never before faced off against an opponent of a different species. But I guess certain kinds of feelings are common to all living creatures. When the female caught sight of us, she quickly reversed direction and bumped her charges off to a nearby cave. One of the pages on horseback took after them to finish the job, and for a few moments nothing was heard. Then from deep in the woods came something between a shout and a scream: “It’s killing me! It’s killing me!”
We all jumped back on our horses and galloped to his aid, only to find the poor fellow face down on the ground with blood spurting out of his backside. And no sign of the pig. The wound told the tale of what had happened. It was a sickening mess with torn ends of muscle sticking out from his pulsing flesh.
“Lucky it was a sow that got him,” my partner muttered to me as we hoisted the wounded page’s prostrate body onto an improvised stretcher. “A male boar would have had better aim.”
Probably so, but cold comfort to the page whose lower parts were now covered with blood.
We had been amazingly lucky earlier in the day, and now we were seeing the dark side of pig-sticking. Apparently, these big animals are often slow to react, but when they do they are deadly. Myself, I didn’t take it personally. It was just the law of the jungle. Not so my fellow hunters. The moment they caught sight of their bloodied comrade, the cries went up.
“Kill the pig!”
“Get the sow!”
“Kill! Kill! Kill!”
They were after vengeance. They even prevailed on the Sultan to track down the culprit, in revenge for the wounding of their bleeding comrade. I do not believe his heart was in the venture. With piles of carcasses to be carried down the slope to his hungry troops below, a delay at this point was surely the last thing he needed. Perhaps he wanted to give the men some kind of reward for a hard day’s work far beyond the call of duty. Whatever his reason, he did lead us all back into the darkening forest in search of the sow, and, amazingly, we soon found her, this time with two huge males standing guard over the lair.
Beside me, a Janissary with a musket fired and hit the larger boar. The animal spun around but did not go down. Instead he took off straight at us. I heard another shot but the beast never faltered. Then another and still he came on. You could not help but admire the courage of the animal.
Now he was very close to those of us at the front of the column. Out of some kind of instinct, I position
ed my gerit on my hip. From the corner of my eye, I could see the second boar leap into the air to hurl himself at the Sultan. No time to measure the distance, or calculate the angle of the thrust or the timing of the throw. I let go with my gerit. Then everything slowed down as if the whole world was moving at half speed, and the beast literally fell from the air at the Sultan’s feet. A moment earlier, I would have missed him. An inch of play in the angle, I might have killed the Sultan with my gerit instead of the boar.
After that I went into a swoon and fell off my horse, so they told me, for I remember nothing of it. My last memory as I lay on the ground is of the Sultan leaning over me, reaching for his jeweled dagger — was he about to kill me? — and then, as my sight faded, I felt his fingers tucking the weapon under my waistband and heard his voice say, “Keep this with you always. It will protect you from harm. And remember this: if ever you have a need for anything within my power to bestow, only ask and your wish will be granted.”
I reached down and there it was — the Sultan’s own dagger inset with jewels worth hundreds. I heard him say something about Allah — then blackness and silence.
When I came to, I was back at the foot of the mountain on my bedroll, covered by a downy quilt with men crowded around me. And when I greeted them, they began to applaud me like the spectators at the hippodrome. Then Ahmed told me I had saved the Sultan’s life. But what I have written here is only my recollection of it.
Now you see why I wanted to tell you the story myself. Today, I saved the Sultan’s life. Tonight I was fêted throughout the camp. But I know that I acted without thought, without intent, without true courage.
This venture has set me to wondering how much of our life is spent fearing and preparing for dangers that never happen. While men were quaking in fear of being bombarded from above by Persian bowmen, they were almost destroyed by an avalanche. While we were hunting for food in the age-old way, our leader was almost killed by a chance encounter with a wild animal. And I am saluted for an act beyond my control. We have much to talk about, Papa.
Last thought. The Sultan once said to me that, given the choice, he would rather be the God of Weather than the God of Gunpowder. Today, if I were offered a choice, I would choose to be the God of Timing.
I miss you, Papa.
D.
From: Sultan Suleiman, encamped in the Manisht Pass
To: Sultana Hürrem at Topkapi Palace
Date: November 12, 1534
Allah is kind. Allah is merciful. At the darkest hour, the troops of the holy jihad, snowbound in the Manisht Pass, were beset all around by wild animals. Suddenly a mad pig, poised to kill, sprang out of the underbrush to impale me. But, as the beast flew through the air, Allah guided the hand of a nearby page to bring down the crazed animal, and in a flash it lay dead on the ground, pinned to the earth by the page’s gerit. Allah be praised. You, my beloved, are the first to know of this miracle, thanks to my pigeon post.
The Zagros Mountains have not been kind to us. The campaign has brought much glory to the empire but at great cost. Thirty-nine hundred dead and some twenty thousand horses and camels lost.
Baghdad beckons.
Signed with the Sultan’s seal.
Beneath the Sultan’s seal, an encrypted message:
The Sultan was saved by the strong arm of a lowly page of the Fourth Oda. He is to be granted his dearest wish. Hope lives.
47
ABI-NERIN
From: Danilo del Medigo at Abi-Nerin
To: Judah del Medigo at Topkapi Palace
Date: November 26, 1534
Well, Papa,
I have had my moment of glory. It lasted three days. As you can see by the date and place of this letter, we are well out of the Manisht Pass, but the real story of our release may not be the same as the news now winging its way to you in the capital. That report will have been authored by the Grand Vizier Ibrahim, who is by no stretch the hero of our rescue. Not even close. To be precise, while we were walking to safety through the blowout in the snow wall, he was still at Baghdad preparing his men to come to our rescue.
I believe that I left off writing to you after I killed the boar, fell off my horse, and was carried down the mountain from the hunting grounds. That evening came the great feast. There we were — those of us lucky enough to have survived the hellish crossing of the Zagros — spread out in the valley of the pass from one end to the other, warm and well-fed, unharmed by either Persian sharpshooters or wild boars, a little pleased with ourselves for having survived nature’s onslaught.
It was the perfect moment for the Sultan to bring everyone down to earth with the information that we were not yet out of the woods, still imprisoned by an ice wall with no means of blasting our way out. “So eat hearty,” he said, before warning us that after tonight we would be on short rations until we were rescued. Nobody even grumbled. So when a beefy fellow began to shoulder his way up to the Sultan’s dais in a very bellicose way, shouting, “Make way, make way!” he was greeted on all sides with jeers and calls of “Sit down, ungrateful pig!” But something he told the Janissaries who were guarding the Sultan must have impressed them, because after feeling him up and down for weapons and relieving him of a knife, they let him through the crowd to the space in front of the Sultan’s dais. And the mere sight of this ruffian in such close proximity to the royal presence brought him the attention of the entire assemblage. Lucky for him, the fellow did have the sense to keep his head lowered when he addressed the Sultan.
“My name is Orhan,” he began. “In early days, my father Korkud was the Sultan’s Chief Butcher and now I am the Sultan’s Assistant Chief Butcher.”
For this common worker even to be standing in the vicinity of the Padishah was such a total breach of custom that the crowd had no notion how to respond. So they sat silent. But the Sultan leaned forward, which the butcher took as a signal to continue.
“How does a humble butcher best serve his Sultan?” the man asked.
Again, silence greeted the question. But this time, the Sultan leaned a little farther forward.
Encouraged, the butcher answered his own question. “If called upon I would gladly have sacrificed my life for my Padishah. But I am a humble butcher. So today I butchered two hundred carcasses in honor of his great hunt in the forest. It was the best service I could render. Then tonight at the feast I was told that we were hemmed in at the end of this pass by a wall of ice with no gunpowder to blast our way out. This was the first I had heard of it. No one ever tells us anything.”
He had a point. The Sultanate does not make a practice of giving out information to anyone, not even to the members of the divan. Was this perhaps, I wondered, a ploy to lighten the bad news of what we had still to face? Had the butcher been rehearsed to play his part? No, this Orhan did not have the wit to carry off such a jape. The way he spoke gave the impression of a man not on intimate terms with words, much less a speechmaker.
“So, when I heard of our” — long pause — “predicament, I gathered up my courage and requested an audience with the Sultan.” And indeed it must have taken some courage for a butcher to approach the Sultan’s Janissaries, who, everyone knows, are trained to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Mind you, they did hold onto his knife. And the household guard may have recognized him as a lifelong member of the kitchen staff. Whatever the case, say this for the man, he did know enough to fall on his face and eat the dust at his sovereign’s feet before he looked up and faced him eye to eye.
“I understand, sire,” he continued, “that you have a shortage of gunpowder.”
What was this? A mockery? A threat?
The Janissaries stepped forward to heave the fellow out, but the Sultan waved them away. And then, the unthinkable: the Sultan spoke directly to the butcher; almost as if to an equal.
“You heard correctly, my good man. Our entire supply of explosives has go
ne on ahead with the advance party.”
“Well, sire, I have something here that might help you out.” With that the butcher began to paw at the odds and ends of shawls and wools that he had wrapped himself in to ward off the cold.
Once again, the Janissaries moved to stop him and once again the Sultan warned them off. I wonder if someone who has spent a lifetime under the threat of assassination from the very day of his birth develops a special sense of whom he can trust. Certainly the Sultan seemed sure from the beginning that he had nothing to fear from this man. He allowed the fellow to disrobe, rag by rag, waiting patiently until, at last, the butcher reached down below his belly button and fetched up an oilskin pouch filled to overflowing with some yellowish, powdery stuff.
Of course, the Janissaries rushed in to grab it, but the Sultan again motioned them away.
“What have you brought me, Orhan?” he inquired politely.
The butcher, equally courteous, replied, “It is a gift I got from my pa, sire. When I came of age, he gave me two things: this sack and his best butcher knife. ‘Strap these to your belly, my boy, and you will never be without protection in the world,’ is what my pa told me.” Then, with a sideways glance at the Janissaries, he added, “Your men took the knife away when they let me through.”
“Don’t worry, you shall have your knife back,” said the Sultan. “Now, what of the sack?”
“I give it to you, sire, with my heart’s wishes that it may be of some use. Not much of it, but my pa swore to me there was enough gunpowder in this sack to blast me out of any jail in the world.”
The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi Page 34