I saw Vlad’s eyes glow for a moment.
“I knew you could not want that. At last they let me go. Sokolly is still too powerful, but I am afraid that his days may be numbered as a result of this discovery. It will be the bowstring, I am sure.”
The bowstring, I should point out, was the accepted method by which members of the Sultan’s family or high officials were quietly disposed of. They would be seized one night by Janissaries and strangled. I was concerned, but was reluctant to make a precipitate move.
“Sokolly and Valide are powerful,” I said. “They may yet prevail over Baffo. We must wait.”
But Inanna was not to be comforted. Her concern, she said, was for the Prince, who was being used as a pawn in the game of power, and like most pawns he was likely to be sacrificed. I saw her turn to look at him, her green eyes full of a kind of slavish devotion, and I felt a pang of jealousy. This fragile, supple creature had no thought for herself: she had taken the risk, made the sacrifice for a boy she barely knew and who looked back at her with a kind of bemused indifference.
But I was not indifferent. That birdlike, half boyish quality had captivated me when I saw her dance, and when she came to us her simple devotion won me over completely. I was enslaved by her capacity for slavery, but when she looked at me it was only with a fleeting tenderness and without a trace of adoration.
We debated the issue, and Razendoringer said that we should at least prepare for flight. At that moment Haroun rushed in: the news was that the Sultana Valide had been confined to her quarters and that even now the bowstring men were in Vizier Sokolly’s house. Baffo had made a bid for absolute power with great decisiveness. She had gone to Murad, shown him the letter concerning Vlad, and implied not only that Vizier Sokolly was planning to put his own puppets in all the Sultan’s vassal states, but that he was conducting an amorous intrigue with the Sultana Valide. It was this last and wholly unwarranted suggestion which aroused the Sultan.
Though normally the most supine and unvindictive of men, he was instantly inflamed by the thought that an alien wolf was prowling in his sheepfold. The sleeping demon of Ottoman cruelty had been aroused and would not rest again till it had tasted blood.
Haroun was trembling as he told us the news because he guessed its consequences. Soon an indiscriminate slaughter of anyone connected with Vizier Sokolly would begin. We must escape now.
Our lodging was a small house — called a kiosk — in one of the many courtyards which composed the Seraglio. It was connected to other buildings only by a short colonnade. There was one door which was guarded day and night by two Janissaries, several more of whom patrolled the courtyard vigilantly. The situation required a desperate remedy.
In the house attending to our needs were two elderly women and a slave girl whom the guards mocked and cruelly treated whenever they could. We decided to make our exit from the Seraglio disguised as them, for women passing in and out of the palace grounds attract little attention whereas men are always closely scrutinized.
The old women raised a great howl of protest when we insisted on taking their clothes, so we stuffed their mouths with rags. I think that we may have not used them well, but we were angered by the fact that their clothes were none too clean, so we trussed them with cords and placed them in an empty closet with little show of mercy. The young slave, a redheaded Circassian, we treated with more leniency, for she was docile, slow-witted and fond of washing. We bound and tied her heavy white body, made her drunk with sweet wine, and left her to sleep it off on one of the beds.
The disguises were effective enough, for women cover their faces in Turkey out of modesty so that only the eyes show, though with the rest of their bodies they are not so modest. I had seen women whose faces were well-nigh invisible lift up their skirts and make water in the open streets of Stamboul. Be that as it may, Haroun and I went as the old women while Vlad was dressed as the young Circassian. Inanna was to go still dressed as a boy.
The only problem was presented by Razendoringer, for dwarfs were sufficiently unusual in the courts of the Sultan. What dwarfs there were were confined to a particular part of the Seraglio, the “Hovkhij”, or Dwarf Museum, where many of them were trained as musicians, but they were very rarely seen beyond this domain.
It was decided that he should be carried in a “kuff” which is a large basket carried on the back by women to convey linen or provisions. Fortunately we had two of these baskets, in one of which we put provisions and in the other the Dwarf.
A small, heavily shuttered window at the back of our kiosk gave out onto a narrow passage which over the years had become almost choked with rubbish. Into this we climbed. The moon was high and close to being full and we could hear that the Seraglio was full of unaccustomed noises that night. I was the last to leave that house and, as I did so, I heard hammering on its outer doors. We were just in time.
Before we had emerged from the passage I had mounted Razendoringer on my back in the kuff. We had decided to separate immediately and make our own way to the quayside where we had first landed.
By the time I emerged from the shadows into the courtyard the others had gone on their way. The place was teeming with Janissaries, so it was clear that upheavals in palace politics were already taking place. Even now perhaps the bowstring was beginning to dig into the soft flesh of Sokolly’s neck. But I for one could shed no tear for him, not after his bombardment of Castle Dracula with human heads.
As there was no way I could move rapidly with a dwarf on my back I made the most of a slow shuffling progress which was unlikely to arouse suspicion. I was almost stifled by the stench emanating from my old woman’s clothes, but this too prevented people from paying close attention to me. I shuffled out of our courtyard, muttering as I went, into a scene of bustle and turmoil. Baffo, as I discovered later, was taking the opportunity to round up every creature against whom she had a grudge and then kill them, ostensibly on Murad’s orders.
These events caused confusion, and so it was that I passed through several gateways and courts without being molested or challenged, but before I reached the great gateway to the palace itself, which is sometimes called the Sublime Porte, I was forced to sit down and rest on the lip of a stone fountain. I slipped off the kuff which had been making progress so slow and put it on the ground. From within, Razendoringer asked my reasons for delay. When he heard of my exhaustion he immediately offered to leave the basket and make his own way, fending for himself. This I would not allow and so I shouldered my burden once more for the journey down to the harbour.
While some of the Sultan’s guard were darting hither and thither in the glare of torches, searching for victims, there were a few who took these disturbances more phlegmatically. One in particular I noticed, a fat sergeant of Janissaries, was leaning against a wall picking his teeth. He noticed me toiling along and twirled his moustache. Then he eased himself from the wall and came towards me.
I resolved to deter him by spitting on the ground and letting fly a few insults which would put him off without outraging his dignity too much.
“Cannot an old woman be left in peace by a maggot-bellied son of a dung beetle? Be off, thou shameful old Khukti Goat!” The Khukti Goat, I should explain, is an animal notorious for its combination of idiocy and malodorous lechery as it has been seen on more than one occasion attempting to conjugate with tree trunks and smooth rocks.
The sergeant merely laughed at my sallies and seemed more eager than ever to engage me in conversation.
“What do you carry in your basket, O moon of Shiraz?”
I replied that it was none of his business. Then, as he came even closer, I thought better of this and told him that it was merely some bed linen that I was taking to be repaired by my sister who was a seamstress. He asked if my sister had large breasts to which I replied that she had, but that she kept them for her husband who was a knife grinder. He laughed and asked whether I was similarly endowed. When he attempted to discover this for himself I shook him off rem
arking that seven children had succeeded in shrivelling a once remarkably fine pair of dugs.
Even this did not deter him. He offered to carry my basket. By this time we were approaching the main gate of the Seraglio and it struck me as politic to have him accompany me through it. So I made a slight play at him by saying that carrying kuffs full of linen was not man’s work, and that I could tell from his splendid physique that he was a mighty man of valour.
This seemed to please him, but as we passed together through the main gate and into the open streets of Stamboul, he began to have doubts and asked me if I truly thought he had a fine physique. For all the danger of the situation I felt some pity for him because he was, in all conscience, a most unattractive specimen of humanity. I replied that I could tell a real man when I saw one, while he in turn paid me the compliment of informing me that I was a true woman, one who did not go in for fancy perfumes such as attar of roses but relied upon my own natural odours to attract.
With this fragrant remark he pressed me up against a doorway and began to search with his hands among my voluminous robes. I pushed him away gently saying that to consummate our passion in a mere doorway would disgrace us both, but I knew a place where we could enjoy each other’s company at our ease. The sergeant seemed delighted by this and asked if it were possible for me to feel for him as he did for me, to which I replied that I would soon give him proof of my true feelings.
Once more he asked if he could carry my basket and I again declined his offer, but he insisted, saying that he could see how weary the burden was making me. Attempting to lift the basket off my shoulders he expressed astonishment at its weight. Surely it could not hold mere linen? I shook him off and began to trot down the street as quickly as I could. But he soon caught up with me. Now he demanded to see inside the basket.
I said that if he really wanted to see a bundle of old linen he was welcome. He insisted and began to open the kuff. Suddenly Razendoringer reared out of the basket and struck my admirer a great blow on the chin.
The sergeant fell over, as much from shock as from the knock, and I also overbalanced and fell into the street with the dwarf on my back. All three of us now lay in a heap in the Stamboul street. Fortunately there were few passers by, for we must have looked a curious sight. The dwarf was the first to recover and told me to follow him and run. The sergeant began to rise but the dwarf knocked him down again. So we began to run through the narrow labyrinthine streets of Stamboul, Razendoringer as fast as his little legs could carry him, I, already exhausted, barely managing to keep up with him.
The dwarf seemed to have some uncanny sense of direction, for he led me through streets which were quite unfamiliar to both of us. He told me subsequently that he found the way quite simply by choosing whichever streets led downwards, keeping the moon on our right. Nonetheless that journey down the hill towards the harbour and the Golden Horn took on a nightmarish quality for me. I was still hampered by my old woman’s stinking robes, and in my state, half dead from fatigue, the journey seemed endless.
At one point I collapsed in a doorway, but Razendoringer pulled me up and dragged me on. When we arrived at the quayside it took some time to find Vlad who had been waiting impatiently with Inanna. They had managed to purchase with the jewellery they had about them a small caique, reputed to be fast, with a good spread of canvas on her. Vlad was now desperate to go, but Inanna insisted that we wait for Haroun, at least until dawn. The rest of us were not convinced of this necessity, but we deferred to her.
There was an uprightness about her which to defy would have seemed a blasphemy. I was glad to doze in the boat and wait. At last the edges of the sky turned grey, a dawn breeze sprang up, and the golden sun began to show over the lip of the ocean. Inanna, who knew something of boats, having spent her youth on a Greek island, began to hoist the sail. It flapped in the breeze. Vlad said that there was to be no more waiting.
At that moment Haroun appeared on the quay. There was something casual about his manner which I found immediately disconcerting. He greeted us effusively and shouted: “Wait for me!”
I knew then, by instinct rather than judgement, that he was playing us false. I shouted: “Cast off! We are betrayed!” Vlad immediately obeyed but not before we saw a platoon of Janissaries clatter onto the quayside. The captain commanded us to halt. Haroun caught hold of a rope still attached to the caique, but Vlad gave it a sharp pull and dragged him into the water. I told Vlad to cut the rope and let him go, but he was determined to avenge himself. He dragged Haroun through the water up to the caique and then thrust him under the waves with a boat hook till the rope was released.
Meanwhile, thanks to Razendoringer’s steering and Inanna’s skill with sails we were sweeping out of the Golden Horn and into the Sea of Marmara.
The boat was an admirably swift vessel and responded well to the touch of the tiller. While we were lucky with the wind there was some hope of escape.
Meanwhile the Janissaries who had arrived with Haroun had commandeered a small ten-oared ceremonial galley and were setting out in pursuit. We were still drawing away from the shore swiftly into the open channel, blessed by a fresh and almost following wind. Meanwhile the Turks were organizing themselves along the rowing benches. The first strokes of their oars were uncoordinated, but soon they were beating the sea in unison. Others on the galley set up a small square sail. The breeze freshened and turned slightly. We gathered speed, but so did the galley. The sea itself chopped and foamed which made it hard sometimes for the rowers, but they were now working well together.
For some time the chase continued without any of us speaking. We had nothing with which to defend ourselves except a boat hook and a pair of oars which Vlad now commanded that he and I use to increase our speed. I do not know whether it did, but the strain of using them helped a little to distract me from anxiety. Inanna trimmed the sails with every turn of the boat while Razendoringer guided it.
Though we were not increasing the distance between us and the galley we knew that eventually exhaustion would play its part. The speed of the rowers would drop and the power of our sails was greater than theirs. Then two things happened to upset this balance.
Firstly the wind dropped so that our speed was almost halved at a stroke, then we saw that one of the Turks was setting up an arquebus in the bows of the boat and he was aiming not at us but at our sails. The galley began to gain on us rapidly. The Turk fired, we ducked and the shot whistled through the sails. This was serious enough, but if he had managed to sever one of the stays with his shot it might have been the end.
The Turkish galley was now speeding towards us. The wind freshened a little, but it veered, forcing Inanna to tack into it, thus losing us time. Vlad and I rowed desperately but, neither of us being an expert oarsman, we spent much of the time scooping spray high into the air. As the galley came still closer Razendoringer told us to stop rowing and prepare to defend ourselves.
We could see the Turkish officer once more priming his arquebus, but spray had dampened his powder. Now a group of Janissaries was massing in the bows of their galley, preparing to board us. This made their boat slightly unbalanced. It dipped and took on a quantity of water and for a time, as they bailed out, they fell behind; then they began to advance on us rapidly again.
Vlad and I took our oars and went to the stern of the caique. The galley was now virtually behind us, a little to the right trying to put us in the lee of their vessel. Armed men were once more gathering in the bow, preparing to board. A wave swung both boats together for a moment and one man jumped for our caique, but just as suddenly another wave pulled the boats apart so that the Turk fell half out of the ship. He clutched hold of the sides of our vessel and tried to scramble aboard but Vlad clubbed his struggling hands with an oar and the man fell away into the sea. Meanwhile the boats were converging once more. Several Turks prepared to spring. With a clumsy movement I swung my oar making the men start back. I touched none of them, but they stumbled. Two fell among the rowers, c
ompletely fowling their stroke. Our boat drew away again.
By now the rowers were beginning to tire as the waves were making it hard for them. We could see they were preparing for a final, supreme effort. The officer fired his arquebus, but the shot went wide. Once again the galley surged up to our stern. Some of their men looked afraid of jumping for our boat, having seen how we dealt with the ones who had done so before, but two great Janissaries leapt, drawn scimitars in their hands. Both landed safely in our vessel. I found myself facing one. He called for me to surrender and I at once recognized my slender advantage. He had had instructions to capture us alive if at all possible. I started to argue with him while our vessel lurched for a moment away from the galley. The man commanded me to lay down my oar. Meanwhile Razendoringer came up behind him and thrust the boat hook up his rectum. This surprised the Turk so much that he stumbled forward, dropping the scimitar, which I picked up and with it struck him a clumsy sideways blow across the head. He fell over the gunwale at which the dwarf promptly picked up the man’s heels and tipped him over the edge into the sea. I turned to see Vlad engaged in a mortal struggle with the other Janissary in the bottom of the boat. Inanna was clutching onto one of the ropes, helpless with terror. The two were rolling over and over. I tried to strike at the man’s leg with the scimitar, but the blow glanced off his boot; then I threw myself on his back, wrenched his head sideways by the hair and drew the scimitar blade across his neck. The blood flew out, spattering Vlad’s face. I fell back with the half dead Janissary on top of me. Vlad hurled himself on the man and shook the last remaining drops of life from him. Was I mistaken, or did I see him take his teeth to the great gash in the Janissary’s neck?
All this while, the galley had been keeping up with us. The captain had been urging others to leap onto our boat, but now the sea was heaving considerably so that all of the Turks were holding back for a more opportune moment. The captain began to curse at them for cowards. A groan went up from their men as we pitched the second Janissary over the side.
The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar's Tale Page 34