“We both grow old, my dear lord.”
“Not that old!” he answered, taking her with a suddenness that surprised her. When she gasped softly, he stopped her mouth with a burning kiss, then murmured against her ear, “Woman of my heart, I love you. I would lose myself in you this night.”
And when he finally slept, content, she lay awake keeping watch over him, feeling strangely protective of this man who was her whole life. Only when the sky began to lighten and turn gray with the coming dawn did she fall asleep.
When she awoke the sun was up, and she could hear the battle trumpets sounding. There was great activity outside her tent. Murad was gone, and the pillow where his head had so lately lain was cold. She scrambled to her feet, calling to her slaves.
“Has the sultan gone? Is the battle begun?”
“No, and no, my lady,” said Iris. “There is time yet.”
Adora dressed quickly and hurried outside. Messengers rushed back and forth between the sections of the army. She noted that the wind was gone. The day was warm and quite clear. Catching the cloak of a young Janissary she said, “Take me to the sultan.” She was immediately led to Murad, who was with his generals.
They had all grown so used to seeing her with him on campaign that her presence was barely noticed. The sultan casually put an arm about her, and continued giving orders. He, with his cavalry guard and his Janissaries, would occupy the center position. Prince Bajazet would command the newly reorganized European troops on the right flank. Prince Yakub, reassigned to command the Asian troops, would be on the left flank.
With the other officers now dismissed, Adora wished both her son and Yakub good fortune and a safe return. Both young men knelt for her blessing. Then she and Murad were alone for a few minutes.
“The wind went with the night,” he said.
“I know. Why did you not wake me before you left the tent? I had hoped to break my fast with you. Some friendly peasants brought a basket of newly ripened peaches for us.”
He smiled. “Peaches! Always your weakness, eh, my dove?” Then he sobered. “I did not awake you, Adora, because I know how these last-minute preparations for battle always worry you. I had hoped to be away before you awoke.”
“And what, Allah forbid, if something had happened to you?” she said reproachfully.
“It is not my fate to die in battle, Adora. I shall always come home to you reeking of blood, sweat, and dirt, and you will scold me as you do our children, overlooking the fact that one cannot stay clean in battle. Am I not right, my dove?” He held her gently against him, and she could feel the sure beat of his heart beneath her hot cheek.
“You make me sound like a foolish maid,” she protested.
“Never foolish, but always my naughty maiden, stealing peaches from the convent orchard.”
She chuckled, somewhat mollified. “What on earth made you think of that?” she asked. But before he could answer, the trumpets sounded and the armorer hurried in with the sultan’s breastplate. With nimble fingers she helped him close the fastenings, then buckled on his great sword. The armorer and his assistant stood waiting with the sultan’s helmet, shield, and heavy mace.
The sultan put his arm about his wife and kissed her deeply. He held her for a moment. “May Allah guard you and bring you safely back to me, my lord,” she said softly. He smiled a quick smile at her, then walked swiftly from the tent.
For a moment she stood quietly. Then she called out, “Ali Yahya! Come! We will go and watch the battle.” The eunuch approached silently from a room within the tent. He draped a light silk cloak about her shoulders. Together they walked through the nearly deserted camp, and ascended a small hill overlooking the plain of Kossovo, the Plain of the Blackbirds.
Below them, in perfect formation and facing each other, were the armies of the Pan-Serbian Alliance and the Ottoman Empire. She saw Murad give the signal to attack, and an advance guard of two thousand archers loosed their arrows. The enemy foot soldiers raised their shield in what appeared to be a single motion. There were few casualties, and they parted to allow their cavalry through. The Serbs charged, shouting wildly, and broke through the Turks’ left flank. Prince Bajazet came to Yakub’s rescue with a massive counterstroke. He fought valiantly, using his great mace with deadly accuracy. Adora, watching from her hill, thought that her son seemed almost invincible. She was not able to see that he bled from several small wounds.
The battle remained in doubt. The hours flew by, and the Ottomans were still on the defensive. Then suddenly a great shout went up from the Serbian side as Vuk Brankovitch and his twelve thousand men withdrew from the battlefield. Badly weakened by this defection, the remaining members of the Pan-Serbian Alliance broke their ranks and fled. With a whoop of triumph the Ottoman soldiers tore after them.
Murad had been correct about the Serbs. They could not remain united, even under dire circumstances. Satisfied that his armies could finish without him, the sultan withdrew from the field. Adora and Ali Yahya hurried down the hill to meet him. As the little group returned to camp, slaves ran to meet their master. They took his armor and weapons from him and seated him to draw off his boots. They brought him a basin of warm, scented water, and he washed his hands and face.
“You see,” he grinned up at Adora, “it is not my fate to die in battle.”
“Praise Allah!” she murmured, sitting on a stool by his feet and laying her head against his knee. He reached down and stroked her hair. A slave placed a bowl of peaches at his elbow, and Murad handed her one before biting into one himself. The sultan’s aid-de-camp entered the tent, prostrated himself, and then said, “We have a deserter of high rank from the enemy side, my padishah. One of Prince Lazar‘s sons-in-law. He asks to see you.”
“My lord,” protested Adora, “the battle has exhausted you. See this princeling tomorrow.”
Murad looked irritated by the interruption. But assuming it was Vuk Brankovitch, he sighed and said, “I will see him now and get it over with. Then we will spend a few quiet hours together before my generals come to give me their reports.”
Adora got up, and moved back into the shadows of the tent. The aide-de-camp left and returned quickly with a richly dressed young man who knelt in submission before the seated Murad. The man was not Brankovitch.
“Your name?” demanded the sultan.
“Milosh Obravitch, infidel dog!” cried the young man, jumping forward, his hand raised.
Adora screamed and leapt from the shadows, flinging herself in the direction of Murad. The aide-de-camp and the guards were as quick. It was too late. Milosh Obravitch twice plunged his dagger into the sultan’s chest, so hard that both times it went through his back. The Janissaries, streaming into the tent, grabbed the assassin. Spread-eagling him, they lopped off his head. Blood from the man’s severed neck gushed onto the rugs.
Heedless, Adora cradled her husband in her arms.
“Murad! Oh, my love!” she sobbed.
He struggled to speak, his face white, the light in his eyes fading rapidly. “Forgive…the cruelties. I love you…Adora…”
“I know, my love! I know! Do not speak. The physician is coming.” Oh, God! She felt so cold! Why was she so cold?
A sad smile flickered on his face, and he shook his head. “Kiss me farewell, dove.”
She bent her wet face and touched his cooling lips with hers.
“Peaches,” he said weakly. “You smell of peaches,” and then he fell back in her arms, his black eyes open and sightless.
For a moment she thought her heart would stop and that she might be granted the mercy of following him. Then she heard her own voice saying, “The sultan is dead. Notify Prince—notify Sultan Bajazet. No one else! No one must know yet!”
The Janissary captain stepped forward. “Prince Yakub?”
“See to it immediately after the battle,” she ordered. “Prince Yakub is not to return. Do not wait for word from my son. I will not have this decision on him. It is my responsibility.”
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“To hear is to obey, Highness.”
“Ali Yahya!”
“Madame?”
“No one enters this tent until my son comes. Tell them the sultan rests with his wife after a hard battle and cannot be disturbed.”
“It will be as my lady says.”
Then she was alone, still cradling Murad’s body. Gently she drew his eyelids closed. He looked so relaxed, asleep. Slowly her tears fell on him. She made no sound. In the heat of the tent she could smell the nearby bowl of peaches, and she recalled his last words to her. “Peaches! You smell of peaches.” They had begun together with peaches stolen from St. Catherine’s orchard. Now it was ended in a tent smelling of peaches on a battlefield called Kossovo.
Throughout the rest of the day Theadora of Byzantium sat on the floor of the sultan’s tent holding her husband’s dead body. And while she sat, her numbed mind remembered their years together. It had not always been as easy between them as it had been in these last years. He had not always understood the passionate, intelligent woman whom he had moved heaven and earth to possess; and she had rarely been able to hide the woman she really was. But there had always, from their first moment, been love between them. Always, even during their fierce battles.
I have been blessed, she thought, in having such love. Then she thought again, But what will I do now? Bajazet respects me, but I do not think he knows how to love, even me. Zubedya certainly does not care for me, nor do her four sons, my grandsons. Once again I am alone. Murad! Murad! Why have you left me? She wailed her grief silently, and she rocked back and forth with her precious burden.
It was thus that Bajazet found her, her eyes swollen almost shut from weeping. He silently surveyed her. Her robe was covered with dried and blackened blood, her face puffy and streaked with tears. A wave of pity swept over him. He had never seen her other than elegant and beautiful. Bajazet had not yet found love, and did not understand the emotion, but he knew how his parents had loved one another. She was going to be lost.
“Mother.”
She looked up at him. “My lord sultan?”
He was amazed at her calm, her correct behavior in the face of her tragedy. “It is time to let him go, Mother.” Bajazet held out his hand to her.
“He wanted to be buried in Bursa,” she said quietly.
“So be it,” answered Bajazet.
Slowly she released her hold on Murad’s body, and allowed her son to help her up. He led her from the tent. “Yakub?” she asked him.
“My half brother died in the battle, they tell me. He will be buried with honor, along with our father. He was a fine soldier and a good man.”
“It is good,” she said to him. “There can be only one sultan.”
“I have already avenged my father, mother. We have slain almost all of the Serbian nobility. I have allowed only one of Prince Lazar’s sons to live. The Serbs are no longer a threat to us, and it will be better if one of their own governs them. I will need their troops to defend the Danube Valley against the Hungarians.”
“Which of Prince Lazar’s sons is it, and what terms have you made with him?”
“Stephen Bulcovitz. He is but sixteen. He will pay us as an annual tribute sixty-five percent of the yearly revenues from the Serbian silver mines. He must command a contingent in my army, and send me Serbian troops whenever and wherever I need them.”
She nodded. “You have done well, my son.”
“There is more,” he said. “Stephen Bulcovitz has a sister. Her name is Despina, and I will take her to wife.”
“Prince Lazar’s daughter? Thamar’s cousin? Are you mad? You would marry the offspring of the man responsible for your father’s death?”
“I need the alliance, Mother! Zubedya binds me with Asia, but I need a European wife as well. The Serbs will trouble us no longer, and Despina will serve my purpose. Father would have approved.”
“Do not speak to me of your father! He is not cold yet, and you would wed with his murderer’s daughter!” He tried to comfort her, but she pulled away from him. “Dear God! I am surely cursed! Your father loved me, but you do not love me, and neither does your wife, or your children. Now you will wed with Thamar’s cousin, and once again I will be alone.”
“Meet with the girl, my mother. I do not have to wed with her if she displeases you. You are a fine judge of character, and I trust your opinion. If you feel that this Despina is not suitable then I will look elsewhere for a European bride. After today there will be plenty of noble Christian widows seeking to placate me with their nubile daughters.”
Prince Lazar had been married twice, and it was his second wife, a Macedonian noblewoman, who had produced his youngest son, Stephen, and his youngest daughter, Despina, who was fourteen. The girl was spirited, but she was not proud, and she had an open and sweet nature. Her features were fine. Her skin was fair, and her long hair dark auburn. She had a small waist, nicely rounded hips, and came just to Bajazet’s shoulder. Though Theadora had expected to dislike the girl, she could not.
Despina was shy with Theadora for awhile, but as her confidence grew, her concern for the older woman’s loss became paramount. “You have had your own loss,” said the sultan’s mother.
A shadow passed over the girl’s face, and then she said quietly, “I loved my father, madame. He was always good to me, and there will never be another like him in my life. However, God has blessed me in my grief by sending me your son to love. Though I am but his second wife, I shall endeavor to make him happy.”
Deeply moved, Theadora put her arms about the girl. “I think, my child, that it is my son who is blessed.”
To Adora’s delight, there was true love between the two young people. The wedding was celebrated quickly and quietly as they were all in mourning. Bajazet was content to stay with his beloved bride much of the time. And within less than a year, Despina had given him a son. He was called Mohammed.
Bajazet then went back to war. Adora approved her son’s return to the battlefield, for Murad had left his plans for conquest written down in several parchment scrolls. These were now in Bajazet’s possession. The new sultan had only to follow his father’s plans and success would be his.
Despina, with a wisdom and generosity far beyond her years, understood how desperately Theadora needed someone to love. Recognizing, too, her mother-in-law’s superior knowledge in all things involving the raising of rulers-to-be, the girl stepped aside, leaving the care of her son to Theadora.
Despina concentrated all her energies on Bajazet; Theadora gave all of herself to Mohammed.
Seeing the baby’s alert black eyes and broad brow, Theadora envisioned Murad. She saw her own renewed purpose in living. It would never be as it had been with Murad, but this life would afford her much. Theadora prayed that the boy would be the Ottoman to finally take Constantinople, and she recalled the prophecy, “And Mohammed shall take Constantinople.”
Theadora of Byzantium was delighted. She had plans again, visions of the future. She would not be just another widow, honored but entirely forgotten. She was still in the center of history.
EPILOGUE
Bursa
December 1427
Epilogue
The orchards of St. Catherine’s convent lay quiet in the cool December sun. The bare branches of the trees rustled softly in a faint breeze. Though the original convent and its orchards had been destroyed when Tamerlane the Tartar took the city some twenty-five years before, they had been rebuilt by Princess Theadora, matriarch of the Ottoman family. In the center of the new orchard there had been built a small marble tomb. This would hold the old woman when she finally released her firm grip on life.
She was now ninety years old. She had outlived Orkhan, Alexander, and Murad. She had outlived her children, all of them, and even her grandson, Mohammed. She had made peace with herself and with her memories, except for the memory of her son Bajazet. For Bajazet had, in his growing arrogance, destroyed the empire Murad had so carefully assembled. Bajazet had
been responsible for many deaths, including the death of the gentle Despina and even his own at the hands of the great Tartar warlord, Tamerlane, who had conquered the young sultan and his armies.
Theadora remembered all too well the day Tamerlane and his army had entered Bursa. They pillaged, looted, raped, and burned their way through the city. They had stabled their horses in the mosques! Tamerlane had not cared for public opinion. He would show them who their new master was.
He had divided the empire as he saw fit, and had surprised Theadora by applying to her family the same logical measures Murad had once used to control the Paleaologis. The khan had laughed at her anger, saying, “Let Bajazet’s cubs fight one another for their empire. It will keep them out of real mischief, and I can return to Samarkand knowing there is no knife at my back.”
Theadora could not allow him a victory over her. “You have set the empire back fifty years,” she said, “but we will triumph in the end. In ages to come our empire will endure and thrive. But Tamerlane, if he is remembered at all, will be recalled only as one of many troublesome Mongol raiders.”
The barb found its mark.
“Woman, you have the tongue of an adder,” he said. “It is no wonder you have outlived most of your family. It is your own poison that keeps you alive.” Then, grudgingly, he admitted, “You are not like any female I have ever known. You are too strong to be a mere woman. Who are you, really?”
Theadora walked to the door of the room. Turning slowly, she said, “You have never known my like before, nor will you again.” Her glance was a proud and mocking one.
“I am Theadora Cantacuzene, a princess of Byzantium. Farewell, Tartar.”
And then she was gone.
The old woman sighed. There had been so many years of strife, of civil war. She had heartened when her grandson, Mohammed, took over and restored the government to a firm and stable one. Then he had died suddenly, and his son Murad II had been forced to meet his younger brother in battle and kill him before he could begin to organize his lands. Like his namesake, the young Murad II had brought his empire together. Peace now reigned in that empire. The fact was that, once again, the Ottomans were ready to move toward Constantinople.
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