The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer

by Lucille Turner

  ‘Indeed, Highness. But you are forgetting the Fates.’

  ‘What about the Fates?’

  ‘The Fates could not be commanded by the gods; even Zeus could not make them bend to his will.’

  Murad nodded. He thought of Odysseus, Telemachus and Kalypso, and remembered he had not ordered coffee.

  A servant brought two steaming glasses. He picked one up delicately. The dervish swallowed his own as though his mouth could summon fire.

  ‘And if the Fates were thwarted?’

  ‘The Fates could not be thwarted, according to the Greeks,’ continued the dervish. ‘Although Aristotle, as Your Highness knows, saw it a little differently.’

  He sipped his coffee. ‘How so?’

  The dervish inhaled deeply from his pipe. The water bubbled beneath the charcoal. ‘Aristotle said that destiny began from a point of departure, and would always be linked to it.’

  Murad shook his head.

  ‘Allow me to simplify. Aristotle believed that one thing led, in a manner of speaking, to another. However, the truth is much more complicated, a fact, I might add, that our forebears the Babylonians knew well.’ The dervish raised his finger. ‘And the men of Babylon were wiser than the Greeks.’

  Wiser but not richer, thought Murad. He ordered a pair of silver coins. They came on a tray. The dervish refused them. With a nod of his head, he ordered the servant to place the coins beside the pipe. The dervish inhaled.

  ‘Please continue,’ he said.

  ‘Your Highness is curious about the Fates, which for our purposes we shall call destiny. Now, it is the firmament, the planets and their courses, which govern the Fates. Zeus himself understood this. He tried to predict what would come to pass, but he could not know for certain. And so, the source of the prediction became a nest of trouble, as Aristotle himself later found.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ said Murad, uncomfortable.

  ‘The cause of a happening, which is the source of any prediction, can be as much of a mystery as the effect of it.’ He prodded his charcoal obstinately. ‘Besides, if I were to give a prediction that did not suit you, Your Highness would be…disappointed.’

  ‘Come now,’ said Murad, impatient, ‘I have not asked you here so that I can listen to a pack of lies.’

  ‘Very well.’ He put aside his pipe. ‘Then we will start with generalities. With Neptune in the twelfth house at the time of your birth, disappointment and deception, these are trials you must face. You cannot avoid them.’

  Murad stared at the ground. ‘You have charted my birth?’ He frowned and looked up.

  ‘That is my business. I charted it the moment your Imperial Chamberlain requested my attendance.’

  ‘And what did you see?’

  ‘What did I see? The moon in the maiden, love of beauty, balance and judgement, Mars in the Ram.’ The dervish paused. ‘The city of Constantinople.’

  ‘Yes.’ He thought of Mehmet, and looked again at his feet.

  ‘Many wishes, one unconquered city,’ murmured the dervish. ‘Why do you want it?’

  Murad frowned. Why would anyone want it? ‘For the glory of God. For jihad.’

  Not to mention the levies of the ships through the straits, he thought.

  ‘That is a good answer, but is it the right one?’

  ‘The right one?’ repeated Murad, suddenly irritated. ‘The Greeks have grown weak. Their time is over; it is time to take back what is ours by right. It is God’s justice.’

  The dervish smiled. ‘But perhaps God is not always as just as he could be, or he would not take away what is ours by right in the first place.’ He ran his finger over the skin of the pear. Murad understood and picked out a piece of fruit. Then the dervish glanced at the silver coins on the platter. Murad asked the servant for two more silver pieces. The dervish refused the coins. He insisted. The dervish refused again, and again he insisted. The dervish picked the pieces up and dropped them in his pouch.

  ‘Now,’ said Murad, ‘this chart?’

  The dervish placed his hand against his chest. ‘What Aristotle meant was that the mystery of a cause and its effect is such that the outcome of one person’s chart cannot be seen in isolation but is irrevocably entangled with the charts of other people, giving rise to what he named a chain of events. And this had been Zeus’ problem all along. The gods of the Greeks could not control the Fates but were forced to submit to them.’

  Murad nodded. ‘This chain of events that you mention, can it be managed?’

  ‘The Babylonians thought so,’ said the dervish evasively, ‘but Babylon was bound to fall, and so it did. It was only restored much later. Almost one thousand years before the coming of our prophet Mohammed, Alexander the Greek restored it to its former stature as a place of scholarly learning.’

  ‘Almost a thousand years before; are you certain?’ said Murad, irritated.

  The dervish inclined his head.

  Murad muttered. ‘Samarkand, Babylon and Baghdad. The House of Wisdom, the Almagest. These are our works, and what has come of them now? Constantinople. And now the Greeks take the merit for them.’

  The dervish looked at him audaciously. ‘Then you have your answer, Highness. To beat the Greeks you must acquire their wisdom.’

  ‘Their wisdom?’ he growled.

  ‘Their library, perhaps,’ the dervish added.

  He sat back, folded his arms, and considered. Had he not always known that the value of the city lay in its library? A picture came into his mind: he and Mehmet side by side on the steps of Constantinople’s temple of knowledge. It was a good picture, a great one. Great enough to drown the evils of the past few weeks. The dervish was right. With the books and codices of the library in his possession, he could restore the works of the Arabs to their rightful owners.

  ‘Although I think you will find,’ said the dervish, ‘that you will have to do more than simply acquire the scrolls of the library. If you wish to do better than the Greeks, you will also need to use them.’

  ‘Use them? They will be read of course, I do not doubt it.’

  The dervish went back to prodding charcoal. ‘Forgive me, Highness, but I cannot help but think that merely reading them will not be enough. Studies would have to be set up, scholars brought in.’

  ‘Yes, scholars, naturally,’ he said and thought of Mehmet. The picture did not fit. It positively jarred. ‘What about the conquest of the city,’ he said, ‘will it come about?’

  The dervish looked up. ‘The conquest of the city is linked with the future of the scrolls. Aristotle, Highness; the chain of events.’

  ‘Then tell me the future of the scrolls,’ said Murad, transfixed.

  The dervish dipped his fingers in rosewater. ‘I will name the scroll that comes into my mind at this present moment: the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi at the time of the old library of Alexandria. Now to be found in the new library of Constantinople – I say new, only by comparison to what is gone, Highness.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Continue.’

  ‘The figures of this scroll will make their own predictions; the owner of these predictions, if he uses them well, could do great things.’

  ‘And what will the name of this person be?’ said Murad. ‘What is the future of that scroll?’ The hairs rose on the back of his neck.

  The dervish shook his head. ‘I cannot say.’ He held up his hand. ‘Not even for silver pieces.’

  ‘Why not?’ He frowned. ‘If I ask you…’

  ‘I beg you, Highness, to let me finish.’

  Murad wrapped his hands together.

  ‘Another scroll appears. The Book of Revelation of John the Greek, the scholar of the cave. The Greeks also have it.’

  ‘But that is not al-Khwarizmi; that is not our work,’ began Murad. ‘I am not interested in the words of a Greek Orthodox in a cave.’


  ‘Ah, but that would be a mistake, Highness. Remember the fable of the rooster and the eagle. Is not a rival often defeated by the words from his own mouth?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Murad, irritated that the dervish had thought of it instead of him. ‘And what will the owner of such a scroll achieve?’

  The dervish paused. Murad looked at him in frustration. He glanced at the platter.

  ‘No, it is not for want of silver.’

  ‘But you cannot give me half a prediction. What about the rest?’

  The dervish smiled in sympathy. ‘One thing I can say, Highness: a true conqueror should conquer the library before he takes the city. But whether that man will be a conqueror in the real sense of the word depends on, not only his chart, but also on the charts of those that cross his path in life, and everything they do. And so we return to the Babylonians before the time of Alexander.’

  Murad looked at him in frustration. He could hardly conquer the library before the city, unless the dervish meant that he should simply walk through the city gates and ask the Greeks to give him what was theirs? He mused on the idea for a moment, although he knew it was absurd. The Greeks had become their enemy, and they had become the enemy of the Greeks. This enmity could not be reversed; it had gone on for too long. He would say that it began with Alexander, while the Greeks would say that Alexander of Macedonia did not conquer, he enlightened. Then he would say, enlightened what, a village with a torch? And there would be no end to it.

  The dervish asked to take his leave. Murad did not like to say no. He grabbed the arm of his Imperial Chamberlain. ‘I want the soothsayer at court. Give him whatever he wants. A chamber, servants, coins.’

  Chapter 32

  The dervish skirted the walls of the palace, his purse heavy enough, although not as heavy as it might have been. But that was how it was with princes of any kind, sultans not least. If the predictions were not to the listener’s taste, the soothsayer was either not paid at all or paid badly. He should think himself fortunate that the Sultan had not sent him off to see his head gardener, the man of sabre and scythe. Even if he had known every answer to the Sultan’s questions, he never gave the secrets of the charts to those who were not ready to hear them, and within the palace wall a severe case of indigestion was in progress. A father must choose a name for his son. Would it be conqueror or something less desirable? And if a conqueror, what kind of conqueror?

  Hearing footsteps at his back, he stopped and turned. There was the Imperial Chamberlain calling him back. It did not surprise him. The powerful altered the path of the wise and were in their turn altered.

  Once Athazaz, soothsayer of Bursa, had assured the Imperial Chamberlain that he would return by sundown, he made his way back to the bazaar, collected his bags, drank tea at a merchant’s stall, ate a bowl of rice and considered what lay ahead. After their discussion in the pavilion, the Sultan wanted him back. His presence at the Imperial Court had been requested, demanded even, from the look of urgency on the Imperial Chamberlain’s face. He could hardly refuse; the Sultan demanded, but he also needed, and that need, which the soothsayer sensed and the Sultan liked to hide, was quite a lure. The silver coins, however, were not. The Sultan thought they were, but it was only natural for a man of great wealth to imagine that everyone was drawn to the same object. In any event, Athazaz had long ago renounced earthly pleasures, which were transitory and brief. He lived from hand to mouth, and liked it that way. He likewise preferred the unknown to the known, the state of trance to the state of affairs, and the firmament to the earth.

  He had become a murid, and had passed the period of the thousand-and-one-day solitude to emerge as a dervish. He had travelled from caravanserai to caravanserai, where merchants rested legs and horses, and he could snatch a tale or question a wanderer. He had read palms in exchange for food when he was hungry, or when the hand was especially revealing. He had divined the future from the entrails of the fish, as much from curiosity about the fish as anything else, and had developed a fascination for reading coffee because he liked coffee. But he had never doubted where the true key to prophecy lay. The mysteries of life and death were above and below. One copy was written in the skies, while the other was locked in the head. This he discovered in the spring of the year eight hundred and seventeen of the Sufi calendar, and through the unfortunate fate of the merchant of Bursa.

  One day in the bazaar, a merchant in passing offered him a pipe. A conversation was struck. The merchant was deliberating over the purchase of this piece of land or that one, and asked him his opinion. Athazaz gave it. The opinion met with the merchant’s approval. The merchant drew him aside discreetly and asked another question. He was having difficulty, he said, with his morning ablutions. Things were not going as they should, and not in the direction that they should, which ought to be an upward one. In a word, he was out of humour, and did not know what to do about it.

  ‘Consult a physician,’ said Athazaz.

  ‘On this?’ replied the merchant in horror. ‘I would never hear the end of it. ‘Besides which,’ he added nervously, ‘they have leeches.’

  Driven to pity by the merchant’s state, Athazaz agreed to examine his chart. He looked into the eighth house, noted the position of the ascendant, and rubbed his temples. The merchant would die suddenly, and he would die soon. Leeches did not come into it. Believing his duty to lie in revelation, and since the merchant had paid him in advance, he informed him.

  ‘What should I do?’ the merchant asked, terrified.

  ‘Look after yourself,’ he suggested.

  The merchant did. He smoked less opium, drank sugared water twice daily and chewed garlic. His habit every morning was to sit with his friends in the bazaar and talk. But since every time they saw him they scrutinised him closely for signs of sickness, he stopped more often indoors. He became melancholic and lost his appetite. By harvest time he had become thin. His face, once round and content, was now bony and drawn, which gave him a sinister look his wife no longer liked. With all hopes of pleasure lost, the merchant fell ill.

  Athazaz heard of these developments with nervous gratification. While his prophecy seemed to be proving correct, he could not help but wonder whether it had only come true because he had made the prophecy in the first place. Had he said nothing at all to the merchant, would the merchant still be sitting in the bazaar, laughing over a glass of coffee? He deliberated over the matter for several days. Finally, he made a decision. He would turn the prophecy on its head. If it was as he suspected, and the merchant was falling sick because of the prophecy he had revealed, then it followed that a new prophecy, albeit not the one written in the charts, would have the opposite effect.

  He paid a call on the merchant and brought good news. There was something in the chart that he had overlooked. The sickness was only mild; he would recover before the feast of Mitra. The merchant thanked him generously and Athazaz left with a full pouch of coins, his heart lighter but his mind troubled.

  Time passed. The merchant filled out. It showed at first on his face. He threw out the sugared water and brought in the flask of wine he had been saving for brighter days. He filled up his pipe and smoked like a fire. He returned to the bazaar, where his friends greeted him like a man who had risen from the dead. The next morning he woke with a shaft of wood between his thighs. The feast of Mitra came and went and all was well. Then one day at the end of winter, the merchant went to take his seat at the bazaar as usual and found that there were two seats instead of one. He made a choice, and sat on the one he saw, falling on the floor in a heap. Later that day, when he passed water he felt that he was pissing honey, and went to bed frowning. He fell into a deep sleep from which he did not awake.

  The discovery of the death of the merchant struck a solid blow from which Athazaz did not easily recover. But that, he decided, was as it should be. Fate had taught him a lesson and he would never forget it. Once a prophecy had been made,
it could not be taken back but must be handled carefully, and he felt as God had intended him to feel, small.

  Nevertheless, the incident gained him a name. He became the dervish who had predicted the death of the merchant of Bursa. But the coins that the merchant had given him burned a hole in his pouch. He found a beggar at the gate of the bazaar and gave him the merchant’s money, fearful of the power of dishonest earnings. Then he remembered that he hadn’t eaten for two days, and took half back. It was only when he opened his eyes in the morning, at that time when the mind is fresh, that he managed to make sense of it. It was the wine, the sugared water and the worry that had caused the merchant’s death. The first prophecy had been right; the merchant was bound to die early. A prophecy did not attach itself to an event but to a person.

  Now he was summoned to court. Pack up your rags by sundown, said the Imperial Chamberlain. Will I beat the Greeks? asked the Sultan.

  The matter of beating the Greeks had for many years now filled the long hours of night in the caravanserais of Anatolia with frenzied discourse. There were those who believed that Constantinople, with its riches and its levies, was theirs by right, and others who thought the Golden City of Constantinople better left alone. Arguments had flared over its fate; wagers were made. Travellers prolonged their stay to continue debating the subject the following evening, in the hope of changing the mind of a wayfarer. As for himself, he did not dislike the Greeks any more than he approved of the Sultan. Constantinople, in his view, belonged not to the one who took it but to the one who deserved it. Was that man Murad the Second of Anatolia? He did not know. Not yet.

  What he suspected, however, was that the Sultan was not an easy man. Murad thought that for every question there was a prophecy; he did not understand that for every prophecy there was a person, and sometimes more than one. The matter of Constantinople was thorny, like a rose one did not like to pick. Murad the Osmani had not taken the city of the Greeks. Now, to avoid the unpleasantness of failure, he wanted his son to take it for him. The success of the son would mean the success of the father. The failure of the son would mean, therefore, the failure twice over of the father. To make matters worse, Mars was in the fourth house; the Sultan would suffer by his own hand. The matter would be complicated. He pictured a cup that was full but undrinkable; or worse still, a cup that was poisoned and half drunk.