The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire

by Linda Lafferty

  Row upon row of huge bronze cauldrons glittered in the sun. Each pot was flagged by a greasy silk banner with the insignia of a particular orta—bears, scimitars, horsetails—flapping in the morning breeze. The soldiers ate communally from the huge kettles, as Janissaries had done for over three hundred years. It was here that Ottoman Sultans’ victories and deaths were decided, wars planned, and revolutions staged, contemplated democratically over the hot pilaf pots of the Janissaries.

  La ilaha illa ’Llah

  There is no god but GOD

  As the call of the muezzin echoed, Postivich knelt down on the stones and prayed, tucking the long sleeve of his janissary cap behind him. Thousands of men were roused from their blankets and a sea of turbans faced southeast towards Mecca and the rising sun.

  Postivich never thought of Mecca. Instead he thought that by facing the City of God he was able to keep his left ear towards his homeland in the north. It was then he would remember.

  “Hide him, oh God, hide him. In the pantry, behind the apple basket.”

  “He won’t fit, Mother. He’s too big!”

  “Make him fit or you shall have no brother.”

  His sister Irena hid him behind a woven reed basket and then pushed the door closed.

  The reeds stuck into his skin as she shoved him in further, trying to make the wooden latch swing down and hold the door shut.

  He stayed still, quiet and dumb with pain, his scratched limbs contorted and cramped.

  “We have come to see all the Christian boys,” said the Ottoman-accented voice.

  “They say the devshirme is no more, that the Sultan needs not gather the Christians. Why do you come to this house, janissary?”

  “You have a son. One the Sultan must see.”

  “Oh,” his mother laughed, straining to convince them. “If I had a son, I would have better fortune. I have only my daughter here to help me with so much work since my husband died.”

  From the darkness of the cabinet, the boy heard the strange pitch of the Ottoman language being spoken for the first time. Understanding nothing, he marveled at the sounds, wondering whether they could really understand one another.

  “We know of the girl,” said the corbaci. “But first, the son.”

  “I told you. I have no son.”

  “The neighbor across the way has told us that you have a boy, a giant boy of seven, unlike any in the region. We will take this one to the palace at Topkapi. He will become a great janissary some day and serve the Sultan.”

  Ivan Postivich heard his sister give a little cry. His heart beat quickly in the dark and he wondered if he would suffocate in the strong smell of ripe apples.

  “That bewitched old woman would tell the Sultan’s army anything for a loaf of bread,” said his mother. “She has visions, you understand she is a half-wit and—”

  “Search the house,” commanded the officer.

  The cabinet door was flung open and the boy heard his mother scream as he squinted in the sudden light of day.

  Ivan Postivich rose from his prayers, remembering. He rubbed his back as he straightened. He decided to forgo his morning ration at the soup pot and walk to the stables to supervise the feeding of the horses before he returned to his cot to rest.

  The cavalry stables were located just above the River Lycus, at the edge of the city. Ivan Postivich breathed in the good smell of horse, the sweet hay mingled with the salty sweat of fine animals who had carried him into battle. The cool air from the river below carried away the stench of the slaughterhouse and brought with it the freshness of the Sweet Waters beyond.

  A horse meant more than the Koran or the Bible to Ivan Postivich. It was a horse that had given him comfort when no religion could. He entered the stables as one of the faithful—here amidst the sweet smell of dried grass and the earthy musk of horse dung, he felt sanctuary.

  As a seven-year-old child, lonely for his mother, sister, and homeland, he had cried into the rough coat of his first horse, Dervish, a small Anatolian crossbreed. Young Ahmed Kadir—Ivan Postivich no more—had plenty to weep for and the shaggy Turkish pony seemed not to mind his tears.

  Only a week before, a janissary had taken the terrified boy to an immense stadium, the Hippodrome, where he had waited in the bright sun for an eternity. At last, a man in a tall turban approached him with a sharp knife. Bewildered and still not speaking either Ottoman or Turkish, Ivan was made to understand that he was to lie very still. The man removed the boy’s trousers and grasped his penis, stretching it thin like taffy. The man spoke some unintelligible words, with just a few that the boy recognized as a prayer from his recent studies of the Koran.

  The janissary accompanying the boy bent down and spoke to him in Serbo-Croat.

  “As the most important part of your indoctrination to the Holy Faith of Islam, you are to be circumcised on the very day that the young prince Mahmud II celebrates the same glorious rite of manhood. Glory be to Allah, and to our Sultan!”

  And then his world exploded in pain. Despite his tears, the janissary and mullah made the incoherent boy recite the introduction to the Koran, correcting his pronunciation until the sura was intelligible to Allah.

  As part of Ottoman tradition, Sultan Abdulhamid had paid for the circumcision of all the young boys of Constantinople, from the ages of seven to thirteen so that they, too, could join in the citywide celebration of Mahmud’s entry to manhood. The young prince was not present, of course, as he had already had the circumcision performed in the privacy of the Circumcision Hall of Topkapi.

  These were the shaming secrets the boy whispered to the Turkish pony as it poked its nose deep in the hay, looking for the greener bits. The boy’s penis still ached, the pain exacerbated by the resumption of his equestrian training only a few days after the circumcision. Ivan Postivich’s sobs were barely audible above the systematic chewing and snorting of the horses; and this same comforting sound obscured the approach of the Turkish Master of the Horse.

  The boy raised his head from the pony’s neck and saw the dark green robes of the Master of the Horse just beyond the ropes of the paddock. His heart thumped as he imagined the stern master’s anger when he discovered his pupil crying like a Christian girl.

  The Master of the Horse, who had no time for emotional children, wisely decided to walk on.

  A lonely boy seeking comfort in his horse is not a vice, he thought and never said anything to the boy. His wisdom paid off. In the years to come, there was no keener pupil than the young Ahmed Kadir, and no rider who had finer intuition and control of his horse. The boy had lived and breathed horses to quiet his grief and even preferred to sleep in the stables on a bed of straw, instead of in the dormitories with the other cavalrymen.

  Now, as a thirty-six-year-old veteran of many battles, it was the stable that gave comfort to him again, although he knew he was forbidden to ride the cavalry horses by the Sultan’s decree. The Turkish Horse Master was long dead, but the casual kindness he had shown a young boy remained etched in the janissary’s heart.

  “Merhaba, Ahmed Kadir!” cried the stable boys, throwing down their three-pronged pitchforks and clamoring to embrace him. “You have returned to us, old man!”

  “I’m only visiting the horses, to see how they fare,” said Postivich gruffly. He told himself he must be careful not to show how much he missed the stables and what shame the Sultan had brought him by removing his command.

  The Turkish crew was taken aback, not knowing what to say. They wiped their noses on their sleeves and fidgeted, picking their dust-crusted eyes with dirty fingernails. Ivan Postivich could not bear to see the disappointment in their faces, for the common Turks were as sincere in their friendships as innocent children.

  “But how does life greet the dung-chuckers?” Postivich joked, relenting a little, for he had known the Turkish stablemen for more years than he had known his own mother. “Do the horses still provide you a livelihood?”

  “Graciously by Allah’s permission, we have a
life’s work ahead of us for the horses never hesitate in providing us occupation!” answered the head groom, overjoyed that the corbaci of the Kapikulus could still see his way to jest among them. “They oblige us with their fruits that are our labor, one ripe horse apple after another!”

  Ivan Postivich laughed despite himself and greeted the stablemen, embracing them as they slapped him on the back, over and over again. For the first time in many weeks, Ivan Postivich found himself content as if he had feasted on warm baked bread on an empty belly, for there is nothing more beautiful than a Turkish smile looking upon an old friend.

  “Your mare is just here,” offered a groom, proudly. “I have brushed her already this morning. Your polo horses are grazing by the Lycus, growing fat on the early summer grass.”

  “Let me see Peri, my only wife,” said Postivich.

  The dappled mare lifted her head and snorted. She sniffed at Postivich, her soft nose wrinkling as she nibbled on his tunic. Then she lifted her head high and curled her lip up, showing her teeth as if in disgust.

  The stable boys laughed, slapping their dirty thighs.

  “See what an intelligent animal she is, Ahmed Kadir,” said one. “She is a good judge of character! You shall never have a harem, for not even one woman can abide you.”

  “As a janissary, I can never have a wife, you bastard of a whore!”

  The stable boys jostled each other, grinning. With the exchange of insults, all was right again in their world.

  Ivan Postivich ducked under the rope and entered her stall. He threw his great arm around the mare’s massive neck and haltered her nose with the palm of his hand. Drawing her head down, he whispered close to her ear, “We shall ride again, Peri, I swear to you. Don’t fall in love with another rider or I shall have to murder him.”

  “What do you say to your horses, Corbaci?” asked the head stableman. His black eyes shone with admiration for there was no cavalryman he liked more than Corbaci Ahmed Kadir.

  “You must speak to a mare as a woman,” teased the janissary, knowing the Turkish pride as lovers. “And you speak words of love in Serbo-Croat, not a rube’s tongue like Turkish.”

  “Women have always loved me for my tongue,” retorted the head stableman, grinning so wide his mustache spread, a bushy caterpillar inching across his face. All the stable boys laughed and the horses snorted and stamped, startled at the sudden outcry. The dust from the hay spun up in lazy clouds in the fresh light of morning. The Turks smiled and drank in the cool air and thanked Allah for such a day. The day was glorious simply because Ahmed Kadir was in the stables again.

  Later that afternoon, Ivan Postivich stood beside an enormous potted palm in the palace of Esma Sultan, pinching his belly in boredom. There was a thin layer of loose flesh over the once hard muscle. Fat, thought Postivich in disgust, earned by standing guard in the palace. He had never been fat in his life, and now, at thirty-six, he was hardly more useful than the palm tree that leaned over him—a large decorative ornament in the royal palace.

  He missed the brush of the grass under his boots, the Macedonian dust that filled his mouth with acrid grit, the taste of earth on a summer’s day. His legs and groin were often stiff at the end of the day from riding, but his body conformed to the saddle so that the horse was almost an extension of himself. Years of campaigns had made him one with his horse, a centaur wielding a yataghan sword, curving murderously over his enemy. He remembered his tongue during battle, fat with thirst, and the concave of his hollow belly, empty, arching back to his spine.

  But an empty stomach meant a clear mind and a light body, the essence of a cavalryman. His body was made for war; the Master of the Horse and Pasha Efendi had recognized that immediately.

  On campaigns, he ate and drank when he could, much like a camel. The Kapikulu corbaci withstood the pangs of hunger more easily than someone half his size. His muscles were as hard and long as the blade of his sword and when he was not mounted, he made good time with his long stride, leaving huge prints in the dry dust. He lusted for combat, to fight to the death against another man.

  Ivan closed his eyes and breathed the humid air of the palace. It was tame and spoiled, pregnant with the ladies’ perfumes and oils, decadent with the scent of jasmine and lemons. His nose longed for the acrid smell of sweat, the hot stink of battle.

  “What are you dreaming of, giant?” asked a voice from behind the harem lattice.

  “Nothing,” muttered Postivich, studying the filigree of the screen. He, like all men, had always dreamed of the wonders that lay behind the harem walls.

  “Thinking of supper, perhaps,” said the voice again. Postivich could make out the shadow of her hair shifting over her shoulder. Long yellow hair, like those of the women that lived in the north of his homeland.

  “Or perhaps dreaming of your woman,” she teased.

  “I have no woman.”

  “What? A man of your size without a woman?” she paused. “Or you prefer the young boys?”

  “I prefer to perform my duties to the Sultan without insults,” he replied looking away, and straightening his back.

  “Careful, O gentle giant,” warned the voice. “As long as I am within the great Esma Sultan’s harem I shall command your respect. The Princess would be angry if she heard your tone with me.

  “She might impale your head on a stake at Topkapi, to amuse the crowds with your big, round Serbian skull,” she said. “The Turkish boys would steal your lonely head to play with and kick your skull about the streets of Constantinople, playing keep-away from the dogs. But they will complain because your Christian nose is so big, it will stub their toes and they will run home to their mothers, crying.”

  Postivich laughed in spite of himself.

  “I’m sorry that my words were clumsy,” he said. “I ask forgiveness, madam.”

  “Clumsy. It seems you have used that excuse before,” came her reply. “I don’t know how many times our Sultaness will accept that as an excuse.”

  “Who are you?” said Postivich. He moved quickly towards the screen. “How do you know of my conversation with Esma Sultan?”

  “Stay back or I’ll call the Head Eunuch,” hissed the voice. The hair rippled like a golden wave behind her. He could not make out her face in the shadows.

  Postivich plunged his fingers through the perforations of the screen, his great hands tightening around the lattice.

  “Ahmed Kadir, you risk both our lives,” she whispered in the Serbo-Croat of his homeland. “Move back.”

  “I knew you were from the Northernlands,” he said, switching to his native tongue. “I could hear it in your Turkish.”

  “Stay back,” she repeated from the darkness, and then whispered. “I only approach you to warn you. Do not trust those who come as friends and try to gain your confidence. Listen to my mistress and you will know the secrets of the Ottomans, but never forget she is one herself and will never forfeit her divine right. Yet she might protect you when you least expect it.”

  “She is a murderess,” snarled Ivan Postivich. “She sends innocents to their death. She will find a way to murder me as well when it pleases her.”

  “Not all is as simple as Good and Evil,” answered the voice. “In time you will learn how intricate they weave the tapestry of the royal Ottomans. To unravel it, you must know which thread to pull.”

  With that, the harem girl’s slippers rasped across the mats and Postivich could hear her steps disappear down the corridors beyond the elaborately carved screens.

  Mahmud’s own doctor, Stephane Karatheodory, was summoned to the Princess’s chambers, parting the phalanx of hysterical harem girls with an agitated wave of his hand. The women fluttered away like frightened pigeons, but only a few paces, their fine silks still rippling as they lighted once more, hovering over the ailing Esma Sultan.

  “Get them out of here!” commanded the Imperial physician, his Greek disposition piqued by the ignorance of the harem. He addressed the Head Eunuch sternly. “And do not
let more than one attendant and guard in this room at a time.”

  As he approached the Princess’s bed, he was struck with the aroma of jasmine, roses, and lilies. Every inch of the royal chamber was lined with vases of flowers in various states of bloom. Harem attendants wiped the floors with concentrated perfumes that emitted such a heady scent that the Sultan’s physician gagged.

  The doctor, an erudite man who was said to have the command of eighteen languages, shook his head at the ignorance of the Princess’s court. He sneezed into his handkerchief and cursed vehemently in Greek. Flowers, courtiers by the dozen. It was no surprise that the Princess was bedridden and failing by the minute.

  “She refuses nourishment and has not slept in three days,” pronounced Nazip, wringing her freckled hands. “We have tried preparing all of her favorite dishes, even pigeon in spices, but she will not even look upon food.”

  “What did you eat Sultane, three days past?”

  The Sultane raised her chin from her pillow. “Very little. The last I remember eating was a bite of fresh fig from the garden. Oh, by Allah’s name?! What is that hideous stench?”

  The physician raised his eyebrow and looked around.

  “I smell nothing, your Princess, but the lingering closeness of your court. On the contrary, I smell the overpowering fragrance of the flowers. Open the windows at once!”

  “She says she smells death, everywhere, sir,” whispered the slave girl. “We have brought every sweet-smelling flower of the garden to her room to ease her mind. She will not abide the breeze from the Bosphorus.”

  The physician considered her words, blinking like an old turtle.

  “I presume your tester took a bite first to ensure the figs were not poisoned?”

  The Princess turned her head back into her pillow. “I was entertaining. I fed the fruit to my guest first.”

  “And is he well now?”

  The harem girl turned away, her hair sliding across her shoulder.

  “He has since left us. I do not know his whereabouts,” muttered the Sultaness. “Do not mention him again, physician.”