The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire

by Linda Lafferty

  She smiled gently, an expression Postivich thought he had never before seen on her face. “Mahmud has never forgotten you, despite the many concubines and wives he has taken.”

  “But once he sees my face,” Irena protested. “No one will ever love this face!”

  “I love it,” Esma Sultan said, stroking her friend’s cheek. Irena watched the intricate patterns of the red henna on the Princess’s hand drift past. “It is the face of rebellion and determination. It does not show age, terror, or ennui. It is frozen in time, in a moment when you took a stand against a man who abused you. It is a mark of rebellion against man’s dominion, even an Ottoman Sultan. What face could be more beautiful, Kucuk?”

  The next night, the janissary was not called to the royal chambers. He sat idly in the courtyard, eating pistachios until long after midnight. A yawning servant boy swept up the shells that fell on the marbled ground.

  Out of the darkness, Emerald approached and, with his chin lifted unnaturally high, dismissed him.

  “Return to your barracks, Ahmed Kadir,” he said, his voice officious and distant. “The Princess rests peacefully on the second night of the new moon. There is no need for your presence now.”

  Ivan Postivich felt a strange wave of disappointment wash over him. As he made his way out of the courtyard, he turned and saw the eunuch’s tight smile sour in the torchlight, his hands crossed over his chest in satisfaction.

  How could she banish him now from her harem, when he had learned that his own beloved sister was among the women behind the grille?

  After so many long nights awake, the janissary realized he would not fall asleep until sunrise. He chose instead to leave the palace grounds and walk along the Bosphorus.

  He gazed out upon the water, black in the new moon’s light. In these dark waters, he had drowned more than two dozen men, their watery graves unmarked in the immense cemetery of the enemies of the Sultans.

  Lost in his thoughts, Ivan Postivich ignored the first muffled scream, thinking his mind was playing tricks on him. Then the agonized wail of a child broke through his reveries and he shouted across the water, “Who goes there? By the Sultan’s Royal Janissary’s order, announce your business!”

  A woman screamed back to him, her voice pleading and hysterical.

  “My child, my child! You murderers, don’t touch him!”

  Postivich heard a sound he knew far too well. One that haunted his dreams: the splash of a heavy sack and the sudden stillness of the frantic voices.

  He struggled to steady his breath and strained his eyes in the dim moonlight to find the murder. A single lantern flickered in the distance.

  “Fellow Janissary!” called a voice. A launch rapidly approached. Postivich caught the mooring line.

  “It is you, the giant,” said a soldier, standing at the prow, his tall sleeved cap fluttering in the night wind. “Oarsman, rest. I must speak to this man.”

  The oarsman nodded. He kneaded his hands, content with a moment’s rest.

  “You are Esma Sultan’s Solak,” said the janissary, climbing out of the boat. He had bright red hair and spoke in Serbo-Croat with an inflection of the northeastern provinces.

  “I am no Solak,” protested Ivan Postivich, spitting in the dust. “I was assigned duty to the Sultaness, but I do not belong to that orta.”

  “I did not mean to insult you, brother,” said the young soldier. “I only meant—” He looked over at the Turkish oarsman, staring into the night. “To warn you. Go into the barracks and cover your ears, for what you will hear will haunt your mind.”

  “Say more.”

  “They say that you have suffered murderous nights under the orders of Esma Sultan. Tonight will be worse by hundreds. I am only the first to commit my sin.”

  “I heard. A harem woman?”

  “And her child, a little prince, son of Mahmud’s brother Mustafa. They are only the first. Two hundred will be drowned this night.”

  Ivan Postivich suddenly spied dozens of lanterns rounding the bend of the Golden Horn and heading for the center of the Bosphorus.

  “The Sultan has ordered that all of Mustafa’s women shall die by his decree and by our hand—”

  As he spoke, the red-haired janissary’s voice rose an octave, to the range of a young boy. He choked back tears, his face frightened at the prospect of appearing womanish in front of the legendary Ahmed Kadir.

  “I saw your great size and recognized you. The taverns still hum with your conquests and your men sing your praises. You have become a legend.”

  “If I am a legend, I am dead. Peace be with you, my brother. I need no praise. Let us live to serve Allah.”

  The young janissary fidgeted with his sash. “I came not to give you false praise, Ahmed Kadir. Moments ago, I stood on that launch, considering throwing myself after the two souls I dispatched. Then I heard you call and recognized your unmistakable stature and judged it as a sign from God.

  “Give me words that will soothe my soul for I am tormented by this woman’s screams and the tears of the little prince. If I had refused the order, I would have died along with the woman and child. But now I live and I cannot suffer this memory, the Holy Mary forgive me and my filthy soul.”

  Ivan Postivich could make out the young man’s pleading eyes in the darkness. He wore his cap clumsily, his red hair emerging in tufts pulled by the sea breeze. His face was nearly hairless and his lip quivered as he spoke. He rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his tunic.

  Now Postivich could hear the distant splashes and the cries of the women from the Bosphorus. Their shrieks of terror tore at his soul. He, like Esma Sultan, was haunted by the deaths in these dark waters.

  These women—like the men he had drowned—were innocent.

  The drowning guard felt something shift within him.

  “I cannot offer you words of comfort, brother,” he said. “But having seen the denigration of the Janissary Corps, and above all, the drowning of hundreds of innocent women and children, I am ready to strike the head from the serpent. The only words we can speak now are those of revenge, which will wash this stain from our hands and soul. Revenge and justice are words revered in the Holy Koran. We will make those who command this evil choke on these words.”

  For the next few hours of darkness and even into the sunrise, the Bosphorus was filled with the screams of women. As Ivan Postivich returned to the palace of Esma Sultan, he saw the torches lit and heard the mad keening of the women of the Serail.

  The Royal Kayik was moored to the dock and servants hurried, preparing for the Sultaness’s boarding.

  “Where does the Princess go at such an hour?” said Postivich to a servant he recognized from the palace.

  “She is said to be visiting her brother, our Sultan. She has heard the rumors of the drownings and is hurrying to plead for a stop.”

  Just then, the Sultaness ran down the stairs of the palace, her cloak flying, and a flock of handmaidens running to keep up with her.

  “To the Topkapi!” she commanded, and a dozen oars struck the water.

  By early morning, every woman of Mustafa’s harem was dead. Sultan Mahmud delayed audience with his sister until he was sure that the Janissaries had carried out their orders and then finally admitted her to his throne room. He rarely addressed her in these formal chambers, but had insisted that she be received here, rather than the more intimate rooms of Topkapi.

  “My sister! What brings you so early to a sleeping household?”

  Esma Sultan clenched her fists and beat at her knees, the ancient Turkish gesture of grief. “A broken heart, my brother! The Bosphorus moans from so much carnage at your hand!”

  Mahmud looked down upon her from his throne.

  “My dear sister, Esma, light of my soul. Remember you are an Ottoman before you shame us both. How could I let these women live when a child of Mustafa might be among them? Any one of them could appear with a boy and claim it was Mustafa’s issue. The Janissaries are mutinous and yearn for another O
ttoman Sultan, one whom they can control like a leashed dog. Mustafa’s women could claim the throne using the issue of their womb!”

  “You murdered all of them! You murdered even the barren women, the girls. Even Ayse, the Valide with whom you grew up. Don’t you remember the games she taught us in the courtyards, the almond pastries she made for us as children?”

  “She was the most dangerous of all. She would love to see my blood stain the courtyard and her own son rule the Empire. Did she not try to have me murdered?”

  Esma Sultan stared at her brother incredulously.

  “You indulged your righteous revenge with the murder of her son Mustafa, our brother. She is an old crone whose womb dried up years before—no fruit could spring from her.”

  “It was her long due kismet. She should have died along with our brother.”

  “What right do you have to murder these women? Did you learn nothing from our father and our childhood?”

  “I am the Sultan,” said Mahmud, raising his voice. “And you will never be!”

  Esma Sultan raised her left hand to her cheek as if she had been slapped.

  “How dare you question me?” roared her brother. “It is only with my blessings and good favor that you live the life you do. I could seize your palaces and your Serail and take your women to my own harem. I have kept my promise to our father in every way, and our subjects call you blasphemous!”

  “What have I done that you have not? Do I not indulge you? I have brought you fair women,” spat the Princess. “I have even brought you fair men!”

  “You have brought me only those who have consented to come to me. I have asked thrice for the favors of your handmaiden Nazip and the whore has refused me! Never has a Sultan been refused, and this is your doing.”

  “She will attend you only if she sees pleasure in it,” replied Esma Sultan. “She is among my favorites and my adopted daughter. I will only give permission if she wishes your favors.”

  “This is the way you talk—as if you have never read the Koran and did not know a woman’s obligations to men and their Sultans.”

  “There is no talk of obligation to the Sultan, only to Allah.”

  “It is our religious tradition, my sister. Women are to serve men. You have filled the women’s ears with blasphemy and rebellion. I heard of your antics in the slave market. The men have complained to the Imams that you have publicly denounced a man’s right to examine his property. You rock the very principles and traditions that our forefathers have honored for four hundred years!”

  “A pox on men and their property! These are women we speak of, not cattle! You men twist Allah’s words to fit your indulgences and vice. Mohammed could not have wished to save half of humanity and throw the rest on the rubbish heap. These woman in the markets are Allah’s children, too.”

  “They are infidels and slaves, sister! They are property of the Empire and your behavior incites treason. I have heard you have brought into your most intimate chambers the janissary who despises the Topkapi and most especially you.”

  Esma Sultan blinked at her brother. “Go on.”

  “You entertain a traitor in your bedchambers who would kill both of us in our sleep with a snap of his wrist. They say he is chaste with you, though I cannot believe this for I know your proclivities.”

  “I have many companions in my palace, brother. They are not all for my pleasure. I enjoy many for their company, their minds, and their adventures.”

  “This one is a man, and a dangerous one. I banished him from his orta so that he would no longer stir mutiny. They say he is still an influence on men, even though he is isolated in your palace. Where does he go when he is not in your harem?”

  “I have no idea. Ahmed Kadir is free to conduct his business without my intrusion.”

  Sultan Mahmud II raised his hands in a gesture of astonishment.

  “This is my same sister, Esma Sultan, who loves men knowing that before dawn they will meet their death?”

  “That is your doing, brother, not mine. You send that jackal Emerald smelling at my sheets so that he murders my lovers. The blood is on your hands.”

  She turned away from the Sultan.

  “What has this man, this pagan, done to deserve such liberties at your hand?”

  “I trust him.”

  “You are mad, sister. He will die soon by a Topkapi sword or he will deliver my own death. Can you not see what you harbor in your palace walls? The enemy of the Ottomans—and you call him friend!”

  “Enough! By my oath, I would attack you myself for the murder of two hundred women. The waters swell the banks of both Europe and Asia with their bodies, rotting at the floor of the Bosphorus. You carried out this terrible deed without my counsel. You have defiled the memory of our father who made you promise—”

  “Enough! Promises are all in the past. Only I know what challenges a sultan must face. Your counsel has been wise, my sister, until the moment you took an enemy to your bosom. I shall henceforth make decisions without your guidance. The women are dead, Esma. Return to your palace and mourn them, comfort your nervous harem. That is work of women and not of a sultan.”

  Esma Sultan fastened her cloak and turned away, her body trembling with emotion. Never had she hated a man as much as she now hated her own brother.

  The news of the drowned women and children snatched the joy of finding her brother from Irena’s heart. These women had been her friends and companions. There was not one of the victims she did not know.

  She, like the other harem women of Esma Sultan, walked numbly through the gardens of the palace, despising the Sultan and the Bosphorus for taking so many lives. Irena studied the seagulls as traitors, vultures from the sea who would pick the beloved flesh from the women’s bones, should they wash up from the depths.

  But the real traitor, she knew, was the Sultan, Mahmud. When they were both children, she had seen him only rarely. He was almost always in the princes’ cage, locked away with his cousin Selim so that there was no chance of a revolt to overthrow his father.

  But Sultan Abdulhamid allowed the young princes to attend special occasions and see his harem dance. Irena noticed him watching her, saw the longing in his gaze.

  No one thought of Irena’s reaction, for it was not important. But for little Irena, too, it was love at first sight. But now that long-ago love turned to guilt and confusion. To have thought she loved a man capable of murdering two hundred women—and, perhaps worse, to have been loved by him. What in her would attract such a demon? Yet, she remembered him and his inquiries about her after the terrible night with his father and the terrible moment when she—but, no, even now she could not allow herself to think of that searing instant when she scarred herself forever.

  But through the cloud of that painful memory, she recalled the young prince with tenderness. Esma Sultan had showed her letters he had written, desperate to find her when she had disappeared from the harem. For years he sought her. Until he became Sultan himself. Upon his coronation he quickly became hardened and cruel—like all the rest, and a childhood love was soon forgotten, replaced by war and ambition.

  Or had she imagined tenderness where there was none? Can a heart become so scarred with cruel acts of power that it ceases to be capable of love? Or was love always impossible for one such as Mahmud?

  And yet, such was her confusion that a part of her heart still wondered if there was any redemption for the damned. Surely God heard the screams of the women and children as they were dumped in the Bosphorus, clawing frantically at the canvas. She could not forgive. Could God?

  Irena feared for the future. Would anything ever staunch the flow of blood after so many centuries and exorcise this monster of a Sultanate? The cruel ambitions of men, who murder their brothers, drown their sisters’ children, men who would strangle their own mothers to keep their power.

  Nakshidil should have more influence with her son than his viziers and ministers. A mother’s counsel was what Mahmud needed now, but his e
ars might be forever deaf to a woman’s voice. Deaf to redemption.

  At sunset, Emerald did not meet Ivan Postivich at the bathhouse. Instead, the Head Eunuch, Saffron, handed him his towels.

  “What privilege is this to be greeted by the head of the Royal Serail? Where is the eunuch Emerald?” asked the janissary.

  “I have sent him to perform some errands that will take time.”

  Ivan Postivich shrugged and accepted the towel.

  “Surely you have more important things to do than to wait on a soldier.”

  “I am not here to bathe you, Ahmed Kadir,” the eunuch said, and raised his hand to indicate another young man. “Ali will serve you in that respect. First, however, I must speak with you.”

  Saffron clapped his hands, dismissing the bath servant. “Wait in the cooling rooms. I will send for you.”

  The servant bowed and disappeared.

  Ivan Postivich sat on the smooth marble bench of the hamam and waited for the Head Eunuch to speak.

  “Your life is in danger, janissary.”

  Postivich looked up at the man’s eyes and saw that it was true.

  “Such is a janissary’s life,” replied Postivich.

  The eunuch considered his remark, his dark eyes glittering

  “When you first arrived at the palace, I did not trust you,” he said. “It was so evident that you loathed my mistress that I could only hope for your death. Now I risk my own life to give you this warning.”

  “You honor me.”

  The eunuch sat down next to the janissary and whispered. “The man who attends you, Emerald, is a spy for the Sultan. He has told the Sultan of your treasonous talk. He says that you are part of the conspiracy that will bring disgrace upon the Ottoman name. These words insure your death, Kapikulu.”

  “Emerald is a spy for Mahmud,” Postivich said slowly. “Was I a fool not to see it before now?”