The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire

by Linda Lafferty

  Postivich walked the perimeter and then made serpentines across the grass, his feet memorizing the turf. It was satisfactory. He had played cirit in all conditions and what was battle except a cirit game with life as a prize and death to the loser?

  The janissary remounted the stallion and called for the jereed spears. The teams faced each other, separated by a hundred paces. The youngest rider, a groom named Abdul, rode out past the center of the field and as he neared the opposing side, he threw his jereed at the Head Groom.

  The Head Groom dodged the spear, reining his horse sharply to the right at a quick gallop and diving low below the saddle. He immediately straightened as his horse flew down the field in pursuit of Abdul, closing the gap quickly. He flung his blunt-ended spear at the boy, catching him between the shoulder blades.

  “Score!” he crowed, but his laugh was cut short as a second groom, older and more experienced, galloped out as soon as Abdul crossed back into his team’s territory.

  The Head Groom spun his horse around and raced back to his team, the Turkish boy in pursuit. The rider threw his jereed, but it missed narrowly, sliding over the Head Groom’s back as he flattened himself against the saddle.

  Postivich was the last to ride. He spurred his stallion the instant the jereed left the hand of the opposing rider, and before the player had time to finish his turn towards the safety of his team, the janissary’s jereed stuck him hard in the small of his back.

  He howled in pain, though the stick was too blunt to pierce his flesh.

  “Move more quickly next time,” yelled Postivich, and he circled his horse, changing leads in midgallop, racing back to his team before his opponent had time to pursue him.

  The grooms nodded to one another, for they had seen how accurate the giant’s aim was and the ease with which he commanded his horse. And they could see he was not really trying, but only testing the stallion, running him through his paces.

  “I propose another game,” said the janissary, reining in the stallion. “My horse and I against all of you using the entire field. You come at me in twos, allow me sanctuary when I cross my line.”

  “This is a mockery!” cried a swarthy youth whom Postivich had recognized earlier as a skillful rider. “No man can challenge an entire team.”

  “Consider it my Serbian ignorance,” said Postivich. “I want to see how much stamina and intelligence this stallion really has.”

  The grooms nodded and the Head Groom had them file back into their rows in twos to take on the giant. The Head Groom took the first turn, reining his prancing mare into the ready position.

  “Ready?” said Postivich, reining his horse out to the center of the field. His horse charged forward at a gallop and before the grooms could realize what had happened, a jereed slammed against the Head Groom’s chest.

  Two horsemen raced after Postivich, but the stallion was too quick and he crossed the line into sanctuary and immediately circled his horse, a flying change of leads that gave advantage to the stallion, closing the distance on the retreating players.

  Two jereeds hit their mark, squarely between the shoulder blades of the grooms.

  After thirty minutes of play, the horses stood quivering and the grooms licked their lips, struggling with the dryness of their mouths.

  “Enough!” said Postivich. “I will ride this stallion tomorrow and take the Head Groom’s mare as back up. She has an admirable intelligence about her and a sure foot, I can see this without riding her.”

  The grooms, their faces streaked with dirty sweat, noticed that the giant was dry faced and content, a smile creasing his face. He leaned over and slapped his sweating horse on the chest with the blade of his giant hand, grateful for a chance to compete at cirit once again.

  But the cirit play was not unnoticed and within minutes the Sultan knew of the game. He pushed past his guards to the top of the walls and looked down on the players. In less than a second he recognized the huge stature of Ahmed Kadir and cursed him aloud.

  The Grand Vizier made his way up the steps, panting hard.

  “My Sultan! What is it?”

  “That traitor Ahmed Kadir, banished from the Kapikulu Cavalry, has the nerve to appear on the royal cirit fields!”

  The Vizier, long accustomed to Mahmud’s outbursts, recovered his breath. Then he counseled the Sultan.

  “I believe that you banished him from the Kapikulu Orta, Sultan. It was not mentioned that he could never ride a horse or play cirit.”

  “Whose horses are they, if they are not mine! All the Kapikulus ride my mounts! I will have his head.”

  The Vizier drew in a breath and strained his eyes towards the field. “I do not know all four thousand of your horses, of course,” he said. “But I venture a guess that these are horses of your sister Esma Sultan’s stables. Is she not staging the cirit tournament in honor of your birthday tomorrow?”

  Mahmud pulled at his beard.

  “There is no woman more traitorous than a sister,” he said. “Especially when she has her own harem and stable!”

  “What a buffoonish crew!” laughed the Vizier, squinting his eyes. “Those are common stable boys playing cirit with the giant! What an insult to a great corbaci of the Kapikulu to have fallen so low!”

  Mahmud stopped plucking at his beard and smiled at his Grand Vizier.

  “Yes, what a delicious insult, my good Vizier! Now I remember why I chose you as my most trusted consultant.”

  When he got back to the palace, Ivan Postivich had to pick his way through the wagons and carts full of food and provisions for the celebration the next day. There was a great deal of swearing as the workmen unloaded heavy crates of live fowl that pecked viciously at them when they picked up the cages.

  “May Allah curse your gizzards!” growled a Turk, kicking at a hissing goose who had ripped a strip of flesh off his fingers. The rest of the workmen laughed at the bleeding man until they too were pecked and howled curses to Allah in turn.

  The bakers and cooks supervised the deliverymen, finding little virtue in their work.

  “You are damaging the goods! Look how your dirty peasant hands have crushed that precious head of lettuce! You buffoon, don’t you know the price of these provisions? They are worth ten of your lives put together.”

  “Where is the cream! The sun will ruin it! You must put the cream in the cooling pantry at once before it curdles. We shall never buy another drop of milk from your dairy if my yoghurt is ruined from your laziness.”

  The gates of the palace were opened wider for a flock of sheep, driven by a dozen barefoot boys. The sheep droppings were immediately swept up by a team of handsome pages. Looking too beautiful to perform such a menial task, they pushed the excrement off the cobblestones and into the gutters and sluiced the courtyard with water from silver buckets.

  The deliverymen stopped, despite the curses of the various cooks and eunuchs, to regard the boys, for they were as fine as the harem itself.

  As one fair-haired youth bent down with a scrub brush to clean the stones, a burly driver whistled at him from the wagon. The workmen laughed and jeered at the comely youth who straightened up and threw a handful of sheep dung at them.

  Another man touched himself, gesturing lewdly at the male servants.

  “Stop that vulgarity this instant or we shall never buy again from your master’s stall. He and you both shall be bankrupt and begging for soup at Aya Sofya!” shouted a woman’s voice, as clear as the muezzin’s call. It was Nazip, Esma Sultan’s favorite servant, her face uncovered and her freckled cheeks red with indignation.

  The men stood still, frozen the second they saw the bare face of the beautiful Nazip. With hands in midair, or geese pecking their numb fingers, they stood immobile before her beauty.

  She spat in their direction. Looking them in the eye, she delicately removed the traces of spittle from her lips with a lace handkerchief before returning to the interior of the palace.

  “To work, you brutes,” shouted the Greek cook Ma
ria through her yasmak. She was a large, fat woman who seemed as wide as the wagons and her voice bellowed through her thin veil. “You cursed issue of whores, dream of impossibilities on your own time!” she shouted. “Your hands to the task, you have no time to fondle yourselves!”

  A boy whispered, “Has a woman ever dared to say something so vulgar to a man?”

  The Turk next to him said, “In the privacy of the home, I cannot pretend that such slurs are not heard.” He threw down another melon to the boy. “Just pray to Allah that this fat one doesn’t remove her yasmak!”

  On the other side of the palace, the ice man and his crew were unloading snow and ice from their barge, cold treasures shipped all the way from the mountains of Greece. The sherbets of Esma Sultan’s kitchen were held in high regard throughout Asia and Europe; they were flavored with lemon and almond, ripe melons, rhubarb, roses, pistachio essence, and incenses of the Orient. It was whispered that those who visited her privately in her harem were given the ultimate sherbet—a fantasy-inducing concoction of coconut, ambergris, and cream, laced with opium.

  There was a fleet of barges on the Bosphorus, full of red and yellow silks, candles, incense, perfumes, and precious spices. A small British ship raised hazardous waves as it pulled close to the docks to deliver crates of French champagne. Curses echoed across the water as the merchants fought for dock space to deliver their wares.

  “You spawn of a Greek whore,” shouted the British sea captain in passable Turkish. “Move your dung carriers out of the way; we have fine wines to deliver.”

  “Keep your infidel hands on your own dirty genitals and bide your time!” shouted back the Turks as they moored their boats to the dock and unloaded their goods. “We were here first, you miserable wart on a toad’s rump!”

  There was a splash as the British ship’s first mate dived into the water and swam towards the Turks. Within seconds he was on the dock, still blinking back the saltwater when a Turkish workman took a swing at him. The Englishman ducked, then countered with a punch to the Turk’s stomach and followed up by bloodying his nose.

  “Teach the dirty Turk a lesson, Charlie,” shouted the captain, he and his crew hooting and cheering at the fight.

  The Turk had turned to vomit, his stomach convulsing from the hit. But without pausing to wipe the spittle from his mouth, he spun around and came at the first mate with a knife, blade flashing in the morning sun.

  The Brit pulled out his own blade and circled the Turk on the splintered boards of the dock. The air filled with roars in a mixture of half a dozen languages, attracting the Solaks who stood guard nearby.

  “Put down your knives,” shouted the commander, pushing through the crowd that had quickly gathered. He raised his scimitar high. “Put down your weapons or I’ll send your heads to Topkapi!”

  The Turk understood the threat and threw down his knife, gesturing to his opponent with an open hand to do the same. The Brit stood bewildered, his dagger still tight in his fist.

  “What’s the bloke say?”

  “He says, throw down your knife!” said a sunburnt sailor with a wandering eye. “Throw down the bloody knife, Charlie or the Sultan will put your head on a bloody stake!”

  The first mate kept his eyes on the Turk and the Solak.

  “If I put down the knife,” he shouted over his shoulder, “is ’e coming after me with that crooked sword of’ is?”

  “If you don’t put down the knife they will all come after you, you idiot. Throw down the knife and be done with it.”

  Charlie looked at them warily and threw his blade down onto the dock, so that it stuck quivering in the warped grey planks.

  The Solak retrieved the knife and grunted for the workers to continue their work under his watch and scimitar.

  “Bloody Turks,” muttered the captain as he moored his boat against Esma Sultan’s docks.

  The palace was in an uproar. Everywhere Irena looked there were people carrying cases of food and wine, arranging flowers, cleaning the carpets with long rakes. The rich smells from the kitchen wafted over the grounds and made her mouth water.

  Esma Sultan strode about, scrutinizing the work, and pointing out faults. It was clear from her imperious tone that she would not accept anything but the highest standard.

  “What horse did he choose?” Irena asked her mistress.

  “Your favorite, of course,” she smiled. “Like sister, like brother.”

  Irena clasped her hands together like a little girl, thinking that of the hundreds of horses in the stables, Ivan would be riding Sultan’s Choice. He rode mares, almost exclusively, but the challenge and potential of the stallion had won him over.

  “I knew it,” she said.

  The servant women were aflutter, quarreling and nervous, energized and jubilant. Men sweated and cursed under heavy loads and the entry hall smelled of cold seawater and fresh oysters, plucked from the Baltic and held in huge metal tanks.

  It had been many months since Irena had seen a cirit tournament and now she was more excited than ever. To see her brother finally in his rightful place—on the back of a horse—made her flesh prickle with excitement.

  Esma Sultan’s face was radiant. There was not even a shadow of the illness she had so recently experienced.

  “God be praised,” thought Irena. Her brother had restored Esma Sultan’s health and given her back her spirit—enough to needle and bait Mahmud, as she always had. Irena had never seen her so jubilant.

  Chapter 11

  It was the third night in a row that Ivan Postivich had not been summoned to the chambers of Esma Sultan and he paced the gardens. It was the second night that servants other than Emerald had attended him in the hamam. He had not seen the soft-bodied eunuch at all.

  Saffron at last appeared, his white turban atop his black head floating like a disembodied skull in the night.

  “Ahmed Kadir, rest for tomorrow’s game. The Princess sleeps tranquilly, her face content with gentle dreams. She does not need you tonight.”

  Ivan Postivich nodded stiffly. The eunuch looked at the janissary’s face.

  “What’s this, janissary? Do I see disappointment in your face?”

  Ivan Postivich hardened his mouth.

  “Disappointment? To be relieved of my duty so that I can visit the taverns that beckon, the whores who have not seen my face in a month? I will be disappointed not to perform my duty to the Princess when pigs climb poplar trees!”

  The eunuch did not smile.

  “Do not forget whom you serve, janissary. Any male who sees Esma Sultan as anything other than a noble Ottoman Princess will be condemned to death. I beg you not to forget this even if some night it escapes the Sultane’s mind.”

  Ivan Postivich turned to walk away and called over his shoulder.

  “I cannot stop to prattle, Saffron. Excuse me, but there are cups of wine to be drunk and fat whores to caress.” He strode off, gritting his teeth.

  The ferryman took Postivich across the Golden Horn to Galata, where the lights of the taverns flickered an invitation across the calm water.

  The streets reeked of cheap wine, fried oysters, garlic, grilled eggplant, and olive oil. Christians and Jews stood outside each tavern, calling to the passersby in urgent tones, bragging of the quantities and good value of the wines and of the beauty of the boys who danced in veils within.

  Most of the customers inside the sordid taverns were Janissaries. The rooms reeked of stale drink and dirty, sweating men.

  Ivan Postivich chose an establishment and the bearded men at the doorway eagerly ushered him into the dark. A Greek boy motioned to a table.

  “Fetch me a boza,” said Postivich remembering his cirit match.

  The Greek waiter hurried back with a foaming glass of boza, a beer with little or no alcohol. He set a little bowl of pistachios in front of the janissary and then disappeared to serve another customer.

  Postivich rarely visited the taverns these days. He had come to find the conduct of the Janissaries
bordering on barbarous, making his stomach tighten in revulsion. He frowned upon the boys dressed in women’s silks, and scowled as they practiced the art of flirtation, tugging at his tunic sleeves to capture hiseye.

  “Away!” he said, shaking one off. He threw up his elbow abruptly, gesturing to the peach-veiled boy to leave him alone.

  The boy shrugged but didn’t miss a beat, shaking his hips and flat abdomen at a group of Janissaries next to the giant. They were eager to watch his dance and rewarded his long groping fingers with coins.

  The beautiful creatures made fools of the drunken soldiers who lusted after them. While he did not find the boys attractive, Postivich understood how the lascivious moves and veiled faces provoked even the women-loving men. But to hear the soldiers call out lewdly and grope another man’s genitals in public made him turn away in disgust for their betrayal of the dignity of the Janissary Corps and its old, but threadbare honor.

  “It comes from sequestering women from men,” said a Bektashi, who had slipped—determined and unnoticed—through the crowd and taken a seat—uninvited—at the janissary’s table. “We Sufis believe in the inclusion of women. There will always be men who love men, but the situation is exaggerated when there is no real choice. For a woman to dance like this in public would cause a stoning, but a boy? Nothing. So the hypocritical traditions of the Sunnis and Shi’ites keep women caged like prize dogs in heat.”

  He took a long draw on his opium pipe. “Come to our tekke lodge and I will show you real women, my friend,” winked the dervish. “Ones who know how to love a man without veils and witchery, but with her heart.”

  The janissary continued to eat his pistachios, considering the dervish’s words.

  “You are Ahmed Kadir,” the dervish said after a minute, not asking a question but stating a fact from the depths of his stupor.

  “I am,” said Postivich, drinking his boza and cracking another pistachio between his teeth.