The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire

by Linda Lafferty

  “You must take him from this place, Saffron. Ferry him across the Bosphorus. Smuggle him to the White Sea where he can breed with his own kind. We shall tell my brother that we were taking a midnight sail when the boat capsized and he was drowned.”

  “But my Princess, surely he will return to Galata and the Sultan will send his Solaks to murder him.”

  The Princess leapt to her feet and clenched her hands. She shook her fists at her servant, like a child in a tirade.

  “That would be his own kismet! Am I not the daughter of Sultan Abdulhamid? Will I not have the right to decide who resides within my palace walls or will we harbor a man whom I loathe? See that he is dispatched tonight! What happens to him is in Allah’s hands. Send for the drowning guard, and see that the Greek is dispatched to another shore, I command you!”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Leave me. I must rest. I have not slept a minute in three nights.”

  When the eunuch emerged from the harem, he found Postivich and a Solak on the edge of violence.

  “You! Ahmed Kadir—move on!” the Solak shouted. “You are no longer needed here.”

  “Since when does a Solak give me orders!” the janissary shouted back. “You miserable dog, you forget yourself.”

  “I give you orders because we have no need for you! Should I see you near the entrance of the harem again, I shall slice your throat.”

  Ivan Postivich made a lewd sign with his hand, gesturing towards his genitals. “You should try now to see if that is wise, you cowardly Albanian. Come, let’s have that discussion now so that I might wring your wretched neck like a sick pullet!”

  “Ahmed Kadir!” shouted Saffron. “Stop! You, Solak! You take your orders from me. You, Corbaci. Wait for me at your quarters. I bring a message from the Sultaness for your ears only.”

  That night, a blue-painted boat sliced through the Bosphorus, a single lantern swinging from the bow. A dark figure towered above the light as the vessel pulled silently to the docks of Esma Sultan’s palace.

  Two Solaks and a turbaned eunuch stood by a golden-haired youth who was dressed in fine clothes, staring nervously at the dark figure that stood motionless at the bow.

  “You are the first man to escape the Sultan’s wrath,” whispered Saffron. “Praise Allah for your delivery. It is the good will of Her Highness, Esma Sultan, that spares your life. She risks her brother’s anger in doing so.”

  “But—the Sultan’s Solaks. They will find me and drag me from my father’s house!”

  “If you return to Galata, you will be butchered before the cock crows. Seek refuge in your Greek homeland or the outer territories of the Empire, where no one will know your history.”

  “But—I have pleased the Sultaness in all ways! Night after night I performed to the limits of my manhood. Why does she banish me from Constantinople, the only home I have known?”

  The Head Eunuch raised his chin in the torchlight, motioning to the boat that thumped its wooden hull against the dock. As the pages inclined their torches to light the Greek’s way into the boat, the burning rags illuminated the giant’s face, tight with rage.

  “She banishes you to save your wretched life, Greek. Board the boat, you fool, and say a prayer for my mistress’s benevolence.” Then, pulling the Greek close, the eunuch whispered, “Say no more in the presence of the giant. He will murder you as easily as the Sultan, for his anger is aroused at the mention of the Sultane’s name.”

  The fair-haired youth trembled as he looked at the rocking boat and saw the face of the corbaci in the flickering light of the torches. The giant’s upper lip curled and the Greek recognized the bloodlust of the Serb, a people as ferocious as the Turks themselves.

  “The drowning guard?” the Greek breathed in horror. “You send me to my death!”

  Saffron pushed him forward at these words and he stumbled and fell on the dock, inches from the edge of the water. Ivan Postivich did not move to help him, and the Greek crawled onto the boat.

  In the commotion, no one noticed another boat, a royal caïque slipping through the water upcurrent from Esma Sultan’s docks. The ghostly white skin of a little man in a crimson tunic would have been visible in the lantern light had there not been such a distraction. He motioned to the boatman, who feathered his oars in silence, drifting close to the reeds that grew along the shore of the Bosphorus.

  The boatman, Ahmed, the same man who had so often and so unhappily taken Ivan Postivich out on these same waters on voyages too much like this one—rowed hard across the mouth of the Golden Horn. He then pointed the bow towards the Asian side of the Bosphorus, where the Greek could hide until he could secure passage on one of the ships returning to the White Sea.

  The Princess had given the Greek youth gold to make arrangements; gold that was sewn into the hem of his heavily embroidered tunic. He fingered his wealth nervously as the Sultaness’s drowning guard stood over him in silence.

  As they reached the depths of the Bosphorus, midway between Europe and Asia, Ivan Postivich motioned for the oarsman to stop. The giant took a long look at the spot where he had drowned so many men.

  “Why do we stop?” asked the Greek, nervously. He stood up and his movement rocked the boat. “Were you not instructed to take me to the Asian side?” His voice rose in the night air.

  Ivan Postivich shifted his gaze from the dark waters to the man, and back again to the water.

  “Do as the Sultaness commands, janissary!” pleaded the Greek. “The eunuch guaranteed me safe passage to the Asian shore!”

  The oarsman looked at the giant who towered above them both.

  “Shall I row on, Ahmed Kadir, or do you wish to pause here a moment longer?”

  Postivich nodded his head. “A few more minutes, Ahmed,” he said. “I wish to ask the prisoner a few questions.”

  The Greek swallowed hard. “I am no prisoner. I am the guest of Esma Sultan.”

  “I have entertained her night guests before,” growled the giant. “I am not sure how you are any different.”

  The youth looked around wildly.

  “She has given me gold for passage,” he said, his voice rising, “and bids me well.”

  “I did not see her accompany you to the docks to wish you a good voyage.”

  The passenger tore at the hem of his tunic with a small dagger that he had tucked in his waistband.

  “Here”—he held out a coin—“I will give you gold, but I beg of you, do not defy the Sultaness’s command. Row for the shore, boatsman, and there shall be gold for you as well.”

  The gold caught the light of the lantern, glittering in the night. Ivan Postivich struck the passenger’s hand and sent the precious metal flying. It landed with a distant splash in the water.

  “That was a small fortune!” shouted the Greek in astonishment. “Are you mad?”

  “Look me in the eye, you dog! Tell me what you did with the Sultaness.”

  “Ahmed Kadir,” whispered the oarsman. “What matter is this?”

  The great corbaci did not answer. Instead he seized the Greek by the neck.

  “Pity on me, Ahmed Kadir,” the youth pleaded.

  “Tell me how you came to lie in Esma Sultan’s bed or you shall die this very minute!”

  The Greek’s breath came in rasps as the giant closed his fingers tight around his neck.

  “Release me and I will tell you all!”

  The giant loosened his grip and sent the man flying against the hull of the boat. The oarsman stabbed at the water to keep the boat from tipping. He steadied the vessel once more, but said nothing to the corbaci who remained standing despite the rocking boat.

  “Then tell, Greek,” said Postivich. “From the beginning.”

  The passenger rubbed his neck, his throat raw from the grip of the giant.

  “I was approached one night in Galata by an envoy of the Sultaness.”

  “His name?”

  “I do not remember. He was a white eunuch, fat and greedy, with laven
der lips as swollen as sausages, but he wore the royal tunic with crimson and gold threads. He said that the Princess had heard tales of my—” Here he hesitated.

  “Your what?”

  “My beauty and my prowess,” he said, staring at the giant’s muddy boots. “Those were the words he used. He said that the Princess needed a consort, that she was widowed and had finally seen that she could not live without the love of a man.”

  “Are you so deaf that you have not heard of the men Esma Sultan has drowned! Have you not heard the wails of the Christian families in Galata and Pera who have lost their men to the water’s depths?”

  “The eunuch promised me that this was not what she sought. She had been cured and only sought the love of one man. He assured me that I would be cared for and protected under the Banner of the Prophet and Sultan Mahmud II.”

  “Since when does the Banner of the Prophet protect infidels who lie with Ottoman royalty?”

  The passenger tried to answer but his mouth was too dry. A high crackling noise was the only sound that he uttered.

  “Tell me, then. Was she waiting for you in the coach?”

  The Greek nodded, swallowed hard, and found his voice again. “I was instructed to approach the carriage with my eyes lowered. The eunuch told me to walk back and forth beside it, where she could see me. Then he ordered me to retire to my family’s home where he could bathe me.”

  “And did you not become frightened?”

  “Frightened? No. No woman has ever tired of my love,” he said with an anger born of pride. “Why should an Ottoman princess be any different? Besides, I had the promise of the eunuch, sealed with this—”

  He removed something from his pocket. It was an emerald ring with the crest of the waning moon, a diamond star at its side.

  “The eunuch gave it to me as the Sultan’s promise of safety if I were to remain faithful to his sister and not leave the palace walls. The eunuch said the Princess had become too absorbed with another who was not worthy to clean the filth from her shoes and that I might provide distraction. I served the Sultan himself!”

  Ivan Postivich’s ears hummed with hot blood.

  “The eunuch acted the pimp for the Sultan’s own sister!”

  The Greek swallowed hard at these words, knowing the giant must be mad to speak such treason.

  “I was promised gold and property. I have only done what I was told, what I was commanded to do!”

  The giant lunged for the man and caught him by the throat as the boat rocked to one side, taking in water before the oarsman could right it again.

  “Tell me. How did you seduce her?”

  “I had no need to, by the Savior’s honor! It was she who seduced me.”

  “Tell me, you vile dog!”

  The oarsman spoke, “Ahmed Kadir! I beg of you, do not torture the man. I have heard the stories of the Sultaness’s seductions. There is no honor here to defend! Let us take the man to safety and forget this night!”

  The corbaci did not answer but tightened his grip on the struggling Greek. He whispered, “That first night. Did she—did she speak in her ecstasy?”

  His victim’s head was now just inches from the terrifying water. His scream carried across the waters and the wild dogs began to bark and howl.

  “Tell me or die by these waters!”

  “Yes! She called out for another.”

  “What? You mock me. Smell the saltwater for it shall be your grave.”

  The man screamed, “No, I do not mock you! She called out, ‘Ivan!’ and tears coursed down her cheeks, like a wounded girl. ‘Ivan.’ I swear that was the name. A Russian lover. I don’t know.” He sobbed.

  Postivich pushed the terrified man away and slumped against the bow of the boat, his lungs heaving for breath.

  “Row, oarsman,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Make haste for the Asian shore.”

  The blue boat reached the shore in less than an hour. No one spoke again until the wooden hull knocked against the pilings of the dock, waking the sleeping Anatolian guard.

  “Who goes there?”

  “The servants of Esma Sultan. We have a passenger to deliver safely to your watch. Help him to shore.”

  The Greek leapt from the boat. As soon as his slippered feet touched land, he ran as fast as he could away from the docks. He scrambled straight up the hill that rose from the water, loosening rocks that rattled down onto the dock.

  “What conduct is this?” asked the guard. “Why does he run?”

  Ivan Postivich pushed off. “He does not have the stomach for the sea,” he said. “Most likely he needed to purge in the bushes.”

  “A Greek,” muttered the guard, wrinkling his mouth in disgust. He yawned a farewell to the departing boat and squatted next to a mulberry tree to drink his tea. He did not see the two figures that slipped through the darkness and followed the fair-haired man, their daggers flashing silver in the moonlight.

  The oarsman waited until the boat was well out onto the water before he spoke.

  “What spell has she cast on you, my friend? You have behaved as a madman.”

  Ivan Postivich shrugged and looked out over the moving water.

  “I cannot blame my behavior on Esma Sultan,” he answered at last.

  “Ahmed Kadir, do not forget how we have heard the last words of the condemned men who by our labor have been drowned. I thank Allah we were not to murder this fair-headed man tonight.”

  “I almost killed him.”

  “I saw his death written in your face. What demon possessed you?”

  “I am not sure, oarsman. I only know that it is more powerful than I.”

  Then a cry pierced the air from the heavy mist of the Asian shoreline. Ivan Postivich and the oarsman turned, straining their ears to hear more, but there was only the lapping waters of the Bosphorus.

  Irena had seen her brother dispatched directly from the palace in the night. She had seen the Esma Sultan’s young Greek lover spirited out of the palace, neither tied nor gagged.

  She ran to Saffron, her slippers slapping on the smooth marble floors.

  “What is this?” she begged him, gasping for breath. “Does the drowning guard return to his occupation of murderer?”

  He turned with resignation in his eyes.

  “That depends solely on Ahmed Kadir and his conscience. If his pride is stronger than his soul, he will murder again. But this time, the blood will stain his hands only, not Esma Sultan’s.”

  Irena waited late into the night for Postivich to return, listening to the fast-moving water of the Bosphorus from the garden walls. At last when she saw the swaying light of a lantern, she bade a page to run to the docks and summoned the janissary to meet her in the garden in haste.

  The night was hot, but after midnight puffs of wet breeze lifted off the Bosphorus and stirred the air. Overhead, the broad leaves of the plane trees rustled in the wind.

  Irena sat on a bench near one of Esma’s favorite fountains: a high fluted column with a series of graduated marble pools, overflowing with cascades of water.

  She saw the silhouette enter the garden from the west gate. Only one man in the Ottoman Empire could cast such a colossal figure in the moonlight.

  “Irena, why do you bid me come so late?” he said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion.

  “Did you murder the Greek?” Her voice was cold as marble.

  “I did not. I left him safely to travel back to his homeland.”

  Irena did not argue that the Greek’s homeland was here, in Constantinople, in Galata, where he had been born, as had been generations of his forebears. Instead she studied her brother’s face, ravaged with emotion, not physical exhaustion. He sat down next to her, his massive shoulders crumpling.

  “You love her,” Irena said simply, stroking his brown hair, matted with the salt air of the sea. His heavy torso sagged into her arms and she heard the sound of tearless sobs.

  “I cannot allow myself to love a murderess. And see how she casts me aside, now
that she is well?”

  “She is not as well as you think. The Greek was a diversion. Her crimes haunt her. But she cannot trust herself to speak to you again.”

  There was a silence and Irena felt a shift of emotion as subtle as the first wave to change the tide and move the sea out away from shore.

  “May her guilty corpse rot in hell!” He stood up, heaving air into his lungs and straightening his back. “I have become soft as a woman from lack of war! I shall not let a woman wither my manhood!

  “She is an Ottoman and her brother is my enemy. He shall pay with his life for his deceit and cunning. I shall revenge the humiliation of the Janissary Corps. And the deaths of over two hundred women and children drowned! And the foul deeds I have commited in the Sultan’s name!”

  “No!” Irena’s hand flew to her throat. “Do not continue this bloody way! Follow the Bektashi way and let live! Make peace with the Sultan and stop this bloodshed.”

  “There is no making peace! He has gone too far in his vile ways. The Janissaries boil in rage.”

  He pulled his sister to her feet and held her close, his embrace so tight she could not draw a breath.

  “Pray for me. The time has come.”

  “No!” she shouted and a dog barked.

  Immediately a Solak called. “Who goes there?”

  “I must go,” he whispered hoarsely. “Pray to the Blessed Mary on my behalf, sister. Pray to our dead mother.”

  Irena sunk to her knees, her hands clasped imploring, but her brother did not stop.

  “It is I, Ahmed Kadir,” he shouted to the anxious guard. “I have asked Bezm-i Alem to deliver a message to Esma Sultan, and the content startled her.”

  The Solak lifted a lantern as Irena struggled to her feet, the wet grass staining her harem pants.

  “Are you all right, Bezm-i Alem?”

  “Yes,” she cried. “Go with God.”

  Alone in the garden again, Irena sat down on the bench and stared up at cold stars above her, thinking of the Bektashi Sufis as they lifted their faces to the heavens, swaying like stalks of wheat.

  Part IV