The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire

by Linda Lafferty

  The Sultan’s doctor, Stephane Karatheodory, lifted up the sheets and probed the wound.

  “You are lucky that the blood loss was not more,” he said, his fingers unwinding the dressing.

  A woman’s gentle hand reached behind Postivich’s neck and tilted his head towards a silver cup of water. He drank greedily and did not look up until he had drained every drop.

  “More, I beg of you,” he whispered and only then did he realize that his sister, Irena, was already refilling the cup. As he turned to watch her, he felt something around his neck shift and slip against his chest.

  It was the golden cross of the Greek Orthodox Church.

  “You were brought to me by the dervishes,” said the doctor, as he continued to attend to the wound. “They found you at the gates of Et Meydan, shot through the leg with a burning timber across your back. The Sultan has put a high price on your head as if the reward of thousands upon thousands of dead Janissaries weren’t enough to sate his bloodlust.”

  “Good doctor, I beg you, say no more,” whispered Irena. “You risk your life and that of your family by attending to my brother. Even the cistern may have ears.”

  The doctor nodded and with his trembling hands pulled the last of the dressing from the wound.

  Ivan Postivich winced as the blood-soaked rag tore away, pulling at the flesh.

  “My mare, Peri,” he croaked. “Does she still live?”

  Irena bent close to his ear. “Do not speak. The effort costs too dearly.”

  But even as she spoke, Postivich screamed in pain. The doctor had forced a hot poker against his flesh to cauterize the wound. As his cry reverberated, he lost consciousness. His scream faded to silence and the dripping stream of water was once more the only sound that broke the silence.

  Ivan Postivich did not know how much time passed as he lay in the deep chambers of Esma Sultan’s palace, delirious from the fever of the infection in his wound.

  He heard voices and saw visions and fought enemies he couldn’t see. One night—though night was no different from day deep in the cavern—he sat up, thrashing against the sheets, wet with his perspiration. He was still caught in the memory of a dream. He had been surrounded by dancing women who moved softly and seductively, laughing at him. Then their steps became heavy, impossibly loud, like the roll of thunder overhead. It was that thunder that had awakened him.

  Awake, he found that he was dressed in a palace tunic, embroidered with the Ottoman crimson and gold. He felt his face and knew that he had been shaved while he slept and he marveled that he had not awakened.

  At his side were a jug of water and cup. He drained the cup five times before he had slaked his thirst.

  Now he looked around, seeing that the candles lit only a small part of the vast palace cistern. There were torches scattered through the darkness that must have lighted a passageway to the palace. Shifting spears of green light clashed on the vaulted walls, reflecting off the deep pools of water.

  Again, he heard the thundering. This time he was not dreaming. A bat zigzagged overhead, startled at the vibration.

  An old voice cursed in Turkish and from the darkness came a man he recognized, a stooped old gardener from the palace. The gardener walked laboriously towards him, muttering.

  “You are awake at last,” he said. “How soundly sleeps the giant, how fecund are his dreams!”

  “What is that roar overhead? It sounds as if elephants move above us!”

  “The cave exaggerates sounds,” said the old man, his eyes bleary with age. “For surely they are not elephants. Ha!”

  With that, the gardener turned away and stomped off again.

  “Stop!” commanded Ivan Postivich. “Where do you go?”

  “Follow me and you shall see the secret of the thunder.”

  Ivan Postivich thought the man must be touched with madness, but he followed him anyway. The stones bit into his bare feet, tender from bedrest. His thigh was stiff and sore, almost beyond bearing, but still he was able to drag himself at almost the same pace as the gardener. Together they limped and shuffled through the flickering torchlight.

  At last they came to a ladder, rough-hewn rungs lashed to two oak logs. The gardener climbed awkwardly up the creaking rungs to the top and pushed with one hand on a trapdoor.

  The door groaned open and moonlight spilled into the darkness like molten silver. Ivan Postivich struggled up the ladder, wrinkling his nose at the stench of the old man’s breath that lingered in the stale air.

  The full moon shone fiercely and Postivich blinked and shaded his eyes from the moonbeams.

  The gardener gestured from the shadows of the immense jasmines.

  Postivich followed the gesture and saw the flowing white garb of riders on horseback. They swung long graceful mallets that swept elegantly through the air and sent a small white ball down the grassy field with a sharp click that resounded in the night.

  “Polo?” he said, wondering if he was still under the spell of his fever.

  As he sucked in the sweet mingled aromas of the blooming gardenia and jasmine, he heard the gardener’s laugh, ringing with a tone of certain madness.

  “You see!” he said, bringing his dirty fingers to his toothless mouth in joy. He limped away to the shed where he kept his tools and began raking the grounds as if it were early morning.

  Ivan Postivich sunk to the ground, his leg too tired to support him any longer. He focused on one player, graceful and tall in the saddle, riding with an agility that sparked a dim memory. He tried to force his mind to focus and remember.

  But it wasn’t until he heard the unforgettable laugh as the white ball flew through the upright posts, that he realized it was his sister, who reined her horse with such innate skill and gentle hands.

  And in that same moment, he recognized the litheness of all the riders and the high, ringing tone of their laughter and shouts. They were all women. And then, one more voice, lower and rougher in tone. It was the old Turkish Horse Master, applauding Irena’s goal, the only male among the eight women riders.

  Another rider rode up next to Irena, reached out and caressed her cheek. Esma Sultan leaned over kissed Ivan Postivich’s sister in joy.

  Chapter 19

  Ivan Postivich grew stronger each day. The greenish light of the cistern was unearthly, reflected through a filter of algae and lingering on patches of moss that lined the cavern walls. Its constancy and silence brought healing peace, for no one would search the palace of an Ottoman princess, not even the Sultan himself.

  Those who cared for him brought news of the failed revolt and carnage. Thousands upon thousands of Janissaries had died in the Et Meydan inferno, their charred remains left for the ever-ravenous dogs. Any who escaped the flames had been hunted down and brought to the Hippodrome to be hanged. It was rumored that the Sultan was so murderous in his rage and so greedy in his revenge, delivering prisoner after prisoner to Allah, that the executioners were not allowed to carry off the corpses from the field of death. Hundreds of bodies, in various stages of decay, lay mounded on the ground and the Sultan inspected each one from his horse, red with fury that none was the man whose death he coveted.

  “We cannot go on until the bodies have been carried off,” whispered an executioner to the Vizier, wiping his brow. “You see how deep the ground is in corpses! The next prisoner could stand on the backs of his dead brothers and never feel the noose!”

  “Seek more wagons, then, to cart off their blasphemous flesh,” ordered the Vizier. “Find men with stronger backs and quicker hands. The Sultan’s rage cannot be quenched until it has seen the dead eyes of the giant, Ahmed Kadir.”

  Ivan Postivich heard the tales with a heavy heart. He walked about the pools of the cistern, contemplating not just his own future, but that of all Constantinople.

  “The Sultan has decreed that the Janissaries and all those who joined them shall die,” said a young servant boy who stripped the sheets each day and served Postivich in a makeshift hamam. He stood o
ver a large kettle of water heating over a fire.

  “You alone are blessed by Allah,” the boy said, his eyes red from the stinging smoke. “The Sultan’s New Order has ransacked the houses of Constantinople and even searched the wells and cellars. They have found scores of hidden soldiers and all have been dragged to the Hippodrome to be slaughtered—along with those who had given them shelter,” said the boy dipping a bucket in the steaming kettle to bathe the corbaci.

  “The Sultan has announced from the pulpit of Sultan Ahmed Mosque that the very word ‘janissary’ is never to be uttered on pain of death as it is forever cursed by Allah.”

  Concentrating on his story, the boy did not test the temperature of the water before he poured it on the bather’s back.

  Ivan Postivich screamed as the scalding water cascaded over his still-tender flesh.

  “Forgive me, Corbaci!”

  The eunuch, Poppy, who supervised the ablutions swiftly boxed the ears of the servant boy.

  “You stupid boy! The Head Eunuch himself has requested the finest care for the royal prisoner and you burn him like the ignorant peasant you are!”

  Ivan Postivich whirled around, forgetting his pain.

  “Prisoner?”

  Poppy straightened his spine, standing as tall as his stunted frame would allow.

  “You are a house prisoner,” Poppy said stiffly. “And you receive the hospitality of the Ottomans. Yet there are some who think your blood should have already mingled with that of the other traitors in the mud of the Hippodrome.”

  Ivan Postivich realized by the stiff shoulders and twitching mouth that Poppy had spoken on impulse and was distressed to have done so. The little man tightened his lips as if making a silent pledge not to speak again and turned away.

  The young servant, on the other hand, looked as though he had much more to say. Ivan Postivich could see his eyes glittering in the firelight. Still, he only nodded quickly to the giant, gathered up his towels and buckets and walked off into the darkness.

  When Dede Mustafa entered the audience chamber, Irena rushed to him and fell to her knees. She clasped his hand and kissed it and he pressed his finger against her forehead.

  “Rise, Bezm-i Alem,” he said softly. “You never have to kneel to anyone, and certainly not me.”

  “You saved Ahmed Kadir,” she whispered. “You put your own life in danger. And that of the Bektashi!”

  He helped her to her feet and gazed into her eyes.

  “We are already condemned,” he said. “The Sultan has banished us from the Ottoman kingdom, as we are considered accessories to the revolution, since we are affiliated with the Janissaries.”

  “Banished? Where will you go?”

  “Some suggest the northern provinces—Serbia or even the mountains of Albania—where we can practice our religion in peace.” He smiled wearily, still cradling her hands in his.

  Irena did not remember her father. Dede Mustafa’s presence challenged her to think of what it would have been like to have a father’s love. She wondered if her father would have been a peaceful man had he been allowed to live, and not murdered by the Ottomans while defending their farm.

  It is possible for men to love and honor peace, she thought. Esma Sultan is wrong.

  The Dede asked her about Ahmed Kadir and how he fared. He said that he was unable to speak now with the Greek doctor, as it risked Stephane Karatheodory’s life to be seen with a Bektashi.

  Irena told him about the illness returning to Esma Sultan and he shook his head. “She will not ever be rid of the ghosts that haunt her if she does not repent. Redemption is her only escape from the fevers and djinns that haunt her. She must beg Allah’s forgiveness.”

  He told her the Sufis were packing their wagons as quickly as possible. Were they to be seen in the city after Sunday, they would be killed by the Sultan’s Solaks.

  The order of Bektashi would travel at night, so as not to agitate those who lusted yet for the Janissaries’ blood.

  “They might take ours as a substitute,” he said. “Better we travel to the edges of the Ottoman frontier under the cover of darkness and navigate by the stars.”

  He gave her a blessing.

  “May Allah grant you peace and health,” he said turning towards the door. Then he called out, “And may your children have the same pure soul as their mother and seek peace and the love of humankind.”

  That was the last Irena saw of Dede Mustafa, although she would seek his intervention one more time before the Bektashi Sufis left Constantinople forever.

  Chapter 20

  As the giant’s body healed, drawing on the hard core of strength from a lifetime of work and training, each night of sleep faded into the next. That smooth succession was broken late one night when a scream somehow penetrated deep into the cavern, so terrifying in its desperation that Ivan Postivich’s eyes flew open. He frantically looked around, his heart pounding hard in his ears. He saw only the leaping flames of the torches, their tongues of light licking the rough walls. There was no human movement—and now no sound but the drip of the weeping water into the green pools.

  Again the scream came, a cry from the depths of a terrified soul. Then again and again.

  Postivich’s muscles tightened and he looked up to the ceiling. Algae and hanging mosses softened the rock face, where rivulets of water trickled towards the cistern’s pools.

  The scream came again and Postivich knew it was Esma Sultan.

  He called for water. The young boy who had bathed him days ago appeared and hurried to the edge of the pool with a hollow gourd that he filled and brought to the giant.

  Ivan Postivich stared at him and remembered their conversations. The boy spoke with a Slavic intonation that tortured the lilting syllables of Ottoman.

  “Two Serbs in the bowels of the earth,” said Postivich in his native tongue. “Surely Allah means this as a joke before I die!”

  The boy smiled. “I am honored to serve you, Ahmed Kadir.”

  The giant sipped, then drained the gourd. He motioned the boy close to him.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “It is weeks since the Janissaries’ revolt and slaughter.”

  The scream came again, from above, perhaps weaker now.

  “Weeks of sleep,” said the giant. “And I waken to that.”

  “The cries of Esma Sultan,” said the boy.

  “Has she cried out before this?”

  “Many nights. They say she has ‘lunacy,’ the moon has stolen her wits. The screams only cease when the Sultan’s eunuch brings her opium.”

  Ivan Postivich was silent for a long moment, until the scream came again, definitely weaker this time.

  “Perhaps it is not the moon’s pale light that has leached out her wit.”

  The boy widened his eyes and whispered, “It is said that the eunuch Emerald tempts her with men the way the animal keepers throw bloody meat to her pet tigers. He has tried everything to persuade her to take a lover.”

  Ivan Postivich ran his tongue over his cracked lips.

  “I am prisoner here, by Esma Sultan’s decree, am I not?”

  “You are a prisoner by the Head Eunuch Saffron’s mercy. Neither Princess nor Sultan knows of your fate. They both offer gold and jewels for news of you: one for your life and one for your death. It is rumored that when the demons leave her, the Head Eunuch will give Esma Sultan the great news of your recovery. Now he fears that in her delirious state, your name will spill from her lips, sealing your fate with her rage-possessed brother.”

  “I must get out of here.”

  “Were you to try to leave, it would mean both our deaths, Corbaci.”

  “There must be a way. Tell me everything you know about where we are and how I am guarded.”

  The boy, like Postivich, had been captured to serve the Ottomans, but his heart and soul remained faithful to his countryman. He could not help but dream of his homeland, of the cool mountains and sweet apples of the fall. The strange custom
s of the Muslims made his head swirl and his Turkish was slow and clumsy. The giant’s words in Serbo-Croatian were a delicious intoxicant to him, and he eagerly obeyed.

  The Solak emerged from the shadowed recesses of the cistern, carrying a tray. He blinked and rubbed his eyes still adjusting to the dark of the cavern.

  He approached his prisoner with a burning torch, examining the sleeping giant’s face for a flicker of his eye, or a waking yawn.

  The prisoner snored loudly.

  “Has the giant awakened at all, boy?”

  “Only long enough to call for a draught of boza, sir.”

  The Solak laughed and spat on the ground.

  “See what a drunkard your countryman is! All Serbs are brutes! He cannot even hold a child’s drink like boza. How he could inspire the bloodthirsty Janissaries, Allah curse their name, I cannot understand. We will wake him now and feed him like the weak-chinned baby he is.”

  The page drew in his breath as the Solak kicked the giant’s hip.

  “Wake, O great Ahmed Kadir!” the Solak shouted. “The cook sends your meal!”

  Ivan Postivich rubbed his eyes and turned his head to avoid the Solak’s sour breath. He pulled himself up to a sitting position, imitating a struggle against weakness and the torpor of too many days spent asleep.

  The Solak set the tray down and uncovered the plates. The scent of rosemary lamb and minted yoghurt filled the damp air.

  “Page! Serve the Corbaci!”

  “I find myself overcome with sleep, Solak,” said Postivich.

  With a snort of impatience, the Solak reached down to grab the janissary to set him upright. As his face neared the giant’s, Ivan Postivich’s eyes flew open and he wrestled the Solak to the ground, punching him hard in the face. An instant later, the Solak lay unconscious on the rock floor of the cistern.

  Postivich had torn a blanket into strips in preparation for this moment and they were tying the guard when they heard the scrape and creak of a door opening somewhere distant in the darkness.

  “They will see the Solak!” the page whispered. “I will be murdered for taking your side.”