The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire (11 page)

Ivan Postivich could not help himself. He raised his head and stared at her, his insolence betraying him. His eyes flashed wide in astonishment and anger.

“Why me?” his spread hand flew to his breast, indicating his insignificance. “I am only a guard to your Royal Highness, no holy man am I! I am soldier, a man of horses, swords, and battle. Could you not speak to your attendants? The Head Eunuch Saffron who serves you night and day? This trusted servant who wrings her hands in worry over your health?” he said, gesturing to the red-haired woman. “Surely you will find more willing and sympathetic ears than mine!”

“No. These are stories they will not understand. I need someone to hear who can—judge me. A stranger who can hear and cannot, even if he tries, deceive himself and thus deceive me. You, Ahmed Kadir, do not like me. I know this. Everyone who surrounds me is subservient to me. They will listen to my story and proclaim my innocence, because they cannot imagine otherwise. And I will die by their deception, for they will not hear and know the truth.

“You, janissary, have learned to hate me because of the work I cause you to do. Some day, I will have to answer to Allah for the acts of my life. I think you will serve very well in the meantime, schooled in your own pagan beliefs and our true Islamic faith. Perhaps if I speak, the
efrit
s that haunt me will leave me in peace.”

Ivan Postivich looked over at the fountain and listened to the rhythmic splash of water.

“You forget, Sultane, that I, too, have blood on my hands—a stain that all the water of the Black Sea cannot wash clean. How can I be your confessor when I have carried out the murders of innocent men? It is by my very hand each of them has died.”

“That is why it is you who must listen. Allah sees all. You have seen only the worst—men sinking to the bottom of the Bosphorus. But you have not known my life. I was once an innocent child—you must know that.”

“I will listen,” agreed the janissary. “But as Allah is my witness, you will murder me in the end for the hatred I feel.”

“I will not touch you, Janissary Kadir. You shall be under my personal protection as long as you remain in my guard. No matter what you decide, your life is secure. I promise you this much. I ask you only to listen, you need not comment.

“If you do not consent, I will speak to my brother who indulges me more than any wife, and he will have your head impaled upon my garden wall for insolence. But if you listen, and listen with your heart and soul, I will grant you freedom from my palace guard to return to the Janissary Corps and the war campaigns that you thirst for.”

She smiled languidly and said, “I have my spies, even among the fishmongers, prostitutes, and chestnut vendors. Even midnight’s mantle cannot hide your wanderings—you are known as the ‘dog warrior’ who invades the neighborhoods of Galata, raging for a fight. The Pasha Efendi judged you well—you shall return to the war campaigns of the Ottoman Empire if you grant me these nights to listen to my story. You know nothing of me, nothing of my life. You must know everything if you are to understand me.”

Ivan Postivich could think of nothing more repugnant than to hear the Princess’s tales, but to refuse her would be suicide. In response he only nodded, his jaw clenched.

“When I close my eyes, I see blood. Red. A dark flowing crimson. Ottoman blood. I see my dearest cousin, Sultan Selim, butchered at the hands of Janissaries like you. His mouth is agape, his tongue is stuck to the skin at the corner of his mouth, drying there like parchment. Dirt and leaves cling to his face, sticky with blood, and I know the Janissaries will return to claim his head and impale it. But now they scour the Topkapi for my youngest brother, Mahmud.

“I know that it is my half brother Mustafa who has caused this, or more likely, his mother, Ayse, who thirsts for power.

“I stand over Selim’s mutilated body and wipe the leaves and dirt from his mouth. I try to tuck the tongue behind his teeth again, for his expression is not becoming an Ottoman Sultan. But he will not submit and the tongue lolls back out like a panting dog.

“The rebel Janissaries and my half brother Mustafa will leave me in peace, I know this. An Ottoman princess, barely past puberty, is not a threat to power and I am only a curiosity. Because of my birthright, I am untouchable. It’s my male relatives they seek.

“Mustafa will surely drown most of the wives and concubines to rinse the seed of my cousin from their wombs forever. How he can ever face me or the other women of the harem again is something I cannot fathom.

“They have murdered my cousin! He was the most gentle of the Sultans, preferring music and poetry to warfare. It was precisely these gifts that marked him as vulnerable.

“In the harem we had long heard the rumors, long sensed the unrest. We might not have our freedom, but we had our eyes and our ears. And our spies. We knew the Janissaries were angry with Sultan Selim because he looked to the armies of the West for inspiration and knowledge. And we knew to fear the sullen power and murderous nature of the soldiers.”

Postivich met her gaze, but did not let even a flicker of a response reveal his feelings.

“We knew that Mustafa would seize on that savage unhappiness to incite revolt. And we knew it was not really Mustafa. Not slow-witted Mustafa at the heart of plot, but his mother, Ayse, who dreamt of becoming Valide Sultan once her son ascended the throne.

“I hid and spied on the day that fifty thousand Janissaries stood in the courtyards of the palace, immobile as stone, waiting for their pay. And when it was late, their silence turned to anger and they returned to their barracks, their hearts full of murder.

“My cousin Selim refused to hear the din of mutiny as the Janissaries kicked over their copper pilaf caldrons and beat them with sticks. But the women of Selim’s harem knew what would come. They knew too well that their fate was tied to the Sultan’s. Their knees were worn raw from praying to Allah; their voices rasped through the night beseeching help from heaven.

“When the rampage began and death finally came, I alone would touch the Sultan’s body. His harem women wept and trembled in fear of the djinns of death and they dared not go near the corpse. Instead, they huddled in the far
reaches of the Serail, terrified of the death that they could not have escaped no matter what they did.

“But I knew I would survive. I had seen barbarous acts and I would live through them while others suffered and died.

“I was born an Ottoman princess.

“Turkish blue is my favorite color, the fierce color of the sky, the color of freedom. My young eyes would seek a world beyond the gates of the Serail, my cheek flattened against the perforations of the grille, to see a slice of the heavens beyond our small world. That patch of sky was a precious jewel, but my mother or our eunuch would snap the jewelry case shut as soon as I began to reach for it.

“ ‘Esma Sultan! You must dress for your music lesson.’ I can see my mother giving a withering look at the eunuch Jonquil as she brushed past him to the entrance of the harem. Despite the elaborate screen that blocked the passage, I had trespassed too close to the outside world. ‘Come here at once. A man might see you as he passes the courtyard to have audience with the Sultan. There will be a scandal.’

“I lived, of course, with my mother, whose shadow was as far reaching as the tallest plane tree of the courtyard. From my birth, I had the honor of being Sultane, daughter of the Sultan, and with my passage through my mother’s loins I immediately outranked her—because Ottoman blood ran through my veins. She would never forgive me. Had I been a son, I would have moved her closer to the throne with the possibility of being queen mother or Valide. But her labor pains counted for nothing—for I was born female.

“Some mothers counted girls as a blessing, knowing that they were much less likely to be murdered in the struggle for the throne. My mother considered me a bawling insult to her status.

“The music lessons, I thought, were part of her revenge. The violin and I were never well matched and I cursed it as a bedeviled invention of the West, brought to us by the infidels. My fingers were clumsy, the strings bit my soft fingertips and made them bleed. Still I was made to learn—to the great frustration of the maestro—because every member of the Imperial family was obliged to master an instrument.

“ ‘Why must I torture my hands with this wretched instrument?’ I cried. ‘I am not musical—even my father proclaimed this when he heard me at the recital.’

“ ‘You are lucky your honorable father saw humor in your performance and not the obvious shame you brought his honor,’ my mother replied. ‘If you repeat that incompetence, he will find his own daughter disgraceful to the Serail and to his name.’

“My mother threw back her long chestnut hair in disdain; it was the hair that had bewitched a Sultan. My own hair was much darker than hers, though not without the same glints of red. My mother had the beauty of a goddess, even now as she aged—approaching thirty. The Sultan still called for her, despite his two hundred other women.

“I continued to be a disappointment to her. ‘You are suited neither for music nor for feminine pursuits. Your father will see this and you will be married off to some old deaf pasha who cannot hear your torturous music or see your pitiful needlework.’

“She scowled at me as if I could not possibly be her daughter.

“ ‘The other wives and consorts laugh at you.’

“ ‘Let them. I don’t care that they do.’

“ ‘No, my daughter. When they laugh at you, they are mocking me. You are my handiwork, embroidery by my own hand. I will not let you fail me.’

“With that she made an angry gesture to shoo me back into the recesses of the harem, to our apartments where I would change into my tutorial clothes: my cloak and a
yasmak
, the translucent veil.

“Jonquil escorted me to the music room where he would remain while I played my instrument. I removed my yasmak while the tutor bowed his head. The maestro was under the eunuch’s strict scrutiny as he corrected my finger position and lifted my chin.

“ ‘You must feel the music, Sultane. It is in our Turkish souls—your brother, Prince Mahmud, can play magnificently, tempting the very birds to fly nearer and light to listen. You must not treat the instrument as if it were a mere piece of wood. It has a soul that can be touched by a skilled hand.’

“He was right, of course. I think now that I should try playing again, after all these years. I think I understand what he meant much better now than I did standing in that music room, taking pleasure in the pain on his wrinkled face as he endured my earsplitting notes.

“I did understand vaguely what he meant of ‘soul.’ At least I did when I heard my own brother play in the harem. His music filled the corridors with the strains of heaven.

“Perhaps it was because he had seen his own mother, Nakshidil, die of a broken heart. He had a new mother now—foreign born, French-tongued, assigned the same name as the woman who had died. She nurtured him now, and saw that he understood the passion of music. She attended my lessons quite often and encouraged my study, as disappointing as I was.

“One night, after a concert in the harem, my little brother found me sulking on a cushion in the corner of the great hall. He sat next to me, under the watchful eye of my mother and Nakshidil, and lifted my chin.

“ ‘Esma, why are you so sad tonight? Didn’t you enjoy the music? I played the violin expressly for you—I thought you’d recognize my voice in the melody of the notes.’

“I smiled and touched his hand, as it lingered on my face. He was several years my junior and loved me like a goddess.

“ ‘My dear brother, I thought I heard your whisper in the music. But the sweet sound only made me sad. I realize that I will never, ever play the violin the way you do. You caress the strings as if they were—’

“Here I stopped, lowered my head and blushed. Mahmud looked up at his beloved stepmother, who was hurrying towards us.

“ ‘Your blush brings our mothers rushing to separate us,’ sighed my brother, though I could tell he was pleased that he had caused the color to rise in my face. ‘You have forfeited our few remaining minutes together but I gladly trade them to see the red blood stir in your veins.’