The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (11 page)

7

PALADIN REDUX

Nearly two years had passed since the princess and the paladin graduated from the Harem School. By now they had mastered the stealth, the logistics, and the rules of their game. Most important, both had the nerve for this dangerous escapade, and the talent. On the little island of Kinali they found their ideal venue. And, surprisingly, between the two of them, they had been able to summon up enough patience to keep their fragile creation afloat through four
Bayrams,
plus a festival to mark the birth of a third son to Hürrem (a hunchback, true, but still a boy), and a celebration of Sultan Suleiman’s conquest of Budapest. Only six meetings, none longer than a few brief hours, but each long enough to fan the flame and keep it alive.

Since Danilo’s unfortunate lapse during his reading of the Sultan’s poem, he had managed to avoid any further black marks against his name in the Chief Eunuch’s Book of Pages. He had also made his father proud by learning and performing the ancient Hebrew ritual that earns a Jewish boy a place among Jewish men. And the day after the Sultan’s homecoming from Austria, he was to make his debut at the hippodrome as a member of the Sultan’s
gerit
team in the games dedicated to the current victory at Guns.

There had been times during the last two years that the tight bounds of a page’s life seemed to Danilo too high a price to pay for its rewards, times when he was tempted to give it up, cry, “Enough!” and retreat to the safety and comfort of his father’s house. But just when the rigid, cloistered routine seemed more than he could bear, along came Narcissus bearing a silk-wrapped summons to rescue him. Somehow the prospect of those nocturnal escapes, as well as their pleasure, managed to supply whatever mysterious glue holds lovers together. Only once since their first rendezvous at Kinali had the fragile idyll threatened to collapse.

It was on the eve of their third
Bayram
together as they were about to part. By unspoken agreement, they never said goodbye to each other. But this time, Danilo, overtaken by a sudden stab of misgiving, blurted out, “How do I know if I will ever see you again?”

Suddenly rigid in his arms, the princess glared at him. “We don’t know. That is how things are between us.”

What had he done to turn her so cold?

“You don’t understand. Let me explain. Have you never wondered why I am still an unmarried virgin at close to fifteen years old? A year and a half out of the Harem School and not a husband in sight?”

He had not. “But I have often wondered how you manage to commandeer your father’s caique,” he told her. “And how you get Narcissus to risk his life for you.”

“Narcissus is a separate matter,” she replied, brushing his question aside. “Only one person counts in my life. My grandmother. It is she who holds my happiness in her hands. In her name, anything can be done. She is the Valide Sultan. No one disobeys her orders or any orders given by her steward in her name.”

“Are you telling me she approves of” — he gestured around him — “us?”

“Of course not. But she wants me to stay at her side until she dies, which means that I will not marry as long as she lives. Which means I am free to do as I please . . . for now,” she said, leaning heavily on the now. “But my grandmother is not well. She gets weaker every day. One of these days, she will die.”

“And then?”

“I will be married off to some fat, old, toothless pasha or vizier. Have you ever thought of that?”

“Is there no way out?” he asked gently.

“None.”

After that flat, final word there seemed to be nothing more to say. But, in the silence that followed, a thought occurred to him. “What about me?” he asked.

“You? You will be fine. You will marry a pretty girl of your own faith and be happy with her. I am the one who will spend her nights in hell.”

“I didn’t mean what would happen to me. I meant me for a husband. I could marry you.”

“A man of no fortune or future and a Jew to boot? You marry an Ottoman princess? Ha!”

The laugh that accompanied this blunt assessment seemed so cold, so calculating, that he turned away from her.

“Now you mustn’t get sticky about it. You will make me cry and spoil everything.” Then, without warning, she leaned close, took his face in her hands, and looking deep into his eyes continued with a tenderness he had never seen in her before. “What we have is a miracle. Somehow the gods were looking the other way and let it happen. But it wasn’t meant to be and it can’t last. You once told me that we inhabited the same world. And yes, here in Kinali, we do. But out there” — she gestured toward the towering landscape of the city behind them — “out there, we do not. You come from a place where anything is possible. I belong to a world where everything is foreordained. My faith tells me that I have a destiny to fulfill and it has given me the strength to perform my duty. I will marry and you will go back to Europe where you belong. For us, there is no tomorrow. That is our fate. But I will die knowing that at least I have had a taste of true love. That is all there is for me. And, if my grandmother lives on, maybe a tomorrow or two. So let us enjoy it.

“Think of me.” She pressed his hands in hers urgently. “I am the one who is going to marry some smelly old reprobate and bear his children.”

“I don’t like to think about it,” he admitted.

“Nor do I,” she said. “So let us not. Let us never mention the future again. Let us not even allow it into our dreams. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Promise on your honor?”

“I promise.”

Since then, two
Bayrams
came and went, and their vow had been honored scrupulously. The moment that the Sultan’s sleek black caique bearing the Sultan’s
tugra
pulled up on the silver sands of Kinali, time stopped. And only when the craft returned to collect him did the clock start to tick again.

By now, Zerbino and Isabella had left center stage. Danilo and Saida didn’t talk much but, when they did, they spoke as themselves, in their own voices, telling each other tales of things that had happened to them in their younger years. They rarely talked about events in the present. Somehow, the present edged too close to the future.

Most of the time, they rolled around in the leaves exchanging passionate kisses. Sometimes they played the games of childhood. Perhaps because she was younger, Saida cherished a fancy for tag and blind man’s bluff, flitting from tree to tree like a naughty nymph while Danilo staggered around blindfolded trying to catch her. He could never understand how someone so silly could muster such a resolute will. Still, a part of him loved her fancies and her contradictions and her dress-ups.

What will it be this time?
he wondered as he waited on the rock ledge for his transport to Kinali. The last time they were together, on the eve of the
Bayram
of Sweets, she had greeted him with a bowl of iced sherbet that she swore she had made with her own hands. The time before that, she had brought along a mysterious dream powder for them to sniff that made him sleepy all the next day. It certainly made for a sweet
Bayram,
but with his
gerit
debut only a day away, it wouldn’t do for tonight. Definitely, he thought, if she turned up with some new potion, he must regretfully decline.

But when he reached the little green glade, she was not there. Instead, he was met at the rusty gate by a lone horse tethered to the iron railing, switching its tail and nibbling contentedly on the vines twined around the gateway.

An avid reader of Fuyuzi’s
Book of Equines
, he could not resist the urge to give the animal a quick appraisal — teeth, nose, withers, haunches — at which point he was interrupted by the familiar lilting voice.

“Is that my paladin come to rescue me?”

He pushed through the gate into the moonlit mosque and there she was, not reclining but sitting upright, a far cry from the harem odalisque who had first appeared at Kinali with kohl-blackened eyes swathed in diaphanous scarves. This girl, gotten up as a horse trader in a fringed leather vest and a pair of pointy, studded riding boots.

“What do you think of my horse?” she inquired, narrowing her eyes in the manner of a wily bargainer. “How much would you give me for him?”

“How much are you asking?” he drawled, trying to make his eyes even shiftier than hers. He knew she could never sell the horse even if she wanted to. Everything she owned belonged ultimately to her father.

“I might take nineteen hundred,” she teased.

“That’s robbery. His teeth are black. His ears are too close together. He’s long-waisted, his n\ose is too big and his back has a curve in it.” Danilo had learned a thing or two from Fuyuzi.

“It doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “I’ve changed my mind about selling him.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m fond of him. I’ve named him after your father.”

“You what?”

“He’s the best horse I ever had so I named him after your father.”

“You named him Judah?”

“Not the doctor. Your blood father, Lord Birro, the knight beyond fear or reproach. I did it for you.” He was not as pleased as she expected he would be. “We Ottomans are not too proud to name our horses after the people we love,” she advised him haughtily.

He smiled, amused at her prickly pride. “Don’t try to use that ‘we Ottomans’ line on me, Princess. You forget, I know that you are more like half-Mongol, half-Turkoman on your father’s side and your mother was a Seljuk.”

“A Seljuk princess,” she corrected him.

“And my blood father is indeed a Christian knight. But,” he corrected her, “his name is not Birro. It is Pirro. Lord Pirro Gonzaga.”

“Well, it’s too late to change the horse’s name now,” she told him, tossing the subject aside with a wave of the hand. “He’s registered at the stud.”

That settled that point. “But where did you tell your father you got that name?” he asked.

“I told him Birro was an Egyptian warrior at the time of Ramses the Second.”

“And he believed it?”

“My father knows nothing about ancient Egypt,” she sniffed.

He shook his head, overcome by the combination of her duplicity and her candor. “Do me a good turn, will you, Princess? If you ever stop being my friend, let me know. Because I wouldn’t have a chance against you as an enemy.”

The very word wiped the mischief off her face. Her eyes widened. Her tone softened. “But I could never be your enemy. You are the love of my life.” She said this quietly, without touching him and yet with a piercing gaze that fixed the words in his heart more securely than an embrace.

These times on Kinali had a strange quality. Short though they were — a few hours at best — there was no haste about them, no pressure to snatch at each moment as if it might be their last. They simply took up where they had left off months before as if only days or hours had gone by; as if theirs was one long, unbroken courtship; as if each kiss, each touch only reached farther into their hearts to reveal a new depth of passion. And, when time crept up on them, no matter how many hours they had managed to steal, it always seemed as if hardly a moment had passed.

A shrill signal from the Kinali shore announced the arrival of the Sultan’s caique. Their time was up.

Still, she did not release him from her gaze but put her hands on his shoulders to draw them closer together. “I would give all my treasure to see you ride at the hippodrome,” she told him. “But since I cannot, this will watch over you in my stead and keep you from harm.” In one swift move, she looped a chain around his neck and dropped something small and cold on his chest. Then she was gone, and he was left to make his way to the waiting caique
that would ferry him back to the Grand Vizier’s dock.

All the way home he was conscious of the disk pressing against his naked chest but something in him resisted taking it out and looking at it. Not until he was in bed in his dormitory did he finally reach under his quilt and hold it up to the light. It was a deep blue eyeball embedded in a white orb — the traditional talisman against evil that hung in every Turkish household. But, unlike those common amulets, this one had a clear, bright blue sapphire gem mounted at its center.

As he peered into the crystalline depths of the jewel, thoughts of the future invaded his mind
. How long can I have her? How long before we get caught? You promised,
he reminded himself,
never to think of the future. Not even in dreams. If you must dream
, he told himself,
dream of the
gerit.
The
gerit
. . . Bucephalus
. . .

Now, for the first time in this long night, he remembered that, in his haste to obey Narcissus’s summons, he had failed to make his nightly visit to the stables.Tossing aside his covers, he threw on a cloak and made his way in the dawning light to the Sultan’s stables in the Second Court. To be sure, Bucephalus was awake, waiting patiently for his master’s good-night caress.

“You waited up for me. You are a good old horse.” He took the horse’s majestic head in his hands and looked into the soft, sleepy eyes. “The truth is, once I got her note, I lost my senses. That’s how it is with women. They’re not like we are. They beguile you.”