The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (13 page)

Mind you, Narcissus had not decked himself out in his best finery today out of vanity. His costume was a stratagem. If by chance he should be stopped by one of the Third Court vigilantes and called to account for his presence in that oh-so-private enclave, the gold-embroidered caftan might be his best protection against harassment. The relationship between the white eunuchs of the palace and the black eunuchs of the harem was touchy at best.

The white slaves felt superior because the Sultan had chosen them to watch over his person. The blacks claimed higher status because the Sultan had chosen them to watch over his most prized possessions — his women. An expensive caftan that marked the wearer as a highly placed personage in the harem would put him several moves ahead in any confrontation that might develop with the Sultan’s Janissary guards. So it was not as an adornment but rather as a piece of interpersonal armor that Narcissus had donned his priceless caftan today.

When he dropped safely to earth inside the grounds, the way was quite clear for him to advance directly to his destination, the School for Pages, a structure built up against the Gate of Felicity. The Sultan took a deep, personal interest in his pages. Like his treasure, his doctor, and his holy relics, he liked to keep them close at hand. Hence the presence of the School for Pages, the Treasury, the Doctor’s House, the Pavilion of the Blessed Mantle, all within calling distance of his
selamlik
in the Third Court.

A quick glance at one of the sundials that decorated the grounds told Narcissus he was on schedule. Excellent. The Sultan’s
gerit
team practiced hurling in the athletic field behind their dormitory every day before the last prayer. “You are sure to find Danilo del Medigo there if you don’t dawdle on the way,” he was told before leaving the harem. And indeed, when Narcissus rounded the corner, there stood before him a row of twelve handsome young men lined up facing a battery of dummies, each page bearing a long pole with a sharp point — the Turkish lance known as the
gerit.
Among them, Danilo del Medigo was easily identified by his mop of yellow hair, which stood out in stark contrast to the dark locks of his teammates.

In
gerit
training, hurling was practiced separately from horsemanship. When the team competed in a true
gerit
contest, the players were mounted on fine horses and hurled their
gerits
at flesh and blood adversaries while in full gallop. Even here on the practice field, advancing on a cadre of straw-filled opponents, they were an impressive bunch — tall, muscled, each one with a finely chiseled physiognomy. Candidates for the Sultan’s School for Pages in Topkapi Palace were carefully screened for the slightest imperfection. Suleiman took seriously the Koranic precept that outer beauty was what Allah bestowed on inner virtue.

On command, the players rushed forward in a row, weapons poised. When the Master of the Gerit deemed that they had reached the ideal range, he shot a volley with a pistol and in tandem they hurled their weapons at the dummies facing them with all the force they could muster. A veritable rain of
gerits
poured down on the dummy targets. Each tip was stained with a different color of dye to mark precisely which part of his target the marksman hit. Points were allotted by the Master: five for the heart, four for the skull, and so on. Then the whole drill began again. Almost never did a hurler fail to hit the target altogether. These were, after all, members of the Sultan’s own
gerit
team.

Narcissus managed to edge quite close to the practice field without attracting notice. And when the Master of the Gerit called for a water break, the eunuch quite naturally approached the blond page, del Medigo, with an offering of spring water he had poured from a spigot for the purpose. (A fresh supply of spring water was brought down from Mount Ulu to the practice field every afternoon. Nothing was too good for the members of the Sultan’s
gerit
team.)

The eunuch’s task was well begun. Contact had been made. Now he could allow himself the indulgence of enjoying the pleasures of the scene, not least the balletic grace of the hurlers. But when the practice ended, he was once again all business. Edging forward as the team of beautiful young men trooped off the field to wash up in the
hamam
, Narcissus placed himself unobtrusively but visibly close to the edge of the path, the very spot where Danilo del Medigo stopped to investigate a stone in his boot. As the blond page took off the boot and shook it, a roll of papyrus was thrust into his hands and stripped from his hands into his boot in a single fluid motion. Not a word was exchanged.

Moments later, in the
hamam
, Danilo del Medigo was trading jokes with his teammates while they were being pummeled by the masseur and scrubbed and scraped in hot water and cold by the scalpers, those experts with the sharpened mussel shell from which no vagrant hair escaped. He even stayed behind to have his nails pared since he was in no hurry. He had already made apologies for not accompanying his teammates on their quasi-illegal outing beyond the walls that evening. Were it not for his proven prowess with the
gerit
, young del Medigo’s reluctance to carouse with his teammates on their free days might well have subjected him to a brutal hazing. But the boy was, after all, the youngest member of the team, and his fellow pages made allowances for his reluctance, assuring each other that next year he would be out drinking and whoring with them like a man. For now, all he had to suffer was a little mild teasing before they bundled themselves off to the fleshpots of Galata via the Eunuch’s Path and left him free to investigate the contents of his boot.

Inside he found a single sheet of paper that looked as if it had been torn out of a book. When he broke the wax seal that held it together, out tumbled a fresh red rosebud anchored in a single stick of cinnamon. He smiled broadly and tucked the little tokens into his girdle, then turned his attention to the paper in which they were wrapped.

Unfolded, it revealed a sketchy landscape in red chalk featuring a black caique
of the sort that plied the waters of the Bosphorus. The sleek craft was tethered to a small dock. The sky above was empty except for a perfect half-moon hanging low in the west sky, which cast a shower of moon rays onto a small banner flying from the prow of the caique
emblazoned with a single word:
Tonight.
The message that Narcissus was sent to deliver had been deciphered and perfectly understood.

9

FORTUNE FAVORS
THE BOLD

In the staging area at Üsküdar, the advance units of Suleiman’s returning army were preparing the city of tents that was erected wherever he spent the night on campaign, be it for a month, a week, or a day. Fully assembled, his private quarters in the field became a replica of his
selamlik
at Topkapi Palace. There was a sleeping tent, a bathing tent, an audience tent, a wardrobe tent, a cooking tent, his doctor’s tent, and the vast portable shed that enclosed his treasury. When the Sultan traveled, all the gold he owned traveled with him.

On campaign, his governing council, the
divan
, had continued to meet four times a week as it did at Topkapi, assembling in a huge meeting tent capacious enough to accommodate its entire membership — viziers, judges, and men of religion, the
Ulema
. The sleeping tents for his councillors and their attendants clustered around their portable council chamber, setting this distinguished group off from the tents that housed the hundreds of servants, clerks, and pages who together enabled the Sultan’s private quarters to function in their accustomed way as both a residence and the seat of imperial power.

The campaign caravan also included a bazaar that was set up each time the march came to a halt — stall after stall of merchants and tailors and shoemakers and blacksmiths and their camp followers, all of whom had to be tented and fed. Plus the many portable mosques required to accommodate the spiritual needs of this vast population, together with their attendants. And we have not yet begun to consider the actual fighting force — the Ottoman army proper — with all of its branches and auxiliaries. No wonder that, fully mustered, Suleiman’s army on the march numbered upwards of three hundred thousand souls. And animals too numerous to count.

This, then, was the small city that was assembling on the banks of the Bosphorus the eve of October 23, for a single night only.

Why bother to unpack and repack this vast encampment for only one night? Why not disperse the various units into the city once they reached the Bosphorus and save time, trouble, and expense? Because Suleiman the Magnificent was no mere general or head of state returning home from the wars. He was also the King of Kings, the Unique Arbiter of the World’s Destinies, Padishah, Sovereign of East and West, Master of Two Continents and Three Seas, Caliph of the World, Defender of Islam, the Shadow of God on Earth, and on a less-exalted plane absolute ruler of the largest empire the world had ever seen. Such a man must enter his capital like a god descending from heaven.

By sunset, when the Sultan and his entourage galloped into Üsküdar, the waters of the Bosphorus were already churned up from the barges bearing all the paraphernalia needed for the next day’s victory parade — huge boxes of banners and shiny medallions, trunks full of saddles and bridles, complete sets of polished musical instruments already tuned, hundreds of parade horses to replace the dusty cavalry of war. Even now, a fresh crop of equestrian mounts was waiting to be caparisoned in their gold-edged, gem-studded parade blankets. One entire barge had already crossed the Bosphorus loaded with barrels of scented rose petals to be scattered from the rooftops, Roman style. Overnight the ragged, battle-scarred force that had arrived from Austria would be transformed into a fantasy cortege out of Caesar’s Gallic wars.

Amid this furious activity, the Sultan was quietly enjoying a hot bath before he retired for the night behind his gold-embroidered tent flap. The rigors of tomorrow’s long, slow ride through the streets of his capital demanded that he be well-rested.

Meanwhile, across the water in the city, the air resounded with the clatter of hammers and the grunts and groans of workmen. A thousand torches lit their labors. With only a night and a morning to prepare, the palace Janissaries were already climbing poles all over town to string up victory banners. Palace launderers had been pulled from their tubs, guards from their gates, and armorers from their forges to construct kiosks on stilts at every main intersection. From these platforms, an avalanche of coins and sweetmeats would rain down on tomorrow’s crowds.

At the hippodrome, a hundred palace gardeners, who normally practice their carpentry skills constructing delicate trellises and airy pergolas, were throwing together row upon row of temporary stands for the games and circuses that would enliven the week-long celebration. And this entire makeshift workforce would stay at their task throughout the night if necessary to transform the capital into a Roman carnival. The Ottomans were experienced looters. They had appropriated their poetry from the Persians and their protocol from the Byzantines. To master the art of celebrating great occasions, they sought mentors even farther afield and studied the world’s greatest crowd-pleasers, the Romans, who taught them that bread and circuses went a long way toward filling empty stomachs and empty purses that had been drained by war.

In contrast with the city streets, life behind the walls of Topkapi Palace remained untouched by this tumult. In the First and Second Courts tranquility prevailed. And in the Third Court total silence reigned as always. Not yet back in residence, the Padishah was already enforcing his will from the staging area across the water.

Suleiman valued silence. He was the sultan who introduced the teaching of sign language to his servants so as to limit the number of words they would need to utter aloud. Whoever walked in his
selamlik
walked shoeless. The tap of heels on the cobblestones irritated the Padishah. Even the corps who guarded this most private domain walked their patrols barefoot. They knew by sight every one of the Sultan’s attendants and every soul who had regular business in the Third Court. And God help anyone who wandered into these precincts accidentally.

Of course, Danilo del Medigo ran no such risk as he made his way from his dormitory in the School for Pages to the Doctor’s House. His father, Judah del Medigo, was one of the small number of attendants the Sultan held close. On the first day of his service as Suleiman’s Chief Body Physician, the doctor was given this house in the Third Court of Topkapi Palace to use as both his residence and his pharmacy. (Perhaps “loaned” would be a better word than “given,” since any gift from the Sultan to a retainer or slave was presumed ultimately to belong to the Sultanate and must be returned on the death of the recipient.) But as long as Judah continued to be the Sultan’s Chief Body Physician, the Doctor’s House remained his son’s home.