The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (48 page)

We kept on digging even after the grunting ceased and we couldn’t hear any breathing noises. Without being told, we somehow understood that seconds were important. I know that all of us were praying while we dug. And, as if in answer, a face came into view. It was the face of Selim, the youngest of the pages, who must have headed out into the night for the latrine, his need stronger than his fear. He was unconscious and did not appear to be breathing.

Behind me, Ahmed Pasha shouldered aside the diggers who had now stopped digging and were staring at the bluish face, transfixed. Ahmed was barely recovered from his seizure, but he managed to jump in beside Selim’s lifeless body and scoop his fingers into the boy’s mouth to clear it of snow. Whereupon, miraculously, with a weak cough, Selim sputtered back to life.

It must have been the cheer that echoed up and down the valley that drew the attention of the Sultan, who appeared just in time to see Selim open his eyes.

“My compliments, Chief Interpreter.” The Sultan swept his caftan over the snow in a rare gesture of respect for another human being. “If this boy had been buried many minutes longer, he would surely have died.” Then, turning, he bowed to us. “To all of you, my congratulations. By saving your colleague, you have bested the avalanche.”

The Sultan’s tone was even, his voice strong. From that moment we knew that we were destined to wrestle ourselves free from the jaws of the monster, no matter what else it had in store for us.

A troop of Janissaries was dispatched to dig a path the length of the encampment, which they accomplished with amazing speed. (Never again will I make fun of those little spades they dangle at their waists.) By noon the line of march was in touch with itself, and reports were beginning to come to the Sultan from both the head of the line and the rear. The snow had inflicted its damage in a wanton — godlike, you might say — manner, burying the food supplies but sparing the hospital tent and the pigeon coops and the treasury. (Was I the only page who thought of King Midas starving to death because everything he touched turned to gold?)

By the end of the day, the Sultan’s fatwa
was being passed on up and down the valley reassuring all that, although our food wagons were lost, we were not condemned to death by starvation. We were in real need of only three things, said the fatwa: food, water, and warmth. For water, Allah had provided us with an unlimited supply of snow to melt, for which we must offer a prayer of thanks. Allah had already split loads of broken trees to be gathered for firewood, the fatwa
continued. And tomorrow, with Allah’s help, the Sultan promised us food.

“Look up at the side of the mountain, through the break in the cornice,” he ordered us.

All we could see was a forest of shattered trees. Then one of the pages spoke. “The forest is destroyed, sire.”

“Correct. However, it remains the home of birds. And where there are birds there are gazelles, ibexes, and certainly wild pigs for us to eat. All we have to do is hunt them down.”

“But how do we get up there, sire?” another of the pages asked.

“We climb up on the backs of the horses we have left. I will lead the way. I need not remind you that the Osman tribe has been on intimate terms with the horse and saddle for many generations. Long ago my ancestors survived the steppes of central Asia by their hunting skills. And, to this very day, the Ottomans are known to be the finest horsemen in the world.”

“Hear, hear!” echoed through the valley.

“In happier times,” he went on, “we hunted for sport. Now we will hunt for food, the stuff of life itself. Tomorrow at dawn,
inshallah
.” He lowered his head in reverence. “I will lead you up the side of the mountain to conduct the greatest hunt in history. And I have complete confidence that we will succeed because I am accompanied by a group of hunters renowned in the world.”

The shouting and stamping that followed reverberated against the walls of the pass, giving his words the air of an ancient prophecy. And for the next hour, cheering echoed through the valley each time the fatwa
was read out to a section of our bedraggled force.

What the Sultan did not disclose — and what we in the Sultan’s entourage learned only by whispers as the day went by — was that, at the end of the valley, the Janissaries had encountered a wall of snow as high as a small mountain that sealed us off from rescue more effectively than any Persian general could have. Furthermore, the depth and heft of the barrier were far beyond the reach of spades and shovels. Dynamite was needed. And we learned soon enough that, by a twist of fate, our supply of gunpowder had been sent ahead with the Grand Vizier to prepare for the siege of Baghdad. Was it possible that the great army of the Gunpowder Empire would perish in the Zagros passes for lack of explosives to blast its way out? That was the bitter jest that circulated among the pages as we prepared for the grand hunt the following day. Yes, Papa, the Sultan had sent a runner to remind me that, on account of my recent service to him, I was now an invited member of his personal hunting party.

Did I have my weapon with me, he wanted to know. I was able to answer, yes, I did. You know me, Papa. I had slept with my
gerit
at my side all through the campaign, even during the avalanche. And I was ready to use it. More to come.

Love,

D.

Enclosed, the letter I wrote to you while we were bottled up in the Manisht Pass.

46

THE HUNT

From: Danilo del Medigo, snowbound in the Manisht Pass

To: Judah del Medigo at Topkapi Palace

Date: November 12, 1534

Dear Papa:

Even though our regular courier service has not resumed, the Sultan’s pigeon post may have already brought news to the capital of the big hunt in the Zagros Mountains. But I suspect that there is a part of the story you will never hear as long as Ibrahim the Greek is forwarding the reports. Besides, who knows? I may have forgotten how it went by the time we are freed from this frozen hellhole.

Note that I have written, “by the time we are freed,” not “if we are freed.” For I have no doubt we will be rescued as soon as the Grand Vizier gets news of our entrapment and sends a party of sappers to blast us out. But for now we are still imprisoned by a wall of snow, and as yet there is no sign that anyone is aware of our predicament. You see, the couriers and their horses are boxed in here with us. So our only contact with the rest of the world depends on the carrier pigeons that the Sultan always insists on bringing along just as his ancestors did. Clever Sultan. Clever ancestors. Ahmed Pasha says these birds travel eighty miles in four hours, about three times faster than our couriers. Clever pigeons.

Some of the pages — more than a few — fear that a second avalanche may engulf us, set off by the noises we make in the forest with our muskets while we hunt for food. As if a burst of gunfire could unleash a snowslide. Some people will believe anything.

What I did find slightly alarming is that this morning the Sultan issued each of us an oilskin envelope into which anyone who wished to do so could insert his last will and testament, to be strapped on his person. I need not dwell on what this gesture implies. But I assure you, Papa, I do not intend to be found frozen to death with my last will and testament stuck to my chest. Besides, I have nothing to leave behind except an eyewitness account of this accursed campaign, so why not write about it? I urge you to keep these scribblings of mine in a safe place for the children that I know I will someday produce. But if by some chance we do not get out of here safely, please make sure that my horse, Bucephalus, is treated well and not put down until his natural lifespan has been lived out. That is my testament.

You know as well as anyone how much it meant to me to be included in the Sultan’s hunting party. I found myself whistling as I set about my preparations. But while I was sharpening my
gerit
,
my mind was invaded by a vision, not a dream but like a dream. I was on my horse, moving through a forest knee-deep in leaves, nothing stirring. Then came a rustling in the brush and a brutish head thrust through the branches. It was a wild boar coming at me head-on, and I was paralyzed with fear because I had no idea how to kill it.

You know me, Papa. I am not a pretending sort of person. When I come face to face with new text, I know perfectly well that, given my inadequate scholarly skills and in spite of your efforts and Mama’s to educate me, it will be difficult for me to decipher the meaning. On the other hand, I also know that, when I line up at the shooting range, I am the best marksman in my
oda
. But, faced with the snorting, snarling creature in my vision, I was suddenly aware that I knew nothing about hunting, and even less about hunting pigs. Cavorting in the riding ring or even in the hippodrome while the crowd cheers on is a far cry from hunting wild animals in the forest. Until now, all my training in horsemanship has been for tilting and racing against other riders in places with fences around them. And there are rules. But in the forest there are no fences. Or rules. Even if there were, I had no time to learn them and no one to teach me. I could hardly wake up Ahmed in the middle of the night and beg him to teach me how to kill a wild pig in a dense forest before morning.

For a moment, I thought of avoiding the hunt by feigning a fever. But I am such a bad liar that I was bound to be found out and disgraced. All I really needed was a quick lesson in pig-
sticking. A few good tips like, what is the best moment for the thrust, what part of the body to aim at, how close you have to get — some things I know in my bones about
gerit
tilting but which may not apply to pig-sticking. Yet for the lack of them I could end up not only disgraced but dead.

Then it came to me. There in the tent in the middle of the night I heard my mother’s voice reciting, in unison with me, the portion of
The Odyssey
where Odysseus comes back to Ithaca after an eleven-year absence and can’t get his wife to recognize him. She asks for proof that this ragged, grizzled old man could possibly be the handsome, heroic husband she sent off to Troy a decade earlier.

Odysseus turns to his old nurse and reveals a scar on his leg from a wound he received in a boar hunt when he was a boy.

“Oh yes!” she says as she caresses the scar. “
You are Odysseus!
Ah, dear child! I could not see you until now — not till I knew my master’s very body with my hands!”

She then describes the hunt in which the boy was wounded. That is the canto that Mama made me memorize and I remember it to this day.

Before them a great boar lay hid in undergrowth,

In a green thicket proof against the wind

or sun’s blaze, fine soever the needling sunlight,

impervious too to any rain, so dense

that cover was heaped up with fallen leaves.

Patter of hounds’ feet, men’s feet, woke the boar

as they came up — and from his woody ambush

with razor back bristling and raging eyes

he trotted and stood at bay. Odysseus,

being on top of him, had the first shot,

lunging to stick him; but the boar

had already charged under the long spear.

He hooked aslant with one white tusk and ripped out

flesh above the knee, but missed the bone.

Odysseus’ second thrust went home by luck,

his bright spear passing through the shoulder joint;

and the beast fell, moaning as life pulsed away.

As I repeated the words aloud to myself, I realized that I had actually picked up a few pig-sticking tips from old Homer. I had learned that boars use their tusks the way we use the
gerit
, for one massive thrust. What this said to me was, better be very careful with your aim because you may not get a second chance at this beast. Odysseus was lucky. He missed his first go at the boar and was wounded. Still, he lived to kill his prey. Then again, he had the gods on his side. I couldn’t count on either luck or the gods. But I did have a strong feeling that my mother was watching over me from heaven as I made my way to join the hunting party.

It took an entire morning for us to climb up to the shelf where the forest began. Toward the last of the climb the pitch was so steep we had to dismount in order to unburden the horses. We were followed by a detachment of muleteers, each leading a string of pack animals to carry back to the camp enough wood and meat needed to roast and feed the thousands of mouths waiting below. We must have looked to them, as we headed to the peak, like the longest snake in the world, slithering up the mountain. The odd horse took a fall, but almost all got up there safely. And, of course, mules are almost as good as goats at climbing rocky cliffs.