The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer

by Lucille Turner

  He sought out the Kizlar. ‘Tell Madam Azize I am ready to see her.’

  The Kizlar frowned a little then bowed out to give Azize Hatun the news. Murad waited in the pavilion.

  The Kizlar returned. ‘Madam Azize says she is unwell, and not disposed.’

  ‘Not disposed?’ He laughed, or tried to. What sort of word was that, and by what right did she use it? He pictured the last time he’d seen her. She was proud, that was the trouble. But she was not as proud as he, nor should she be.

  He remembered the parable.

  A nobleman was travelling on his horse alone. For sustenance along the way, he carried a watermelon in his load. He was thirsty and he stopped. He scooped out the best of the watermelon, the sweetest part, and ate it. He did not touch the white flesh near the skin. If anyone should pass by here, he thought, he would see that a nobleman had rested and had eaten what was best. But still, the best was not enough, so he scooped out the hard white flesh until only the skin remained, and ate that too. No matter, he thought. If anyone should pass by here, he would see that a nobleman had rested and had given the white flesh to his servant. He put aside the skin but realised he was hungry, so he ate the skin as well. No matter, he told himself. If anyone should pass by here, he would see nothing at all.

  He turned back to the Kizlar. ‘Tell her I have made a mistake. It was the boy I wanted to see. Not her.’

  ‘Now remind me again of your name.’

  ‘Djem,’ said the boy, and grinned shyly, twisting one foot over the other.

  ‘What do you like to eat – pastries?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Figs?’

  He shook his head again.

  ‘Ah,’ said Murad, raising a finger. ‘I have it then. Lokum.’

  The boy nodded. Murad signed to the servant, who brought out a tray.

  ‘Take some. More. That’s right. Now you can go.’

  The boy cupped the sticky sugared starch in his hands and retreated. Murad heard him running off down the corridor, his feet like pattering rain. How much he reminded him of Aladdin. That sudden shyness. He had been wrong to ignore the boy, but he would make up for it.

  Mehmet came. Murad found him in the pavilion, to which he had retired in search of peace. The preferred son never changed, Murad noticed. He was like the wall of the Golden City. Events washed over him and left him intact. Words made no impact. Ever since their last discussion, mutual avoidance had been observed. He had expected something: a confession of guilt perhaps. A little remorse. Some shame, God willing. But nothing had come. Only his son had come, as though nothing at all had been either done or said and things would go on as before.

  ‘Father,’ he said, ‘I have been perfecting my plans for the Golden City and have put them on paper for you to look at. I have told the foundry to cast cannons.’

  ‘On whose authority?’ The words came out badly.

  ‘My own.’

  That was a fair reply. He could not argue with it.

  ‘Show me the plans.’

  They leaned over a table. He pictured them both from above, their heads side by side. ‘What does this mean?’ he said.

  ‘The Greeks pull their chain across the harbour of the Golden Horn; there, where our ships could anchor most easily out of the current,’ he said smoothly. ‘But it is not hard to outwit that. You simply go around it.’ He sat back smugly and folded his arms. ‘There is land either side, enough to haul the ships onto a bank and go around the chain, returning to the water on the other side of it.’

  Murad thought of his son hauling weighty ships, laden with men and supplies, over a spit of sand. ‘It cannot be done,’ he said dismissively. ‘The masts are too heavy.’

  ‘I know that,’ replied Mehmet, laughing. ‘We take the masts down. Then we put them back in place.’

  ‘We put them back in place,’ he echoed. ‘But it will have to be done fast.’

  ‘It will be. We can practise beforehand. By the time they get there, they will be able to do it in the dark, eyes closed.’ He looked at his father, triumphant. ‘What do you think?’

  He looked at the map with its figures and ships. It was brilliant. Undeniably, astoundingly brilliant. He remembered the number of times ships had floundered on the giant chain of the Greeks. No army could make an assault without getting past it, and no army had. He had never thought of that strip of land, that insignificant beach.

  ‘It could be done at night,’ he said.

  ‘At dawn,’ corrected Mehmet.

  He nodded. ‘Dawn would be best. And the cannons?’

  ‘The big one will be positioned here, on the other bank. The range would be long enough. We could start firing early, as a distraction. They will be so busy trying to save their ramparts they will hardly know we are upon them,’ said Mehmet, his eyes glowing.

  ‘And how long will your giant cannon take to build?’

  ‘Until next year. Then we would have to transport it. It would have to be hauled. It would take time. And men. But it can be done.’

  ‘It can be done,’ Murad repeated.

  ‘So you see that you were wrong, Father.’

  Wrong about what, he wondered. ‘Wrong about what?’ he said.

  ‘You think I won’t do it, but I will.’

  ‘I never said you would not,’ he contested.

  The Mehmet wall stood firm against him. He, Murad, washed off it.

  There was the sound of small running feet. The Imperial Chamberlain was giving chase, but the boy had finished his lokum. When he reached the pavilion, he looked at Mehmet and halted.

  Mehmet turned. ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Your brother Djem.’

  Djem sidled forwards.

  ‘A young prince should wait his turn,’ reproached Murad gently. ‘You see that I am busy with your brother. Come back when the sun goes down.’

  Djem gazed at Mehmet in awe for a moment then turned away and ran off as suddenly as he had come.

  He glanced at the face of his elder son. It was like a frozen storm. ‘How is your mother?’ he said suddenly. He had heard nothing of the Valide Hatun since she had come back from Manisa. In all truth, he could barely recall her face. He would pay her a visit, he said.

  ‘I’m sure she would like that,’ replied Mehmet. ‘Incidentally, your soothsayer came to see me. I think you should take him in hand.’

  ‘Oh? Why is that?’

  ‘He’s a fraud. He told me that the Greeks are better than us and that we would never take their city. As you see, he is lying.’

  ‘He said that?’ Murad frowned. He got up slowly; doubt crept into his legs. Varna had made him old. Of course Mehmet’s plans for a new assault on Constantinople were brilliant. But were they right?

  He looked again at his son’s face. It was a handsome face, a clever face, but would it ever be a wise one?

  ‘And do you think they are better than us, the Greeks?’

  Mehmet stared. ‘Are you quite well, Father?’

  Perhaps he was not. ‘Quite well,’ he said. ‘But I was thinking about the library of Constantinople. When the city is taken, I should like to have it rebuilt.’

  Mehmet looked past his shoulder. ‘Don’t you think it astonishing that the Greeks have practically no fortress at the entrance of the straits? There should be at least two, one on either side. They have a monastery there, do you believe it? How can they control traffic with that?’

  They couldn’t, he said, and furrowed his brow again. Cannons in the place of scrolls. He dismissed his son, and wandered through the hayat with the vague understanding that what he needed was nowhere to be found. He paused at the sight of the Kizlar. Madam Azize was feeling better, said the Kizlar, and begged to see him. His first instinct was to refuse her, but he was no longer certain that his first instinct was the right one. He fell back
on the second. He needed someone to talk to who was not his son. Nor did he have the stomach for prophecies. He returned to his quarters, his head pounding with Mehmet’s cannons.

  Chapter 48

  Her eye thrust against the shutter gap, Azize stared at the arch of the youthful back of the man in the second courtyard. How old was he? Twenty summers, or less? More perhaps. Her eyes travelled upwards. She imagined the nape of his neck, invisible because it was covered by long, dark hanks of hair, the kind of hair she had only seen in mosaics of old Persian kings riding on swift, black mounts. It was thick hair, not thin and wiry or patched and balding. She wanted to reach out and touch it, bury her face in its mass.

  The head turned. She stepped back, her heart pounding, and covered her mouth. Could he hear her breathe? She did not think so, but then again, perhaps she was breathing heavily. She must be, because her mouth was open and her lips were dry. She went back to the gap, and peered through it. She had glimpsed his face for only a moment, and now the head had moved again. It was a very un-Turk face, but then it would be; he was probably a Rumani prince. The high brow, the flash of a green eye, the full mouth – these belonged on the divan, not in the wrestling ring of the Turks. Of course he was strong, that she did not doubt. He had to be if he held a sword well enough to have been picked out as a janissary by Murad.

  She took the eunuch aside at the gate of the second courtyard.

  ‘Who is the hostage in the second courtyard?’

  ‘A Draculesti,’ said the eunuch, grinning. ‘Rumani.’

  ‘The one from Egrigoz fortress?’

  The eunuch inclined his head.

  She held up a coin.

  ‘His Highness Mehmet has the other Draculesti brother,’ whispered the eunuch, ‘the younger one.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘The older one is stronger than Mehmet Celebi.’ The eunuch took the coin in his fist and put a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh.’

  She left the eunuch, deep in thought. There were new arrivals at the seraglio, two new odalisques that either she or the Valide Hatun was supposed to take in hand. But since the Valide Hatun was still sick, or had decided to stay sick, and she was not inclined to do it, the task had fallen onto one of the other girls, and they were no good at it, so that was that. In any case, she had kept a regular eye on comings and goings and saw that Murad had no more interest in them than he had in the palace hunting hounds. He hated hunting; he hated girls with nothing in their heads; he preferred what he could not have, a fact that Mara Brankovic appeared to have understood perfectly. Where was she now, Azize wondered. She was not at the bathing pool and she was not in the hayat of the fourth courtyard.

  ‘She’s in her room, sulking,’ said one of the women.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, but was met with blank faces. Either nobody knew, or nobody was revealing what they knew. She went back to the eunuch, who delivered the news about the Brankovic brothers at last, voice shaking.

  She filled a tray with tea things and drew fresh water from the well. Murad loved his rose garden. When Aladdin had died he had planted one white rose bush. She remembered that her mantle had caught on a thorn. She’d freed it in a shower of white petals and thought, I will not have sons. But she did. Murad did not make daughters. The Osmani line was tenacious, built to last, and Mehmet was the worst of them. It had nothing to do with roses. She imagined Mehmet instructing the Bostanji to blind children. Only the Bostanji, the Court Executioner, would carry out an order like that, and only Mehmet would give it. As she sprinkled rose petals among the sweets, a plan began to form inside her head. If Mehmet was using the younger Draculesti brother as another of his playthings, could she not make a useful ally of the older one?

  She pushed open the door to where Mara Brankovic was sitting on a raised divan in a corner of the room and looked at the woman who had brought about her banishment. The cool-headed Serb was crumpled in a heap, weeping.

  She did not, Azize said, want to do as the other women did, and pry. She was sorry about her brothers, very sorry. She was not interested in how things were with Murad. What she was interested in was Djem.

  ‘I know,’ said Mara. ‘You have a son; I have brothers. What does that change?’

  Did she know who had had her brothers blinded? Did she not see what was happening?

  ‘What I see is a bunch of women gossiping.’

  ‘Wrong. What you see is a bunch of women fighting to be heard. But who will listen? The eunuchs? No. If you want to have a voice in the seraglio, you have to either shout until you are hoarse or whisper out of earshot.’

  ‘I have a scheme,’ she said, ‘and I thought you would like to hear it.’

  ‘Is that what you do in here, scheme?’

  ‘If you don’t have a plan in the seraglio, you die.’

  ‘From what – tedium?’

  ‘No, not tedium. Mehmet.’ Who did she think had given the order? Mehmet. Better that she had no children, especially not male ones, because Mehmet would come to their beds at night and twist the breath from their throats.

  Mara’s brow pinched with horror.

  ‘So you see, you are not the only one who is trapped. We all are. And now there is another, a prince kept like your brothers at the Sultan’s pleasure. His younger brother is Mehmet’s plaything. The brother is not blind, not yet, but he has enough to put up with as things go. The Grand Vizier Pasha is scared of Mehmet, and so is Murad. The hostage in the second courtyard is the only one who could stand up to him. Soon he will be made a janissary. A janissary is a useful ally. If he is promoted even further, he could be even more useful.’ Could she speak Rumani? Good, but she would have to risk the second courtyard.

  ‘I have the freedom of the court; Murad has sanctioned it.’

  Azize stared at her rival in astonishment. That was not possible. Murad would never give a woman the freedom of the palace if she had not made him a son.

  Mara gave a weak smile. ‘At first I thought he was sincere, but once I heard about what he had done to my brothers…’

  ‘What Mehmet had done,’ corrected Azize. She would not have Murad’s name slandered. Especially by a Serb.

  ‘…when I heard, it made it even worse.’

  Azize frowned. How different they were, the two of them. A woman received a favour from a man and she weighed it up against his sins. It was a new idea. She let it settle in her head, saved it up for later.

  What they needed, she said, was to find out if this prince would be willing to help them. They would have to befriend him but they would have to be careful. And they would have to bribe the gatekeeper.

  As she left the chamber with the tray in her hands, the shiver of a thrill ran down her back. For months if not years she had thought that the only way to get to Mehmet was through his father. But Mehmet had already smothered his father, not with a cushion or a swatch of silk, but with his mouth and the words that came out of it. Murad had always loved words, poetry and parables; he had not understood that words could kill. But so could other things, vengeance for instance, the opiate of the seraglio. Vlad Dracula would be brooding over the fate of his brother, as Mara brooded over the fate of hers. In putting a Serb and a Rumani together, she had surpassed herself. It was a perfect alliance: both were vassals, both were hostages. Whatever had happened at Egrigoz, which Halil Pasha had been so unwilling to reveal, the hostage prince would eventually tell them and she would have another weapon; the only thing then would be to find a way of using it.

  Chapter 49

  The season of the dead had come to Targoviste. The beginnings of an early dusk had crept across the cobbles. A premonition of winter threatened the night air; it frosted the moon and instigated the annual culling of the weak. Forestalling the menace of this Carpathian winter, creatures clawed into the soft, cold earth to shelter from the snow that was just around the corner; people dried their wood. If they had no
wood, they dried dung. When that was all used up, they froze. That was how it had to be, how it was designed to be, and nobody understood it better than Dracul.

  He had been sitting at his desk for what seemed like forever. More than two years had passed since Varna and his dream of victory had turned sour. The only option now was supplication. He pulled out quill and paper and set himself to task.

  Now that I have complied with your requests, I beg you to let my sons return.

  Murad had punished him for Varna; he was still punishing him. Dracul had received a curt letter from the Sultan, informing him that he would spare his sons on condition that the lands taken around the Danube were once again surrendered. He had relinquished the land at once. Giurgiu, briefly won by Hunyadi’s men and his own, was now once more in the hands of the Turks. Then, when he had heard that Brankovic’s sons had been blinded, he had shut himself in the tower for a week and the loss of Varna had faded into nothing. Even the fate of the Greeks had become unimportant to him. He had told the servants to prepare a travelling party for another journey to the Ottoman court. This time it was Cazan who had stopped him.

  Three hostages instead of two?

  No, he said to his first officer. One life instead of two.

  In spite of the distance that divided them, he often sensed the presence of his sons. He felt Vlad’s rage, pictured Radu’s helplessness, wondered if Vlad was protecting his brother and prayed that he was. His middle son would be a man by now. What sort of man? He had not forgotten the scrolls of Zalmoxis and all that they meant, not only for Vlad but for Mircea too. Even if the Sultan conceded to his pleas out of pity or a sense of fatherhood, would the rivalry of the scrolls, Veles against his brother Perun, repeat itself in the last of his dynasty? And if so, was it better that Vlad did not return at all?

  He threw down the quill. Where should his faith be if not in his own flesh and blood?

  He went to the window and pushed back the drape. At the main gate there was a visitor. The crow of Corvin Castle of Hunedoara on the standard of a carriage. Hunyadi. Cardinal Cesarini had been slaughtered at Varna, and Pope Eugenius was dying. The papacy would find a new cardinal and elect a new pope. Then it would do what it always did, close ranks and consolidate its position. Questions would be asked; old troubles would be given fresh impetus. Someone would have to pay for the death of Cesarini, and only a Draculesti would do.