The old doctor studied her face, half turned to him. He noticed a yellowed bruise on her bare shoulder and various other welts that inflamed the white flesh along her neck. He was a wise man and did not inquire further, having heard the rumors of the immoral conduct of Princess Esma Sultan.
He had been present at her birth, overseeing the midwife’s work. She had been a squalling infant from the first, colicky and fussy in her mother’s arms. But her standing as the favorite child of Sultan Abdulhamid allowed her education and privileges normally given only to Ottoman princes, never women. Her loyal friendship with her half brother Mahmud had sealed her position from the moment of her cousin Selim III’s death.
Even a physician could not touch an Ottoman princess without express permission and close supervision. He asked for her to spit on a little golden plate, then to describe her symptoms and the hours of their occurrence. Her eyes were clear but haggard, shadowed by blue half-moons.
As he studied the spittle on the plate and watched her listless eyes, he noticed a spasm along her right eyebrow, a nervous twitch.
“I ask permission to examine you, Esma Sultan. Ready her under drapery, eunuch.”
Stephane Karatheodory stepped beyond the drawn curtains while Esma Sultan undressed and was swathed in linens.
“You may approach, Doctor,” said the Head Eunuch. “We will observe you.”
Karatheodory laid his hand gently on the Princess’s arm and raised her palm to his eyes where he could better examine it.
The doctor felt how she flinched when he touched her white hands, drawing them quickly back into her wide sleeves.
“Greek! You must give me notice before you touch my hands,” she warned.
“I beg your forgiveness,” said the doctor, waiting for her to return them to his outstretched palm, like a beggar supplicating. When she finally extended her left hand, he studied the white moon in her thumbnail and the newly applied henna on her wrist. Her skin was cool and damp, a pale blue white. With the supervision of two eunuchs, and wild-eyed scrutiny from the patient herself, the physician probed the Princess’s abdomen. There was no evidence of pain from the pressure of his fingers.
Princess Esma pushed his hand from her belly, agitated at his touch. She threw the linen sheet over her nose, her eyes rolling back in her head.
“The stink of rotten flesh haunts me,” she cried. “How can you not abhor it? Are you all fiends? My tongue can taste the stench, it is so thick!”
The old doctor said nothing.
“I dream of the Bosphorus choked with flesh. Heads bob in the current like melons thrown into the sea! Angels plunge into the brine and though they flap their wings desperately, they cannot lift their souls to heaven.”
The physician waited, silent. When she seemed a little calmer, he whispered to her. “We must speak in private, Esma Sultan.”
The Princess looked up from her pillow, creasing her brow. But she waved away the guard and her handmaiden, though the Head Eunuch Saffron refused to leave, folding his massive arms over his chest in a stance of defiance.
The Greek physician nodded and waited until the other servants had left the great room.
“When you were born, it was the worst year of the Angel of Death,” he began. “A third of Constantinople died from the plague and there seemed to be no hope for any of us. You were born, a blessing, a girl. You would not have to compete with your brothers to be Sultan. The harem rejoiced at the birth of a beautiful daughter they could bathe and spoil.”
“What good is it to be a mere woman?” cried Esma, throwing her head back on the embroidered silk cushion. “To be married and remain behind a harem wall? It is to be held prisoner from womb to grave and never be truly born. And if it were not for my husband’s death, I should live the same fate.”
“Yes. It is highly unusual for a princess never to remarry, especially more than a decade after the loss of her husband. You confound all of Constantinople.”
“I would rather have my head on a stake gawking at the fishmongers outside Topkapi than to ever take another husband.”
“A daughter is spared the ugliness of a man’s world,” replied the doctor, scratching at his beard. “That was Mohammed’s command, was it not, to remain sequestered from the rougher, more brutal sex?”
“You dare quote the Prophet to me, you Greek? Our Prophet demanded men’s respect of women, not sequestration! Besides… I saw, old physician. I saw enough brutality for a lifetime.”
The doctor considered.
“Perhaps you should tell me what you saw.”
The Princess covered her mouth with a kerchief but spoke through the cloth, her voice muffled.
“I saw the murder of my uncle, Selim. He took refuge in the harem and the murderers dragged him out to the courtyard and butchered him under the lime tree. They hacked him to bits with their scimitars. The blood splattered and puddled, clinging to the leaves where I used to play.”
“You indeed saw too much, Princess. A woman should never see these things. She hasn’t the constitution.”
She raised up on her pillow, supporting her weight on her forearm.
“The constitution? Your words mock me and all women! I watched an old slave woman save my brother in an oven when they came to murder him. There is my constitution! When they learned of her cunning, I watched three of the animals rape her, to pay for her loyalty to the Sultan’s family. A servant woman who saved a male Ottoman! No assistance from men, no protection!”
“All of the Ottomans seem doomed to suffer,” mused the doctor. “But I come to you to heal your condition.”
The doctor hesitated. “If you belonged to my religion, I would tell you to confess your sins against God to the Patriarch priest. Then you would at last have rest in your confession and be at peace with God.”
A great silence filled the immense room, so that even the old ear of the doctor heard the wooden rakes of the gardeners outside the palace window, scratching at the fallen leaves in the courtyard.
“You dare prescribe your pagan rites to an Ottoman Princess!” said Esma Sultan, suddenly sitting up in bed, a cobra ready to strike.
Karatheodory realized he had gone too far, but he was too old and respected to fear the Sultan’s sister’s wrath.
“I have only speculated what I would prescribe were you of the Holy Byzantine faith,” replied the doctor calmly. “Since you are not of my church, I can only suggest that Allah will decide your destiny and cure you of the headaches, dreams, and sleepless nights; these visions of dead men choking the clear clean waters of the Bosphorus. I have potions that will induce sleep and a headwrap soaked in soothing lavender oils to ease your headache. But I can only treat the symptoms of your disease. There is something that haunts you that I as a man of physical healing, cannot reach.”
“You are too old to cure anyone,” pronounced Esma Sultan, turning away from the man. “You are dismissed to drink the spirits in the tavern that have polluted your mind so as to render you decrepit and useless to the Ottoman Sultans. I shall tell my Angel brother so!”
The physician nodded that he understood and a guard instantly appeared to escort him to the palace gates.
It had been days since Esma Sultan had left her bedchamber to walk in her gardens or visit her beloved library. Bezm-i Alem and the other harem women took turns bringing the Ottoman Princess sherbets and fruitwaters, offering barley water and honeyed baklavas from the Greek cook, Maria. Nazip offered her the opium pipe, which she took at first, until she became sickened by the drug. Esma Sultan swore she smelled dead bodies, foul with rot. She retched silently into a copper bowl by her divan while Bezm-i Alem pressed damp cotton cloths to her forehead.
The harem woman gathered flowers from the Princess’s immense gardens and sent boys to the Bazaar to buy even more from the vendors, but nothing could ease her anguish. Every vase, even the most precious enamel vessels from Topkapi, burst with pungent blooms. The harem sniffed the air like dogs, trying to discern any aroma but
the cloying sweet fragrance of the myriad bouquets, while Esma Sultan raged at their ineptness and pressed lemon-scented linen handkerchiefs to her nose, barely breathing.
Ivan Postivich could not bear the soft life of the palace and thought only of battle and the weight of his sword in his hand. He pictured the cirit games, staged somehow without him, and wondered how his favorite mare, Peri, fared under the hand of another rider and groom.
Mahmud was sly, thought Postivich. He preferred to kill a janissary slowly with idleness and seclusion rather than have him die in a war that would bring honor and martyrdom. Postivich sat on a cool marble bench, planning how he would change his life to make himself a soldier once again.
Every night before dinner, if he was not required to stand duty, Ivan Postivich wrestled, challenging not one, but two men at once. He did not lack opponents. Hundreds of Janissaries proved eager to fight together to defeat the renowned giant warrior. The merchants, saddlemakers, butchers, and cooks stopped work to watch the evening games, and the pistachio and chestnut vendors did brisk business among crowds of Janissaries, ravenous before their evening meal.
At first Postivich lost every match, often in less than a minute. Two men could work together to pull the giant down and pin him, as they did over and over again. He grunted, face down in the dirt, under the weight of the men, his spit turning the dust to mud under his chin.
“Kadir! You thick-headed Serb! It is impossible!” the soldiers howled. But they watched in eagerness and exchanged bets as to how long he would stand. It was the very thin chance of victory and the big heart of the warrior that they were willing to gamble on, for Ahmed Kadir embodied the legendary spirit of the Janissaries, even if he lost, time and time again.
Young men from Postivich’s old cirit and polo squads stood before an open barrel of crude olive oil, rubbing down their former corbaci before each match. They good-naturedly sponged the oil over his skin and leather wrestling pants until he glistened in the sun like an immortal god.
“How a jereed would slide past you now!” the young cavalrymen joked, though they knew the pain their old captain felt at being stripped of his orta command and mount. Although wrestling was one of the foremost war games, it could not compete with the noble thrill of dodging spears on a galloping horse. But being still young, they had faith in justice, and believed with one heart that a day would come when the giant would fell the two opponents on the wrestling ground, and their warrior would stand victorious. And they hoped that they would see Ahmed Kadir astride his mare again, leading them into battle.
One day, after weeks of competitions that left Postivich’s body sore and bruised, the crowd of Janissaries erupted in a fierce roar of cheers that sent the pigeons flying in great circles over the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. Ivan Postivich had pinned two men at once, locking his trunk-like legs around one and crushing the other in his sinewy arms. The gasping opponents writhed under him, spitting and cursing. Postivich lifted his leonine head to the crowd, his hair matted in sweat and grease, grinning through the still-rising dust.
“Long live the Giant! May Allah protect Ahmed Kadir!”
The cheers of hundreds of Janissaries reached the courtyards of Topkapi, where the Sultan raised his head in alarm.
“What is that cry?” he asked the Grand Vizier who walked at his side in the inner courtyard, under the plane trees. He looked over the wall and saw the birds of Constantinople swoop overhead, still frightened by the roar.
“Send a servant to find out why the pigeons circle the city. Is this a cry of mutiny? Secure the port and harem! Bring me my sword!”
Shortly, a page, still gasping for breath after his run to Et Meydan, asked permission to approach the Sultan.
His head still lowered, sweat glistening on his upper lip, the page reported:
“The giant Ahmed Kadir of the Kapikulu cavalry defeated two other Janissaries in wrestling, pinning them for over a minute on the ground!”
“The shouts we heard were congratulations on a victory in sport, Sultan,” said the Vizier in relief. “You can rest calmly now for there is no conspiracy! Simply strength of the giant who lifts our army’s hearts in a harmless pastime.”
The Sultan rubbed his black beard with his thumb and index finger, pulling at it brutally as he contemplated the news.
Postivich began walking the streets of Constantinople at all hours of the night. He filled a saddlebag with heavy rocks in order to carry more weight and tax his body, as if in battle. Each night he walked farther and farther around the Imperial City, coming back as the muezzins called the faithful for morning prayer. He found that he needed little sleep; his body thrived on the rigorous exercise, clearing his mind.
The wild dog packs of Constantinople began to shadow him. They prowled at his side, sensing his strength and urgency. Though he threw sharp rocks at them and cursed in Serbo-Croat, they only whined and cowered, and soon were at his side again, trotting along in the darkness.
The fishermen and prostitutes would point at the dogs as they loped down the streets to join the pack and say, “The giant must be near, looking for battle that the Sultan denies him.”
And thus Ivan Postivich—janissary Ahmed Kadir—slowly became a legend throughout the Royal City of Constantinople.
Chapter 3
After many sleepless nights, the Princess sat up straight on her divan. The two harem girls had fallen asleep beside her on the floor, their heads across their folded arms, their long hair spread over them like a shawl.
The Princess stared past the flickering candles to the windows that opened onto the Bosphorus.
She could hear some incomprehensible sound, like the howl of a dog, but more human in pitch. A howl of pain, terror. As it came closer, growing louder, she watched the girls to see if they woke. Neither stirred, even as wind from the Sea of Marmara filled the open window, billowing the muslin upward towards the high ceiling.
The Princess knew she could scream. Her screams would shatter the silence and bring legions of sentries, eunuchs, and harem girls to her side in seconds. There were guards just outside her window; wouldn’t they have heard the hideous cry from the waters below?
Esma Sultan did not—would not—scream. In her veins ran Ottoman blood, shrewd and cold as it was noble. Her mother had taught her always to be in command, never to let her inferiors see weakness.
You must rid yourself of weakness, daughter. Even the subtlest whiff of doubt will send your enemies an invitation. And the handmaidens, slaves, and sentries who surround you will spread the word if they suspect hesitation or cowardice. An Ottoman is strong. Or strangled.
Esma knew now that the stench that gagged her was not detectable by anyone else in the court. The doctor had all but declared it was imaginary, a creation of her fancy. She had seen the two harem girls exchange looks, and then drop their gaze to the floor.
Fantasy. Weakness.
So they might consider these sounds to be the same. She would not permit that to happen.
The doctor had asked her of her troubles. What kind of doctor asks a sick patient of her thoughts? The doctor’s job was to cure her, not question her. She had no one to answer to but Allah himself—she was an Ottoman. Her nostrils flared in contempt at his boldness.
The strange sound over the Bosphorus grew in volume and clarity, not so much a howl now as a wail.
And now she knew that sound.
It was a drowning man’s last gasps, cursing as his fingernails clawed at the coarse hemp bag in the depths of the Bosphorus. In the candlelight, she could see a drowned man’s eyes staring cold and glassy through the billowing fold in the curtain.
Esma Sultan fought the scream that climbed to her throat.
I will not show weakness, she told herself. I cannot—
The entire palace was awakened by her wail, pitiful and violent, helpless in its terror.
“What is it, Your Highness?” shouted the head guard, racing into the chamber, flanked by two other sentries.
“Bring the Topkapi doctor at once!” cried the Sultaness. She covered and uncovered her mouth, touched her throat and gagged.
Nazip brought her rosewater in a golden cup, her hand trembling, splashing big drops on the bed linen.
“I want him here at my bedside before this hour is over, do you hear me?”
“Your Sultaness, he shall be here immediately,” promised the guard. “I shall send our fastest runner to the Gates of Bliss.”
“Send for Ahmed Kadir,” commanded the Turk, over his shoulder. “While I am attending the Princess, we must have all sentries and reinforcements posted outside this door.”
A fast-running boy was sent to the fort to fetch the janissary. As he raced to the gate of the barracks, a sentry called from the wall, “Ho! Who goes there?”
“I’ve come from the palace of Esma Sultan to bring the giant Ahmed Kadir,” gasped the runner. “If you will tell me where to find him, I’ll wake him. He must come with me at once!”
“You do not know his nightmares or you would not dare to wake him,” said the gate guard. He motioned to another guard to take his position. “I’ll fetch him myself. Allah be with me!”
The guard entered the barrack, a lantern held high. Among the many sleeping men, one shadowed figure loomed huge, contorted with fitful sleep. The great body shifted restlessly, the mouth agape, dry lips moving in agitation, mumbling in Serbo-Croat, fingers digging feverishly at the straw ticking of his cot, sweat trickling across his temples.
“Wake up, Giant,” said the guard, shaking Postivich’s shoulders. “You are wanted in Esma Sultan’s palace. Immediately.”
Postivich’s eyes flew open and he lunged violently, his massive hands grabbing for the guard’s throat. The guard smacked him hard in the forehead with the hilt of his sword and Postivich fell back onto his cot, grunting in pain.
“You are not an easy man to wake,” grumbled the guard, pulling his tunic straight again on his shoulders. “Next time I’ll protect myself with the sharp blade of my sword.”
“You summoned me, Princess?” said the doctor, his face blue in the candlelight of the royal chamber. His hair curled up in grey wisps under his turban.
The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire Page 6
