“Sebastiani fought at Austerlitz.”
“Yes, and was promoted to general there. The sultan sees Napoleon as his new best hope, and Sebastiani has Bonaparte’s ear. Did you want to teach the tsar what you’ve learned of the art of war? Teach the sultan’s New Army instead. Trade a Russian palace for a Turkish one.”
“Caleb, have you been drinking?” Astiza asked.
He winked at her. “No liquor in the land of Islam, Madame Gage, unless you know where to go, which is to every second house in Constantinople.” He laughed. “But no, I’m perfectly sober, and simply intoxicated by the new opportunities life has given us. Turkey and Russia are drifting toward war, France is provoking Prussia, Adriatic islands are being traded back and forth like coins in a gambling salon, and bold people are seizing control of fate. I met with Sebastiani and he’s intrigued by what we offer. Does he want to meet the notorious Ethan Gage? Of course he does. But he suspects another is even more important, as she has been from the beginning. It turns out that one of the most powerful and unseen people in the Ottoman Empire has a special interest in you, Astiza.”
The prospect appeared to horrify her. “No. Not again.”
“This invitation is as sweet as the other was sour.”
“The Muslims won’t listen to a woman.”
“But the women of their harems might. There’s a blond beauty from the island of Martinique, enslaved in Topkapi Palace for almost two decades, who wields more power behind the throne than most viziers do in front of it. She’s mightily interested in a woman of your learning and experience.”
“A blond from the Caribbean?” I asked.
“A French creole seized by the Barbary pirates, prized for her looks, and offered to the prior sultan as a present, from the pasha of Tripoli. The sultan cannot stock his harem with Turkish women, which offends Islamic law, so he seeks infidel slave beauties from all over the world. This one has captured the Turks as thoroughly as she’s been captured. She’s persuading them to ally with Napoleon.”
“Why would she do that?” Astiza asked.
“Because her cousin, dear family, is none other than that other creole from Martinique, one Josephine Bonaparte.” He nodded at our astonishment. “Yes, Empress Josephine. The two played together as children. As a result, we have a key to the Topkapi Palace overlooking the Bosporus and all the riches within it. Our key’s name is Aimée Dubucq de Rivéry, now known as Nakshedil, ‘the beautiful one.’ Sebastiani sent word to her of what I told him about our family, and I’ve brought back a reply.” He handed a note. “Our luck has finally turned.”
I opened it. Written in French were just five words: Venez, Astiza. Bienvenue à Pelée. ‘Come. Welcome to Pelée.’
“And what is Pelée?” I asked, while knowing all too well. We had, after all, spent a difficult time on the woman’s home island.
“I had to ask the same thing,” Caleb said cheerfully. “It’s a code to convince us of her authenticity. Apparently a peak on Aimée’s Martinique erupted when she left as a child to study in a French convent. It dusted her ship with ash.” He got down off his horse, nodding.
“Yes,” Astiza said. “We’re being welcomed to a volcano.”
CHAPTER 27
The palace of the Grand Turk, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, occupies a point at the edge of Europe with a splendid view of Asia across the Bosporus Straits. A more beautiful and strategic site can scarcely be imagined. North is the Black Sea, south the Dardanelles and Mediterranean, and all the shipping of the world, with all its flags, crowds the Golden Horn. One of the finest views in Constantinople is from the wooden balcony of the French Embassy in the Italian trade neighborhood of Galata, which lies across the watery Horn from Topkapi Palace. Walls, towers, kiosks, gardens, flowering trees, fountains, minarets, and chimneys mark the sprawling seraglio, while the domes of the great mosques of storied Constantinople rise like swollen moons beyond. The fabled city is called Istanbul by the Muslims, Tsarigrad by the Russians, New Rome by the Italians, New Jerusalem by the Jews, the City of Pilgrimage, the City of Saints, the House of the Caliphate, the Gate of Happiness, the Eye of the World, and the Refuge of the Universe.
My new goal was to call it home.
This former capital of the Byzantine Empire, conquered by the Turks in 1453, fills a triangular peninsula. For one thousand years a four-mile-long triple wall on its landward side resisted attacks by Goths, Huns, Slavs, Avars, Persians, Arabs, Bulgarians, and Russians. Huge Turkish cannon finally made the wall obsolete. Now its moat is given over to gardens, graveyards, and garbage dumps, in that mix of preservation and practicality that marks all places with long history. The wall and its 192 towers still demarcate the city limit, while lower walls hem the city’s shores. The vast Topkapi, meaning ‘Cannon Gate’ in English, occupies the tip of the peninsula. The palace is made up of four courtyards, each more sacrosanct and mysterious in turn. Europeans are referring to the sultan’s last and most ultimate gate when they call the Turkish government the Sublime Porte. The palace is home to up to five thousand ministers, servants, soldiers, and harem women. From this stronghold the Ottomans rule a loosely confederated empire that stretches from the Danube to the Euphrates, and from Arabia to Tripoli.
Its power has eroded. As recently as 1683, the Turks threatened to conquer Vienna. But revolt, war, corruption, and treachery have left the 1806 empire a wormy hulk, half glory and half ruin. Constantinople is regularly ravaged by plague and fire.
Accordingly, European embassies line the brow of the hills of Galata like patient vultures, surveying what might be a useful ally one day and a particularly rich carcass the next. France, which alienated the sultan when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, now saw a chance to be the sultan’s savior just eight years later.
I absorbed this summary from the briefings of Horace Sebastiani, the new French ambassador whom we’d met in Adrianople. Astiza added more history, and crafty Caleb weighed in on the politics. “You’ve got a weak sultan trying to reform a military that fears improvement will end its privileges,” my brother said. “Ambassadors from Russia, England and France all trying to win the Turks to their side in Europe’s quarrels. The sultan’s women scheme, his advisors change sides like we change clothes, and his pashas starve him of taxes. Everyone fears the sultan, but few revere or trust him. Ottoman ministers can become fabulously rich one day and brutally strangled the next, depending on palace intrigue.”
Sebastiani put it another way. “The neck of a servant of the Sultan is thinner than a hair’s breadth, goes the proverb. Some thirty Grand Viziers have been beheaded, drowned, poisoned, or throttled.”
“Another volcano,” I said, thinking of Aimée’s summons. Our strategy, if one could call it that, was to become one of these perilous “servants of the sultan.” Advisor. Confidant. Vizier. Potentially strangled with a bowstring if of modest rank, or by a silken cord if particularly favored. “Another St. Petersburg. Another Pelée.”
“Another city of gold,” Caleb said.
Yes, risk can bring reward. And few great cities were so lovely, or offered the ambitious so much opportunity. With half a million inhabitants, Constantinople was smaller than London, about the size of Paris, bigger than Vienna, Rome, or St. Petersburg, and more cosmopolitan than any. Only half its inhabitants were Muslim, and it had distinct neighborhoods for Italians, Greeks, Kurds, Serbs, Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Circassians, Albanians, Bosnians, Croats, Bulgarians, Romanians, and Hungarians. All were scramblers, drawn by a crossroads of wealth where every home and palace vied for a view. Gardens tumbled down hillsides, their owners competing to grow the best daffodils, tulips, and roses. Minarets jutted like spears. Linden and cypress trees gave shade. The harbor was typically crammed with a thousand sea-going ships and fifteen thousand boats plying between them. These included the elegant kayiks, narrow oar-and-sail-driven longboats that spirited the rich from picnic to soiree to supper, darting li
ke water bugs and racing each other. When all were moving, the sea was a hive.
Like all cities Constantinople was noisy, from beckoning merchants, clopping cavalry, groaning ox carts, lowing cattle being driven to slaughter, and the wailing muezzins sounding the call to prayer. And yet the place was curiously hushed, too, the women spending much of their time locked away, the arrogant Janissary soldiers erratically enforcing draconian laws, and the Muslims exhibiting a subdued decorum that would baffle Londoners or New Yorkers. The city seemed half market, half monastery.
Across the Bosporus on the Asia shore were the wealthy estates and vineyards of Uskadar. On the Golden Horn’s Galata side were the navy dockyards, the arsenal, the powder works, and the slave prison. The merchant ships docked primarily on the Constantinople side of the bay, their wares carried uphill to the Spice Market, Fish Market, and Grand Bazaar.
“France has long been the Ottomans’ biggest European trading partner,” Sebastiani explained. “We imported their wool, hides, silk, and spices, and sent back cloth, paper, leather, and glass. Their goat hair made our wigs, and their dyed sharkskin made sword handles and bookbindings. We were allied with the Turks for a century. But the Revolution upended traditional partnerships, Napoleon invaded the Ottoman provinces of Egypt and Syria, England and Russia rushed to exploit the breach, and now Bonaparte has sent me—nay, you and me, Ethan—to repair the damage. The other powers are bullying Selim to let their navies use the Bosporus, even as French victories suggest Paris will control the world. Napoleon is a great believer in luck, and was it not extraordinary luck that brought us all together?”
“I’m beginning to be suspicious of luck, actually.”
“I know I jeopardized your family,” Caleb put in, “but the ambassador is right. All our fortunes are converging. Dalca said the Trojan Palladium is hidden somewhere in Constantinople, and if that’s true, what other treasures await? The sultan is turning to the French. You were planning to be a military adviser anyway. Here at last the Gage brothers will make our fortune, I’m sure of it!”
I remained wary. By now I considered this Trojan icon a myth, Napoleon a plague, and saw no reason for Sebastiani to pay attention to my exhausted clan. Yet he welcomed me like a prodigal son, said he knew of my adventures in Egypt, introduced Astiza to his pretty wife Fanny, tousled the hair of my son, and acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world to invite my family into his entourage.
Which meant he, and Caleb, wanted something: Astiza’s help.
The new French ambassador certainly exuded charm. At age thirty-five he was handsome as a stage actor, with shoulder-length curly hair, the erect carriage of a soldier, and a voice as melodious as a harp. He was a Corsican native like Bonaparte, and as a colonel he’d supported Napoleon’s seizure of power in Paris in 1799. He was later wounded and promoted at Austerlitz. Gifted with a smile as bright as a banner, Sebastiani was out to change the world’s balance of power.
I’d have been envious, if I didn’t like him so much.
Thanks to the ambassador, we’d once more gone from penury to astonishing respectability in a moment, our luck reversing just as things seemed bleakest. Caleb had guided us from the mountains girdling Transylvania to Wallachia, Bucharest, and across the Danube to Bulgaria. We finally met the French diplomat in Adrianople, about a hundred miles west of Constantinople. For weeks Sebastiani had been making his stately way across Europe in a gleaming coach pulled by four horses in silver harness. He delivered tidings from a triumphant Napoleon to this prince and that duke, while his lovely wife exhibited the latest Paris fashions. One reason I liked the ambassador was that he had an expense account, and we were immediately given new clothing and a hired coach of our own.
Our fortune improved even more at Constantinople. The Ottomans play European powers against each other by welcoming favored new diplomats as if they were celebrities. Sebastiani’s entourage of twenty soldiers, aides, and hangers-on was met with Janissary guards, a Turkish band of cymbal, trumpet, and drum, and a swarm of officials in beehive turbans. The ones in purple were the ulema, or learned men; the green were the viziers, or advisors, and the scarlet were the chamberlains. All were topped with ostrich or peacock feathers that rocked in the breeze like plumed grass. We entered the city through the massive old walls and paraded down winding streets lined with mansions, tenements, mosques, minarets, and markets, people rushing to view us as if we were a circus.
The usual civic mix of sewage, perfume, spice, smoke, sweat, tobacco, and hashish assaulted our noses, but in main the city was remarkably clean. There were marble fountains by every mosque so that worshipers could wash before entering, and the city is dotted with Turkish baths called hammans.
Parts of Constantinople reminded me of Cairo. Old men squatted on steps to smoke the hookah water pipe. A gate to the Grand Bazaar gave a glimpse of four thousand merchant stalls. Sheep spilled down a side lane to briefly block us; the city devours a thousand a day. Packhorses jostled with camels bearing sugar sacks. Veiled women peeked from wooden grills and high balconies, crows cawing on the eaves above. Craftsmen hammered copper, shaved wood, threw pots, and forged swords. There were schools, barracks, and convents for Sufi dervishes. Pigeons erupted from the paving of every square.
We flew the tricolor while a piper tootled The Marseillaise.
“No theaters and no gambling salons,” Sebastiani said as we crept towards the Golden Horn. “Parades are one of the few permitted distractions.”
“And no alcohol,” I said. “No wonder they overran half the world. Had a clear head.”
“None in principle, but they were stopped at half because they’re as human as the rest of us,” Caleb corrected. “‘Men desire what is forbidden,’ goes the Ottoman proverb. There are fifteen hundred taverns here, and the sultans drink as much in private as they deplore it in public. You can’t find a prostitute in the mosques as you can in the alcoves of Notre Dame, but they seem to do business from every other house in the city, and cater to every sailor, Janissary, and gawking farmer who comes to town. The Ottomans still have brutal sports in the old Roman Hippodrome, and to a man they’re as greedy as Dutchmen. There is the public face and the private, same as anywhere.”
“Napoleon says to never forbid what you lack the power to prevent.”
“A lesson he probably learned in Egypt.”
We passed chicken and duck coops, pyramids of vividly colored spices, and quayside fish stalls that glittered like silver. Then we boarded kayiks and were ferried across to Galata and Sebastiani’s diplomatic mansion, called the Palais de France. Unlike the stone and brick buildings of Europe, all the yalis of the foreigners and rich Ottomans are built of wood to stand up to frequent earthquakes, even though this makes them vulnerable to fire. The European enclaves are painted rust-red, with overhanging second stories to steal airspace from the streets below. In theory the Christian houses must be at least two feet lower than their Muslim neighbors, but this rule is ignored as often as it is observed. Harry has already learned the difference between rules—which his mother imposes—and enforcement, which his father is sometimes slow to perform.
The French embassy had a huge upper-story reception room with Turkish carpets, Ottoman arabesques, European paintings, niches that held flower vases, incense burners of perfume, and gilded trellises. The furniture was a mix of Versailles ornate and severe Ottoman divans placed like benches along the walls. In the Eastern fashion, stools supported the metal trays carried in for meals. A sea breeze usually blew, and after the hell of Balbec, it felt as if we’d ascended to paradise.
Fanny showed Astiza to a bedroom. Harry asked if there were any toys.
Sebastiani seated the men to plot diplomatic strategy. “I hope you like our surroundings,” he began. “But our purpose is to serve France, not live off her. You are her instruments.”
“I’m unfamiliar with the ritual of the Sublime Porte,” I warned.
> “I don’t need help with ritual. I need to offer the sultan immediate military and political advice. We’ve little time because Sultan Selim is embroiled in many crises. But that also gives us opportunity.”
“The sultan needs new friends,” Caleb surmised.
“He does indeed. The Serbs are in revolt and Russia is marching to their aid. An independent Serbia would break the Ottoman hold on the Balkans, and outflank the Turks in Bessarabia, Moldavia, and Wallachia.”
“Franklin said a great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges,” I contributed. Ben’s quips can be applied in almost any situation, and are usually wittier than my own.
“Yet even as the Ottomans are scrambling to prevent this, they quarrel amongst themselves,” Sebastiani said.
“You’re hoping Selim will be dependent on France.”
“The Treaty of Pressburg awarded Dalmatia and Istria to France, putting our forces closer to Serbia,” the ambassador said. “In February, Selim finally recognized Bonaparte as a legitimate emperor and dispatched an ambassador to Paris. Now the sultan’s own forces are being mustered in Macedonia to march on the Serbs. Muslims in Bosnia will attack from the west. The Ottoman fortresses on the Danube are being strengthened against Russian invasion, while Russian Admiral Dmitri Senyavin has sailed to the Mediterranean to counter we French.”
“I knew the admiral in St. Petersburg,” I said.
“That could prove useful. The naval and army maneuvers have put Montenegro and Albania into play, the English are supporting Russian demands for free passage through the Dardanelles, and the Austrians fear an independent Serbia will encourage rebels in Hungary.”
“I hope everyone has an atlas, just to keep track.”
The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) Page 22
