The water was black, reflecting a crescent moon. There were ghosts below its surface, I knew. When a harem woman misbehaves enough to be condemned to death, eunuchs sew her into a sack and row her to this spot, her muffled cries as piteous as a kitten’s. I watched once from a balcony with a stoic Aimée, both of us rigid from horrified fascination. There’s little ceremony. The eunuchs row a hundred paces, stop, stand, and heave the bag overboard. I could see the terrified woman’s feet kicking before the bag splashed into the water. And that is that. It’s said at least a hundred women were drowned over the centuries and are still down there, legs weighted, their sacks swaying in the current, longing for a opportunity to drag down their executioners.
The Janissaries rowed expertly, their craft like an arrow. Soon the pursuit would end, or rather something even more terrible would begin at Dalca’s hands. How much had he paid them? Or what did he threaten?
But then another kayik darted from the palace shore. It was a royal boat with a dozen occupants. “Here comes help, Mama!”
I awkwardly turned toward potential rescuers. A race commenced, each side trying to reach us first. I thrashed frantically toward the palace.
The Janissaries almost won. I faced backward with the oars and so watched with despair as they remorselessly gained. Some of the cruel soldiers held long pikes, and others leaned from the bow with curved swords. Their features were swarthy in the night, eyes dark as sharks, grins cruel.
I pulled hard, gasping. They pulled harder.
They neared. A bowman reached for my boat’s stern. One, I realize with horror, was holding a large burlap sack.
“Bad men!” Harry held up his small hands in a vain attempt to protect me.
And then the Janissaries recoiled as if from a viper. Their commander shouted a sharp, panicked command. Oars crashed into the water. Their boat lurched to a stop and then actually jumped backward. Soldiers ducked their heads in fear, not daring to even look at me.
No. Not daring to look at a harem boat.
I turned. Black eunuchs were rowing a palace kayik with Aimée and half a dozen harem women on board. The slaves were veiled but clearly recognizable by their finery and beauty. Their pillbox hats were jeweled. Their silks undulated in the night breeze. Their almond eyes were liquid. They were a forbidden fruit, never to be seen by mere mortals, much less addressed or molested. The Janissaries were terrified of them, or rather terrified to be in their presence. Their boat drifted backward as if it had bounced off a wall. Pikes and swords clattered to the kayik’s bottom as the men crouched.
Aimée’s boat thumped into mine. “I’ve been watching for you, priestess. I’d hoped you’d return with your secret.” Black eunuchs plucked Horus and I like feathers and tucked us into their vessel. The boat I stole was abandoned. Before the Janissaries could restore their courage for more mischief we rowed quickly back to the palace, running up the hill to a harem gate.
And so we were saved by the inviolate harem. Horus and I were given a room where we recovered as best we could, listening to the grumble of guns and rumors of navies and battles. The English ships, it was said, went away. But Russian ones came and defeated the Turks, meaning no food would reach the masses anytime soon.
The sultan had not saved the city after all.
Riots broke out. Fires burned. Sickness burned just as fiercely. And then we began to hear the thud of spoons on Janissary cauldrons.
Ministers were sent to hastily distribute coins to buy loyalty. The viziers were torn apart. And now we hear gunfire and explosions. The rebels are storming Topkapi.
CHAPTER 37
All that Sebastiani could tell me was that my wife and son had disappeared from the embassy.
“Apparently there was mischief,” the French ambassador confessed. “Your family was asleep. There was a disturbance at the Kingdom of Naples embassy, my men rushed to help, and Janissaries broke into the mansion in their absence. When my men returned Astiza was gone, a rope of bedding hanging from her window. We can’t get any official word. One story is that she made it to the palace in a boat.”
“I told her not to leave the harem in the first place.”
“Perhaps by the time she got your message she was already outside it,” Sebastiani reasoned. “Perhaps she had to fetch your son. But now she’s in and Topkapi has been cut off. Astiza told my wife Fanny that she wanted to await your return from Fort Sestos because of a secret she needed to share. But then she fled, the Russian fleet prevailed, the Janissaries grew restive, and I ordered you back here.”
“Have you heard from Caleb?”
“No. The Turks complain he deserted when the English ships arrived. They’re calling him a coward. He didn’t reappear for the Russian battle.”
“Whatever Caleb is, he’s not a coward. But it’s also within his character to simply vanish.” Or, I thought to myself, Dalca got him.
“I agree. It’s as if everything is evaporating, including our diplomatic gains. What Napoleon achieves on land is always undone by defeats at sea.” Sebastiani was frustrated.
“If Bonaparte can defeat the Russians in Poland then fortune might turn again.”
“Perhaps. But it appears that victory will come too late.”
We looked gloomily out at a paralyzed city. Smoke from a dozen arsons hazed the sky, the minarets looking like tree trunks in a forest fire. Drums rumbled dull warning. Gunshots and cannon fire echoed as Turkish faction fought Turkish faction.
“If they elevate Mustafa they might try to kill his half-brother Mahmud, Aimée’s child,” Sebastiani said. “They might even kill her.”
“To elevate Mustafa they must storm Topkapi to overthrow the sultan,” I said. “Which means no one is safe. Even if Astiza and Harry managed to escape to the harem, now I have to get them back out. But how?”
And get them far, far away from Cezar Dalca, I added to myself. This quest had been a misfire from the very beginning, destiny mocking my ambition and fate punishing me for greed. It was time to go somewhere new. Sebastiani had said the new French envoy to Persia, Claude-Mathieu de Gardane, was looking for his grandfather’s treasure. Maybe he needed help.
“I can’t get messages to the palace,” Sebastiani said.
“Which means I need to break into the harem.”
“Impossible.”
“Not in a riot, with Topkapi overrun.”
“It’s madness. You’ll become a eunuch yourself, Ethan.”
“Or maybe my wife will know some magic.” I winked. What secret had she wanted to share?
The ambassador smiled ruefully. “Will I see you again?”
“Events have swung against us, my brother has disappeared, and my family needs a fresh start.” I shook Sebastiani’s hand. “Take care of your own.”
“Adieu, my friend. Your bombards worked despite my doubts.”
“Until they didn’t. Now Senyavin need only wait for Janissary victory and the Ottomans desperate for peace.”
I retrieved my rifle, horse pick, and traveling clothes for Astiza and Harry. I couldn’t very well march up the palace ramp as we had as diplomats, asking directions to the harem girls. So I ferried across the Golden Horn to the main city outside the palace and made my way uphill past the fish and spice markets. Ahead loomed the mass of the Grand Bazaar and beyond, like great mountains in a range, the high domes and minarets of Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. Smoke drifted past their timeless serenity.
It was an eerie journey. The merchant stalls were shut, all commerce dead, and the few people I saw were furtive. Every door not already smashed by marauding mobs was firmly locked, and every shutter closed. Looted belongings were scattered on the street. Several corpses lay in dark corners and alleyways, gnawed at by rats and dogs.
I stayed out of sight as much as I could, taking the smallest lanes and sometimes climbing walls and trotting on rooftops to avoid Janissary patrols. I als
o saw troops of Selim’s New Army, but they’d barricaded themselves in pointless positions and seemed too dispirited to battle their political adversaries. All the gun batteries along the shore had been deserted.
A great crowd heaved back and forth in the plaza between the vast bulk of Hagia Sofia and Topkapi’s Imperial Gate. Thousands of Janissaries, wailing servants, political opportunists, and excitement seekers were milling as they debated whether to storm the sultan. A handful of frightened sentries looked down from the wall above. It didn’t take a Napoleon to know that the rebels would attack as soon as they worked up their nerve. The mob would be my camouflage; I’d follow their tide into the palace.
My first step was disguise. I slipped into the blocky Byzantine church turned Islamic mosque, its rooms big enough to swallow battleships and its walls as solid as Gibraltar. Gold-tile mosaics of Jesus were coupled with inscriptions from the Koran. The interior was vast as a cavern, seemingly capable of forming clouds, and its columns were thicker than ancient trees. The monument was mostly empty, but a few Janissaries had taken the opportunity to drift away to sightsee or malinger. There are always soldiers secretly not anxious for battle—usually those who boast the most.
Hagia Sofia has dark corners and shadowy balconies, and I’d plenty of concealment to stalk a Turk my size. I lurked in an alcove, clubbed one with my rifle, and stole his clothes.
The tall hat and bright robe went over my own travel clothes and I marched back outside. The agitated Janissaries were zealots in their frenzy, believing Selim’s reforms had brought defeat from Allah, and I squeezed myself into the tightest, most excited mass of them I could find. Machiavelli advised to keep friends close and enemies closer.
The Janissary Aga Gelib who’d scowled at me in Selim’s Throne Room was at the head of the crowd, I saw. He mounted a wagon to harangue us in Turkish. A howl went up at his incendiary conclusion. There was a crackle of gunfire, the sentries vanished from the wall, and the mob of unruly soldiers burst through the gate and surged into the first courtyard.
A warlike sultan would have met us with grapeshot. Selim was in his library, listening to flutes and composing appeals to reason.
The Janissaries fanned out, loyalist troops fleeing. Then the rebels charged the turreted Middle Gate. More shots were fired, a couple attackers fell, the crowd crashed against the barrier like a breaker on the shore, and someone’s bloody head was displayed on a pike. Everyone roared approval. The gate splintered and I was caught up in a near-suffocating press of men boiling into the sacrosanct grounds beyond, briefly lifted off my feet in the press of agitated flesh. The Janissaries’ eyes were wide with fear and hatred, emboldened and terrified by their own political blasphemy. The invasion rolled on toward the Gate of Felicity.
I struggled aside the mob and caught my breath, looking for a way to the harem. The second courtyard was an agitated sea of Janissary headdress and waving weapons. The rebels seemed determined to smash down the third gate and get to the Throne Room, and from there they would assault the harem and hunt for the sultan. Somehow I must outflank and get ahead.
As I looked for a way I spotted European clothes and focused. A Western agitator was urging on the rebels. I peered closer and got a new shock. Lothar Von Bonin was ahead of me in the press of soldiers, waving his prosthetic arm to urge the rioters on. He wore a Prussian uniform, burn bandages, and eye patch, and hung on Aga Gelib like a cloak. Lothar no doubt hoped the chaos and anarchy would give him the freedom to search for the palladium.
Well, if I’d failed to finish the vile devil off on Canopus, I’d do it now. All was confusion, and nobody was paying particular attention to me. I checked the priming on my rifle, snapped it to my shoulder as if aiming at a distant loyalist, and fired across the milling crowd to drop the bastard like a deer. Yet even as I did so, a Janissary soldier stepped into the way of my bullet and spun like a dervish instead.
Bloody hell.
Von Bonin whirled, looking for the shooter as I grounded my gun. All he saw, I hoped, was a sea of Janissary börk hats. Then he was lost, too, using the mob as protective cover. I had minutes to get ahead of him.
I ran left across the courtyard to the harem side of the palace. Reloading and then slinging my gun, I swung up onto a courtyard tree and used a branch to leap onto the top of a thick wall. I danced along it to where I could pull myself up onto the tile roof of a colonnade leading toward the harem. Some men cheered, thinking me a cheeky daredevil, and others cried sacrilege. Someone else, perhaps a eunuch guard, took a shot that missed by inches. A tile broke and clattered off the roof. I bounded up to a gable and scrambled out of sight. The sound of the mob I’d left was like the roar of the sea.
I looked behind. No other Janissary had dared follow.
The complicated covering of the huge harem was a labyrinth of domes, minarets, towers, skylights, gables, sheds, and chimneys, cobbled together over three centuries. To my right I could hear the rebels blasting their way into the sacrosanct third courtyard. Below in the harem were women’s screams, eunuch shouts, and pounding feet as hundreds of frightened people churned this way and that. Directly ahead was a chimney. To hell with its swirling smoke!
I tossed off my plundered Janissary robe and hat, climbed to the chimney lip, dangled my legs, held my breath, and plunged. I skidded thirty feet down the hot chute and landed boot first in a harem fireplace. Hot! I kicked my way out, crouched, and brandished my rifle, smoking logs and embers rolling across carpets and marble. I was black with soot. Shrieking women scattered like squirrels.
I’d prefer to report that I encountered the standard Oriental fantasy inside the fabled seraglio, with voluptuous harem girls lounging by a pool in the erotic poses so vividly imagined by French and Italian artists.
Alas, their beauty was impressive enough, and certainly it was a crime to have all that pulchritude sold to a single sultan. But every woman I saw had all her clothes on and was wailing unattractively to little purpose. The girls recoiled as if I were a demon. Eunuchs stood uncertainly with scimitars and whips, dwarves crawled into cabinets, and deaf mutes covered their eyes at my devilish materialization.
The sultan was nowhere to be seen.
I seized a woman by the arm. “Aimée?” This particular female looked like a house servant of some kind, probably having lost her place in the royal bed because she was as old as I am. Fortunately, she understood my pronunciation of the name and jerked her head to get rid of me. No one was going to protect the French sultana.
I let the woman go and dashed in the direction she’d indicated.
“Aimée? Aimée?” My wife would be near the sultana. A eunuch loomed to block my way, scimitar held amateurishly at waist-level because these guards had never had to bully anyone more formidable than weaponless women. I impatiently clubbed him aside and charged up a flight of stairs, flinging open doors upon cowering occupants. Several more pointed, and finally I burst upon the right room.
“Ethan? Thank God!”
My wife was costumed in Turkish finery that took my breath away, given our lengthy separation. Yet I was glad I’d brought traveling dress. We’d be caught in an hour if she tried to escape in harem clothes.
She rushed to embrace me and stopped short in consternation. “You’re black as coal!”
I, in turn, was transfixed by my first look at the mysterious beauty behind her. If my wife is the epitome of serene Mediterranean allure, Aimée was a northern flower, her hair a sunburst, her eyes sapphires, and her figure almost stupefying. No wonder she’d enthralled two sultans.
“Papa!” Harry hugged me despite the filth.“You’re dirty.” Harry was in a tunic, vest, and Turkish pants.
“Filthy as a chimney sweep,” his mother added. She wrinkled her nose.
“Like Sinterklaas!” I winked. “Dropped from the sky like Athena.”
“You’re funny, Papa.”
“It’s my disguise.” I
turned to the stunning sultana. “Ethan Gage, at your service, Madame. Do you mind if I borrow a basin to get a little soot off, and then borrow my wife and son? Astiza, I brought traveling clothes.”
Aimée was examining her own fireplace with interest. “A man can fit up there? Hiding from enemies?”
“In an emergency.”
“I’ll remember that, Monsieur Gage. You may have saved an empire by saving my son Mahmud.”
“Crawling about is my specialty.” I’m sure my grin was dazzling against the soot. Then I splashed in a wall fountain while Astiza and Harry dressed.
We heard the boom of a cannon and a rising cacophony of cries and shouts. The riot had turned to pitched battle. In the habitual stillness of the palace it seemed shockingly loud.
“Quick, the Janissaries will be here soon and Selim either caged or dead. How can we get out?” I put the question to Aimée, but my wife answered.
“There’s a secret passage that leads under the palace.”
“Can we get to it?”
“I’ll escort you,” Aimée said. “The eunuchs will still obey me.”
“You and your son need to come too. When Selim falls—”
“No, I’ve changed my mind. Our place is here. The Janissaries will elevate Mustafa but he’s a stupid man and won’t last. Mahmud must be ready. And there’s no place for me in the outside world. I’m no more fit to fly than a caged bird with clipped wings. I’ll stay to see my son on the throne. There will be perilous days ahead, but perhaps your chimney trick will save him.”
“Aren’t you afraid for yourself?”
She shrugged. “I’ve no power without Selim. They’ll humiliate me and then they’ll ignore me.” She grimaced fiercely. “Besides, a mother protects her young.” She looked at Astiza. “But the Janissaries fear women of learning. They’ll think your wife a witch.”
“Best we hurry, then.”
We trotted through the maze of the harem, windows giving glimpses of palace courtyards. It was slaughter. Ministers were being dragged to chopping blocks. Captured white eunuchs were being strangled.
The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) Page 30
