sex before sunset.’
Orkhan gave a brief, barking laugh as he gazed up at the roofs of the Cage’s buildings and Hamid shrugged before suggesting a wrestling bout. The princes, as they wrestled, were accustomed to tell each other that they were building up muscle and studying at cunning. They were training to master the Empire, preparing themselves first to lead armies against Vienna and Tabriz and then to ride the ladies of the Harem, but, when Orkhan wrestled, he thought to himself that he was preparing for the terminal fight in the Passageway against the mutes with the bowstring. Orkhan and Hamid now went to the kitchen, where they would not be disturbed by the other princes. A servant sat crouched in one corner of the kitchen, but not only were the servants of the Cage deaf and mute, they were also, as far as the princes were concerned, to all intents and purposes blind and invisible as well.
The two princes stripped and oiled each other, reaching down to a jug on the floor and slapping great handfuls of olive oil onto their bodies, until they seemed to be sheathed in a body armour of gleaming leather. They lowered their heads, like a pair of angry and confronted bulls, and they wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders. They pressed hard against each other so that their oil and sweat ran together. Still locked together, they turned and turned, each trying to get a leg behind the other’s. Suddenly, Orkhan stepped back and pulled Hamid to him and threw him over his extended leg. Hamid fell, but he kept his grip on Orkhan who followed him in the fall. Then Hamid was on his back slightly winded with Orkhan on top of him. His mouth formed an O of surprise, which Orkhan silenced with a kiss. Raising himself slightly, Orkhan ran his hands down Hamid’s oiled cuirass of a rib-cage and muscled stomach. Pulling away yet more, he felt for Hamid’s testicles and squeezed them. Hamid moaned, not from pain, but apprehension, as Orkhan, kneeling between his legs, reached for the flask of oil and, having poured more onto his left hand, he forced Hamid’s legs upwards, and inserted the oil into the cleft between Hamid’s buttocks. Then, as he was satisfied that the way was now prepared, he brought himself closer, so as to force his cock into the cleft of Hamid’s arse. Even so, though the entry had been prepared, it was still difficult. Orkhan ground his pelvis against Hamid’s body. Hamid moaned crazily. Orkhan was hammering at a door which opened only slowly. Finally he came deep inside his stepbrother.
Victory. He had used Hamid as one might use a lavatory. This was indeed part of the victory. This was the way of the warrior — a hard-fought contest where one conquered and the other played the woman’s role and submitted. It had nothing to do with the love that poets and women played at. He withdrew and contemplated Hamid’s hard and gleaming buttocks. He was relieved to find that he felt no desire for Hamid’s body, for desire of the flesh made one vulnerable, womanish. Victory, yet it was, he knew, only a shadow victory, as sex with a man was reported to be only an adumbration of sex with a woman. It was only a game, an exercise, practice for the real war which was between men and women. On the other hand, it was better than being in bed with a eunuch. As those who have had sex with eunuchs will know, eunuchs are childish, petulant creatures. They are always demanding chocolates or toys for their favours.
Orkhan lay beside Hamid, looking up at the ceiling and thinking of the day which stretched ahead. It would be precisely the same day as yesterday — only it would bear a different date. They were all schooled in boredom. The same day came round again and again and in it they wrestled and engaged in target practice. Some of the princes gardened, measuring out their days against the slow growth of plants. Others raced cockroaches, placed bets on the fall of leaves in the wind, or sat like idiots watching the sunlight climbing up a wall. Orkhan read books on miscellaneous topics — the manners and customs of the inhabitants of the Russian steppes, sex-lives of the eunuchs, how to cook edible clays, conjuring tricks with eggs — whatever literature was procurable through the hole in the wall. Sometimes, he wrote poems or love-letters to the Ladies of the Harem and, having scrolled them round the shafts of arrows, he fired them over the enclosing roofs of the Cage. No arrows ever came back. Now he lay back beside Hamid and poured more oil over his cock which was sore. Hamid, seeing what he was doing, crawled over to suck the cock, working his tongue from the base to the tip until Orkhan came again, this time in Hamid’s mouth. At length, bored with each other’s company, they went next door to the tiny bath-house to wash the oil off.
Hamid limped off back to the dormitory. Orkhan was left alone in the courtyard — apart from a couple of old deaf-mutes that is. He felt his sense of triumph ebb away, for he now asked himself was it to him that Hamid had submitted, or was it to the dream? Destiny, after all, has its own power. Suddenly the wind changed and the women’s voices could be heard. It seemed to him that they sounded unusually excited, like the twittering of exotic birds disturbed by the proximity of a predator. Then the door of the Cage opened. A black hand beckoned and Orkhan walked towards it.
Chapter Two
THE PERFUMED BATTLEFIELD
He walked in front of the mutes down the Passage Where the Jinn Consult and stumbled slightly on the uneven flagstones. High bottle-glass windows let in a greenish light. Orkhan’s eyes drank in the details of unfamiliar stonework. As he walked, he kept his arms tense against his sides, for he was waiting for the descent of the bowstring. Yet nothing happened and he kept walking. It seemed that the invisible Jinns who consulted in this corridor had decided on life for Orkhan.
At the end of the passage stood a tiny man.
‘Hail, Sultan Orkhan, Lord of the Empire in the East and in the West. Greetings to my new master, raised from the dead and born again. Squinting my eyes in astonishment, I behold the earthy clods fall away from your body as your august mother, the Valide Sultan, confers on you the shining robe of a second life. Then accept her gift and follow me.’
As the dwarf turned to lead the way, Orkhan saw that the strange little man was also humpbacked. He followed the dwarf out of the passageway and, taken aback at finding himself in such a vast open space, he reeled. Though at first his eyes could not comprehend what it was that they gazed upon, he soon came to understand that he was walking in a large garden.
He reached forward and spun the dwarf round,
‘Who are you?’
‘I am your Vizier for as long as I can behold my shadow in the sunshine of your favour, but God knows that, whatever the angle of the sun, the shadow that a body like mine can cast must always be a short one.’
‘How am I Sultan? Is Selim dead? What has happened to Barak?’
‘Alas for the Sultan Selim. Indeed the parrot of his great spirit, breaking the bonds of its sensual cage is obliged to set out for the eternal city.’
‘You mean that my father is dead?’
‘Even a Sultan must one day step off from the world of being into the abyss of non-existence.’
‘Where is Barak?’
‘You will shortly behold him face to face.’
‘Why have I been freed?’
The Vizier responded impatiently,
‘Who has said that you were free? You are not free. The Sultan is the least free of all mortals, being burdened with the cares of justice and government. The good sultan will always be a slave to his subjects.’
Now the impatient vizier turned and broke into a trot, heading towards a pavilion made of porcelain in the centre of the garden. Orkhan’s brains boiled with unanswered questions, but there was no time to ask them before he followed the dwarf through the door.
A baby gazelle was skittering across the porcelain floor, its legs splaying out as the little creature was unable to find any hold on such a smooth surface. Servant girls knelt around the gazelle trying to catch and calm it. A raddled, older woman sprawled back on a cushioned bench at the far end, laughing at the unavailing efforts of her servants. Orkhan found that he did after all remember her.
‘Mother, don’t you recognise me?’
The Valide Sultan nodded and waved her hands apologetically, yet she could not stop laughing. This was the woman who had let him be taken off to prison and left him to languish there for fifteen years. At last, one of the servant girls caught the gazelle, scooped it up and carried it out of the pavilion. Now the Valide Sultan’s eyes came to rest on Orkhan. Indeed, all the women in the pavilion were slyly watching him from beneath darkened lashes. No
