Sofia
Ann Chamberlin
OTTOMAN EMPIRE TRILOGY: BOOK 1
Copyright © 1996 by Ann Chamberlin
All rights reserved
Map by Ellisa Mitchell
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Distributed by St. Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Jacket art, Lelia, by Sir Frank Dicksee, courtesy of The Fine Arts Society
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-10: 0312861109
ISBN-13: 978-0312861100
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
Contents
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF VENICE IN 1562
PART I: GIORGIO
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
PART II: SAFIYE
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
PART III: ABDULLAH
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
XLIX
L
LI
LII
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF VENICE IN 1562
PART I: GIORGIO
I
Of all the days in my long life, I remember the day I met Governor Baffo’s daughter more than any other.
I, Giorgio Veniero, had climbed a convent wall.
This was no youthful Carnival prank, though it was both the year’s season and mine. I’d been told I must do it. I must climb the convent wall to deliver a message. The message was unusual not because of what I must say—which was what the Doge of Venice would say to any young lady under the circumstances—but because of the lady herself. His Serenity’s secretary had decided to humor this lady’s own singular demands of secrecy.
My blossoming sense of romance and adventure had tingled to life from the first suggestion: I’d jumped at the chance.
I’d never seen a convent garden before, of course; I was no priest. I guess I’d envisioned it in the hull-splitting life of spring. But the naked branches of the plane tree—like hoary, shedding antlers—provided very little cover apart from their woolly winter tassels. Nor did the air—hard, cold, and clear as a diamond.
It was the bare-bone structure of a garden, odorous of moist loam and worms working. The beds were damp but barren, turned over for the season, and against anything but the sky I must stand out like a sapphire on sackcloth. Afraid this would happen, I’d climbed high in the tree. But I was going to be very dependent on the lady’s skills of subterfuge, a position of helplessness for which I didn’t care.
And my fingers were beginning to grow numb and clumsy with the chill.
She was in the company of her aunt when I saw her. The pair had appeared against the gray stone of the refectory at the far end of the garden. If I stood out like she did—a garnet on a weathered grave marker—I was in serious trouble.
The older woman was part of the stone—and she had her face to me.
My heart skipped a beat and my hands, grown stupid and senseless, slipped their hold. How careless of Madonna Baffo to bring her aunt out into the garden! Or, if this were a chaperon she could not avoid, to let the older woman look directly into my hiding spot—A young man hiding in the convent gardens! Whatever would the old woman say if she saw me?
The aunt’s face was a crab apple at winter’s end—chafing, red, soft, and wrinkled out of her wimple. It was full of bitterness, the bitterness of a fruit left neglected at the bottom of the bin, the bitterness of virginity consigned to a sisterhood, a sacrifice to the consolidation of the family fortune.
I dared no more than glance at this unhappy nun. If the girl were foolish, I would not add to her foolishness with a misuse of my eyes. And yet I had time to see, besides her features, that the older woman was enthralled in her companion. I can only think that Baffo’s daughter knew she had control over her aunt and was playing with the danger as a tightrope walker may pretend to lose his balance for the thrill of having the audience gasp. And why, I ask myself, does the audience stay and watch, but for the thrill of gasping?
When next I dared to look, the older woman was gone— vanished, I knew not where-—and she, the younger, was walking toward my hiding spot, whistling the popular tune by which I had been told I would know her. “Whistling girls and crowing hens are sure to come to some bad ends.” I laid no particular store by this old wives’ cant, only wondered how a patrician girl, raised in a convent, should have contrived to learn such a sure, brazen pipe.
She walked toward me in a manner that let me know I was not the first she had ever met there beneath the plane tree. Although slightly disappointed, I was not surprised. That she had so often managed that conjuring act with her aunt and that she was so young did surprise me, however.
I slid down the tree trunk quickly, hoping to impress with my rigging-learned grace.
Madonna Baffo was tall and womanly for a fourteen-year-old. But most of all, I was surprised by her beauty. Like demon-cold at midnight, she took my breath away.
Others have said it and I, who saw her in her youth before these eulogists were even born, will say it, too. When she walked, it was dancing. She came down the flagstone path with steps that swept like the galliard to the very tilt of her head. It was movement full of fascination to both viewer and executor, sensuous steps matching the popular and ribald tune she whistled. The tune was called, as I remember, “Come to the Budding Grove, My Love.”
When she approached, I was compelled to sweep the cap off my head and brush its blue-tinted ostrich feather across the earth before me in a deep bow.
“Madonna Baffo,” I said. “May I present myself? I am Giorgio Veniero, at your service, if you please.”
“You’re the Doge’s man.”
She stated rather than asked it and her business-like tone made me straighten up at once. But I gained no sobriety looking at her. Convent life was seen in the breach rather
