“No!” I said. “No!”
The girl crept off to a corner of the rooms shaking with sobs that my offer of a blanket could not still. I did not try to hush her more than that, for the sound of a slave girl weeping in the night was the perfect pathetic accompaniment to my thoughts, which would have kept me awake anyway. The girl wept and wept, fearing the wrath of her master in the morning because she had not made a satisfactory gift.
I was somewhat encouraged by this gesture of sympathy. Husayn had not forgotten my plight in the joy of his homecoming, after all. He had sent this girl hoping to divert me from my true love. Well, her tears in the morning would assure him that I remained unmoved.
XVI
My guess concerning Husayn’s motives proved correct. When he came from his prayers to rouse me that morning, he brought the glad news that between the two of them, he and his father-in-law had decided they could put up fifty ghrush toward the purchase of Sofia Baffo from the slave merchants.
A trip across the Golden Horn that morning won promissory notes for another hundred and fifty ghrush. Here in the suburb of Galata, where merchants of my homeland lived in a tight little colony, the Venetian ambassador and other kind-hearted souls who knew either Governor Baffo or my family were glad to help out.
From previous experience with my uncle, I knew that anybody’s coins were legal tender in Constantinople: the familiar Venetian zecchino, Dutch ducats, German groschen. Even Turks tended to favor these European mints to their own because the many sites throughout the vast empire where coins were struck did not maintain much unity among themselves as to weight and alloy.
Also, according to Muslim religious prejudice against drawing figures, the Sultan Suleiman would only distinguish his coinage in Arabic script. Besides being difficult for most Europeans to decipher, it was much simpler to alter a few tendrils of script than it was to deface the entire figure of Saint Mark blessing the standard of Venice. I knew the dealer among the Turks must be constantly on guard not to accept as legal tender disks of base metal stamped in back alleys with meaningless curlicues and crosshatches. But this was easier said than done for one who didn’t read Arabic.
Every transaction, therefore, demanded a separate adjustment. The transaction depended on the known variations in the different currencies one happened to have in his pocket at the moment. It depended on each individual’s judgment as to how many times a curl of silver had been shaved off the edge of each individual coin. It also depended on whether the partners in this present deal would decide to line their own pockets with this roundabout way of charging usury in a land that otherwise forbade it. I realized the details would have to be haggled out with the slaver when the time came.
At the moment, I was content to know that we had a sizable purse full of zecchini, ducats, and groschen that could be figured roughly and generally as two hundred Turkish ghrush. Uncle Jacopo had always told me to equate ghrush with grosso —“those big silver coins”—to distinguish them from plain “silvers,” the little aspers, of which there were one hundred twenty in a ghrush . I knew that the chief cook at the Sultan’s palace, with fifty cooks under him, could brag that he earned forty aspers a day. It would take him three days to earn one ghrush, nearly two years with very few holidays to earn what we had in that purse. How much more could a slave possibly cost? A master had to feed and clothe his purchase after all, all those things, Husayn reminded me, a poor orphaned sailor would be hard pressed to provide for a wife like Sofia Baffo.
Husayn advised that we should wait a day or two for other men to consolidate their funds and raise perhaps another fifty ghrush or so, but I could not wait. The figuring of such a sum could only fill me with confidence.
A second night with the black slave girl passed much as the first—only just fast enough to keep my impatience from turning to distraction—then, armed with the two hundred ghrush, I made Husayn take me to the slave market the very next day. We were there when the great wooden doors opened.
There are several places one can go in Constantinople to look for slaves. Rowers change masters on the quayside so they are never free from the sound and smell of the sea. If one is looking for a good strong Ethiopian to be his man-of-all-work or a docile Sudanese woman to help in the kitchen, one goes to a tumble of buildings a stone’s throw from the Haseki caravanserai.
Husayn took me, however, to the exclusive courtyard no great distance from the Sublime Porte itself. We had to pass through a district of pearl merchants to reach it. Such an array of gems of every hue and size, displayed in so many shop-windows on velvet cushions that set off their luster, served perhaps as a probation. If the sight were too rich, one was warned away from the treasures that lay in the courtyard of the slaves beyond.
Rugs, low tables, and smoking braziers were set beneath high, mosaicked colonnades. Here narghiles and sherbets were served with compliments to the prospective buyers who might linger all day over their purchase as if at a party. The merchandise itself
