I nodded vaguely. Certainly during these past glorious days with Esmikhan my mind had been yearning towards the meaning of Easter in a primal urge no renegade’s knife could cut from me. The very countryside clamored for it, but in ways that made bell towers quite redundant. I had been feeling “Easter” in no way so precisely defined as the ultimatum that rang out from Chios that morning.
Had the ability to feel Christianity been cut from me along with the rest? Or were there things about Christianity’s compulsion that I had forgotten until this reminder?
“This will do.” The captain shoved himself from the rail with the carelessness of command, more immediate things on his mind. “Why don’t you, my mate, give the boys the order to drop anchor. Then go gather your things and—and you’re a free...you re tree.
I couldn’t fail to notice how he avoided saying “A free man.” I could never be that. And since I couldn’t be that, was there any use in freedom at all?
I suppressed this doubt and others like it, however, and went to do as Giustiniani bade me. Orders are easier to follow than to think about.
The anchor carried its cable to the bottom with a plunge that seemed to take my heart with it. Now I had to go get my few belongings from the cubicle where my lady lay. But I lingered on deck as long as I could, contemplating how not even a bubble arose to show where my heart had gone down.
I thought-—I hoped—Esmikhan was still asleep. It was her fast-day custom, after taking a sustaining meal before dawn, to sleep again as much as she could into the long, hungry day. But perhaps hearing bells in place of the muezzin startled her as much as it did me. As I quietly pulled back the damask curtains to slip inside, she roused and sat up on her cushions, stretching with lazy luxury.
“Morning, Abdullah,” got swallowed in a yawn.
“My lady.”
Say as little as possible, I told myself. But every word I did say seemed awash with gall. Look jour last, I advised again. But I couldn’t. To have her read betrayal in my eyes?
“Ah, Abdullah,” Esmikhan said in another yawn. “Up so early? You sailors are a hardy bunch.”
“Yes, lady.” I had my things now. I could go.
“Today is the day we rest at Chios, isn’t it? Yes, I remember. Does it look like it will be a good day?”
She tried to hold me with her idle chatter, but it was the sweet smell she stirred when disturbing sleep that held me more. With an explosion of breath that came close to a groan, I snapped free of the spell.
I even choked on the word “Inshallah” as I fled.
***
Outside, the morning air, though breezeless, cleared my head. The ship’s boat lowered smoothly. But Giustiniani seemed somewhat agitated. I fell alongside his stride of nervous pacing at the rail.
“Something’s amiss,” he said, twiddling his earring.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Giustiniani shook his own hand from his ear as if it were an invasion. Then he pointed out a flock of little local boats drawn up on the Chian strand. The natives were among them, almost frantically decking out the crafts with rugs and garlands and bunting.
“An Easter custom?” I offered, though I realized as soon as I said it that one didn’t suggest an ancient custom to a native. But the islanders’ actions did seem quaint and harmless enough.
“No,” Giustiniani said. “The only time we get up a little flotilla like that is to greet incoming Turks.”
“Turks?”
I was certain the captain must hear the thud of my heart. Or perhaps he was deafened by the thud of his own. I raked the horizon all around but saw nothing.
“They come once a year to claim some men and ships for their navy,” Giustiniani explained. “It counts as part of the tribute. We put up a little pomp for them when they do. Seems to make them satisfied with less of a material nature. But it’s fall when they usually come, on their way to shutting down for the winter, as it were.”
“And they already came last fall?”
“They did.”
“So what can the actions of your countrymen mean?”
“I don’t know.” With disgust, the captain once more found the cross in his earring gave him no comfort. “But I think you’d better stay put for a while ‘til I find out.”
I nodded my compliance. I might have tried to logic him into the position that the sooner I got onto the Chian shore, the better my chances of freedom were. But haste didn’t seem to be his first instinct. I trusted to his instinct and to my own, which at the first sign of danger was “My lady.” But was it her safety that concerned me, or my own which I sensed would be greater if I stayed with her?
For all at once my mind couldn’t place Piali Pasha in the Bosphorus where we’d left him anymore. The numbers of men-of-war we’d seen on our trip down the coast suddenly added up to stragglers of the armada rather than the oddities for which we’d previously taken them.
I saw Giustiniani over the side and off towards shore until I couldn’t hear the groan of his boat’s oars anymore.
And then I went to do what I’d thought I’d never have to do again: I went to face my lady.
XXII
It was a long, quiet Easter-Ramadhan day when, to the long numbing weight of hunger was added the stupefaction of doubt. It was a day much, I suppose, as that first Resurrection Day must have seemed to the Three Marys who found the Holy Sepulchre empty but as yet had no proofs as to what their discovery might mean. They knew only the emptiness.
Perhaps I could expect a miracle for which nothing yet in personal experience taught me to hope. Experience taught me that even the most beloved of life’s companions assaulted the
