I elaborated: “Chios must fall before Sokolli Pasha can march north to join the Sultan in Hungary. And I don’t think the Sultan wants a full half of his army too far behind when he crosses the Danube. Piali Pasha won’t wait long. With this intelligence, have you any doubt as to what his purpose is? He is not come a-maying. Piali Pasha’s reinforcements are much, much closer than yours are, my friends. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sokolli Pasha was already at Izmir, perhaps even at Çeşme. My master and his hordes are just waiting for the first ships to vomit their loads of men and arms on your shores, then to come back and pick up more, ever more janissaries to swarm through your streets and your homes.
“And when the Turks enter your streets, as I promise you they must—tomorrow, dawn, at the latest—do you think they’ll spend much time worrying about my lady? I don’t. I know how Turks treat their women. Don’t you? They trust them so little they must put them in the care of creatures like me—and would sooner see them dead than have a whisper of dishonor about them. So—go ahead. Do what you will with my lady. But trust me. Tens of thousands of janissaries will do what they will with your mothers, wives, and daughters.”
And I couldn’t resist this last little turn: “Gentlemen, wouldn’t all of you welcome the protection of a eunuch for your women at times like these?”
XXIV
Then I stood panting, backed against Esmikhan’s curtains, out of breath and out of words. I had painted a picture so grim that even I balked at it. But having exhausted my brain on this, I had no mind left to plan a remedy to the situation.
It was into this faltering that my lady stepped. Out of the curtains she came, only the very careful, strict draping of her veils let me—and me alone—know just how much such a move cost her. To step thus before a crowd of strange men and demand their attention on herself? I was silent a while longer just at the wonder of it.
And she did attract their attention, she certainly did. Of course she looked like little more than a bundle of fabric, but she had taken great care that it was her very richest fabrics that showed. Sparks of gold and silver threads caught the lamplight. A ruby glowed like blood upon one exposed finger.
But more than the impression of costly treasure, her appearance was striking in its indefiniteness. And in this indefiniteness, each man’s mind created its own particulars. My lady in all her distinct plainness of face might have appeared ridiculous, at best not worth fighting for. As she’d moaned herself as we stood on Ilium, “Allah, in His wisdom, made me no Helen.”
But as she now stood before us as no woman, she was Every Woman. Each man put aside that swath of silk and in his mind’s eye saw his mother’s face, his sister’s smile, his wife’s tender breast.
And draped over all, Esmikhan carried the Turkish star-and-crescent banner.
I could see signs of hasty completion. The stitches began as tiny and neat as any Esmikhan had used—too many times to bear the thought—to make garments for an infant prince. But towards the end, the lengths of thread extended until one hook of the moon and most of the star were merely tacked on. They would serve—through the first gusts of wind, anyway.
And they served very well now, in the lamplight, in the hand of a woman who was every man’s dearest.
“Sirs,” Esmikhan said.
My heart was in my throat. She spoke Italian—Venetian—my own mother tongue. They must understand her, although her thick accent and sometimes stilted or over-poetic choice of words lent a musical, exotic, almost otherworldly quality to what she said.
“Sirs, your flag is ready. Sail with it, and under it, as Allah is my witness, your families will receive no hurt at the hands of my grandfather’s slaves.” The men couldn’t guess, but I knew. My lady had just about reached the limit of her impromptu vocabulary as well as of her courage. So, with miraculously restored vigor of my own, I stepped into the breech. I took the flag from my lady’s shaking fingers and placed one reassuring, thanking hand at the small of her back, the place only I in all the world would know where to find beneath the bundle of wrappers.
“Go,” I said. “Fetch your families, your valuables. Enough to start a new life, but no more than you can carry. If Giustiniani won’t sail his Epiphany to safety, if he’s too proud, too Genoese to accept an Ottoman’s gift of protection, I’ll sail her myself. I’ll sail all of you and yours to safety through the very heart of Piali Pasha’s armada. This, by the word of Sokolli Pasha’s eunuch Abdullah, Giorgio Veniero.”
***
Sometime during the hectic night that followed, between hastily rowing men to shore, hastily rowing boat after boat of disoriented women, squalling infants, ill-sorted belongings back and stowing them, I found a moment alone with my lady. The moment I did, I fell to her feet in gratitude.
“Allah alone can recompense what I owe you, lady. What a brave and timely deed you did.”
“Nonsense,” she replied, her hand on my turban, then on my chin, trying to raise me. “Abdullah, what you said, when you said I was the only family left to you. Look, I weep now at the thought of it. How could I not do all in my power to aid—what was really an attempt to aid me. Abdullah, what you did, standing up to all those men who would have killed you and then—cut off my ear in a dungeon...”
She got my face so she could look at it, then pulled away her veil so she could laugh through the tears that lamplight
