Then what I knew would happen without bothering to pray for it did happen. The Ramadhan watch saw us. We were now close enough to see the men ordered from their breakfasts to scramble over the sides of Turkish galleys, into ships’ boats to row and drag the larger vessels at the circumference of the flotilla around so their guns could face us. This was unnerving.
“More coastward men,” I heard Giustiniani call. “Yes, cut the bars as close as you dare.”
I heard the sickening brush of wood on shallow shoal. Miraculously, the solid timbers held. The Epiphany slipped on.
“Closer!”
Closer? By God, we were far too close already. I was glad to see the man at the helm was in no hurry to fulfill that order. He knew, if the captain didn’t, just how low the load pressed.
For the love of Allah, couldn’t the Turks see Esmikhan’s banner? We weren’t out of firing range yet, not by a long shot.
“Closer. Trim the sails—”
I craned my neck up the mast behind me for reassurance—and then I couldn’t see the red banner, either.
I obliterated the captain’s orders with an outburst of my own. “Giustiniani, the banner. You’re a damned fool, man. To hope to sail without my lady’s banner.”
“I will not captain a ship under the infidel’s colors.”
“Then, by God, you’ll captain no ship. I will.” I yanked the shalvar silk out of an undecided Greek’s hands and ran it up myself.
Perhaps it was only the communion of predawn food, but once the wind caught the women’s stain of red, I was almost certain the Muslims at the fuses relaxed their hands a bit. At any rate, instead of the cannonballs I fully expected, the flotilla at last sent a little yawl towards us. A number of larger ships, too, had dropped their sails and began to move like the dawn out of the east towards us. I didn’t like that so well. The wind was with them, our cargo decidedly against us. So close to Chios as we were riding, our sails grew slack between gusts, panting like an overweight man near the top of a hill.
“Get off from land. Starboard, hard starboard,” I hollered to the helmsman. He was only too glad to comply as we brushed yet another rock, although his twist of the shaft brought us, for a moment, straight at Piali Pasha’s forces.
“They’re closing, you fools!” Giustiniani hollered. “Back port. And get these women and children out of the way.” Where they might go but packed tighter and tighter into each other’s arms, he didn’t say.
Then Giustiniani ordered: “Men, man your guns.”
“No,” I countered, knocking the first gun I came to out of its stand. “No. No, these are women, children, old folks we have. Giustiniani, we parley.”
“I will not parley with a God-accursed Turk. Not when women and children are at stake.” Dawn glistened on the man’s mad skin of sweat as he peered over the barrel of his own gun, the best little falconet on board. “We’ll all die martyrs first. I’ve got the damned yawl in my sights.”
And martyrs we would have been if a single gun had blown. But I said, “We parley,” reining my voice down as low as it would go. And, out of the corner of my eye, I saw powder stay where it was, even behind the falconet. At the moment, that was the best I could hope for.
“Ahoy!” I heard then from over the bulwarks. While command of the ship was in debate, the yawl had slipped close enough for speech. But the Turks still suspected. The call came in very bad Italian. “Friend or foe? You fly the Sultan’s colors, but your actions—we do not trust.”
Giustiniani didn’t move. His face under the sweat and the sky’s reflected colors had frozen to the white of ice. So I moved instead, stepped from his side to the ship’s.
“Ahoy,” I replied, little concerned now that my voice betrayed me in a squeak. The Turks had easily as many guns in that yawl as we had with us. And they were also manned and primed.
“Ahoy,” I repeated, and the next came in Turkish. “I am—I am khadim to Sokolli Pasha.”
“Khadim? To Sokolli Pasha? Don’t believe it.” I heard a mutter among the yawl’s crew. Their weapons, bouncing with the waves, caught dawn like kindling to fire.
“His harem is on board, sirs. Believe me, as one who fasts this day with you. Believe, by my manhood which heathen dogs devoured in the streets of Pera, believe. I am charged with their safety. Please, let me bring them to the vizier. Let me bring them out of the punishment you plan for Chios.”
“You ride awfully low for one man’s harem, khadim. Even for a vizier’s.” Their skepticism was not without humor. I took that as a good omen. Some of the guns sank out of sight.
“Yes. Yes, sir. You’re right. These are…women and children, women and children who have been kind to my lady. For these kindnesses, my lady has chosen to throw the protection of her veils over them.” Quite literally her shalvar, I thought, but let the yawlers have time to think about what I’d said aloud.
“We should board and see,” ran the Turks’ discussion. “There may be treacherous Giustinianis among them.”
I heard a groan of fear behind me and realized the captain understood at least enough Turkish to know his own name when he heard it. I pushed my voice to cover his involuntary betrayal: “Sirs, you will not pass a vizier’s eunuch. For Ottoman honor and for the Faith, you will not.” And, in the end, they didn’t. No man swears by the fast who doesn’t keep its rigors. Even less does any man feign a lack of manhood in a eunuch’s dress—unless he’s nothing left to lose.
And so the yawl escorted us around the headland
