That day I turned my long-robed back upon the sea. Easter had come and gone. There were no miracles, only luck awarded to courage, perseverance—and love. The tomb remained empty, and the Resurrection—somehow it no longer mattered.
Now I must concentrate on getting my lady a child. I couldn’t perform the honor myself, though heaven knows I wished it. There was only one thing heaven had left to me: to get her to Magnesia, to Sokolli Pasha—and, incidentally, to Sofia Baffo.
XXV
In history, Safiye was the fairest of the Prophet Muhammed’s seven wives. Sofia Baffo’s harem naming was a coincidence of the similar sound in her given, Christian name and the popular Arabic appellation. The name Safiye means “Fair One” and the matriarch’s namesake was the fairest in the imperial harem. But Sofia in its original tongue means “wisdom” and I have always considered the combination, the conflict of beauty and wisdom in one mortal body, like the kiss of powder and fire. I have never seen a woman bear a pregnancy quite like Safiye the Fair One did hers. Esmikhan’s every attempt—and it grew worse with each successive one—seemed to overwhelm her, like some great parasitic fungus sapping all the strength from the trunk of a tree. My lady had to devote her every waking thought to the matter of the child within her; there was time for little else. As I had seen, she spared little time even for me.
Safiye, on the other hand, perhaps because she was so tall, never lost the supple grace that was hers by nature. Though it did require her to go about in jackets with but the first two little pearl buttons fastened under the breast, the bulge itself seemed tightly bound to her as a barrel is bound with hoops of iron. It never got in her way. She was always in complete control, and she had plenty of time to fill her mind with other things.
So befell that day in the month Christians call May—for Muslims it was the first decade of Dhu ‘l-Kada in the nine hundred and seventy-third year after the Hijra of the blessed Prophet. Leaving my lady alone with the dregs of Safiye’s harem in the governor’s residence in Magnesia, I made my way to the army’s encampment on Bozdag. Safiye herself hadn’t been in the residence since the four days of Bayram at the end of the holy month of fasting. In spite of her condition, she would not leave Murad’s side, and Murad’s place was with the empire’s battalions.
There is probably no location on the face of the earth where a eunuch feels more out of place than in an army camp—unless it be a battlefield. I know creatures like myself in the time of the Greeks did actually lead men into combat, but that is a calling I cannot imagine. I can only speak for myself, and Bozdag was discomforting enough.
Spring had almost faded from the countryside in ripening grain. Trees stood in the silent state of potential between flower and harvest. The fruit hung undistinguished from leaves and buds unless you cared to look closely.
In camp, however, spring had been pounded from the earth weeks ago. Clouds of artillery practice sulphured it from the hillsides. The overused latrines and cavalry pickets dunged all growth senseless. One phalanx after another of yellow and indigo janissaries or violet spahis marched spring into summer dust on the parade ground. Following their horsetail standards, the troops perfected the martial step: left, right, twist face to the right; right, left, twist face to the left. This gave the impression of stern and constant vigilance to the impassive features under regiment-precise headgear that, acre after acre, held no seeming distinction or individuality.
My master had never had to leave Bozdag to come to Piali Pasha’s aid on Chios. The Chian annexation to the realm of the Faithful was an accomplished fact of a month’s standing. And, much to the credit of the Kapudan Pasha’s patience, the island got off much easier than it deserved. Let it never be said that Suleiman punished unjustly, for the Giustiniani alone suffered, as we in Magnesia heard the tale. Save for those the Epiphany brought safe to Izmir—and the man I knew had only daughters—all the rest went in slavery to Constantinople.
Here, a number of Giustiniani sons between the ages of eight and eighteen died martyrs rather than turn Muslim, though they’d already been forcibly circumcised—the worst part of conversion—as an introduction to their tortures. Some of their mothers and sisters still wept over their tale on our return to the imperial harem.
But there are harder things in life than death. I can testify to that.
Thus died the Giustiniani name as artificially as it had, to that point, been growing. The rest of the Chians had already, within that month, been given more freedoms than they’d enjoyed under Genoa and encouraged in every way to bring their industry to the benefit of the empire as well as to their own. That was the tale as we heard it. At any rate, all these soldiers still blotched Bozdag. All these men, primed to the peak, waited just to be shown the enemy—and needed him pointed out quickly before they began to crumble in on one another. I made my way through circle after circle of them. At each sentry I stated my master’s name and was directed closer and closer to the eye of the storm, as it were, the pivot around which all that might spun.
Though Chios hadn’t immediately called him to duty, it was in the springless realm of camp discipline that Sokolli Pasha felt most at home. More than a eunuch’s natural awkwardness in the place, I felt graceless calling the Grand Vizier to a duty he clearly would rather ignore.
I wished my lady would be content, like other wives, that her husband would come
