XXXIII
Back in the Pasha’s palace, a sacrifice was killed and all the master’s favorite dishes prepared to welcome him home. Esmikhan put on her best clothes and sat in the mabein waiting for his return. Alas, she waited in vain, and the food was cold before it was ever eaten.
As the hour grew late, I sent a boy over to the Serai to find out what the trouble was. He brought back the word.
“The janissaries are in revolt.”
“That was this morning,” I told him. “The master paid them off and they gave it up.”
“But they’re in revolt again,” the lad insisted. “They got as far as the courtyard of the Sultan’s palace. Then they barred the gates and won’t let Selim into his own house. Selim has had to retreat outside the walls again to one of his villas, and Allah knows what is to become of us.”
“What will become of the harem?” Esmikhan asked, wringing her hands. “Do you suppose the soldiers will have the audacity to violate the harem? Oh, how I wish that Safiye were safe back in Magnesia!”
You don’t know how we all wish that, I thought, but had worse to tell her. “There is a greater fear, lady. My lord Sokolli Pasha is also behind the gates to the palace. They are holding him hostage.”
She sat up that night in her best dress, sleeping in fits and starts, not even bothering to lay her head down on a pillow, wondering (fearing? hoping?) whether she was an orphan, a widow, both, or neither. And I waited with her.
A day, a night, a day, and another night passed in the same way. We heard of perhaps a dozen deaths caused by factions brawling in the streets, but they were just the sort of eruptions, like cankers in the mouth, that indicate a general infection throughout the body. Our gatekeeper’s son got a cuff at one shop and was refused service at another because they knew he was buying for Sokolli’s house. But then at last we pricked up our ears and heard the boom of cannons from the fortress, not in aggressive, but in joyous rhythms, and we knew the rebellion was over. The Venetian fleet had faded back into the Mediterranean and Selim was at last safely installed behind the Sublime Porte. “But at what a cost! What a cost!” My master shook his head wearily. We spoke together in the selamlik upon his final, safe return, and I had to endure several interruptions during our interview from many pressing concerns as he tied up the ends of the rebellion.
“What was the price, my lord?” I asked.
“Well, they ruined the Empire, that’s all. Ruined the Empire. They couldn’t see. All they cared for was their own satisfaction.”
The entire treasury, I learned, was gone. All the spoils from the Kapudan Pasha’s recent conquest of the island of Chios had to be handed out besides a hefty installment of the personal jewelry and real estate belonging to Esmikhan’s Aunt Mihrimah. This venerable lady had made this sacrifice to ransom her drunkard brother and herself and the other women of the Serai harem from disgrace.
“Still, that is not the worst,” Sokolli Pasha said.
“There is more? Allah preserve us, what more could they ask?”
“The treasury is nothing. Taxes will come in, and we will replenish it “my master said. “But they demanded concessions and they got them. The ancient laws have been changed at the very roots. Janissaries are now allowed to marry. Yes, to marry! Not only that, but they may pass their positions on to their sons. And the corps has been opened up to enlistment—to Turks as well. It is the end of the army, that’s what it is. And the end of the army means the end of the Empire.
“I’ll wager if you listen closely, you can hear them—the elite, hand-picked corps that once had no thought but for training and battle, the army that none in the world could defeat—I’ll bet you can hear them in the streets now, wildly scrambling for brides as they scrambled for those aspers on the morning of the parade. No man’s daughter is safe; they will all want a month off for honeymoons, and soon they will delight more in the bandying of sons than of lances and spears. How can you fight barbarian Christians with such a mob, I ask you? It’s gone. The Empire is gone. And I was the one who bartered for her downfall.”
“But wouldn’t you, my lord, delight to see a son of yours join the corps you love so much?” I ventured.
“A son of mine? I have no son.”
“But you might, Allah willing, someday.”
Sokolli Pasha turned away, his exhaustion showing in the crow’s-feet of his eyes, and in the hollows of his temples. “No, I would rather he live a quiet life as a merchant or the owner of a workshop. Especially if he is a scrawny sort of lad, which I suppose any son of mine who might deign to live would have to be. Certainly not the sort I would want protecting this Empire and any daughters Allah may see fit to give me besides. Haven’t we in our present besotted Sultan, son of the great Suleiman, a perfect example of how generations rot in hereditary posts?”
“So far, master, I must compliment you. You have covered for him remarkably.”
“Yes, well, I suppose I can keep the Empire going for a little while longer. If I’m left free to choose good men beneath me. And if Allah favors us. But when I am gone...”
“Allah willing, that dread event is many years hence.”
Sokolli Pasha now turned to contemplate the future’s awesomeness in silence. As focus for his meditation, the
