“If Selim were to go about terrorizing his women and pinning them to the floor—as he could, indeed, if he wished—he would lose more than a night’s paramour. He would lose his honor. Every shred of it. A thousand years of military victory could not make up for that loss, for there is nothing more important a man owns than that which is totally out of his hands—the honor of his women. He would make a martyr more powerful than a thousand ragged dervishes because it would be of his own flesh and blood, from the very center of his heart, as we say. He might as well order lepers to sleep with all his women.
“Ah, but here I am trying to explain to you something that is beyond words even as the dervish’s union with Allah is unspeakable. Usually I cannot even talk to my lady about these things. ‘Ghazanfer,’ she sighs, ‘you grow tedious and there is work to be done.’ Often I fear she does not understand the very harem she lives in. She was, after all, born and raised a Christian.”
Here the eunuch paused, betraying uncharacteristic introspection before continuing. “Sometimes I fear she misuses the harem’s power—or, rather, rejects its power in favor of the tactics men use. If she uses that power, she must face the consequences men face, and sometimes I fear...Still, she saved my life. She is wise, good and brave...”
“And beautiful,” Andrea added to complete his version of the vision that today had failed to appear.
“Yes, and the most beautiful woman in the harem besides. Few are such complete eunuchs they are not aware of this. I will not speak against her. And that she would send me to you with this message assures me she has some inkling of how the power of the harem should be used.”
“What does your lady want me to do?” Andrea still found himself helpless of decision in the face of this news.
“That she did not tell me,” Ghazanfer said.
“How I wish I were her slave instead of you!” Andrea burst out. “For I desire nothing more of life than to receive orders from her lips. For I myself seem...witless at this news.”
“Would you take a suggestion from me?”
“Gladly. For you know her mind better than anyone in the world.”
“I think my lady has sent you this warning so you and all of Venice now on the Bosphorus can pack up your things and flee to safety. The Porte, I believe, means to send you an ultimatum tomorrow: Give up Cyprus, or face war. That will buy you some time. You can pretend to think it over. Two days, perhaps, in which to evacuate all people and possessions safely. After that, your lives cannot be vouched or bargained for in this city, whatever the harem’s power. And, perhaps, at sea, you can warn your navy of the coming storm—”
“Navy? What navy?” The words exploded from Andrea’s heart-crushed lungs. “I have been instrumental in blowing the Venetian navy out of the waters!”
The thought brushed his back with a chill. Was his destruction of the Venetian navy connected not only with Chios, but with Cyprus as well? He couldn’t compass the notion.
“Turn your merchant vessels into men-of-war, perhaps...” the eunuch ventured.
“With what? Our munitions turned the night of September thirteenth into day.”
Ghazanfer shook his great white turban sadly. “These details are beyond me.”
But not beyond Sofia.
Did that thought come from the eunuch or from Andrea’s own mind? He squashed it. “Surely she cannot expect me to flee. Flee, like a coward, from the field?”
“The power of the harem is to preserve life. Glory such as a soldier craves is not part of it.”
“But life without honor is—” Well, what was it? Could one such as himself have any honor—or life—left? None, certainly. None without the focus of all he had done—Sofia Baffo.
“You are young, my friend,” the eunuch was saying mildly, as if purposely to contrast their natures. “And full of hot blood. As I told you, the honor of the harem is not the honor of men, although they do hold the honor of men in their white hands.”
“You speak in cursed Turkish riddles!” The young man quite forgot his task of diplomacy. “How can a woman love a man who is a coward?”
“More, I suppose, than she can love a corpse.”
Or a traitor.
Did the eunuch’s eyes read that, or was it Andrea’s own mind that accused himself so? He would not succumb to the thought. He had only done what was necessary. “Well, by God, I do not intend to die in this fray.”
“That will be as Allah wills.”
For her part, Sofia wanted him alive. That was promising; she must still love him. Then a horrifying thought occurred to Andrea and his blood seem to freeze miles from the warmth of his heart. What if she was preserving him alive not for love, but for further use? To order the explosion of more Arsenals. To torture him through years as Selim had done to the young page boy—who had fancied himself spared—only in the end to take barbaric pleasure in pinning the lad through the heart to the rugs on the floor. Was it even possible that this was why the khadim had told him that horrific story, a warning with two separate meanings?
Andrea looked hard at the eunuch and could see no denial of such a motive behind the creature’s eyes. But he read no confirmation either.
Ghazanfer rose to leave the room. “I have done my lady’s will. More than that I cannot say. Salaam, Barbarigo.”
“Here, here!” Andrea shook the fears of Sofia’s betrayal from him as a dog shakes off muddy water. He rose after the eunuch, pulling the locket from his neck. “Take this and give it to your lady—from me.”
Ghazanfer held the fragile thing in his great, torture-flattened hand. “It may be Allah’s will that she never send you another message.”
“It was my mother’s locket, but I do not care.
