“Salaam.” Ghazanfer bowed again. “I pray for peace, Barbarigo, both between our countries and within your troubled heart.”
Tucking the locket within his breast, the eunuch turned to leave.
“Tell her—” Andrea called after, convinced now that only Sofia’s well-justified fears for her own safety had kept her away. Fears she had defied for his sake. “—tell your lady I will not leave Constantinople without her.”
VII
Andrea considered his options. He would go and plead peace before the Divan with such power and logic that Sofia would throw all foolish Turkish convention aside and pull back the curtain of the Eye of the Sultan. For, of course, she would be there and, no less than the viziers, be won by his speech. She would leap from there into his waiting arms...
After that, what should happen was not so clear. Yes, there was the problem of the room and a courtyard outside filled with janissaries. But somehow that seemed a negligible factor, once he had her in his arms.
Then there was the scenario in which he stormed the palace walls almost single-handedly, killed the mad old Sultan, and then penetrated the forbidden holy of holies. There she (he would almost write it She—divine) would be lying in sorrow and languor on a crimson couch, her golden hair like fire in luscious disarray. She would reach long, white arms out to him, her liberator, her deliverer, her true love. Again, he need not dream further than this point.
More elegant settings stoked the fire of his brain, but practicality had whittled it down to this: an alley beside the little neighborhood mosque-converted-from-a-church a stone’s throw from the palace of the Grand Vizier. If he shifted just right, he could catch a glimpse of Sofia’s sedan through the wrought-iron gates.
A sharp wind scudded straight off the Black Sea to attack his fingers and toes. It put out the moon as easily as one of his bravos had put out the light at the end of the alley just after the lamplighter had passed. Now the only illumination came through the heavy curtains drawn over the second-story lattices of the closest homes.
Andrea blew on his hands to keep them flexible. They must be able to curl firmly around the hilt of his dagger.
The call to evening prayers directly over his head brought a small congregation to the mosque. Andrea found the men who filed past his hiding place slightly unnerving, being predominantly janissaries from the exercise field. Each man carried his own rug under his arm like an open display of his soul. Andrea felt a strong urge to join them, if only for the better concealment of his own soul, one among many. But public devotion would soon make way for the privacy of tents and hearthstones.
Already the domestic miracle of fresh-baked bread served with cabbage and earthy chickpeas seeped its scent along with a warm, greasy light through the lattice stars and the curtains overhead. It overwhelmed the smell of rankled garbage at his feet. The balconies and jutting bays of the second stories sagged like matronly breasts.
This image made Andrea wonder. Though no man was likely to see the deed, what about the women? Day and men and their liveliness made it easy to forget, but he knew full well that few actions in Turkey went unobserved by the silent sentinels of harem eyes. What would women think? Wouldn’t they rejoice that one of their number was about to be freed?
Earlier, from the Pasha’s gardens, peacock cries had sounded. Now, with a ruffling of feathers, the birds settled. From that lesser house, jutting into the moonlight on his right, he heard an infant wail, very like the fowl, he thought. The mother hushed it. That most intimate of exchanges, surpassing, in some ways, even that between lovers, caught its talons in the pit of his stomach. How separate he felt from the joys of hearth and home!
But by these means I shall \Nin such pleasures for myself, Andrea insisted to his seething brain. From tonight on, I shall no longer be on the outside looking in.
The only problem remained how long they’d waited. Sofia couldn’t be spending the night with her friend, could she? Andrea knew harem doors were universally closed and locked at dark. But he also knew Sofia. She would have her ways around such constraints.
Another gust of northern wind, and the moon shivered out of her gauzy veil again. The faucet before the mosque would have an icicle on the end of its nose in the morning when the pious came. But he would not be there to see the prayerful, made brave by faith, crack the crust and plunge in with the muezzin’s first sleepy call of the morning. The notion gave him a brief pang which w 2ls, he assured himself, only the wind, cutting more to the quick. Andrea drew the cloak tighter about himself. He let his eyes catch heat from the faint gleam of gold trim on the sedan chair seen through the palace gates.
This sight was enough to settle his resolve.
In no more time than piety allowed, the mosque emptied. Then, as if on that cue, the Pasha’s palace disgorged the awaited sedan.
Rather than heading straight back for the Sultan’s palace, the conveyance obliged him vet further by turning down this very passageway. It halted not four yards from where he stood, pressed against the minaret wall.
Finally, wonder of wonders, the bearers were dismissed to go warm themselves in the public house around the corner.
That left only the eunuch, leaning against the sedan door with his arms crossed over his chest, watching, waiting. And perhaps Ghazanfer wasn’t to be counted as the enemy. He had dismissed the bearers, after all. Certainly he hated Sultan Selim. And loved his mistress. He would not care to be parted from her or do an\-thing she did not approve. Once the khadim saw Sofia’s joy
