The mute had drawn his sword.
—
THE GRAND VIZIER Yosef ben Hananon was never far from the room where the khalif allowed himself to be painted in the morning—and spoken to—by a Jaddite.
He had not liked this idea of a portrait from the beginning, and he loathed it now. They’d discovered the vile, pernicious actions of the devious Seressini. Executed in concert with the younger prince, Beyet, whom Yosef saw as an unstable force in a world he was endlessly engaged in trying to make stable.
He was, accordingly, only moments away when the two guards posted outside the room where the painting was being achieved came hurrying to say he was required.
It was unseemly for a grand vizier to run. It would be inaccurate to say he did so, but he did walk extremely quickly to the room that was the centre of the world, because that was where the khalif was.
The artist was on his knees (which was proper, though he ought to be dead already). The khalif was in a towering rage. Something the vizier had seen, thankfully, only two or three times but which he recognized because . . . because you learned to recognize a wildly dangerous condition in the man who ruled all. And the eunuch had his sword in his hand.
This was still the Palace of Silence. Yosef bowed three times. He said nothing. His heartbeat was rapid. Not good for him at all. He had been prepared to arrest Beyet and the artist this morning, have the prince garrotted and the artist flayed towards a slow, excruciating death. He had been instructed to await the end of this last session. The khalif, he’d decided, wanted to deal with the Jaddite in his own way, and then with the prince. That was proper.
But the Jaddite was still alive and his head was not lowered. The man’s hands, the vizier noted, were clasped tightly, but were not trembling.
The khalif spoke, not looking at his vizier or at anyone else. He gave instructions with extreme precision, even within the rage that was consuming him. He could do that. This had also happened the other times he had been in a fury such as this. Commands had been exact. People had lost their lives then.
This time, the Osmanli world changed.
The vizier was made to understand what was required of him. It was, in the event, not difficult to confirm what he was asked to confirm. The guards—Beyet’s guards—who had escorted the artist at night were identified. Inducements of an unpleasant sort caused three of them to admit being paid by Prince Cemal (all but one did so, and his suffering, as the first man selected for inquiries, clearly led to the others preferring a kinder death).
It was also not hard to establish that Prince Beyet had been gambling in a brothel in the city (one of the things he liked to do) on two of the nights when he was supposed to have been painted in his own palace by a Seressini, while wearing a porphyry robe.
Some servants in the palace of Prince Cemal also proved unwilling to die terribly. They were able to confirm that the artist did indeed arrive very late at a room where some of Cemal’s wives were (shamefully) sent to wait for him at night. In short, it was as the Jaddite said: he had been in an underground room in Beyet’s palace with Cemal, escorted both ways through the old Imperial Tunnel, then lying with Cemal’s women.
Conclusions could be drawn by a thinking man, and the vizier was such a man. Prince Cemal had, clearly, relied on the infidel being too terrified to speak, or—more likely—not having a chance to do so, with his father acting in violent fury.
Why, indeed, would the infidel ever have been allowed to say anything? He would not have been, had the vizier had his way. Yosef ben Hananon was painfully aware that his own suggestion had been that the man be killed this morning, and he’d urged the immediate death of Prince Beyet, as well. He was also aware (also painfully) that his khalif knew this, and that Cemal would accordingly have succeeded entirely if the vizier had prevailed. Not a good thing for a man seeking the trust of his khalif.
This remained, from the point of view of a pragmatic, prudent grand vizier, an utterly foolish plot, made more so by the clear indications that Cemal was the preferred son, and had only to wait.
It was possible, the vizier conceded, that matters might have changed in this regard if enough time passed. They did not live in a predictable world. It was also possible—a darker thought he would never voice—that having Beyet killed by their father might have been a first step in an even more dreadful plot by an heir grown impatient waiting for the throne.
In truth, that did feel to Yosef ben Hananon to be the best way to understand these events. Beyet to die, and then the sacred khalif. With the Kindath vizier obviously disposed of, if matters went as the prince purposed. Matters had not gone that way, but only by vast good fortune, a blessing from above, the khalif’s sagacity. The Jaddite had been useful. His death, accordingly, could justly be made easy.
It was not. The artist was not to be killed. The vizier was caused to understand this later that morning, back in the same room.
Grand Khalif Gurçu added this to a stream of instructions, which remained precise while destroying the stillness in the Palace of Silence. Prince Beyet was to be summoned into his father’s presence. He would be spoken to. His status was to change. Prince Cemal was never to see his father again. He was to be blinded, gelded, and his hamstrings were to be severed. When it was possible (if it was possible), he was to be placed among the beggars in the Eastern Market by the walls.
If he wished to profane the laws of Ashar and end his life, that was his choice to make. His father would provide him a begging bowl, and the first copper coin to be put in it.
The portrait painted in the other palace was to be destroyed. The painter would not be. The painter was to be given a guard of djannis and escorted west all the way to Dubrava. There was some possibility, the vizier was informed, that the older prince—who would never again have his name spoken in Gurçu’s presence on pain of the speaker having his tongue ripped out—had arranged assassins on the road, should the artist somehow be allowed to depart.
The artist was being allowed to depart. He even spoke again in that room, from his knees. He begged that he might send word to his Dubravae friend and have the man accompany him home.
The khalif’s voice, speaking to the wretched person who had caused all this grief (which was only beginning, the vizier knew), was unfathomably gentle. Yosef swore to himself that he had never heard such a tone from Gurçu. Was the westerner a sorcerer? They did have such men and women.
“You may take the merchant with you, yes,” Gurçu said. “You must leave immediately, however. There is going to be violence when certain things happen. There always is at such times. A prince is being disgraced, and an heir will now be named. Some of the army will have been loyal to—will have been his men, and they will fear for their lives. Rightly so. They may rebel. People will be frightened and seek those to blame. You do not want to be in Asharias when that happens.”
The Jaddite lowered his head and touched it to the floor. Finally, the vizier thought. He did so three times, as Yosef had had him taught to do at the start of all this. The mute had sheathed his blade.
“Now,” said the khalif, in a voice closer to his normal tone, “stand, Signore Villani. I would see the western portrait you have done.”
The vizier hadn’t given it a thought! The portrait was right there, on the easel, with paints and implements beside it. The Jaddite rose. He stepped towards his work. The vizier was on the wrong side to see.
Gurçu crossed the room and stood beside the artist—far too close for Yosef’s comfort. He saw the eunuch straining with anxiety, and the other guards were the same. Their world was turning askew, moment by moment.
It would continue to do so for a long time.
There was a silence. The proper silence, Yosef thought, for this room. Into it, at length, the khalif’s deep, measured voice came.
“My nose is quite large, isn’t it?” he said.
Surely no sane ma
n would reply to that?
“It suits the khalif’s features wondrously,” said the Jaddite calmly. “It speaks to strength, and in profile it balances the depth of your eye.”
“Does it so?” said Gurçu with an amazing mildness of tone. Then he added, “The orange trees through the window. They are very vivid.”
“The richness of the garden suggests the richness of the grand khalif’s reign.”
“Does it so?” Gurçu said again. And then, after a moment, “Are you pleased with your work?”
And the artist from the west said then, simply, “Lord, it is the best thing I have done in my life.”
Whereupon, at the outset of events that would shake the Asharite world from east to west, the grand khalif smiled. He touched the infidel artist on the shoulder (he did that!), and said, “It is well. You have done what I summoned you to do. Go home now. The vizier will provide you an escort and a proper reward. I am grateful. I am also . . . I was pleased by what you said this morning, Signore Villani, about myself and your duke. Convey to him my greeting when you paint his portrait in Seressa. Go with your god, and safely under our stars.”
—
PERO VILLANI AND MARIN DJIVO and the Djivo guards and his purchased goods on mules left Asharias late that same afternoon. It was understood that it would be a mistake to wait for morning.
The Seressini servant and spy Tomo Agosta, by his own great good fortune, happened to be with Djivo when word came to prepare to depart immediately. The day before he had managed to arrange for the merchant a purchase of Ispahani pepper, and he’d arrived for his fee. It was luck, or the will of Jad, whatever one might want to call it, but he was there, and so he did get home.
—
AMONG THE MANY DEATHS that followed in the succeeding days were those of a large number of Jaddite merchants across the strait. There was rioting, and an uprising among the djannis in the city, specifically those who had been loyal to a disgraced and blinded prince. Even more specifically, those who had been privy to his planning, and so knew their lives were over if they did not somehow end this current reign.
They did not do that. There weren’t enough of them, they were unprepared, and the vizier, the devious Kindath, ben Hananon, had already identified a number of them. They had been seized and strangled even before word of the prince’s fate left the palace to run through the city.
In the event, the rioting was not too extreme, the deaths, including those of infidels, an acceptable number in the circumstances. Prince Beyet was not disliked in Asharias, was even seen as a romantic figure, doomed to die when his brother succeeded to the throne.
Cemal didn’t kill himself when released in the marketplace after the violence in the city came to an end and the loyal djannis and city guards reasserted control, and his wounds had healed.
He had someone else end his life for him, instead, so as not to violate Ashar’s law against self-killing.
Matters became bad again, however, because shortly afterwards tidings came that the army of the khalif had been forced to turn back before reaching the Jaddite fortress.
There had been rain, it was said by those sent with the messages. It was also conveyed that the cannons, the pride of the Osmanli artillery, had somehow been destroyed, including the largest ones, by enemy soldiers from a town to the west. Senjan was the name. A name they knew.
The vizier ordered the immediate execution of the leaders of the artillery company, to take place before they reached Asharias. He was informed that the senior ones had died in the explosions that had consumed the great cannons.
The djannis in the city, those guarding the khalif and court, grew restless again at this time. They shared in whatever treasures were obtained from the army’s advances in a campaign season, and there would be—evidently—none at all this year.
The grand khalif, following his loyal vizier’s advice, disbursed from the treasury a large sum for the troops of the city. It was not a good moment to have his guards unhappy.
—
MUCH WAS CHANGED by what happened in Asharias at that time. The death of the expected heir and a perception of weakness at the court caused turmoil in the east among the tribes there. For several years Gurçu’s forces were engaged, with difficulty, in dealing with rebellion in that direction. No armies went west or north for some time.
Prince Beyet, who became khalif when his father died, was not a good or attentive leader, nor did he choose shrewd advisers after executing his father’s, nor did he live long. There were further changes when he died, and more turmoil.
Looking back, it became easy to say that Prince Cemal—his name came to be spoken again over time—would have been a more effective khalif.
Events, destinies, the flow of the river of time . . . these are altered, often, by very small things.
The portrait of Gurçu the Destroyer, who had conquered Sarantium, remained in the palace complex. It survived upheavals and changes, a treasure of the Osmanli people—and the world—for centuries.
—
BACK IN THE first days of violence in Asharias, that difficult time, investigations were conducted in the palace that had belonged to the nameless prince.
It could not be determined which of his wives had been disgraced by being given to an infidel at night as a part of the prince’s degenerate scheme. Because of this it was judged necessary to execute them all by strangling.
There are always innocents who die during times of fear and rage, no matter how gentle hands and heart might have been, how much tenderness lay within a soul under the night’s stars.
CHAPTER XXV
She has never been anywhere but their farm. Morning journeys to the village with her parents and brothers in the wagon do not count. She knows that, or feels it, which is the same thing at her age.
She is sixteen and has only a vague idea of the world. How could she have more than that? She understands that much is out there beyond the river and wood, down the road both ways, that large events happen beyond the boundary markers of their fields, but it is difficult to picture this.
There is a khalif, there is an emperor. Women are said to wear beautiful clothing. She does not know what this would be. She has never seen silk though she’s heard the word. Tidings come at times (to her father and brothers): of war or plague, a flooding of some far river, fire taking someone’s barn. There are hadjuk raids. Sometimes those cause the fires. Usually, she has come to realize, news arrives long after an event. A fire will be ashes on wind, the barn rebuilt, a war lost or won before they know of it here, Milena thinks.
None of it really matters, except that to her it does. She can’t explain why that is so, but it is. Yes, their lives carry on here—as they have, as she knows her own will—but every so often she has to be shouted home by an angry brother or her mother. She’ll be staring into the distance, east or west along the road, or south across it and the stream, when she’s only been sent to the well for water again.
They survive. Winters are always hard. Her father is a careful man. She has two other brothers and they went off to join the khalif’s army many years back. There wasn’t enough to feed so many mouths, even though they’d changed religion long ago. The family had been Jaddite until her grandfather adopted Ashar’s faith when the Osmanlis first came this way. Many people around here had done that. Most of them had.
You could cling to your beliefs, her father often said, but what good did that do if the head tax meant your family starved?
They’d paid taxes to the emperor north in her grandfather’s youth, they paid them to the khalif now, and those two were—as best a man could tell, he’d said—much the same. Unless you stayed Jaddite and paid the head tax and died because of that.
There are enough Blessed Victims in the world, her grandfather had reportedly declared when he made his decision. Milena has some memories of him from when she was small. A short,
strong man, heavy beard, many teeth missing by then, and the tip of one ear. He limped, for a reason no one knew, not even her father. She’d asked, hadn’t got an answer. He’d refused to use a stick.
There are four farms here, houses close to each other with the field attached to each stretching out, boundaries marked with big stones. It is safer having them laid out this way—if you aren’t feuding with the others. One of the others is her uncle, one is a friend of her father’s. The fourth is a family her father doesn’t much like, but they have a son a little older than Milena, and discussions have begun. It is, she understands, complex. Land matters are.
Milena is unsure how she feels about this subject. She has unquiet nights, has had them for a while, has explored her body in the dark with a hand she pretends she isn’t actually causing to do what it does. And her daydreams can turn towards thoughts that unsettle. She isn’t sure what she’s looking for across the stream or along the road, but she looks.
The boy they are talking about, Dimitar, is smaller than she is, even if he’s older by half a year. Milena is a big girl, strong, her father boasts about it. Dimitar’s being smaller doesn’t matter, she’s told herself. But once, three years ago, they’d been by the riverbank (he was fishing) and twilight was coming, they’d be heading back soon, and Milena had kissed him on the cheek where he was standing with his pole and line above the dark, slow, summer water.
And Dimitar had grimaced and turned away and said, “You smell of onion, foh!” and he’d spat into the water. She’d walked home alone, face burning.
—
DID PEOPLE FORGET things like that, she wondered now on a warm day nearing another summertime. They’d been young then, she’d forgotten she’d been eating an onion as she’d walked down to the stream where he was fishing. And, the bigger part of this: were there any alternatives for her to marry, live with, lie with, where they were, in the life they lived?
She was carrying the two buckets, the pole across her neck, as she headed for the well. The well had been discovered—all the young ones in the four families knew the story—by a water-finder hired by the grandfathers together. He’d cut a forked branch from a tree in the woods, walked about their lands for most of a day, then stopped at one place and said, Dig here.