Harem by Colin Falconer
The spider spins her web in the palace of the Caesars. - a verse from Sa'adi.
'I could spend my whole life locked up in here,' she whispered, to the little bird. 'They keep me for my pretty colours and my song, and one day my youth will be withered and gone, like a flower pressed inside a book. But I will find a way out.' There was really only one way out; but he was still at Rhodes, where they said he was building a new villa on Mount Philermus. She was his, he possessed her, even though she had never laid eyes on him and she had been in his dark and pretty prison for two seasons. Well, there had to be some way. She would not spend the rest of her days idly dreaming of the miracle that might bring her to his bed. She would wake the Devil himself and light all the fires of Hell under this palace, but she would find a way to displace the Montenegran and get out of here. They would rue the day they allowed this hell-cat into their cage of pretty birds.
PART ONE The Spiders Web
Chapter 1 Rhodes, 1522 Silence, but for the steady rhythm of the rain, splashing into blood-stained pools. Camels trudged through the mud; even the beasts of burden coughed at the stench of sick men and poor sanitation. The worst was the reek from the moat. It encompassed the fortress, sixty feet deep and one hundred and forty feet wide, and was almost filled with the bloated bodies of the dead. The smell of putrefying corpses pervaded everything, it seeped into clothes and hair and skin, was pungent even in the silken sanctum of the Sultan's tent, despite the incense burners. The assembled generals held perfumed handkerchiefs to their noses and stared at the ground. The young man on the mother of pearl throne looked as if he could murder every one of them. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a snarl as he listened to the mumbled obeisance of his second vizier, Mustapha. 'How many of your Sultan's men did you lose today?' he said, referring to himself, as he always did in public, as if he were a separate person. The second vizier's face and beard was crusted with black blood from a sword slash yet untended on his forehead. A dozen times that day he had led the charge against the breach in the wall below the towers of St. Michael and St. John, while the grizzled veterans of the Cross cut down his azabs with their broadswords and arrows. Even their women and children had torn up cobblestones from the street and hurled them down on their heads from the ramparts. He had even seen one pale priest take a turn at upending a vat of boiling pitch. Some of his men had run, it was true, their nerve broken. He had hacked them down himself with his sword. But now, for the first time that day, he was truly afraid. 'How many men?' the young sultan repeated. Mustapha dared raise his head to look into the Sultan's eyes. 'Twenty thousand, lord,' he whispered. 'Twenty thousand!' The Sultan leaped to his feet and every man in the room - except one - took a step back. In the long silence that followed several of the generals in the room thought they heard
Mustapha trying to swallow. When Sultan Suleiman spoke again, his voice sounded like the death rattle in a dying man's throat. 'You advocated this expedition to me. For three centuries these infidels have taunted us from this fortress. Even the Fatih and my own father could not dislodge them. But you promised me this would be different.' Mustapha knew there was no excuse for failure. The silk of Suleiman's robes rippled in the light of the oil lamps. A froth of spittle had formed at the corners of his mouth.' Another twenty thousand of your Sultan's army lie in the mud at the foot of this accursed rock, the rest are afflicted with pestilence, and still the walls stand! Winter is coming, the storms are boiling there out to sea, ready to shatter our fleet and leave us stranded here. Yet if Suleiman turns away now, he must drag the banner of Islam in the dirt. You brought your Sultan to Rhodes. What will you have him do now?' Mustapha was silent. 'You advised this!' he screamed, and stabbed his finger at his second vizier as if it were an iron spike. He turned to the bostanji who waited in the shadows. He made a quick motion of his hands to give the order for execution. His butcher was a deaf mute, so he could not be swayed by screams of pain or supplications for mercy. The Nubian strode forward and shoved Mustapha to his knees with one expert motion of his leg and arm. The bands of his muscle on his naked back tensed as he brought his killiรง above his head to strike. Old Piri Pasha, the Grand Vizier, stepped forward, both hands held up in supplication, distracting the executioner. The killing blade glittered in the light of the oil lamps. 'Great Lord, please! A moment. Misguided this man may be, but he has fought like a lion for you in front of these walls.' 'Quiet!' Suleiman shouted at him. 'If you think him so worthy, then perhaps you should join him in Paradise.' A swift intake of breath from every man, like a wind guttering the lamps. Not Piri Pasha! He was an old man, the Vizier who survived Selim the Grim, had been Suleiman's own tutor as a child. He was one of the few dissenters against the attack on Rhodes. The assembled generals and counsellors fell on their knees in front of the young Sultan, put their foreheads to the carpets, and begged for his forbearance. Only Ibrahim, his falconer, dared approach him. 'Great Lord,' he murmured and took
Suleiman's hand. He knelt and kissed the ruby on his finger. 'There is another way.' Suleiman tried to pull away but Ibrahim held his hand firmly in both of his. 'Tell it, then.' 'The histories tell us the Greeks besieged Troy for fourteen years for the sake of a woman. Will not the Turk, then, oppressed by piracies and invasions from this rock for over three centuries, endure one winter's siege?' The bostanji shifted his weight, waited for the final signal form the sultan. 'What is your counsel, Ibrahim?' 'They say that when one of the Roman Caesars invaded an island, he would burn his fleet on the beach. Great Lord, perhaps if you were to build a villa on this hill, in full view of the castle, the defenders will know there is to be no reprieve until the fortress is ours. It will crush their spirit. And if our soldiers know your conviction also, it will give them heart.' Suleiman sighed, and eased himself back onto his throne. He caressed a turquoise stone that was inlaid on the arm with his forefinger. 'And what of them?' he said, nodding at the two men who knelt, heads bowed, below the killiรง. Only now did he realize that one of them was old Piri Pasha. He winced. How could he have contemplated such a thing? 'There has been too much Turkish blood spilled today already,' Ibrahim said. An almost imperceptible shake of the head and the bostanji moved silently again into the shadows. 'Very well,' Suleiman said. 'Perhaps you are right, Ibrahim. It is wise counsel. We shall build the villa. Let winter come - the Sultan stays.' End of Excerpt
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About the Author
Find Colin Falconer at: https://colinfalconer.wordpress.com or on Twitter at @colin_falconer
Born in north London, Colin Falconer worked for many years in TV and radio and freelanced for many of Australia's leading newspapers and magazines. He has been a novelist for the last twenty years, with his work published widely in the UK, US and Europe. His books have been translated into seventeen languages.
Copyright Page Original edition copyright © 1992 by Colin Falconer Revised edition copyright © 2011 by Colin Falconer
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance of fictional characters to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Originally published by Hodder and Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline PLC London and by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author and publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
eISBN 9781935712756 Find Colin Falconer at http://www.colinfalconer.net Colin Falconer's blog at: http://colin-falconer.blogspot.com/ or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/colin_falconer http://twitter.com/#!/colin_falconer