THE BURSTING FORTH OF THE STORM.
A contrary wind was blowing across the Bosphorus, so that it was not
until towards the evening that the Sultan arrived at Scutari, and
disembarked there at his seaside palace with his viziers, his princes,
the Chief Mufti, and Ispirizade.
Though everything had quieted down close at hand, all night long could
be heard, some distance off, in the direction of the camp, a murmuring
and a tumult, the cause of which nobody could explain.
More than once the Grand Vizier sent fleet runners to the Aga of the
Janissaries to inquire what was the meaning of all that noise in the
camp. Hassan replied that he himself did not understand why they were so
unruly after they had heard the arrival of the Sultan and the sacred
banner everywhere proclaimed.
Shortly afterwards Ibrahim commanded him to seize all those who would
not remain quiet. Hassan accordingly laid his hands on sundry who came
conveniently in his way; but, for all that, the rest would pay no heed
to him, and the tumult began to extend in the direction of Stambul also.
Towards midnight a ciaus reached the Kiaja with the intelligence that a
number of soldiers were coming along from the direction of Tebrif,
crying as they came that the army of Küprilizade had been scattered to
the winds by Shah Tamasip, and that they themselves were the sole
survivors of the carnage--that was why the army round Stambul was
chafing and murmuring.
The Kiaja went at once in search of the Grand Vizier and told him of
this terrible rumour.
"Impossible!" exclaimed Ibrahim. "Küprilizade would not allow himself to
be beaten. Only a few days ago I sent him arms and reinforcements which
were more than enough to enable him to hold his own until the main army
should arrive.
"And even if it were true. If, in consequence of the Sultan's
procrastination, we were to arrive too late and the whole of the
provinces of Hamadan and Kermanshan were to be lost--even then we should
all be in the hands of Allah. Come, let us go to prayer and then to
bed!"
At about the same hour, three softas awoke the Chief Mufti and
Ispirizade, and laid before them a letter written on parchment which
they had discovered lying in the middle of a mosque. The letter was
apparently written with gunpowder and almost illegible.
It turned out to be an exhortation to all true Mussulmans to draw the
sword in defence of Muhammad, but they were bidden beware lest, when
they went against the foe, they left behind them, at home, the greatest
foes of all, who were none other than the Sultan's own Ministers.
"This letter deserves to be thrown into the fire," said Ispirizade, and
into the fire he threw it, there and then, and thereupon lay down to
sleep with a good conscience.
The following day was Thursday, the 28th September. On that very day,
twelve months before, the Sultan's eleven-year-old son had died. The day
was therefore kept as a solemn day of mourning, and a general cessation
of martial exercises throughout the host was proclaimed by a flourish of
trumpets.
To many of the commanders this day of rest was a season of strict
observance. The Aga of the Janissaries withdrew to his kiosk; the
Kapudan Pasha had himself rowed through the canal to his country house
at Chengelköi, having just received from a Dutch merchant a very
handsome assortment of tulip-bulbs, which he wanted to plant out with
his own hands; the Reis-Effendi hastened to his summer residence, beside
the Sweet Waters, to take leave of his odalisks for the twentieth time
at least; and the Kiaja returned to Stambul. Each of them strictly
observed the day--in his own peculiar manner.
But Fate had prepared for the people at large a very different sort of
observance.
Early in the morning, at sunrise, seventeen Janissaries were standing in
front of the mosque of Bajazid with Halil Patrona at their head.
In the hand of each one of them was a naked sword, and in their midst
stood Musli holding aloft the half-moon banner.
The people made way before them, and allowed Patrona to ascend the steps
of the mosque, and when the blast of the alarm-horns had subsided, the
clear penetrating voice of the ex-pedlar was distinctly audible from end
to end of the great kalan square in front of him.
"Mussulmans!" he cried, "you have duties, yes, duties laid upon you by
our sacred law. We are being ruined by traitors. Fugitives from the host
have brought us the tidings that the army of Küprilizade has been
scattered to the winds; four thousand horses and six hundred camels,
laden with provisions, have been captured by the Persians; the general
himself has fled to Erivan, and the provinces of Hamadan and Kermanshan
are once more in the possession of the enemy. And all this is going on
while the Grand Vizier and the Chief Mufti have been arranging Lantern
Feasts, Processions of Palms and Illuminations in the streets of Stambul
instead of making ready the host to go to the assistance of the valiant
Küprilizade! Our brethren are sent to the shambles, we hear their cries,
we see their banners falter and fall into the enemy's hands, and we are
not suffered to fly to their assistance, though we stand here with drawn
swords in our hands. There is treachery--treachery against Allah and His
Prophet! Therefore, let every true believer forsake immediately his
handiwork, cast his awl, his hammer, and his plane aside, and seize his
sword instead; let him close his booth and rally beneath our standard!"
The mob greeted these words with a savage yell, raised Patrona on its
shoulders, and carried him away through the arcades of Bezesztan piazza.
Everyone hastened away to close his booth, and the whole city seemed to
be turned upside down. It was just as if a still standing lake had been
stirred violently to its lowest depths, and all the slimy monsters and
hideous refuse reposing at the bottom had come to the surface; for the
streets were suddenly flooded by the unrecognised riff-raff which
vegetates in every great town, though they are out of the ken of the
regular and orderly inhabitants, and only appear in the light of day
when a sudden concussion drives them to the surface.
Yelling and howling, they accompanied Halil everywhere, only listening
to him when his escort raised him aloft on their shoulders in order that
he might address the mob.
Just at this moment they stopped in front of the house of the Janissary
Aga.
"Hassan!" cried Halil curtly, disdaining to give him his official title,
and thundering on the door with his fists, "Hassan, you imprisoned our
comrades because they dared to murmur, and now you can hear roars
instead of murmurs. Give them up, Hassan! Give them up, I say!"
Hassan, however, was no great lover of such spectacles, so he hastily
exchanged his garments for a suit of rags, and bolted through the gate
of the back garden to the shores of the Bosphorus, where he huddled into
an old tub of a boat which carried him across to the camp. Then only did
he feel safe.
Meanwhile the Janissaries battered in the door of his house and released
their comrades. Then they put Halil on Hassan's horse and proceeded in
great triumph to the Etmeidan. The next instant the whole square was
alive with armed men, and they hauled the Kulkiaja caldron out of the
barracks and set it up in the midst of the mob. This was the usual
signal for the outburst of the war of fiercely contending passions too
long enchained.
"And now open the prisons!" thundered Halil, "and set free all the
captives! Put daggers in the hands of the murderers and flaming torches
in the hands of the incendiaries, and let us go forth burning and
slaying, for to-day is a day of death and lamentation."
And the mob rushed upon the prisons, tore down the railings, broke
through bolts and bars, and whole hordes of murderers and malefactors
rushed forth into the piazza and all the adjoining streets, and the last
of all to quit the dungeon was Janaki, Halil's father-in-law. There he
remained standing in the doorway as if he were afraid or ashamed, till
Musli rushed towards him and tore him away by force.
"Be not cast down, muzafir, but snatch up a sword and stand alongside of
me. No harm can come to you here. It is the turn of the Gaolers now."
In the meantime Halil had made his way to that particular dungeon where
the loose women whom the Sultan had been graciously pleased to collect
from all the quarters of the town to herd in one place were listening in
trembling apprehension.
The doors were flung wide open, and the mob roared to the prisoners that
all to whom liberty was dear might show a clean pair of heels,
whereupon a mob of women, like a swarm of shrieking ghosts, fluttered
through the doors and made off in every direction. Those women who
stroll about the streets with uncovered faces, who paint their eyebrows
and lips for the diversion of strangers, who are shut out from the world
like mad dogs, that they may not contaminate the people--all these women
were now let loose! Some of them had grown old since the prison-gates
had been closed upon them, but the flame of evil passion still flickered
in their sunken eyes. Alas! what pestilence has been let loose upon the
Mussulman population. And thou, Halil! wilt thou be able to ride the
storm to which thou has given wings?
There he stands in the gateway! He is waiting till, in the wake of these
unspeakably vile women, his pure-souled idol, the beautiful, the
innocent Gül-Bejáze shall appear. How long she delays! All the rest have
come forth; all the rest have scattered to their various haunts, only
one or two belated shapes are now emerging from the dungeon and
hastening, after the others--creatures whom the voice of the tumult had
surprised _en déshabillé_, and who now with only half-clothed bodies and
hair streaming down their backs rush screaming away. Only Gül-Bejáze
still delays.
Full of anxiety Halil descends at last into the loathsome hole but
dimly lit by a few round windows in the roof.
"Gül-Bejáze! Gül-Bejáze!" he moans with a stifling voice, looking all
around the dungeon, and, at the sound of his whispered words, he sees a
white mass, huddled in a corner of the far wall, feebly begin to move.
He rushes to the spot. Surely it is some beggar-woman who hides her face
from him? Gently he removes her hands from her face and in the woman
recognises his wife. The poor creature would rather not be set free for
very shame sake. She would rather remain here in the dungeon.
Speechless with agony, he raised her in his arms. The woman said not a
word, gave him not a look, she only hid her face in her husband's bosom
and sobbed aloud.
"Weep not! weep not!" moaned Halil, "those who have dishonoured thee
shall, this very day, lie in the dust before thee, by Allah. I swear it.
Thou shalt play with the heads of those who have played with thy heart,
and that selfsame puffed-up Sultana who has stretched out her hand
against thee shall be glad to kiss thy hand. I, Halil Patrona, have said
it, and let me be accursed above all other Mussulmans if ever I have
lied."
Then snatching up his wife in his arms he rushed out among the crowd,
and exhibiting that pale and forlorn figure in the sight of all men, he
cried:
"Behold, ye Mussulmans! this is my wife whom they ravished from me on my
bridal night, and whom I must needs discover in the midst of this sink
of vileness and iniquity! Speak those of you who are husbands, would you
be merciful to him who dishonoured your wife after this sort?"
"Death be upon his head!" roared the furious multitude, and rolling
onwards like a flood that has burst its dams it stopped a moment later
before a stately palace.
"Whose is this palace?" inquired Halil of the mob.
"Damad Ibrahim's," cried sundry voices from among the crowd.
"Whose is that palace, I say?" inquired Halil once more, angrily shaking
his head.
Then many of them understood the force of the question and exclaimed:
"Thine, O Halil Patrona!"
"Thine, thine, Halil!" thundered the obsequious crowd, and with that
they rushed upon the palace, burst open the doors, and Patrona, with his
wife still clasped in his arms, forced his way in, and seeking out the
harem of the Grand Vizier, commanded the odalisks of Ibrahim to bow
their faces in the dust before their new mistress, and fulfil all her
demands. And before the door he placed a guard of honour.
Outside there was the din of battle, the roll of drums, and the blast of
trumpets; and the whole of this tempest was fanned by the faint
breathing of a sick and broken woman.