An hour later the Kislar Aga, chief of the black eunuchs in charge of
the royal harem, was announced.
"Well, Sinam, have any of your herd of gazelles escaped?" asked the
Sultan.
"None. But Mira Sultana would pay her homage at your Majesty's feet."
"Mira, the Greek?" said Mahomet, the deep color rising to his temples.
Lowering his tone to a whisper, he conversed for a few moments with
the eunuch, who prostrated himself upon the ground, and with harsh,
yet thin voice, said:
"Your Majesty is wise, very wise. Your will is that of Allah, the
Great Hunkiar. It shall be done."
Mira was a beautiful woman. The light texture of her robe revealed a
perfect form; and the thin veil lent a charm to her face, such as
shadows send across the landscape.
Mahomet shuddered, as the kneeling woman embraced his feet. The words
of her congratulation to the young monarch, her protestation of
devotion to him as to his father, though uttered with the sweetest
voice he had ever heard, and with evident honesty, sent a visible
tremor through the frame of her listener. And when she added, "My
child, Ahmed, the image of his noble father and thine, will serve thee
with his life, and"--
"It is well! It is well," interrupted the Sultan. "Be gone now!"
The morning following was one in which the hearts of the citizens of
Adrianople stood almost throbless with horror. Mothers clasped their
babes with a shudder to their breasts; and fathers stroked the fair
hair of their boys, and thanked Allah that no tide of royal blood ran
in their veins. A story afterward floated over the lands of Moslem and
Christian, as terrible as a cloud of blood, dropping its shadow into
palace and cottage, and dyeing that page of history on which Mahomet's
name is written with a damning blot.
While Mira Sultana was bowing at the feet of the new monarch,
congratulating him upon his accession to the throne, her infant son,
Ahmed, half brother to Mahomet, was being strangled in the bath by his
orders. Another son of Amurath, Calapin, had, through his mother's
timely suspicion, escaped to the land of the Christians.
It was late in the day when Captain Ballaban appeared for audience
with the Sultan. His Majesty was apparently in the gayest of moods.
"Come, toss me the dice! We have not played since I laid aside my
manhood and put on the Padishah's cloak. Come! What? Have you no stake
to put up? Then I will stake for both. A Turkoman, the father of my
own bride, has sent me a bevy of women, Georgians, with faces as fair
as the shell of an ostrich's egg,[72] and voices as sweet as of the
birds which sang to the harp of David.[73] The choice to him who wins!
What! does not that tempt the cloud to drift off your face? Then have
your choice without the toss. What! still brooding?" added he, growing
angry. "By the holy house at Mecca! I'll make you laugh if I tickle
your ribs with my dagger's point."
"You made me promise that I would be true to you, my Padishah, and if
I should laugh to-day I would not be true," replied Ballaban quietly.
"My face wears the shadows which the people have thrown into it."
"The people?" said Mahomet growing pale.
"Ay, the people have heard the wailing of the Sultana."
"For what? Tell me for what?" asked the Sultan with feigned surprise.
Ballaban narrated the story which was on every one's lips.
"It is treason against me," cried the monarch. Summoning the Capee Aga
he bade him call the divan.
The great personages of the empire were speedily gathered in the
audience room. At the right of the Sultan stood the Grand Vizier and
three subordinate viziers. On his left was the Kadiasker, the chief of
the judges, with other members of the ulema or guild of lawyers,
constituting the high court. The Reis-Effendi, or clerk, stood with
his tablets before the seat of the Sultan. The rear of the room was
filled with various princes and high officials.
Turning to the Kadiasker, the Sultan asked:
"What is the denomination of the crime, and the penalty of him who,
unbidden by the Padishah, shall put to death a child of royal blood?"
The Kadiasker, after a moment's evident surprise at the question,
pronounced slowly the following decision:
"It were a double crime, Sire, being both murder and treason. And if
perchance the child were fatherless, let a triple curse come upon the
slayer. For what saith the Book of the Prophet?[74] 'They who devour
the possessions of orphans unjustly, shall swallow down nothing but
fire into their bellies, and shall broil in raging flames.' If such
be the curse of Allah upon him who shall despoil the child of his
rightful goods, much more does Allah bid us visit with vengeance one
who despoils the child of that chiefest possession--his life. Such is
the law, O Zil Ullah."[75]
Turning to the Kislar Aga, Mahomet commanded him to give testimony.
The Nubian trembled as he looked into the blanched face of the Sultan;
but soon recovered his self possession sufficiently to read his
master's thoughts, and said,
"The child of Mira Sultana was found dead at the bath while in the
hands of Sayid."
"Was Sayid the child's appointed attendant?" asked the Kadiasker.
"He was not," was the response.
"Let him die!" said the judge slowly.
"Let him die!" repeated the Grand Vizier.
The Sultan bowed in assent and withdrew.
The swift vengeance of the Padishah was hailed with applause by the
officials, as if it had erased the blood guilt from the robe of royal
honor; but the people shook their heads, and kept shadows on their
faces for many days.
"I tire of this life in the barracks," said Captain Ballaban to the
Sultan, shortly after this event.
"Speak honestly, man," was the reply. "You tire of me; my heart is not
large enough to entertain one of such ambition."
"Nay, Sire, but I would get nearer to the innermost core of your
heart, into that which is your deepest desire."
"And where, think you, is that spot?" said the Sultan smiling.
"Constantinople," was the laconic response.
"Ah! true lover of mine art thou, if you would be there. Until I put
the Mihrab[76] in the walls of St. Sophia, I shall not sleep without
the dream that I have done it. Know you not the dream of Othman? how
the leaves of the tree which sprang from his bosom when the fair
Malkhatoon, the mother of all the Padishahs, sank upon it, were shaped
like cimeters, and every wind turned their points toward
Constantinople? My waking and sleeping thoughts are the leaves. The
spirit of Othman breathes through my soul and turns them thither. Go!
and prepare my coming. The walls withstood my father Amurath. Discover
why? I hear that Urban, the cannon founder, is in the pay of the
Greeks. He who discovered a way to turn the Dibrians against
Sfetigrade can find a way to turn a foreigner's eyes from the battered
crown of the Cæsars to something brighter--Go, and Allah give you
wisdom!"
The reader is acquainted with the immediate sequel of Captain
Ballaban's departure, his adventure with the Italian desperadoes at
the old reservoir, and his success with Urban.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] The type of a beautiful complexion according to the Koran, Chap.
XXXVII.
[73] Koran, Chap. XXXIV.
[74] Koran, Chap. IV.
[75] Shadow of God, one of the titles of the Sultan.
[76] The niche in mosques, on the side toward Mecca, in the direction
of which the Moslems turn their faces to pray.