The Captain of the Janizaries Part 30

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s; 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 d.a.m.ning 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 sh.e.l.l 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, const.i.tuting 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, p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sent 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 Caesars 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.

x.x.xVII.

[73] Koran, Chap. x.x.xIV.

[74] Koran, Chap. IV.

[75] Shadow of G.o.d, one of the t.i.tles 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

The siege and capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, was, with the exception of the discovery of America, the most significant event of the fifteenth century. The Eastern Roman Empire then perished, after eleven centuries of glory and shame; of heroic conquests, and pusillanimous compromises with other powers for the privilege of existence; exhibiting on its throne the virtues and wisdom of Theodosius and Justinian, and the vices and follies of emperors and empresses whose names it were well that the world should forget.

But the historic importance of the siege was matched by the thrilling interest which attaches to its scenes.

The last of the Constantines, from whose hands the queenly city was wrested, was worthy the name borne by its great founder, not, perhaps, for his display of genius in government and command, but for the pious devotion and sacrificial courage with which he defended his trust. A band of less than ten thousand Christians, mostly Greeks, and a few Latins whose love for the essential truth of their religion was stronger than their bigotry for sect, withstood for many weeks the horrors which were poured upon them by a quarter of a million Moslems.

These foes were made presumptuous by nearly a century of unchecked conquest; their hot blood boiled with fury and daring excited by the promises of their religion, which opened paradise to those that perished with the sword; and they were led by the first flas.h.i.+ngs of the startling genius and audacity of Mahomet II.

The Bosphorus was blockaded six miles above the city by the new fortress, Rumili-Hissar, the Castle of Europe; answering across the narrow strait to Anadolu-Hissari--the Castles of Asia.

A fleet of three hundred Moslem vessels crowded the entrance to the Bosphorus, to resist any Western ally of the Christians that might have run the gauntlet of forts which guarded the lower entrance to Marmora. At the same time this naval force threatened the long water front of the city with overwhelming a.s.sault. The wall which lay between the sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn, and made the city a triangle, looked down upon armies gathered from the many lands between the Euphrates and Danube;--the feudal chivalry from their ziamets under magnificently accoutred beys; the terrible Akindji, the mounted scourge of the borders of Christendom; the motley hordes of Azabs, light irregular foot-soldiers,--these filling the plains for miles away:--while about the tents of the Sultan were the Royal Horse Guards, the Spahis, Salihdars, Ouloufedji and Ghoureba, rivals for the applause of the nations, as the most daring of riders and most skilful of swordsmen: and the Janizaries, who boasted that their tread was as resistless as the waves of an earthquake.

Miners from Servia were ready to burrow beneath the walls. A great cannon cast by Urban, the Dacian, who had deserted from the Christian to the Moslem camp, gaped ready to hurl its stone b.a.l.l.s of six hundred pounds weight. It was flanked by two almost equally enormous fire-vomiting dragons, as the new artillery was called: while fourteen other batteries of lesser ordnance were waiting to pour their still novel destruction upon the works. Ancient art blended with modern science in the attack; for battering rams supplemented cannon, and trenches breast-deep completed the lines of s.h.i.+elds. Moving forts of wood antagonized, across the deep moat, the old stone towers, which during the centuries had hurled back their a.s.sailants in more than twenty sieges. The various hosts of besiegers in their daily movements were like the folds of an enormous serpent, writhing in ever contracting circles about the body of some helpless prey. From dawn to dark the walls crumbled beneath the pounding of the artillery; but from dark to dawn they rose again under the toil of the sleepless defenders.

Thousands, impelled by the commands of the Sultan, and more, perhaps, by the prospect of reward in this world, and in another, out of which bright-eyed houris were watching their prospective lords, mounted the scaling ladders only to fill with their bodies the moat beneath. At the point of greatest danger the besieged were inspired with the courage of their Emperor, and by the aid of the bands of Italians whom the purse and the appeals of John Giustiniani had brought as the last offering of the common faith of Christendom upon the great altar already dripping with a nation's blood.

Sometimes when the Christians, whose fewness compared with the a.s.sailants compelled them to serve both day and night, were discouraged by incessant danger and fatigue, a light form in helmet and breastplate moved among them, regardless of arrows and bullets of lead: now stooping to staunch the wounds of the fallen; now mounting the parapet, where scores of stout soldiers s.h.i.+elded her with their bodies, and hailed her presence with the shout of "The Albanian! The Albanian!" The reverence which the soldiers gave to the devoted nuns, who were incessant in their ministry of mercy, was surpa.s.sed by that with which they regarded Morsinia. She had become in their eyes the impersonation of the cause for which they were struggling.