House of War Read online

  They went next to the imaret, the public soup kitchen maintained by the mosque. There Murad, Aladdin, and Mehmed distributed sweets to hundreds of simple folk gathered from all over the town.

  “After the Eid prayer we shall visit Gürani’s madrasah,” Murad said and walked arm in arm with Mehmed and Aladdin to Yeşil Mosque nearby.

  “Mehmed has worked a miracle, restoring that old place in only three months,” Aladdin said.

  “His memorizing of the Qur’an is the true miracle,” Murad said, his smile the image of immoderate parental pride.

  Following the prayer, Mehmed sought out Vlad in the courtyard. “You’ve got to come with me to the madrasah, or—” The rest of Mehmed’s words were lost in the tumult raised by hundreds of worshippers wishing each other “Mutlu Bayramlar, Happy Bayram.”

  Vlad leaned over and Mehmed shouted in his ear, “—or, I’m going to fail my test.”

  “You’ve already recited the Qur’an flawlessly a few times, Mehmed,” Vlad said. “You’ll do just fine.”

  “I’d be more confident if you came along,” Mehmed whined. “Gürani inhibits me. Besides, one of the favors I’m going to ask Father concern you.”

  Vlad hadn’t returned to the madrasah since that first day when Gürani demonstrated his determination to break Mehmed’s will. He found the plaza in front of the gate transformed. The bazaar stalls were gone, and the ground was covered with an intricate mosaic of white and green tiles cut in diamond shape. The fountain at the center of the place had been restored, its white marble seeming to illuminate the intimate plaza. Clear water jetted from the mouths of seven lion heads arranged in a circle around the bowl of the fountain.

  “The lions were my idea,” Mehmed said. Then he pointed to the building’s new façade. “Look up there.”

  The defaced, weatherworn sandstone had been replaced with pink granite that lent the building an air of majesty.

  “‘Those to whom We have given the Qur’an,’” Vlad read the carved Arabic inscription above the portal, “‘follow it as it ought to be followed.’”

  “Sūrah 2, ayah 121,” Mehmed said. “I memorized that verse the week I met Gürani.”

  Vlad wondered whether Mehmed had indeed acquired a reverence for the Qur’an, or had simply learned how to manipulate his father. “With this building as testimony to your new love of learning, your father won’t be able to deny you any favor.”

  They passed through the new mahogany portal, and Vlad noticed that the enormous panels pivoted on their hinges with the slightest push. From inside came a perfumed air, as if they were entering not the courtyard of a madrasah, but a jasmine garden. Vlad stopped under the colonnade, while Mehmed advanced with aplomb and took his position on the same spot where Gürani had administered him his drubbing back in October.

  Sunlight reflected off the new marble flagstones and softened the winter chill.

  “Here comes my son, the Hamil al-Qur’an,” Sultan Murad shouted, joyful. He was sitting on a dais next to the restored pool, surrounded by baskets of sweets. Aladdin sat on the ground at his right, Gürani at his left.

  ““I’m ready to hear the words of the Prophet from my own flesh and blood,” Murad said, his faced suffused with pride.

  Expressions of approval rose from a dozen men seated on cushions around the atrium. Vlad recognized among them members of the imperial council he’d seen in Edirne, some local representatives of the ulema, and the governor of Bursa. Tirendaz, Zaganos, and Skanderbeg stood under the arcade. Among the senior officials only the Grand Vizier and the Second Vizier were missing. Vlad learned from Mehmed that Murad had left Khalil and Fazullah behind in Edirne, in case the crusade should start before the spring.

  “‘The father of the son who has memorized the Qur’an,’” an old scholarly-looking man quoted from the sayings of Mohammed, “‘will be clad by the angels on Judgment Day with better garments than the entire world holds.’”

  “Mutlu Bayramlar, Father,” Mehmed said. “I’m ready to please you.”

  For the next half hour Gürani called out the numbers of specific ayat, and Mehmed recited them, eyes closed in concentration. Then Gürani would recite half an ayah, and Mehmed would complete it. As time passed, the exclamations of wonderment from all around the atrium became more and more enthusiastic. Aladdin was so taken with his brother’s performance that he rose to his knees and kept a permanent smile on. Then, as soon as Gürani would confirm the correctness of Mehmed’s answer, Aladdin would slap his thighs and shout, “Allāhu Akbar.”

  In the final portion of the test Gürani proposed to mention a Qur’an topic, expecting Mehmed to name the sūrah and the ayah where it appeared. But Murad, looking tired and tipsy from whatever he was frequently imbibing, dismissed Gürani with a lazy wave of his hand.

  “You’ve more than earned my Judgment Day’s garments, Mehmed,” Murad said. “Another hour of this, and I’d be overdressed for the eternity.”

  That drew laughter from the audience.

  “Come sit next to me and do what suits best a boy your age on Şeker Bayramı—eat sweets to your heart’s content.”

  Instead of obeying his father’s command, Mehmed dashed over to the place Vlad was standing.

  “Come,” he said, excited, “it’s time for me to ask for my favors.”

  He led Vlad by the hand to Murad and said, “Father, forgive me for disobeying you.”

  Murad gave Vlad a curious glance and seemed to be fighting the impulse to smile. Then he turned an inquiring look upon Mehmed.

  “I was supposed to send Vlad on to Amasya as soon as we’d reached Bursa,” Mehmed said. “Instead I—”

  “Instead you decided to postpone his departure until I arrived,” Murad said, with unconvincing severity.

  Mehmed knelt and dropped his chin in a show of humility.

  Murad reacted with a soft chuckle. “Do you think there is anything you can do without me knowing about it? But since I can’t deny your initiative has born good fruit, I forgive you. Take this as one of the two favors I promised you for becoming a good student.”

  Mehmed’s face fell. “Oh, no, Father,” he cried, “the favor I wanted isn’t forgiveness, but permission to keep Vlad as my permanent companion, instead of sending him off to Amasya.”

  Vlad had a start at Mehmed’s unexpected demand. The possibility that his exile might be commuted to a life of scholarship in Bursa was exhilarating.

  “I know how important Vlad is to you as a hostage,” Mehmed said. “But he doesn’t have to be locked up in a faraway fortress to make sure he doesn’t run away. I can have him watched here in Bursa at all times.”

  Murad looked at Mehmed with a mixture of amusement and astonishment, but gave no indication what his answer was going to be.

  Vlad made the sign of the cross with his tongue and visualized Virgin Mary looking upon him, benevolent. A drop of sweat ran down his spine.

  “Vlad will be my study mate,” Mehmed said, “and also my bodyguard. He’s proven himself capable of that in Constantinople.”

  Vlad braced himself for the sultan’s reaction.

  Murad’s head jerked backward, and his eyes flashed. “Now, your caper in Constantinople was a serious transgression we have yet to discuss.”

  He held out his cup, and a page rushed over to refill it with an amber-colored liquid. Murad drained the beverage and returned his gaze to Mehmed; but his anger had waned. “Mullah Gürani’s told me quite a few good things about our Wallachian guest. Perhaps having him as your companion isn’t the worst thing.”

  “I was hoping to have Vlad as my companion,” Aladdin said.

  “Oh, I’ve heard all about your teaching him carpentry,” Murad said and winked at his oldest son. “Next you’ll tell me you want Vlad as your bodyguard as well. But unless you can match Mehmed’s performance, you’ll have to settle for your current staff.”

  Aladdin laughed with good humor, and Murad joined him.

  Vlad realized this signaled the sultan�
�s approval of Mehmed’s request and a deep joy overtook him. Now he could wait for the port to open in the spring and organize his escape by sea.

  “What’s the second favor you want from me, Son?” Murad said.

  Vlad observed Mehmed glancing at Zaganos. The Third Vizier gave his pupil a slight nod.

  “I’ve matured a lot since I left Edirne in the fall, Father,” Mehmed said.

  “Judging by Gürani’s reports, I’d say you have. So how can I reward your progress? Give you a tuğ?”

  Mehmed shook his head.

  “More provinces to govern? That’s impossible without conquering new lands, and I’ve got no desire to do that. In fact, I’m planning to take a slice of your territory and give it to İbrahim Bey in exchange for peace.”

  “No, My Sultan and Father, I’m not yet worthy of a tuğ. And the lands I govern in your name are yours to do with as you please.”

  “You can give İbrahim some of my lands, Father,” Aladdin said, “and let Mehmed keep his.”

  “The favor I’m asking of you, Father,” Mehmed said, “is to let me be your envoy to Karaman, so I might bring you the peace treaty you desire.”

  “Your lion cub is ready to hunt on his own, My Sultan,” the kadıasker said in an admiring tone. He too exchanged meaningful looks with Zaganos. “It reminds me of when you were eleven and—”

  “Peace negotiation is a delicate mission, Sadeddin Hoja,” Mehmed said, “with so much depending on its outcome. My father would’ve never entrusted such a thing to me at the age of eleven.”

  “Oh, what’s there to worry about?” the kadıasker said. “You’re offering İbrahim the Hamid Province on condition he stays put when the Christians start their crusade. How could he say no to such a deal?”

  Murad shook his head, unconvinced. “My brother-in-law might not consider Hamid a sufficient price for peace. He’s got designs on Kütahya, Ankara, Sivas, Amasya … and he’s exceedingly tricky. It takes a seasoned diplomat to ensure I don’t end up giving him more land than I was planning to. Besides, I’ve already promised the mission to Aladdin, knowing his lala’s well versed in dealing with the Karamanids.”

  “Hızır Pasha’s a great diplomat, Father,” Mehmed said with urgency, “but so’s my lala. Zaganos Pasha has large estates on the border of Karaman, so he—”

  “My head’s aching,” Murad moaned. “I can’t make such a decision on a stomach full of helva and Transylvanian eiswein.” He clapped, and two pages came to help him off the dais. “I’ll give you my answer tomorrow, after the Ambassadors’ Reception.”

  “Why’s the mission to Karaman so important to you?” Vlad said when he and Mehmed left the madrasah. “You’ve traded for it the chance of asking for a meaningful favor. Your father would’ve given you command over half of the Anatolian army and your own tuğ, the way he adored you today. You’d no longer be the helpless brother with no chance to the succession when the time came.”

  “Father wants peace with İbrahim Bey more than he lets it be known,” Mehmed said. “He’s never been so keen on avoiding war. If I, not my brother, delivered him İbrahim’s signature on the treaty, Father would see me as Aladdin’s equal henceforth.”

  “You’ve told me peace with Karaman would stop the crusade,” Vlad said. “So you, who favor war, are now working for peace, just to earn your father’s respect?”

  Mehmed stopped and gave Vlad a pensive look, as if asking himself how much to trust him. “Of course there is more to it than. Zaganos’s friends in the army want proof of my abilities. Making İbrahim sign the treaty shows them I’m ready to be sultan. I’ll worry about war when I’m sitting on the throne.”

  28

  JALāL’S PUZZLE

  February 1443, Bursa, Ottoman Empire

  “I still don’t know what haqīqah is,” Omar told Jalāl next time the old man visited him in his cell. “Even though I’ve touched the saint with my hands and lips.”

  “Allah’s the Ultimate Truth,” Jalāl said. “But you cannot know Him with either your senses or your intellect. Spend your life in religious pursuit, and you’ll experience Him one day with your heart.”

  When Omar asked for a new recitation that would help him mortify his body through endless repetitions, Jalāl shook his head.

  “You must use your energy now to learn the secret meaning of letters and numbers,” he said. “Allah has revealed himself to the Prophet in words. Words are made of sounds, and sounds are trapped inside letters like insects are trapped in amber. But the letters, as seen by the uninitiated, yield only the superficial meaning of their sounds. To unlock the deep meaning of Allah’s sounds inside each letter, you must learn the cipher contained in the letters’ numerical values. These values make up the total of Allah’s creating possibilities. They are Allah Himself made manifest.”

  Omar followed diligently Jalāl’s lessons, memorizing the numerical values of the twenty-eight Arabic and thirty-two Persian letters. He marveled at the way the words of Qur’an revealed new meanings when letters became numbers, and the numbers yielded new words under Jalāl’s skilled interpretation.

  But his mind was ceaselessly troubled by the thought that he had no gift for the sheik, or the means to acquire one. By now he understood that the murīd who came to the saint empty-handed was unworthy of his baraka.

  As a test of his proficiency in the mysteries of letter interpretation, Jalāl gave Omar a sequence of words to decode.

  “When you’ve figured out this little puzzle,” Jalāl said with a benevolent look, “you’ll have the solution to the problem that’s been vexing you.”

  Omar wasn’t surprised that Jalāl could so easily read his mind. After all, his murshid was the sheik’s khalīfa, and the sheik was al-Haqq, the Truth that saw everything.

  Jalāl hadn’t yet closed the cell door behind him when Omar had already finished reducing the letters to the numbers 8 and 17. He dashed to the Qur’an and read sūrah 8, ayah 17. “‘You did not slay them, but it was Allah Who slew them. And you did not smite them, but it was Allah Who smote them, that He might confer upon the believers a good gift from Himself.’”

  At the word gift, Omar felt as if he’d just emerged from a dark place into the sunlight. As Jalāl had predicted, the puzzle revealed to Omar the gift he could present to the sheik. It would be a gift worthy of al-Haqq, Who in turn would confer it upon the believers from Himself.

  29

  AMBASSADORS’ RECEPTION

  February 1443, Bursa, Ottoman Empire

  The day following the Ambassadors’ Reception, Murad sent a messenger to İbrahim Bey informing him he’d be sending his youngest son to Karaman the following month with an important proposal.

  “Zaganos and I wanted to leave immediately,” Mehmed said, “but Father insisted we delay our trip to arrive in Karaman on the first of next month. Since warfare’s forbidden that month, he thinks that signing the peace treaty in Dhu al-Qi’dah will be more auspicious.”

  “What do you think?” Vlad said.

  Mehmed shrugged. “He’s acting like a superstitious old man. And what’s worse, like a man who’d rather buy peace than sell war.”

  “That’s harsh judgment from someone who hasn’t yet been tested in battle,” Vlad said, amused at Mehmed’s obvious parroting of his lala. “After twenty years of unrelenting war, your father’s earned the right to rest.”

  “You speak like someone from a country of no consequence,” Mehmed said. “When you’re the ruler of the greatest empire in the world, rest isn’t an option.”

  The intended barb missed its mark with Vlad. For him, Wallachia had all the consequence it needed, if only left alone by its neighbors. “That might be so, but your father could use some rest to spend more time with his sons.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Mehmed said, reluctant. “We see him only a few weeks every year.”

  Vlad expected Mehmed to take advantage of his father’s presence in Anatolia to strengthen their bond. But when Murad invited Mehmed to
join him in observing Aladdin and Skanderbeg’s war maneuvers along the seashore, Mehmed declined.

  “I must tend to my greenhouse, Father,” he said, with a petulance visible only to Vlad. “My cherries are about to ripen.”

  Then for the next ten days, while Murad and Aladdin were away, Mehmed smoldered with jealousy. When a dispatch from Murad, oozing with pride, informed him that Aladdin had defeated Skanderbeg in a war game, Mehmed’s envy burst into the open.

  “My brother has endorsed my request to be sent to Karaman only so he’d have Father all to himself. I’m certain they’ll be plotting the succession while I’m gone.”

  “Oh, the soothing comforts of playing the victim,” Vlad said, annoyed with the boy’s peevishness. “Why can’t you believe Aladdin’s intercession on your behalf at the Ambassadors’ Reception was sincere?”

  The reception, held in an ancient Byzantine hippodrome at the west end of the town, had taken the better part of the day. An enormous tent supported by sixty-six poles had been erected at one end of the hippodrome, leaving the rest of the field open for horsemanship and archery contests. Aladdin’s Sipahis entertained the guests throughout the day with remarkable feats of skill and daring.

  Inside the tent, envoys from all over the Middle East, Persia, Egypt, and Europe paraded in front of Murad and showered him with presents from their masters. In turn, the sultan granted various favors to the ambassadors and entrusted them with gifts for the respective heads of state. Then he treated the crowd to an opulent dinner that lasted several hours.

  When the time came to eat, Aladdin, Mehmed, and Vlad took seats on the carpet at Murad’s right. In front of them the ambassadors and their entourages, numbering in the hundreds, also sat on the floor. The eastern guests did so with ease, while the western ones with visible discomfort. An army of about two thousand slaves waited upon the gathering, under the stern supervision of a dozen çavuşes. Silver bowls heaped with steaming dishes in faraway kitchens passed from hand to hand along a human chain to reach the dining hall. The empty bowls made the reverse trip along a like chain.