The Architect's Apprentice (9 page)

‘Go, Chota!’ Jahan yelled, his command devoid of strength.

The elephant didn’t budge.

‘Move, you beast!’

Jahan prodded the elephant with a stick, then a wooden cudgel. He uttered threats and curses, offered nuts and apples. None of it worked. When Chota did finally care to move, instead of stamping on the convict, he took a step back and waited, flicking his ears nervously.

The jurists, seeing that the public was getting bored, changed the verdict at the last moment. The heretic and his followers were to be killed in the traditional way.

In the end, Majnun Shaykh and his nine disciples were executed by hanging. Their bodies were dumped into the Bosphorus. The last disciple, the one who had escaped because he had been travelling at the time of the trial, waited at the bay where the land jutted into the sea. He knew the tides of the Bosphorus would bring him the bodies. One by one, he fetched them, cleaned them, kissed them, buried them. Unlike all other Islamic graves in Istanbul, theirs would be without headstones.

From the moment he arrived in the menagerie, Jahan expected Sultan Suleiman to inquire about the elephant. But weeks, then months passed without any sign of the sovereign. He was either on a battlefield or on his way to one. On those rare occasions when he stayed in the palace, he was wrapped up in affairs of the state, if not in the entanglements of the harem. Jahan kept waiting for the Sultan to come. Instead it was the Sultana who turned up one afternoon.

Quick as the wind and quiet as a cat after a pigeon, she caught him unawares. One minute the garden was empty and the next she was there, her entourage waiting demurely seven steps behind her. She wore a scarlet petticoat trimmed with ermine, a headdress with tassels that accentuated her sharp chin and an emerald larger than the egg of some queer fowl on her middle finger.

There, behind the erect figure of her mother, apart from everyone and everything, was Princess Mihrimah, gauzy scarves dangling from her headdress. Ruddy and radiant, sparkles of sunlight dancing in her hair. Her eyes, glossy like pebbles at the bottom of a creek, lit up as they caught his admiring gaze. Her lips twisted in a smile, revealing the gap between her two front teeth, which gave her face a mirthful, impish appearance.

Jahan opened and closed his mouth as if unbeknown to him his tongue wished to speak to her. He was almost going to take a step in her direction when a eunuch slapped him on his neck. ‘Kneel down! How dare you!’

Startled, Jahan bowed so low and so fast that his knees knocked against the stones. A giggle ran through those present that made him blush up to his ears.

Ignoring the scene, Hurrem walked past, her skirts brushing Jahan’s forehead. ‘Who looks after this beast?’ she asked.

‘I do, my Sultana,’ Jahan said.

‘What’s the beast’s name?’

‘Chota, your Highness.’

‘What can he do?’

Jahan found the question so bizarre it took him a moment to answer. ‘He’s … he’s a noble animal.’

He wished to tell her, if he only could, elephants were huge not only in size but also in heart. Unlike other animals, they comprehended death; they had rituals to celebrate the birth of a calf or to mourn the loss of a relative. Lions were fierce, tigers were regal, monkeys were smart, peacocks impressive – yet only an elephant could be all of those things at once.

Oblivious to his thoughts, Hurrem said, ‘Show us a few tricks!’

‘Tricks?’ Jahan asked. ‘We don’t know any tricks.’

He could not see the expression on her face, as he could not look up. Instead he watched her feet – long and shapely, clad in silk slippers – glide a few steps; she came to a halt in front of the elephant and ordered her concubines to fetch a twig. Instantly one was provided. Jahan feared she was going to hit Chota, but she waved it in the air, asking, ‘Can the beast catch this?’

Before the boy could answer she flung the twig up towards the elephant. It made a crescent in the air, landing near Chota’s hind feet. The animal wagged its trunk as if to ward off an invisible fly, and remained still, unruffled.

The Sultana made a sneering sound. In that instant Jahan saw Chota through her eyes – a massive creature that ate too much, drank too much and, in return, offered nothing.

‘Are you telling me there’s nothing this creature can do?’ Hurrem said – less a question than a statement.

‘Your Majesty, this is a war elephant. So were his grandfathers. He might be young, but he has already proved his bravery on the battlefield.’

She turned towards him, this boy who was clearly unfamiliar with the ways of the palace. ‘A warrior, you said?’

‘Yes … your Highness, Chota is a warrior.’ Even as the words left his mouth, Jahan felt uneasy, already regretting his lie.

The Sultana took a quiet breath. ‘Then you are blessed with luck. The war is soon!’ Hurrem half turned to the Chief White Eunuch. ‘Make sure the beast joins our valiant soldiers.’

She flounced away, her chambermaids and concubines obediently trotting after her. Carnation Kamil Agha, after giving the elephant and the mahout each a cold stare, followed them. Not everybody had left, though. Two figures had stayed behind and were now watching the boy – the Princess and her nursemaid.

‘You’ve upset My Lady Mother,’ Mihrimah said. ‘Nobody upsets my mother.’

‘I did not intend to,’ Jahan mumbled on the verge of tears.

‘Tell me, why are you so upset?’

‘The elephant does not know how to fight, your Highness.’

‘So you lied to my mother?’ she asked, less appalled than amused. ‘Look at me, mahout.’

No sooner had Jahan glanced at her than he lowered his gaze in shame. In that fleeting instant he had seen her eyes – set wide in her oval face, inherited from her mother – glow with mischief. She said, ‘You are more of a fool than I thought. Tell me, have you ever been in a war?’

He shook his head. From a nearby tree came the squawk of a crow. A loud, harsh cry of warning.

‘Well, I haven’t either. But I have travelled more than My Lady Mother. Even more than my noble brothers! My venerable father loved me so much he asked me to accompany him to many lands. Just the two of us.’ A tinge of sorrow crept into her voice. ‘But he doesn’t take me anywhere any more. You are no longer a child, he says. I must be kept away from the eyes of strangers. My brothers are as free as migratory birds. How I wish I had been born a boy.’

Mystified by this statement, Jahan duly kept his head down. Yet his compliance seemed to annoy her. ‘Look at you and look at me!
You are a boy, but you are frightened of the battlefield. I am a girl, but I am dying to go to war with my father. I wish we could exchange places, just for a while.’

That evening, mustering his courage, Jahan went to see the Chief White Eunuch. He explained to him Chota was still young and not ready to fight. He blathered on, repeating himself, not because he thought the man hadn’t understood but because if he stopped speaking he might begin to cry.

‘What does he need to be ready for? Isn’t he a war elephant?’ the Chief White Eunuch asked. ‘Or did the Shah deceive us?’

‘Oh, he is. But he has not been trained. There are things he’s scared of.’

‘Like what?’

The boy swallowed hard. ‘Tigers. I’ve noticed every time the tiger growls the elephant cowers. I don’t know why but –’

‘In that case, don’t fret,’ Carnation Kamil Agha scoffed. ‘There are no tigers in Black Bogdania.’

‘Black Bogdania?’ Jahan echoed.

‘That’s where our army is heading. Now get out of my sight and don’t come back to me again with such nonsense!’

It was Olev the lion-tamer who came to his aid. He explained to Jahan that an order, once pronounced, must be followed. In whatever time was left they had to train the elephant.

If the beast was afraid of tigers, they would have to teach him to overcome his fear. With this purpose, Olev found a tiger skin, God knew from where. Then he asked Sangram to bring a sheep. An innocent animal with blank, brown eyes. They let it graze during the day
and kept it in the stable at night. Meanwhile, Olev handed a firkin to one of the kitchen boys, instructing him to fill it with blood the next time a chicken was slaughtered.

The following morning, when Chota was out in the yard, Olev asked the same boy to put on the tiger’s skin: it was draped round the lad’s shoulders, its edges tied around his neck. Olev then instructed him to crawl on all fours around the elephant, growling and snarling.

‘Knock down the bucket!’

While the boy did as told, the elephant watched this peculiar creature out of the corner of his eye. That day they did not give him food and there was no water. They sharpened his tusks and kept him chained. The second day Olev stuffed the tiger skin with spuds and placed it near Chota’s cage. Again there was no food, no treats, just a tad of water. He did not allow him to go out for a walk either. Upset and irked, the elephant kept glancing at the tiger skin, holding it responsible for his misery.

The third day Olev brought over the sheep and wrapped the tiger skin on its back. The poor animal tried to shake the thing off, but Olev had smeared the insides with a sticky pine resin. He dragged the sheep in this state into Chota’s barn. An hour later the elephant was allowed in. By this time Chota was fraught with hunger and thirst, the sheep crazy with fear. Olev took out the filled firkin. He poured the blood over the sheep: its tiger skin and wool got soaked in red. The smell of blood was sharp, sickening. Olev covered the sheep’s head with a cloth. No longer able to see anything the animal went wild. Its tension infected Chota, who began to stamp his feet. In its daze the sheep ran left and right, eventually ramming into the elephant. Chota swung his trunk, hitting the sheep with tremendous force. The animal toppled over, then recovered, unleashing awful sounds that would haunt Jahan for weeks to come.

Trembling, Jahan closed the gate on them. He waited, his ear to the door, holding the handle so hard his fingers ached. He heard the sheep’s endless bleating – a bloodcurdling wail as if from the bottom
of hell. Little by little, all sounds withered away. Gently, they opened the door. It reeked of blood, urine and excrement. There lay the sheep, lifeless, half mutilated.

That night in the menagerie, Jahan sat with the other tamers around a fire scented with cedar wood. They talked in hushed tones, the smoke from their waterpipes swirling in the air. The Chinese twins, wrapped in a hashish daze, kept chuckling at things unseen.

The moon hovered large and low over Istanbul. The sky resembled a sieve of countless holes through which starlight seeped on to the sleeping city. Where there had once been excitement, there was now weariness in Jahan’s soul. What was he doing in this garden amid wild animals, apart from his kith and kin? His sisters must be married by now, perhaps had babies each. The thought of them sitting around another fire – one that was so far away it could not warm him – filled his heart with despair. He should be going back home. Instead he was going to war.

Friday afternoon, following the prayer, the Sultan gave the command for the sounding of the war drum, a giant circular instrument moulded from bronze that was struck seven times before every campaign. The spine-tingling noise rumbled through the marble halls, the rose gardens and the animals’ cages, vibrated through the neighbourhoods of rich and poor alike.

In front of Jahan’s eyes the entire city made ready to do battle. Every mother’s son was a soldier of sorts. The Janissaries came out of their barracks. The pashas saddled up their horses. The artisans and the shopkeepers took up arms, as did the gardeners, bakers, cooks, tailors, farriers, furriers, cobblers, potters, weavers, riggers, tanners, chandlers, glaziers, sawyers, stonemasons, coppersmiths, carpenters, tinkers, rope-makers, rat-catchers, caulkers, fletchers, oarsmen, fishmongers, poulterers and even the soothsayers. In each guild there was a flurry of activity, including in that of the prostitutes.

Even so, everyone waited for the Chief Royal Astronomer to announce an auspicious day to launch the war. There was a right time for everything – celebrations, weddings, circumcisions, warfare. Finally, after nights of watching the stars, the date was fixed. At the end of twenty sunsets the troops would be on their way.

Since war meant finding your enemy, unless the enemy found you first, they had to traverse the distance between the Golden Horn and the River Pruth. The elephant and the boy were ordered to march in the front lines. This perturbed Jahan greatly. He did not wish to be that close to the
delibashlar
– the crazyheads. Clad in furs, tattooed from head to toe, ears pierced, scalps shaved, they were erratic, rough and savage. Among them were vicious criminals. Playing trumpets, blowing horns, banging drums of all sizes and hollering as if to wake the dead, they made a terrible racket certain to chill the enemy’s blood – and put an elephant into a frenzy.

Jahan mulled over how best to reveal his concerns, but as it turned out there was no need. The morning they set off for Black Bogdania, the mad clamour sent Chota into a rage so fierce that he nearly trampled a soldier. Before dusk the two of them were moved towards the back rows alongside the cavalry. This time, however, it was the horses that got skittish. In the end they had to be relocated again, next to the corps of footmen.

After that things went smoothly. Chota broke into a springy trot, enjoying the open air and the steady march after months of being confined to the palace gardens. From where he sat up on his neck, Jahan could see below and behind, astonished to find himself staring at a sea of bodies with no end in sight. He saw the camels carrying provisions and the oxen pulling cannons and catapults; the Halberdiers of the Tresses, with their hair dangling from their caps; the dervishes chanting invocations; the agha of the Janissaries proudly sitting atop his stallion; the Sultan riding an Arab steed, encircled by guards on both sides – the left-handed archers to his left, the right-handed to his right. In front of him rode a standard-bearer carrying his flag of seven black horsetails.

Propping up their banners and horsetails-on-poles; hoisting lances, scimitars, hatchets, arquebuses, axes, javelins, bucklers, bows and arrows, thousands of mortals were forging ahead. Jahan had never seen so many together. The army was less a horde of men than one lump of giant. The beat of feet and hooves in tandem was hair-raising and stupefying at once. They proceeded uphill against the wind, slicing through the landscape like knife into flesh.

Every now and then Jahan jumped off the elephant, deciding to walk for a while. This is how he met a foot-soldier, lively as a grig-hen, his waterskin slung across his back.

‘When you finish off an enemy, it settles in your gait,’ the soldier said. ‘For every dastard’s head you get a mansion in heaven.’

Not knowing much about Paradise or why he would need houses there, Jahan remained quiet. The foot-soldier had fought in the Battle of Mohacs. Droves of infidels had died – falling to the earth like a
slew of felled birds. The ground had been strewn with corpses still holding on to their swords.

‘It was raining all the time … but I saw a golden light,’ he said, dropping his voice to a whisper.

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Jahan.

‘I swear. It was so bright. It shone upon the field. Allah was on our side.’

All at once, his words were pierced by a sharp cry of pain. Soldiers ran left and right, barking orders. Murmurs rippled from row to row. Where once was solid ground there was now a large hollow, like an empty eye socket turned towards the skies. The earth had opened up its mouth and swallowed a party of cavalrymen. They had tumbled into a pit with sharpened stakes deep inside – a well-concealed trap left by the enemy. They had died instantly. Only a sable horse was still breathing, gored in the neck, when an archer shot it to end its suffering.

A debate ensued as to whether to take the dead out and bury them or leave them where they were. The light was already receding from the horizon. Time being precious, they were laid to rest together, horses and soldiers sharing the same grave. How unfair, Jahan thought, that only the humans would go to heaven, having attained martyrdom, while the animals that accompanied them and died for them were turned away from the gates of Paradise. It was a thought he didn’t know what to do with and kept to himself.

In the days ahead, the army ploughed through pearly valleys and rugged hills, making headway with the sun, camping with the dark. In this manner, after six dawns and five dusks, they reached the banks of the River Pruth. A curtain of fog rolled over the water. There was nothing to convey them to the other shore: no boats, no bridge. They were ordered to set up their tents and get a good rest while a solution was sought.

Bolting towards a bend in the river that had silted up with sludge, Chota threw himself into the pool, wallowing, squelching,
trumpeting. Such was his delight that entire regiments stopped to watch him.

‘What is he doing?’ said the foot-soldier.

‘Covering himself with dirt.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘They can’t sweat like us,’ said Jahan. ‘Water keeps them cool. The mud protects them from the sun. Taras taught me.’

‘Who is Taras?’

‘Uhm … This old tamer in the palace,’ said Jahan nonchalantly. ‘He knows everything about every animal.’

The foot-soldier studied him with a glint in his eyes. ‘So you learned about the elephant’s ways from this Taras. Why didn’t you know about your own beast?’

Jahan evaded his gaze, suddenly uneasy. He had said too much. Every time he allowed someone, anyone, to prise open the shell of his soul he repented of it instantly.

Soon it became obvious that Chota was the only one benefiting from the hiatus. Endlessly waiting by the river didn’t go down well with the Janissaries, who longed for victory and loot. The wind that had lashed at their faces during the march had abated, but now there were swarms of mosquitoes everywhere. They stung with a vengeance, as if they had been trained by the enemy. The soldiers were tense, the horses fidgety. The foragers were tired of raking through the same villages for food and the soup tasted blander by the day.

In the meantime, a corps of workers had begun building a bridge. They seemed to be doing a fine job, when, unexpectedly shoved by Sheitan, first one then the rest of the piers collapsed. Before the week was over, the foundations of a second bridge had been laid; though thicker and sturdier than the first, its abutment crumbled even faster, wounding half a dozen soldiers and killing one. The third bridge was only a weak attempt. The soil was too boggy, the river’s current relentless. Disheartened and bone-weary, they fell into a torpor that
sucked them down like the marsh beneath their feet. Jahan didn’t even need to ask the foot-soldier what he thought about their predicament: he knew he would say that the Almighty, who had brought them all the way into this bleak landscape, had suddenly forgotten them. If things went on like this, before the war had even started, the Ottoman Army would be defeated by its own impatience.