The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire by Linda Lafferty

Author:Linda Lafferty [Lafferty, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction, Turkey
ISBN: 9781477805299
Amazon: 1480516295
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2013-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Sister and brother spent the night together in the apartments of Esma Sultan. Ivan Postivich’s tears bathed the scarred flesh of his sister’s face.

She retraced her life from loss to joy to pain. Esma Sultan had rescued her, sheltered her, and treated her as a sister. And in the end it was the kindness of women that had comforted her after she had traded her physical beauty for the sanctity of being an untouchable, protected by her wounds.

Ivan Postivich smoothed her hair with his great paw of a hand and burrowed his face into the space where her neck met her shoulder. He breathed in the unforgettable scent of his home and family and wept uncontrollably for his dead mother. He confessed his life to her in stages throughout the night, in chapters of recollections that came to him in the hours of darkness.

As dawn approached and the light of the rising sun rendered the flickering candles unnecessary, two Circassian servants silently entered the room to extinguish the flames. The slave girls saw the favorite of Esma Sultan in the arms of Ahmed Kadir and smiled inwardly. That the giant had chosen the most unfortunate of the harem women as his lover spoke of secrets of the soul and not just the lusts of the body. They thanked Allah for the generosity of their mistress who had allowed a man’s touch to at last caress the burnt flesh of the Sultaness’s favorite companion.

“Praise Allah,” they whispered to each other as they silently closed the door on the whispering couple.

Irena and her brother whispered their secrets through the dawn and into the day. They had lost their dear family home, their language, and their religion. Their mother died of grief and hardship, with no one left to help her through the hard Serbian winters.

Brother and sister, they had lost everything, but now they had regained each other. Irena’s soul was filled, and like the water that escapes the overflowing lip of a fountain, her spirit spilled over with joy.

As the sun burned higher in the sky, Esma joined them. She refused any gratitude. She didn’t let them speak. Instead, she warned them that their secret would be revealed eventually to the Sultan. She reached out her hand to Irena’s shoulder, holding it gently.

“It would be best if you told him yourself. Secrets are like air. They disperse and travel freely, no matter how you try to keep them from escaping. Should Emerald learn of our secret, we shall die of suffocation. Better you find the best time to use the information to our advantage than to have the eunuch carry the secret to Topkapi.”

She smiled gently, an expression Postivich thought he had never before seen on her face. “Mahmud has never forgotten you, despite the many concubines and wives he has taken.”

“But once he sees my face,” Irena protested. “No one will ever love this face!”

“I love it,” Esma Sultan said, stroking her friend’s cheek. Irena watched the intricate patterns of the red henna on the Princess’s hand drift past.

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