Vlad by C.C. Humphreys Page A

“Maybe they’ve already passed the other way.”
    “No. Vlad would have come to get us. He knows we have little time.” Ion looked again at the mescid beside the tavern. The muezzin had ceased his call to prayer only a few minutes before. Because it was a Friday, hostages were allowed to remain in town till prayers were over. Staybeyond that, and they would feel more than a touch of an agha ’s bastinado .
    It was not only the hardness of the stool that made Ion shift. He turned and looked through the bobbing heads of the tavern’s occupants to see Aisha, the-yet-to-be-attained, with a wisp of brown hair damp upon her forehead. He watched as she wiped it with a red kerchief, saw a man grab the cloth from her and ostentatiously suck it, to hers and others’ laughter.
    Ion groaned, and Radu mistook it. “I know! If he does not come will these not answer the muezzin ’s call and go to their devotions?”
    “These?” Ion forced his gaze away from his beloved. “These are Bektashi. They have other devotions.”
    “I thought they were janissaries?”
    “They are.”
    “And all janissaries are Moslem, are they not?”
    “Yes. Wherever they are from, to join the ortas they have to come to Islam.”
    Radu frowned, staring. “And doesn’t the Qur’an forbid the drinking of spirits and wine?”
    “It does. Your brother could quote you the verse. But that does not stop many drinking. They say that even the Sultan, Murad, is given to bouts of over-indulgence. And many janissaries belong to the Dervish cult of Bektashi. Moslem but different. These of the…” He squinted at a bare calf muscle, the elephant tattooed there. “…Of the 79th orta have adopted Bektashi ways. Unveiled women.” He glanced sourly at the laughing Aisha. “Unbound hair. Drinking.”
    “But…?”
    Ion raised a hand. Allow the flood of Radu’s questions to begin and it would never stop. “Go to the crossroads again.”
    “But I just came back.”
    “Go!”
    “Who is the prince’s son here?” Radu grumbled, but rose.
    Ion glanced into the tavern again but couldn’t see Aisha. Gone to fetch more raki probably. He had bought several jugs—“tinder for the flames,” Vlad had said. He had a plan for everything, from winning at dice to stealing fledgling hawks from a nest. But Mehmet’s concubine was not a baby bird up a tree, to be taken just after its first moult. Ion could only hope that what had been planned would happen soon, before prayers he could hear being sung in the mescid next door ended, and the first stroke of the bastinado fell on their upraised Christian backsides.
    Then he saw Radu running up the street. Behind him a silver heron’s plume bobbed above the crowd. Rising, he did as Vlad had told him.
    “Look,” he shouted, “here come some of Mehmet’s arselickers!”
    —
    Vlad, ten paces behind the palanquin , heard the shout, saw the first of the tavern’s clientele spill out from under its awning—and smiled. The rivalry between the janissaries and the palace bodyguards was intense. Both were elite troops, the Sultan’s chosen. But the peyk —halberdiers of the guard—were nearly all Turks and freemen; the janissaries were all Christian converts and still slaves, despite their status. This worsened the enmity between the groups and would, he hoped, help his cause.
    He moved till he was within one donkey-length of the covered litter; till, through the folds of his headscarf, he could see the bolukbasi of the peyk in profile. The man was straining to ignore the comments on his manhood, his parentage and his predilection for bestiality. Vlad knew he had his orders, could not allow himself to be drawn into the tavern brawl Vlad needed. He also knew that if one did not start on its own, he would have to start it.
    The guard marched forward in step, lowering their halberds at a snapped command. For a moment, Vlad thought they might escape with nothing but insults, until a huge man stepped into the roadway…and