Bertrice Small - Adora

“You will not tell my father,” he said smugly, “if you do I will deny the incident and say you seek to discredit me.”

“Rest assured, Cuntuz,” she said calmly, “that if I tell my lord Murad, he will believe me.” Then she brushed past him. Behind her, his eyes blazed hatred, but she did not see.

Several days later Adora sought for her sons late in the afternoon. They had, she was told, gone riding with Cuntuz. A prickle of apprehension ran through her, and she hurried to find Ali Yahya. A troop of Janissaries was sent after the princes. An hour into the hills they met with Cuntuz who claimed that they had been attacked by bandits. His three younger half brothers had been taken captive, though he had managed to escape. The trail was clear, he claimed, so he would return to the Island Serai to get more aid. Having no real reason to doubt him, they let him go.

The trail was clear. And because it was late spring, the light remained. At no point could the Janissaries find the tracks of more than four horses. And when they found all three of the younger princes’ horses wandering, the soldiers became suspicious.

“Do you think he’s killed them?” asked the second-in-command.

“Probably,” said the captain grimly, “but we must find them before we return. We cannot go back without the bodies as proof.”

It was growing dark, and they stopped to make torches so that they might continue to follow the trail. Eventually the flickering torchlights led them up a small hill into a rock-strewn clearing. There they found the boys. They had been stripped naked and staked out in the cold night air. Their young bodies had been lashed with a metal-tipped whip, opening several bloody stripes which eventually would have attracted wolves. They had been doused with icy water from a nearby stream.

Young Osman was dead. Orkhan, his twin, was unconscious. But Bajazet was conscious, shivering, and furious with himself for having been taken in by his older half brother.

The Janissaries built a huge fire and, finding the boys’ clothes, dressed them quickly. Bringing them to the roaring blaze, they rubbed their hands and feet in an effort to stimulate their circulation. Orkhan remained unconscious, despite their efforts. But Bajazet couldn’t stop talking, and when one Janissary remarked that the deceased prince had a bruise on the side of his head, the boy burst out, “Cuntuz kicked him there when Osman cursed him for what he was doing to us. My brother never spoke again. That accursed spawn of a Greek whore boasted that with us dead, he would next poison little Yakub, and see that our mother was blamed! He said our father would have no choice but to make him his heir. We must get back to the Island Serai!”

“Dare we move Prince Orkhan, Highness?” questioned the Janissary captain.

“We must! You cannot possibly get him warm here. He needs our mother’s touch.”

It was well past midnight when they returned to the Island Serai. Five-year-old Prince Yakub was safe: Prince Cuntuz had never returned to the palace to carry out his plans. Adora’s grief over the dead Osman had to wait while she attended to his twin. But at dawn Orkhan opened his eyes, smiled at his parents and Bajazet, and said, “I have to go now, Mother. Osman is calling me.” And before any of them could say a word, the boy died.

For a moment all was silent. Then Adora began to wail. Clutching the bodies of her twin sons, she wept until she thought she could weep no more-but wept again. Murad had never felt so helpless in his life.

They had been his sons too, but he had not nurtured them within his own body or suckled them.

“I will avenge them, I swear it,” he promised her.

“Yes,” she sobbed, “avenge them. It will not bring my babies back to me, but avenge them!”

And when he had left her she called her surviving son to her. “Listen to me, Bajazet. This tragedy could encourage Thamar to act against you, but I will see you are protected. Someday you will be sultan, and when that time comes you will not allow sentiment to overrule you. You will instantly destroy your rivals, whoever they may be. Do you understand me, Bajazet? Never again must you be threatened!”

“I understand, Mother. On the day I become sultan, Yakub will die before he can act against me. This empire will never be divided!”

Clasping the boy in her arms, Theadora began weeping afresh. Bajazet looked grimly over her shoulder at the bodies of his twin brothers. Slowly, silently, the tears ran down the boy’s face. No, he vowed silently, he would not forget.

Prince Cuntuz fled to Constantinople where he begged asylum of the empress. Her cold blue eyes took in the boy who had briefly been her lover. In the years away he had become a man, and had probably learned many an interesting trick. The Turks were known for their licentiousness.

“Why should I take you under my protection?” she demanded of him.

“Because I have done something that should please you greatly.”

“What?” She was not particularly interested.

“I have killed your sister’s sons.”

“You lie! Did you really? How could you?”

He told her, and Helena mused aloud, “The sultan will most certainly demand your return.”

“But you will not give me up,” he said, softly caressing the tender inside of her arm. “You will hide me, and protect me.”

“Why on earth would I do that, Cuntuz?”

“Because I can do things for you that no other man can. You know that well, my wicked Byzantine whore. Don’t you?”

“Tell me,” she teased provocatively, and so he did.

Smiling, she nodded and agreed to hide him.

John Paleaologi was furious. But for once, Helena correctly understood the situation. “The sultan has bigger things to do than besiege this city to obtain his wayward son,” she said. “Cuntuz has behaved badly. But his mother is my friend, and Murad would be overly harsh with the boy.”

The emperor turned purple with anger and choked. “Either I am mad,” he said, “or you are! Cuntuz has behaved badly? Cuntuz is responsible for the brutal, premeditated murders of two nine-year-old boys and the attempted murder of a ten-year-old boy. His own half brothers! If Mara is correct about her son’s paternity.”

“They are not all dead?”

“No, my dear. Bajazet, the eldest, survived. He is as filled with plans for revenge as his father. Cuntuz is not even safe within the walls of this city. I will certainly not protect him from Murad. Where is he?”

“He is under the protection of the Church,” she answered smugly. “He never gave up his religion, and his grandparents raised him in our true faith. You cannot violate the laws of sanctuary, John.”

Boxed in by the Church, the emperor wrote his overlord an apologetic letter filled with his personal sympathy, explaining the difficulty of his situation. Murad wrote back absolving his vassal, but warning him to keep Cuntuz under constant observation, and not allow him to leave Constantinople. Thus the renegade prince-drinking, gambling, and wenching about the city with his boon companion, Prince Andronicus-thought himself quite safe.

As Murad began a new western advance, Thamar’s father, Tsar Ivan, launched a campaign against him. Joining with the Serbians, he attacked the Ottoman forces and was quickly and soundly defeated at Samakov. Ivan fled to the mountains leaving the passes to the Plain of Sofia open to the Turks. And he left his unfortunate daughter, Thamar, very much in disfavor with her lord.

Murad was in no hurry to take the city of Sofia. He was no longer a tribesman on a swift raid for quick booty. He was an empire builder, and as such he moved to secure his left flank. The valleys of the Struma and the Vardar were to be occupied as quickly as possible.

The Struma River Valley was part of Serbia. The Vardar was in Macedonia. Both areas were as torn with internal troubles as Bulgaria had been. The Serbian army marched to the Maritza River to engage the Ottoman forces. They were defeated at Cernomen and three of their princes were killed.

Thus the Serbians were conquered as easily as the Thracians had been some ten years earlier. The two major cities of Serres and Drama were swiftly colonized, the main churches turned into mosques. The smaller cities and villages of the Struma Valley accepted and acknowledged the sultan’s sovereignty. The mountain chieftains became Ottoman vassals.

The following year Murad’s armies crossed the Vardar River and took the eastern end of its valley. Now Murad paused in his campaign of western expansion, and turned his eyes back to Anatolia.

By this time, John Paleaologi had decided that the time was right to seek aid from western Europe. Murad was far too occupied to notice his scholarly brother-in-law, so John traveled quietly to Italy to warn of the growing Ottoman menace.

Once before the emperor had sought aid of his western neighbors. He had made a secret visit to Hungary two years prior and, by swearing the submission of the Greek Church to the Latin, he was promised aid against the Turks. On his return home, however, he was captured and held by the Bulgarians who objected to what they considered the emperor’s betrayal. This gave a fine excuse to John’s Catholic cousin, Amedeo of Savoy, to invade Gallipoli. Having captured it, he sailed into the Black Sea to fight the Bulgarians, and gained his cousin’s release.

Freed, John Paleaologi made for Constantinople. When his cousin insisted on his acceptance to Rome, John refused. Angered, Amedeo fought the Greeks.

Now, John ventured to Rome where he once again foreswore the Orthodox faith in favor of the Roman Church. In exchange he was to receive military aid from his fellow Catholic princes. When the aid was not forthcoming, John sadly departed for home. In Venice he was detained for “debt” and forced to send to his elder son for the ransom. Andronicus had been left as regent in his father’s absence.