Bertrice Small - Adora

Adora screamed and leapt from the shadows, flinging herself in the direction of Murad. The aide-de-camp and the guards were as quick. It was too late. Milosh Obravitch twice plunged his dagger into the sultan’s chest, so hard that both times it went through his back. The Janissaries, streaming into the tent, grabbed the assassin. Spread-eagling him, they lopped off his head. Blood from the man’s severed neck gushed onto the rugs.

Heedless, Adora cradled her husband in her arms.

“Murad! Oh, my love!” she sobbed.

He struggled to speak, his face white, the light in his eyes fading rapidly. “Forgive…the cruelties. I love you…Adora…”

“I know, my love! I know! Do not speak. The physician is coming.” Oh, God! She felt so cold! Why was she so cold?

A sad smile flickered on his face, and he shook his head. “Kiss me farewell, dove.”

She bent her wet face and touched his cooling lips with hers.

“Peaches,” he said weakly. “You smell of peaches,” and then he fell back in her arms, his black eyes open and sightless.

For a moment she thought her heart would stop and that she might be granted the mercy of following him. Then she heard her own voice saying, “The sultan is dead. Notify Prince-notify Sultan Bajazet. No one else! No one must know yet!”

The Janissary captain stepped forward. “Prince Yakub?”

“See to it immediately after the battle,” she ordered. “Prince Yakub is not to return. Do not wait for word from my son. I will not have this decision on him. It is my responsibility.”

“To hear is to obey, Highness.”

“Ali Yahya!”

“Madame?”

“No one enters this tent until my son comes. Tell them the sultan rests with his wife after a hard battle and cannot be disturbed.”

“It will be as my lady says.”

Then she was alone, still cradling Murad’s body. Gently she drew his eyelids closed. He looked so relaxed, asleep. Slowly her tears fell on him. She made no sound. In the heat of the tent she could smell the nearby bowl of peaches, and she recalled his last words to her. “Peaches! You smell of peaches.” They had begun together with peaches stolen from St. Catherine’s orchard. Now it was ended in a tent smelling of peaches on a battlefield called Kossovo.

Throughout the rest of the day Theadora of Byzantium sat on the floor of the sultan’s tent holding her husband’s dead body. And while she sat, her numbed mind remembered their years together. It had not always been as easy between them as it had been in these last years. He had not always understood the passionate, intelligent woman whom he had moved heaven and earth to possess; and she had rarely been able to hide the woman she really was. But there had always, from their first moment, been love between them. Always, even during their fierce battles.

I have been blessed, she thought, in having such love. Then she thought again, But what will I do now? Bajazet respects me, but I do not think he knows how to love, even me. Zubedya certainly does not care for me, nor do her four sons, my grandsons. Once again I am alone. Murad! Murad! Why have you left me? She wailed her grief silently, and she rocked back and forth with her precious burden.

It was thus that Bajazet found her, her eyes swollen almost shut from weeping. He silently surveyed her. Her robe was covered with dried and blackened blood, her face puffy and streaked with tears. A wave of pity swept over him. He had never seen her other than elegant and beautiful. Bajazet had not yet found love, and did not understand the emotion, but he knew how his parents had loved one another. She was going to be lost.

“Mother.”

She looked up at him. “My lord sultan?”

He was amazed at her calm, her correct behavior in the face of her tragedy. “It is time to let him go, Mother.” Bajazet held out his hand to her.

“He wanted to be buried in Bursa,” she said quietly.

“So be it,” answered Bajazet.

Slowly she released her hold on Murad’s body, and allowed her son to help her up. He led her from the tent. “Yakub?” she asked him.

“My half brother died in the battle, they tell me. He will be buried with honor, along with our father. He was a fine soldier and a good man.”

“It is good,” she said to him. “There can be only one sultan.”

“I have already avenged my father, mother. We have slain almost all of the Serbian nobility. I have allowed only one of Prince Lazar’s sons to live. The Serbs are no longer a threat to us, and it will be better if one of their own governs them. I will need their troops to defend the Danube Valley against the Hungarians.”

“Which of Prince Lazar’s sons is it, and what terms have you made with him?”

“Stephen Bulcovitz. He is but sixteen. He will pay us as an annual tribute sixty-five percent of the yearly revenues from the Serbian silver mines. He must command a contingent in my army, and send me Serbian troops whenever and wherever I need them.”

She nodded. “You have done well, my son.”

“There is more,” he said. “Stephen Bulcovitz has a sister. Her name is Despina, and I will take her to wife.”

“Prince Lazar’s daughter? Thamar’s cousin? Are you mad? You would marry the offspring of the man responsible for your father’s death?”

“I need the alliance, Mother! Zubedya binds me with Asia, but I need a European wife as well. The Serbs will trouble us no longer, and Despina will serve my purpose. Father would have approved.”

“Do not speak to me of your father! He is not cold yet, and you would wed with his murderer’s daughter!” He tried to comfort her, but she pulled away from him. “Dear God! I am surely cursed! Your father loved me, but you do not love me, and neither does your wife, or your children. Now you will wed with Thamar’s cousin, and once again I will be alone.”

“Meet with the girl, my mother. I do not have to wed with her if she displeases you. You are a fine judge of character, and I trust your opinion. If you feel that this Despina is not suitable then I will look elsewhere for a European bride. After today there will be plenty of noble Christian widows seeking to placate me with their nubile daughters.”

Prince Lazar had been married twice, and it was his second wife, a Macedonian noblewoman, who had produced his youngest son, Stephen, and his youngest daughter, Despina, who was fourteen. The girl was spirited, but she was not proud, and she had an open and sweet nature. Her features were fine. Her skin was fair, and her long hair dark auburn. She had a small waist, nicely rounded hips, and came just to Bajazet’s shoulder. Though Theadora had expected to dislike the girl, she could not.

Despina was shy with Theadora for awhile, but as her confidence grew, her concern for the older woman’s loss became paramount. “You have had your own loss,” said the sultan’s mother.

A shadow passed over the girl’s face, and then she said quietly, “I loved my father, madame. He was always good to me, and there will never be another like him in my life. However, God has blessed me in my grief by sending me your son to love. Though I am but his second wife, I shall endeavor to make him happy.”

Deeply moved, Theadora put her arms about the girl. “I think, my child, that it is my son who is blessed.”

To Adora’s delight, there was true love between the two young people. The wedding was celebrated quickly and quietly as they were all in mourning. Bajazet was content to stay with his beloved bride much of the time. And within less than a year, Despina had given him a son. He was called Mohammed.

Bajazet then went back to war. Adora approved her son’s return to the battlefield, for Murad had left his plans for conquest written down in several parchment scrolls. These were now in Bajazet’s possession. The new sultan had only to follow his father’s plans and success would be his.

Despina, with a wisdom and generosity far beyond her years, understood how desperately Theadora needed someone to love. Recognizing, too, her mother-in-law’s superior knowledge in all things involving the raising of rulers-to-be, the girl stepped aside, leaving the care of her son to Theadora.

Despina concentrated all her energies on Bajazet; Theadora gave all of herself to Mohammed.

Seeing the baby’s alert black eyes and broad brow, Theadora envisioned Murad. She saw her own renewed purpose in living. It would never be as it had been with Murad, but this life would afford her much. Theadora prayed that the boy would be the Ottoman to finally take Constantinople, and she recalled the prophecy, “And Mohammed shall take Constantinople.”

Theadora of Byzantium was delighted. She had plans again, visions of the future. She would not be just another widow, honored but entirely forgotten. She was still in the center of history.

Bursa

December 1427

The orchards of St. Catherine’s convent lay quiet in the cool December sun. The bare branches of the trees rustled softly in a faint breeze. Though the original convent and its orchards had been destroyed when Tamerlane the Tartar took the city some twenty-five years before, they had been rebuilt by Princess Theadora, matriarch of the Ottoman family. In the center of the new orchard there had been built a small marble tomb. This would hold the old woman when she finally released her firm grip on life.

She was now ninety years old. She had outlived Orkhan, Alexander, and Murad. She had outlived her children, all of them, and even her grandson, Mohammed. She had made peace with herself and with her memories, except for the memory of her son Bajazet. For Bajazet had, in his growing arrogance, destroyed the empire Murad had so carefully assembled. Bajazet had been responsible for many deaths, including the death of the gentle Despina and even his own at the hands of the great Tartar warlord, Tamerlane, who had conquered the young sultan and his armies.