Chapter 31
Gryzelda managed not to run to Jeremi, but sashayed towards him with dignity, and sank into a deep curtsey. Jeremi pulled off his hat to bow low, sweeping his hat and fingers across the ground.
"How now, my lady, can the Sejm manage without your wit and wisdom?" he asked, eyes twinkling at her.
"I could be absent from my lord, my king no longer," said Gryzelda. "I thought I might inspect the troops and impart intelligence to my husband's privy ear, regarding the potential mayhem in the rule of Hungary and Bohemia."
"What have you been up to?" asked Jeremi, appreciatively.
"Set up the notion that Rakoczy might be desirous of the throne of Bohemia," said Gryzelda. "It keeps both him and Ferdynand of Austria off our backs. Uh... and I might be buying northern France and parts of the Spanish Netherlands."
"I adore you," said Jeremi.
"Remi, I've missed you," said Gryzelda.
"If Jurij pulls off seizing Constantinople and holding it, I can make a treaty with the Ottomans which will keep their Empire from interfering in our lands forever," said Jeremi. "And then I'll come home, and spend as long as we are left alone with our children."
"Stay safe, my king, my love," said Gryzelda. "Where are you sleeping? If you are in a tent, can we borrow a room in the castle?"
"We can borrow a room," said Jeremi.
oOoOo
"Your highness! A word?" it was spoken in Polish. Oddly accented Polish, but Polish nonetheless.
Jurko turned.
"Certainly; who is it who speaks to me?"
"My name is Ali Ufki Bey; once I was Wojciech Albert Bobowski1. I progressed through my apprenticeship as a page, after having been seized by the Tatars."
"Is it your wish to return to Poland? Or have you become happy with being a nobleman of the Ottomans as I believe 'Bey' means?"
The middle-aged man looked conflicted.
"I... yes," he said. "I was valued in my youth, when I was one of the Sultan's translators, and I have inscribed their music, the first time it has ever been written down. They made me conductor of the pages' choir, for they were expected to learn music by heart, not write it down, and that I knew how to write down music they thought something wonderful. News speaks of Prince Jurij as a musician, a scholar. And that you do not despise folk music; for I have written down the turku, the folk music which the educated despise. I... I hoped to talk with you about music."
"Why, Pan Bobowski, I will set aside some time now, and perhaps you will also dine with me tonight?"
"Mushroom pierogi? Barszcz?" asked Ali Bey, hungrily.
"Even so," said Jurko. "Tell me, where do they keep the pages? I will find homes for any who wish to return to Christian lands."
"We are swiftly broken by the leash and by beatings and by solitude to accept conversion," said Ali Bey. "I... I have questioned my situation of late. I have also been in trouble for drunkenness. Perhaps... if there was a place for me..."
"My father would welcome an advisor on the ways of Constantinople," said Jurko. "Let us play music together for an hour, and then we will speak more seriously this evening over food and good mead."
"The taking and training of noble Christian youths is called devshirme." Ali Bey said, after a meal of every Polish dainty Jurko's cook could devise. "Tribute is demanded of the children from primarily the Balkan Christian subjects. Some translate it as 'child levy' and others more directly as 'blood tax.' The Albanians and Bosnians give their sons willingly to devshirme," he added, over his second goblet of mead. "The schooling, which is fourteen years, gives rise to many military governors, viziers and so on. As well as personal service to the Sultan, which is a privilege. Some become eunuchs, some of the youngest taken, and it is argued that once having converted to Islam we are no longer slaves, and so there is no conflict with the Koran. I have been questioning more and more. I was in my twenties when I was taken, and I do not know what I feared, but I kept my head down, and behaved, and it was not too bad; and I was allowed music. I converted because it was easiest. And for the sake of my sister."
"I understand," said Jurko. "And when you are told all the time that something is good, desirable, and it comes with rewards, it is hard to resist. I don't suppose those who resist live long."
Ali Bey shuddered.
"I don't really want to think about it," he said. "I want to go home. I have brought all that I have written, and my musical instruments, and I want to stay on your ship so nobody can change my mind for me. I know my former family will not acknowledge me, but perhaps I can see them... even if they ignore me."
"We are changing perceptions, since we have retrieved many people seized," said Jurko. "I cannot answer for your family, but perhaps it will not be as bad as you fear."
"My sister was taken into the harem of the Sultan of the time," said Ali Bey. "I do not think she is still alive."
"I will have my wife search for her," said Jurko. "You will be welcome at court."
"I am a good linguist, too, and if I may be Wojciech Bobowski once more, I will be pleased to work for your esteemed father. I know Turkish and Arabic, of course, and Latin, as any szlachcic must, also Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Persian, French, Italian, German, and English. I also know the silent language, the sign language used at court to make sure the air of silent dignity is maintained. "
Jurko was interested.
"Can you teach my Cossacks?" he said. "We have some limited sign language, but something more sophisticated would be useful."
"Certainly, I would be delighted," said Bobowski. His accent was disappearing as he spoke with native Polish speakers.
"Why did the Sultan not take you as a translator?" asked Jurko.
"Because I sing too many songs of how I am desolate away from my own country, and drink too deeply when I do so," said Bobowski. "And so I am expected to try to escape, or to communicate my desire to return to Poland to the King."
He sang,
"Ufkî burns, crying like a thorn fallen from a rose.
It's so hard to be far away from one's home.
It is so hard, so hard to come to safety."
"And who might be surprised," said Jurko, dryly.
Jurko took a contingent of men to the page school. Finding boys as young as eight on leashes like dogs enraged him. There was a brawl. Jurko had been begged by Bobowski not to use fatal force.
The Cossacks were happy. The trainers were sore. Also on the leashes lately on their young charges and well beaten.
"Bring these poor children back to the ship," said Jurko.
"There are some in solitary cells too," said Jan.
"Have all the pages assembled," said Jurko.
He addressed them.
"Those of you who want to be free, please come up to the front," he said. "I know some of you find the chance of high position more alluring than being permitted to worship as you choose, and of being free so we will not force any of you to leave. But we will take those who wish for more than dusting the Sultan's throne of the smell of his farts, or whatever you do whilst hoping for notice. And if any of those on leashes who are over twelve wish to remain, well, it's your choice. The marks on some of you are cruel, and I am outraged, but I will not choose for you."
He ended up with most of the younger ones, and a third or so of the older ones, and overheard one of the eunuchs saying,
"He is the most beautiful man I have ever seen, so his mind must be fine, for Allah surely does not permit a weak mind to inhabit so beautiful a body."
"Friend," said Jurko, "I have known men who were handsome and whose minds were twisted and corrupt; yet oft times one might see corruption, cruelty and evil in a man's expression, and how his face is marred by such. But the true beauty in any face is the honesty which shines in the eyes of a righteous man, even if his face be marred by disease, disfigurement or scarring. Our bodies are not reflections of our souls; we are creatures of spirit and light, not the crude clay of which we are made."
They took their human booty back to the ships, to be sorted out. Few could be taken home readily, but some at least might write home.
Jurko shook his head, sadly. So much misery caused just for the glory of the Sultan. They had a lot of girls as well, rescued from harems.
The erstwhile brothel slaves were doing very well out of the Cossacks and might be expected to be able to set themselves up very well indeed somewhere like Kijów. Those who had wanted to get out of the life were in another ship, and the ship those who wished to continue in business were in was currently unofficially named 'the finest kind floating brothel.'
It kept the men from misbehaving with those who were not willing.
oOoOo
"They took the bait," chuckled Bohdan Chmielnicki to his son. "They did assume your attack was that of partisans, and they've hanged some prominent citizens in reprisal. Now they'll really be in for a bad time, we drifted through a few places, and it's stirred up the real partisans. You never know, we might get the Wallachians petitioning to join the Rzeczpospolita as well as Moldavia."
"Is Jeremi planning on looting all of Europe?" asked Timofey, mildly.
His father sniggered.
"No, but can't you see his face if we could make him take them on?" he said.
"Honestly, Pa, if you and Uncle Jeremi couldn't prank each other, I think you'd die of boredom," said Timofey.
"More than likely," agreed Bohdan. "Tonight we set off a diversion inland with slow match to firecrackers so they think they're being fired on, and when they're busy fighting an invisible army, we add a load of senna to their supplies. I love the way Jurij does war."
The firecrackers were set up off the path, near the huge Ottoman camp, and a sniggering Cossack ran back to the river after having set light to the slow match. It braided and divided so some went off together, and the staccato fusillade was quite realistic. The Ottomans leaped up and ran to defend themselves. A bush exploded.
"They have artillery!" squealed a Janissary.
"Hmm?" said Bohdan.
"Jar full of gunpowder and slowmatch through the bung," said Timofey. "Nice and noisy, wasn't it? There are a few of those, under bushes where we concealed them. Should be another right... now." He was rewarded with another explosion. "Let's go."
Senna was quickly added to dried goods and the chuckling Cossacks beat a fast retreat.
Some of them seemed to have acquired a number of the Sipahi mounts.
"We can't put those in skiffs!" said Bohdan.
"We'll ride up the coast to where you can bring the ship in," said Timur, who was one of the horse thieves. "These hotbloods are worth breeding from."
Bohdan mentally shrugged, and let the horse thieves head north.
Anything which caused mayhem to the enemy was a good thing, and horses did constitute loot.
oOoOo
"You did what, Bohdan?" said Jeremi, as the Cossack and Tatar ship docked and led off horses.
"We looted some horses. Well, our Tatar friends did, and I persuaded them that they would be safer in your care on dry land, than shadowing the Ottomans up the coast. They may be a little delayed, because of the senna."
"Oh, my, Jurij started something," said Jeremi. "If not delayed, how far are they?"
"Well, the Sultan has been force-marching them so they've increased their speed from waddle to plod," said Bohdan. "Oh, don't raise an eyebrow at me like that, Remi, you know fine well your men and mine could do Constantinople to Chocim in a week or ten days."
"Not with artillery," said Jeremi.
"Well... no. But I wager we could do it inside of a month."
"I don't know what's keeping them," said Jeremi.
"Those poor little Janissaries don't know how to use their poor little legs," said Bohdan.
"Why didn't they sail up the coast?"
"Scared of being sunk by big bad Cossacks?"
"How long have they been on the march?"
"Nigh on sixty days," shrugged Bohdan. "And they're just about into Moldova, with force marching."
"I could take a girls' school faster than that."
"Received military wisdom is that taking artillery over terrain goes around six or seven miles a day."2
"I'd court-martial any officer of mine that went at that sort of snail's pace."
"Of course you would, Remi. Even without Jurij's roads, your people are inclined to hussle. It comes of being Cossacks; we can't believe in any speed between flat out and stop."
Jeremi laughed.
"You're not far out, Bohdan," he said. "Can you scare them along a bit faster? If they have the runs, make them run for the next ditch to crap in. I want to get this over before the winter. My children are missing me."
"We'll get them shifting," said Bohdan. "Oh, I had a message from Jurij, he sent a small ship with it. He wants you to know that he and Helena have christened every throne they could find, and the Sultan's bed as well, and they are digging in to wait for you to kick the Sultan's arse hard enough for a thought or two to migrate upwards into his head. In other words, they have Constantinople under control. The Swedes sank their fleet, and Jurij has only had to hang half a dozen of the Swedes."
"Would you reinforce him after you've harried the Turks a bit?"
"Only if I can leave the Tatars with you; I don't trust them to keep Jurij's rules."
"I can live with that. I can threaten Sobiepan's new brother-in-law if he doesn't keep them in check."
1 The real Ali Bey was dismissed for drunkenness at or around 1657, two years after the current date. One cannot help picturing a Zagłoba-like man, brainwashed like the other child slaves seized as pages, and drinking to forget that once he had been a Pole, and free.
2 I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's the baggage trains. In the first siege of Chocim, the Ottomans set off middle of April and arrived end of August. A little over 600 miles. Compare with Sobieski, who took artillery from Warszawa to Vienna in 1683, something over 400 miles, in just three weeks. Poles. They know how to shift.
