Halil the Pedlar: A Tale of Old Stambul by Mór Jókai (most important books to read .TXT) 📗

board the ship destined for him with the banner of the Prophet borne before him.

In the Seraglio all the clocks one after another struck one as four-and-twenty salvoes announced that the Sultan with the banner of the Prophet had arrived in the camp.

And the people of the East believe that the blessing of Allah does not rest on the hour which marks the afternoon.[Pg 123]

CHAPTER VI. THE BURSTING FORTH OF THE STORM.

A contrary wind was blowing across the Bosphorus, so that it was not until towards the evening that the Sultan arrived at Scutari, and disembarked there at his seaside palace with his viziers, his princes, the Chief Mufti, and Ispirizade.

Though everything had quieted down close at hand, all night long could be heard, some distance off, in the direction of the camp, a murmuring and a tumult, the cause of which nobody could explain.

More than once the Grand Vizier sent fleet runners to the Aga of the Janissaries to inquire what was the meaning of all that noise in the camp. Hassan replied that he himself did not understand why they were so unruly after they had heard the arrival of the Sultan and the sacred banner everywhere proclaimed.

Shortly afterwards Ibrahim commanded him to seize all those who would not remain quiet. Hassan accordingly laid his hands on sundry who came conveniently in his way; but, for all that, the rest would[Pg 124] pay no heed to him, and the tumult began to extend in the direction of Stambul also.

Towards midnight a ciaus reached the Kiaja with the intelligence that a number of soldiers were coming along from the direction of Tebrif, crying as they came that the army of Küprilizade had been scattered to the winds by Shah Tamasip, and that they themselves were the sole survivors of the carnage—that was why the army round Stambul was chafing and murmuring.

The Kiaja went at once in search of the Grand Vizier and told him of this terrible rumour.

"Impossible!" exclaimed Ibrahim. "Küprilizade would not allow himself to be beaten. Only a few days ago I sent him arms and reinforcements which were more than enough to enable him to hold his own until the main army should arrive.

"And even if it were true. If, in consequence of the Sultan's procrastination, we were to arrive too late and the whole of the provinces of Hamadan and Kermanshan were to be lost—even then we should all be in the hands of Allah. Come, let us go to prayer and then to bed!"

At about the same hour, three softas awoke the Chief Mufti and Ispirizade, and laid before them a letter written on parchment which they had discovered lying in the middle of a mosque. The[Pg 125] letter was apparently written with gunpowder and almost illegible.

It turned out to be an exhortation to all true Mussulmans to draw the sword in defence of Muhammad, but they were bidden beware lest, when they went against the foe, they left behind them, at home, the greatest foes of all, who were none other than the Sultan's own Ministers.

"This letter deserves to be thrown into the fire," said Ispirizade, and into the fire he threw it, there and then, and thereupon lay down to sleep with a good conscience.

The following day was Thursday, the 28th September. On that very day, twelve months before, the Sultan's eleven-year-old son had died. The day was therefore kept as a solemn day of mourning, and a general cessation of martial exercises throughout the host was proclaimed by a flourish of trumpets.

To many of the commanders this day of rest was a season of strict observance. The Aga of the Janissaries withdrew to his kiosk; the Kapudan Pasha had himself rowed through the canal to his country house at Chengelköi, having just received from a Dutch merchant a very handsome assortment of tulip-bulbs, which he wanted to plant out with his own hands; the Reis-Effendi hastened to his summer residence, beside the Sweet Waters, to take leave of[Pg 126] his odalisks for the twentieth time at least; and the Kiaja returned to Stambul. Each of them strictly observed the day—in his own peculiar manner.

But Fate had prepared for the people at large a very different sort of observance.

Early in the morning, at sunrise, seventeen Janissaries were standing in front of the mosque of Bajazid with Halil Patrona at their head.

In the hand of each one of them was a naked sword, and in their midst stood Musli holding aloft the half-moon banner.

The people made way before them, and allowed Patrona to ascend the steps of the mosque, and when the blast of the alarm-horns had subsided, the clear penetrating voice of the ex-pedlar was distinctly audible from end to end of the great kalan square in front of him.

"Mussulmans!" he cried, "you have duties, yes, duties laid upon you by our sacred law. We are being ruined by traitors. Fugitives from the host have brought us the tidings that the army of Küprilizade has been scattered to the winds; four thousand horses and six hundred camels, laden with provisions, have been captured by the Persians; the general himself has fled to Erivan, and the provinces of Hamadan and Kermanshan are once more in the possession of the enemy. And all this is going on[Pg 127] while the Grand Vizier and the Chief Mufti have been arranging Lantern Feasts, Processions of Palms and Illuminations in the streets of Stambul instead of making ready the host to go to the assistance of the valiant Küprilizade! Our brethren are sent to the shambles, we hear their cries, we see their banners falter and fall into the enemy's hands, and we are not suffered to fly to their assistance, though we stand here with drawn swords in our hands. There is treachery—treachery against Allah and His Prophet! Therefore, let every true believer forsake immediately his handiwork, cast his awl, his hammer, and his plane aside, and seize his sword instead; let him close his booth and rally beneath our standard!"

The mob greeted these words with a savage yell, raised Patrona on its shoulders, and carried him away through the arcades of Bezesztan piazza. Everyone hastened away to close his booth, and the whole city seemed to be turned upside down. It was just as if a still standing lake had been stirred violently to its lowest depths, and all the slimy monsters and hideous refuse reposing at the bottom had come to the surface; for the streets were suddenly flooded by the unrecognised riff-raff which vegetates in every great town, though they are out of the ken of the regular and orderly inhabitants, and only appear in[Pg 128] the light of day when a sudden concussion drives them to the surface.

Yelling and howling, they accompanied Halil everywhere, only listening to him when his escort raised him aloft on their shoulders in order that he might address the mob.

Just at this moment they stopped in front of the house of the Janissary Aga.

"Hassan!" cried Halil curtly, disdaining to give him his official title, and thundering on the door with his fists, "Hassan, you imprisoned our comrades because they dared to murmur, and now you can hear roars instead of murmurs. Give them up, Hassan! Give them up, I say!"

Hassan, however, was no great lover of such spectacles, so he hastily exchanged his garments for a suit of rags, and bolted through the gate of the back garden to the shores of the Bosphorus, where he huddled into an old tub of a boat which carried him across to the camp. Then only did he feel safe.

Meanwhile the Janissaries battered in the door of his house and released their comrades. Then they put Halil on Hassan's horse and proceeded in great triumph to the Etmeidan. The next instant the whole square was alive with armed men, and they hauled the Kulkiaja caldron out of the barracks and set it up in the midst of the mob. This was the[Pg 129] usual signal for the outburst of the war of fiercely contending passions too long enchained.

"And now open the prisons!" thundered Halil, "and set free all the captives! Put daggers in the hands of the murderers and flaming torches in the hands of the incendiaries, and let us go forth burning and slaying, for to-day is a day of death and lamentation."

And the mob rushed upon the prisons, tore down the railings, broke through bolts and bars, and whole hordes of murderers and malefactors rushed forth into the piazza and all the adjoining streets, and the last of all to quit the dungeon was Janaki, Halil's father-in-law. There he remained standing in the doorway as if he were afraid or ashamed, till Musli rushed towards him and tore him away by force.

"Be not cast down, muzafir, but snatch up a sword and stand alongside of me. No harm can come to you here. It is the turn of the Gaolers now."

In the meantime Halil had made his way to that particular dungeon where the loose women whom the Sultan had been graciously pleased to collect from all the quarters of the town to herd in one place were listening in trembling apprehension.

The doors were flung wide open, and the mob roared to the prisoners that all to whom liberty was dear might show a clean pair of heels, whereupon[Pg 130] a mob of women, like a swarm of shrieking ghosts, fluttered through the doors and made off in every direction. Those women who stroll about the streets with uncovered faces, who paint their eyebrows and lips for the diversion of strangers, who are shut out from the world like mad dogs, that they may not contaminate the people—all these women were now let loose! Some of them had grown old since the prison-gates had been closed upon them, but the flame of evil passion still flickered in their sunken eyes. Alas! what pestilence has been let loose upon the Mussulman population. And thou, Halil! wilt thou be able to ride the storm to which thou has given wings?

There he stands in the gateway! He is waiting till, in the wake of these unspeakably vile women, his pure-souled idol, the beautiful, the innocent Gül-Bejáze shall appear. How long she delays! All the rest have come forth; all the rest have scattered to their various haunts, only one or two belated shapes are now emerging from the dungeon and hastening, after the others—creatures whom the voice of the tumult had surprised en déshabillé, and who now with only half-clothed bodies and hair streaming down their backs rush screaming away. Only Gül-Bejáze still delays.

Full of anxiety Halil descends at last into the[Pg 131] loathsome hole but dimly lit by a few round windows in the roof.

"Gül-Bejáze! Gül-Bejáze!" he moans with a stifling voice, looking all around the dungeon, and, at the sound of his whispered words, he sees a white mass, huddled in a corner of the far wall, feebly begin to move. He rushes to the spot. Surely it is some beggar-woman who hides her face from him? Gently he removes her hands from her face and in the woman recognises his wife. The poor creature would rather not be set free for very shame sake. She would rather remain here in the dungeon.

Speechless with agony, he raised her in his arms. The woman said not a word, gave him not a look, she only hid her face in her husband's bosom and sobbed aloud.

"Weep not! weep not!" moaned Halil, "those who have dishonoured thee shall, this very day, lie in the dust before thee, by Allah. I swear it. Thou shalt play with the heads of those who have played with thy heart, and that selfsame puffed-up Sultana who has stretched out her hand against thee shall be glad to kiss thy hand. I, Halil Patrona, have said it, and let me be accursed above all other Mussulmans if ever I have lied."

Then snatching up his wife in his arms he rushed out among the crowd, and exhibiting that pale[Pg 132] and forlorn figure in the sight of all men, he cried:

"Behold, ye Mussulmans! this is my wife whom they ravished from me on my bridal night, and whom I must needs discover in the midst of this sink of vileness and iniquity! Speak those of you who are husbands, would you be merciful to him who dishonoured your wife after this sort?"

"Death be upon his head!" roared the furious multitude, and rolling onwards like a flood that has burst its dams it stopped a moment later before a stately palace.

"Whose is this palace?" inquired Halil of the mob.

"Damad Ibrahim's," cried sundry voices from