The Siege Read online

  Feeling guilty once again for the thoughts he had just had, the chronicler watched the tall, slim figure of the Quartermaster General, whom he had got to know during the long march. Quite unusually, this time he gave an impression of haughtiness.

  The last to turn up for the meeting was Giaour, the architect. Çelebi tracked him and was struck by how unnatural his gait appeared. Nobody rightly knew the origins or the nationality of the man who was acquainted with every secret of the structures of fortresses. He had no known family, which was not surprising for a foreigner, but he seemed doubly alone because of the way he spoke — in a peculiar kind of Turkish that few could fully understand. As his chin was smooth, many suspected he was really a woman, or at least half-man and half-woman — a hermaphrodite, as people say.

  The architect went in last. The duty guards were the only people left outside, and they started playing dice. The chronicler was burning to know what was being said inside the tent. Now, if he had been appointed secretary to the council of war as well as campaign chronicler, he would have been in a position to know everything. It was normal for the same man to occupy both positions. He accounted for his own limited station in various ways, depending on his mood. Sometimes he thought they had done him a favour by not overloading him with work and thus allowing him to concentrate entirely on the chronicle, which was intended to be an immortal record of the campaign. But at other times, such as now, as he looked at the Pasha’s pavilion from a distance, he guessed the real reason for his exclusion, and felt bitter and disappointed.

  He was about to move off when he saw several council members emerge from the tent. The Quartermaster General was among them. He saw Çelebi and called out to him.

  “Come on, Mevla, come for a walk, we’ll be able to chat. The council is now going over the details of the attack and those of us not directly involved have been asked to leave.”

  “When will the assault begin?” Çelebi asked shyly.

  “In a week, I think. As soon as the two big cannon have been cast.”

  They sauntered slowly, with the Quartermaster’s orderly following them like a shadow.

  “Let’s go into my tent for a drink and escape from all this racket,” the Quartermaster said, making a wide gesture with his arm.

  Çelebi put his hand on his heart and bowed low once more.

  “You do me great honour.”

  Being invited into the tent to talk about history and philosophy once more, as he had done a few days ago, filled him with a joy that evaporated instantly at the fear of disappointing his eminent friend.

  “My head’s bursting,” the high official said, “and I need some respite. I’ve still got a pile of things to settle.”

  The chronicler listened to him with a guilty air.

  “It’s very odd,” the Quartermaster said. “You historians usually attribute all the glory of conquest to military leaders. But mark my words, Mevla, mark them well: after the commander-in-chief’s, it’s this here head,” he said, tapping his forehead with his index finger, “that has more worries than any other.”

  Çelebi bowed in homage.

  “Supplying food to an army is the key problem in war,” the Quartermaster went on, in a tone close to irritation. “Anybody can wave a sword about, but keeping forty thousand men fed and watered in a foreign, unpopulated and uncultivated land, now that’s a hard nut to crack.”

  “How very true,” the chronicler commented.

  “Shall I tell you a secret?” the Quartermaster said all of a sudden. “The army you can see camped all around you has got supplies for only fifteen days!”

  Çelebi raised his eyebrows, but thought they were insufficiently bushy to give adequate expression to his amazement.

  “According to the plan,” the officer went on, “supply trains are supposed to leave Edirne every two weeks. Granted, but given the huge distance they have to cover, can I rely on them? Provisions … If you ever hear that I’ve gone out of my mind, you’ll know why!”

  The chronicler wanted to protest: Whatever are you saying? He nodded his head, even raised his arms — but they seemed too short to say what he now wanted to say.

  “So all the responsibility falls on our shoulders,” the other man went on. “If the cooks come and say one fine day that they’ve nothing left to fill their pots, who is the Pasha going to call to order? Obviously not Kurdisxhi, nor old Tavxha, nor any other captain. Only me!” And he stuck a finger into his breast as if it was a dagger.

  Çelebi’s face, on which deference and attentiveness were painted like a mask, now also expressed commiseration, which wasn’t difficult, seeing that in its normal state it was deeply lined and wrinkled.

  The Quartermaster General’s tent was pitched at the very heart of the camp so that as they drew nearer to it they were walking among throngs of soldiers. Some of them were sitting outside their tents undoing their packs, others were picking their fleas without the slightest embarrassment. Çelebi recalled that no chronicle ever mentioned the tying and untying of soldier’s backpacks. As for flea hunting, that was never spoken of either.

  “What about the akinxhis?” he enquired, trying to banish all reprehensible thoughts from his mind. “Aren’t they going to be allowed to pillage in the environs?”

  “Of course they are,” the officer replied. “However, the booty they take usually covers less than a fifth of the needs of the troops. And only in the early stages of a siege.”

  “That’s odd …” the chronicler opined.

  “There’s only one solution: Venice.”

  Çelebi started with surprise.

  “The Sultan has made an agreement with the Serenissima. Venetian merchants are supposed to supply us with food and matériel.”

  The chronicler was astounded, but nodded his head.

  “I understand why you are amazed,” the Quartermaster said. “You must find it bizarre that we accuse Skanderbeg of being in the pay of Westerners while we do deals with Venice behind Skanderbeg’s back. If I were in your shoes, I admit I would find that shocking.”

  The Quartermaster General put a formal smile on his lips, but his eyes were not smiling at all.

  “That’s politics for you, Mevla!”

  The chronicler lowered his head. It was his way of taking cover whenever a conversation wandered into dangerous terrain.

  A long line of azabs went past, carrying rushes on their backs.

  The Quartermaster watched them go by.

  “That’s what they use, I believe, to weave the screens the soldiers use to shield themselves from burning projectiles. Have you really never seen a siege before?”

  The chronicler blushed and said, “I have not had that good fortune.”

  “Oh! It’s an impressive sight.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Believe me,” the general said in a more informal way. “I’ve taken part in many sieges, but this,” he waved towards the castle walls, “is where the most fearful carnage of our times will take place. And you surely know as well as I do that great massacres always give birth to great books.” He took a deep breath. “You really do have an opportunity to write a thundering chronicle redolent with pitch and blood, and it will be utterly different from the graceful whines composed at the fireside by squealers who never went to war.”

  Çelebi blushed again as he recalled the opening of his chronicle. “One day, if you like, I could read you some passages from what I have written,” he said. “I would like to hope they will not disappoint you.”

  “Accepted! You know how much I like history.”

  A squad of janissaries marched past noisily.

  “They’re in a good mood,” the Quartermaster said. “Today is pay day.”

  Çelebi remembered that pay was also never mentioned in that kind of narrative.

  Troopers were setting out some oval tents. Further off, carters were unloading beams and rushes beside a ditch that had just been dug. The camp looked less like military quarters than a construction site.


  “Look, there are the old hags from Rumelia,” the Quartermaster said.

  The chronicler turned his head to the left, where he could see a score and more of old women in an enclosure; they were busying themselves with pots hung over a campfire.

  “What are they cooking up?” Çelebi asked.

  “Balms for wounds, especially burns.”

  The chronicler looked at the tanned, impassive and aged faces of the women.

  “Our warriors are going to suffer horrible injuries,” the Quartermaster said sadly. “But they don’t yet know the real function of the Rumelian women. They’re reputed to be witches.”

  Çelebi looked away so as not to see the soldiers picking out their fleas. Many of them were in fact sitting cross-legged so as to examine the corns on the soles of their feet.

  “Their feet are sore from the long march,” the Quartermaster said with sympathy. “I’ve still never read a historical work that even mentions soldiers’ feet.”

  The chronicler was sorry to have displayed his distaste, but the harm was done now.

  “In truth, the vast Empire of which we are all so proud was enlarged only by these blistered and torn feet,” the officer said with a touch of grandiloquence. “A friend often said to me: I am willing to kneel and kiss these stinking feet.”

  The chronicler didn’t know what to do with himself. Fortunately for him, they had just got to the Quartermaster General’s tent.

  “So here’s my den,” the general said in a different tone of voice. “Come in, Mevla Çelebi. Do you like pomegranate syrup? In such scorching weather there’s nothing better than the juice of a pomegranate to cool you down. And then, a conversation with a friend on matters of high interest is like a violet blooming among thorns. Isn’t that so, Çelebi?”

  The chronicler’s mind flashed back to the soldiers’ blisters and filthy feet, but he soon took solace in the thought that man is so great that all can be permitted him.

  “I am overwhelmed by the friendship you bestow on me, a mere chronicler.”

  “Not at all!” the Quartermaster interrupted. “Your trade is most honourable: you are a historian. Only the uneducated could fail to grant you their esteem. Now, my dear friend, are you going to read me a few passages from your work, as you promised?”

  Çelebi would have blushed with contentment had he not been so scared. After the whole exchange of courtesies, the chronicler, who knew the start of his work by heart, began to recite slowly as follows:

  “At the behest of the Padishah, master of the universe, to whom men and genies owe total obedience, a myriad harems were abandoned and the lions set forth for the land of the Shqipetars …”

  The Quartermaster General explained that this overture was not entirely lacking in poetry, but he would have preferred the idea of abandoned harems to be linked to some more basic element of human life, something more vital to the economy, such as, for example, the plough or the vine. He added that a few figures would give it more substance.

  At that moment the general’s secretary appeared at the tent door. His master signalled to him to come nearer, and the servant whispered something in the general’s ear. The Quartermaster said “yes” several times, and “no” an equal number of times.

  “What were we saying?” he asked the chronicler as soon as the secretary had left. “Ah yes, figures! But you mustn’t take too much notice of me on this issue, because I’m obsessed with numbers. All day long I do nothing but count and reckon!”

  The secretary reappeared.

  “A messenger from the Pasha,” he blurted out as soon as he saw his master scowl.

  The courier came close to the general, bent down to speak in his ear, and went on whispering in that position for a long while. Then he put his own ear to the Quartermaster’s mouth to collect the reply.

  “Let’s go out,” the Quartermaster suggested when the courier had left. “We’ll have a better chance to talk outdoors. Otherwise the thorns of everyday business will throttle the violet of our conversation!”

  Dusk was falling. The camp was in a state of lively activity. Akinxhis were coming from all directions, leading their horses to water. Standards rustled in the wind from the tips of the tent poles. With the addition of a handful of flowers to add their smell, the many-coloured camp would have looked less like a military installation than a blooming garden. The chronicler remembered that none of his colleagues had ever described an army as a flower garden — a gulistan — but that was what he was going to do. He would liken it to a meadow, or else to a polychrome kilim, but one from which, as soon as the order to move forward was given, would emerge the black fringes of death.

  They had almost reached the centre-point of the camp when they ran into the engineer, Saruxha. He was wandering around looking absent-minded.

  “Is the meeting over?” the Quartermaster General enquired.

  “Yes, it’s just ended. I’m dead tired,” Saruxha replied, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. “We’ve not had a wink of sleep for three nights in a row. Today the Pasha gave us final orders to ready the cannon for next week … In eight days, he said, he wants to hear their blast.”

  “Will you manage?”

  “I don’t know. We might. But you can’t imagine how difficult the work will be. Especially as we’re using a new kind of weapon, one which has never been made before, so I have to attend to every detail of manufacture.”

  “I understand,” the Quartermaster said.

  “Do you want to have a look at the foundry?” Saruxha asked, and, without waiting for an answer, he led them off across waste ground.

  The chronicler was delighted to be given so much trust. Before leaving the capital he had heard all kinds of rumours about the new weapon. People spoke of it alternately with admiration and horror, as is normal with a secret weapon. They said its roar would make you deaf for the rest of your life, and its blast would topple everything around it within a radius of several leagues.

  During the long march he had noticed the camels that were alleged to be carrying pieces of the barrel destined to serve the big cannon. The soldiers who marched silently alongside never took their eyes off the rain-soaked black tarpaulins hiding the mortal secret.

  Çelebi itched to learn more about the camels’ packs but he was frightened of arousing suspicion. When at last he overcame his shyness and questioned the Quartermaster, whom he had just got to know, the latter burst out laughing, with his hands on hips. Those heavy packs, he said, don’t have any tubes in them at all. All that was in them were bars of iron and bronze, and a special kind of coal. “So you’re going to ask me, where then is the secret weapon? I’ll tell you, Mevla Çelebi. The big, fearsome cannon are in a tiny little satchel … as tiny as the one over my shoulder, here … Don’t look at me like that, I’m not pulling your leg!” Now he whispered it into Mevla’s ear, nodding towards a waxen-faced man wrapped in a black cloak: “The secret cannon really is in a satchel.” It took the chronicler a little while to grasp that in that wan figure’s shoulder bag were to be found secret designs and formulae that would be used for casting the big gun.

  The foundry had been set up away from the camp in an area that was entirely fenced off and under heavy guard. It was separated from the stream by a hillock, and at twenty paces from the gate stood a sign saying: “Forbidden Zone”.

  “It’s well guarded, day and night,” the engineer said. “Spies might try to steal our secret.”

  The engineer acted as their tour guide through the long shack that had been thrown up and gave them copious explanations of what could be seen. The forge and the ovens had just been lit, and the flames gave off stifling heat. Shirtless, soot-blackened men dripping with sweat were busy at work.

  Heaps of iron and bronze ingots and huge clay moulds covered most of the floor.

  The engineer showed them the designs for the giant cannon.

  The visitors looked with wonderment at the mass of straight lines, arcs and circles meticulously traced out on the blue
prints.

  “This one’s the biggest,” Saruxha said as he showed them one of the drawings. “My artificers have already dubbed it balyemeztop!”

  “The gun that eats no honey? Why call it by such a strange name?” the Quartermaster asked.

  “Because it prefers to eat men!” Saruxha replied. “It’s a whimsical cannon, if I may say, a bit like a spoiled child who says to its mother one fine morning, ‘I’m fed up with honey!’ … Now come and see the place where it will be cast,” he added as he moved off in another direction. “Here’s the great hole where the clay moulds will be laid down, and over there are the six furnaces where the metal will be melted. A standard cannon takes one furnace, but for this one, six will barely suffice! That’s one of the main secrets of the casting. All six furnaces have to produce molten metal at exactly the same degree of fusion at precisely the same time. If there’s the tiniest crack, the tiniest bubble, so to speak, then the cannon will burst apart when it’s fired.”

  The Quartermaster General gave a whistle of astonishment.

  Although he too was amazed at what he had heard, Mevla Çelebi was sufficiently astute not to turn his head towards the general in case the latter, once he had regained his poise, might feel annoyed at having been caught in a moment of weakness by a mere chronicler, or, in other words, at having let himself be seen to be astonished, when he was supposed to be far above such emotions.

  But the Quartermaster General wasn’t trying to hide his bewilderment. The chronicler, for his part, trembled at the thought that Engineer Saruxha was engaged on God’s work, or else the Devil’s own, by having his furnaces produce a fiery liquid that Allah himself caused the earth to spew out through the mouths of volcanoes. Labour of that kind usually brought severe punishment.

  As the engineer went on explaining how the casting would be done, in their eyes he slowly turned into a wizard, wrapped in his black cloak, about to perform some ancient, mysterious ritual.

  “It is the first time that cannon of this kind are to be used in the whole military history of humankind,” Saruxha finally declared with pride. “An earthquake will sound like a lullaby next to their terrible thunder.”