The Hero of Negropont
I am a scion of the English aristocracy. I was chucked out of school, rusticated from Oxford, ejected from countless bawdy houses, and am generally considered in Town and County the bravest blade. I am valiant in pursuit of foxes, dauntless in the massacre of birds, heroic in a steeplechase, intrepid at the gaming table, spirited at the theatre, gallant in the boudoir, untiring in the bawdy house, gracious at the ball, witty in the coffee house. I am the modish model of elusive ton, taste and fashion. To my parents I bring pride, expense, summonses for debt and proposals of marriage. In short I am the model son.
My parents have a similar double closet in London and a travelling version for Bath and Droitwich, in case their lodging does not have this convenience. The double throne is the seat, the bottom, the fundament of their marriage.
Winstanley was not many years senior to me but old beyond his years, not in appearance, which was smooth and juvenile, but in the gravity of his demeanour, a maturity derived not from experience of the world but a lifetime spent with dry old books and wet old men.
I presented him with a Brummagem silver box. He invited us to sit down beside him and we exchanged vacuous courtesies, relayed through Pericles. I was surprised to find such Christian politeness among a people, whom I had been taught to believe were little less than barbarous.
What was my unpleasant surprise to find Tourists washed up on our shores. They purport to be gentlemen of good family but if so, why do their parents allow them to go on such fruitless and expensive wandering to the detriment of their reputation and that of their native country? They claim an interest in antiquity but pass the days intoxicated and the nights with loose women.
Mehmet the Conqueror grew angrier with every day’s humiliation. He had six agas beheaded for incompetence and ran one through with his own dagger… Ten days it lasted until the Imperial Flower Gardeners, led by Soup-Stirrer Ahmed, stormed the breach by the south gate and spilled down the Street of the Annunciation, drowning in blood anything that lived.
Such a band of unkempt ruffians you would send to the barber if not to the gallows. Each was thatched with tangles of black curls of a piece with untrimmed beards and long moustaches, all glistening and rank with oil. They were shod and clad in skins of sheep and goats and smocks of unbleached wool over tight-fitting trousers of the same material. They reeked of the flocks that clothed them, sour cheese and goat’s piss.
There was still another upward step for the ambitious janissary. It was the hearth, the Orta of the Imperial Larder, the cooks of Topkapı. These elite troops were spared all other duties except the most ceremonial, when they escorted the Kazan of the Corps, the sacred cooking pot in parades and processions.
I never knew my real mother…When I began to question the mysteries of birth with scraps of evidence from hatching eggs, whelping dogs, boys’ gossip, adults’ obfuscations, I came to the conclusion I had sprung from the womb of the clock. On Saturday night my father opened the case to wind up the pendulum and I saw her entrails laid bare.
… This will be the most important event in her life, not for sentimental reasons associated with her maidenhead, her girlish longings, her feelings for the man who first possessed her, but for the practical reason that if she fails to please her master she will never be summoned again… They may give her away like a horse or a parrot or traded for a pistol or simply forgotten in a backwater of the river of tribute that flows from all over the empire to the palaces on the Bosporus.
“What’s the matter?” – “Aphrodite has appeared to me in a dream.” – “And told you put trousers on? She has changed her tune.” – “The goddess of love will not be mocked.” – “True. Did she also tell you to put both feet in one leg?”
“If he so much as hints that he fancies her we will all end up on pointed stakes. Is that plain enough?”
“Don’t you know your Homer, Madam? How handsome Paris and lovely Helen fell in love and ran away from mighty King Menelaus? How …” I enjoyed watching the simpering bore driven to distraction by this opinionated woman. There are many ways to make a eunuch and immersion in the romances of the past is one. Winstanley blabbed of love and women but the touch of a real woman’s lips would turn him into Paris – Plaster of Paris.
“Why do I travel? For entertainment Madam, for the same reason I go to the theatre. Actors in the artificial theatre are rewarded by our money and our applause. In the theatre of the world the rewards are reciprocated. The traveller entertains those who entertain him, a part in which the English abroad unwittingly excel.”