The Year of Rice and Salt

He led his usual train of retainers out of the room: bodyguard of six, cook and waiters, astronomer, valet and the Chief Black Eunuch of the Seraglio, all trailing him and the doctor, whom the Sultan held by the shoulder. He brought Ismail through the Gate of Felicity into his harem without a word to its guards, leaving his retainers behind to figure out yet again who was intended to follow him into the seraglio. In the end only a waiter and the Chief Black Eunuch entered.

In the seraglio all was gold and marble, silk and velvet, the walls of the outer rooms covered with religious paintings and icons from the age of Byzantium. The Sultan gestured to the Black Eunuch, who nodded to a guard at the far door.

One of the harem concubines emerged, trailed by four maids: a whiteskinned red-headed young woman, her naked body glowing in the gaslight jets. She was not an albino, but rather a naturally pale skinned person, one of the famous white slaves of the seraglio, among the only known survivors of the vanished Firanjis. They had been bred for several generations by the Ottoman sultans, who kept the line pure. No one outside the seraglio ever saw the women, and no one outside the Sultan's palace ever saw the men used for breeding.

This young woman's hair was a gold burnished red, her nipples pink, ber skin a translucent white that revealed blue veins under it, especially in her breasts, which were slightly engorged. The doctor reckoned her three months pregnant. The Sultan did not appear to notice; she was his favourite, and he still had her every day.

The familiar routine unfolded. The odalisque walked to the draped area of her bed, and the Sultan followed, not bothering to pull the curtains. The ladies in waiting helped the woman to cushion herself properly, held her arms out, her legs spread and pulled up. Selim said 'Ah yes,' and went to the bed. He pulled his erect member from his pantaloons and covered her. They rocked together in the usual fashion, until with a shudder and a grunt the Sultan finished and sat beside her, stroking her belly and legs.

He looked over at Ismail as a thought occurred to him. 'What is it like now where she came from?' he asked.

The doctor cleared his throat. 'I don't know, Excellency.'

'Tell me what you have heard.'

'I have heard that Firanja west of Vienna is mainly divided between Andalusis and the Golden Horde. The Andalusis occupy the old Frankish lands and the islands north of it. They are Sunni, with the usual sufi and Wahhabi elements fighting for the patronage of the emirs. The east is a mix of Golden Horde and Safavid client princes, many of them Shiites Many sufi orders. They also have occupied the offshore islands, and the Roman peninsula, though it is mostly Berber and Maltese.'

The Sultan nodded. 'So they prosper.'

'I don't know. It rains there more than on the steppes, but there are mountains everywhere, or hills. There is a plain on the north coast where they grow grapes and the like. Al Andalus and the Roman peninsula do well, I gather. North of the mountains it is harder. It's said the lowlands are still pestilential.'

'Why is that? What happened there?'

'It's damp and cold all the time. So it is said.' The doctor shrugged. 'No one knows. It could be that the pale skin of the people there made them more susceptible to plague. That's what Al Ferghana said.'

'But now good Muslims live there, with no ill effects.'

'Yes. Balkan Ottomans, Andalusis, Safavids, the Golden Horde. All Muslim, except perhaps for some Jews and Zotts.'

'But Islam is fractured.' The Sultan thought it over, brushing the odalisque's red pubic hair with his palm. 'Tell me again, where did this girl's ancestors come from?'

'The islands off the north coast of Frankland,' the doctor ventured. 'England. They were very pale there, and some of the outermost islands escaped the plague, and their people were discovered and enslaved a century or two later. It is said they didn't even know anything had changed.'

'Good land?'

'Not at all. Forest or rock. They lived on sheep or fish. Very primitive, almost like the New World.'

'Where they have found much gold.'

'England was known more for tin than gold, as I understand it.'

'How many of these survivors were taken?'

'I have read a few thousand. Most died, or were bred into the general populace. You may have the only purebreds left.'

'Yes. And this one is pregnant by one of their men, I'll have you know. We care for the men as carefully as we do the women, to keep the line going.'

'Very wise.'

The Sultan looked at his Black Eunuch. 'I'm ready for Jasmina now.'

In came another girl, very black, her body almost twin to that of the white girl, though this one was not pregnant. Together they looked like chess pieces. The black girl replaced the white one on the bed. The Sultan stood and went to her.

'Well, the Balkans are a sorry place,' he mused, 'but farther west may be better. We could move the capital of the empire to Rome, just as they moved theirs here.'