Reign of the Favored Women Read Online Free PDF

something to say on the subject of Chios rather than standing there like a total fool.”
    Andrea swallowed the last of his wine and cleared his throat. “The Turks sets great store by Chios.”
    His voice started high, reminding him of the eunuch again. “Sofia Baffo’s hellborn hair will destroy you.” The memory made Andrea’s words end in a squeak. He tried once more.
    “The Turk will not be induced to give the island up so easily as we may hope.”
    “Indeed?” said both older men together. The rigid constriction of two pairs of brows awaited more.
    “The profit from the annual mastic harvest alone is worth a fortune.”
    “All the more reason it should belong to the Republic,” Agostino Barbarigo said, the many hairs of his chest-length beard quivering as one.
    “Indeed, sir.” Overcoming a Turkish hesitation to speak on such a subject, Andrea forged ahead. “But all these profits go to the support of the...of the imperial harem. The Turk will not easily endure such an insult to his womenfolk.”
    His womenfolk will not endure it, Andrea thought, smelling jasmine mixed with almond paste, remembering the last time in the Jews’ shop. No, by God, say not “last time.”
    “Our fleet shall teach the infidel to endure it, the lecherous old lout,” said the elder Barbarigo with a passion he usually reserved for redheads.
    Involuntarily, Andrea said, “ Inshallah .”
    “And what is that heathen word supposed to mean?” his father asked.
    “Forgive me, sir. No Turk would speak of the future without uttering it. The word means, ‘If Allah wills.’ “
    Foscari laughed, the jovial host. “The Turk would then find anathema any festivity looking to the future such as we hold tonight?”
    “I think Allah shall have very little will in the matter when he comes up against San Marco on Chios.” Agostino puffed out his beard like a bullfrog marking territory with his song.
    Andrea could not suppress another “ Inshallah .” But fortunately, no one heard it. Santa Sofia began to ring midnight, followed closely by San Felice, the more distant campanile of the Apostles, all the many bells of Venice that had stilled him to sleep as a child. Their notes were as liquid on the sultry night air as canal water.
    Over the fading peals, Andrea heard a thud. Of course, he was listening for it. He only had time to think. That must be the patrol at the door, before he knew it was not.
    The “ Mashallah ” of pure astonishment with which he followed the thought was also unheard by his scrupulous audience, for the syllables were blasted from their ears by a sound that rocked the very mud flats beneath their feet. Slivers of glass exploded from the upstairs windows of the palace and shivered through the wisteria’s leaves like a waterfall.
    And suddenly there was no doubt which way was east, which way the Arsenal was, for the sky over that quarter of the palace’s roof glowed orange and coquelicot with soot and sulphur like the approach of daylight.
V
    “She will not come to see me.”
    Andrea heard the lifelessness in his own voice and knew he caught it from the great eunuch’s death mask of a face. The tones echoed around the tight confines of the jeweler’s back room like whispers in a tomb.
    Around him were the familiar sounds of the Turkish bazaar muffled by walls. The sharp smell of gold mingled with the strong soap the Jewess used throughout the shop in a religious frenzy of cleanliness, yeasted by the little fresh-baked poppyseed buns she offered to every guest. All these things folded into the pleasant ambiance he had longed for throughout the past two months until the thought stung his eyes with tears. But these same things now all seemed bleached and faded of life.
    Andrea struggled against passive acceptance of his own statement as a man struggles beneath a smothering pillow. He felt, in fact, more violently angry, more betrayed, more frightened than he’d ever been in his life.
    “Sofia will not see