There was another personage that Sir John would have been well advised to cultivate even at some personal risk: a certain Mustafa Pasha, the Grand Vizir’s brother-in-law, who, having already acted as Ahmed’s Deputy, was destined to rise at no distant date to the highest post open to a Turkish subject. But Sir John, whose energy was limited and whose fear of the Plague was unlimited, contented himself with sending to that pasha his Dragomans with a present and an excuse. No doubt, he felt that by calling on the Mufti he had done his part. It was now Sir Thomas’s turn to do his. Had they not always hunted in couples?
To the Knight’s lot fell a far more interesting figure—the much-honoured and fawned-upon Sheikh Vani Effendi, chief counsellor and preacher to the Grand Signor: a holy man who knew how to retain the Imperial favour by reassuring the Imperial conscience on such points as giving to hunting and to the harem what was meant for the Empire. Ahmed Kuprili had wisely avoided making a rival of this redoubtable saint by taking him as an ally. In personal appearance, the two had nothing in common. What Ahmed was like, we know. Vani, as painted by the Rev. John, was a repulsive old hunch-back with shrivelled flesh and one eye smaller than the other, as if it had shrunk in the washing: an uglier saint could not easily be imagined. Yet they shared a common passion. Ahmed was animated by a statesman’s love for political morality; Vani burned with a fanatic’s zeal for religious purity. It is hard to determine which of the two unclean things he hated most: Moslem heretics or Christian infidels. But it was amongst the latter that his fervour had found its choicest victims. As far back as 1661 he had announced that the decline of the Ottoman Empire was due to the excessive liberty permitted to its Christian subjects—the liberty to live amongst the Turks and to sell wine to them. The fires and plagues which afflicted Constantinople were likewise traced to divine anger at such unseemly tolerance. It was at his instigation that Imperial edicts were issued forbidding the reconstruction of ruined churches and the consumption of wine, and commanding all infidels to clear out of the capital. While the Sultan threatened wine-bibbers with death in this world, the Sheikh promised them eternal damnation in the next. Every Friday he fulminated in one mosque or another, and the Grand Signor himself was an assiduous listener to his sermons.
Nevertheless, one regrets to hear, Vani Effendi imbibed in his closet vast quantities of the liquor he cursed from the pulpit. It may be, of course, that, like other saints, he issued some kind of a special dispensation to himself in the matter. He certainly held that indulgences which in an ordinary man would be sinful were lawful to a saint. When one of his disciples asked him how he reconciled the anathemas he continually hurled against the use of gold and silver, of silk and pearls, and against certain other joys of the flesh, with his own marked predilection for such things, he replied: “Worldly goods are not evil in themselves; it is the manner they are got by and used that decides the cases in which and the persons to whom they may be permitted or forbidden.” For the holy nothing is impure.[146]
Benighted unbelievers looked upon the Sheikh as a ranting hypocrite—he reminded the English Cavaliers in Turkey of the Puritan Pharisees they knew at home. But among his own co-religionists Vani was above scandal. He was “more than a Pope amongst them,” says the Rev. John: nay, in a sense, “this old coxcomb” was more than the Grand Signor himself. For your Grand Signor could only put you to death. But your saint could put you in a particularly unpleasant corner of a particularly unpleasant place, where people had garments of fire fitted unto them, boiling water poured on their heads, and were beaten with maces of iron for ever and ever. Or, on the other hand, he could procure you an exceptionally comfortable pavilion in Paradise, furnished with green cushions and beautiful carpets, and couches of silk and gold; and a garden planted with shady trees full of all kinds of fruit growing close at hand; and rivers of milk and honey flowing conveniently by; and troops of fine black-eyed dancing girls with complexions like rubies and pearls, to ensure domestic peace and felicity. Either of these lots it was in Vani Effendi’s power to bestow, and he made a very good thing of it in the way of presents: a poor saint’s only recognised source of revenue.
From all this it is easy to understand the Knight’s anxiety to win over Vani Effendi.
One of Sir John’s Dragomans and the renegade Count Bocareschi were sent to solicit an interview. They returned with the answer that Sir Thomas would be welcome. He went and acquitted himself after a fashion which showed that he had not spent so many years in diplomatic circles for nothing. With exquisite tact he attacked the Sheikh on his weak side, putting to him a number of questions in the tone of one consumed with a violent thirst for illumination. Did women and children have souls of the same size as men’s? Could women go to heaven? What infidels might be suffered to live amongst True Believers? Had a good Christian a chance of salvation?
The Sheikh found some of these questions rather embarrassing, and met them with evasions; but on others he was as precise and positive as became one who had direct access to the Creator’s inmost secrets. He seemed very glad to parade his exclusive information, and very pleased with the man who gave him the opportunity. The crafty Knight followed up his advantage by becoming confidential. He told the Sheikh what kind of Christian he was: he would rather die than worship images, pictures, crosses, or the like abominations. He adored only one God, and he believed that a Mohammedan who lived up to his Law would undoubtedly be saved. For his part, he would never hurt a hair of a Mohammedan’s head on account of religious difference, but would rather help and cherish him in every possible way. On hearing this confession of faith, all the bystanders (needless to say, the saint had taken care that there should be a full house) cried out:
“Ey adam—a good man!”
Vani Effendi burst into tears, and said he had never thought any Christian could come so near to being a Mussulman. But—but there was no real perfection except in Islam. Would not Sir Thomas——?
Sir Thomas shook his curls, sadly. He was now over fifty-five years of age, he said; his bones were hardened to their shapes, and so were his opinions; it would be a difficult process, and one that would require some time, to unrivet his mind.