The Seven Towers—that celebrated prison of which the very name is a spell of power—are rapidly crumbling to decay, but must continue to be among the most interesting of the antiquities of Constantinople, as long as one stone remains upon another.
Although situated in a populous part of the city, this fortress is, nevertheless, an isolated building; and four of the towers to which it owes its name are destroyed, but of those that still exist, one contains the apartments originally appropriated to state prisoners, and is also the residence of the Military Commandant and the officers of the garrison. When it ceased to be a state prison for attainted Turks, the fortress of the Seven Towers was exclusively reserved for the reception of the Russian Ambassadors, on the occasion of any misunderstanding between the Ottoman and Muscovite courts; and it is almost a ludicrous fact that, during the reign of Mustapha III., His Excellency Count Obrescoff, representative of Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress of all the Russias, not only suffered an imprisonment of three years in this fortress, but actually passed several days at the bottom of a dry well, into which it was the Sublime pleasure of the Sultan to cause him to be lowered.
If His Highness acted upon the impression that the Muscovite Minister would succeed during his subterranean sojourn in discovering the moral deity who is said to be concealed therein, there is every reason, from existing circumstances, to believe that the experiment was a failure, or that she declined being withdrawn from her retreat.
Instruments of torture—racks, wheels, and oubliettes—are rife within this place of gloom and horror. One chasm, upon whose brink you stand, is called the “Well of Blood,” and is said to have overflowed its margin with the ensanguined stream which was once warm with life—a small court, designated the “Place of Heads,” is pointed out as having been cumbered with the slain, until the revolting pile was of sufficient height to enable the spectator to look out from its summit upon the waves of the glittering Propontis; and more than one stone tunnel is shown, into which the wretched captive was condemned to crawl upon his hands and knees, and there left to die of famine.
But I shall pass by these tales of terror, to narrate a Legend of the Seven Towers, less known than the objects which are exhibited to every visiter, and more calculated to interest the reader.
On the declaration of war with Russia made by the Turks in 1786, Baron Bulhakoff, the Russian Minister, despite his representation that the imprisonment of the Muscovite Ambassadors on such occasions had been abolished by treaty, was, nevertheless, sent to the Seven Towers by order of Codza Youssouf Pasha, the Grand Vèzir, with the assurance that treaties were very good things in a time of peace, but mere waste paper in the event of war. The discomfited Ambassador was, however, treated with great civility, and was even permitted to select such members of the Legation as he desired should bear him company during his captivity; strict orders being given to the Commandant of the castle to accede to every request of his prisoner which did not tend to compromise his safety; and upon his complaining of the accommodations of the Tower, he was moreover permitted to erect a kiosk on the walls of the fortress, whence he had a magnificent view of the Sea of Marmora and its glittering islands, and to construct a spacious and handsome apartment within the Tower itself.
I have already stated that the Commandant was lodged beneath the same roof as his prisoner; but I have yet to tell that he had an only daughter, so young, and so lovely, that she might have taken her stand between the two Houri who wait at the portal of Paradise to beckon the Faithful across its threshold, without seeming less beautiful than they. Fifteen springs had with their delicate breathings opened the petals of the roses since the birth of Rèchèdi[7] Hanoum, and she had far out-bloomed the brightest blossoms of the fairest of seasons. Her voice, when it was poured forth in song, came through the lattices of her casement like the tones of a distant mandolin sweeping over the waters of the still sea—when you looked upon her, it was as though you looked upon a rose; and when you listened, you seemed to listen to the nightingale.
Rèchèdi Hanoum had never yet poured the scented sherbet in the garden of flowers. Her young heart was as free as the breeze that came to her brow from the blue bosom of the Propontis; and when she heard that a Muscovite Giaour was about to become an inmate of the Tower, she only trembled, for she knew that he was the enemy of her country.
Terror was, however, soon succeeded by curiosity. Only a few weeks after the compulsatory domestication of the Ambassador at the Seven Towers, his kiosk was completed; and from her closed casements the young Hanoum could see all that passed in the vast apartment of the prisoner.
Her first glance at the dreaded Infidel was transient; but soon she took another, and a longer look; and curiosity was, in its turn, succeeded by sympathy. The Russian prisoner was the handsomest man on whom her eye had ever rested, and it was not thus that she had pictured to herself the dreaded Muscovite. He was unhappy too, for in his solitary moments he paced the floor with hurried and unequal steps, like one who is grappling with some painful memory; and at times sat sadly, with his head pillowed on his hand, and his fingers wreathed amid the wavy hair which encircled his brow; looking so mournful, and above all so fascinating, that the fair Rèchèdi at last began to weep as she clung to her lattice, with her gaze riveted upon him; and to find more happiness in those tears, than in all the simple pleasures that had hitherto formed the charm of her existence.