Free The Sultan's Eyes by Kelly Gardiner

flight, listened to the sounds of the wind in the canvas and the creaking boards.
    I felt the world come alive. Every few days we would pass an island with a name dripping in honey and milk — or blood; islands named for goddesses or inhabited by monsters. Oh, how I wished my father was with me. The ship ploughed through the waters Homer had called the wine-dark sea, and I chanted his poems in time with the motion of the waves. If sometimes I glimpsed flashes of my own despair in those depths, I looked away as if I hadn’t seen them.
    We sailed almost within reach of Crete, the site of the mythical Labyrinth; Naxos, where the god Dionysus fell in love with Ariadne; even tiny Delos, the birthplace of Apollo, now a ruin. I asked the captain if we could anchor, just for an hour or so.
    ‘There’s nothing there but stones,’ he scoffed.
    He was right, of course. But such stones! Marble temples and ancient houses, all now rubble from the accounts I’d read, eachone with a story to tell to those who would linger and listen. But not to me, not this time. We pressed on as if Fra Clement was sailing close behind us, as if all the navies of the world were in pursuit, until we were deep in Ottoman territory.
    ‘We need to keep a close watch here,’ the captain told us. ‘This war between Venice and the Turks means that either side needs little excuse to fire upon a Venetian galley headed for Constantinople.’
    Willem joined the sailors in keeping lookout, but I stood in the bow of the ship and watched the world unfold. Somewhere over the horizon lay the cities of Ephesus and Pergamon, no doubt now in ruins. Off the coast lay the island of Patmos, where John wrote the Book of Revelation. All around us, the sparkling sea was studded with islands where gods had wrestled and soared, where men and women of legend had lived and died and written the greatest books and poems known to history.
    One morning, we sighted Lesbos, island home of the poet Sappho — all her works now lost to history — and then the shore where Achilles and Hector fought on the plains of Troy. Finally, the hills overlooking the narrow Dardanelles strait came into view. The sea was busier here, with merchants from all corners of the Mediterranean sailing to and from Constantinople.
    ‘We’re lucky with the winds,’ said the captain. ‘There are times when you can’t get near the city for weeks on end.’
    ‘We are blessed,’ said Valentina.
    ‘I wish that was true,’ said Willem. ‘Just once.’
    The water was a deep cobalt blue, even on these winter days, and on each side the hills rose up high and steep. We passed small villages, watchtowers and forts, and sailed close to the town of Gallipolis, with its fishing fleet at anchor.
    I’d dreamed of sailing through this strait since I was a tiny girl, but it had always seemed impossible. Yet here I was, with Europe on the port bow and Asia to starboard, breathing the mingled air of both continents and gazing first to one side and then the other, at those hallowed, historic hills. My father had told me stories of this stretch of water from an early age; and later, when we worked together on the Histories of Herodotus, I’d memorised every detail. The Greeks had called it the Hellespont and here Alexander the Great’s army had surged across in search of the end of the world and immortality. How, I wondered, had any general imagined that these rocky shores and high cliffs would be a good place for a battle?
    ‘What are you doing out here?’ Willem’s voice cut through my reverie.
    ‘Looking,’ I said. ‘Thinking. Remembering.’
    ‘You’re always doing that,’ he said.
    ‘I suppose I am. I feel as if I know this coast, those hills — as if they are engraved in my memory.’
    ‘How can you remember a place you’ve never been?’
    I shrugged. ‘That’s how it is.’
    ‘It’s not logical.’
    ‘I know. And yet … did I ever tell you about Xerxes?’
    ‘No, but you’re about to,