The period in the aftermath of the Great Exodus, as the Jews called the setting up of the new enclave, was the happiest of my life.

Politically, the Sultan was happy with the campaign, and why should he not have been? He had fresh territories and sources of revenue with no effort on his behalf, and the eastern part of the Empire was stable. The reorganisation turned out even better than I had hoped, with the Amirs all busy either consolidating or integrating their new territories. With the Mongol threat gone, and with Russia to the north entering a period of instability as the death of Tsar Feodor came nearer, the Ottoman Empire was freer of rivals than at any period in its history. Had it not been for the ambitions of the Grand Vizier it would have been a period of perfect peace.

My success bought me prestige and respect. The Amirs may not have understood me or how I had achieved what I had for them, but what mattered was that I had succeeded and they had profited. I had no family to provide for, no clan to favour, and they had no reason to oppose me. Dogu’s fate showed what might happen to those who plotted against me, and that deterred any ambitious Amirs who would also have had to contend with opposition from their fellows. It was acknowledged that I was an impartial judge who had brought order and good governance to the region, and as prosperity grew, men grew fat on it. Jeshun may have waxed fat, but the urge to kick was not in evidence.

It was true that some of the Islamic puritans disapproved of me, but most Muslim Amirs did not, and I had the support of the Jews and the Christians. The Puritans were not popular, and no one was going to overthrow me to enthrone them. They could mumble, they could say things about my private life, but outside a small circle, no one cared.

My private life also entered a golden age.

My conversion brought Ana, Mel and myself even closer, something I had not thought possible. With the threat to the Marble King removed, and with the Romanov heir awaiting his moment, the Bodyguard could relax in a way previously impossible. They formed, in effect, another enclave within the Empire, coterminous with the Jewish one. It was noticeable that in both areas, prosperity and economic progress were better than in the areas controlled by the Emirs; but few drew any lesson from that.

Ana was able to spend longer with me in the Grand Serail, and Mel’s orderly conduct of the administration made things work smoothly, giving all of us time to relax, make love, and enjoy life.

Mindful of what I seen at the Topkai Palace, I was careful not to slide into self-indulgence. Ana kept herself fit and well and helped me; Mel was an excellent guardian of my time and health, and we gradually constructed a life that allowed pleasure and duty to coexist.

Sexually, the deeper our love grew, the better we were together. There was a deepening, but also a continued exploration of the pleasures of Sapphic love. I adored the deepening, not least as it meant that we three became in many ways one. Of a sudden an entity called “the future” existed.

Any hopes I had nurtured when I was sixteen that by the time I was twenty-one I would grow were dashed. I remained four foot ten, and where other women developed breasts and pubic hair, I retained a girlish figure. But my self-consciousness of this lessened because of the love of my wives.

I began to realise that with the Sultana, Jess, Damila, and even the great Elizabeth, I had been so grateful for their attention, and indeed so needy for it, that all my attention was poured into pleasing them. çıtır escort There was nothing wrong in that per se, but without learning that I had needs and wants, I could never enjoy the fulness of a relationship. If I could not let my lovers know my needs, it was not their fault for assuming they were being wholly met in my service to them; it was only with Ana that this had changed.

Ana knew about love. She knew what I was learning, which is that for love to grow and a relationship to be healthy, there has to be give and take on both sides. A woman who was not conscious of her needs made a poor partner in the longer term. It was, I had discovered, all very well to give; but what happened when one had given one’s all? Without reciprocity there could be no real growth. That was fine for sex in the short-term, but it provided no foundations on which to build. With Ana and Mel that changed.

What I discovered was something which, alone, I should never have suspected. It was the hardest thing for me to accept, and while I long ago did so, I still marvel at it. Love is a free gift from one’s lover. It cannot be commanded or “earned,” and one cannot even “deserve it.” Like salvation, it is a free will offering to those who will accept it.

But, came the first objection, I am not worth it. Yes, I accepted that my gifts such as they are, had won for me a position of some authority, and I can see why someone might therefore want me; I had something to offer. But Mama and Poppa had not rated me, and they were the ones who should know me best; so without the trappings of power, I had little to offer and no sense I was worth having. I could earn attention and what I took to be “love.” I could be attentive, loving, adventurous and skilful in the bed chamber. All of that might win, and had won me attention and what I thought of as love. But until I met Ana I had actually had no idea of what “love” really was.

The second objection was that to be loved one had to look desirable. Jess was desirable, Damila was too, so were Ana and Mel. Men and women looked at them and found in them objects of desire; but me? I looked more like a girl and no one could say I was desirable in the way a curvaceous woman was; I lacked that aesthetic appeal. But who was I to make that decision? That was where I had to have the humility to accept that this was not one I got to make. It may have been amazing that one who looked like Ana, or Mel, could desire me, but they did. The lesson? Accept it and with it acknowledge that I was worth loving.

Of a certainty, I would never be conceited and think I deserved loving, but there was also a sort of conceit in thinking the opposite. Better for me to dismiss myself as not worth loving than to discover that I wasn’t by opening myself up to the possibility and failing to be loved. In true love there was a receiving as well as a giving, and in that, growth and wonder.

In the aftermath of Yerevan I discovered myself. My new Faith made a difference and opened me further to the love my wives gave me. That Jesus had died for me was simply beyond the power of anything short of faith to accept. But if He had died for me, then it suddenly made sense that Ana and Mel could love me. In that love I found my own love for them grow, and that, in turn, made our love grow.

I saw things I never had before.

Ana and the Bodyguard seemed to me the perfect example of a Christian community. Too often in a world dominated by men, there is an emphasis on the renunciation of sex. I understand that for a man that is almost the supreme sacrifice, escort demetevler as it would be for some women. But the real mark of a Christian community is sharing in love. The Bodyguard were devoted to each other and to their cause. Each would have died for the other and the cause. Ana and Helena’s love would sometimes take on a physical form, but that was a natural concomitant of their mutual devotion to the same cause. Just as Mel could no more stop loving me than I could her, so too were Ana and I one. There was a love which existed to sate the pleasures of the flesh; but there was a deeper love that expressed what was in the soul. As that grew between us, a whole oasis developed.

What does one know at eighteen? Torn from my home, I had sought a way to survive and found it. But there had not been, and there could not have been any plan; survival was its own reward. However, was what needed then, and what was needed now were not the same thing. As Mel once pointed out, in my position I could have behaved like the Sultan and had who I wanted; but, I responded, looking at her and Ana that I had that already!

And so we grew in love and happiness followed. From time to time I would get an affectionate note from the Sultan, but as summer turned to winter and back thrice, it seemed as though we had managed to recreate an Edenic state.

Ana was at the centre of my private life, but though, in her moments of doubt, Mel thought she was but a third wheel, the three of us formed a perfect unity. That did not stop Ana having Helena and others, nor did it prevent Mel from enjoying other women, but it did mean that the centre held.

Was I tempted too? One of the benefits of realising that I did not need to please everyone was that the feeling that the best way to do it was to have sex with them, faded.

It was wonderful to see Damila, and from time to time, Ayesha and my former lover, Jess. But what was good about it was to see how content the latter were. Jess blossomed, and when Ayesha fell pregnant by a chosen man, their happiness made the world a happier place. They made me a godmother to their little Alexander, who brought delight to us all.

Ana was solicitous, often asking whether I was really content that she had other women.

“If you wanted, darling, I would be content to rest with you and Mel.”

“No, my darling one, I could never deny you anything.”

Ana drew me to her.

“Mel will be here soon, shall we wait or start?”

Her smile would have eclipsed the sun. She drew me to her bosom, and soon my tongue was at work. I licked slowly round her areolae before fastening my lips on her left nipple and sucking it firmly. Feeling it swell in my mouth, I flicked it with my tongue, and heard, with satisfaction, the moans which came from her.

It was at that moment that Mel entered. Within a moment she was on Ana’s other nipple. With both us us hungrily sucking, Ana began to finger both of us. I gasped as I felt her fingers press through my lips and into my velvet wetness. I clenched as she began to fuck me. I could feel she was doing the same to Mel. It made both of us suck all the more.

As we sucked, my finger strayed between Ana’s open thighs, encountering Mel’s finger already there. Entwining our fingers, together, we plunged into Ana; with my other index finger, I began to rub Ana’s clit.

The air was ripe with out scent, and the squelching noises from our wetness filled the room. Then, of a sudden, we came, the three of us, together. It was a magical moment, and we fell back on the bed escort dikmen together, kissing and loving each other. It was the perfect physical manifestation of our joint love.

And so the time passed, and our love grew and prospered. But during the third year after the Great Exodus, a cloud appeared on the horizon.

There were mornings when the weakness I had felt as we had travelled to Yerevan would return. My back would ache, and I would feel a lassitude. It was over-work, I would say, and stay in my chamber. Ana would look at me with concern on such days, but they would pass, and so would the clouds they brought.

I could, I told myself, cope if I rested more, and for a while that seemed to work. In any event, other clouds occupied my concern as we reached the fourth year of my tenure as Viceroy. My own region was peace and tranquillity, but further West, the ambition of the Grand Vizier plunged the Empire into war in Hungary.

Sinan Pasha, having secured the empire against the possibility of a Christian coalition, felt free to pursue his ambitions against the Habsburgs. The problem with that was it stimulated a Christian revolt in the Serb lands, and initial Ottoman successes alarmed the Habsburgs enough to secure what their diplomacy had failed to do – that was to bring the Catholic Powers to cooperate against the threat from Islam. A quick set of victories might have served Sinan’s purposes, but he did not enjoy the success his egotism had imagined was his for the taking.

Instead of a swift victory, our forces faced a long and expensive war which, at first went badly for us, which resulted in demands for more tax money from us. At one point it was said that the Christians were within fifteen miles of Constantinople, and there were rumours that the Sultan would massacre all Christians in the city. But eventually the sheer force of arms on our side repelled the Catholic forces.

All of this I was able to follow through the diplomatic mail from Constantinople, and I received updates from other sources. To my delight a despatch from the great Elizabeth came to me, assuring me of her love and of England’s loyalty to our agreement; the Sultan himself thanked me for my efforts. But by the same letter came bad news. His physicians had, he wrote, advised him against another campaign, his health, they said, was not up to it; he was thirty five.

This was, as I told Ana, not a development to be welcomed. His chosen heir was Irene’s son, Şehzade Mahmud, who was still a child, which would mean that his mother and the Grand Vizier would exercise power on his behalf; neither of them had any reason to love me, and there were those who would pay them handsomely for my post. Instability would follow Mehmet’s death, but that, I had hoped would be many years in the future; now it seemed that it might come sooner.

I took counsel with Ana and with Mel. Our options were limited. The turmoil in the West had left us untouched, and, if anything, emphasised the virtues of my rule, so there was not immediate need to act; but plans needed to be prepared. The difficulty was that however one approached it, there was no model for surviving as Viceroy if the Sultan decided to rid himself of you.

I could, it was true, have gone with Ana to the secret stronghold of the Bodyguard, but that might bring on us the vengeance of my successor; I could not ask Ana to do that, and though she offered, I could not let that happen. The cause she served was the greatest one. As she and I wracked out brains it was Mel who came up with the answer.

“Why go? You can win enough support from the Amirs to keep you here, and without their help, no Sultan can successfully depose you. If assassins are sent, have them assassinated.”

It was brilliantly simple. Defy convention, stay and dare Constantinople to depose me. In the absence of a better plan, Mel’s idea held the field.