Yannina and Ali Pasha

I will go hide in a monastery lost in an island, with my bride. No man shall know that unknown coast nor land and break inside.

What can be more hidden than an island in a lake, reed guarded, face averted, ridden to in boats, and at need pulled in on itself, to fend the unbidden?

Ali Pasha, he of the broad chest and Turkish beard, lord of the north in strong suzerainty, bloody-handed, Greek-feared, took the Christian, Kyra Basilike to be his bride (we let strangers in) but rode the land hard. Souliote women walked off the cliff and died to beat the chase and the red hand. From the castle's dungeon on the other side Kyra Phrosyne, bound by Ali's moustachioed bravoes, gagged, thrown from a boat and drowned in clear clean depths none dragged for her poor rotting beauty, and none found afterward, speaks from large scared eyes. Turn beneath the mosque, take the shabbier way. The slaughterhouse leaks its gutterful of blood into the lake. Under the calm front history reeks.

At last Ali fled to the island sanctuary in the trees. The assassins came and hacked him in his bed, and beautiful Kyra Basilike's pillowy bosom propped his dying head.

Yannina, green in spring for willows, soft for lake air, beneath the filigree silver screen of art, the broken ribs lie bare, and the torn vitals bleed between.

And where the tall minaret and the mosque, Bohemund's dungeon-keep, and the dilapidated castle wall tied together with ivy, sleep, Ali, in their sleep they remember all.

How could this dreamy lake town, this waterland soft as a fish, then in the treason of its bland embrace take Basilike, Phrosyne, and their men, and cause the heart of the north to break?