Dursteler|187the women on board his ship in the first place, because they “impede[d] the ex-
ecution of public decrees since the actions carried out [were] by their nature irre-
vocable.” In other words, the hands of Venice’s rulers were effectively tied: They
already recoiled at the thought of sending innocent Christian women back into
Muslim hands. Now that they had contracted legal Christian marriages or en-
tered a monastery, the thought of deporting them was unthinkable. To close the
door on any lingering thoughts of returning the four to Milos, within a month of
her marriage, Margherita announced she was pregnant. Whether this was true
or not, which seems doubtful given how little time had passed since their mar-
riage and that Burlion eventually would die without heirs, the pregnancy claim
was another effective move to help ensure that the family would not be returned
to Milos.
While the women undoubtedly hoped that they could leave their past be-
hind and blend quietly into their new lives on Corfu, the contest over their
status was only beginning. News traveled quickly in the early modern Medi-
terranean, and when word of the incident on Milos broke, it generated a flurry
of activity in Venice and Istanbul. In the Venetian lagoon, the women’s flight
produced a significant institutional response—the Signoria of Venice mobilized
numerous high governmental magistracies, monasteries were co-opted to house
the women, Venetian couriers crisscrossed the region, ships and convoys were
rerouted, and significant financial resources expended. The situation played out
quite differently in Istanbul, where several influential Ottoman officials became
deeply involved, although ultimately the affair ended up being resolved outside
official channels.
The figure at the intersection of the Ottoman and Venetian responses was
Venice’s chief diplomatic representative in Istanbul, the bailo, Alvise Contarini,
who first heard of the incident at the end of May in a letter from the Venetian
consul on Milos, Filippo Benin. Benin gave a detailed overview of Maria’s flight,
emphasizing that the women had left “of their own free will” and had “left all
their belongings... and a sum of about 2,000 reals” in Milos. Hard on the heels
of Benin’s initial dispatch, on May 28 Aissè’s husband, Mustafa Efendi, himself
appeared in the Venetian embassy. His account of events mirrored Benin’s in
many details, but there were two key differences. First, and most importantly,
he placed responsibility for the women’s departure squarely on Venice, asserting
that his wife and her family were “carried away... [and] seduced... by the people
on the galleys.” Second, he claimed that the Venetians had also taken property
belonging to him—“clothing, furniture, and furnishings valued at a great sum.”
These were serious charges, and experienced members of Contarini’s embassy
considered this one of the “most scandalous cases that had happened in many
years,” particularly because of the importance given to moral issues by the re-
form-minded Sultan Murad IV.