Harem (13 page)

The Hippodrome

Güzül was a Jewess; once a month she was allowed inside the Harem to sell gems and trinkets to the odalisques. But that was not her true function; in the closed world of the Harem, Güzül was that most precious of creatures - a go-between. Over the course of the years she had become Gülbehar's voice in the outside world.

She was no longer youthful. Her skin was the colour of tobacco, and wrinkled; to compensate for her fading youth she dyed her hair with henna and tied it with bright ribbons, in the remembrance of vanity.

For her errand today she had chosen a cloak of scarlet silk with a small round satin cap, also scarlet, on her head. She had a gold damask waistcoat and white kid leather shoes. The silver bracelets on her ankles and wrists made her look like a brigand queen.

With the sunset the stone of Ibrahim's palace had turned a rose pink. The high walls and wooden shuttered windows echoed the splendour of the great Topkapi, which stood less than half a mile away. It was a reminder to everyone, from the horsemen playing
çerit
on the Hippodrome below, to the faithful filing into the Aya Sofia mosque, that this Greek was the greatest and wealthiest and most trusted Vizier the Osmanlis had ever known. They said the Sultan himself had built this palace for his Grand Vizier out of the public purse. He had even given him his sister, Hatise Sultan, in marriage.

The ivory and tortoiseshell throne, the silver candle holders and the copper-and-turquoise censers were all fit for a Sultan. With the thick band of gold around his sugar loaf turban and white satin robes, Ibrahim looked every inch as she had imagined the Lord of Life must look. The ruby on his finger was the size of a bird's egg.

This rising star had carried another with him, like a comet with its tail. He now sat cross-legged at the foot of the marble steps, facing away from her, so she could not see his face.

She had made discreet enquiries about him though, before coming here. They said Rüstem Defterdar was a Bulgar, brought to Stamboul many years ago by the
devshirme
. He had been educated in the Enderun, the palace school, and had excelled in mathematics. They said he rose quickly through the ranks of the Treasury Department thanks to Ibrahim's patronage. One might guess, she thought, how productive it might be for the Vizier to have his own money man inside the Treasury, helping him manipulate the purse strings. But none would raise their voice in complaint against a man like Ibrahim, unless they wished to make a closer inspectiion of the spikes on the walls of the Felicity Gate.

Ibrahim saw her glance curiously in Rüstem's direction but he addressed her as if they were alone. 'Well Güzül, tell me what brings you to my humble seraglio.'

'My mistress, Rose of Spring, sends her felicitations. May your house always increase in wealth and prosperity.'

'I thank her for her good wishes. May God always protect her and may her beauty never fade.'

'Insh'allah.'

'I have heard whispers, Güzül.'

'What whispers, my Lord?'

'That your mistress quarrels with the Lady Hürrem in the Eski Saraya. One may only pray the conflict will be resolved to the satisfaction of all.'

'She is to be exiled, my Lord.'

Ibrahim did not seem surprised by this news.

'That is why I am here, my Lord. My mistress begs for your intercession.'

'I do not have such power, Güzül.'

That's not what they say in the bazaars, she thought. There they say you are Sultan in all but name. 'My mistress asks only that you speak for her with the Lord of Life.'

'This is the business of the Harem, and no affair of mine. You know I would like to help your mistress if I could but this is beyond any small power I may have. She should perhaps take her case to the Kislar Aghasi.'

'My mistress only suggests that you perhaps examine more closely the consequences of her departure.'

Ibrahim leaned forward, one arm resting on the arm of his throne. 'Go on.'

'You have always been a friend to Mustapha. One day he will be the next Sultan. His mother hopes she will always remember you kindly.'

'Is that a threat, Güzül?'

'It is only human nature that we have a longer memory for our friends. And as she has always thought of you as a friend, she would like to extend a word of caution.'

His eyes glittered. He glanced down at Rüstem.

'My mistress has never sought to challenge the power of the Grand Vizier.'

He laughed at that. 'Of course not.'

'But Hürrem might.'

It was as if someone had dropped a horseshoe on the marble floor. Startled silence. Ibrahim stared at her for a long time, his fist clenched on the arm of the throne. Finally: 'You think so, Güzül?'

'In the bazaars they say she has bewitched him.'

'The Empire is not ruled by carpet salesmen.'

'He spends long days and nights with her, my Lord. Not all of their time together concerns the pleasures of the bedchamber. He talks to her of politics.'

'More Harem talk?'

'My mistress believes you to be a wise and faithful counsellor. She wishes only for your continued well-being.'

'Thank you, Güzül. You have made your point.'

'My Lord.' Güzül crept forward and kissed the carpet at the foot of the throne and crept out again. Ibrahim watched her leave, his face creased into a frown of uncertainty. Hürrem, a threat? Impossible!

He looked at the man kneeling patiently at the foot of the throne. 'Well, what do you think?'

'It is always wise not to make more enemies than is absolutely necessary.'

'He indulges this little Russian girl of his. But - challenge the office of Vizier?'

Ibrahim watched his defterdar. Can you see what I am thinking, Rüstem? My real problem here is that the Harem is the only part of the Empire over which I exercise no control.

'As Güzül said, Gülbehar is the mother of the next Sultan. What should I do?'

'Perhaps a gentle word to the Sultan to gauge his thinking in this matter. How he responds to your advice should allow you to discover exactly the extent of this Hürrem's influence.'

Really? He had not even considered that. Suleiman would always be led by his counsel, he had never over-ruled him before. If he suggested to him that Gülbehar should remain in Stamboul, then that is what he would do. As Rüstem said, he could test him out on it.

Hürrem? She was just a bauble, a whim.

Wasn't she?

Topkapi Saraya

Suleiman stared gloomily into his hands while the servants removed the last dishes of
rahat lokum
- the sweet pistachio-flavoured 'rest for the throat' with which he finished all his meals. Ibrahim finished the ballad he was playing on the viol and laid the instrument on the carpet beside him. 'Something is troubling you, my Lord?'

Suleiman nodded.

'Is it Haberdansky?'

Suleiman scowled. Haberdansky, the Hapsburg ambassador! Frederick had had the temerity to dispatch him to his court with no tribute and no terms, other than to claim Hungary was part of his empire by birth and demand its return. It had given him great pleasure to show him the rougher edge of Osman hospitality in the dungeons at Yedikule.

'No, it is not politics that wearies me, old friend.'

'Yet the Hapsburg question must be resolved.'

He sighed. Yes, a decision must be made. 'What do you think of this Zapolya now you have met him?'

'He will make a poor king and a fine vassal.'

That was what Hürrem had said, Suleiman thought.

'Very well. We can make him our gatekeeper. He may wear the crown, but as long as he gives us tribute, in gold and slaves for the
devshirme
, the kingdom remains ours.'

'It is settled then?'

'Yes. Give his envoy our decision.'

Ibrahim picked up the viol again and gently plucked at the strings. Suleiman felt a prickle of irritation. He could not rest, even here. All he could think about was the war of nerves taking place in his own Harem. He would not rest until Gülbehar was safely removed from it.

'There is something I must discuss with you. It is about Mustapha.'

'A fine boy,' Ibrahim said.

'Indeed, he shows great promise as a leader and as a warrior. He is fourteen years old now and I think it is time he is given a governorship, to test his mettle for the great burden he must one day accept.'

Ibrahim put down the viol. So it was true, Suleiman wished to exile Gülbehar from the Harem and this was how he planned to do it.

'He is still young,' he said.

'Only a year younger than I was when my father sent me to Manisa.'

'A year is not a long time when one is forty, but a lifetime when one is fourteen.'

'Still I think it is time. But I accept what you say about his youth. We should have his mother accompany him, to guide him. They are very close. Do you agree?'

'I would counsel against it, my Lord.'

'No, I have made up my mind.'

Ibrahim blinked in surprise. Months to make up his mind about Hungary, days to make up his mind about a woman? Suleiman had never before made a decision without his blessing on it. 'There is danger in blooding him too soon. We should weigh this carefully over time.'

'I cannot see anything further that we should trouble ourselves with.'

'I would counsel forbearance. Can we not wait at least one year?'

'He is my son. I know him best.'

'But to give him a governorship so soon -'

'Will you give me peace, Ibrahim! I have told you that I have made up my mind! You are a fine Vizier, but sometimes it seems you think yourself the Sultan!'

Güzül was right, Ibrahim thought; so was Rüstem. The little Russian has his ear as well as his balls. I should let this subject be, for now. It is too dangerous to provoke him further. 'As you say, my Lord. I defer to your greater wisdom.'

There was a tense silence.

Finally Suleiman got to his feet. 'I shall go to bed now,' he said. 'I am tired.'

***

His pages had laid out his sleeping mattress on the floor. Suleiman slipped under the coverlets. Two of his bodyguards took up their post by the candles at the foot of the bed; Ibrahim stayed where he was, strumming a melancholy tune on the viol.

As he played he closed his eyes, saw the music drift beyond the walls of the seraglio, over the seven hills of Stamboul, across the Black Sea and the Aegean and the Mediterranean; a phrase drifted on the hot desert winds of Africa; one sad note echoed along the valleys of Persia and Greece, and then over the wide slow rivers of the Danube and the Euphrates; a refrain was carried with the wind over the wide plains of Hungary and the steppes of the Ukraine, and even found its way along the winding streets of Jerusalem and Babylon and Mekka and Medina.

Princes and pashas, shahs and sheiks danced to the music for this was the empire the Osmanlis had built and it was here within the walls of the Topkapi that they plucked the strings. It has always been thus.

But tonight he heard another melody, discordant, competing with the harmony he and the Divan had created. It came from the old palace where the Sultan kept his Harem, and the hands that played it were soft and white, and the nails were painted scarlet.

For the first time in his life he was a little afraid.

***

Suleiman sat astride a white horse in the cobbled courtyard, a dark topaz glittering in his turban, a heron's plume bending to the breeze. His face was drawn in a stern mask. It would have been impossible to decipher his expression, even if the pages and guards who stood nearby had dared look up at him, and on pain of death, none of them would.

Mustapha jumped into his saddle and nudged his stallion forward with the slightest pressure of his knees and reined in alongside his father. Suleiman put a hand on the boy's arm. 'May God bless your journey and keep you safe.'

'Thank you, Father.'

'Do well.'

'I shall do all I can to serve you.'

'Remember it is not me you serve but Islam. Even Sultans and their princes are only servants of Allah. Go in peace.'

Suleiman felt a great weight on his chest. How strange it will be to go to the Harem and not find Mustapha there! He turned around and saw three veiled figures hurry across the courtyard and climb inside a waiting coach, Gülbehar and her two handmaidens.

He waited until the tiny procession had left the court and the great doors of the Eski Saraya were shut behind them. He felt both sorrow and elation. Had he lost her or was he free of her? She was only a woman, as Ibrahim reminded him on so many occasions. Yet he wondered sometimes if a woman was not the other half of a man.

All the women in the world and he still did not yet feel complete.

The Ionian Sea

The galley resembled a giant water beetle, twenty seven sets of oars on each side like spindly legs pushing it across the surface of a pond. The Golden Lion of Venice hung limp from mast and stern, asleep in the sun. The elaborately carved poop was shaded with an awning of purple silk under which the officers and more gentle cargo reclined at their ease on rugs and low divans, perfumed handkerchiefs held to their noses to block out the appalling smells wafting from below.

The sails were braided along the two yards above the fore and main masts while in the bowels rows of naked slaves pushed her across the ocean. They were chained to wooden benches, their own faeces swirling in the bilge around their ankles. They had been rowing now for eighteen hours without a break. An under-officer moved down the rows of benches with bread soaked in wine, cramming it into the gasping mouths of those wretches who seemed closest to exhaustion. Several men had already passed out in their chains. They were flogged back to consciousness with rope dipped in brine. Two who did not recover quickly enough were unshackled and tossed over the side.

Julia Gonzaga saw nothing of this from her chair under the purple tabernacle above. Brocade curtains spared the passengers such unpleasantness, though they had all caught glimpses of those unfortunates at the oars several times during the journey. Julia had never seen such despair, or such filth. It had haunted her all the ten days they had been at sea.

The captain explained to her and her
duenna
that she should not trouble herself as they were only heathen, captured Turkish sailors and Arab pirates and no better than animals. But she felt ashamed anyway. Whenever she caught a whiff from below she closed her eyes against the glare of the ocean and fingered her rosary.

She looked down at the beads, remembered how they had trembled between her fingers the night of her wedding, how she had sat there in the marriage bed staring at the walnut panelled door, hardly able to breathe, waiting for her new husband. Would it hurt? What was she supposed to do?

Finally she heard a timid knock on the door and when it opened her husband stood framed in the doorway, still in his wedding clothes. They stared at each other in embarrassed silence.

'I am accustomed to sleeping in my own bedchamber,' he said. 'I wish you a goodnight.'

She had not entered his private rooms until almost a year later when succumbed to a chill and could not leave his bed. He was running a fever and the physician was called and bled him. He sent for her afterwards and required that she sit beside him and read to him from Plato.

And so, day after day; Greek philosophers and holding a basin under his chin while he coughed up foul humours. If he had maintained his malady long enough she might have become a philosopher. To keep from despair she would think about Abbas and remember how he looked at her.

As soon as he was well again Serena left to visit his estates in Cyprus; a few months later he wrote to tell her his business might keep him there for some time and he had arranged passage for her to join him. Perhaps he needed someone to read him philosophy, she thought. More likely he did not trust to leave her alone in Venice.

She had anticipated this adventure with great excitement. She revelled in the salt air and the wide expanses of ocean, the unexpected pleasure of seeing the bright spring flowers blooming on the islands off the coast of Greece. It was all a joyous relief from the cloistered
palazzo
, with its smell of must, the monotony of lacework and daily prayers. Only two things spoiled it for her; one was the stench coming from below; the other was the knowledge of what awaited her at the end of her journey.

She went to stand at the rail. Her
duenna
was below decks, seasick again; she was an unpleasant old woman, as most of them were. Like Signora Cavalcanti. Thinking of her drew her inevitably to wonder yet again, as she so often did, what had happened to Abbas..

She had never seen Lucia again so she never had the chance to ask her about it. Her father had sent her to the convent until her marriage, and afterwards she went to live in Serena's
palazzo
and there had been no way of finding out about affairs outside.

'You are … glorious,' he had said.

She remembered how he had pulled back her hood, and the look on his face as he had said it. She smiled at the memory. Sweet Abbas.

***

She looked around, startled. It was the captain, Bellini, a plump young man with florid cheeks and furtive eyes.

'I beg your pardon?' Had he seen her smiling through the black lace of her mantilla?

'One has so much time for reflection on these long voyages.'

'I was thinking of my husband.'

'Ah.' Bellini pointed to the sails. 'Still no wind. But another few days and I am sure you will be reunited. The voyage has taken longer than usual, because of the calm. The oars are a poor substitute for sail.' He held his handkerchief to his nose for a moment and breathed deeply. 'How long since you have seen your husband?'

'It must be nearly six months.'

'A long time. You must miss him.'

'Not especially,' she said and saw the blood rise to his cheeks. It was not the answer he had expected and she had embarrassed him.

'For a lady such as yourself-' She never found out what he was about to say. The sentence caught in his throat.
'Corpo di Dio!
' he shouted and ran across the deck to fetch his eyeglass. Another cry from the sailor in the yards confirmed his fears.

The triangular lateen sails of the galleot appeared suddenly from behind the cliffs of an island on their port side. The blades of its oars hovered and dipped, hovered and dipped again as she came on.

'Turks!' Bellini shouted, panicked. He ran down the companionway from the poop to the slave deck. 'Row!' he screamed. 'Make these scum row!'

The galley captains gave a blast on their whistles. Julia heard the slap of their whips as they ran up and down the rows of benches, kicking and lashing and swearing at the exhausted slaves. The ship lurched as the helmsman leaned on the long tiller, swinging them hard to starboard, away from the Turkish pirate.

Suddenly the deck swarmed with sailors, clambering from the yards to their positions in the prow and poop. Soldiers fumbled for their harquebuses and crossbows, cursing God and their luck in their terror.

The long beaked prow of the galleot came on: dip-pause-sweep.

Julia gripped Bellini's arm. 'What is going to happen?'

He shook her off, looked right through her.
'Corpo di Dio
, where's our escort?' He searched the horizon for the warship escort he had allowed to slip away across the horizon.

'Can't we outrun them?'

'They're lighter and faster and their oarsmen are all freemen and rested.' His eyes were wide, like a horse running form a fire. 'They must have been waiting for us,' he said, perhaps to himself, and then pushed her aside and ran to the bridge. The screams from below got louder as their galley masters worked the slaves with their whips.

She looked back to the stern and gasped. The galleot was almost on top of them.

***

A primitive wail came from the slave deck, over the cries of the pilot and soldiers and the
thrum-thrum
of the war drum. The galley slaves were defying the officers now, their voices raised in a strange guttural chant.

'La illah ilallah Muhammadu rasul allah … la illah ilallah Muhammadu rasul allah …'

God is great and Mohammed is his prophet.

The green flag of Islam fluttered at the mast of the galleot. So this was the heathen they had been fighting all her life, this was the Devil Islam.

Their
rais
stood at the poop, urging even greater effort from his oarsmen, while a huge Arab, bald and bare-chested, gave the stroke on the tambour. The blades rose and fell in perfect unison. A white puff of smoke drifted from the prow as the Turks opened fire with their harquebuses.

One of the soldiers on the bridge screamed, clutching at his face, and disappeared over the side. The galley slaves cheered.

'La illah ilallah Muhammadu rasul allah … la illah ilallah Muhammadu rasul allah …'

The galleot swept towards them from the starboard aft, safe from their own bow-chasers. There was a roar as the Turks fired their own cannon. The water in front of them churned to foam and then part of the rigging in the main mast collapsed in a scream of cracking timber.

Julia was so frightened she could not think. Her legs shook and then gave way under her. She tried to cover her ears with her hands, but could not block out the sound of the
chamade
, the chant sent up by the Turkish rowers to frighten their enemy.
'Allahu Akbar! Allaaaah!'

One of Bellini's officers pulled her to her feet and pushed her towards the hold. 'For the love of God!' he screamed. 'Get below, get below!'

She ran blindly where he pointed.

But when she reached the companionway she stopped. She could see the slaves chained at their benches, their backs ripped and bleeding from the whips of their galley masters, leaning on their oars watching the Turk's iron-tipped fighting prow, the
rambade
, scything through the waves towards them.

Within moments it crashed through the oars as if they were twigs, the looms snapping back into the chests and faces of the oarsmen. The bilges turned red, the screams deafened her. She saw one man trying to push his own viscera back into his stomach.

Then the
rambade
crashed through the starboard bulwark and the galleon lurched. She toppled forward into the hold.

***

When she came round she found herself lying on her back at the foot of the companionway. A filmy mist of white smoke drifted across the deck above her. She could hear men shouting orders, others crying in pain or begging quarter. The clash of steel and the boom of the harquebuses stopped abruptly. It was replaced by a terrible rattling and howling.

She realized it was the galley slaves, begging for their freedom.

She was too terrified to move. She crawled into a corner, hugged her knees to her chest and waited. She closed her fingers around her rosary and started to whisper a prayer to the Madonna.

She heard footsteps on the companionway. Three men were silhouetted against the hatchway. They all wore turbans and carried curved swords.

They stopped halfway down and stared at her. Then one of the men said something in a language she did not understand and the others laughed. They pulled her to her feet and dragged her back up to the deck.