Harem (20 page)

'I think she believes you are punishing her. She wishes to show her contrition.'

'This is my Harem. Does she not understand what that means?' Suleiman fidgeted. 'No, Kislar Aghasi, it is impossible.'

'Perhaps if you explained this to her yourself. She has become accustomed to your exclusive use of her, I am afraid. To ignore her now would be only to accentuate her suffering.'

'You explain it to her. You seem to have a better understanding of her moods.'

Abbas could smell his own sweat. I cannot push him too hard or he will have the guards throw me out and perhaps put me to the bastinado. But if I do not leave here with his agreement to this excruciating arrangement, I shall forfeit one of my feet to Hürrem's temper. How miserable is my life?

'My Lord, a few kind words from you at supper would perhaps save you a lengthy speech at breakfast.'

Suleiman sighed. 'Do you really think so, Kislar Aghasi?'

'I am convinced of it.'

Suleiman drummed his fingers on the back of the divan. 'How do you know so much about women?'

'I spend every day amongst hundreds of them. I have almost begun to think like one.'

Suleiman raised an eyebrow at that. 'Oh, very well. But tell her I cannot stay long.'

God be praised, Abbas thought, I have that witch off my back. 'I know she will greatly appreciate your gesture, my Lord.'

'I hope so, Kislar Aghasi. I hope so.'

'I prepared the meal myself,' Hürrem said.

Suleiman surveyed the feast; vine leaves stuffed with milk-fed lamb, small pieces of spit-roasted chicken,
shish ketabi
,
revani
cakes,
halwa
and sherbets. Suleiman picked at the food. Guilt had taken away his appetite and that only made him angrier with her; she had no right to make him feel this way in his own Harem.

'You do not like it?' she said.

'I do not feel hungry.'

'You must eat something,' she said and picked up one of the pieces of chicken and put it in his mouth. 'Muomi brought me some new spices to try.'

He studied her face. She had been crying, that was obvious, and her cheerfulness now was so evidently forced.

'Shall I make a shadow play?' she asked him.

'Not now.'

'What about some music. Shall I fetch my viol?'

He shook his head and pushed his plate away.

She pushed it back. 'Please eat, my Lord.'

'I told you, I am not hungry!'

'Have I given you offence?'

'There is no offence. I am not hungry and there is an end to it.'

'There are times I have been presumptuous in your presence. In my passion for you I have forgotten my place. I wish to acknowledge my fault.' Hürrem now dropped her mask of conviviality. She stared at her hands and looked thoroughly miserable.

Suleiman wanted to reach out and comfort her but that would not do, he could not let her see that his pain was as great as hers. She should understand that as much as he loved her, he had a duty to Islam and the Osmanlis, and she had a duty to him. Duty was a hard lesson to learn and it was as well that she learned it now.

'It has pleased me to make you my sanctuary from time to time, but you would do well to remember that I am still your
seigneur
and I will not abide jealousy from you.' He stood up. Without warning Hürrem crawled across the carpets and kissed his feet. Suleiman was shocked. He had not wanted to humiliate her like this.

'Hürrem,' he whispered, 'I am bound by my duty. You must understand this.'

He left her lying there on the carpet. He told himself he had taught her a hard lesson. He hoped that this time she would remember it.

***

'After he had gone Muomi entered and knelt to retrieve the dishes on the table.

'He hardly touched his food,' Hürrem said. 'Will it be enough?'

'It only takes a little,' Muomi said. 'The only thing standing in his bedroom tonight will be the two guards at the door.'

***

Abbas did not recognize her.

They had dressed her in a rose-pink silk chemise with blue harem pantaloons and a headdress glittering with emeralds, diamonds and opals. Her face was concealed beneath a bead-fringed
yashmak
. All that was visible was her eyes, and they had been completely ringed with kohl. Her wrists and ankles were dripping with gold.

Corpo di Dio
, Abbas thought. It is like they hung the entire contents of the Treasury on her.

As she rose to her feet, a
gediçli
held out a heavy cloak for her to put on. Once she was dressed in it the broad hood and long sleeves hid her completely, so that not even a finger was visible.

He escorted her down the winding passageways to a narrow door. A coach waited for her in the cobblestone courtyard. They climbed in and set off in silence. The last time you were alone with me like this, he thought, I pulled back your veil and asked you to run away to Spain with me.

'Are you frightened?' he said.

'Yes.'

'Don't be. The Sultan is a gentle man, he means you no harm.'

She was shaking somewhere inside the mountain of brocade and jewels. 'What must I do?' she murmured and he heard the panic in her voice.

'Have you ever lain with a man?'

'No, never!'

'Never? But you were on your way to meet your husband when you were captured.'

'He never touched me the whole time we were married.'

Corpo di Dio!
There was no God! If he was, then he was a sadist and a tyrant! Why else would He bring together a virgin and the eunuch who loved her unless it was for sport?

So how could he help her, even now? 'You must simply do everything he says. If it is your first time, it may hurt a little, but the depilatory hurts more, so they tell me. Be agreeable and try at all costs to please him. You know what to do when I leave you alone with him?'

'The
Kiaya
has told me many times. I remembered it exactly the first time.'

'I am sure you did.'

'Why did he choose me?'

'Because you are the most beautiful woman in the world,' he heard himself say, and thought he had given himself away and, mortified, he kept his silence afterwards. The carriage drove through the gates of the Sublime Porte.

***

Suleiman lay on the bed in a simple white robe. His turban, though, was magnificent, the plume of a white egret fastened to it with a cluster of white diamonds and rubies. The room was fragrant with the frankincense burning in the brass censers that hung from the ceiling.

Abbas touched his head to the carpet three times. 'Great Lord.'

'Kislar Aghasi,' Suleiman said, as was the protocol, 'I have mislaid my handkerchief. Do you know who has it?'

'Yes my Lord. I will have her bring it to you.'

Abbas raised his great bulk from the floor and took long enough about it. Suleiman sensed there was something amiss with his Chief Black Eunuch. He was sweating heavily though it was not a hot night and his eyes had a frozen look about them. He had seen that look sometimes after a battle in men who had endured too much. He hoped the Kislar Aghasi was not sickening, he would be a hard man to replace.

Abbas went to the door and ushered in a small, cloaked figure. He removed her
ferijde
and whispered something to her. He pushed her forward and then hovered anxiously by the door.

'Go,' Suleiman said to him.

The door shut softly and they were alone.

The girl took out the handkerchief he had placed across her shoulder that morning, fell to her knees and crawled on all fours to the bed. She lifted the coverlet, raised it to her forehead and to her lips, and crept up the bed, exactly as the
Kiaya
of the Baths had told her to do.

Suleiman closed his eyes and wished with all his soul that he were with Hürrem.

Suleiman rose naked from the bed, staring accusingly at the girl who lay curled on her side beside him. The candlelight cast long shadows over the hills and valleys of her body. She was … perfect. Too perfect perhaps, that was the trouble.

He threw on a silk robe and went to the open window. A yellow moon sat fat and low over the Asian shore. A witching moon.

She was beautiful, this Venetian. Her body was like satin to the touch, a paradise for the eyes, yet he had been unable to raise any passion for her. He had no appetite tonight at all. I might as well have been … Abbas!

Something … someone … has made a eunuch of the Sultan of the Osmanlis! Fear and rage and confusion tumbled over inside him. This had never happened to him before, and it could never be allowed to happen again. The girl watched him from the bed, doe-eyed. Could it really be that she did not know what was wrong? She had not uttered a word the whole time. Perhaps what Abbas said was right, she was stupid as an ox, and could not speak a word of Turkish anyway.

But one day she would learn, if she stayed long enough. And what would she say about him then, when the other Harem girls what it was like to lie with the Sultan?

The trouble was, she was not like his Hürrem. She had no tricks, there were no soft moans and feathery touches to encourage him. She had just laid there, and offered him her beauty, as if that was a precious currency in his Harem.

He wondered if any woman could stir him again now after Hürrem. What if it was witchery? Better to be mesmerized by Hürrem than humiliated by a
Gaiour
.

He could not let this get out, could not let her giggle to her fellow odalisques that the Lord of Life and the Possessor of Men's Necks had been unable to bull her.

He went to the door and threw it open. 'Kislar Aghasi!' The halbediers standing guard at the door jerked with fright. 'Where is the Chief Black Eunuch?' he shouted at them. One of them ran off to find him.

Suleiman slammed the door behind him and went back to the bed. He picked up the girl's clothes and flung them at her. 'Get dressed!'

A few moments later Abbas appeared in the doorway, his eyes wide with fright. Suleiman pointed to the Italian. 'Get her out of here!'

'She does not please you, my Lord?'

'GET HER OUT!' He grabbed Julia's arm - she had on only her harem pants and a silk chemise - and dragged her across the carpets and hurled her through the door. Then he snatched a
yataghan
from one of the halbedier's belts and went back inside, slamming the door behind him. He held the point of the blade to the Kislar Aghasi's chin. A thin trickle of blood oozed and ran down his neck.

'She is to speak to no one when she leaves here. No one, do you understand? And if she is alive tomorrow morning your head will be feeding the crows on the Gate of Felicity. Do you understand me?'

Abbas could not speak. He nodded.

'Now get out!'

***

Abbas stumbled through the cloisters of the Topkapi Saraya, a sealed parchment clutched in his hand. He found the Aga of the Messengers, whispered his instructions and slipped something into his palm as added incentive to complete the task quickly. He had to get this message across the Bosphorus to Ludovici now. Immediately. Did he understand?

Yes, Kislar Aghasi.

Julia was locked up in a cell below the Ortakapi. It was nearly midnight which meant that by the time Ludovici received the missive he would have less than five hours to make his preparations. It might not be enough time.

I will defy him, Abbas thought, defy the Sultan. What will they do to me for that? But if I do not arrange her execution she will die anyway, they will give some other slave the job and he will make sure it is done promptly and well. This is her best chance, her only chance.

'Julia,' he muttered as he ran back to the palace, 'Julia, what have you done?'

Just before dawn Abbas led Julia through the gate at the Bosphorus wall, and down the stone steps to the water's edge. Something made him look up. He saw a flock of white birds that the Stamboulis called the Damned Souls wheeling in the sky above them. The strange thing about these birds was that they never made any sound; even the beat of their wings was silent. No one ever saw them roosting or feeding; they just seemed to drift over the black waters night and day. It was said they contained the souls of the
houris
who had been drowned in the waters below.

This was the traditional way for a Sultan to be rid of his brother's wives when he assumed the throne, or to punish a girl who had somehow found a way to get pregnant by one of the white eunuchs. The mud at the bottom of the harbor must be thick with the whitening bones of former wives and odalisques.

Now you, Julia.

She had been crying all night and the kohl had run down her cheeks, making her look like a
djinn
. Her braids hung in a tangle round her face. She wore only her chemise and harem pants and she hugged her arms to her chest, shivering in the cold of the morning. He could see the gooseflesh on her.

'Where are we going?' she asked him.

He had two of the
bostanji-bashi
's men with him, they were there to report that the job had been done correctly. He intended to give them no cause for doubts. 'You will not be returning to the Eski Saraya,' he said. He took her arm and pulled her down the bank to the waiting
caïque
.

'What's happening?'

'Just do as you are told.'

He slung her into the boat. She looked down then and saw the sack. She must have realized by now, Abbas thought. He took a silver cord from the folds of his pelisse and tied her hands behind her.

'Please, no,' she whispered.

He put her feet in the sack and tugged it up around her hips. There was a pile of smooth stones in the stern and he placed them in the bottom of the sack. Then he lifted it over her head and knotted it with rope.

He threw her on her back. 'Don't struggle until you hit the water,' he whispered to her in Italian. 'It will be all right. Trust me.'

Then he stepped out of the
caïque
and joined the two
bostanji
in the other boat.

***

They rowed past the promontory of Seraglio Point and the sombre sea walls of the palace, towing the
caïque
to a spot roughly midway between the peninsula and the Asian side. It was still dark but he knew dawn could not be far off. They had to do this now. Mist swirled over the water.

The
bostanji
decked their oars and they drifted with the current. Abbas looked at the tiny boat drifting behind them, illuminated by the lantern at the stern. The shapeless bundle was still struggling in the sack so that the boat rocked gently in the water.

'Take the lines,' Abbas said. The
bostanji
picked up the two ropes that trailed over the stern and twisted them, so that the
caïque
began to roll and then take water. Finally it listed to starboard and capsized. There was a splash as the sack tumbled into the water; a rash of bubbles floated on the surface and then was gone.

The
bostanji
cut the ropes. Abbas sat slumped in the bow and let the two assassins row him back to Seraglio Point. Then they heard a splash behind them. The
bostanji
looked over their shoulders.

'A fishing boat,' he said to them.

'They're out early in the fog.'

'You want to go back?' he said to them casually and held his breath.

Then they heard nets going into the water. It was too misty anyway, he could see them thinking, they risked a collision. And besides, what was the point now? They shrugged and kept rowing. The morning kept her secrets.

***

Julia gasped as she hit the water, the stones in the sack dragging her feet first to the bottom. She knew it was pointless to struggle; she had resolved to suck in the water straight away, get it over with quickly; but as soon as she felt the
caïque
capsize she had instinctively breathed in a lungful of air and held it. She struggled with the ropes behind her back, and to her astonishment, they fell away.

She fell fast through the water and it felt as if someone had pierced her ears with two hot needles. She tried not to scream against the pain and lose her last breath of air. She tore at the sack and the ropes that the Kislar Aghasi had tied around it fell away.

She struck out blindly, that one last breath of air carrying her up, as her chest pumped in agony. As she broke the surface she tried to take another breath but her mouth and nose was full of water and she started to choke. She paddled furiously at the water but felt herself going under. Then a hand reached out for her but she was too exhausted to keep herself afloat any longer and everything went black.