Harem (7 page)

Hafise sat on the terrace overlooking the shaded, eastern court of the Palace and regarded her son's new
iqbal
with a practiced eye. She could tell at once that this one was a different proposition to Gülbehar, you could see it in the way she walked, the way she held herself.

They said she was more clever than beautiful. But that was perhaps not such a bad thing. She had not survived so many years in the harem of Selim the Grim without a certain quickness of mind herself.

'Hürrem,' she said warmly, extending her hand. 'I am delighted with your news. Come and sit here beside me.'

It was a warm afternoon and finches twittered in the ornate cedar cages hanging from the eaves. Sherbets and melon and
rahat lokum
were laid out on the low table in front of them. Behind them the city shimmered in the afternoon haze, the cupolas of the mosques shining like diamonds through the dust.

'Suleiman is hunting at Adrianople, as I am sure you have heard. I have sent a courier today with a message for him. He will be overjoyed with this news.'

Hürrem put a hand to her stomach. 'We must wait many months to gauge the extent of his pleasure.'

A good answer, Hafise thought. If it's a girl, we are all back where we started. 'If God wills it.' She reached out for the girl's hair, held a few strands towards the light. 'You have beautiful hair. Not red, not gold. Where are you from?'

'My father was a khan of the Krim Tatars, Crown of Veiled Heads.'

A khan of the Tatars. Listen to her! Perhaps she knows my own father was a Georgian peasant and thinks herself superior. 'And how did you come to us?'

'My father saw an opportunity.'

Hafise smiled. 'For you, or for himself?'

'The
spahis
tied him to the ground so they could force the money into his pockets. He struggled and screamed. I had to avert my eyes.'

'You laugh when you say such things, but there is no laughter in your eyes.'

'Why should I weep? He still lives in a tent, I am in a palace. In the end I won more from the trade.'

'So you are happy here?'

'I will be happier when my lord returns.'

'I was married to the Sultan Selim for many years. I can count the number of weeks we spent together on my fingers. It is a lonely life, Hürrem.'

'I shall heed your advice gladly. I will go back to my father, then. Can you arrange a horse for me?'

Hafise laughed, in spite of herself. The girl might be mocking her, but she had a point. Why be miserable over things you do not have the power to change? 'Now you have the Sultan's child, this harem will be your home for the rest of your life.'

'Then I shall have to arrange for larger rooms.'

'Like mine, perhaps?'

'If God wills it.'

'I should not be at all surprised if that is His design.' Hafise selected a piece of
lokum
, flavoured with pistachio nut, and bit into it. 'If there is anything that you need, you must tell me. In Islam, the mother is sacred, and never more so than now. Everything will be done to ensure your comfort.'

'There is one thing, Highness.'

'Yes?'

'I want a bodyguard.'

Hafise looked startled. 'A bodyguard. Why?'

'I am frightened.'

'Of what?'

'I have heard rumours that I will not live to see my baby born.'

'Who dares threaten you - threaten the Sultan's child?'

Hürrem averted her eyes. 'I don't know. It might just be gossip.'

She is lying, Hafise thought. She knows who it is but dares not say. There is only one person who would wish her dead. Gülbehar! But surely Gülbehar was not capable of that?

'If you think such rumours might have any base, you should have your servant girl taste all your food, even try on your clothes before you wear them, in case the fabric has been impregnated with poison. As a precaution I will have the Kislar Aghasi assign you one of his eunuchs.'

'Thanks you, Crown of Veiled Heads.'

'Nothing - nothing - must endanger the Sultan's son. Do you understand?'

'Yes. Yes, I understand.'

***

The Kapi Aga watched from the North Tower as she appeared from the long shadows and sat down on the marble bench beside the fountain. She opened her Qu'ran on her lap. She had come to the garden three days in a row. There was only one reason to go there and that was to speak to him alone. But why? What was she thinking? Soon she might be Suleiman's wife - so what more did she want? They could not continue with their trysts; but if he did not go down to meet her, what might she do then?

She could not betray him without betraying herself. But then, who knew what she might do? It had never occurred to him that she might harm Meylissa. It struck him for the first time that she might be mad.

He must know what she intended or he would never rest.

He scurried from the room, locking the door behind him, then went down the wooden steps to the courtyard.

He hesitated when he reached the iron gate. This must be the last time, he promised himself, the very last time. He put the key in the lock. The key and the lock! he thought. Just like men and women; you place it here, you find the fit, the tumblers fall and you open the way to dreams and nightmares. There was nothing as compelling as a locked door.

He slipped inside. Hürrem looked up at him and her eyes widened in surprise. She dropped the Qu'ran, stood up and screamed.

The Kapi Aga froze. He heard moaning and realized it was him. He turned to run, fumbled with the keys and dropped them on the marble flags.

She screamed twice more as he fumbled on the ground for the keys. He fumbled with the lock and when he finally threw open the door he found himself staring into the startled face of one of his own guards.

He ran back into the garden. 'You little whore,' he shouted, and drew the jewelled dagger from his pelisse and slashed at her. Hürrem shouted and fell back, the stroke scything the air inches from her face.

The guard rushed at him. The Kapi Aga heard the blade scythe the air and then the dagger was gone, and with it his right hand. There was no pain, just the horror of it; the stump and the spurting of bright blood.

He fell to his knees and tried to prise the dagger from the fingers of his own severed hand. If he could kill her now, it would be all right. They could do what they wanted with him as long as he knew she was dead. But then the guard dragged him towards the gate and he screamed again, this time at the sudden white hot pain in his arm. Puddles of his own blood soaked the cobblestones around the little witch in the green taplock. He tried to scream a curse at her but then another guard appeared and struck him with the hilt of his
yataghan
and he groaned and his head fell back.

***

The hawk soared on the updraught from the baked cobblestones of the city, then wheeled towards the Bosphorus, hovering again over the walls of the Topkapi Saraya. Its golden eye picked out the twin towers of the Gate of Felicity, where the head of the Kapi Aga was turning black as an olive high in its niche in the wall. His decapitated body still hung from the steel hook where it had been tormented for three days, its point penetrating the ribs and the thigh, a rope lashed from the scaffold to hold it upright. It would be there till the carrion crows had finished their work and the meat and sinew rotted from the bones.

The hawk wheeled again, now towards the Golden Horn and the wooden palace high on the hill beside the great mosque of Bayezit. On a balcony among the brass domes stood a woman with hair the colour of fire. She was smiling.

The months would pass quickly, she thought. She stroked her belly. Let it be a son.

***

The day of the birthing there was snow on the roofs of the Harem.

A birthing chair and swaddling bandages were brought to Hürrem's apartment. Incense was burned and rose petals strewn over the marble floors; amulets and blue beads were hung around the room to ward off the evil eye.

Hürrem had never experienced such pain. When the baby would not come the Harem midwife, a terrible Nubian who weighed perhaps as much as three odalisques, sat on her stomach to force the child from her womb.

Hürrem screamed. The midwife jammed a stick of ivory between her teeth to silence her. 'Bite down!' she hissed. 'Bite down and be silent!'

Crouched over the chair, supported on each side by the midwives, she delivered up the child, the Nubian receiving the infant in a cloth of linen while she recited the declaration of the Faith.

The Kislar Aghasi watched, as Osmanli law demanded, to ensure that no substitution was made. He took the child himself to the white marble fountain and washed the baby three times, according to custom. Sugared oil was placed in its mouth to ensure a sweet and amiable tongue; kohl was smeared around its eyes to warrant a profound gaze and a diamond-encrusted Qu'ran was touched to its forehead.

Hürrem clutched the midwife's shoulders. 'What is it? Just tell me what it is!'

It was the Kislar Aghasi who answered her. 'You are delivered of a son, my Lady.'

'A son!' Hürrem repeated. She smiled at him, then fainted dead away.

Venice, 1528

She was a vision in black velvet, a dark angel with hair as black and lustrous as coal. She had skin like ivory and her lips were so full and plum-coloured, it appeared as if they were bruised. The bodice of her vesture was fashionably low-cut and the small gold cross at her throat - he could imagine the soft pulse just below it - seemed to taunt him.

White and Christian; twice forbidden.

The street was crowded, and rang to the cries of the hawkers and the cursing of the sailors - Armenians and Dalmatians along with Venetians - gambling in the arcades. An Albanian pushed past in baggy trousers, chewing a nub of garlic like a sweet; several people saluted the passage of a
togato
in the purple robes of a senator and he replied with a casual wave of the hand.

Abbas pushed through the mob, following her to the portal of a church. She ascended with elaborate grace, her eyes to the ground. She looked up just once, and their eyes met. Her lips parted, just slightly, and he told himself that his presence had affected her in some manner. God alone knew how.

The old hag who escorted her gave him a contemptuous look as they walked through the doors of the Santa Maria dei Miracoli.

'Did you see her?' he whispered to his friend, Ludovici.

'Of course I saw her. That's Julia Gonzaga.'

'You know her?'

'My step-sister knows her. She's her cousin.'

'Her cousin?'Abbas grabbed Ludovici's
saion
- the fashionable waist-length scarlet smock he wore over his shirt - and pulled him towards the steps.

'What are you doing?'

'I want to get closer.'

'
Tu sei pazzo
- you're mad!'

'Come on!'

Ludovici pulled him back. 'Do you know who her father is? Antonio Gonzaga - he's a C
onsigliatore
!'

'I don't care.'

Ludovici was alarmed, but not altogether surprised. Abbas was the most headstrong man he'd ever known. Reckless, his father called him. If it was his fault it was also his charm. Perhaps it was in his blood; a Moor is a Moor. But this time Ludovici would not let him make a fool of himself, and besides, there was real danger in this.

He pushed his friend against a wall and held him there. 'Abbas, no!'

'I just want to look at her.'

'You are not meant to look! She's a Gonzaga!'

'You cannot stop me,' Abbas said, jerked free of his grip and sprinted up the steps.

To hell with him! Ludovici thought. It was his funeral. He started to walk away, then changed his mind and went in the church after him.

***

The saints watched, disapproving, from the gilt ceiling. A bust of the Vergine della Santa Clara frowned from her balustrade on a wall of pink coral marble.
Putti
and sea monsters cavorted on the pilasters.

It was cool after the warmth of the piazza. A shaft of light from the vault pointed to the altar like the golden finger of God. He had picked out the two figures kneeling at the
prieu-dieu
before the altar. Saint Francis and the Archangel Gabriel stood guard on either side.

Abbas heard Ludovici's footsteps echo on the marble as he came to stand beside him. 'She is the loveliest thing I have ever seen,' Abbas whispered.

'She is not for you, my friend.'

The old hag heard them and raised her head from her prayers. Abbas and Ludovici ducked behind one of the pillars. Ludovici put a finger to his lips.

When they peered out again, the two women were gone. The old woman was hurrying her charge out through a side door. Julia Gonzaga looked back once before her
duenna
pulled her away.

'There, you've had your look,' Ludovici said. 'Now forget about it!'

***

The Captain General of the Republic put both broad, dark hands on the balustrade and watched the sun set behind the snow-capped peaks of the Cadore, setting aflame the backdrop of mushrooming clouds. The gondolas and galleys faded into dark relief against the pearl of the lagoon. Such a harbor, such a city; sometimes it was easy to feel a part of it. But he was only paid to love it for as long as they paid his hire. They did not belong; his son sometimes forget that.

'It is quite impossible,' he growled. 'You still do not seem to understand the first thing about them!'

'We can protect their lives but not marry their daughters? Is that it?'

'Marry? Is that what is on your mind?' He rounded on his son, who fell back a step. Mahmoud was a bear of a man and his thick frizzled beard added to his size and his ferocity. 'There are reasons for our presence here and they are purely commercial. No Venetian wants a black Muslim son any more than I want a white infidel daughter.'

They would not be in Venice at all, of course, if the Doge could trust his army to the command of one of his own noblemen. The Captain-General of Venice was rarely even Italian and sometimes, as now, not even a Christian.

'They treat us like dirt,' Abbas said.

'The
Magnifici
treat everyone like dirt. They mean nothing by it.'

'But we have royal blood!'

'What do you think the royal blood of a Muslim means to them?' Mahmud crashed both fists onto the walnut table between them. 'We are mercenaries. That is all we are. We have no rights and no place here. You may live in a fine
palazzo
and dress like the son of a
togato
but you are still a foreigner. Even if you may sometimes forget that, I assure you that they never do.'

'Then what am I to do?'

'Do as the other young bloods do and find what you need on the Ponte delle Tette - the Bridge of the Tits!' Abbas knew the place, it earned its nickname from the women who stood stripped to the waist in its doorways, calling out to the young men who passed. 'You are too young to think about a wife.'

'No. I want to meet Julia Gonzaga.'

Mahmud sighed. He was not angry any more. What was the point? Abbas was like a spoiled child petulantly demanding his own castle to play in. No Gonzaga would entertain the thought of his daughter even breathing the same air as a blackamoor and besides, there was a statute in the Republic forbidding a Venetian nobleman or woman to marry outside their peers. A
Magnifico
of the Council of Ten, like Gonzaga, could not even speak to a foreigner in private, even the Captain General of the Army.

'It is just youth, Abbas. Believe me, it will pass. Tomorrow you will have forgotten all about her.'

'You judge me poorly,' Abbas said.

'I hope not, for you sake, for this can never be. Put it aside. Now.'

***

Julia Gonzaga watched the theatre of the Venetian evening from behind the latticed screen of her loggia. The lanterns hanging from the sterns of the gondolas left rippling tracks on the surface of the canal and she heard voices and laughter echo along the
fondamenta
as a young couple vanished arm in arm through a dark
sottopportico
.

Julia felt a stab of envy.

She thought again about what had happened that afternoon in the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. Why had that boy stared at her like that? A blackamoor, too, like a
gondolieri
, though he did not dress like one. He had a jewelled
bareta
on his head, and his linen
camicia
had been open at the front, in the manner of a fashionable young nobleman.

So who was he?

Another mystery to add to mystery on top of mystery. Her life was like living in a great house where all but one room was locked to her; there was the mystery of her father, a sombre man who was rarely seen even in his own
palazzo
; there was the mystery of her mother, dead in childbirth and never spoken of; but most of all there was the mystery of men.

Her father had intimated to her that one day she might marry one of these exotic creatures. The notion provoked in her both dread and excitement; according to her
duenna
- her governess, Signora Cavalcanti - young men were the Devil's work, and they would put her very soul in jeopardy. Yet sometimes she wondered with a blush if even damnation might be better than this. She was already buried alive. What could be worse?

Signora Cavalcanti's tirades against the fecklessness of men had stirred a terrible fascination in her. She wanted to know what it was they were hiding from her. Despite her trepidation, she was eager to discover more about the world outside her loggia.

But how?