Lost Love Found (57 page)

“Be silent!” she ordered him. “It is I who built the fortunes of our family—long before you saw the light of day, I might add! Were it not for your sons, Eli, I should truly despair for the future of the Kiras. I have not prospered all these years, nor our family either, by relying solely upon logic. One must rely upon one’s instincts, too. It is something you have never learned, to your detriment.

“I do not speak idly. Last spring when Lady Barrows first visited me, we were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Cicalazade Pasha, who was in this house discussing business with you, Eli. He was most taken by Valentina and made no secret of his interest. Had she been one of our slaves, I tell you he would not have left the house that day without her in his possession! I remember thinking at the time that I was glad my young English guest was leaving for the Crimea. He is a very carnal man who would, indeed, dare to kidnap a woman off the streets, if that woman appealed to him. Somehow, he must have learned of her return to Istanbul.

“Think! No one saw Valentina kidnapped, or no one will admit to having seen it. Every slave market and every brothel in Istanbul has been thoroughly searched thrice over! Yet there is no trace of her. Why? That is the question I have asked myself over and over again.
Why?
Why is there no trace of her?”

“Perhaps she was taken from the city immediately and sold in some foreign slave market,” Eli ventured.

Esther Kira snorted with impatience. “Who,” she demanded scathingly, “would kidnap a veiled, anonymous woman who might easily have been the valide herself? The way the women of Istanbul look in public, one cannot be certain if they are young or old, fair, pockmarked, or ugly. No. This was a planned act by someone who knew Valentina, and knew precisely where she was at all times.”

“Why not the sultan, Esther?” Simon Kira asked. “You said that he was intrigued by Lady Barrows.”

“Aye,” the old lady agreed, “he was, but the valide protected Valentina by telling the sultan that Valentina was his sister by Marjallah, although of course, she is not. Although the sultan was not loathe, for his own sake, to destroy his younger brothers, he has always been most protective and caring of his sisters and his other female relations. He would not stoop to incest. And he had no reason to doubt Safiye’s word. As far as Sultan Mehmed is concerned, Valentina is his sibling.

“It is his vizier who is the culprit in this matter, I am certain of it.”

“Grandmother, we cannot accuse Cicalazade Pasha of kidnapping Lady Barrows without proof,” Eli Kira said nervously.

“Am I a fool? Do you think me a witless old woman that I do not know that, my overcautious grandson?”

“I was not so cautious in the matter of Incili,” he reminded her, “and that little escapade almost cost me two sons and a daughter.”

“You were younger then, Eli,” Esther Kira said dryly, “but like most, you have grown less daring with age. I, however, have not.”

A sound, not unlike a muffled laugh, escaped from Simon Kira, who attempted to cover his breach of etiquette by coughing.

Esther Kira’s eyes twinkled, but she did not even deign to gaze at her great-grandson. “It has been some time since I saw Lateefa Sultan,” she said. “I will invite her to visit me, at her convenience. She will know what is happening in the house of the vizier, and she will tell me.”

“Who is Lateefa Sultan?” asked Lord Burke.

“She is the wife, the only wife, of Cicalazade Pasha,” the old lady replied. “She is an Ottoman princess, a great-granddaughter of Sultan Selim I. Her great-grandmother was that sultan’s second wife, Firousi Kadin, and she descends from one of Firousi’s daughters, Guzel Sultan, who was her grandmother. Her father was Guzel’s son. As an Ottoman princess, Lateefa Sultan has the privilege of allowing or refusing her husband other wives. Only once did Cicalazade Pasha request her permission for a second wife. She gave her consent, for she is a kind woman with a great heart.

“The woman involved was a beautiful Scots noblewoman who had been kidnapped and sent to the vizier as a gift. Cicalazade Pasha fell madly in love with the woman, Incili. Incili, however, wanted only to return to her husband and family.”

“Did she?” Lord Burke said.

“She mysteriously disappeared from the vizier’s private island, which sits in the center of the Bosporus,” Esther Kira said. “The vizier believes she is dead.”

“Is she?” Lord Burke persisted.

Esther Kira smiled, showing partially toothless gums. “No” was all she said. Padraic smiled with understanding.

“I will leave the matter of Valentina’s disappearance in your more than capable hands,” he said quietly. Esther Kira was obviously more powerful than any of her English guests had thought.

“Leave me,” Esther Kira said. “All but Lord Burke.”

The others filed from the room dutifully, but Simon Kira stopped to give the old woman a kiss. She patted his hand, nodding in an understanding manner.

Then she and Padraic were alone.

“Valentina has been gone for over three months now, my lord. It is unlikely she has escaped the vizier’s attentions. You will, of course, wish to regain custody of her. But you must understand that she will be a different woman. Perhaps, under the circumstances, you will wish to seek another wife.”

“If I understand you, Esther Kira, you are telling me that Cicalazade Pasha has used Valentina as a man uses a woman.”

Esther Kira nodded.

“I have loved Valentina her whole life, Esther Kira,” Padraic Burke said. “I foolishly allowed her to wed someone else in the mistaken belief that someone so beautiful deserved a greater name and fortune than I have to give. Instead, Valentina married a man of no greater importance than I, and not for love of him, but for love of her two younger sisters whose parents would not let them wed until Valentina was wed.”

He fixed her with his gaze and declared, “I have vowed not to let her escape me a second time.” Lord Burke took Esther Kira’s wrinkled hand in his, looking into her dark, sympathetic eyes. “I do not care if Cicalazade Pasha has possessed her body, for she will never really be his. She is mine. I want her back, Esther Kira. I know my Val. Whatever he has done to her, she has not yielded herself to him. He can possess her flesh, but he cannot possess her heart. She put that into my keeping when she accepted my love. Did Incili’s husband take her back willingly? I think he did, for he must have loved her greatly to arrange for her rescue, even as I love Val.”

“Aye, Incili’s husband loved her deeply, and they resumed their lives happily,” Esther Kira said quietly, “but those first few months after her return were harrowing ones for them both. A woman used unwillingly must come to terms with herself. Understand that this is what you face, my lord.”

“I understand, Esther Kira,” Lord Burke told her. “Once, long ago, when I was a very little child, my mother was in a similar position to Valentina’s. Although I was too young to remember my mother’s anguish, both she and my stepfather have spoken of the situation over the years. You see, my father was involved.” Then Padraic, knowing Esther Kira’s love of a good story, went on to reveal the adventure his mother, Skye, had had in Algiers.

When he had finished, the old lady said quietly, “Your mother must be a very unique and brave woman to have survived such a dangerous undertaking. I have known three women from your part of the world, and now you tell me of your mother who I see as being as daring as the others. The women of your land are most unusual, yet I understand them, for I have never been a meek creature myself—to the distress of the men of my family who have, nonetheless, profited royally through my eccentricities.”

Padraic chuckled. “Perhaps they find your behavior odd, Esther Kira, but I grew up in a country ruled by a woman who very much reminds me of you. I find nothing strange about you. Indeed, I understand you quite well—as does your great-grandson, Simon.”

“Ah, Simon!” she said with a warm smile. “He is my hope for a bright future for this family. His brothers are good men and hardworking, but they are too much like my son, Solomon, and my grandson, Eli. Pious men. Righteous men. Dull men, bound by five thousand years of tradition. Men of narrow vision who can see only yesterday and today, but not tomorrow and all the tomorrows that follow.”

She chuckled. “They say I am a foolish old woman, but when our parents died and my brother Joseph and I were taken into our uncle’s house, the Kiras lived in a simple wooden house on a nondescript lower street in Balata. Joseph and I were poor relations, for our father had been the younger son. He had left the family circle and attempted to start his own business in Adrianople. It was just beginning to flourish when a prominent Jew of Adrianople was accused of a particularly heinous crime, and riots broke out in the city. The ghetto there was burned to the ground and many of our people were killed. Fortunately, these things do not happen today in our more enlightened times. The worst part of it was that it need not have happened at all.

“The Jew who was the cause of it all had a beautiful daughter. One day, while at the public baths, she was glimpsed by the governor of Adrianople, who had a hidden spyhole to the women’s baths. The governor sent a message to the Jew, offering to take the girl into his harem. The Jew, however, was a pompous fellow, and he publicly denounced the governor, embarrassing him by scornfully refusing his offer. Suddenly, a pile of bones was discovered in the Jew’s cellar, and he was accused of stealing and murdering innocent children for some ritual having to do with the black arts.

“No one had reported any children missing, of course, yet the mindless, panicked populace of the city was driven into a frenzy by daily rumors that grew in intensity until finally the riots began.

“My father, a man of vision, saw what was coming and sent my brother and me to his elder brother in Istanbul. He and my mother were killed in those riots, and everything they had was either stolen or destroyed. As for the Jew’s beautiful daughter, she was taken into the governor’s harem where she remained for three days before being scorned and given to the governor’s soldiers, who killed her with their tender attentions,” said Esther Kira.

“That is barbaric!” Lord Burke exclaimed.

“That, my lord,” came the fatalistic reply, “is the East.

“Because of my father’s vision, Joseph and I survived. I began my career selling wares in the sultan’s harem when I was seventeen. I brought only the finest and most unique merchandise to the women, which I sold to them at fair prices. I became an intimate friend of Sultan Selim’s favorite wife. Eventually she became Sultan Valide when her son, Suleiman, became sultan. My family’s fortunes stem from that good, long friendship.”

“Yet you helped Val’s mother escape an Ottoman sultan,” Padraic said, having been curious about this for some time.

“Only after she was condemned to die, my lord. My own personal ethics will not allow me to betray those who have been as loyal to me as I have been to them. But Marjallah was condemned to drown. And the case of Lady Barrows is also a unique one. What the vizier has done is immoral.”

“You are certain the vizier’s wife will help you?” For the first time, Esther noticed how drawn and anxious he looked.

“I will not compromise Lateefa Sultan’s position with her husband, my lord, but rest assured, she will do what she can when she learns what has happened to Lady Barrows,” Esther Kira said with assurance.

A messenger from the Kira household was dispatched to the palace of Cicalazade Pasha, and Esther’s invitation was accepted. On the following afternoon, Lateefa Sultan arrived at the Kira home.

She was an exquisitely beautiful woman with magnificent hair the color of silver gilt and turquoise-blue eyes. She was the very image of her great-grandmother, Firousi Kadin, and each time Esther Kira saw Lateefa Sultan it took her back to another time, making her feel almost young again.

Lateefa Sultan wore her silvery hair in a coronet of braids woven around her head, and she was garbed in a slash-skirted dress of turquoise and silver brocade, beneath which showed silver-gilt pantaloons.

A servant hurried to take the pale pink feridje from her and then escorted her into Esther Kira’s salon.

The old matriarch sat ensconced amid her pillows on a divan.

“Esther Kira! Do you never change?” Lateefa Sultan demanded imperiously as she came across the room to kiss the old lady’s cheek. Then she settled herself on a low chair. “It has been a year since you last invited me, and I am most put out by it. You are, I am relieved to see, looking well.”

“When you are my age, Lateefa Sultan,” came the wise reply, “the days go by so quickly that a year is gone in the time it once took a month to pass by.”

“Your body may have grown old, Esther Kira,” said the princess, “but your wit is as sharp as ever.”

Esther Kira cackled. “Heh! Heh! Indeed, Lateefa Sultan, my great-grandson, Simon, claims that my body will be dead long before my mind is willing to acknowledge it. He says that my brain and tongue may live on for several years after my passing. But enough! You will have coffee? Cakes?”

The women went about the rituals of politeness until, at last, the time was propitious for Esther Kira to broach her subject.

“I need your help, Lateefa Sultan,” she said bluntly.

“You know I always stand ready to help you, Esther Kira” came the quiet reply.

“This is a matter involving your husband, my princess.”

“Continue, Esther,” the princess said, very curious now.

“Has your husband recently introduced any new women into his harem, Lateefa Sultan?”

“Not to my knowledge, Esther Kira. Yet, for several months, there has been something strange going on regarding his harem,” the princess said thoughtfully. “You know, however, that I avoid the harem unless I am needed. All those nubile young creatures depress me.”

“Can you tell me anything?” Esther asked, her voice calm.

“Cica has not been on the Island of a Thousand Flowers since Incili’s time,” Lateefa Sultan began. “Suddenly, several months ago, slaves were sent to refurbish the kiosk and to tend its gardens, which, of course, were overgrown. Soon after, three of my husband’s favorite women, Gülfem, Säh, and Hazade, were sent to the island along with four eunuchs.”