The Harem Midwife (10 page)

A few steps across the hallway was Leon’s study. On the table was the promissory note Cesca had seen Foscari sign, leaving behind as a pledge a ewer that Cesca could see at a glance was merely plated silver. Leon had bent over his strongbox, counted out Foscari’s money, and then slid the ducats across the table, averting his eyes as though it pained him to see the gold pass from his hand to Foscari’s. At the
time, Cesca had wondered why Foscari sought out a moneylender in Rome rather than in Venice where he lived, but she had given the matter no further thought. No doubt nobles had to be discreet about going to Jews for money.

Cesca dragged out Leon’s strongbox. Using the key Leon kept tucked under the corner of the carpet, she undid the lock. There, next to a bag of crimson powder, she spied it—the canvas purse. A shroud has no pockets. If she did not act now, when would God place such an opportunity before her again? It would be churlish to spurn His offer. She snatched up the pouch. But there was no delicious heft, no merry tinkle of coins, no shiny ducats straining the seams. She loosened the twine around the neck of the pouch and turned it upside down, shaking it like a cat toying with a dead mouse. The crinkle of parchment and two sheets slipped out and drifted to the floor. She kicked the worthless sheets out of her way. Had there been a fire burning in the grate in the study, she would have flung them in. Where were her gold coins?

She pawed through the strongbox, pitching items to the floor—a cheap garnet ring, a glass brooch, a small pair of scales for weighing gold, a jeweller’s loupe, letters tied with a silk ribbon, a tattered yarmulke. She had planned this moment down to the tiniest detail, going over it in her mind so often it was as though Leon’s ducats were already snug in her pocket. She felt the righteous anger of a woman who has been robbed. Rage gathered at the back of her eyes and moved to her forehead, and travelled to her arms, her torso, her legs—like a forest fire gathering momentum
as it burned downhill—until it consumed her whole body. Her dream, which had seemed so attainable—take the ducats and sail off on the next ship—was shattered. She snatched up the empty canvas pouch and threw it to the floor and ground her heel into it. Have my ducats sprouted wings and flown into the sky? Have they grown legs and run off down the road?

She picked up the first of the two sheets of parchment off the floor. The tiny script was probably Latin, that much she could figure out. Once, Leon had explained that all merchants and moneylenders wrote commercial contracts in Latin so that a trader in, say, Venice could read without difficulty a contract from a merchant in Constantinople, Amsterdam, or Leghorn.

Cesca had learned to tally figures but never to read. For the first time in her life, she could see the sense of learning to decipher ink squiggles on a page. She shook the parchment and held it to the light, twisting it this way and that, as though by scrutinizing it she could force it to reveal its secret. It seemed to be a promissory note. Foscari had signed a pledge document much like this one. It also had a motif of oak clusters on the top. She had glimpsed it as it lay on the table, the ink drying. She smoothed the paper out and held it to the light from the window, noticing something she could understand—numbers.

There in the middle of the page were the figures 100, written in numerals in Leon’s precise hand. The signature at the bottom of the page was a maddening scrawl. Even an educated person could not have made it out.

Cesca was about to pick up the second document, which had a border of peacocks in blue and green ink, when she heard voices and the rattle of the bolted door. She dropped the documents in fright. For a moment she could not think what to do. Her mind had been so focused on the money, she had forgotten the mourners outside. They had come to collect the body for burial! Hastily, she shoved both parchments into the pocket of her skirt. Later, she would find those ducats. She gathered the scattered items from the floor and thrust them into the strongbox. When she tried to slam the lid, the yarmulke caught in the hinge, preventing the clasp from closing. Yanking it out, she tossed it under Leon’s desk. She slammed the top closed, replaced the strongbox on its platform, and slipped the key back under the corner of the carpet.

Assume an appearance of calmness
, Cesca thought. She brushed some dust off her skirt and smoothed her hair. She forced herself to breathe more slowly as she opened the door and proceeded down the hall to admit the mourners. Her instincts told her that in some obscure way these two indecipherable documents held the secret of what had become of her ducats. All nobles could read. Foscari was a nobleman. He could explain what the papers signified. With her hair arranged prettily, she would go to him. She had no one else to turn to. Had there been more to Foscari’s relationship with Leon than she realized? Could she trust Foscari not to betray her to Grazia?

With his aid, she would find her ducats and when she did, she would buy a dress of Atlas silk, a prosperous farm, and a respectable husband. Never again would she be hungry.

AS HANNAH FOLLOWED
Mustafa through the corridors of the Imperial Harem, her courage began to desert her. It was madness to lie to the Valide about this peasant girl. She thought of the Fountain of the Executioner in the First Court. Of what importance was the life of a slave girl compared to the erotic whims of the Sultan and, hence, the future of a great empire?

A heavenly fragrance greeted Hannah as Mustafa ushered her through the wide doors of the Valide Nurbanu’s private apartments.

“Watch,” he said. “Then do as I do. Remember, your
head must never be higher than the Valide’s. You must not sit unless she commands you to.”

Hannah nodded. Mustafa had tactfully chosen to ignore the fact that Hannah had visited the royal apartments before, although clearly he remembered that night very well. There had been no time for instructions about protocol during that visit. Hannah had raced to the Valide’s side, hovering over her, unmindful of the impolite shadow she cast on Her Highness, Hannah’s toes pointing every which way, even directly at the Valide. Tragically, the royal womb had become twisted, and Hannah had had to perform all manner of indignities on the most powerful woman in the Empire in order to assist her. The Valide on all fours. Hannah behind her, her fingers inserted into two royal orifices, tugging and pushing and pulling until the womb settled back into place. Hannah had never spoken of it to anyone, not even Isaac.

Hannah’s heart was beating so loudly now she was afraid the Valide would hear it. Kübra, the lovely slave girl with a long, black braid hanging to her waist, was present. Hannah felt very small and insignificant in this room, the ceiling high enough to fly a kite, expansive enough to hold Hannah’s entire house, workshop, and gardens. Trompe l’oeil paintings in greys and blues depicted arches, colonnades, and sparkling fountains of an imaginary palace so skilfully rendered Hannah felt she could walk into it—feel the splash of the water and hear the birds overhead while she sat next to the fountains. Emerald-encrusted mother-of-pearl wainscotting adorned the room. The entire tiled floor of the vast reception room
was carpeted with thousands of rose petals—white, pink, red, crimson, and gold. Dozens of ladies-in-waiting flanked the Valide, some fanning her, some carrying trays of
dolma
, grape leaves stuffed with ground lamb, and
börek
, flaky pastry filled with spinach and cheese. Others held tulip-shaped glasses of pastel sherbets.

An evening breeze off the Bosporus stirred the petals on the floor. It felt not quite real, as though Hannah were walking through a dream. She waited as Mustafa descended on all fours and crawled the length of the room to announce Hannah’s presence to the Valide, who, Hannah could see from the corner of her eye, was seated on a dais.
Trust no one in the palace
, Isaac had often cautioned.
Remember the swift justice meted out to those who vex the Valide
.

Mustafa reached the dais and some words were exchanged, but Hannah was too far away to hear. Then Mustafa pivoted, still on all fours, and beckoned Hannah forward. Hannah carefully put down her bag in the entranceway before dropping to her hands and knees. She crawled to the raised platform at the far end of the massive reception room. A fragrant, invisible trail of perfume followed her. When she reached the dais, she warily raised her head.

The Valide Nurbanu was seated on a chair of inlaid ivory, her feet immersed in a gold basin of water large enough to bathe twins. Carp nibbled away at dead skin from her feet. This was the latest fashion among the ladies of the harem, Ezster had told Hannah.

“
B-Bismillah
,” Hannah stammered.
In the name of God, the most compassionate
. The word was awkward on her tongue.

“
Bismillah
, indeed,” the Valide answered. “We meet again.”

As Hannah’s eyes travelled from the Valide’s feet and up to her face, she saw how composed the woman was, notwithstanding their previous encounter. Hannah kissed the hem of the Valide’s
pelisse
, then glanced down, studying the marble floor beneath her.

“Rise,” the Valide said in Venetian. She nodded to Mustafa to include him in the invitation.

Hearing the Valide speak in the beloved rhythms of the Venetian dialect reminded Hannah that Nurbanu, in her former life, had been Cecilia Baffo-Venier, the illegitimate offspring of two of the noblest families in Venice. Hannah ventured to look at her. Her Highness was smiling now, showing her perfect white teeth. Rumour was that one of her ladies-in-waiting scrubbed them every night with a pointed stick dipped in a paste of lemon juice and salt. Hannah thought it wise not to meet her eyes for too long, and looked down again at the carp flashing silver and gold in the low-sided tub that held the regal feet of the mother of the Sultan. The Valide squirmed in a way that made Hannah wonder if perhaps the two of them had something in common—ticklish toes.

Two slave girls helped the Valide rise and steadied her while a eunuch dried her feet with a gold-embroidered cloth. They led her to a divan covered in rose-coloured silk. There, Valide Nurbanu rested, one wrist crossed over the other, a glass of sherbet by her side, while a girl massaged her feet with oil. The Valide’s
pelisse
reached her ankles. It was a lush, vibrant red dyed with cochineal. The fabric
shimmered. Every dyer in Constantinople would kill for this most precious of red powders, made from the crushed bodies of insects from New Spain. Cochineal, Isaac said, was wonderfully fast. If only he could see with his own eyes this astonishing crimson—a ridiculous notion since no man outside the Valide’s household was permitted in her private chambers.

Although she was not young, Nurbanu was so lovely that no one who gazed upon her alabaster skin and long, graceful neck questioned why the late Sultan Selim had been so enchanted with her. Her black curls were swept up into twin coronets in the Venetian style. Here and there, diamonds winked and sparkled in her hair like a constellation. Surrounded by women and eunuchs, there was, of course, no need for the Valide to wear a veil.

When Nurbanu was twelve, she had been kidnapped off the coast of Páros in the Aegean and brought to the palace as a concubine for Selim, who fell so in love with her he could not eat. The cooks in the palace kitchen and the Imperial Taster swore that not a morsel of food, not so much as a roasted chickpea or pistachio nut, passed Selim’s lips for two months. Nurbanu’s political shrewdness was legendary. Selim had depended on her to the exclusion of his chief adviser, the Grand Vizier. The Valide’s enemies, Ezster claimed, were legion. Gossips contended that the Valide remained loyal to Venice in spite of the growing conflicts between the Empire and the Republic. Others said it was a pretense, her way of extracting lavish gifts from the Venetian ambassador in exchange for
advocating Venetian interests. Nurbanu was just thirteen when she bore Selim’s first son. Hannah had a thought. Perhaps if Hannah told the truth about Leah, the Valide would be sympathetic? No. It was impossible.

Mustafa bowed low before the Valide, approaching her divan cautiously and kissing her hand. She dismissed him with a flick of her jewelled fingers. He fell to his hands and knees and slowly crawled backwards out of the room, his belly grazing the floor, leaving a trail of displaced rose petals in his wake.

It was Hannah’s turn to approach the royal divan. She was so frightened she would happily have changed places with any other person in the room, including the young girl who was netting the carp out of the gold basin and stringing them through their gills to carry them off to the kitchens.

The Valide reclined with what seemed to Hannah an unnatural calmness, eyes fixed on her. Damp circles formed under Hannah’s arms. They say that the body odour of an animal excites the instinct of the predator, causing the eyes to narrow and the mouth to water in anticipation. She must relax and show no fear. The Valide picked up her glass of rose-petal-flavoured sherbet and began to sip. Hannah could almost see the translucent skin of her neck flush pink as she swallowed. A pair of large, silky-haired dogs lounged at Nurbanu’s feet, front paws crossed in an unconscious imitation of their mistress.