The Harem Midwife (5 page)

He smiled and kissed her.

Hannah and Isaac went downstairs and stood in the street, waiting for Suat to dismount and open the carriage door. The stars hung so low it seemed as though they had been hurled into the heavens by an unseen hand.

Hannah looked back at their house and spacious grounds. They had bought the property from a prosperous arrow-smith whose workshop had handily converted into a workspace for looms, trays for mating moths, drying cocoons, and all the paraphernalia of silk-making, including an orchard of mulberry trees in the back. The purchase came with a parrot, Güzel, which Hannah could hear screeching even from a block away. Soon after they took possession of the house, it became apparent why the arrowsmith’s wife had left the creature behind. This beautiful bird from Afrika, with lustrous grey plumage and a tail of vivid red, knew no greater pleasure than to lure an unsuspecting person to its perch. Then it would stretch out its scrawny neck waiting for a caress. As soon as a finger appeared, the bird would slash with its black beak, leaving behind a bleeding cuticle or punctured thumbnail. The creature would then fill the house with shrill, human-like cackling while it squatted on its perch, shifting its weight from one scaly leg to the other.

Isaac turned Hannah toward him and straightened her veil. As a Jewess, she was not required by law to wear a veil,
but at certain times it suited her to pass for Muslim. Now, she wanted to avoid the attention of roving gangs of Gypsies only too happy to gawk at the Imperial landau and the woman inside. She wore a silk dress and pearl earrings. The silk was from their workshop, of course, spun from their own worms, woven by Isaac on their loom. The cloth had been dyed in a vat of madder and oak kermes and turmeric to give it a reddish hue.

Suat held open the carriage door. Hannah gathered her skirts, and Isaac handed her into the compartment and closed the door behind her. He leaned up through the carriage window to kiss her goodbye, patting the velvet pouch around her neck, adjusting it so it nestled next to her skin. Isaac wore a matching pouch. Even Matteo, their son, wore such a pouch. Without the constant warmth of their bodies, the silk eggs would fail to hatch and provide a new crop of pupae for the next mothing season.

Isaac smelled of lemons. He regularly rubbed lemon juice on his hands to remove dye used for the silk. In the light from the pine-pitch torch, his eyes shone.

“Good night, my darling,” he said. “All will be well. Administer a poultice, mix up an herbal decoction, place your cool hand on an anxious forehead, and soon you will be back.”

Isaac’s optimism usually steadied her, but now, when all the signs pointed to an urgent situation—the time of night, the closed carriage, the impatient way Suat was glancing from the mare to their house and back again—it made her nervous.

Constantinople had been the start of a new life for her and Isaac. They had used the ducats Hannah had brought from Venice to purchase their ample house. Jews were permitted to buy property in the city. Even more startling, Ottoman law permitted married women to own their own property. Hannah had not imagined such a thing was possible.

“Give Matteo a kiss for me,” she said.

A feeling of peace came over her as she thought of Matteo, her three-year-old son. Early this morning through half-closed eyes, she had seen him at the doorway of their bedroom, trailing his blanket. She pretended to be asleep. He folded himself over on all fours, head down, knees pressed together. Then he rabbit-hopped to their bed. Without saying a word, he squeezed himself between her and Isaac and pulled the covers over all of them. She hated to leave knowing that he would likely wake in the morning calling for her, but what was she to do? Hannah could not possibly refuse a summons from the Imperial Harem.

Before she had a chance to blow Isaac a kiss, as was their custom on parting, Suat clucked to the mare and they were off. Hannah was flung back, hitting her head on the roof of the carriage as they lurched into the narrow cobblestone street.

Later that night, when she returned from the palace, she would recall the look on Isaac’s handsome face as she was leaving. She would wonder if they ever again would enjoy the intimate conviviality and the gentle jesting that had always typified their marriage before that night. The events at the palace were about to change everything.

HANNAH SETTLED BACK
on the cushioned seat for the long, jarring ride to the palace, the residence of the Sultan and his family, as well as the administrative centre of the entire Empire. Once they were out of her neighbourhood, she ripped off her veil, which always made her feel like a baby born with a caul over its face. They rumbled past the
Misir Çarşisi
, the Egyptian spice market, a low structure shaped like the letter T. During the day, the smell of garlic, peppercorns, frankincense, and saffron emanated from the building. It was here that Hannah purchased remedies for every malady, even gunpowder to cure haemorrhoids.

Such a still night would be populated by
djinns
—those fiery, evil creatures whose chief delights were dumping slop buckets on people’s heads from upper-storey windows, snatching turbans off dignified pashas during public ceremonies, and stealing babies out of their mothers’ arms and hurling them onto hard tiled floors.

The district of Eminönü was silent now—no familiar wheeze of the blacksmith’s bellows, no raucous clanging of hammers on metal, no insistent cries from fishwives and butchers, no calls from the porters at the dock loading and unloading the ships. The only sounds were the squeaks of the mare’s harness and her hooves clattering on the cobblestones.

When they reached the street of the felt-makers, the throb of a drum interrupted the silence. The guards were locking the old Roman Gate of Septimius Severus at the confluence of the Golden Horn and the Bosporus. Among the refuse heaps lining the alleys, Hannah could just make out the scurrying feral cats. From roofs and treetops came the caterwauling of the felines that prowled the city chasing rats at night. Hannah hated the scrawny, diseased creatures, but she hated the alternative of a city swarming with vermin even more.

She pressed a handkerchief across her nose and mouth against the stench. She could have been blind and still able to tell from the odour of sheep’s urine used to tan hides that they were now on the Street of the Tanners. The tanners were a wretched group of artisans who defiled the quarter by pouring their filthy water into the open sewers.
They should have put it in barrels and disposed of it outside the city walls as ordered by the authorities, but few of them ever went to the trouble.

When the carriage reached the district of Sirkeci, the street grew so narrow—it was no more than an alley—that neither the moonlight nor Suat’s torch could penetrate the darkness. Suat, who exhibited a propensity for driving too fast on the winding streets to demonstrate he was accustomed only to the wide boulevards of Seraglio Point, was forced to slow down. The horse stumbled and then refused to budge despite the crack of the whip on her back and Suat’s urging. Grumbling, Suat climbed down from his seat and, one hand on the horse’s bridle, the other flat-palmed on the rough stone walls, moved forward, feeling his way along the narrow street. After several minutes of slow progress, they neared the water. Breezes from the sea greeted them as they swept along the south shore of the Horn. It had been about an hour since Hannah had climbed into the carriage and still the giant fortress of the Imperial Palace loomed in the distance, high on a hillside overlooking the Bosporus.

As they neared the port, Hannah heard the squeak of ropes on restless boats and the drunken shouts of sailors. At the harbour, the smell of the salt-ladened sea air and fish from the markets filled her nostrils. A few moments later, they drew nearer to Seraglio Point, which jutted like a rhinoceros horn into the Bosporus. The Sea of Marmara lay to the south and the Golden Horn to the north. Only as they approached the palace, set high on the bluff, did the air turn sweet and fresh.

On the right they passed the Hagia Sophia mosque. To Hannah’s left, moonlight cast a silvery wash over the high palace walls. The Sublime Porte, the main entry into the palace, with its twin turrets and gatekeepers’ quarters of large octagonal towers with pointed roofs on either side came into view, rearing up like a creature rising from the sea. The carriage passed through the Gate of Salutation, entered the First Courtyard, the wheels gliding on the marble paving. Hannah replaced her veil.

During the day, this central courtyard of the palace was open to all the Sultan’s subjects. It seethed with crowds of people seeking redress for grievances. Several hundred agitated Ottomans usually surrounded the pavilions while busy scribes wrote out their complaints. Empty now, the vast space echoed with the clatter of the mare’s hooves. Five heads were displayed on spikes on either side of the Gate, a warning to all who passed of the Sultan’s absolute power and the consequences of not yielding to it. The heads were stuffed with cotton if the executed man had been high-born or with straw if he had been of low station. The carriage passed numerous armouries, the buildings of the Imperial Mint, and stables housing three thousand horses.

Hannah averted her eyes from the Fountain of the Executioner, where the executioner washed the blood from his hands after beheadings. At the entrance to the harem, the carriage finally halted. Craning her neck, Hannah could see a gigantic, formless shadow against the white and blue Iznik wall. To her surprise, as her eyes adjusted she recognized Mustafa himself waiting for her rather
than one of his minions. Mustafa, the Chief Black Eunuch, the guardian of the harem, wore a black sash, black tunic, and a towering black turban with a gold quill on top. A girdle of diamonds encircled his hips as befit one of the richest men in the palace. Only the Sultan and the Grand Vizier were more powerful than Mustafa.

Though she had met him many times, his inky blackness continued to astound her. She had not encountered Nubians in Venice and she could not help but study the man every time she saw him. How was it possible for skin to be so dark? Had Mustafa been standing in front of a black basalt wall, she would not have seen him. Hannah had been frightened of him the first time she met him, but had come to admire his brilliant eyes, satiny skin, and gentle nature.

Mustafa was a master of self-control. Only his occasional gruffness and his halting steps revealed that he was frequently in pain. For the Arab slavers to remove what God had intended a man to have was an appalling crime. Perhaps he still had the desires of a man, yet there had never been a whisper of scandal about him regarding the girls of the harem. To Hannah it seemed as though his joy came from his chest of jewels and his political power. There were those who claimed he owned a magnificent
yali
, an estate on one of the Princes’ Islands, with a huge house overlooking the Sea of Marmara, where he retreated when the pain rendered him unfit for human companionship. It was the kind of story one hears in the harem, a place where idleness and boredom incite tongues to wag.

Mustafa approached the carriage and bowed his head low, the golden quill in his turban glinting in the shadow of the Gate of Salutation. As always when Hannah noticed the quill and thought of its purpose, she did not know whether to wince or to blush.

She stood as Suat dismounted from the driver’s seat, opened the carriage door, and placed a small set of steps in front of the carriage. She held out her hand to Mustafa, who took it in his plump one. It was scented with attar of rose. His skin was as soft as a girl’s. He steadied her, helping her to alight. As she bent toward him, her velvet pouch swung forward and grazed his chest. Mustafa also wore a velvet pouch around his neck. While hers contained silkworm eggs, his, it was rumoured, contained that shrivelled part of his body that had been taken from him as a young boy, a part he kept with him at all times so that when he died, he could be buried whole.

She released Mustafa’s hand once her feet touched the marble paving stones. Was it right that Hannah permitted Mustafa to touch her? It was a riddle she had not solved. Jewish law was strict: unrelated men and women were forbidden from having physical contact. Did the law include someone like Mustafa, not entirely a man, yet certainly not a woman? His voice was high, his torso thick, his hips almost womanly. His hand was warm and comforting in hers. Whether right or wrong, Hannah had not the heart to avoid contact.

Mustafa smiled, his lips as fleshy and pink as a conch shell, his generous cheeks creasing, flashing teeth as white
as the Chinese porcelain in the new palace kitchens. Was his smile heart-felt? He beckoned her to follow him into the Imperial Harem.

Hannah was naive, as Isaac had told her often enough. She was no wiser than a child when it came to the politics of the palace—a place of conspiracy, intrigue, sudden deaths, disappearances, and poisonings. Not a dish of food passed the Sultan’s lips without the Chief Taster trying it first. People in the palace whom Hannah met and laughed with one day were gone without a trace the next time she inquired.