The Sultan's Eyes (9 page)

‘My mother is very dear to me,’ said the Sultan.

‘Then I am blessed indeed,’ said Valentina.

‘But you dress very strangely,’ said the Sultan.

Valentina’s eyes crinkled as she smiled beneath her veil. ‘Our ways are different to yours.’

‘I know,’ he said. He nodded his head thoughtfully, like a man many years his age. ‘This is something I have learned from your book.’

‘Then it has achieved all that we wished,’ I said.

‘I like you, Mademoiselle Hawkins,’ said the Sultan. He glanced at his sister, who nodded. ‘You will return tomorrow.’

‘If you command it, Your Magnificence,’ I said.

‘We do,’ he said. ‘I do. Go now.’

Al-Qasim waited until we were in the carriage and well outside the palace walls before he exploded.

‘I have never been so humiliated —’

‘Now, now,’ said Valentina. ‘It didn’t turn out so badly in the end.’

‘Laughing! In the Presence! What possessed you?’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t filled us with terror beforehand, it might never have happened.’

‘So it’s my fault?’ He looked as if fireworks might burst from his ears.

I leaned forward. ‘I’m sorry — we’re both sorry. But the Sultan didn’t seem to mind.’

‘Luck,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘Pure luck. Others have lost their heads for less.’

Valentina and I exchanged glances.

‘I’m sorry, too,’ she said, but not very convincingly. ‘Truly.’

Al-Qasim shook his head. ‘I can’t believe you got away with it.’ A slow smile curled up one corner of his mouth. ‘Who’d have imagined the Sultan is an avid reader? Heaven knows, his father was an imbecile.’

Willem jumped up on the back of the carriage and leaned in between us. ‘I knew you’d need a bodyguard.’

‘You were no help at all,’ I said. ‘In fact, you made it worse.’

‘I learned something today,’ he said. ‘When people think you’re a servant, they don’t see you at all. It’s like being invisible.’

‘We heard you, though,’ said Al-Qasim.

‘Wait until we tell the Admiral,’ Valentina said, wrapping her cloak more tightly around her against the chill. ‘He will laugh, too, I know it.’

Al-Qasim groaned. ‘Oh no. Do we have to call on the Jonsons now? I’ve suffered enough failed diplomacy for one day.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘We promised. And anyway, those English men are all so charming.’

‘At least we don’t have to genuflect all the time for the Admiral,’ I said.

‘Just as well,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘I don’t think Constantinople could cope with much more of your unique approach to courtly protocol.’

By the time we reached the Jonsons’ house, Willem had wriggled in under the blankets next to Valentina and we’d re-enacted the scene in the Throne Room twice.

‘I thought Colonel Orga was going to draw his sword and chop off your heads on the spot,’ said Willem. ‘Did you see his face?’

‘Don’t make an enemy of Orga, whatever you do,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘He’s a vicious creature. The stories I could tell you.’

‘Really? Please do.’

‘Willem, it is not amusing. The Sultan’s father perpetrated any number of dreadful crimes, and Colonel Orga was among those who carried them out.’

‘I didn’t trust him for a minute,’ said Willem.

‘Nuri Effendi, on the other hand, seems harmless,’ said Valentina.

‘Poor Nuri,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘I fear he may never recover.’

‘You know him well?’ asked Valentina.

‘He was my mentor,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘A great mind, a brilliant man.’ He looked up at the threatening grey sky. ‘I let him down when I fled, many years ago. I will not do it again.’

‘I can’t imagine you letting anyone down,’ I said.

‘You do not know how it was in the palace, before.’

‘So tell us,’ said Willem.

‘Not now,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘Here we are.’

‘You can’t change the subject every single time,’ I said, as we climbed from the carriage.

Al-Qasim smiled. ‘Perhaps not. But for the moment, I seem to have managed it.’

The Jonsons’ house was one of the new wooden mansions in Pera overlooking the Bosphorus. A footman showed us into a reception room with a view across the water to orchards and villages on the opposite shore. After the palace, it seemed built of sunshine: yellow walls and curtains, gilded wooden tables and chairs, and light through gleaming windows. A pile of pine logs blazed in the fireplace.

‘How delightful,’ said Valentina. ‘What a perfect room. It feels like summer in here.’

‘My mother will be pleased to hear you say it.’ Justinian Jonson stepped out from a hidden corner. ‘She detests winter. Refuses to accept that it exists.’

‘Master Jonson.’ Valentina acknowledged him with a quick nod. ‘Is your father here?’

‘Somewhere.’ Justinian waved vaguely in the direction of the hallway.

‘We must tell him about our adventures at the palace,’ Valentina said. ‘Isabella was a tremendous success.’

‘I’m sure she was.’ He looked away.

At that moment, voices sounded in the hallway, and the Admiral swept through the door, followed by a woman in a soft blue gown edged with black lace.

‘Here you are,’ he cried. ‘Survived your palace ordeal, then?’

‘It was a triumph,’ said Valentina.

‘Eventually,’ said Al-Qasim.

‘Ah, there’s a story in that, I suspect,’ said the Admiral. ‘You must stay for tea and tell us everything. But first, let me introduce my wife.’

Lady Elizabeth was several years younger than her husband, but her hair was pale silver. Her face, like Justinian’s, was finely drawn, the cheeks almost hollow, but she smiled at us warmly.

‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ she said after a flurry of introductions. ‘I’ve heard so many stories about all of you, I hardly know what is true and what is merely fantastical.’

‘Wait until you hear the latest,’ said Valentina. ‘It is both of those things.’

‘Justin, dearest,’ said Lady Elizabeth, ‘don’t you dare leave us at this fascinating juncture.’

Behind her, Justinian was edging his way towards the door. ‘I was just going to —’

‘Call for tea, there’s a dear,’ she said. ‘Then come and join us.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Or would you all prefer coffee?’

‘Both!’ the Admiral shouted. ‘And some of those spice cakes.’

Valentina was right. The Admiral laughed until he cried over our pathetic attempts at etiquette in the Presence, gasped at her exaggerated tales of my supposed audacity, and beamed when she told him I’d been invited back to the palace the next day.

‘You are a sensation, Mistress Hawkins,’ he said. ‘I knew it.’

‘Hardly,’ I said.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Valentina said, and then launched, with help from Willem and Al-Qasim, into a detailed description for Lady Elizabeth of everything we’d seen at the palace, from the Sultan’s sister to the feathered headdresses of the
kapici
.

I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes.

‘You’re weary?’ Justinian stood just behind me. He leaned across to take the cup from my hand and placed it gently on a table.

‘Everything is so foreign to me,’ I said. ‘It’s a strain trying to keep all these new rules and sights and languages in my head.’

‘If anyone can do it, you can.’

‘That’s very kind,’ I replied, ‘but you know better than anyone how short my temper is when I’m tested.’

He didn’t respond. Instead, he twirled his own cup around and around between his fingers, watching it spin.

‘It’s odd,’ he said after a few moments, ‘but I feel quite at home here, in spite of all that is so new, and so old.’

‘I felt like that when I first arrived in Venice.’

‘It’s not like that in England,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’

I sat up straight. ‘I must apologise. When we parted in London, I deceived you. Just a little.’

‘No harm done.’ His voice was grim again and strangely formal. ‘It is my family that should apologise to you, Mistress Hawkins. It was my own brother who arrested your father.’

‘I imagine he was following orders from above.’

Justinian had no idea how generous a concession it was. Normally I cursed his brother’s name, but I couldn’t, not there in the warmth of his family’s hospitality.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but we choose whose orders to take.’

I smiled. ‘That sounds like something my father would have said.’

He bowed, ever so slightly. ‘That’s the greatest compliment anyone has ever paid me.’

Something tugged at me, deep inside. Something old and sad and half-buried. I stood up, walked over to the window and gazed out across the water and the rooftops.

‘I never heard what became of our house, of Nanny,’ I said.

‘Then let me relieve your mind. One of the new college proctors lives there now, with his family. Your nanny is still in charge of the children, just as she once cared for you, and giving cheek to young visitors as always, no doubt. I made a point of finding out before I left England.’

‘Thank you.’ I let my gaze wander across the unfamiliar skyline. ‘I can’t tell you how I miss Cambridge … miss Nanny. Though I’m sure she wouldn’t approve of some of my escapades.’

‘You will see England again, I’m sure of it.’ His words seemed to float through time, through years.

‘Don’t be kind to me, please,’ I said. ‘You’ve done enough.’

‘What else are old friends for?’

‘Are we friends?’ I asked. ‘Forgive me, but we barely know each other.’

‘That much is true,’ he said. He took a step closer to the window, to me. ‘But we also have a great deal in common.’

‘Memories. That’s all.’

‘That’s more than most people.’

I put one hand on the window pane. It was cold to the touch. I would not let him unravel my tightly bound sorrow — not here, not now.

‘I wonder if we even remember the same things,’ I said. ‘I expect our views of the past are quite different.’

‘Undoubtedly.’

I felt a flush of anger. ‘The girl you knew in Cambridge was a mirage, created to disguise my true self, and my father’s.’

‘I understand,’ he said.

‘Do you? I don’t think so. In my memories, you laughed at my impertinence for speaking, for reading.’

The others were watching, and I motioned to Al-Qasim that it was time to call for the carriage.

Justinian blushed. ‘I’m sorry. I was a fool.’

‘You were —’

‘Arrogant?’

He certainly had a way of interrupting a person’s thoughts. I forgot that I had been about to leave, and instead glared at him. ‘You admit it?’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘I freely confess it. And other sins. Ideals that quite carried me away, so that I didn’t notice the truth of the world. Fancies, which I imagined to be great principles. Youthfulness,
which, according to my father, I have squandered. I was ignorant and …’

He looked for an instant as if he might weep. I have not often felt quite as uncomfortable as I did at that moment.

‘Master Jonson. Calm yourself.’

‘And extravagant.’

I reached for my veil. ‘We must go.’

Justinian reached out a hand as if to stop me. ‘I learned a great deal from him — your father. And also from you, although, I confess, I didn’t realise it at the time.’

‘I recall you being quite scathing about the capacities of the female mind.’

‘I’m attempting to apologise.’

‘There’s no need, really. Good day, Master Jonson.’

‘Do you think,’ said Willem the next morning, as he and I made our way to the palace, ‘that you can get through today without causing a major diplomatic incident?’

‘Very amusing.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ he said. ‘I quite enjoyed watching you flay someone else for a change.’

I sighed. ‘Poor Justinian. He didn’t deserve it. Not much, anyway. I should apologise.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Willem. ‘I’d let him stew for a while.’

‘I’ll send a note to his mother, at least. What must she think of me?’

‘Only that you’re a fearful harridan, but everyone in Europe knows that already. Apparently.’

I crossed my arms and refused to speak to him for the rest of the journey.

This time, we were shown through the Gate of Felicity by five attendants, and through yet another gate behind the Throne Room. They led us, without speaking, to a pavilion covered in blue and green tiles and surrounded by bare garden beds.

We were met at the door by a thin man in blue cotton robes, a cloak thrown over his shoulders against the cold. He bowed.

‘I am Jamael Khoury,’ he said. ‘It is my great honour to be the tutor to the Sultan.’

‘I am very pleased to meet you, sir,’ I said. ‘It must be to you that the Sultan owes his fine education.’

He inclined his head graciously. ‘I obey.’

He ushered us into the chamber where the Sultan and his sister waited, attended by yet more guards.

‘You have come, Mademoiselle Hawkins.’

I bowed deeply. Willem placed a pile of books next to me, then took several steps back to wait near the door.

‘There is no need for you to prostrate yourself, Mademoiselle Hawkins,’ said the Sultan. ‘I fear you are not very good at it.’

‘Thank you, Your Magnificence. Please accept my apologies for my behaviour yesterday.’

‘It does not matter,’ he said. ‘Who is that man?’

‘He is my … my bodyguard.’

‘Is he a eunuch?’

I blushed, and prayed that Willem’s French vocabulary did not extend to that word.

‘No,’ I said. ‘That is not our custom.’

The Sultan waved a tiny hand. ‘Then he cannot continue to be in my sister’s presence. This is not an official reception — today we meet informally.’

‘But all these other men —’

‘Are eunuchs,’ said the Sultan. ‘What else?’

I tried not to look at Jamael Khoury or any of the others. Perhaps all the men in the palace were eunuchs. I had no idea. I wished Al-Qasim had mentioned it in all those long hours of coaching.

‘Willem is quite harmless, I promise.’

‘He must go. Send him away.’

If only it was that simple.

‘I’m afraid I can’t really make him do anything,’ I admitted.

‘But I wish it,’ the Sultan said. He motioned to his guards.

‘Wait.’ I turned and whispered urgently in Dutch to Willem. ‘He says you have to leave.’

He crossed his arms. Somehow I knew that would happen. ‘Does he just? Well, you tell him —’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Sultan’s guards move closer.

‘Willem, please.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ll explain later. It might be best —’

‘For him, maybe,’ said Willem. ‘But if the
signora
found out I left you alone with all these infidels, my life wouldn’t be worth living.’

‘The Sultan outranks even the
signora
. Wait outside. If I need you, I’ll shout.’

He glared at the approaching guards. ‘I don’t trust these heathens.’