The Sultan's Seal (16 page)

K
amil sits on a cushioned bench under a trellis of jasmine in the garden of his mother’s house, reading Reese’s
Manual of Toxicology,
which he has borrowed from Michel with the excuse that it would help him with his investigations. Kamil has always taken satisfaction from knowing exactly how things work. But his reading today is in the service of a more uncertain project, his father. Opium poisoning, he reads, leaves few consistent clues in the body after death. The pupils are often contracted, but may also be dilated. Death may be sudden, or staved off altogether, depending on whether the stomach was full or empty, how many grains of opium were administered, and whether the poison was in liquid form or solid, as tincture of laudanum or crystals of morphia. But a drop of starch diluted by iodic acid will identify a residue of only one ten-thousandth of a grain of morphia by turning blue. There is nothing in the book about weaning a man from the habit of opium.

Sparks of light from the strait give the garden an air of motion and exuberance that intensifies its tranquillity. One of Kamil’s most vivid childhood memories is of the delicate, colorful crocheted butterflies edging the cotton scarf draped loosely over his mother’s hair. When she leaned over his father to serve him tea, the butterflies vibrated in the breeze and seemed to be trying to lift the scarf away from her face.

Why had his mother chosen to live here on her own? he wonders again. Her presence in the garden is strong. He can almost believe he sees her, stitching her tapestry on the bench beside the roses. Maybe he is seeing visions like Baba, he muses. He supposes his mother tired of the immense staff, the constant surveillance, the wives and families of officials and other visitors she was required to entertain at the official residence. During this time, Kamil remembers watching his parents carefully when they were together. One day, from behind a door, Kamil saw his father embrace his mother, swiftly, almost furtively, in a passageway. This embrace, though brief, relieved Kamil’s fear that his parents would part from one another, that he would lose them. At that moment he became aware of this possibility, lodged like a splinter in his heart.

After this, the family moved permanently to his mother’s house. Kamil’s father came twice a week, bringing his documents and a small retinue of assistants. He settled himself to work at a table under the short, sturdy pine tree overlooking the roses and, beyond them, the strait. Kamil’s mother refused to let the servants pour her husband’s tea, but took the empty glass herself to the samovar steaming on a nearby table. She spilled the remnants in a copper bowl, washed the glass with hot water from the spigot at the samovar’s base, emptying this water too into the bowl. Then she carefully poured two fingers of the rust-black concentrate from a small china pot atop the steaming brass urn, topping it up with hot water. Holding the glass against the light, she carefully inspected the color of the tea, adjusting it with more tea concentrate or more water until the color was just right—a brilliant brownish red that she called rabbit’s blood. She brought the glass to her husband balanced on her smooth palm and bent to place it on the table before him.

Enraptured by this peaceful memory, Kamil drowses. His grasp on the book weakens and it slips from his hand. He is awakened by the clink of glass against glass. For a brief moment, in the late afternoon shadows on the patio, he thinks he sees his mother standing by the door. Her face hidden behind a wing of cloth, she is wearing Sybil’s dress. When she moves into the slanted sunlight, he sees it is Karanfil, the cook, bringing him tea.

“I
’m like the cook on a Black Sea grain ship. The cook is set afloat in a small dinghy attached to the ship by a long rope, so that when he cooks over a fire, he doesn’t endanger the ship with its combustible cargo.”

Violet and I were walking in the garden. Over my shoulder, the sky smoldered orange behind the hill. Our leather slippers made delicate scuffing sounds on the paving stones as we approached the pavilion. The sky over the strait had been leached to ash.

“How do they get the food from him?”

“They wait until he has put out the fire, then pull him back in. But it’s dangerous. If there’s a storm or a fire, he is lost.”

“How do you know this?”

“Hamza told me.”

Violet said nothing, but I sensed her disapproval. She never liked Hamza and spied on us when he visited until I scolded her for it.

I had not heard from Hamza since the dinner at our house in Nishantashou, even in the weeks since Amin Efendi’s attack. This weighed on me. If he had sent a message, Aunt Hüsnü might not have bothered to pass it on to me here. Nevertheless, I was hurt by his silence. He must have heard what Amin Efendi had done. The city vibrated with the news.

My feelings had not been steady since the attack. Self-pity overtook me during sleepless nights. I disowned it and wished to cut it from me like a useless limb. The bitter rage I relished, as it made the pain recede. But my anger flooded over. I snapped at Violet, and raged silently at mother, Ismail Dayi, and Hamza for not protecting me, even though I knew they could have done nothing. Most of all, I was angry at myself for having gone along with the charade of visits. But beneath the anger was a calm lucidity, a new confidence that I was closer now to understanding death. That it was really rather simple, after all.

T
HE GARDEN PATH
wound around the base of the small hill on which perched the glass-walled pavilion. Violet wandered a few steps ahead of me, but my eyes were drawn to a motion inside. At first I reached out to alert Violet, but then withdrew my hand at the thought it might be Hamza. Her dark profile turned back toward me. Behind her, the sky was ash gray.

“Go inside,” I told her. She looked surprised, then displeased. Without a word, she swung around and marched toward the house, the tail of her head scarf swinging hard with every step.

I waited, gazing toward the water, until she had closed the door. My ears strained for Hamza’s nightingale call, but found only the commotion of common birds. The ashes in the sky bled and infected the air, now dense with dusk. An owl mourned in the forest.

I turned and climbed the path to the pavilion. The door was ajar. I pushed it open and slipped inside. No one was there. I sat heavily on a cushion. Most of the shutters were closed and the room was dark and chilly, but I no longer cared enough to rise. I heard a moan and realized it had come from my own chest.

I remember clearly the small, cool hand that settled on my arm out of the darkness. I looked around at a bright shimmer suspended in the dark, like a white veil. Startled, I said nothing.

The apparition settled beside me. Its hand moved to my cheeks and stroked them dry, first one, then the other. A small kindling.

“You mustn’t cry,” the face said in English.

“Mary? Is it you?”

“I came ’round to see you, but your maid said you weren’t at home. So I decided to rest here for a bit before driving back. It’s such a long way. I left the driver snoring in his carriage outside the gate. I guess he’s used to long-winded women’s visits.”

“I didn’t know you were here.”

“You weren’t at the Palais des Fleurs at the usual time, so I sent you a message at your father’s house. I was worried you might be ill. Then I heard about what happened to you and that you were staying up here, so I had to come see you. I didn’t realize it was so far. I sent you a message to let you know I’d be visiting today, but you never responded.” She shrugged. “I came anyway.”

“I never received any messages from you, Mary, either at Nishantashou or here.”

Mary sat back, frowning. “But I sent them. The messenger said he gave them to your maid.”

For a few moments we gazed at the ink-washed sky outside the unshuttered pavilion window, each lost in our own thoughts. What else had Violet kept from me?

“So you had no idea I was coming,” Mary said incredulously.

“No,” I responded, smiling at her, “but I’m very pleased you’re here. I too wanted to see you, but life became too, how shall I put it, different. Else I should have sent you a message too—or responded to yours. You are so kind to come all this way.”

“I’m sorry about what happened, Jaanan.” She moved closer, linking her arm through mine. We looked for a while at our reflections in the black dusk of the window.

“You know,” she whispered finally, “something like that happened to me too.”

Her hand remained hot through the cloth of my sleeve.

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my eye on her reflection. Her hair looked like it was made of light.

“Your fiancé?” I asked finally, to help her.

“No. Punishment.” Her voice was bitter.

“For what?”

“For not wanting them.”

I didn’t understand the meaning of her words, but saw she was sad and angry. She withdrew her hand and sat, head bowed, in the shadow.

“There were three of them. A lodger and his cronies. They saw me kissing a woman friend. They spied on me in my room while we were together.”

“What evil is there in a kiss among women?”

Mary looked at me wonderingly.

“When my friend left, they forced their way in and said they’d hurt me if I didn’t do the same to them.”

“How awful,” I exclaimed, remembering the stories of young women who flung themselves to their deaths rather than be touched by a man before their wedding day. I supposed that included a kiss, although now that seemed harmless enough to me.

“What did you do?”

She said softly, “I did what they wanted. What else could I do? They threatened me. They said they’d tell the landlady. I worked there, in the kitchen. I would have lost my position. I had no place else to go.”

“What about your friend?”

Mary stared at the dark window for a long moment before answering. “She’s the one who told them where to look. She sold me for a few pence.”

I didn’t see why men would pay to see women kiss. Perhaps in England women were kept hidden as they are among the Ottomans, and unscrupulous men paid to look at them.

“People heard about what happened anyway. They went around bragging about what they had done. No one would hire me. I lost everything.” I could hear Mary quietly crying, her face in shadow. “The wife of the minister of our church took pity on me and gave me a good reference, but only if I promised to reform. So I came out here.”

I leaned over and caressed the silken filaments of her hair. She let me stroke her hair, as she had my cheeks. She was lovely, taut, confused. I thought to gentle her in the way among women.

When after a while she touched her lips to mine, I misunderstood and she fell back.

“You startled me,” I said.

“It’s only a kiss,” she said breathlessly. “Won’t you let me?”

“You are right,” I admitted, ashamed of having repulsed her. “There is no shame among women, only comfort.”

We smiled bashfully at one another, our faces close enough to see in the gloom. I allowed her to kiss my mouth, then my neck. It reminded me of the balm that ran through me when Violet calmed my fears as a child and, after Hamza no longer visited, eased my sorrow. I had not desired Violet’s pity since Amin Efendi’s shameful attack, but this pale woman’s touch brought me back to my body. It is a blessing of womanhood that we may gather strength and pleasure from one another.

Like a mariner in uncharted seas, her hand traced the pulse in my throat to the top of my breasts, sheathing them in flames. Our lips lay together as twins. I felt myself arching back against the cushions as her hands pulled away the layers of cloth between us.

“Never strangers,” she breathed into my ear. “Not from the very beginning.”

She did not speak again, not even when I lay shuddering in her arms, my body her supplicant.

This was not the bread and water of Violet’s caress, but a veneration.

A
FTER THAT WE
resumed our weekly meetings. As the months passed, I thought less and less about Hamza, who did not come again. Instead, I savored the unfamiliar sensations of my first real friendship with a woman. Mary rented a carriage and we went for drives through the autumn countryside. When we discovered the abandoned sea hamam, we began to go there for our picnics. The driver returned at a given time or waited, snoring, by the road.

I unstacked the copper warming pots and laid them in a circle on the table. We threw a fringed cotton blanket on the mattress to cover the damp boards. Our bare feet hung in pairs, hers pale as milk, mine the color of fine china. As always, Mary had brought coal and kindled a small fire in the brazier. The jewelry I had given her winked from the shadows as she heated water for tea. From a corner nook, I extracted two tea glasses, the cheap kind bought in the market.

Perched on the mattress under a quilt, we fed each other pockets of flaky dough stuffed with cheese and parsley, tart fingertips of grape leaves rolled around rice and currants, fragrant bread kept hot in the tinned copper pans. After we ate, we smoked cigarettes and threw the remnants from the shady portico into the bright captive square of water. In another season these walls would hold the racket of children’s calls, shrill volleys of sound amid the placid murmur of their mothers’ voices telling and retelling. Their legs shyly entering the sea up to the ribbon at the knee. Bathing costumes worn like daring fashion gowns. The vulnerable body quickly pressed between plush towels so it did not sicken from a draft.

But not yet. It was still our sun and sea, our banging shutters, our sighing under the weathered boards. We lay still like split mussels, gathering a crust of salt. Her yellow hair was cut short, like a boy’s, and when she slicked it back wet, her face became naked.

T
o Sybil’s surprise, it is not difficult to arrange to see Shukriye. The women’s gatherings buzz with the news that she is staying with her sister, Leyla. The women prepare to visit the house in droves to offer sympathy to the sisters, whose father lies dying, and to assuage their curiosity about this member of their society so long gone. On the family’s first receiving day, Sybil joins the assault of the concerned and curious. Sybil hears the woman beside her whisper to a neighbor that Shukriye has borne three children, but that only one survives, a boy, just two years old.

“Mashallah, by the will of Allah,” the other woman answers in surprise, turning her head and looking appraisingly at Shukriye. “The poor woman. But at least she has a son.”

Shukriye, a plump woman in a caftan of exquisite brocade, sits on the divan, her face half hidden behind the wings of a gauze scarf that hangs to her breast. Sybil can see that her eyes are red from weeping. Shukriye’s sister, Leyla, keeps up the formal greetings and directs the servants to offer the guests tea, cakes, and savories from large silver trays. Another servant stands in the corner with a small stove and implements, ready to make coffee for anyone desiring it.

Sybil notices Asma Sultan’s daughter, Perihan, sitting next to Shukriye, her hand occasionally reaching to smooth Shukriye’s robe. She remembers that Shukriye had been engaged to the man Perihan wanted to marry. Perhaps, she thinks, they are united as friends in sorrow at his death.

An old woman in a corner of the divan by the window moves her head rhythmically side to side, intoning a litany of prayer, interspersed with loud sighs and appeals to Allah.

“That is Shukriye’s grandmother.”

“May Allah protect her. She is praying for her son.”

There is a commotion among the women, a rising whisper and flurry of silk as they make way for a tall eunuch that Sybil recognizes as the one that had ushered her into Asma Sultan’s house. The women fall silent. Behind him, Asma Sultan enters the room. She looks tired and older than Sybil remembers from the circumcision party two weeks before. She is dressed in a tight-waisted European gown and walks stiffly past the row of women in loose Turkish robes propped comfortably on the divan.

Leyla hurries toward her, arms extended in welcome. Signaling to Shukriye and Perihan to follow her, she leads Asma Sultan into an adjoining private room. As Asma Sultan passes Sybil, she stops and, with an amused smile, gestures that she should come with them. This occasions a flurry of whispers among the other visitors. The eunuch waits beside the door, arms folded, and when the five women have passed through, closes it behind them.

Sybil finds herself in a sitting room furnished only with a low cushioned divan around three sides of the room. In the middle is a carpet of cheerful colors on which are scattered small low tables of wood inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. The windows behind the divan open onto the Bosphorus, quaking with light. She hears the sad query of a dove from the garden.

Asma Sultan is given the seat of honor in the corner of the divan, Perihan beside her. With a curious look, Leyla seats Sybil to Asma Sultan’s left.

This is followed by the formalities of introduction and inquiries about health. Servant girls bring refreshments, then withdraw. Shukriye slumps on the divan. She does not eat or speak beyond the required formulaic responses.

Finally, Asma Sultan asks, “What is the matter with her?” To Shukriye she says encouragingly, “Pull yourself together, dear girl, and tell us what has befallen you in these eight years since we last saw you.”

Leyla, beside her, adjusts the cushions at her back and gently draws the veil back from her face. She speaks to her in a low, soothing voice, as to a child.

“My rose, remember, I’ve petitioned the palace to bring you back to the city. Everything will be all right.”

Shukriye stops crying and sits up straighter. She squeezes her sister’s hand. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but her face is white and round as a full moon, with even features and a small red mouth. A headdress of tiny gold coins sweeps across her forehead.

Asma Sultan continues in a kind voice, “That’s better. Now we can see you. What is it that is troubling you, my dear? I know. Your poor father, of course. May his illness pass.” Sybil knows this is simply a formula of comfort. She has heard that the man is near death.

Leyla holds her sister’s hand and strokes her cheek, murmuring, “Shukriye, my dearest, my rose. You’re home at last. We’ve missed you very much.”

Shukriye sighs deeply, as if reaching for all the air in the room. When she finishes, she says to no one in particular, “What is to be done? It is in Allah’s hands.”

She notices Sybil for the first time.

“Who is that?” she asks.

Leyla introduces Sybil again, emphasizing the fact that her father is the British ambassador.

Sybil begins repeating the ritual formula of greeting. Leyla interrupts, waving her hand exhaustedly and says, “Sybil Hanoum, you are welcome. We consider you a member of our house. Please sit.”

Leyla calls to the servant waiting by the door and tells her to bring coffee and then to leave and make sure they are not disturbed.

When the girl has served the coffee and gone, Leyla says, “When you’re ready, my rose, tell us everything.”

“I have a large house,” Shukriye begins slowly, “with enough servants that I cannot say I’m not comfortable. And people say that my husband is a good man.” She pauses and loses her eyes in the play of light beyond the window. “Perhaps he is,” she whispers, “but he’s also a weak man. I feel as if I’m married not to him, but to his mother.” Her face winds into a grimace and she begins to cry again, an ugly outraged crying.

“She is responsible for the death of my children,” she chokes out.

The other women sit tense and rapt. Sybil is startled to see a smile of satisfaction flash across Perihan’s face, but then decides she must have been mistaken.

Finally, Shukriye calms down and continues in a hoarse voice. “My daughters fell ill after eating her food. I think she poisoned them out of spite because I hadn’t borne a son. She didn’t allow me to take the children to the doctor in town. Instead, she called her faith healer. All he did,” she says disgustedly, “was write some Quranic verses on a piece of paper and throw it in water, then had the girls drink the water. Can you imagine?”

Perihan says softly, “Imbibing the word of Allah is a blessed remedy, Shukriye dear. Perhaps they were not meant to live. It is Allah’s will.”

Shukriye closes her eyes. “Surely treating illness with medicine also finds favor in Allah’s eyes.”

Asma Sultan asks, “Are you not worried about your son during your absence?”

“Of course I am, but he has a guardian now.”

“Your husband?”

“No, he’s still his mother’s slave. After my children died, my husband took a kuma. His mother suggested it, of course. Then she handed him the stick for our backs,” she adds angrily.

A second wife, thinks Sybil, appalled.

Seeing the women’s stricken faces, Shukriye tells them, “It’s not so bad. She became like my daughter. I tried to protect her, but every month laid a year on her face. She became pregnant and miscarried in midwinter, with no midwife able to reach her through the snow in time. She can have no more children, the poor girl.”

Shukriye’s hand traces the flowers on a cushion.

“Since her misfortune, her spirit has hardened. Even our husband fears her temper. And she has the support of three brothers who live nearby. My son is safe in her hands.”

The room falls silent.

Finally, Sybil ventures, “You must miss your family terribly. I haven’t seen my sister in England in more than seven years, and I’ve never met my nephews at all. Sometimes it’s hard to bear. Tell me, why did you marry so far away?” Flustered, she adds, “I mean, if it’s not impertinent of me to ask.”

“I don’t know, chère hanoum. I was engaged to marry my cousin, Prince Ziya.” She struggles to control her voice. “He was killed and then my life was taken from me. Whoever killed him, killed me too. I refuse to believe that my life in Erzurum was kismet. Someone besides Allah had a hand in it.” She adjusts her veil so that it covers the lower part of her face, then looks up at the women and adds softly, “Those who take fate from the hands of Allah are guilty of pride and will surely be punished.”

“Allah knows our fates,” Perihan counters. “They are written on our foreheads at birth. No earthly being can alter them.” Her voice has a sharp edge that can easily be confused with sorrow. She pulls her veil across the bottom of her face, but Sybil sees the deep crease between her eyes.

“Perhaps you’re right. But what was the point of his death? I don’t believe for a moment that he was killed by thieves in a house of ill repute, as they told me. I’m sure the palace had him killed. They think all the Turks in Paris are plotting against the sultan. But they’re wrong. Ziya was there to oversee the signing of a trade agreement, nothing more.”

Leyla tries to hush her sister. “My dear sister, please don’t excite yourself. Allah is the only witness.” Trying to change the subject, she turns to Sybil.

“You remind me of a governess we had in the palace long ago, may Allah rest her soul. You have the same pale eyes.”

“Hannah Simmons?” Sybil feels her skin prickling with excitement.

“Yes, that was her name. Did you know her?” Leyla leans closer to Sybil. “You seem too young.”

“My mother did. Please tell me about Hannah.”

“A calm girl, sweet as honey lokum.” Leyla looks around the room. “What else is there to tell? Asma Sultan, you must remember her.”

Asma Sultan thinks a moment, then answers, “No, regrettably I do not. Though, of course, we all know what happened to her.”

Perihan looks at her mother in surprise and seems about to speak, then thinks better of it.

Leyla also appears surprised. “But she was a governess in your house.”

“We have many servants,” Asma Sultan snaps irritably.

Perihan adds in a conciliatory tone, “She wasn’t very memorable. I’m sure her death is the only reason we can remember her at all.”

“I thought her quite pleasant,” Shukriye chimes in. “I often saw her at the women’s gatherings and at the hamam. She had charge of the young girls. I once tried to give her some satin cloth, but she seemed content to dress like a colorless sparrow. Poor woman. She seemed uninterested in even the simplest embroidery or jewelry.”

“Just that silver necklace she always wore,” Leyla adds. “Do you remember it, Shukriye? The only time she ever took it off was to sleep and at the baths. I was surprised that she took it off even then, since she insisted on wearing a chemise. Perhaps she had a disability?” She looks at Sybil inquiringly. “I never understood why she hid her body in the bath. It’s ridiculous. We’re all women. What is there to hide?”

Sybil can think of no response that wouldn’t offend her hosts. On the lowest physical surface, what Leyla says makes logical sense, but it takes no account of higher, more civilized notions of modesty. She smiles nervously.

“Why didn’t she take the necklace off? Was it something special?” asks Shukriye.

“I don’t think so. Just a round silver bauble,” Leyla says dismissively.

Sybil speaks up. She wants to defend Hannah from these women’s disparaging judgment. “I think it was probably quite a valuable piece. At least, it seems to have been made at the palace.”

“Why do you think that? I don’t remember anything particular about it,” asks Leyla curiously. “Of course, it was all such a long time ago.”

“It has a tughra inside,” Sybil says brightly, relieved at not having to defend British modesty and proud that she has something to contribute to the conversation.

Leyla draws her breath in sharply. “What? Where would a foreign girl get such a thing? You must be mistaken.”

“No, really. I saw it myself.”

Leyla looks at Asma Sultan. “It must have been a gift from someone in the harem.”

“I’m not in the habit of giving valuable gifts to servants,” Asma Sultan answers with mild reproach.

“Sybil Hanoum,” Perihan asks, “did you say you saw it? I thought the police would have taken it.”

The women’s heads all turn to Sybil.

“The young Englishwoman—Mary Dixon—who was killed last month had it around her neck. You’ve heard of her death, surely.” Turning to Perihan, she adds, “She was your governess, I believe.”

“Mary Hanoum,” Perihan mutters. “An odd woman, but I wished her no ill. May Allah have mercy on her soul.” To Sybil, “I never saw her wear such a necklace.”

“How do you know it’s the same one Hannah had?” Leyla asks.

Sybil explains about the box. “It’s also special because it has Chinese writing in it.”

“Chinese?” the women exclaim.

“Then it must be something from outside the country,” Perihan suggests. “Maybe the sultan’s seal was added later.”

Leyla agrees. “Our food in the palace is served on porcelain brought from China.”

“And aren’t those enormous vases in the reception rooms from China?” Shukriye adds. “I remember almost knocking one over as a child.”

“Didn’t your mother have a collection of Chinese art?” Leyla asks Asma Sultan.

Asma Sultan doesn’t answer the question. Instead, she asks Sybil, “How do you know it’s Chinese?”

“My cousin Bernie is visiting here. He’s a scholar of Asia. That is, he’s writing a book on relations between your empire and the East. Anyway, he was able to read it. It’s part of a poem.”

“A poem,” Asma Sultan repeats knowingly. “Of course. It was probably a gift to Hannah from her lover. But how did this woman Mary come to have it?”

“Hannah had a lover?” Sybil tries to hide her excitement.

“Someone she met on her day off. She was allowed to leave the palace once a week, but Arif Agha kept an eye on her.”

“Arif Agha?”

“One of the eunuchs. Every week, Hannah got into a carriage with the same driver and didn’t come back until early the next morning. Arif Agha asked her where she went, but all he could get out of her was, ‘To visit a friend.’ He tried to have her followed, but that incompetent fellow couldn’t manage it. And then it was too late.”