The Venetian Contract (7 page)

In another hour, Feyra was as sure as she could be that her mistress was dead.

The Valide Sultan’s eyes were open and staring, the flesh mottled as black as a bruise. Feyra closed the eyes that were as blue as the sea, this sea and the one that cradled Venice, and then she tiptoed from the room.

Feyra knew it was time to find the doctor. She stumbled back to the Hall of the Ablution Fountain. The last time she had been here her world had been the right way up. Now her entire future was uncertain and she had found and lost a mother in a brace of hours.

She sent one of the black eunuchs for the doctor and when he came he looked little better than her poor mistress. He was grey and shaking, and his turban was awry. She
bowed to him. ‘It seems you already know, Teacher, what it is that I would say.’

Haji Musa looked at her, as if he had taken a glimpse down the pit. ‘Feyra, I must tell you, your father is in danger. Don’t let him sail.’

‘My
father
? But I came to tell you my –’ she paused ‘– my mistress, she has passed away. You did not know?’

It was as if the doctor could not hear her. ‘I have already said too much. Don’t let him sail. His cargo is dangerous. It will kill him.’

Feyra froze. ‘His cargo? What is my father’s cargo?’ She was shredded by loss and confusion, sick of hints and intimations; it made her strident. ‘Tell me, quickly and plainly.’

Her teacher and mentor, the great Haji Musa, visibly shrunk before her. He backed away. ‘I have already said too much.’ His hands fluttered to his mouth. ‘Did you say your mistress was dying?’

‘She is already dead.’

The news seemed not to matter to him at all, a mere detail. ‘Then, Feyra, go home
now
. Do not be here when she is discovered. And take your father away,
do not let him sail
.’

‘Wait!’

He was already walking away. ‘I have already said too much. They may take my head for just this much. If I say more, I am surely a dead man.’

Feyra watched him scuttle off and knew that she would never see him again.

Not knowing what else to do, she walked through the quiet courts in the direction of the palace gates. Her mother had
told her to go with Timurhan on his voyage. Her mentor had told her on no account to let her father sail. Both of them had spoken of his cargo. Nur Banu had named it the black horse, and Haji Musa had warned her it would kill him. Feyra felt suddenly very young. All she wanted to do was climb into Timurhan’s lap, pull his beard as she used to as a child, lay all before him and ask him what they should do.

As she passed the Sultan’s quarters she could hear the Sultan’s voice booming within. She quickened her steps, as if Murad himself might emerge from his rooms and strike her down for letting his mother die. If she’d listened more carefully, if she’d not been in quite such a hurry, she might have heard another male voice.

She might have recognized the second voice too. The Sultan was in conference with her father.

Chapter 4

S
ultan Murad III had begun his reign as he had meant to go on.

On his return from the province of Manisa to claim the throne, he had ordered the strangulation of the five younger brothers his father had sired by other wives. The succession was clear; and now at nineteen, young, vigorous and unopposed, he was ready to put his life’s ambition into play.

According to the Kizlar Agha, with whom he’d just had an interesting conference, his mother should be dead by now. He was at last free of the tie that had of late been squeezing him like a noose and he would no longer have to brook her interference.

Conveniently, too, he had contrived to allow the Genoese to do the deed. His hands were clean, for while his suppression of his brothers had been popular with his people, and expected in a strong ruler, the murder of his mother, a well-loved figure, would have been a step too far. To blame the Genoese, though, was a masterstroke. He would have her
Gedik
strangled for negligence and denounce the Genoese who had, in his opinion, taken over too much of his city with their quarters in the Galata tower and the surrounding ghetto. He could not only mourn his mother with all civic
honours, but also whip up righteous anger against foreigners. And such hatred would only serve to strengthen this latest, greatest and most audacious piece of foreign policy to ever have been attempted.

The Sultan sat on his throne and regarded the man standing obediently before him on the marble map of the known world that covered the entire floor of this vast presence chamber. The man was, appropriately, standing in the sea.

This man had once given an oath of utter allegiance to his father Selim and all his heirs. A one-time admiral, and now, in peacetime, just an old sea captain. Well, the old fellow was about to be an admiral again. The notion made the Sultan feel magnanimous, a sensation that he enjoyed, concomitant, as it was, with power. There would be one last fight for the old sea-dog. Sultan Murad III was about to call in his debt.

As he gave his instructions to the captain he thought he could detect the exact moment, the very
second
in their discourse where Timurhan had realized that he would never be coming back. This man who had been crossing all the charted waters of the Ottoman Empire and beyond since he was a boy, was now to embark on his last voyage. Murad enjoyed the moment. It was part of the whole picture. The gold of the room, the vast marble map, and the attendant white eunuchs, all deaf and dumb, having had their eardrums pierced and their tongues torn out at his command. The cloth he was wearing, the palace walls around him, the Harem full of women that he could take at a word. And, best of all, the power to end a man’s life and expect him to accept it. And the sea captain did.

Timurhan bin Yunus Murad was perfect for the task – no
one knew the waters like him, he was a veteran of Lepanto and had seen enough atrocity in that greatest of sea battles to hate Venice and its Doge. And he had only one dependant; one whose care Murad would be only too happy to assume.

‘Our good doctor has played his part and found a case, from one of the temples outside the city. The white eunuchs will arrange for your cargo to be delivered to the dock tonight at midnight. You will sail in one of the Venetian ships that we captured at Lepanto. It is named
Il Cavaliere
.’

From the Sultan’s voice you might have supposed that he had been there. In fact it was Timurhan who had been at the skirmish which had resulted in the capture of this very galleass.
The Corsair
. The name meant as much to him as it did to Murad. The Sultan, who was familiar with every detail of his mother’s history, found the name amusing. He liked coincidences and serendipity – it made him feel that God was with him. ‘You will take the ship to Venice and wait.’

He rose from his throne and walked the map noiselessly, charting the ship’s route in his golden slippers. When he reached the marble rendering of Venice he walked deliberately all over the city. It pleased him to sully the place with his feet. ‘When you reach the mouth of the lagoon –’ he stood at the very place ‘– wait for a storm. Under the cover of a tempest, and in a Venetian ship, you have a good chance of slipping past the quarantine island.’ He indicated a small land mass on the map with a legend beneath which read
Vigna Murada
. ‘Here, they will keep you, if they catch you, for forty days, and all will be lost. The sailors are detained in almshouses and the cargo washed and smoked to be free of all contagion. I need not tell you, that if this
came to pass, our venture would be at an end. Take your freight instead to San Marco’s basin, right before the palace of the Doge. It is here –’ he placed the point of his slipper precisely ‘– that you will release your payload.’

The Sultan waited long enough to be sure he would hear no demurral. The sea captain had followed him obediently, like the cur that he was. ‘Then, you will proceed to the lee of this island, named Giudecca. There you will find a safe house, here at the place called Santa Croce.’ The Sultan was confident that Timurhan would not understand the significance of the holy name, but swallowed the words a little, just in case. ‘Here you will find those who will shelter you and give you succour, sanctuary and sustenance. Then you will be able to sail safely back to Turkey.’ He delivered the lie breezily.

The sea captain, looking down at the map, was silent. The Sultan was used to silence in his presence but this one went on so long as to irritate him. Then it occurred to him that this man, who had been in his father’s presence many times but never in his, was cowed by his power and person. He was pleased. His mother, God rot her, always said he was as different from his father as night was from day.
Of course
this man was afraid of him. He was not his father Selim, a weak man, kind and merciful, a sop and a sot. ‘You may speak,’ he said to the sea captain magnanimously.

Timurhan bin Yunus Murad was not, in fact, cowed by the Sultan. He thought him a vicious young puppy and not fit to lick the boots of his late father. He was silent because he was attempting to come to terms with this latest blow that fate had dealt him.

Timurhan was used to loss. He had found a woman he loved and loved him, and lost her to this Sultan’s father. He
had thrown himself into his seafaring, risen to prominence at Lepanto, and lost his fleet. The only thing he had managed to keep hold of in his life was Feyra, and now he was to lose her too. The irony was not lost upon him. When his daughter was born, he had made a pledge of allegiance to Selim and his heirs in return for being allowed to take his daughter home and raise her in peace in the city. That very pledge had brought him here, to this room, to accept the mission which would separate him from Feyra for ever. He spoke at last, asking the one question that consumed his mind.

‘O light of my eyes and delight of my heart, what will happen to Feyra?’

‘Ah, your clever daughter. Yes, very clever,’ the Sultan said, thinking back to his illuminating conversation with the Kizlar Agha. ‘She already knows that which she should not.’

Timurhan held out both his palms, as if to ward off a blow. ‘Sire, I know that she has too much learning, but if you would, of your kindness, just let her remain in your mother’s employ—’

The Sultan interrupted. ‘My mother has chosen her side in this war, and for this, she will no longer be needing your daughter.’

‘But—’

‘Calm yourself. I do not deprecate your daughter’s knowledge of medicine, which I can only commend. No, a clever wife is an asset. But she is also beautiful, a fact, I note, that she is at pains to disguise.’

Timurhan asked the question with dread. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I am saying that in recognition of your services to my empire, I will take care of her personally. I have decided to
confer upon Feyra the great honour of taking her to wife in the Harem as my
Kadin
.’

Timurhan was trapped. How could he reveal to the Sultan that Feyra was his half-sister, that he, a humble sea captain, had once lain with Murad’s mother? He would be cut down where he stood, and Feyra likely murdered too. Should he bow and accept the honour, go on the mission of death, and accept that Feyra would be safe and well but importuned by her brother on a daily basis?

The choice was not really a choice. He bowed.

The Sultan watched him walk to the door, smiling. Timurhan had underestimated him, as so many people did. Feyra was not the only one who knew something that she should not.