The Aviary Gate (31 page)

Even the senior mistresses, normally so careful of their dignity, were on their feet now.

‘Look!' voices were crying out, ‘look at her, a demon has taken her!'

The great mute Coiffeur Mistress, a giant of a negress, taller and broader than the Sultan's own halberdiers, was screaming and pointing, incoherent sounds coming from her tongueless mouth. Everyone was standing now, moving, pointing, running; the room, to Celia's dazed eyes, a whirling mêlée of fur and silk.

The elite of the eunuch guard surrounded the Sultan immediately and escorted him from the room. The others closed in around Hanza, picking her up bodily as if to remove her from the room, but it was only with difficulty that they could hold her, and several times she slipped back on to the tiled floor. Her head struck the marble floor with a sickening crack. Blood now mixed with the spittle at the corners of her mouth.

The panic in the chamber was infectious. Celia felt it grip her too. She could see the Harem Stewardess on her feet and shouting for order, but no one could hear her above the noise. Celia wanted to run, but she found that her legs would not move. Don't run, think, said a voice inside her head. And suddenly she was calm. In the storm of frenzied women Celia stood still, and saw that there were only two others who, like her, were neither running nor shouting.

In the centre of the room the Haseki was still standing beside the magician. Watching her from one side of the room, vast and unblinking on his litter, was the figure of Hassan Aga, while on the other side, sitting absolutely still on her divan, was the Valide. Two eunuch mutes, amongst the most trusted of the Valide's personal servants, had taken up positions on either side of her. When she was sure that she had the Haseki's attention, the Valide slowly lifted the rose which she was still holding between her fingers, and snapped it violently in two.
Immediately the mutes moved towards Gulay, seizing her by the shoulders. She did not cry out, and she did not struggle, but before they could take her away, Celia saw her pluck quickly at her wrist. Suddenly something blue and shining flew through the air towards her. It was the bracelet, the bracelet with the blue glass talismans. Celia watched it describe a shining arc through the air. She put her hand out to catch it, but the bracelet fell short, landing instead just below her, on the hem of Cariye Lala's robe. She leant down to retrieve it but Cariye Lala was too quick for her. The old woman, with surprising agility, bent down and scooped up the bracelet.

‘Cariye!' Celia's voice was sharp. ‘Cariye Lala – I believe that's for me.'

The under-mistress looked up at her, an expression of surprise in her blue eyes. A memory came to Celia of that night in the Valide's hammam: the feel of cool marble against her thighs, the smell of
ot
, Cariye Lala's old head working up and down over the pear. She remembered, too, the exact sensation, the needle-fine scrape, of Cariye Lala's finger as it pushed hard into her sex. The same finger from which the Haseki's blue glass bracelet was now dangling.

‘If you please …' Celia stood tall, ‘the bracelet.'

But Cariye Lala showed no sign of handing it over. She merely stood there looking at Celia, her little head cocked to one side, her eyes very bright. In her holiday finery, Celia thought unkindly, she had the look of a trumpery old parrot.

‘The bracelet,' Celia summoned as much authority as she could, ‘if you please,
cariye
.'

She held out her hand.

But still Cariye Lala showed no sign of handing over her treasure.

Then, without warning, as if she had suddenly tired of some childish game, or as if she had satisfied herself about something, she reached across and dropped the bracelet into Celia's outstretched palm.

Celia's fingers closed over it at last. When she looked up the Haseki had gone.

No one sees the sacks when they are dropped at night into the inky black waters of the Bosphorous. But you can always hear the guns which signal some nameless harem woman's demise.

On board the
Hector
, a sleepless Paul Pindar heard them.

Lying awake in her room in the palace harem, Celia Lamprey heard them.

And on his silken litter, still wrapped in his talismanic shirt, Little Nightingale turned and stirred, his eyes two black slits in the darkness.

Elizabeth's research at the Bosphorous University now began in earnest. She travelled there on the bus. The first few days Haddba insisted on sending Rashid with her to show her the way, but soon she was confident enough to negotiate the route herself. She found that she enjoyed the ride. Until now, it occurred to her, she had felt like a ghost in this ancient city; but the bus rides, repeated every day, seemed to flesh out her bones, gave her a sense of belonging, a sense, however temporary, of being part of this place, rattling and bumping her way with the other commuters along the cobbled Istanbul streets.

In the evenings she came home by the same route. As she grew to know the city better she would stop off sometimes at one or another of the old villages along the Bosphorous: at Ermigan, famous for the excellence of its water, to drink tea and to buy pastries for Haddba at her favourite shop, the Citir Pastahane; or one of the cafés in the old village square at Ortakoy, much frequented by students, where she would eat mezes – garlicky yoghurt flavoured with mint and dill, stuffed mussels, quince cheese – and watch the world go by.

They were solitary days, but Elizabeth was not lonely. Late autumn deepened into winter, and the melancholy of the city still suited her mood. In the long dark evenings she would play cards with Haddba, old-fashioned games like cribbage and rummy, or write letters to Eve. It was restful, she found, not to have to talk.

The first few weeks working in the library were very slow. But although there turned out to be no archival material, there were other unexpected breakthroughs.

One day she came across a book on the Levant Company, and opening it quite at random, found herself staring at a portrait of Paul Pindar. There was no date; no provenance. Just a name: Sir Paul Pindar.

Her first impression was how very dark he was: black eyes – intelligent and quizzical – looking out beneath close-cropped hair, beard trimmed into a neat point, not a trace of grey. Apart from a small white ruff at his neck he was dressed entirely in black. When she looked more carefully she saw that the portrait was of a man of later years, but his figure was still slim, not a hint of flesh on him, none of the tell-tale signs of wealth, of indolence or excess. Instead a feeling of restless energy emanated from the picture. Every inch, in other words, the merchant-adventurer. In one hand he held an object that Elizabeth could not quite see, proffering it to the viewer on an open palm. She turned on the reading lamp at her desk, but the book was old, published in the 1960s, and the reproduction of such poor quality that even in the brightest light the object was impossible to discern.

Elizabeth took a photocopy of the portrait. When she got back to her room that evening she laid it out on the table next to her handwritten copy of Celia Lamprey's narrative, and the photocopy of Thomas Dallam's diary. She picked up the latter and read the words again:

… than crossinge throughe a litle squar courte paved with marble, he poyneted me to go to a graite in a wale, but made me a sine that he myghte not go thether him selfe. When I cam to the grait the wale was verrie thicke and graited on bothe the sides with iron verrie strongly: but through that graite I did se thirtie of the Grand Sinyor's Concobines that weare playinge with a bale in another courte … that sighte did please me wondrous well
.

She arranged the pages carefully on the table again. Who else had known about the grate in the wall? If one junior palace guard had been aware of its existence – even if he didn't dare approach it himself – then there must have been others who knew the secret. And as Thomas Dallam had realised, if he could see in, then a woman, if she had been made aware of it, could just as easily see out. ‘Yf they had
sene me, they would all have come presently thether to louke upon me, and have wondred as moche at me, or how I cam thether, as I did to se them.'

As she read the words Elizabeth thought of the deserted rooms and corridors in the harem, of the dim blue and green light. Of the sound – so puzzling to her at first – of laugher; the echo of running feet.

It's no good, she passed a hand over her eyes, I must stick to the facts. I know, I'll ask Eve what she thinks, and as if on cue, she heard the bleep of an incoming message from her mobile phone. But it was not Eve. It was a text from Marius.

Elizabeth stared at it, almost dispassionately, like a starving person who has been given a crust of bread too hard to eat.
where u been baby?
Insouciant, she said to herself. How can a text be insouciant? But from Marius, somehow, it could. Where have I been? I'll tell you where I've been, hell and back, she felt like replying. But she did not. She deleted the message, felt euphoric for about five minutes, and then wept for half an hour as if her heart would break.

November turned into December. The days passed, saved from pleasant monotony by Haddba, who from time to time would issue her with an instruction – thinly veiled in the form of a courteous suggestion – to go to this restaurant or that café, to the Egyptian spice market to buy camomile flowers for her
tissanes
, to this shop, where she must try out a glass of
boza
, the winter drink made famous by the janissaries, and where a glass once used by Atatürk was enshrined in a cabinet on the wall.

But for the most part Elizabeth worked and read, immersing herself so deeply in her work that she had not time or energy to think about England. Her dreams, when she could remember them, were neither about Marius, nor about the man in the Malta Kiosk, but about the sea, and a shipwreck, and Celia Lamprey, the lost love of the merchant Pindar.

One morning as she was walking down to breakfast she heard the familiar sing-song voice call after her in the hall. ‘E-
li
-za-beth?'

‘Haddba! Good morning.'

‘I have something very nice for you to do today.' Haddba was dressed in her usual dusty black shift; in the gloomy light of the
hallway her golden earrings danced at her throat. ‘Should, that is, you not be too busy today my dear?'

She gave Elizabeth one of her beady stares. Elizabeth, whose mind that morning had been far away on the niceties of Elizabethan trading missions, gave an inward smile. Haddba, she thought to herself, had a distinctly laissez-faire approach to the life–work balance.

‘What have you got up your sleeve?'

‘Well, I have been thinking about it for some time: I think it's high time you made a little trip on the Bosphorous. You know, on a boat.'

‘On a boat? Today?'

Elizabeth hoped that she did not look as though her heart was sinking.

‘But of course today. You work too hard. Look at you, so pale.' Haddba pinched Elizabeth's cheek between her fingers. ‘You young people, you young girls, you don't know how to look after yourselves any more. Some pure air is what you need, so good for the complexion …' She patted Elizabeth's cheek.

‘Will it take me to the university?'

‘The
university
?' Haddba made it sound as if she had never heard of anything so preposterous. ‘Not everything can be learnt from books, you know. No, no, I have asked my nephew to arrange a visit to one of the
yalis
. One of our Bosphorous summer houses. I think you will like it.'

‘A
yali
?' Elizabeth repeated. In December? And then, ‘I didn't know you had a nephew.'

‘You haven't met Mehmet?' Haddba sounded as if this were the greatest possible surprise to her. ‘Ah well …' She made a gesture, uncharacteristically vague, towards the drawing room door. ‘He's here now.'

Elizabeth now saw that a man was standing in the doorway. Now he came forwards to greet them. Elizabeth looked at him. Oh God! was all she could think, not you!

‘Mehmet, I want you to meet my friend Elizabeth. Elizabeth, Mehmet.'

They shook hands.

‘I'm surprised you two haven't met before.' Haddba looked innocently from one to the other.

‘Ah, well, you'd better go into the sitting room. I'll find Rashid.'

They sat down opposite one another on one of the stiff horsehair sofas. There were no Russian marching songs, no other residents in there that morning. For once the room was silent.

‘You're Haddba's nephew?' Elizabeth said after a while, cringing inwardly at the banality of the statement.

‘Actually, “nephew” is more a figure of speech. I am not really Haddba's nephew,' he smiled. ‘At least not in the way that you might understand it.' She noticed that he spoke English very correctly, with a slight French accent that surprised her. ‘My uncle was her friend.' He used the word carefully. ‘But a very dear friend, I believe. He left her this house when he died.'

‘Oh.'

They lapsed into silence again. Elizabeth tried to think of something else to say but she could not. Does he recognise me? was all she could think.

‘Actually, I think we have met before.' Mehmet was the first to break the silence.

‘Mm?'

‘Well, not exactly met. It was here in this room. I came in to read the paper one afternoon and you were in here doing something, writing a letter, I think. You changed the records on the record player.'

‘Of course!' Elizabeth had to stop herself from laughing out loud. ‘Yes, I think I do remember now.'

But not the time at the Malta Kiosk! Oh thank God! She felt light-headed with relief.

Rashid came in with two cups of coffee on a tray.

‘Shall we wait for Haddba?' Elizabeth said, trying to see into the hall. She was conscious of the fact that she was sitting up very stiffly on the formal sofa. ‘Where do you think she's got to?'