SERAGLIO (11 page)

So what does she want from me?

The lioness had finished toying with the boar. It was shuddering, lying on its flank, still alive, as the lioness bent her head to tear free the first chunk of meat. Normally such things excited his appetite. But suddenly he was not hungry any more.

He looked around again but the eyes were gone.

Paradise on Earth

Pera

The carriage clattered to a halt in the courtyard below her window. A black eunuch jumped down to settle the horses while another opened the door. The windows were covered in black taffeta so she could not make out their visitor. She was only mildly curious. Ludovici often entertained visitors during the day, usually other merchants from the
Comunità
Magnifica
.

A figure emerged from the coach, head and face invisible beneath the hood of a cloak and her black
cazeta
. Not a finger or toe was visible so she realized it must be a woman.

A few moments later Hyacinth tapped on her door to announce a guest. She gaped as the woman entered, removing the hood of her
ferijde
.

'Sirhane!'

***

She had changed hardly at all. She was perhaps a little thinner; otherwise it was as if the last six years had not happened. They were back in the seraglio again, the Sultan's
oda
lisques, best friends and at the end, for a short time, Julia remembered with a blush - lovers.

The Syrian looked glorious, as she always did. She wore an
entari
of green Bursa brocade, open in front and joined at the waist by three pearl buttons. Beneath it she was all snow-white silk, shimmering to her ankles. Rubies glinted on her fingers and in her hair. There was a pearl at her waist. Julia was dressed in sombre black after the Venetian fashion. She felt drab beside her.

She clung to her like a schoolgirl. 'I never thought I would ever see you again,' she said, laughing. 'Tell me everything!'

'You are looking at a respectable married woman,' Sirhane said.

'How did you get out of the Harem?'

'It was all arranged by the Kislar Aghasi. Suleiman is disposing of all his women …'

'It's not true!'

'Hürrem has persuaded him that he no longer needs his Harem! Abbas arranged for me to marry an Aga in the Spahis of the Porte. His name is Abdul Sahine Pasha. He is a big brute of a man with a beard and his member is as thick as my wrist!'

Julia clapped her hand to her mouth.

'I don't mind. He treats me well enough. I think he prefers the boys, I don't know. He is not so bad. I could even grow to love him, if he were not a man.' She rested her head on Julia's shoulder. 'I have missed you so! Perhaps it is wicked to say so, but while you were there I was happy in the Harem. Happier than I was any time in my life.'

'So was I, Sirhane.'

'I truly thought you were dead.'

'How did you find out I was still alive?'

'It was on the morning that I was to leave the Harem. The Kislar Aghasi came to me and told me you had not drowned after all. He said you were here in Pera, married to a Venetian.'

'Abbas told you?'

'I thought the Sultan had put you in a sack and tossed you in the Bosphorus! For six years I mourned you. I still cannot believe it is you!' She threw her arms around Julia's neck and kissed her. 'What happened? How did you survive?'

'It's a long story,' Julia said, wondering if it would ever be safe to tell her.

'And to marry a gentleman from the
Comunità
!'

'We are not married and he is more pirate than Venetian gentleman. Still, look at us, whoever would have thought that we would have come this far!'

***

The sun dipped below the seven hills, and the calls of the
muezzin
rose from the dusky, dusty city. Light pooled like liquid gold on the Horn as the silhouettes of the cypress trees faded into the gloom below the walls of the seraglio. Julia and Sirhane sat on the
terrazzo
, talking in whispers.

'Is it really true?' Julia said. 'Suleiman has married off his entire Harem?'

'Yes. There is no more honey in the honeypot. All that remains is Hürrem and her household. The Laughing One has a hundred slaves in waiting now, so she has plenty to laugh about. She comes and goes whenever she likes, thirty eunuchs trail along in her wake wherever she goes.'

'If a snake can survive so long among vipers, it deserves to grow long.'

'The Kislar Aghasi told me she was the reason the Sultan ordered you drowned.'

Abbas, Julia thought. She wished she deserved his devotion. If only there was a way she could help him as he had helped her.

How did you escape?' Sirhane said.

Should I tell her? Julia thought. She did not want to endanger Abbas, but Sirhane must have already guessed. She told her everything. 'So that is what happened. What hand Hürrem had in it I do not know. But anyway I am alive now, so I try to forget about it.'

Sirhane looked disappointed. 'Poor Abbas.'

'I try not to think about it. He may look like a monster, Sirhane, but he has a heart like a mountain. He is the bravest and most devoted man I have ever known or even heard of.'

'How he must suffer.'

'That is perhaps why he contrives to always look so fearsome. To disguise it.'

'And that witch of Suleiman's. You should try to be more hateful. It is not becoming for a woman not to be spiteful.'

Julia shook her head. 'What Hürrem does cannot affect me now.'

'Then you are the only one in all the Empire who is not intimidated by her. Foreign ambassadors include gifts for her as well as the Sultan now. They even send her letters to try and sway her opinion. The viziers, muftis and Agas pay her tribute through the Kislar Aghasi. Even my husband does it. He says she is more powerful than Ibrahim ever was.'

Julia smiled. 'Poor Suleiman.'

Sirhane curled her legs beneath her, curling into the divan like a pampered kitten. 'What was he like?'

Julia was reluctant to talk about it.

'Tell me!' Sirhane urged her.

'He hardly said a word. He took off my clothes and then he lay on top of me.'

'And it's not big?'

'No.'

'Only they say it's really huge.'

'Sirhane …' Julia spread her hands helplessly, amazed as she always had been to be discussing such things so shamelessly with her. 'He lay on top of me and he made some noises. Then he rolled off again. Nothing happened.' She remembered how Ludovici had made love to her that first time. Until then she had not realized why Suleiman had been so angry with her.

'The Sultan is impotent?'

Julia grabbed her wrist, alarmed. 'If you ever say those words again outside this room we will all be killed!'

'The best gossip I ever had and I cannot tell anyone!'

'It will mean our heads!'

'I know. You don't have to shout.' She pouted. '… What is it like with Ludovici?'

Julia hesitated. 'Not the way it was with us.'

Sirhane seemed pleased with this answer. She watched the lamps flickering to life in the old city as the echoes of the
muezzin
faded into the gathering violet dusk. A stillness settled over the city. 'I must go,' she said.

'So soon?'

'I should not be here at all. If Abdul ever found out, I might end up in a sack myself.'

***

Julia watched Sirhane get back inside her anonymous black carriage. I did not escape the Harem, she thought. I brought it here with me. It was both my captivity and my liberation. It plunged my soul into mortal sin and brought my body to life. Now Sirhane has come back into my life, the Harem will rule me again.

Would they become lovers again? Sirhane called it adultery without consequence. Was it a sin to love another woman that way?

She saw a slight movement of the black taffeta curtains and knew Sirhane was watching her also. She waved, though she knew she could not see her. Then the carriage clattered away through the gates and the loneliness returned.

Fate had been kind to Ludovici Gambetto.

Almost.

He had powerful and influential friends at the Sublime Porte and his business had prospered beyond all imagining. Fortune had also delivered him a beautiful mistress from a noble Venetian family.

Yet within these silver caskets were slivers of real pain. His good fortune was founded on his best friend's anguish; Julia belonged to him only because she could not belong to anyone else.

Even after eight years he was still not reconciled to the fact that his oldest friend now lived in the Sultan's palace as a eunuch and a slave. And then there was Julia; useless currency to anyone but him and the source of endless self-recrimination also. He had lied to Abbas and kept her here in Stamboul despite his friend's entreaties to get her out of the city, and out of the Osmanli empire. Abbas had never spoken a word to him about it but he guessed that he knew about the deception. He could still see it in his eyes every time they met. The guilt of his own duplicity gnawed at him.

If only it had all been worth it; if only she could love him a little.

A part of him - the part that was still Venetian - said that it did not matter. She was his, she was beautiful, his to bed and enjoy whenever he chose. What else could he want?

But the renegade in him was not happy with this. What was it that he wanted then? He wanted her to feel the same for him as he felt for her. He wanted her devotion. Perhaps he was more like Abbas than he ever knew.

He had built a new
palazzo
on the heights of Pera, dressed Julia in the finest velvets and put rubies and diamonds on her fingers. No one saw them, of course, for she was never allowed to be seen. The colony knew he kept an Italian mistress, and he had heard her identity was the source of much gossip. It amused him to hear the names they came up with. One of them was a former mistress of the Pope himself. It didn't matter; they would never invite him to their houses anyway.

***

He stood on the
terrazzo
and watched her. She was down in the garden, reading. The summer flowers were still in bloom, and the air heavy with the scent form the umbrella pines. He went down the marble steps to join her. She looked up. 'You look pleased with yourself,' she said.

'No, I cannot take the credit.' He sat down beside her. On the harbor the
caïque
s criss-crossed the bright water, the violet silhouettes of the mosques silhouetted against the shore.

'What has happened?'

'I have heard whispers form the Porte. They say Rüstem Pasha is to marry the Sultan's daughter.'

'Mihrmah?'

'That's the whisper.'

'Then he will almost certainly be the next Vizier.'

'Yes.'

'That pleases you?'

'If I were on the side of the angels, it would not. But I am only a humble merchant and I cannot afford to be on God's side in this. I have not really been on the side of Heaven since I left Venice. Perhaps not even there. That is why I have all this.'

'That is a blasphemy, Ludovici. And I still do not understand.'

'Suleiman's Vizier, Lütfi Pasha, is too difficult to do business with. He is too honest.'

'A fatal flaw in a Vizier.'

He smiled. 'Indeed. Rüstem on the other hand would sell his own mother for ten per cent commission. For fifteen, his grandmother and his canary.'

'He will be excellent to your purposes, then.'

'I am sure he will be a great success.'

'And therefore you can send more
caramusali
s through the Dardanelles without fear of inspection. But what made Suleiman choose Rüstem for such a wonderful match?'

'His charm and good looks?'

But Julia had already worked it out. 'Hürrem!'

'Yes that is what they are saying in the bazaars. Time will tell. Though what he has done to deserve her patronage I can only imagine.' He studied her. Something different about her t
oda
y, a bloom in her cheeks that had not been there before. 'You had a visitor yesterday,' he said.

She could not meet his eyes. 'Is that wrong?'

'Who was it?'

'A girl. She was an
oda
lisque at the seraglio, as I was.'

'You were friends there? But how did she know …?'

'Abbas.'

'He told her?' He sat up straighter. 'Abbas told her about you?'

'He wanted her to know that I was safe.'

'Nothing is ever safe. Now that someone else knows about you, you are even less safe.'

She threw down her book. 'You pin me to the wall like a butterfly. Sometimes I would rather be dead!'

Ludovici was shocked to silence. Julia seemed to regret her outburst almost at once. 'I am sorry. I know there is nothing you can do. It is not your fault.'

Ludovici hung his head. 'No, what you say is correct. I have no right. I have kept you locked away like this for my own selfish … ' He reached for her hand. 'I have been thinking about this lately. I have a vineyard in Cyprus. You could go there and live under another name. You would not have to live like a prisoner there.'

'You could give me another name but someone there would recognize me. When they knew what had happened to me, they would treat me like a whore.' She drew herself up. 'I would rather stay here.'

He shook his head. This was unexpected. 'But why?'

'I like it here. I do not wish to go to Cyprus.'

I should just put her on a boat and make her go, he thought. That is what Abbas would have me do. Was she finally starting to feel something for him or was there some other reason? He never knew what went on behind those angel's eyes.

Ludovici lapsed to silence as he contemplated the best way to tell her his next piece of news. 'There is something you should know,' he said finally.

'Is it bad news?'

'I don't know what you will think of it. It's about politics.'

'Politics?'

'Julia, you will remember that I told you, two years ago Suleiman's navy defeated the our Republic's fleet at Prevezzo.'

'Yes, I remember.'

'Venice is a city built on the sea and for the sea. It needs command of the ocean to survive. Suleiman is slowly choking it to death. The only Venetians who have welcomed this state of affairs are men like me, here in Pera. We can charge a lot more for our wheat.

'How does this affect me?'

'There is a legation arriving soon from Venice. They have come to see the Sultan, to sue for peace.' He hesitated. 'Your father heads the legation,' he said.

She turned white. 'My father? He is coming here to Stamboul?'

'He is expected any day.'

'Will he come here?'

'I doubt that. The
Comunità
consider me little better than a pirate.'

'You did not imagine that I would wish to see him?'

'No, I did not think so. But I thought you should know.'

She closed her eyes. 'What about Abbas?'

Do you want me to inform him of this?'

'Why would you not?'

'Abbas has become a powerful man. Ambassadors to the Sublime Porte have been thrown into the dungeons at Yedikule before now. Your father could be in danger.'

Her eyes glittered with venom. 'You do not think I would wish to protect him after what he did? Yes, I should like Abbas to know, very much. In fact, I should like to tell him myself.'

Ludovici had not expected that. A meeting between Julia and Abbas? But he supposed it was about time. 'I will see if I can arrange it,' he said.