The Aviary Gate (33 page)

Just then there was a sound. Celia froze. It was a small cracking sound that had come from somewhere beneath her feet. She bent down, and her fingers closed around something small and hard: the stub of a workman's pencil.

She tore a fragment from one of the pieces of paper sticking from the keyboard, and then stood with the pencil poised. Whatever I write it must be something that can never betray either of us – fear tore at her insides – not words, Paul, but – that's it! – a curiosity of my own.

Swiftly Celia drew three lines on the paper. Then she was away and gone, running, running, back through the Aviary Gate, through the gardens, up stairs and down the dark and deserted harem corridors, silent as the wind.

When she reached her own courtyard Celia's overwhelming feeling was of incredulity at how easy it had all been. So much for Annetta's warnings: she had been through the Aviary Gate and no one had seen
her! She had not been watched, had not been found out! The shadows in the courtyard had scarcely moved; she must have run there and back, she estimated, in not much more than ten minutes.

Intoxicated by her success, Celia felt reluctant to go back to her own room straight away. Instead, curiosity now brought her to the entranceway of Gulay Haseki's apartment, something she had not dared to do before. One of its doors hung open on a broken hinge. She peered in cautiously. The room had the forlorn look of a place vacated in a hurry: a broken cup lay on the floor; a tiny embroidered napkin, crumpled and thrown to one side; a dead bluebottle. She felt something against her bare foot and bent down to pick it up. She recognised it at once, and felt an ache in her throat: a single tiny slipper, embroidered with gold and silver thread.

She was already halfway back to her own room when she glanced up and saw, or thought she saw, a faint movement in the corner of one eye. She waited. There it was again, more distinctly now: the gleam of a lamp coming from the rooftops somewhere, just above the doorway. Someone, it seemed, was in the Haseki's apartments after all.

Celia hesitated. Hadn't she taken enough risks for one night? But no – rather it had shown her just how easy it was to move about the palace, unseen, if you had the courage. A few more minutes wouldn't make any difference. She crept back towards her own room, and it was just as she thought, there was no sign of any movement from her servants. She turned and made her way quickly back to the empty room.

Stepping over the threshold, Celia looked around. Nothing – the place was silent as a tomb. Then she remembered the conversation that she had had with Annetta that day; the same day the Chief Black Eunuch had been found, and when Esperanza Malchi had left the coloured sand outside her door. What was it that Annetta had noticed then that she, Celia, had failed to see? What was it she had said?

‘All very clever,' she could hear Annetta's familiar tones, ‘it must have at least three entrances. Her rooms must connect with the Valide's hammam as well.'

Annetta had noticed that the Haseki's rooms were not what they at first seemed; that they were spread over two storeys, and that there was more than one entranceway.

Celia looked around again, more carefully this time. Opposite her she saw one of the other doors almost immediately, the door which, as Annetta had suspected, must lead to the Valide's hammam, but she could see no sign of any other exit, nor any visible means of reaching an upper storey. Only wooden cupboards. Celia went over to one of the cupboards and looked inside. Nothing. Except for a rolled-up mattress, it was empty. Then she tried the other. The door would not open as easily as the first, but eventually she managed it. Nothing: that one was empty too.

Annetta had been wrong, then. If there was another floor on top of this apartment, there did not seem to be any way of getting there from here. Celia shivered. She felt weary now, and cold, but then just as she was about to leave the room she heard a noise, small but distinct: the creak of a footstep on an overhead floorboard. It was coming from just above the first cupboard. Celia ran swiftly over to it and looked inside again, more carefully this time. She took out the rolled-up quilt. Behind it there was a second door.

She opened it. And there, sure enough, was a flight of stairs.

The stairway was both crooked and extremely narrow, barely big enough for her to climb up without knocking her head on the rafters. She wished she had had the foresight to bring the candle from her room. Luckily, a splinter of moonlight was shining at the top of the stairs. Celia climbed on up, and when she emerged it was to find herself in a small circular space, a rickety attic room with a domed ceiling. She realised then that she was inside the cupola that Annetta had pointed out on the roof of the Haseki's apartment. And it was from here, Celia felt certain, that the lamplight had come.

She looked around her, but there was nothing in the little space except for a few cobwebs. A strong frowsty smell of rotting raffia matting came from underfoot. This place, at least, had never been used by anyone, she thought, except perhaps as a secret look-out post. The base of the cupola was pierced all the way around with holes where the moonlight filtered through. Anyone standing here, Celia saw immediately when she put her eye to one of the openings, had a clear view of the courtyard below; they would be able to see not only everyone who came and went across it, but also anyone going in or out of the two apartments.

It was then that Celia saw the second door, very low down in the wall. It too had looked like a cupboard at first, but when she stooped
to open it she saw that it was in fact the entranceway to another corridor. And there, receding into the distance, she could just see the faint glow of a lamp.

Celia now found herself in another extremely small and narrow space, a corridor that seemed both older and more makeshift than the rest of the harem buildings. She remembered hearing that there had been an extensive rebuilding of these quarters just before the new Sultan had moved in. Perhaps this corridor was part of the old structure, and had just been built over instead of dismantled.

Bent almost double, she kept walking, feeling her way along with the tips of her fingers. The corridor twisted and turned, to the left, to the right, up and down, one step here, two or three steps there, until she was completely disorientated. At first she thought that she must be above the Valide's hammam; but soon it occurred to her that this upper corridor had most probably been built to parallel the lower corridor, which she knew led past the entrance to the Valide's apartments, and eventually into the Courtyard of the Cariyes.

Then, suddenly without warning, she turned a corner and there was a fork in the way ahead. On one side it twisted steeply downwards to the left. On the other, which curved sharply to the right, it was so narrow that at first Celia was doubtful whether she, or indeed anyone, let alone someone trying to carry a lamp, could squeeze down it at all.

It was very dark now. The only source of light, which had been the moonlight filtering in through the openings in the cupola, was far behind her. Celia squeezed down awkwardly on all fours and rubbed the back of her aching neck. It was no good; she would have to go back. Was it possible that she had been imagining the lamplight after all? She remembered the stories about the
efrits
and ghouls who were said to roam the palace at night, pale and sorrowful as moonlight. Some said that they were the souls of the dead
cariyes
, discarded favourites who had died of a broken heart, or who had been thrown into the Bosphorous and drowned.

No, no. I mustn't think about that now. Celia forced herself to stay calm. The opening to the left-hand pathway was as black as pitch, but when she focused carefully on the right-hand turning she caught something perhaps not quite so black in the distance – a greyish tinge of light.

Celia took a breath and began to make her way down the right-hand corridor. Her bare feet made a shuffling sound against the debris that had collected in the narrow opening. The odour of old wood, and something else at once rank and rotten – bird droppings? a dead rodent? she tried not to think about what her bare feet were treading on – prickled in her nostrils.

The little passageway narrowed, and after a while Celia found that she could barely move forwards in the confined space. With an effort she turned her body sideways. Was this what it had been like for Gulay Haseki, when they put her in the sack? A feeling of panic rose in her throat.

It was then that she saw the hole in the wall. The hole was at exactly her eye-level, but so small that if her face had not been almost pressed up against it, she might well have missed it altogether. This hole, she realised now, was the source of the grey glow of light. From her vague sense of where she might now be, Celia guessed that the hole gave a view over the Courtyard of the Cariyes. She put her eye to the hole and peered through.

At first the light coming from the other side of the wall was so blinding after the darkness of the tiny passageway that Celia could see nothing at all. Gradually her eye adjusted, and when she saw at last where she was she drew back as if she had been stung. Great God! If she had found herself suddenly in the Sultan's own bedchamber she could not have been more appalled. She was not looking out over the Courtyard of the Cariyes at all, but into the very heart of the harem. She was looking directly down into the Valide Sultan's own apartments.

The hole had been bored into one of the tiles, but so high up on the wall that its concealment was almost perfect; even if you knew it was there the hole would be impossible to see from below. Just as well, for what would the penalty be to be caught spying on the Valide? Celia gave a shiver of fear.

The room was just as she remembered it. The tiles on the walls, deep blues, turquoise and white, infused the room with that strange dim green glow, the light of a mermaid's cavern. Although there was no sign of a human presence, a fire burned in the fireplace. Through the hole in the wall Celia could now see the exact spot beside the window where she had sat with the Valide that morning (could it only be three days ago?) looking down at the boats moored in the
safe harbour of the Golden Horn, and talking as if she had known her all her life.

Annetta's words came back to her: ‘Whatever you do, try not to say too much. She'll use everything you tell her,
capito?
' But when the time came, she had forgotten all about Annetta's warning.

What had she said, what had she told her? Then she remembered. We talked about the ships. She asked me if there was anything that reminded me of the life I had before. And she showed me the ships in the harbour.

So all along the Valide, too, had known about the English ship.

Even now, in the dead of night, the window casements were thrown open. A fur-lined rug lay discarded amongst the cushions, as if someone had recently been sitting there, looking out over the moonlit garden. Did she never sleep, Celia wondered? They watch and they wait, Annetta had said, and it was true. What had Safiye had to do to become Valide? Was there no rest, no respite? Celia could not shake off the impression that there was something almost melancholy about the scene.

Just then there was a movement. If it had not been for the confined space in which she was standing, instinct would have made Celia jerk her head back. As it was, she quickly saw that it was the fur rug that was moving. Cat! Celia watched as the creature uncurled itself from its sleeping place, you wicked creature – what a fright you gave me!

The cat was licking its paws when suddenly it stopped and seemed to be listening to something. And then Celia realised that she could hear that something too. She closed her eyes so that she could listen more intently. Sure enough, there it was again; quite distinctive this time. The sound of someone weeping.

It was not coming from the Valide's room, but from somewhere at the end of the little passageway. Celia left the spy-hole and quickly squeezed her way to the end of the corridor, to where a piece of cloth had been hung up like a makeshift curtain. Cautiously she pulled the material a little to one side, and emerged into what looked very like a cupboard, a tall cupboard this time, in which she could easily stand upright. Its sides were made of wood and there was a piece of open fretwork at the top part. The sound of weeping was very clear now. Standing on tiptoe Celia peered cautiously through the holes into the room beyond. Inside the cupboard it was so cramped she could not
move, could hardly breathe; any moment now someone would surely hear her. She was about to turn and make her way back down the tiny corridor when the weeping started again. Something about it – a sound so lonely, so utterly forlorn – made the tears start in her own eyes. Celia hesitated. Idiot! she said to herself, you have no idea who it is – it could be anyone. It's too dangerous, go back! But somehow she found herself on tiptoe again.

The room, which was lit by a single lamp, was of a good size and fitted out, she saw immediately, for a woman of high rank. The tiles on the walls were nearly as fine as those in the Valide Sultan's apartments, decorated with tulips and sprays of carnations. A kaftan of butter-yellow silk, lined with fur, hung from a peg on the wall; furs and embroidered brocades were strewn across cushions. Immediately opposite the cupboard in which she was now standing was a recessed alcove, of a kind usually used for sleeping in. It was from here that the sound of weeping came. No one that unhappy could be dangerous, she decided. Could they? Celia pushed open the cupboard door and stepped out into the room.

At once the weeping stopped. In the alcove a dark form half-rose from the cushions. For a moment there was silence, then a voice whispered: ‘Are you a ghost?'

The voice was soft and low, but not a voice that Celia recognised.

‘No,' Celia whispered back, ‘my name is Kaya Kadin.'

The woman was sitting up now, but it was too dark for Celia to see more than her silhouette.

‘Have you brought me something?' Her voice wavered, as if she might start weeping again.