The Aviary Gate (7 page)

Elizabeth turned back to her notes and tried to concentrate, but the two women were sitting so close to her that it was impossible to avoid
hearing their conversation. She was looking round for the waitress when she heard Marius's name.

‘In fact, a good friend of mine has just published a paper on exactly that. Dr Jones? Marius Jones? I expect you know him.'

The student made some giggling reply that Elizabeth could not catch.

‘Oh well, I guess every female student knows Marius!'

Somehow his name on her lips seemed like an impertinence. You don't know him
that
well, lady, Elizabeth thought. Her irritation, she knew, was absurd.

‘And on that subject, I must just tell you …' The woman's voice now lowered confidentially. ‘I know I shouldn't but …' Something more was said; her tone serious, trying not to be. ‘… absolutely crazy about her. And the best thing? She doesn't give a
pin
about him. My dear, all his other floozies are absolutely in despair …'

Elizabeth did not wait to get the bill. She put down Eve's ten-pound note together with one of her own, and left the restaurant. In the doorway she passed a woman with blonde hair, who entered, not seeing her, with an enquiring look on her face. Through the glass restaurant front Elizabeth saw her greet the American and the student and pull up her own chair. That it was the blonde woman Elizabeth had seen in Blackwell's she had no doubt. She did not see her face, only the face of the American, upturned in greeting. A homely face, older than it looked, sun-stressed hair falling to her shoulders. And behind the smile, Elizabeth suddenly saw a look of such inner desolation that her hostility dissolved.

Oh, my God – not you too? No wonder then. Oh Marius!

That same morning – while John Carew was cracking nuts on the wall of the English embassy, and Hassan Aga spiralling towards his own death – from her private chambers looking out over the waters of the Golden Horn, the Valide Sultan Safiye was watching the dawn.

Although she was attended by her four personal handmaids there was, as was customary, no sound at all in the room. The young women stood with their backs to the wall, still as glass, where they would wait, all day and all night if necessary, until she commanded or dismissed them at her will.

Outwardly composed, Safiye continued to look out through the window casement, her gaze apparently fixed on the rose-grey waters beneath her. Inwardly, through long habit and by employing that mysterious sixth sense which seemed to give her the ability to see without looking, she surveyed her women with a critical eye. The first, who had clearly risen in too much of a hurry that morning, had pinned her cap crookedly on to her dark curls; the second still had that bad habit of swaying slightly from heel to toe (could she not see it made her resemble an elephant in its stall?). And as for the third, Gulbahar – the one who had been with her when they discovered Little Nightingale – there were dark shadows under her eyes this morning.

‘It is as if you have eyes in the back of your head,' Cariye Mihrimah used to whisper to her admiringly.

‘Just a trick, something my father taught me,' Safiye would whisper back. ‘In my country, in the mountains, we are all huntsmen, see?
You have to know how to stay ahead. I'll teach you, Cariye Mihrimah.'

But Cariye Mihrimah had not survived long enough, in the event, to learn anything much, other than to scent the lips of her pretty sex with ambergris, and to pinken her little girl's nipples with rose.

The Valide turned her thoughts back to the previous night. Of Esperanza's silence she was assured. But perhaps it had been a mistake to let Gulbahar see so much, after all? A slight breeze from the casement made Safiye shiver slightly. Although it was only the beginning of September already the morning air felt cooler, the leaves on the trees below her in the palace garden were flushed with the first hint of autumn. She felt the heavy pendulums of her earrings, pearls and cabochon rubies of improbable size and transparency, knocking at her throat. The lobes of her ears throbbed with their weight, and she would have liked to take them off, but long habit had taught her to ignore physical discomfort, or indeed any outward signs of weakness or fatigue.

‘Ayshe,' Safiye turned her gaze away from the window slightly, ‘my fur.'

But Ayshe, the fourth and newest handmaid, had already anticipated her command and even as she spoke was darting forwards to arrange her cloak, an embroidered shawl lined with sable, around her shoulders. Ayshe was doing well, Safiye thought, focusing quickly once again on the present and bestowing a smile upon the girl. She had quick wits, and the ability always to think a little ahead of what was required of her – a valuable talent to cultivate in the House of Felicity. She had been right to accept the favourite's gifts after all: the two slaves, Ayshe and that other girl, what was she called? Safiye watched Ayshe's fingers tuck the shawl deftly in around her feet. One so dark and the other so pale – such very pale skin that other girl had, miraculous almost. Not a blemish. Mehmet, her son the Sultan, with his unusual tastes, would have enjoyed her last night, she was sure. Anything to get him over his infatuation with the favourite, the one who was always known in the harem simply as the Haseki. He must be tempted away from her, and soon. She would see to that.

Outside her suite, in the corridor which ran past the women's courtyard to the quarters of the eunuchs, Safiye Sultan could hear the faint chink of china. The coffee mistress and her retinue were waiting
outside. She would have known that there were women there, even without the noise: a faint feeling of apprehension, a thickening in the air. How could she ever describe how she knew these things? But despite the fact she had not slept at all that night Safiye had given the order that she was not to be disturbed. She did not need either refreshment or rest, a lifetime of vigils at the bedside of her master, the old Sultan Murad, had long ago accustomed her to do without. What she needed now was silence, and space in which to think.

There had been a time, when Safiye first came to the House of Felicity, when its silence oppressed and disturbed her. It was so different from the palace in Manisa. The three of them, the nightingales, had been together then. Those days, when she looked back on them, seemed filled with sunlight. But now, in the years since she had been Valide Sultan, at last she could recognise the silence for what it was: a tool to be used; a hunting trick, like all the others.

Pulling the furs closer around her Safiye turned back towards the familiar view of the Golden Horn. On the far side, at the water's edge, rose the warehouses of the foreign merchants, and behind them the familiar sight of the Galata Tower. To the right of the tower the walls of the foreign enclave gave out on to open countryside, and the houses of the ambassadors surrounded by vines. Behind them, the sun had well now risen. Beyond Galata, and to the right, flowed the Bosphorous, the shores of its eastern banks still in shadow, fringed with green forest. She remembered the Greek Lady, Nurbanu, who as Valide Sultan before her had sat on this very divan, wearing these very earrings of ruby and pearl, while Safiye herself had waited on her. ‘They think I don't know that they are waiting outside,' she had once said to her. ‘They think I cannot hear. They think that I cannot see. But in this silence, Safiye, there is nothing that I do not see. I can see through walls.'

The first rays of sun now struck the carved shutters of the windows, turning their mother-of-pearl inlay to points of shining light. Safiye drew her arm out of the furs and laid it along the casement. A faint aromatic smell of warm wood reached her. The skin on her arms and hands was milky and smooth, the skin of a concubine still, miraculously unscathed by the years. And on her finger, catching the sun's rays, was Nurbanu's emerald, its vertiginous depths smouldering with points of black fire.

‘What would you do now,' Safiye wondered, ‘if you were me?' She closed her eyes briefly, feeling the sun at last strike the skin of her face. The image of Little Nightingale – swollen body, severed genitals – came again into her mind. And at last, ‘Do nothing,' a sure voice inside her head replied. ‘It is fate.'

It was not Nurbanu who had answered her, someone else: a voice from beyond the grave.

‘Cariye? Cariye Mihrimah?'

‘Do nothing. It is fate. After all these years.
Kismet
. The one thing you cannot outwit. Not even you.'

‘Fatma!' Safiye's eyes snapped open so suddenly they made even Ayshe, the quick-witted, start at her post.

‘Yes, Majesty?' Caught off guard, Fatma, the first handmaid, stammered and flushed.

‘What, are you asleep, girl?' The Valide spoke softly, as she always did, but there was a note of steeliness in her voice that made the palms of the young woman's hands turn cold and clammy, and the blood drum in her ears.

‘No, Majesty.'

‘My coffee, then. If you would be so good.'

On soft and noiseless feet, Safiye's handmaids glided through the room to attend her.

Although the sun had now risen fully, its light never penetrated far into the Valide's quarters. These rooms, positioned as they were at the very centre of the House of Felicity, the Sultan's private quarters, were inward, not outward spaces. The women's rooms, and the larger quarters of the Sultan's favourite concubines, even the private chambers of the Sultan himself, all were connected to the Valide's rooms. No one, not even the Sultan's favourite concubine, the Haseki herself, could contrive to go in or out without passing through her domain.

With the exception of the Sultan's rooms, the Valide's suite was by far the biggest in the place. Their shadowy depths, dim with blue and green light, were cool in summer; heated with braziers and heaped with furs and sables in the winter. The women, moving in their familiar dance, seemed like a small shoal of silvery fish, gliding through its sub-aqueous depths.

Within moments a brass tray had been placed before Safiye, resting on a pair of folding wooden legs, and a tiny brazier, scented with
cedar wood, was tucked beneath it. Kneeling before her, the first handmaid held out a bowl, while the second slowly poured rose water from a ewer of rock crystal, just wetting the tips of Safiye's fingers. Withdrawing soundlessly, they were replaced by the third handmaid who knelt also offering her a tiny embroidered napkin to dry her hands. Next they offered her the coffee. One held out a tiny jewelled cup; the second poured coffee; the third carefully placed a second brass tray on the table with pomegranates, apricots and figs arranged on a bed of crystallised sugar rose petals; whilst the fourth brought fresh napkins.

Safiye drank her coffee slowly and felt her body relax. There was, after all, no sign of nerves that she could detect from her women, usually a first and sure indicator that rumours in the harem were rife. It had been the greatest good fortune that most of the women and eunuchs were still at the summer palace. The Sultan had decided to return to the palace unexpectedly for one night, and she had come with him, together with a handful of her most trusted women. If the House of Felicity had been full there would have been no possibility at all of concealment of the night's business. The loyalty of Esperanza and Gulbahar, the only two who had been with her, was beyond question. All the same, it had been a good idea to keep them standing awhile – in her experience, always an excellent test of nerves. The first handmaid was jumpy, to be sure, but then she often was, especially since the Harem Stewardess had discovered her love letters from the eunuch Hyacinth, a misguided little
affaire
in which she still believed herself to be undetected.

‘Never act in haste,' Nurbanu had once told her. ‘And never forget: knowledge is power.'

You are wrong, Cariye Mihrimah, Safiye said to herself. This may be
kismet
, as you say – in her mind's eye she leant over and kissed Cariye Mihrimah on the cheek – but since when did that ever stop me knowing exactly what to do?

‘Now listen to me, all of you,' Safiye drained her coffee cup and placed it on its saucer, ‘I have sent Hassan Aga, our Chief Black Eunuch, to Edirne for a few days to see to some of my affairs,' she announced. It was more information than she would normally think fit, or necessary, to give out in front of her women: would they think
it strange? A necessary risk, she decided. ‘Gulbahar, stay with me, I need you to deliver some messages. The rest of you – go now.' She gave the sign of dismissal.

‘And Ayshe.'

‘Yes, Majesty?'

‘Bring me your friend, the other new girl, I have forgotten her name …'

‘Do you mean Kaya, Majesty?'

‘Yes. Wait outside with her until Gulbahar comes for you. And until then, let no one in.'

Suddenly, Hassan Aga was awake. Short moments of lucidity punctuated the strange, phantasmagorical dreams, although how long he had been in this state he could not tell. As if through long habit, when the smallest noise, the tiniest diversion from the ordinary business of the harem would alert him, his eyes snapped open. He was no longer in his chamber, of that he was sure, but where had they taken him? It was dark here, darker than night. Darker, in fact, than it was when he closed his eyes, when streams and fountains of light seemed to cascade like shooting stars across the horizons of his eyelids.

Was he dead, then? The thought crossed his mind briefly, and he found that he was not afraid of the possibility. But a burning pain in his gut, and more strangely in his ears, made him think not. He tried to shift his weight, but the effort made a clammy sweat break out on his forehead; there was a strange metallic taste on his lips. His body heaved in a sudden, dry convulsion, but there was nothing left in his stomach to bring up. A lump like a stone seemed to be grinding into his neck, and the air around him smelt damp. Was he underground somewhere, and if so how did he get here?