The Harem Midwife (25 page)

The four women exchanged quick farewells and promises to keep in touch, and then Hannah and Leah made their way home.

When they arrived, Hannah opened her front door as usual and ushered Leah through.

“Who is she?” Grazia said, appearing almost immediately in the entrance, Matteo trailing behind her.

Hannah explained that Leah was a girl from Manisa, rescued from the slave markets because she was pregnant. From her face, Hannah was sure Grazia would ensure the entire neighbourhood knew the details of the new slave girl’s arrival. For once, Hannah was grateful for Grazia’s overactive tongue. It meant the neighbours would not discover Leah’s true identity.

Grazia turned on her heel to go. With Matteo following
close, she made her way toward the kitchens, where she would no doubt inform Zephra of the new arrival.

Hannah was more concerned about Isaac’s reaction to Leah’s sudden presence in the house. She did not have to wait long before her worst fears were confirmed. Isaac was carrying a tray of silk cocoons, walking toward the stifling pot in the workshop. He stopped suddenly when he saw the pregnant woman before him, dressed in a colourful kaftan.

His face grew set and white. “It’s her, isn’t it? The slave girl you lied for,” he hissed.

“Please, Isaac, it is only for a little while. She is with child. In a few months, as soon as she has her baby …”

Isaac was unravelling the silk cocoon in his hands. He flung it to the ground, where it fell into a pile of sweepings.

“I want nothing to do with her or her baby.” He said this to Hannah, refusing to look at poor Leah, who stood in the doorway.

Hannah had never defied Isaac in all their married life. Bargaining, calculating, and scheming were something she did in the marketplace, not in her household with the husband she loved.

“After the baby’s birth, I will send Leah to the countryside. Ezster has a sister, Naomi, in a nearby village. I’ll tell Naomi that Leah is a widow, her husband killed by the Yürüks. Naomi will find Leah a husband.” Hannah was babbling now, unable to stop herself, even though she knew that her words were only driving Isaac further away.

“I will not have her here,” he said.

“Is this not my house as well as yours?” Hannah countered.

“Make other arrangements. Surely, there are other families in Eminönü who would take her in.”

“By ‘take her in’—you mean like a stray dog? Isaac, for the love of God, she’s carrying a child. Have you no compassion?”

Hannah refused to back down even though she felt sick and weak. She woke up every morning feeling nauseous and remained that way most of the day. Food repelled her. She was growing thin. She had to force herself to eat so much as a piece of dry bread. Isaac stormed from the room. Had she not allowed Grazia to join the household? She was not going to send Leah away. Instead, she escorted her upstairs and settled her in a small room in the attic.

Isaac, her rock, her font of love, warmth and good advice, did not so much as meet her glance that evening when Zephra served their tea. Zephra and Möishe eyed Leah quietly, believing the lies about her being a pregnant girl from the slave market brought home to help in the workshop. Later that night, Isaac would not touch Hannah in bed, nor even say good night, so great was his anger.

A week later, Isaac was still not speaking to Hannah except to convey the most necessary details of day-to-day life. Around the house, he ignored Leah completely. Neither Leah’s rounded belly—her confinement was not far off—nor her eagerness to help around the house and workshop made him soften. Grazia, for her part, stayed far away from
the girl and regarded her with equal parts suspicion and fear. So far, no one except Isaac had guessed the truth about Leah. No carriage had arrived at her doorstep summoning Hannah to the palace. Ezster had not been to the harem since the afternoon they rescued Leah and so could not bring Hannah up to date on whether Kübra’s story was believed. But if anyone had suspected Hannah, she would have been dead by now, and Leah along with her. This, if nothing else, gave Hannah some hope.

Her marriage was another matter altogether. When she looked at Isaac’s face over the breakfast table, at the lips she had kissed with such passion, at the dark eyes she had gazed into so many times, at the lean muscular body she had curled around so many nights, she realized she and her husband had become strangers to one another.

He claimed to be struggling to find Grazia’s dowry money, but how hard was he trying? Was he trying at all? In her heart, Hannah feared he simply did not love her anymore.

Zephra, meanwhile, confessed to Hannah that she’d seen Grazia put several drops of her menstrual blood in Isaac’s tea, the traditional way to make a man fall in love.

Her spell was working, Hannah thought as she watched Grazia and Isaac from the kitchen window. In the garden, Grazia was trimming Isaac’s beard—a curiously intimate thing for her to do—and Isaac appeared to be enjoying it. He sat very still with his eyes closed and his chin jutting forward. Grazia’s breasts were level with his face.

Leah had begun to play with Matteo, who seemed to enjoy her company. Like an older sister, Leah picked him
up and swirled him in the air, her filmy trousers billowing out behind her. Her hair had grown to below her chin in the weeks since Hannah first met her in the palace. With the growing bulge in her belly, she no longer resembled a boy but a lovely, graceful young woman. Sometimes, when Hannah hugged her and felt Leah’s belly pressed against hers, her own womb responded with a slight wrench, as though a taut string were connecting them.

When Grazia finished Isaac’s trim, he thanked her and made his way to the workshop. Grazia took her scissors and, ignoring Leah, said to Matteo, “Let’s cut some daisies, shall we?”

Matteo left Leah and scampered to Grazia’s side. Together, they cut and braided a pile of daisies. Holding up the plait to gauge its length, Grazia nodded, then fastened the ends together to make a garland, which she handed to Matteo. Watching, Hannah recalled an old proverb of her mother’s: “She fondles the lamb so that she might steal the ram.”

Matteo raced toward the kitchen with the wreath on his head. He burst in with a jerky trot, knocking a tinderbox and flint off the table. “Look what Mama Grazia made me,” he said, one eye obscured by the wreath.

When had Matteo begun to call Grazia
Mama
? Hannah straightened the garland, picking a flower petal out of her son’s hair and flicking it out the window. “How nice,” she said. She told herself it was a good and fine thing that Grazia cared for Matteo and he for her. She was his aunt, after all.

Hannah watched Matteo from the kitchen. While he played, she went to the sitting room, where she began to stitch a pair of trousers for him to match his blue wool waistcoat. The wide and floppy legs of the garment pooled in her lap. She must remember to order a matching pair of tough cowhide boots from the boot-maker for the muddy streets. Boots and breeches and baking bread and making soap? What did any of these household details matter anymore? If they could not pay Grazia soon, none of these chores would be Hannah’s concern. Her husband and son would be lost to her.

Isaac entered, not acknowledging her presence. He took a seat at his desk and opened his black ledger. His ink-stained fingers moved over the book. He wiped his quill with a pen rag and set it down on his desk. Hannah was surprised when he spoke to her.

“Grazia has become devoted to Matteo.”

Isaac was as unobservant as most men. He did not notice that Grazia played with Matteo in a way that seemed too studied. He did not observe how she hugged him too often and fussed over him excessively. How she spooned into his mouth special soups and stews that she cooked herself.

“Grazia bathes him, changes his clothes, and prepares dishes for him that I do not know how to prepare,” Hannah said. “Matteo seems to prefer her company to mine.” Just as you do, she thought.

“You do not appear to be well,” he said. “It seems to take all of your will to rise in the morning, and to dress
yourself and Matteo.” His voice sounded kind but his words were terrifying.

“You have one wife who is vigorous. That should be enough for you.” How sour she had become. If only she could hold her tongue.

“Hannah, how can you say that? She is not my wife any more than Leah is my daughter.”

The words stung, as all of Isaac’s words did of late. Hannah knew she was distraught and should defer the conversation until she was feeling more composed. But how would she ever have any energy when she could not sleep at night? How could she look well when at any moment she expected a knock on the door and the squad of deaf-mutes to take her away? How could she rest when Grazia was taking over the running of the household? Grazia had even started giving orders to Zephra.

“We used to work together, Hannah, like two horses drawing the same cart. Now you pull one way, I pull another, each of us determined to take different paths,” Isaac observed.

“Everything was different before Grazia arrived.”

“And before you brought Leah into the house.”

It always came to back to this impasse.

His words made Hannah feel sicker and more alone. “When Leah’s baby is born, I will find a family far away to take her in and find her a husband. You will see, Isaac. It will all work out.”

But the thought of Leah gone dismayed her. Hannah had grown to love the impulsive, energetic girl. It was Grazia she wanted to be quit of.

“And have you raised the money yet for Grazia?” Hannah asked, knowing he had not. “Perhaps you are not trying very hard because you enjoy her company more than mine.”

“Hannah—” Isaac began, but she cut him off.

“She is beautiful and—”

“You have nothing to be jealous about. Yes, she is beautiful but in the way a statue is beautiful. I do not desire her.”

“No? Every time she enters the room, every time you hear the rustling of those Venetian silk skirts of hers, you get a look on your face.”

“That is not true!” He rose to his feet and paced back and forth. “You are being unreasonable, Hannah.”

Hannah could not help herself. “You think she will bear you a son as I have failed to do.”

“I want more children. That much is true. The rest is not. Is that so terrible?”

If he had taken a knife and plunged it into her heart, it could not have been more painful. Hannah began to cry, hot, angry tears pouring down her cheeks.

Isaac put away his ledger and his ink pot and quill, and left the room.

A few hours later, after putting Matteo to bed and banking the fire in the stove, Hannah, exhausted, retired but was unable to find comfort on the hard pallet she had fashioned for herself on the floor of their bedchamber. She got up and returned to their bed, where Isaac lay snoring. She crawled in next to him and tentatively wrapped her arms around him. From the corner of their room, Güzel the parrot fluffed her wings, then coughed in a
perfect imitation of old Zephra, who suffered from catarrh. Hannah had forgotten to cover the bird but was too tired now to get out of bed.

There was a low purring noise, like folds of velvet being rubbed back and forth against itself. Hannah sat up in bed to listen, staring through the blackness of the bedchamber. On the window ledge was the silhouette of a cat backlit by the moon, eyes narrowed, back arched, ready to spring at Güzel. Hannah had no wish to wake up to a feather-strewn floor. She flung back her covers, grabbed a fire poker, and ran to the window, but the cat scampered down the wisteria vine and away into the night. Hannah returned to bed after shutting the window. After a time, she finally drifted off to sleep.

It was dawn when Hannah heard Leah’s agonized scream pierce the air, then a whimper, then silence. She pulled on her old blue
cioppà
and grabbed her linen bag with her birthing spoons. She looked over to see if Isaac had heard Leah’s cry, but his side of the bed was empty.