The Sultan's Eyes (12 page)

‘The Sultan is very wise for a person of his age,’ I said.

‘He has no choice. He must be so, in order to rule.’

‘At first, I wondered how he’d become so articulate,’ I ventured. ‘Now I think I understand — you taught him. You speak to him as if he is an adult.’

‘I have done what I thought best,’ said Ay
e. ‘When he was born, it seemed to me that his best chance of survival was knowledge. It was my gift to him.’

‘He’s grown up more quickly than most boys,’ I said.

‘Before he became Sultan, my brother was kept in the
kafes
. In there, they either grow up quickly or not at all.’

‘They kept your brother in a cage?’

‘Of sorts. It is the prison inside the harem. Only the sons and brothers of the Sultan live there.’

‘Why?’

‘Is it not obvious? So they can play no part in the court.’

‘That’s dreadful!’

I looked up at the shuttered windows of the harem and wondered, like every other foreign visitor to Constantinople, what it was like to live all your life inside those high walls.

‘It is our way,’ said Ay
e. ‘But I agree it is not necessarily wise. Our father and his brothers all grew up in the
kafes
, and when they were released, one by one, they were like wild animals. In the
kafes
, there are two choices: study or madness. They say our father was mad. I don’t know. I never met him.’

‘You never met your own father?’

She shook her head. ‘You think it strange? Imperial families are different to other families. I saw my father at ceremonial occasions from time to time, but he never spoke to me. He scared me. He scared all of us.’

‘Do you know what they say in the city?’ I checked to see if anyone was listening. ‘That your grandmother had him killed.’

‘It might be true.’ She shrugged. ‘I do not wish to know.’

‘And his brothers — your uncles? Are they dead, too?’

‘Not all. The youngest is still here, in the
kafes
. When he dies, they will carry him out, but now my brother is on the throne and an uncle, especially a young one, is too great a threat to be free. He is also a little mad. I hear him screaming sometimes at night. I
have cousins, too, many boys, who will grow up and grow old in the
kafes
. They will never come out.’

‘Unless your grandmother wishes it.’ I shivered, although it was warm enough inside my cloak. There were many aspects of palace life to which, I knew, I would never become accustomed.

We paused to watch a raven spear its beak through clods of earth in search of worms. A trumpet sounded in the courtyard beyond the gate.

‘The Divan is over, by the sound of it,’ I said.

‘The Sultan will be ready to see us soon.’

‘Does he know all this?’ I asked.

‘Of course. As I say, he lived in the
kafes
himself until the day he was presented with the sword of state. He would be there to this day if my uncle was not. Only one of them can rule, and the other must always be kept safe.’

‘Safe? That’s a kind way to put it.’

‘It is the only way, so it is said, to preserve the stability of the empire.’

‘But to keep people in cages!’

‘They are not really cages,’ said Ay
e. ‘Just chambers, but locked and guarded. I used to visit my brother every day. I read to him, taught him calligraphy. Nobody ever tried to stop me. In the
kafes
, they have food, carpets, music. Some even drink wine.’

‘But they do not have freedom.’

‘No,’ she said sadly, ‘not that — but then, how many of us can truly say that we are free?’

I thought about that for a moment.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ I admitted, ‘although we prefer to think that we are.’

‘That’s understandable,’ said Ay
e. ‘You enjoy the illusion of free will. But you are constrained, as are we all. It is what you make of your prison that matters.’

‘I agree with you, I think.’ I brushed my hand lightly across some leaves and the fragrance of lemons filled the air. ‘But still, to be stuck in here, day after day. I don’t think I could survive it as well as you do.’

‘That is the difference between us,’ the Princess said. ‘I see the windows. You see only walls.’

On our way to and from the palace, we were always escorted by Captain Skender and a small squad of
kapici
, who met us at our door, led our carriage down to the waterfront where the Sultan’s barge waited, stood in the bow as we were rowed across the Golden Horn, and then marched up the hill to the palace and the Sultan.

At other times, we were free to explore the city by ourselves, ranging further and further afield. So long as Valentina and I wore our veils, nobody really noticed us, though their eyes followed Willem with blatant curiosity and sometimes even shock. With his pale hair and eyes, he looked so different to everyone else in the streets. So did I, for that matter, but they couldn’t see me under all my layers. As we walked along the streets together, no doubt a few of them wondered if this enormous golden-haired boy had taken a local wife.

We grew used to the city, its sounds and even its smells, some of which were just like those of any city I’d ever known: the stink of cesspits and drains, rank water and horse manure. But floating through and above these odours were other, more mysterious aromas: onions fried in herbs and sheep fat, damp rugs drying in the winter sunlight, sea salt, roasting almonds, the perfume of unseen flowers.

We took a boat to the gardens further up the Golden Horn, where old women boiled coffee over coals and boys wrestled in the long grass. We clambered over fallen marble in the ruins of old Byzantium that littered the city, and Valentina sketched the markings on the Egyptian column in the Hippodrome. We ate fried fish at a table under a tree, and scattered coppers for the poor who sat huddled under blankets near the fountain. Al-Qasim told us they’d been driven from their homes in the north — just like us.

In this city heaving with people and filled with light, Fra Clement and his Inquisitors seemed like shadows in the dark, hovering just out of sight but unable to touch us — not here, not now.

Al-Qasim requested permission from the palace to escort us to the famous blue-tiled mosque of Sultan Ahmet, a holy place for the people of Islam, with domes that seemed to float lightly in the sky, as if the building was barely anchored to the earth by stone and mortar.

We walked across the gardens to Emperor Justinian’s great basilica, Sancta Sophia. Inside it was dark, lit by hundreds of candles, but there, too, the ceiling circled up into the heavens as we stood below.

‘I can’t believe I’m really here,’ I whispered.

Al-Qasim smiled. ‘Most foreigners are not allowed.’

‘Isabella’s the Sultan’s Eyes,’ said Willem. ‘Nobody can argue with that.’

‘You see?’ said Valentina. ‘My giggling didn’t hurt, after all.’

A muscle twitched in Al-Qasim’s cheek.

‘You’ll have to forgive me one day,’ Valentina said.

‘You are forgiven,’ he said, ‘but promise me you will never go near the palace again.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Valentina. ‘I have no wish to. Lately, every time I visit a palace I get in some kind of trouble. Better that it is Isabella who goes to the palace, although …’ She turned to me. ‘You spend so much time there. You don’t have to do this.’

‘I feel that I do,’ I said.

‘Isabella cannot refuse a direct imperial order,’ said Al-Qasim.

‘She’s never obeyed anyone in her life,’ said Willem. ‘Why start now?’

‘Why do you think?’ said Al-Qasim.

‘I can’t imagine.’ Willem raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘If you’d told me a few years ago that I’d ever visit such places, I’d have said you were demented. And now look — I spend every day sitting about in a palace as if I belong there. Not just any palace, either, but the grandest palace in the greatest city on earth.’

‘You’ve changed your story,’ I said. ‘Have you decided it’s not so bad here, after all?’

‘Maybe,’ said Willem.

‘But be warned,’ said Al-Qasim, his voice serious. ‘You don’t belong. You never will. Don’t forget that.’

‘I never can,’ said Valentina. She tugged at her veil. ‘I have to wear this wretched thing every day to remind me. The feel of it over my mouth makes me want to scream.’

‘Please don’t,’ said Willem.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ I said.

‘Never.’ She walked away to inspect some mosaics on the wall.

‘We are guests in this city, Willem, and in the palace,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘That’s all.’

‘My friend,’ said Willem, ‘you worry too much.’

Every day, I told myself I would pay another call to the Admiral and his family, as I had promised, and every day I put it off. Finally, my procrastination came to an official end. Our presence was requested at a reception at the embassy the following week, and Valentina and I spent days fretting: she over what to wear, and I over what to say when next I met Justinian Jonson.

But the inevitable could be delayed no longer, and so we presented ourselves at the embassy on the appointed day, to be greeted by the Admiral as if we were his oldest friends, as if I hadn’t snubbed his son and stormed from the room the last time we met.

‘Ah, there you are, my dear Mistress Hawkins.’ He bowed. ‘And your
signora
, too. How delightful.’

‘Admiral Jonson, thank you again for all you have done for us,’ said Valentina.

‘Not at all, not at all.’

We bowed to Lady Elizabeth.

‘How lovely to see you again.’ She curtsied to us, deeply and elegantly, with a grace I could never hope to match. ‘I hoped you would be here.’

Willem appeared as if out of the clouds, a tiny porcelain bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. ‘Isabella, you have to try this. It’s called sherbet. It’s a phenomenon.’

‘You see, lad? Constantinople is a feast for the senses.’ The Admiral took the bowl from Willem’s hand and sniffed it appreciatively. ‘Lemon. Lovely. Have you tried the orange?’

‘There are different flavours?’

‘Countless.’

‘I may faint,’ said Willem. ‘Can I have one of each?’

The Admiral burst into laughter. ‘As many as you like.’

He waved across the crowded room at someone: Justinian, in the middle of a group of young men all talking loudly at once.