The Sultan's Eyes (25 page)

‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘you can teach her to read instead.’

‘No! I like it that she can’t.’

‘You would keep her in ignorance?’ said Valentina. ‘Have you learned nothing from our time together, from Isabella?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Too much.’

‘
Signora
,’ said Luis, chuckling, ‘I think you’d better leave. Now.’

When I got home, Mirza stood in the entrance hall.

‘Don’t go in,’ he said. ‘Colonel Orga has been here, with another man, Jamael Khoury. They have terrorised the other servants and —’

I pushed open the door to our dining room before he could finish. The floor was covered in sheets of paper — hundreds of pages of slashed books and torn bindings, maps ripped to shreds. Al-Qasim’s eye-glasses were smashed beyond repair. Even the tapestries on the walls hung in ragged ribbons.

Valentina kneeled in the middle of the mess, fistfuls of paper clenched in her hands. ‘Imagine,’ she said, ‘what they would have done to us if we’d been here.’

‘I don’t like to think of it,’ I said, looking around me. ‘So this is Jamael Khoury’s revenge, at last.’

‘Who?’

‘The Sultan’s tutor.’

‘But surely he, of all people, would not harm precious books?’

‘We could say the same thing of Fra Clement. He loves books, but only those that contain words that he likes.’

‘Like Paul?’

‘Yes,’ I said sadly. ‘Just like Paul.’

‘Isabella, there’s something else. She’s gone. I’ve looked everywhere.’

‘Who’s gone?’

‘Hypatia.’

Searing heat surged through my body, followed by a wave of icy fear.

‘I know that expression,’ Valentina said. ‘Don’t do anything rash.’

‘Mirza!’ I shouted. ‘I need the carriage.’

The sun was high in the sky by the time I reached the palace. The Gate of Salutation was shut and the
kapici
stood in two rows in front, pikes held at arm’s length. Captain Skender stood in the centre, sword in hand. I bowed to him.

‘Why are the gates closed?’ I asked.

‘Have you not heard the alarms? We have been told to stand on the highest alert.’

‘But why?’

‘To prevent anyone leaving the palace,’ he said. ‘Without the express permission of the Valide Sultan.’

‘That’s all right, then,’ I said. ‘I want to go in, not out.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘I wish to see the Sultan,’ I said. ‘Or his sister.’

‘But after that you will want to come out again.’

‘By then I will have permission.’

A hint of a smile flitted across his face. ‘I do know,’ he said, ‘that the Sultan asked for you earlier.’

‘You see? I’ve saved you the effort of coming to fetch me.’

‘Mistress Hawkins,’ he said, ‘if this is what happens when women are educated, it’s no surprise that so few are allowed.’

But he smiled, and led me through a small side gate and into the Second Court. At the Gate of Felicity, he motioned to one of the White Eunuchs.

‘Take a message to the Kislar Agha. Mistress Hawkins is here.’ Captain Skender glanced at me. ‘At the special request of the Sultan.’

‘Why the Agha?’ I asked. ‘He only reports to the Valide Sultan.’

‘He holds the reins at the moment,’ said Captain Skender. ‘The Black Eunuchs control the palace now as well as the harem, although things change from hour to hour.’

‘Then where is the Sultan?’

‘I can say no more at present. Forgive me.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

I was shown into the Throne Room and left there alone to wait, rather nervously. If the Valide Sultan and her Kislar Agha had taken power, I had no idea what might happen next: to the Sultan or to me.

Three Black Eunuchs guarded the front door. I sat on my usual cushion and thought of the many times that Suraiya had brought books to me here and listened while we read, or fetched me hot meals from the kitchen while I worked into the night on the transcripts of Hypatia. I’d rarely spoken to her, had barely noticed whether she was happy or miserable. Or in love. I was as oblivious as the Sultan or his grandmother to the palace staff, even though I, too, had worked my whole life with my wit, my pen. I argued long and loud for girls to be educated, but did I only mean some girls — or just me? I shook my head in outrage. At myself. At the world I had claimed for my own. Suraiya was no simple slave girl, even if such a thing existed. She was as smart as her mother, and
perhaps as adept at survival in the murderous games of the palace. Willem had seen through it all, through me. Again. Disgust tasted so sour in my mouth I wanted to spit.

I barely looked up when Colonel Orga arrived with a troop of janissaries.

‘Get up,’ he said.

‘You have forgotten your manners, sir.’

‘No. I simply have no need of them any more.’

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘You will see.’

‘If I don’t return home, the English Ambassador will be here within the hour.’

‘That old fool?’ He smirked. ‘I doubt it.’

‘Admiral Jonson will see to it,’ I said. ‘You might know his name. He is a great hero in my country for fighting your Barbary pirates.’

‘You are not frightening me, Mistress Hawkins. Am I frightening you?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Yet you are renowned for your intelligence. How odd.’ He put his face close to mine. I smelled rosewater and sweat. ‘Get up or I will drag you by the hair into the harem.’

I stood up slowly. ‘If you’d told me we were going there in the first place, this unpleasantness might have been avoided.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But where would be the sport in that?’

I walked ahead of him and his guards to the door connecting the harem with the rest of the palace, and breathed a sigh of relief when a small contingent of Black Eunuchs stood waiting for me on the other side. They led me along the Golden Way, but instead of turning into the Valide Sultan’s apartments, they kept going into
a dark warren of courtyards and offices until we came to a room furnished only with a wooden bench. It looked like a cupboard. Or a prison cell.

I shivered.

‘So, Mistress Hawkins.’

I turned slowly. The Kislar Agha ducked down to step through the doorway.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ I said. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

‘To talk,’ he said. ‘That’s all. There’s no need to raise your voice. Please. Sit.’

‘I will stand, thank you.’

‘As you wish.’

He looked away from me, and traced the pattern on a wall tile with a forefinger.

‘I’m disappointed in you,’ he said. ‘We all are. Our city offered you refuge.’

‘Refuge? Do you even know what that means? Truly? It means safe harbour, freedom from threats or harm.’

‘Under certain circumstances. But it seems our trust in you was misplaced.’

He pulled a wad of papers from inside his sash and threw it on the floor at my feet. ‘What is this?’

‘That,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even, ‘is the
Astronomica
of Hypatia, thought lost for centuries and rediscovered in the Sultan’s library. I have spent weeks copying it out. The Sultan knows all about it.’

‘And what was it doing in your house?’

I sighed. ‘I took it.’

‘Clearly. Why?’

I looked up into his face. ‘We are unsure of its provenance. The Sultan asked me to investigate it, so I in turn asked … a friend … to write to a prominent astronomer in England —’

‘Yes, yes,’ he broke in. ‘Admiral Jonson wrote to Mister Wilkins in Oxford weeks ago, we know that.’

‘But how?’

‘We have ways.’

‘How can that be right?’ I said. ‘Reading other people’s mail?’

‘How is it right to steal documents from the Sultan’s library?’

‘I didn’t steal it. I was going to bring it back.’

‘So you say.’

‘I swear it,’ I said. ‘Now you tell me, what laws have I broken?’

‘I don’t know. Not yet. But from the beginning, your attitude, your beliefs, have not sat easily with ours.’

‘With whose? Yours? The Valide Sultan’s?’

‘Those who matter.’ He leaned back against the wall. ‘If only, Mistress Hawkins, you would learn to be more like us.’

‘We abide by your rules as best we can, but when your laws are unjust —’

‘In your eyes,’ he said.

‘Yes, my eyes. The Eyes of the Sultan, don’t forget.’

‘The Sultan sees what we wish him to see.’

‘Not while I’m here,’ I said. ‘These eyes will show him the whole world.’

‘That can be very frightening for a child.’

‘For some, perhaps. But I have faith that our Sultan is braver than most, and more clear-sighted, even at this young age.’

‘I wish I had your confidence,’ said the Kislar Agha. ‘But I have lived through the reigns of several sultans and few of them, believe
me, possessed much clarity at all. That is why you worry me. We need a sultan who is a leader, a true ruler, an emperor.’

‘But surely everything I do makes that more possible?’ I said. ‘If one’s eyes are open, so, too, is one’s mind. The Sultan’s mind is open to wisdom, to excellence, to good government.’

‘He is a boy.’

‘But one day he will be a man. Ruler of half the world.’

‘If he lives that long.’

‘If you let him live that long, you mean.’

‘Such matters are in Allah’s hands,’ he said.

‘I read a great many books, but I’ve never read any accounts of God strangling a sultan with a silken rope,’ I said. ‘It’s men who do such things. Men such as you. I know you well; I’ve met other men just like you. You conceal your own designs behind a façade of destiny, of pious obedience.’

‘Now you insult me?’ he said. ‘Even here, where you are utterly at my mercy?’

‘Am I?’

He pushed himself away from the wall and stood facing me, less than an arm’s length away. ‘This is my domain, Mistress Hawkins.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I thought you were the subject of the Sultan, like the rest of us.’

He sighed. ‘Indeed, and I understand he is waiting to see you. So you will go to him for the last time, say your farewells, and never return to this palace again. That is the express order of the Valide Sultan.’

‘We’ll see.’

I bent down, one hand outstretched towards the manuscript.

‘Leave it!’ he shouted. ‘Or I will have your eyes gouged from your head and you will never read another book in your life.’

So I left Hypatia there, on that tiled floor, as defenceless as she had ever been. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. I straightened up, pushed past the Kislar Agha and into the hall. The guards let me go, and I stumbled through the maze of rooms and back to the Golden Way.

Ay
e was waiting for me. So were Turhan Hadice and her personal guards.

‘We were just coming to fetch you,’ Turhan Hadice said. ‘Are you here to see my son? How lovely. We will escort you to him.’

Ay
e sneaked a smile at me.

‘What on earth is going on?’ I whispered.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘The palace has been in turmoil since early this morning. Nobody knows who is in charge. Are you all right?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ I said.

‘Clear the gardens!’ Turhan Hadice ordered her eunuchs through the harem door and beyond.

The janissaries would have no choice but to retreat beyond the Gate of Felicity. No matter how much Colonel Orga argued, he was not allowed in the presence of the Sultan’s mother. If she wished to visit the gardens, the area would be emptied of all men besides the eunuchs, under pain of death.

‘I wish I had that power,’ I said. ‘It would have been very useful, many times.’

Once the way was clear, we were escorted along the walkway to the Throne Room, where the Sultan now sat, fidgeting. Nuri Effendi kneeled at his feet, and I joined him there, while Turhan Hadice and Ay
e settled themselves on the royal benches.