Harem, page 21
There was froth on the old woman's lips and she was writhing as if she was trying to get off the bed. Abbas called for the gediçli and they tried to hold her down.
'What is happening?'Hürrem said.
'I don't know, I am not a physician, My Lady.'
'She looks like she is trying to say something,' Hürrem said. 'Does it look that way to you Kislar Aghasi? Something has upset her a great deal. I hope it was nothing I said to her. She looks like a fish flopping about in the bottom of the boat. It's unseemly. Tell your girls to try and do something will you?'
'They are doing their best.'
'You should send another message to the Lord of Life. He should be here if he finds it distressing or not. I do not think she is long for this world.'
'I shall do so at once.'
'I hope he gets here before she dies. It would be a shame for him to miss it.'
She gave the old woman's hand a last reassuring squeeze and went out.
Chapter 52
'It was him wasn't it?' She stood at the water's edge staring at the lights flickering on in the palace. She was wrapped in a fur cloak but she could not stop shivering.
'Yes,' Ludovici said.
'What happened to him? It was my father, wasn't it?'
'Abbas got a letter. Lucia gave it to me and said it came from you. I had no cause to think otherwise. So in one respect I was the instrument of his downfall. He was lured to the Ponte Antico and taken to a ship in the harbor …' His voice trailed off.
'How did he not die after what they did to him?'
'He was lucky or unlucky depending on how you see it. I have been told by those who know about these things that there is a high mortality rate for those who are razored in this way. I cannot imagine what he has been through.'
'So my father did this to him?'
'It seems so.'
' And yet he still loves me?'
'It was hardly your fault, madam. You were innocent of this and yes it seems he has carried his love for you even here to this place.'
'How long did you know about this?'
' He has been here in the Harem for five years, I have been in Pera for three. But he only came to visit me when you arrived in the Harem. He asked me for help in getting you out but at the time he had no plan on how to do it. When I received his message I had only a few hours to act. Because of my business I was able to procure a small caramusali and the two Greeks I brought with me this morning to help rescue you.'
'I need to see him again.'
'I don't think he wants that.'
'But I have to. I did not even recognize him. That must have been excruciating for him.'
' Yes, I cannot imagine what that was like for him. But I cannot command him to come back here. I imagine that he does not want to see you, after what has been done to him. They tell me the excessive weight is something to do with … the operation, if we might call it that.'
'And the scar on his face?'
'He tells me that was something that happened in the struggle. It became infected afterwards and that is why he looks as he does.'
Julia hung her head. 'He was such a beautiful boy.'
'He still is.'
She smiled at that. 'What will they do him when they find out he has tricked the Sultan?'
'Knowing Abbas, they will not find out.'
'I hope not. And it was brave of you, also. to do what you did for me.'
'I did it for him. And the courage - I think the courage was all his. You know, in Venice, I always scoffed at him. I vowed that I should never fall in love with any woman. I thought it fanciful and weak and I tried many times to dissuade him from his pursuit of you.'
'You were right to do it. It would have saved him so much pain.'
'No, I was wrong.'
'How can you say that? Look at him now!'
'Don't pity him, he would hate that. And there is no need to pity him. No matter what they did to him, they could not take away his courage or his honour. He honoured you tonight and in doing so he has scolded me for my petty life. For all the women I have, I have never loved like he has. I am … envious of him. He knows more than I will ever know about what it is to live.'
Chapter 53
Few slept soundly in the Eski Saraya. Sirhane lay on her side, her pillow wet with tears. Çehangir moaned and tossed in his bed, haunted by nightmares. Meanwhile Suleiman knelt distraught beside his mother's bed and when she died he uttered a small cry. Ibrahim thought he heard something, as he paced the terrace of his palace near the Hippodrome. Gülbehar thought she heard it, too.
It sounded like a ghost, or a warning. Mustapha shivered, as if a ghost had touched him. A shadow passed across the moon. He stopped to listen, but there was only silence. Perhaps it was just an owl, he thought.
Abbas stood at the window of his tiny cell and looked across the Golden Horn to Galata. 'I promise you I will love you forever,' he said.
If you love her until next week I will give you two gold ducats.
I feel sorry for you, Ludovici. You feel nothing inside. But one day you will, life will seek you out and make you feel again. As for me, I shall find the greatest part of me in loving truly.
She was safe tonight, sleeping sound in Pera. Oh I may not be a man any more but tonight I shall sleep sound in mine. Antonio Gonzaga robbed me of a lifetime in your arms, he thought. But unlike him at least I shall die a good man and there are not many complete men who can say that.
He took out the small velvet pouch that had arrived that afternoon from the Venetian quarter, sent by messenger. He opened the drawstring and emptied the contents into his palm.
Two gold ducats. For the first time since he arrived at the Harem he smiled.
Chapter 54
There was snow on the gate of the Ba'ab-i-Humayun when Suleiman returned from the Lands of War. He rode stiffly, deaf to the cheers of the Yeniçeris and the enthusiastic crowds that lined the Divan Yolu to welcome him back.
Where was the glory? Suleiman thought. This time they had not even got as far as Vienna. Ibrahim had been stalled for over a month by a tiny garrison of soldiers at Guns, and the campaign that was to take Austria and lure the Holy Roman Emperor into a decisive battle petered out into a series of cavalry raids and retribution between his generals over who was to blame for the fiasco.
He returned in mourning. The Valide, his mother, was dead. Though he mourned her, a part of him felt strangely liberated. Even as he said his prayers for her he felt the burden lifting from his shoulders. There was no one who could scourge him with duty now.
The European campaign had been an exercise in futility; the interlude with the Italian houri had been a disaster. It was abundantly clear to him now who was his wisest counsellor, both on the battlefield and in bed. She was the only one he could really trust.
He had been away far too long.
Hürrem, bewitch me again.
THE END
Epilogue
Topkapi Saraya, Istanbul
Once, a man would have had the flesh flayed from the soles of his feet for raising his voice above a whisper in this court of plane and chestnut trees, the sanctum of Allah's Deputy on Earth, the Lord of the Lords of this World, Possessor of Men's Necks, King of Believers and Unbelievers, Emperor of the East and West, Refuge of All the People in the Whole World, the Shadow of the Almighty Dispensing Quiet in the Earth.
Once, only the mumble of pages and viziers disturbed the grazing deer and parades of peacock, as the business of an empire that encompassed the Seven Wonders of the World was conducted in murmurs.
Once there was silence.
But today Mercedes buses rumble through the Sublime Porte, past the sleeping church of St. Irene, and the fountain where the bostanji-bashi washed the blood from his sword after an execution. Now grey-haired and superannuated executives from Frankfurt and Chicago and Osaka, armed with digital cameras and their wives giggling like schoolgirls, are ushered through the crush at Ortakapi by guides wearing Raybans who do not even glance up at the niches in the wall high above them, to point out that they were once the resting places for the heads of the Sultan's viziers.
Beyond the Ortakapi, close to the Hall of the Divan, there is a sign on the stone wall that reads: 'The Harem.' Four matrons from Ohio pose underneath while one of their husbands focuses a camera.
'Don't lean on the wall, Doris,' he drawls, 'I don't know if it can take the weight.'
The black doors swing open and the tour is herded inside, into the cool and cobbled darkness. A young Turk in an open-necked shirt and unpressed trousers, his English distorted by his lisp, stands to one side to address them.
''Harem' means 'Forbidden',' he says. 'Forbidden to men. Once the Sultan was the only man - the only complete man - who could pass through that gate. Any woman who entered there would never pass out again.'
Once there was silence. It was broken not by the shouts of war and invasion, but by laughter, the laughter of a woman.
All of the background events in this novel can be found in histories of the Ottomans in this period. What can never be known is what happened behind the iron-studded doors of the Sublime Porte to incite so much violence and so much passion. Historians have described it, but been unable to explain it.
This is a work of fiction, and also an attempt to imagine an explanation. In this respect this is a work of fiction. Only the long dead could ever tell us how much is true.
Colin Falconer, Harem
