Y
ASHIM had not seen the Kislar aga for several months, and he was shocked by the change in his appearance. His blue-black skin had lost its sheen, and he looked tired and thinner than he had seemed in the summer; but it was his manner that most surprised Yashim.
He had developed a stammer.
“Ya-Ya-Ya-Yashim!” He clapped his skinny brown hands together. “I just knew you would come!”
Yashim bowed. “You sent for me, Ibou.”
“Of course. Do sit d-d-down. Have a”—his head jerked, and he blinked—“a sweetmeat?”
He gestured to a tray, and then popped a small green
lokum
into his mouth.
Yashim settled on the divan. “How are the girls? Settling now, I imagine.”
The Kislar aga passed a hand over his face and shuddered. “They’re like Ta-Ta-Tatars.”
Yashim pursed his lips. He thought of the Kislar agas he had known, men of terrifying girth and power, ruling the harem like cruel tyrants. At least, he had often thought them cruel: perhaps they exercised proper discipline. Perhaps that was necessary.
The Kislar aga twisted his long fingers. “They are hard to manage. Impudent and w-w-worse. They don’t listen. But that’s only p-p-part of it, Yashim. Some of them are a bit wild, but I could hope to settle them eventually. It’s the atmosphere. The strain.”
Yashim spread his hands. “A young sultan, new girls. It goes to their heads.”
Ibou shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s as if people were a-a-a—” He blinked, jerked his chin. “Afraid.”
“Afraid? Afraid of what?”
The black man hung his head. “Magic. Evil eye.”
He described the little homunculus he had found, studded with a child’s teeth. His own teeth chattered as he spoke. “And P-P-Pembe, Yashim. With the child that did not survive. She said it was the l-l-l-lady Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta—”
“Talfa? Bah!” Yashim dismissed the story with an angry wave. “Potions and curses, Ibou.” But he could see the trouble in Ibou’s eyes. “The sultan and his girls are very young. And Bezmialem … perhaps …”
“Of course.” Ibou gave an angry shrug. “She is mother to the sultan. That far, she is a valide. But she is not mother to the harem.”
“Talfa, then, herself? Have you talked to her?”
Ibou shook his head. “Talfa can’t organize everything. She only returned to the harem after her husband’s death. She’s still making friends.”
“Making friends?”
“I saw you talking to Talfa, Yashim.”
“She wondered why I didn’t live at the palace.”
Ibou gave him a look of surprise—eagerness, almost. “But then perhaps, my friend—”
Yashim raised both hands. “I explained to her, Ibou, that the sultan wants me elsewhere.”
“The valide at Topkapi? We could a-a-ask her to come.”
It was Yashim’s turn to look surprised. “She’s quite frail.”
The Kislar aga held up his hands, palms upward. “She has the experience, Yashim—and all the girls are terrified of her.” He gave a guilty smile. “I’m terrified of her.”
Yashim saw no reason to dispute the point. He said: “At her age, to move …”
But Ibou was shaking his head. Having taken up the thought, he seemed reluctant to let it drop. “The valide will be very happy,” he insisted. “And she has a handmaiden who is very good, very caring.”
Yashim raised an eyebrow. The valide had run through more handmaidens than Selim the Grim had had viziers; she changed them like gloves. He remembered the last one, an able Circassian with a pleasant, open face. The valide had boxed her ears and sent her to the imperial laundry because, she said, her ankles were too thick.
“I’ve seen her,” he agreed. “The flautist.”
“Tülin.” The Kislar aga nodded. “Very popular girl, actually. She helps to carry the ladies’ orchestra—the valide allows her over to rehearse on Thursdays. She’s a little older than most of the girls.”
“I suppose that’s an advantage.”
“That’s why I bought her. The valide eats the younger ones for breakfast.”
Ibou’s stammer seemed to have improved, Yashim noticed. “You’ve thought this out already, haven’t you?”
The Kislar aga blinked again. “C-c-c-c-certainly not. I wanted your advice, th-th-that’s all.”
Yashim stared at his feet. “I’d miss her, at Topkapi.”
The Kislar aga laid a hand tenderly on Yashim’s knee. “We’ll all miss her one day, Yashim. And you more than a-a-anyone, I’m sure.” He smiled, and patted his knee. “So you will ask her?”
“Ask her?”
“Why, the valide! Ask her to come to Besiktas, Yashim. The harem needs a mother. As for Talfa—” The Kislar aga cocked his head. “What’s that?”
They heard the sound of running feet outside in the corridor, and the door was flung back to admit a eunuch, who immediately hurled himself to his knees.
“Aga!” He was deathly pale. His eyes rolled in his head. Through chattering teeth he cried out: “I think she is dying! Everywhere is blood, aga. Come!”
T
HE Kislar aga rolled from the divan and clutched the babbling eunuch by the shoulder.
“Who is dying? Show me.”
Yashim followed. The fluttering eunuch ran half stooped with outstretched arms along the corridor, like a startled hen. Girls clutched their hands to their breasts and pressed themselves to the wall, their mouths ovals of surprise.
At the foot of the stairs the eunuch seemed to droop, clinging to the newel post for support.
“Up there, aga! The dormitory …”
The aga brushed past him, and they mounted the stairs two at a time. At the top the aga whirled down a corridor. He flung a door back with a blow from his open hand and stood there, panting, turning his head from side to side.
A girl sprang from the side of the bed with a scream of fright, her hands to her ears. Ibou strode forward and grabbed her wrist; the girl winced and bent at the waist, refusing to lower her hands.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
Yashim saw it all like a tableau from the doorway: the girl squealing, Ibou gripping her wrist in his long hand, his eyes swiveling to the bed under the window, and the bed itself, with a white satin quilt embroidered minutely with multicolored flowers.
Beneath the quilt, black hair trailing wide across the pillows, lay another girl, staring straight at Yashim. Her eyes glittered like black pearls. As Yashim stepped forward into the room, the hairs prickling on the back of his neck, the girl in the bed moved very slightly: her jaw sagged.
“He said—blood!” Ibou shook the girl again. “Where is this blood!”
The eyes of the girl on the bed did not follow Yashim.
“She’s dead,” he said quietly.
Ibou turned his head and his eyes grew wide as they moved from the girl’s face to the flowered quilt draped across her body.
In the center of the bed, between the shape of the girl’s thighs, a new flower was blooming on the patterned quilt, growing larger and brighter than all the rest.
T
HE Kislar aga twitched the quilt back.
Yashim took one look and turned his head away.
The aga’s jaw dropped. His grip on the girl relaxed. She wrenched herself free and blundered to the door.
Yashim made no effort to stop her.
The girl on the bed lay naked from the waist down, her legs outspread above a dark stain between her thighs. Deep welts were scored across the skin of her belly, as though she had been clawed by a great cat; fresh blood still oozed from the livid marks.
Ibou put his hand to his mouth.
“Go, Ibou. This is what you must do. Get green tea and ginger, straightaway.” Yashim laid a hand on the aga’s arm. “Have it sent to this room. Immediately, do you understand?”
“She’s dead.”
“Yes, she’s dead,” Yashim agreed. “The tea is for me.”
He saw Ibou’s color beginning to return.
“Then go and find the girl. What’s her name?”
“I—I don’t know.” The aga yawned suddenly, flashing his gold teeth. “Her name is Melda.”
“Find Melda.” Yashim spoke slowly, with emphasis. “Find her, and take her to your room. When you are there, wait for me.”
Yashim steered the aga toward the door. All the man’s strength seemed to have drained away: he moved without protest, his head bobbing.
“Tea, Ibou. Then find Melda. I’ll join you in your room.”
With the aga gone, Yashim closed the door and rubbed his hands over his face.
He had no expectation of recognizing the dead girl. He knew a few of the harem girls by sight, but for the most part they were anonymous, like beautiful cattle. Naked, unadorned, only the manner of her death distinguished her from a hundred others behind these walls. He wondered what the aga could tell him; what Melda knew.
He spent some time examining the welts on her belly. He examined her hands. There were faint traces of blood on her thighs, and her skin had already begun to cool when he turned her carefully onto her side. There was a deep pool of blood on the sheet beneath her.
He plucked at the sheet. When it did not give way he looked and saw that it was the thin mattress, and the sheet had gone.
He found the sheet easily, under the bed. It was screwed into a loose ball and it was soaked in blood.
M
ELDA collapsed onto the divan, weeping.
She was dressed in the usual harem motley, a jumble of tailored and traditional costume bought in Paris and the Grand Bazaar, Turkish slippers peeping out from beneath French petticoats, a slashed and striped velvet jacket over a bodice of ruched silk, a corded girdle and a muslin shawl.
Yashim drew up a stool and perched on it, one leg drawn up, wrists dangling.
“Melda, my name is Yashim. I want to talk about what happened to Elif.”
The girl covered her face with her hands.
“She was ill, Melda, wasn’t she? Something inside, that was hurting her very badly. She should have seen a doctor.” He frowned. “You know what a doctor is, Melda?”
Melda’s shoulders heaved. Very gently, Yashim took her wrists and lowered her hands.
“Melda?”
She turned her face away.
“Tell me,” Yashim urged. “Tell me what happened to Elif.”
She shook her head convulsively.
“I—have—seen—the engine,” she gasped.
“The engine?”
She dragged her hands free and clapped them over her ears, rocking to and fro.
“I don’t understand, Melda.”
Her eyes grew very wide, and she moved her hands to cover her mouth. Outside, the muezzin was calling the faithful to Friday prayers.
“How could you understand?” she burst out. “You—did you step out from a rock, or drop from a stork’s beak? Did I grow like an apple on a tree? No!” Bright spots had appeared on her cheeks, and her hands were clenched. Gone was the court lisp, the fluting voice, the trembling eyelash. Melda spoke in the stony voice of the mountains where she was raised; and she evoked an ancient bitterness, as old as the pagan gods of Circassia. “Men plant children in our bellies, and we bear them until we die.”
Yashim rocked slowly back.
Melda turned her eyes on him and then, like a snake, she drew back her head and spat.
“Elif was pregnant.”
Yashim remained motionless, gazing at the girl’s face. “The sultan chose her?”
The Kislar aga had said nothing about that, Yashim thought. Everything about a girl was carefully considered before she was promoted to
gözde
: her looks, her bearing, her conduct. To be selected to share the sultan’s bed was a very high honor: from it, with ordinary luck, flowed all the rewards the sultan could bestow upon a woman—rank, and fortune, and power within these four walls.
“The sultan?” Her lips trembled. “How? How, efendi, could that be?”
She covered her face with her hands and began to sob.
Yashim murmured a few words: he hardly knew what to say. He stood up and went to find the Kislar aga.
“
T
ELL me—” He hesitated. “Was Elif a
gözde
?”
The aga looked puzzled. “A
gözde
? Certainly not. Elif was a musician, Yashim. She played in the ladies’ orchestra, and she and Melda were also kalfas. They look after a little girl.”
“And before she came here? Three, four months ago, when Abdülmecid was still a prince?”
Ibou shrugged. “I don’t understand your questions, Yashim.”
“I want to know when Elif met the sultan. Perhaps while he was still crown prince?”
“She didn’t meet him. Not face-to-face, not to be introduced. The only time she’s seen Abdülmecid is at our concerts. We do not have the sultan roaming the corridors, meeting ladies.”
“Ibou,” Yashim said gently. “It seems that Elif was pregnant.”
The silence between them prickled like toasted spice.
“Do you know what you are saying?” Ibou whispered. His face was waxy with—what? Astonishment? Fear?
“Elif died from bleeding,” Yashim said. “What you saw, those marks, were made by her own nails. She was clawing at her own flesh.” He paused. “What you haven’t seen is the sheet under the bed. It’s soaked in blood. If Melda is right, I would guess that Elif miscarried.”
The aga collected himself. “No. Pembe was the sultan’s
gözde
before he became sultan—with the unfortunate results you know about. Since then, he has taken only two other women. Leyla and Demet, both of them selected by—b-b-by me, and B-Bezmialem. To suggest that the sultan would take another woman into his bed, without protocol, is absurd. He is ruled by the traditions of the house of Osman. And Demet and Leyla would prevent it, anyway.”
“To the death?”
Ibou frowned. “They would only have to speak to me, Yashim. There would be no need to talk of death.”
Yashim sighed. The legitimate
gözde
would hardly stand idly by while the sultan dallied with another girl.
“This is not a house in the city, Yashim. The sultan never goes alone. Every minute of the day, every hour of the night, he is watched and cared for.”
“Was Elif watched every minute of the day? At night?”
“She is with the others, Yashim. You now how it is.”
“But if Elif was pregnant, and she did not sleep with the sultan …”
Ibou’s face clouded. “Impossible.”
If what Yashim implied was true, it was not just about one girl, or the lapse of a single aga. This was a taint that would spread like the blood across the quilt, but more fatal, more insidious, than either of them could imagine.
“Could she—have slept with another man?”
The aga slowly turned his head. His lips peeled back. “Is this what the girl Melda says? What to do, Yashim efendi? I cannot let her say such a thing.”
Yashim had known agas who would have strangled a girl with their bare hands without hesitation or remorse; but not Ibou.
“We need to get Melda away,” he said. “Somewhere she can feel safe.”