The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) (23 page)

The sultan gravely nodded.

That signal meant it was present time. Sebastiani’s gifts were unpacked and paraded like the haul from an upscale wedding. Included were gold trays, silver flatware, China plates, silver candlesticks, a chafing dish, a jeweled clock in the shape of a rooster, and a jeweled cavalry saber. The sultan was studiously impassive, receiving it all as his due.

And that was usually the end, the ambassador receding until called upon for specific negotiations. This time, however, Selim startled his entire court by limply raising a hand and asking a question. Ministers jerked as if jolted.

“Is your emperor going to fight Russia?” Sebastiani was asked.

The envoy carefully phrased his answer, knowing that Selim would be well informed and mustn’t be lied to. “We’ve recently signed a treaty of friendship with St. Petersburg after our victory at Austerlitz,” he said, “but the tsar is courting Prussia, which angers France. The situation is very fluid, which is why Napoleon seeks friendship. Your enemies may become ours.”

Selim was silent for a moment, and again I thought the audience was over. But then he spoke again.

“Will Napoleon take the field himself?”

Sebastiani nodded. “Yes. He’s our finest general.”

“He modernized your army.” The aga of the Janissaries stiffened at this comment.

“Yes. It’s why we won at Austerlitz.”

“Who’s the Janissary general?” I whispered to Caleb.

“Abdulla Gelib, the worst of the reactionaries. Don’t cross him.”

“Did you bring experts for my New Army?” Selim asked.

“Certainly. May I present Colonel Ethan Gage, an authority on artillery,” Sebastiani said smoothly, “and his brother Captain Caleb Gage, a naval officer of great experience and valor. These are only the first of many whom our emperor will lend, should you permit.”

“The first.” He looked at us. “Come forward, colonel.”

Sebastiani gestured to me. Nervously, worried that a misstep would send me back to the Executioner’s Fountain, I stepped forward.

Selim assessed me with a surprisingly shrewd gaze. “You are American.” He had his own spies.

I swallowed. “In French service.”

“You’re the man who also worked with the English and Russians?”

“I’ve had a peculiar career.”

“I hope it’s given you wisdom.”

“More than I wish, your highness.”

The sultan studied me for a long moment before something seemed to satisfy him. “I want you to improve my forts, colonel. I want your brother to inspect my ships. The Russian and English ambassadors boast about their weapons. I want to boast about mine.”

“We are impressed by word of your New Army.” I glanced at Caleb, who was watching Gelib. The Janissary aga was tight-lipped.

“I’ll require a visit from your wife, as well,” Selim went on. “The sultana invites her. I’m told she is an educated woman.”

“Self-educated, I’d say, but better-read than almost any man.” I was sweating. Selim’s courtiers stirred some more.

“We’ll talk, perhaps, of reform.” He looked directly at his ministers when he said this. They were struggling not to show expression, but their eyes had widened into something between shock, dismay, and mutiny. The French! Americans! A woman!

And then with a wave the audience was abruptly over, we Westerners backing as instructed, me praying that I wouldn’t trip over the hem of my kaftan.

Apparently I had Selim’s favor.

I glanced at Aga Abdulla Gelib, now glowering.

And another enemy, as well.

CHAPTER 29

Astiza

D
espite Ethan’s colorful description of Topkapi Palace, I wasn’t prepared for the intricacy of its architecture or the quiet within its walls. The center of power is hushed, as if every servant and minister is holding breath. One hears the splashing of the fountains, the tread of sentry boots, and the song of nightingales.

The rambling complex was not so much designed as assembled over three centuries, and the harem where the Sultan and his women live has grown to nearly four hundred rooms. Even at that size a private chamber is prized because Selim’s harem numbers five hundred, of which only the most favored are ever invited to his bed. Add to that hundreds of eunuchs, dwarves, and mutes who serve as guards, entertainers, and messengers, and it’s a cramped warren with little privacy and many rules, as intricate as a monastery. Whispers are the norm. A quarrel or a laugh echoes so unexpectedly that the inhabitants react like startled animals.

I visited dressed from crown to toe, my face concealed by a dark scarf that covered all but my eyes. Yet never had I felt so conspicuously a woman. Everyone whom a female visitor first sees at Topkapi is a man, and the heads of Janissaries and halberd-armed guards swung toward my shapeless form as if on the same swivel. With women shut away, even the most shrouded become the subject of male curiosity. The halberdiers at the Middle Gate have sidelocks like a woman’s tresses that fall across each cheek, grown like horse blinders to supposedly keep these servants from peeking when they deliver firewood or food to the harem. This precaution is no doubt about as effective as a shield made of paper. You could cover my husband with a potato sack and he’d still manage to get a glimpse of forbidden beauty.

The sidelock fashion sustains the fiction that the harem is completely inviolable, but it isn’t. Women such as myself have been invited for decades, and the harem is of necessity repaired, supplied, and serviced by outsiders who are often men. A European organ maker spent two weeks installing an instrument and left an enthusiastic account of spying on the harem pool through a peephole. Still, enough mystery remains to make the seraglio far more alluring in the imagination than any possible reality.

A six-foot white eunuch with beardless face and fleshy features named Sunflower was my escort to the harem door. He was a colorful creature, wearing a red turban, a bright blue robe that fell to his ankles despite the heat, and a broad black sash with jewel-hilted dagger. A gold earring decorated one ear, and a tight gold chain wrapped his neck. He met me with reluctance, as if any outsider was an affront, and imperiously led me to an unremarkable arched wooden door called the Carriage Gate in the second courtyard, where favored harem women board carriages for their infrequent visits to the outside world. Sunflower pounded, we waited a long minute, and finally the door opened to darkness within. The eunuch pushed me inside and shut the door behind me.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The room was domed but windowless, lit by a single lamp. For a disquieting moment I felt once again at Balbec. Then bronze doors on the opposite wall swung open and another eunuch, this one black and even more gigantic, stepped inside to give me a friendlier greeting. His smile was bright as a torch.

“Egyptian priestess! I am Kizlar Aga, the chief black eunuch. My mistress Nakshedil, The Beautiful One, is anxious for your company.” This specimen was an imposing six and a half feet high, his arms as thick as thighs.

I bowed. “Astiza of Alexandria. I’m honored by your mistress’s invitation.”

“She’s intrigued by your mystical reputation, and believes it destiny that you’ve come at this most perilous and propitious of times. The Beautiful One is a believer in fortune-tellers and astrologers. Do you believe in ghosts and jinns, lady scholar?”

“Jinns?”

“Genies, the Franks sometime say.”

“I believe there are more mysteries in this world than we can explain.”

“Indeed! Do you see the closets on each side of this room? Magical things happened there. One day a novice eunuch so annoyed a sultan with his clumsiness that he was chased with a knife to this very room. The boy hid in that closet, the furious sultan yanked open the door—and the eunuch had completely disappeared! No one ever saw him again. The same happened to a naughty harem girl who tried to hide in the closet opposite. Poof! She vanished.” He waited for skepticism, and looked disappointed that I accepted this story so calmly. “This isn’t surprising,” he insisted, as if I’d said it was. “We know jinns dance, gamble, and argue in our courtyards at midnight, and we believe the harem is haunted by the murdered and executed, of which our sad history has many. So don’t be surprised if your senses reveal extraordinary things. You’ve come to the navel of the world.”

“A magical closet? Can I look?”

He solemnly shook his head. “I would not be responsible for your disappearance.”

He led me through the bronze doors to a high, dimly lit guardroom where four eunuchs stood sentry with pikes and swords. Then another door and we were in a narrow courtyard open to a slit of sky, with a pillared portico and upper barred windows. “This is the Courtyard of the Black Eunuchs,” my escort said. “Our living quarters are in the two stories above.”

I thought the place felt more like a jail than a paradise.

“I command the two hundred of us from Africa, castrated at youth after our capture by Arab slave traders,” the Kizlar Aga said matter-of-factly. “We serve the harem without temptation. No virile men pass through here except by extraordinary need. You’ve already seen more than most ordinary mortals can ever hope to glimpse. Should anyone try to penetrate this domain—or misbehave with it—there are dungeons below.”

“The women can never leave?”

“Why would they want to? Here they live in luxury, far from the toil of the world. But favored ones go on outings, and the elderly are retired to apartments in the city.”

The harem beyond was a decorous refuge. A dwarf whispered to a eunuch in the shadows. People walked on slippered feet. Somewhere I heard the song of caged birds, and the lilt of stringed baglama, a Turkish instrument, but the music was a murmur. We wound through a confusion of corridors and courtyards. What did it do to the mind of a sultan to grow up and live here, so far from ordinary life?

“Were you a Christian you might not be invited,” the eunuch said as we proceeded, “but the sultana has heard you’re Greek-Egyptian and respectful of all faiths. Is this true?”

“Many paths lead to the One Truth.”

“But only Islam leads to Paradise.” We passed another guarded door. “This is the Golden Way, the corridor that leads to the sultan. Many harem women are never invited to traverse it, despite their beauty. But Nakshedil was chosen almost at once. Come. We ascend to her salon.”

Furtive women scurried as we advanced down a hallway, eunuchs snapped to attention as we climbed stairs, and a mute pressed his forehead to the floor in front of a door inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I was ushered into a room as ornate as a jewel box.

“The quarters of the Mother Sultan, tragically passed, are now occupied by the sultana.” The Kizler Aga bowed and left.

The reception room had beautiful Turkish tile on its lower half, a fountain in an alcove, and a fireplace topped by a conical copper hearth. A brass chandelier was suspended from the domed ceiling, and grilled windows lent pale light from secret courtyards. The furniture was an east-west mix of Turkish cushions and French high-backed chairs.

“You can choose to sit high or low,” a pleasant voice said from behind.

I turned. A stunning woman with a spectacular mane of golden hair, woven with silver thread and dotted by tiny diamonds, came into the room. She was indeed Nakshedil, still breathtaking at thirty-eight. Her Turkish dress was a modest but shimmering costume of bloused pants tight to the ankles and a silken robe over a gauze chemise. A golden necklace with emeralds was on her breast, and bracelets decorated her wrists and ankles. Her jewels could have purchased a plantation in her native Martinique.

“Your highness.” I curtsied.

“I am not royalty, Astiza of Alexandria. I’m a slave, captured by Barbary corsairs almost twenty years ago and sent to this gilded prison. I lamented my fate at first, and screamed and sobbed when summoned to the bed of the sultan. I was a terrified virgin and vowed never to go. But the sultan’s mother made me see reason, the sultan Hamid initiated me kindly, and in time I became a kadin, or favored one.”

“Understandably. You are very beautiful.”

“Appearance is only the beginning. When I was instructed in the arts of love before meeting the sultan I was taught not just the sultan’s desires but my own, so that I could perform with enthusiasm.”

“Still, it must have taken courage.”

“A summoned concubine is bathed in rosewater, scented with the finest Arabian and French perfumes, decorated with gold and jewels, and dressed in multi-colored veils. But yes, it does take courage. My most important lesson was that this physicality is merely the first step toward becoming a kadin. A sultan is the loneliest of men, who can never entirely trust the motives of even his closest advisors. He is never praised for who he is but rather what he is, and every flatterer seeks reward. Only we harem women can offer true companionship. The most successful are not necessarily the most beautiful. They’re the ones who can talk, sympathize, tell stories, sing songs, confer, commiserate, and advise. I became Hamid’s companion and confidant.”

“And Selim’s too, I understand.”

“Yes, we were like brother and sister. I eventually bore Selim’s father Hamid a son, Mahmud, for whom I thank God. And while I was concubine to Hamid I was friend to his son, the sultan of today, since we were the same age and locked in the same harem. Now he reigns, I’ve taken the apartments of his mother, and my own son, his half-brother, may ascend to the throne someday—if half-brother Mustafa, who also covets the throne, does not murder him! Which means that God moves in mysterious ways, does he not?” Her smile was wry, and she gave a slight curtsey to me. “Aimée du Buc de Rivéry I was in another universe, and Nakshedil I am in this one. And you, I understand, travel like the wind. Which of us is the luckier, I wonder?”

“I, too, have a beloved son,” I replied, “so perhaps we’re equal.”

“Well said. And is it to be chair or cushion? Selim imported the French furniture to satisfy my whim.”

“I’m a guest in his home and so we should sit in the Turkish manner,” I suggested.

“Very good. We’ll have refreshments brought on trays.” She clapped her hands and another harem girl appeared. This one was a dark-haired teen, lovely but no match for Aimée in presence. She was, however, dressed more as I’d imagined, with a cap of gold cloth and a translucent chemise. Her short red jacket only partly covered her breasts, and her cotton harem pants were so fine that I could clearly see the shape of her legs. Loops of pearls hung from her neck, and she too had earrings and bracelets.

“Some tea and fruit,” the Sultana ordered. “And some pastry with honey.” The girl bowed and went to fetch it.

“Some harem women serve others?”

“Hierarchies prevail in all parts of the empire,” Aimée explained. “There is rank in the army, in the government, in the villages, and among the slaves. It’s no different here. We’re all slaves, but the junior serve the senior while they wait for the sultan’s favor.”

“Are the eunuchs your servants or your masters?”

“Our keepers. It’s a curious system. They’re castrated when enslaved to discourage desire and prevent temptation, and thus are weakened as men. The white eunuchs have only their testicles removed, but the blacks in the harem lose their cocks as well, since that tool has proven a distraction in the past.” She said this matter-of-factly, as if discussing farm animals. “So our protectors make poor warriors, and jealous escorts, and piss like women. Yet their leaders often wield more power than Janissary generals, because they have constant access to the sultan.”

“And five hundred women wait like prostitutes?”

“More like nuns. There’s only one sultan, and they’re not necessarily lustful men. But we are ribald nuns. Human nature doesn’t disappear in the harem anymore than it does in a prison, monastery, or convent, and women will find ways to satisfy each other or pleasure themselves. None of this can be openly recognized, of course, and thus we live lives of pretense, whisper, and avoidance. But who doesn’t?”

“I appreciate your candor, sultana. You invited us to what you compared to Pelée, a volcano on your native island. Ethan and I once visited Martinique.”

“Did you! And how is my home?”

“Beautiful, but for us it was very dangerous. There was much intrigue.”

“Like Pelée. I’m candid about my life because we’re all in peril, and before you can help us you must understand us. Constantinople can erupt at any time. The empire is troubled, Selim is struggling, and Mahmud and Mustafa are unspoken rivals to succeed him. The choice is important. My son would reform the empire, taking inspiration from France. Mustafa would move it backward, trying to regain the medieval glory of the Janissaries.”

“Two different mothers?”

“Yes. The sultans typically confine their attentions primarily to four favorites, of which I was one and Mustafa’s mother was another. This selection avoids a proliferation of princes who must eventually compete and conspire. There’s also a Court Abortionist, to narrow rivalries even more. Women particularly favored by the sultan are said to be “in the eye” and may be allowed to bear his children. Others are not. All this causes jealousy and intrigue. I’m favored, and envied for my success.”

“We’re told you encouraged Selim to study French reform and modernization,” I said.

“Which causes even more resentment. Many Turks believe their defeats are caused by too many European ways, not too few. They think modernizers are turning their backs on Allah. So they resent the French sultana who pushes science on a sultan she has supposedly bewitched. Yet without a better army, Selim and my son will ultimately be at the mercy of European monarchs with superior artillery and faster ships. So I seek allies from all reaches of our empire, and word came to me of you and your journey. I was told you came out of the Transylvanian wilderness. What brings a wife and mother so far from home?”