by Saygin Ersin
The agha was given a quick burial following the noon prayers as if he had been a nuisance to be rid of, and before his coffin had left through the first gate, the denizens of the palace had already congregated in the Second Courtyard to bid the sultan farewell.
The sultan’s departure from the palace was even swifter than Siyavuş Agha’s funeral. He was filled with a burning desire to go hunting, a desire which he didn’t quite understand himself, and he had ordered for there to be no farewell ceremony. Such an act was unheard of in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Even when the sovereign went from one room of the palace to another he was accompanied by ceremony, so setting out on an expedition without a farewell ceremony was unprecedented. While the public servants bowed to the sultan’s wishes, they still ordered the residents of the entire palace to gather in the Second Courtyard so there would be a small crowd to set their minds at ease. But even that didn’t slow the sultan down. He spurred his horse on and disappeared from sight with his entourage. So quickly did he leave that the Grand Vizier and other pashas’ salutations were left hanging in the air and his regiment of guards had to run after him in their ceremonial armor.
Questions remained behind in the sovereign’s absence. His state of mind was mysterious of course, but the most pressing question concerned who would be appointed as the new Chief Sword Bearer. The sultan hadn’t yet hinted at whom he might appoint as he knew it would only cause more turmoil.
The cooks in the Aghas’ Kitchen were the most curious, followed by those of the Inner Palace and Harem. If the sultan ordered that the successor be appointed from the ranks, the Treasurer, Chief Equerry, Chief Footman, or Chief Cellar Attendant would move up a step in the ranks, as would their cooks. If the sultan appointed a Chief Sword Bearer from outside the ranks, nothing would change and the only sticking point of curiosity would be about who the new Chief Sword Bearer would choose as his personal cook.
News was delivered to the palace by messenger after the evening call to prayer, reaching the kitchens at lightning speed.
When the cook entered the stewards’ office, having been summoned to receive notification of the decision, he saw that Master İsfendiyar, Kitchen Chamberlain Şakir Effendi, and other high-ranking cooks from the Imperial Kitchens were seated around a table. The mixture of pitying and derisive gazes that greeted him as soon as he walked in gave him a clue as to what the sovereign’s decision was.
“You sent for me. What is your wish?” he said, looking at Master İsfendiyar.
Master İsfendiyar took a sip from a silver chalice in front of him and said, “Our Sovereign has decided that the successor be appointed according to rank. His Highness the Chief Equerry has risen to the rank of Chief Sword Bearer. His personal cook will also resume his duties.”
“The order is from Our Lord the Sovereign, and the desire is that of His Highness the Agha,” the cook replied, trying to conceal his disappointment. “What are your orders for me?”
Master İsfendiyar took another slow sip. “Truth be told,” he began, “we have more cooks than we need. However, Master Bekir requested your services, and I couldn’t say no.”
The cook turned to Master Bekir, who was seated next to Master İsfendiyar, and gave a grateful bow. “I thank you.”
“It is my pleasure,” Master Bekir replied. “It would be a waste to send away a cook of your talents.”
“You are too kind,” the cook replied.
Master Bekir let out a paternal laugh. “No need for blushes, you are among family here.” He shifted on the bench toward Master İsfendiyar and gestured at the gap beside him. “Come, sit down. We were just bidding our brothers farewell, the ones who will be going on the expedition.”
The cook sat down next to Master Bekir after casting a glance at Master İsfendiyar and noting his approval. Master Bekir placed a glass in front of him and began to fill it up as the chatter around the table continued. The subject was, of course, matters of state. Just like at many other tables all around the capital just then, the stewards’ office rang with talk about the sultan’s present state and his sudden hunting expedition.
Master İsfendiyar turned to the Chief Privy Chamber Page’s personal cook, who was seated two places to his left. “Sorry, Master Kerim,” he said. “We’ve interrupted you.”
“Not at all,” Kerim Usta replied, continuing, “As I was just saying, we mustn’t find too great a fault with the sovereign. He was almost a child when he acceded to the throne. He didn’t even have any experience even of ruling over a province—”
Chief Confectioner Master Bilal, who was sitting across from him, cut him off. “So this is what the Ottoman state has come to! How could a man rule over the whole empire without having ruled over a province yet? A prince without experience can’t lead. It’s not just a matter of getting the right education.”
“Master Bilal is right,” concurred Master Bekir. “His inexperience is a bigger concern than his youth. A prince isn’t sent to a province just so he can learn about matters of state. He also learns how to behave toward his subjects. He rules over his own harem and his own pages. Now, look at the sultan. He didn’t have many people around him to begin with. When his grandmother moved to the Old Palace, the Harem was left empty.”
“You’re right, Aghas,” Master İsfendiyar joined in. “But isn’t there a single man left in the whole of the empire who can tell the sultan what’s right and what’s wrong?” His voice had an angry edge. “I don’t just mean the Inner Palace aghas. What does the Grand Vizier do? What are his teachers and advisors for?”
Şakir Effendi laughed softly. “Master İsfendiyar, you can be so amusing sometimes. One would think you had never lived in the palace. Do you not know what kind of place this is?”
“It suits the Grand Vizier just fine,” Mater Kerim added. “He’s glad to see the sultan off on an expedition so he can control things as he wishes. Don’t even mention the Inner Palace. They all put their futures before the state’s. They say that the new Haseki Sultan is a very intelligent and capable lady, but …”
The cook, who was lost in thought until then, pricked up his ears when he heard Haseki Sultan’s name. But the Chief Confectioner concluded the matter by saying, “That Harem has ruined many a capable lady, don’t you know, Master?”
A gloomy silence fell over the table, and it fell to Master İsfendiyar to bring in some cheer. “Well, that is that, and this is this,” he said. “There’s no remedy for one who has died, that’s for sure. As long as this hunting expedition doesn’t bring us to ruin, the rest can be sorted out later. What do you think, Chamberlain Effendi? What is the situation?”
All eyes were fixed on the Chamberlain of the Kitchen. As his duties required, he often had dealings with administrative staff so naturally he knew what was afoot. “Bad,” Şakir Effendi said curtly. “The Treasury is cleared out. They can’t even pull together the Janissaries’ salaries according to what I’ve heard.”
Dismayed cries echoed around the table. “The payments are due in less than ten days!” Master Bekir exclaimed. “The Janissaries will revolt!”
“There’s more,” Chamberlain Effendi went on to say. “Treasurer Lütfi Pasha requested that he be excused from his post, but the Grand Vizier refused. He even posted a soldier by his door so that he wouldn’t try to sneak off.”
“Lütfi Pasha asked to be removed from his post?” Master Bekir asked incredulously. “He’s the closest ally of the Grand Vizier. He wouldn’t take one step before getting his approval, let alone sneak off.”
“Well, he values his own life,” Master Kerim explained. “If their salaries come up short, the Janissaries will be after his head.”
Casting a sideways glance at the cook, Master İsfendiyar grumbled, “This is unbelievable. What was His Highness the Grand Vizier thinking? Why hasn’t he talked our sovereign out of this expedition? Does he think he will save himself by sacrificing the Treasurer’s head?”
Master İsfendiyar was quite right, and the Grand Vizie
r’s nonchalance was incomprehensible. As the cooks murmured to each other, Master Hayri, the personal cook of the Chief Eunuch, started laughing softly. After making sure all eyes were on him, he said, “That matter has already been attended to.”
Everyone was astonished, but none more than the Kitchen Chamberlain. “How so?” he asked, sitting up.
Master Hayri savored the sweet taste of the secret only he possessed by staying silent for a few more moments, and then he explained, “Don’t tell anyone you’ve heard it from me. No one outside the Harem knows about this aside from the Grand Vizier. One of Haseki Sultan’s personal attendants in the Harem, a concubine, has been promised to Darıcızade Mahmud Bey.”
Among the surprised exclamations, a voice boomed out: “Promised to whom?”
Master Hayri looked at the ashen face of the cook uncomprehendingly, and replied, “Darıcızade Mahmud, the son of a wealthy Alexandrian family. Haven’t you ever heard of them? Well, it’s not an easy task, being a bridegroom to a woman from the Harem. Mahmud Bey loosened his purse strings as far as they could go. The Janissaries’ payment will be made on time and in its entirety. Master Kerim is quite right. Haseki Sultan is a very clever lady. She solved the problem by herself.”
The cook was deaf to the chatter around him. He couldn’t even decide what to feel upset about, let alone think clearly, and a sense of defeat seized his soul. “Please excuse me,” he muttered with difficulty, getting up from the table. He left the stewards’ office as if an entire army was hunting him down.
Master İsfendiyar also couldn’t believe what he had heard. The more the Chief Eunuch’s cook repeated the name “Darıcızade,” the more he felt like someone was twisting a knife in his stomach. After listening to the conversation for a while longer, he said, “Let me go and see if the assistants have finished their cleaning,” and left the table. He went down the stairs, walked into the courtyard, and found the cook exactly where he thought he would be, in a secluded corner under the porticos, gazing at the Harem.
The cook appeared so motionless that it was difficult to tell him apart from the stone columns holding up the porticos. He was gazing at the Harem, his eyes filled with a piercing coldness.
Master İsfendiyar walked up and placed his hand on his shoulder. “Look,” he said.
But the cook was beyond consolation. “What sort of fate is this, Master?” the cook muttered.
Master İsfendiyar shook him slightly. “Hold on, son. We don’t know who the Darıcızade heir will be taking for his wife. The Harem is filled with odalisques.”
The cook said nothing. He knew just as well as Master İsfendiyar that Mahmud Bey would want no one but Kamer.
“Listen to me for a moment,” Master İsfendiyar continued. “Let’s discover the truth of the matter first. I had an old assistant; he now works at the Inner Palace. He is quick to hear about such things. I’ll ask him what he knows.”
The cook nodded, still silent.
“I beg of you, wait for me here. Don’t do anything before I come back,” Master İsfendiyar said, and then he began to hobble toward the Gate of Felicity as quickly as he could.
The cook was left alone in the impending night, his soul frozen with defeat and his mind refusing to think. “What sort of fate is this?” he muttered once more. He was right in a way. The man who had appeared out of thin air all those years ago and coveted the light of his night, the one who had awakened the devil within him and caused him to fall into suspicion, the man who had caused him to err, had reappeared. And just at the moment when he was but a few steps away from getting Kamer back, he had shattered his plans. He really did wonder if it was just a twist of fate.
Suddenly the voice of a woman echoed in his mind, saying, “Don’t blame fate for your own ineptitude!”
His thoughts drifted back to a few years before.
The voice howled in his head once more, and a woman’s large, kohl-framed eyes appeared in his mind’s eye, glaring at him with disdain and disappointment. Then their owner repeated that simple but crucial question she had asked the cook all those years ago: “And what have you done?”
The cook lost track of time between Master İsfendiyar’s departure and return. He didn’t see or hear him come back, but only realized he was standing next to him when he felt his hand on his shoulder again.
The master was out of breath and sweating, unsure of how he should broach the subject. After grappling with it for a while longer, he finally blurted, “It’s true. Kamer has been promised to Darıcızade Mahmud Bey.”
The cook didn’t say a word. His eyes were still fixed on the Harem.
“Son,” Master İsfendiyar continued, his voice sounding as if he was trying to console someone on his deathbed. “Sometimes it just doesn’t work. Sometimes destiny gets in the way. There’s nothing to do now. There’s no other way.”
Master İsfendiyar’s platitudes sounded asinine even to his own ears. The cook slowly turned to look at him. The defeated expression on the master’s face froze and then vanished entirely, because the cook was looking at him with his customary self-assurance and wild sense of willpower.
He had been thinking of how he could see yet again the woman whose eyes had appeared in his mind. If they were to meet again and if she asked him once more, “And what have you done?” he decided that rather than fixing his eyes on the ground in silence like he had done years before, he would look her in the eye and tell her a wondrous story filled with adventure, even if it might end in sorrow.
The cook placed his hand over Master İsfendiyar’s hand on his shoulder and said, “Oh, but there is a way, Master.”
6
The Lady of Essences
BY THE END of the two years he had spent with the el-Haki brothers, the cook had learned how to wield his power over his lot of the infinite number of secrets of the earth and the sky, and he was almost fluent in the language of the stars and the plants.
The wheel of astrological signs and stars had replaced the calendar and clock for him. When Brother Sa’d said, “We’ll leave when the moon is freed from the abyss and enters Scorpio,” he could understand that he meant the following afternoon, or when he said, “Remember when Venus was retreating under Taurus?” he knew he was referring to the previous spring.
He could identify plants even as two-leafed sprouts and rattle off which star and sign their leaves, fruit, roots, and flowers fell under, as well as their degrees and natures.
The cook tried hard to apply his learnings to his art. But not all worked out as he had planned.
The problem was not that the house’s kitchen could be called worse than modest. After all, he had been trained by Master Adem, and he could create four different dishes using two ingredients and a single pot.
The first problem was that the house’s residents suffered from a poverty of appetite. He had seen Feridun, the house’s servant, eat only once or twice while he was there, and he began to wonder how that tall, slender, big-boned man managed to stay alive.
But that hadn’t bothered him so much either. He began to prepare dinners with as many dishes as the kitchen and ingredients at hand would allow him, for the evenings were the only time of day when Brother Sa’d, who began to watch the stars after sunset and only went to bed after dawn, and Brother Sadr, who woke up with dawn and went to bed shortly after evening prayers, would come together. He cooked dishes that would help Brother Astrologer stay alert during the hours he worked and dishes that would soothe Brother Doctor in his sleep. He made two different meals for each dinner, but that wasn’t the only problem.
First of all, Brother Sadr was incredibly picky about such things and he tried to keep everyone on a strict regime.
Brother Sa’d’s dishes, on the other hand, had to be in absolute harmony with the skies.
The cook saw during their dinners how the science of medicine and the science of astrology, which seemed at first glance to support each other and even intertwine at certain points, could often clash terribly.
The argument stretched on and on, with Brother Sadr trying to convince his twin by providing proof from books he retrieved from his study and the words of great medicinal scholars, and Brother Sa’d using plates and glasses to create a map of stars on the table. In the ensuing chaos, of course, the food went cold.
The cook then understood why Feridun hardly ever ate. The poor man, having lived with the twin brothers for years, must have been confused as to exactly what he was allowed to eat and found the solution in eating very little.
Thankfully the cook was soon divested of the task of preparing dinner. The el-Haki brothers, always extremely conscious of their physical and mental health, were hesitant to eat anything the cook prepared for them as his talent increased in proportion to his knowledge, and finally one day they requested that Feridun prepare dinner from that day on, as he had once done.
The more he read and the more he learned, the more skilled the cook became. During one of his visits to a Baghdad hospital alongside Brother Sadr, he was allowed to cook for some of the patients in accordance with their regimens. The result stunned even the cook himself. The patients, each of whom suffered from a different ailment, began to get better and respond well to the medicines they were taking. Yet that was the first and last time the cook prepared food for a sick person. “I only let you do it this once so you could bear witness to the extent of your power,” Brother Sadr explained. “However, consistency is what matters in treatment. Regardless of how good a remedy might be, if you don’t repeat it, you must not use it. It will cause more harm than good. And also remember this: You are a cook, not a doctor or an apothecary.”