The Harem Midwife

by Roberta Rich

  “Let us fetch Leah from her chamber.”

  If only Hannah could persuade Leah to follow her instructions, perhaps there was a chance to save her.

  Mustafa clasped Hannah’s upper arm. Whether to steady himself or comfort her, she did not know. “Do not look so alarmed, Hannah. Leah’s first meeting with the Sultan will be a simple affair—no ladies-in-waiting, no Grand Vizier, no Valide—just us four. The Sultan may merely wish to speak to her. If he wishes more, he will toss a handkerchief at her feet to signify his desire.”

  “Will she find favour, do you think?”

  “Desire between men and women is a mystery not even husband and wife can explain.”

  Mustafa was right. Often Hannah would gaze at Isaac, as he tightened bolts on the loom, for example—pliers, pincers, and hammers dangling at his waist—and would be seized by a longing so strong she had no power to resist. She would brush her breasts against him as if by accident, his eyes would follow her for a second, and soon they would be upstairs, wrapped in each other’s arms. The same tools dangling from any other man’s waist, even if Hannah had imbibed the strongest of love potions, would have no effect. Was it so for the Sultan?

  “May I see Leah in private before she goes to the Sultan?” She tried to think of a reason that would satisfy his curiosity. “I must give her some idea of what to expect. It would not do to have her frightened.”

  “Who better to act as her confidante? You managed to coax her down from the window ledge. She has been docile as a lamb ever since.”

  Leah was tough—a mountain girl raised on rocky soil, fed on the watery soup of poverty, rendered an orphan by her enemies—but she deserved more time to remain a child. With any luck, the Sultan would simply smile at her and wave her away as he had done to so many other girls. But if he declined Leah’s company, there would be no grateful smile from the Valide for Hannah and no purse heavy with ducats. And Leah would be shipped to the brothels by the docks—a terrible fate for any girl.

  Once more Hannah found herself following Mustafa’s swaying form, down the corridors of the Imperial Harem.

  Mustafa knocked, then opened the door of Leah’s room. “We have little time.” To her relief, Mustafa looked only once through the doorway at Leah before shambling away. “Ring for me when you are ready and I will escort you to the Sultan’s room.”

  Hannah entered the room and closed the door behind her. Involuntarily, she glanced toward the window ledge, remembering Leah crouched like an animal, spitting down at Mustafa. Now, Leah stood beside her sleeping mattress and rubbed her eyes, looking rather like Matteo when he awoke from a nap.

  “Shalom aleichem,” said Hannah.

  “Aleichem shalom,” Leah said in reply, kissing Hannah’s hand and then pressing it to her forehead.

  Hannah stared at the girl, refusing to believe her eyes. Thank God Mustafa had not lingered. Leah was dressed in a costume such as a dancing boy in a public tavern might wear. Instead of harem trousers held up with an embroidered sash and a tunic of fine silk print, Leah wore a şhalvar—loose pantaloons—and a silk shirt with a length of fabric around her waist. In each hand she held a pair of tiny cymbals.

  Leah’s hair, smooth and glossy, short by palace standards, was slicked back close to her head. She was clean now and smelled of cloves and cinnamon, spices much prized for their powers of seduction. Her skin was whiter too. Her slave must have been busy with lemon and lye creams, bleaching potions and depilatories. No doubt, her slave had removed the hair between her legs and hennaed her private parts. A thin stripe of kohl lined her huge green eyes.

  “Why in God’s name are you dressed like that?” Hannah asked.

  Leah spoke quietly, careful to point her feet away from Hannah. “I bribed one of the eunuchs to bring me this costume favoured by the köcheks.”

  The köcheks, the “fauns of Constantinople” as they were known by the Janissaries, were boys who danced in provocative dress for the pleasure of other men. They were much loved by rough soldiers, who gave them amorous names such as “Pretty Blossom” and “Golden Love Arrow.”

  “Whatever for?” Hannah asked.

  “The idea came to me when I overheard some of the Janissaries talking. They spoke of a terrible brawl, which broke out in Pera between two factions of Janissaries fighting over a dancing boy. So fiercely was the boy desired by both sides that fifty soldiers died in the fray.”

  “Surely you do not think that the Sultan has the same tastes as a coarse Janissary?” Hannah had heard rumours of some of the Sultan’s unusual proclivities—but young boys?

  “The Sultan has not responded to the voluptuous beauties of the harem. It is time to try a different tactic. What might excite a soldier might excite a Sultan.” Leah smoothed her hair in a self-conscious gesture that saddened Hannah more than the girl’s words. “I will accept my fate. If I please the Sultan, I will be safe at last.”

  It broke Hannah’s heart to hear her talk so, resigned to a future no child should be forced to accept. She held Leah’s hand. “Please, change out of those clothes before Mustafa returns. I have a plan to help you avoid the Sultan’s intentions.”

  “You do not understand. I must seduce him.”

  Her words were spoken with such obstinacy and squaring of the shoulders that Hannah knew something was wrong. “What has changed you so?” asked Hannah.

  Leah did not answer, but looked away, fussing with the folds of her şhalvar.

  Hannah stroked the girl’s hair, studying her rounded cheeks and green eyes. “I have something that will help you.” She reached into her bag and held out a gold-foiled pill.

  Leah looked at it. “I have no need of opium.”

  “You are a child. There is still a chance you can remain one a little longer.” Hannah picked up the opium pill and tucked it in the pocket of the girl’s şhalvar. Hannah fished something else out of her bag—a tiny, speckled partridge egg. Hannah took Leah’s hand and placed the egg in her palm. “May you have strength,” she said, and she whispered to Leah instructions on how to use the peculiar egg.

  For the first time that evening, Leah looked like the feisty mountain girl Hannah had first met on the window ledge, spitting at Mustafa, the third-most powerful man in the Empire.

  “Do you really think I can deceive the Sultan with such a ruse?” Leah asked, a new energy in her green eyes.

  “Dear girl,” said Hannah, “of course you can.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Imperial Palace Constantinople

  THE HALL OF the Sultan’s Divan, designed by the brilliant architect Sinan, was a perfect square. The finest Iznik tiles covered the walls; a handsome fountain splashed in the middle. In one corner was a hearth large enough for a person to stand upright. The pendentive dome rising above the Sultan’s divan was decorated in graceful Arabic calligraphy with quotes from the Qur’an. In the centre of the salon was the huge couch, strewn with silk pillows and draped in green brocade and gold curtains. A high balcony, like the gallery where the women sat in the synagogue, ran the width of the room.

  Hannah was in awe. She had seen so much of the harem, but never had she seen this opulent room.

  Mustafa was standing next to her. He clapped his hands, making the velvet pouch hanging around his neck bounce. Four dwarfs entered the reception room bearing a huge gold filigree cage. Some said the Sultan prized these men because he was of a short stature himself and in their presence felt taller and more powerful. The Nubian eunuchs, all of whom were tall, were banished from his presence, all except Mustafa, who was permitted by virtue of his position as Chief Eunuch.

  “Look, Hannah, a hundred and fourteen cooing white doves—one for each chapter of the Qur’an.”

  Hannah wondered at their purpose. She did not wonder for long.

  A dwarf with a rounded forehead unhooked the door of the cage. The birds took flight, swooping and swirling overhead. The scent of orange blossoms filled the air. Hannah moved toward one of the doves at her feet. Fastened to its
neck and to the necks of all the birds were scented pomanders, filling the room with that glorious aroma. It was as though a silk canopy had become unmoored from the ceiling and drifted down, holding her in a veil of fragrant oranges. The room glowed with the light of hundreds of candles, guttering and dripping from the stir created by the wings of the doves. Hannah stood motionless in the perfume-heavy air. The spectacle called to mind her last meeting in the Valide’s apartments strewn with rose petals. Had her stomach not been in knots, Hannah would have wept with joy at this display.

  Suddenly she remembered why she had been summoned and withdrew to a darkened corner. From somewhere, perhaps outside in the gardens, drifted the sound of a peasant tune from Anatolia played on a violin, the old country type of fiddle, made of a coconut shell with fish skin stretched across it.

  A preternatural stillness filled the air. Mustafa froze, his red book under his arm. Even the fountain in the middle of the room seemed to pause its flow. From the far side of the room came the striking of a gong and the insistent beat of a kettle drum. The heavy timber doors, studded with iron spikes, swung open.

  Sultan Murat III, Sultan of Sultans, God’s Shadow on Earth, Supreme Ruler of the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, the Balkans and Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Damascus, Aleppo, Egypt, Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem, all of the Arab dominions, and Yemen, entered, borne aloft on a palanquin draped in brocade and embedded with gemstones. The bearers lowered him to the floor and he dismounted. Gathering his embroidered green kaftan around him, the Sultan climbed the two steps to his divan where he arranged himself cross-legged like a frog on a lily pad. It was an absurd image, but there he was with an enormous belly and no neck. He possessed no long, darting tongue, but instead sucked the ivory mouthpiece of a narghile, the water in the pipe’s bowl gurgling, which a slave handed him.

  The dwarfs withdrew, returning a few moments later bearing Leah on a gilded litter. They lowered the girl to the floor and helped her to alight. Hannah caught a glimpse of Leah before she turned to the Sultan. She wore a look not of seduction but of determination.

  Almost immediately after being helped from her litter, Leah fell to her hands and knees, as protocol demanded. But instead of keeping a respectful distance from the Sultan, she crawled within a few feet of him, then, rising to her feet, stood before him, hands at her sides, fingers holding tiny cymbals. Her head drooped in a way that made Hannah wonder if she had, after all, swallowed the opium pill.

  Musicians from the balcony at the far end of the room began playing softly at first, picked up speed, and then slowed again. As the rhythm of the music changed, Leah began to sway, delicate as a gazelle, moving her hips and shoulders. In the light of the candles, Hannah could see her luminous eyes, rimmed in kohl, gazing, though it was forbidden, directly into the heavy-lidded eyes of the Sultan.

  Mustafa gave a grunt, which he quickly converted into a cough. The others in the room—the dwarfs who were about to depart and the litter bearers—gave a collective gasp, whether at Leah’s costume or her boldness, Hannah could not divine.

  The Sultan’s posture stiffened, then relaxed. His chest rose and fell under his green kaftan, which was adorned with an embroidered peacock, one foot on a delicate peony and the other on a leaf. A smile played across his lips; his head nodded in time to the music. It was a coarse face, his lips thick and fleshy, his nose as curved as a scimitar. His head seemed large for his body and wobbled on shoulders that did not seem equal to the purpose. Hannah saw a ripple of excitement travel through him. What thoughts were passing through the dank interior of his mind?

  Leah timed her movements to the beat of the music, suggestive of virginal modesty. Then, as if overcome by amorous longings, she quickened her pace. She clicked her cymbals and arched her back to show her surrender to desire. Her head tilted to one side yet her face remained as vacant as a sleepwalker’s. Was she thinking of her mother and grandmother? Was she thinking of music around fires in the mountains at night—music to celebrate weddings or victories in battle, or to mark births and deaths? Or, as Hannah hoped, was Leah contemplating the plan they had formulated and how best to bring it to fruition?

  Finally, Leah gave a low cry and dropped, her forehead pressed to the floor as though in prayer. Was it Hannah’s imagination or did she see the girl look up and cast a knowing look at Hannah before prostrating herself again on the floor?

  Hannah was close enough to hear the Sultan murmur, “Such beguiling eyes, like the eyes in a peacock’s train.”

  Often when slothful creatures move, they move with reptilian speed. So it was with the Sultan. In one fluid motion, he withdrew a silk handkerchief from the sleeve of his embroidered robe and tossed it toward Leah. It floated for a moment, caught in a whoosh of air, then settled in front of Leah’s face.

  How could something so meringue-light land like a boulder hurled from the highest roof of the palace onto a stone floor? Hannah wanted to grab Leah by the hand and run with her out of the room.

  Leah lifted her head, spotted the handkerchief, picked it up and wiped her brow. Then she crawled toward the royal divan. She took the Sultan’s outstretched hand between her own and pressed it to her forehead. He drew her toward him.

  Please, Hannah prayed silently. Let the plan work. Let her escape unharmed, and let them both—Hannah and Leah—survive. Hannah looked at Mustafa. Wasn’t it time for both of them to withdraw?

  But Mustafa shook his head and gestured to his Book of Couchings. “Hope must not substitute for fact. There must be no inaccuracies in the official record.”

  Hannah wished she could turn into the feather of a dove and float out the window to the gardens outside. The Sultan lifted Leah onto his lap and caressed her cheek, kissing her with foolish enthusiasm, as if playing with a child’s doll. Then he lay back on the divan, leaning on one elbow while she arranged herself against the length of him. Leah was almost exactly his height.

  Leah reached for the bowl of fruit on a table next to the divan and bit off a piece of apple. She held it between her lips and then slowly moved her mouth toward the Sultan’s face. His mouth opened and he took the morsel into his mouth. Then, he motioned to have the curtains of the divan drawn.

  Mustafa stepped forward and closed the red curtains. A few moment elapsed before the divan began to shudder under the Sultan’s movements, or under Leah’s, Hannah did not know which. Instead of watching the divan vibrate, slowly at first, then faster, then at a frantic pace, Hannah focused her attention on the doves, many of which had perched on wall sconces and on the tall pillars supporting the divan. With the movements, they left their roosts in search of more stable perches. One little hen gave her tail a twitch, and with a soft, fluty cry flew out the window.

  Hannah could avert her eyes but she could not block her ears. There was a squeal, like the whimper of a frightened lamb, then a deeper sound, a quick exhalation like a boar in full rut. From the balcony, behind a filigreed tulip-wood screen where the musician played softly, came another noise, a muffled cry. Hannah looked up to see the flash of blue pelisse and hear the swish of footsteps in felt slippers. This was the way in the palace—whispered confidences, words murmured behind upraised hands, downcast eyes concealing treachery, spy holes in ceilings, balconies connected to blank walls, passageways leading to non-existent rooms. If it was Safiye on the balcony, could anything be more painful than watching your adored husband with another woman?

  After a few minutes, the salon fell silent but for two sounds: the snores of the Sultan, God’s Shadow on Earth, and the scratching of Mustafa’s pen as he recorded in The Book of Couchings the Sultan’s triumph.

  CHAPTER 14

  District of Pera Constantinople

  IN HER EAGERNESS to show Foscari the sketch she had laboured over so diligently, Cesca jumped from the carriage before it had come to a full stop. In front of the Venetian embassy, as grand as any palazzo in that city, a pair of turbaned guards flanked the entranceway, holding pine-pitch torches, the sap making tiny explosions i
n the darkness of the night. The flag—the gold lion of Venice crouching on a field of red—fluttered overhead. Cesca yanked on the bell. As she waited for a servant to admit her, she smoothed her hair. When she told Foscari her news, she was certain, he would reward her handsomely.

  Foscari was right. It was against the laws of nature for a Christian child to be raised by Jews. Last night, Matteo had cried out, restless from a nightmare. Cesca went to his room to calm him. Because she was out of earshot, she sang a lullaby, “Sleep, Baby Jesus, sleep …,” patting his pillow, smoothing the covers over him. Her singing, instead of quietening him, made him thrash and groan. A demon turned his body into a battlefield—a mighty conflict waged between the merciful God of the Christians and the vengeful God of the Israelites. The child’s soul would know no peace in a Jewish household.

  Since their visit to the Rabbi, a multitude of thoughts crowded Cesca’s mind. Of course, her first reaction was shock at the Rabbi’s pronouncement. What woman would not be astonished to discover she was about to marry a man she had thought of merely as a lamb to be sheared? And such an obliging lamb he was too—malleable and sweet and clearly besotted with her, judging by his glances at her when he thought she was not looking.

  But in an instant she realized that marriage to Isaac could be turned to her advantage. True, Isaac had no money at present—she had seen more than enough of his account books to verify that—but the value of silk would not be depressed forever. Prices of all commodities—silk, wheat, cloves—rose and fell, so Leon had counselled her. And Isaac and Hannah’s ample house, workshop, and gardens were splendid and well situated.

  Besides, Cesca would not be saddled with Isaac for long. All she needed was a little more time to get acquainted with the workings of the silk trade and then she would dispose of her new husband, Isaac, in the same way she had disposed of Leon. A blow to the head accompanied by swift pressure of the thumbs to the soft tissue of the throat, and poof!