The Harem Midwife

by Roberta Rich

  Ezster, Tova, and Leah were nowhere to be found.

  CHAPTER 19

  Constantinople

  SHOULD HANNAH WAIT? She did not know how long she’d been standing there, the panic engulfing her. Where were Leah, Ezster, and Tova? The sun was sinking low in the sky. Isaac would wonder where she was. The merchants were packing up their wares and closing their stalls. Stray dogs gathered around the food vendors, eager for the scraps that the proprietors tossed them at the end of the day.

  Finally, Hannah heard the clip-clop of hooves and Fikret with Tova on his back came into view. Leah and Ezster followed.

  “I was so worried!” Hannah said, as soon as they were within earshot. “Are you all right?”

  “We’re fine,” said Ezster. “Just fine. Tova bribed one of the eunuchs to unlock the gate when we were leaving, but once in the First Courtyard, she slipped on a patch of mud and twisted her ankle.”

  Hannah, concerned, said, “Are you really fine?” She reached over to touch Tova’s prominent belly.

  “Yes, Hannah,” Tova said. “All is well.”

  Hannah was greatly relieved. In the grand scheme of things, a twisted ankle was nothing. These three women were standing before her, all of them alive.

  “Once we were outside the gate, Leah was waiting for us,” said Ezster. “A eunuch heard Tova’s cries of pain and sprang forward to help. I intercepted him and took Tova’s arm, and Leah took the other. Together we hoisted Tova onto Fikret. It did not take long for the eunuch to become suspicious. I gave him my day’s earnings so he’d forget the sight of two pregnant women dressed in identical striped kaftans.”

  Both women were still dressed in matching garments. Tova said, “Leah planned to change into her own kaftan someplace out of the way. But with my little mishap, she didn’t have an opportunity.”

  “I’m so glad you are all right, all of you,” Hannah said. “But we must get out of here before we are noticed.”

  Leah had been very quiet throughout this exchange. Now, she looked at the women and spoke. “Before you go,” she said, “I want to say how wonderful I think the three of you are and how grateful I am for your help.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she pushed her veil higher on her face to hide them. “You have saved my life. And the life of my unborn child.”

  “And mine,” said Hannah.

  Leah took Hannah’s and Ezster’s hands and kissed them. Then she reached up to Fikret’s neck and patted Tova’s hand. Not knowing what else to do, Leah bowed her head and stood still before them. Only then did Hannah realize Leah had no idea what was to happen next.

  “Leah, you are coming with me. To my house. We will keep you there until your confinement.”

  Leah looked up at Hannah. Clearly, she did not know what to say. All she could manage was a sincere “Thank you, Hannah.”

  The four women exchanged quick farewells and promises to keep in touch, and then Hannah and Leah made their way home.

  When they arrived, Hannah opened her front door as usual and ushered Leah through.

  “Who is she?” Grazia said, appearing almost immediately in the entrance, Matteo trailing behind her.

  Hannah explained that Leah was a girl from Manisa, rescued from the slave markets because she was pregnant. From her face, Hannah was sure Grazia would ensure the entire neighbourhood knew the details of the new slave girl’s arrival. For once, Hannah was grateful for Grazia’s overactive tongue. It meant the neighbours would not discover Leah’s true identity.

  Grazia turned on her heel to go. With Matteo following close, she made her way toward the kitchens, where she would no doubt inform Zephra of the new arrival.

  Hannah was more concerned about Isaac’s reaction to Leah’s sudden presence in the house. She did not have to wait long before her worst fears were confirmed. Isaac was carrying a tray of silk cocoons, walking toward the stifling pot in the workshop. He stopped suddenly when he saw the pregnant woman before him, dressed in a colourful kaftan.

  His face grew set and white. “It’s her, isn’t it? The slave girl you lied for,” he hissed.

  “Please, Isaac, it is only for a little while. She is with child. In a few months, as soon as she has her baby …”

  Isaac was unravelling the silk cocoon in his hands. He flung it to the ground, where it fell into a pile of sweepings.

  “I want nothing to do with her or her baby.” He said this to Hannah, refusing to look at poor Leah, who stood in the doorway.

  Hannah had never defied Isaac in all their married life. Bargaining, calculating, and scheming were something she did in the marketplace, not in her household with the husband she loved.

  “After the baby’s birth, I will send Leah to the countryside. Ezster has a sister, Naomi, in a nearby village. I’ll tell Naomi that Leah is a widow, her husband killed by the Yürüks. Naomi will find Leah a husband.” Hannah was babbling now, unable to stop herself, even though she knew that her words were only driving Isaac further away.

  “I will not have her here,” he said.

  “Is this not my house as well as yours?” Hannah countered.

  “Make other arrangements. Surely, there are other families in Eminönü who would take her in.”

  “By ‘take her in’—you mean like a stray dog? Isaac, for the love of God, she’s carrying a child. Have you no compassion?”

  Hannah refused to back down even though she felt sick and weak. She woke up every morning feeling nauseous and remained that way most of the day. Food repelled her. She was growing thin. She had to force herself to eat so much as a piece of dry bread. Isaac stormed from the room. Had she not allowed Grazia to join the household? She was not going to send Leah away. Instead, she escorted her upstairs and settled her in a small room in the attic.

  Isaac, her rock, her font of love, warmth and good advice, did not so much as meet her glance that evening when Zephra served their tea. Zephra and Möishe eyed Leah quietly, believing the lies about her being a pregnant girl from the slave market brought home to help in the workshop. Later that night, Isaac would not touch Hannah in bed, nor even say good night, so great was his anger.

  A week later, Isaac was still not speaking to Hannah except to convey the most necessary details of day-to-day life. Around the house, he ignored Leah completely. Neither Leah’s rounded belly—her confinement was not far off—nor her eagerness to help around the house and workshop made him soften. Grazia, for her part, stayed far away from the girl and regarded her with equal parts suspicion and fear. So far, no one except Isaac had guessed the truth about Leah. No carriage had arrived at her doorstep summoning Hannah to the palace. Ezster had not been to the harem since the afternoon they rescued Leah and so could not bring Hannah up to date on whether Kübra’s story was believed. But if anyone had suspected Hannah, she would have been dead by now, and Leah along with her. This, if nothing else, gave Hannah some hope.

  Her marriage was another matter altogether. When she looked at Isaac’s face over the breakfast table, at the lips she had kissed with such passion, at the dark eyes she had gazed into so many times, at the lean muscular body she had curled around so many nights, she realized she and her husband had become strangers to one another.

  He claimed to be struggling to find Grazia’s dowry money, but how hard was he trying? Was he trying at all? In her heart, Hannah feared he simply did not love her anymore.

  Zephra, meanwhile, confessed to Hannah that she’d seen Grazia put several drops of her menstrual blood in Isaac’s tea, the traditional way to make a man fall in love.

  Her spell was working, Hannah thought as she watched Grazia and Isaac from the kitchen window. In the garden, Grazia was trimming Isaac’s beard—a curiously intimate thing for her to do—and Isaac appeared to be enjoying it. He sat very still with his eyes closed and his chin jutting forward. Grazia’s breasts were level with his face.

  Leah had begun to play with Matteo, who seemed to enjoy her company. Like an older sister, Leah picked him up and swirled him in the air, h
er filmy trousers billowing out behind her. Her hair had grown to below her chin in the weeks since Hannah first met her in the palace. With the growing bulge in her belly, she no longer resembled a boy but a lovely, graceful young woman. Sometimes, when Hannah hugged her and felt Leah’s belly pressed against hers, her own womb responded with a slight wrench, as though a taut string were connecting them.

  When Grazia finished Isaac’s trim, he thanked her and made his way to the workshop. Grazia took her scissors and, ignoring Leah, said to Matteo, “Let’s cut some daisies, shall we?”

  Matteo left Leah and scampered to Grazia’s side. Together, they cut and braided a pile of daisies. Holding up the plait to gauge its length, Grazia nodded, then fastened the ends together to make a garland, which she handed to Matteo. Watching, Hannah recalled an old proverb of her mother’s: “She fondles the lamb so that she might steal the ram.”

  Matteo raced toward the kitchen with the wreath on his head. He burst in with a jerky trot, knocking a tinderbox and flint off the table. “Look what Mama Grazia made me,” he said, one eye obscured by the wreath.

  When had Matteo begun to call Grazia Mama? Hannah straightened the garland, picking a flower petal out of her son’s hair and flicking it out the window. “How nice,” she said. She told herself it was a good and fine thing that Grazia cared for Matteo and he for her. She was his aunt, after all.

  Hannah watched Matteo from the kitchen. While he played, she went to the sitting room, where she began to stitch a pair of trousers for him to match his blue wool waistcoat. The wide and floppy legs of the garment pooled in her lap. She must remember to order a matching pair of tough cowhide boots from the boot-maker for the muddy streets. Boots and breeches and baking bread and making soap? What did any of these household details matter anymore? If they could not pay Grazia soon, none of these chores would be Hannah’s concern. Her husband and son would be lost to her.

  Isaac entered, not acknowledging her presence. He took a seat at his desk and opened his black ledger. His ink-stained fingers moved over the book. He wiped his quill with a pen rag and set it down on his desk. Hannah was surprised when he spoke to her.

  “Grazia has become devoted to Matteo.”

  Isaac was as unobservant as most men. He did not notice that Grazia played with Matteo in a way that seemed too studied. He did not observe how she hugged him too often and fussed over him excessively. How she spooned into his mouth special soups and stews that she cooked herself.

  “Grazia bathes him, changes his clothes, and prepares dishes for him that I do not know how to prepare,” Hannah said. “Matteo seems to prefer her company to mine.” Just as you do, she thought.

  “You do not appear to be well,” he said. “It seems to take all of your will to rise in the morning, and to dress yourself and Matteo.” His voice sounded kind but his words were terrifying.

  “You have one wife who is vigorous. That should be enough for you.” How sour she had become. If only she could hold her tongue.

  “Hannah, how can you say that? She is not my wife any more than Leah is my daughter.”

  The words stung, as all of Isaac’s words did of late. Hannah knew she was distraught and should defer the conversation until she was feeling more composed. But how would she ever have any energy when she could not sleep at night? How could she look well when at any moment she expected a knock on the door and the squad of deaf-mutes to take her away? How could she rest when Grazia was taking over the running of the household? Grazia had even started giving orders to Zephra.

  “We used to work together, Hannah, like two horses drawing the same cart. Now you pull one way, I pull another, each of us determined to take different paths,” Isaac observed.

  “Everything was different before Grazia arrived.”

  “And before you brought Leah into the house.”

  It always came to back to this impasse.

  His words made Hannah feel sicker and more alone. “When Leah’s baby is born, I will find a family far away to take her in and find her a husband. You will see, Isaac. It will all work out.”

  But the thought of Leah gone dismayed her. Hannah had grown to love the impulsive, energetic girl. It was Grazia she wanted to be quit of.

  “And have you raised the money yet for Grazia?” Hannah asked, knowing he had not. “Perhaps you are not trying very hard because you enjoy her company more than mine.”

  “Hannah—” Isaac began, but she cut him off.

  “She is beautiful and—”

  “You have nothing to be jealous about. Yes, she is beautiful but in the way a statue is beautiful. I do not desire her.”

  “No? Every time she enters the room, every time you hear the rustling of those Venetian silk skirts of hers, you get a look on your face.”

  “That is not true!” He rose to his feet and paced back and forth. “You are being unreasonable, Hannah.”

  Hannah could not help herself. “You think she will bear you a son as I have failed to do.”

  “I want more children. That much is true. The rest is not. Is that so terrible?”

  If he had taken a knife and plunged it into her heart, it could not have been more painful. Hannah began to cry, hot, angry tears pouring down her cheeks.

  Isaac put away his ledger and his ink pot and quill, and left the room.

  A few hours later, after putting Matteo to bed and banking the fire in the stove, Hannah, exhausted, retired but was unable to find comfort on the hard pallet she had fashioned for herself on the floor of their bedchamber. She got up and returned to their bed, where Isaac lay snoring. She crawled in next to him and tentatively wrapped her arms around him. From the corner of their room, Güzel the parrot fluffed her wings, then coughed in a perfect imitation of old Zephra, who suffered from catarrh. Hannah had forgotten to cover the bird but was too tired now to get out of bed.

  There was a low purring noise, like folds of velvet being rubbed back and forth against itself. Hannah sat up in bed to listen, staring through the blackness of the bedchamber. On the window ledge was the silhouette of a cat backlit by the moon, eyes narrowed, back arched, ready to spring at Güzel. Hannah had no wish to wake up to a feather-strewn floor. She flung back her covers, grabbed a fire poker, and ran to the window, but the cat scampered down the wisteria vine and away into the night. Hannah returned to bed after shutting the window. After a time, she finally drifted off to sleep.

  It was dawn when Hannah heard Leah’s agonized scream pierce the air, then a whimper, then silence. She pulled on her old blue cioppà and grabbed her linen bag with her birthing spoons. She looked over to see if Isaac had heard Leah’s cry, but his side of the bed was empty.

  CHAPTER 20

  District of Eminönü Constantinople

  NOT FOR THE first time in her life, Hannah prayed a baby would be born alive. This baby, conceived in the mountains of Circassia, the last of a long line of mountain Jews, must not be smothered in its mother’s womb nor strangled on its own birth cord, may God be listening. Leah, after all that had happened to her, should be allowed at least this: a lasting legacy of her village, her people, and the young man she had loved.

  Hannah took the stairs two at a time to Leah’s room in the attic. When she opened the door, she saw Leah writhing on the floor, clutching her belly. In the pink light of dawn, Hannah saw the mound of her child pulsating through the thin cotton of her shift. Hannah knelt next to her, placing her bag on the floor. The birthing spoons clanked as they jarred against glass vials of oils and tinctures, tin boxes of herbs.

  A makeshift lamp—a slab of limestone with a chipped-out reservoir for holding a knob of fat—sat next to Leah. The rope wick was smouldering, charred to a stump, casting more shadows than light. Hannah snuffed it out. It was nearly daylight anyway. She pulled the door to the attic closed and worked quietly so as to not disturb the rest of the household.

  Leah was not due for several weeks. Early babies slipped out more easily than full-grown ones, but they had little chance of sur
viving. If born in the fall and winter months, they rarely lived to see spring.

  “Has my time come?” asked Leah. “Isn’t it too soon?”

  “Much too soon.”

  Hannah took the bottle of almond oil from her bag and lifted up Leah’s nightdress. She rubbed some oil between her palms and stroked Leah’s abdomen, palpating to determine the position of the baby. The head was already well descended into the birth canal.

  Hannah must deliver this baby alone. Isaac had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with the birth. And Hannah did not trust Grazia to be present. What if, in pain, Leah said something to reveal her true identity? Hannah could not call for Zephra. The old woman looked on Leah with suspicion, believing she had been brought to the house to replace her.

  Hannah massaged Leah’s belly to relax her. How like a daughter Leah had become. She urged the girl to breathe, hoping she would not shriek quite as loudly as she had and wake up the household. Grazia was a sound sleeper, but no one could sleep through the screams of a labouring mother.

  The girl looked ashen and hollow-eyed. Her hair was hanging loosely around her neck. Hannah drew several packages of herbs from her bag. “This is valerian and black haw. I will prepare an infusion with boiling water from the brazier. It won’t take long, but it has to steep a few minutes.” The herbs might stop these contractions. It was the only hope of forestalling the birth.

  Leah reached for Hannah, gripping her hand between her own.

  “Whatever happens to me, I want you to know I am grateful for your kindness.”

  “Try not to talk.”

  Leah reached up and put her arms on Hannah’s shoulders. “I want you to promise me something.”

  There was a spasm; Hannah felt the girl’s belly harden against her hand. Leah twisted in her arms and gripped her so tightly that Hannah almost felt it was her own travail. It would be a powerful herb, indeed, that could stop these birth pangs.