Stealing Athena

by Karen Essex

  Mary made three bows as she’d been instructed to do before she sat down. Madame Pisani immediately began to read Mary’s greeting speech.

  The Valida listened attentively and then reached under her sofa for a sheet of paper, which she handed to Hanum to read. Madame Pisani translated the statement for Mary. It was full of compliments, declaring that the Valida was publicly receiving Mary so that the world might know that both she and her son were under great obligations to the English. It concluded: “We cannot sufficiently express our thanks to you and to the English people, the Crown, the officers, and the army and navy of His Majesty. We hope that Lord Elgin will remain here, for his superior sense, prudence, and diplomatic abilities are needed. In excess of that, his friendship has been the greatest utility to us and to our son.”

  Mary nodded and gave all the appropriate thanks. Then the Valida broke with all protocol and spoke directly to Mary. She was animated and seemed quite upset, upsetting Mary, who hoped that she had not inadvertently done anything wrong or insulting. But apparently the Valida was angry over Mary’s transportation that morning. She had sent—she promised, putting her hand over her heart—her loveliest and biggest barge to bring Mary across the water. But her eunuchs had somehow sabotaged this, jealous as they were that a stranger was receiving access to the magnificent vessel. The Valida was embarrassed, and assured Mary that she would seek out the offenders and punish them.

  Because she had spoken directly to Mary, Mary decided to speak directly in return, hoping that she was not crossing some line of etiquette.

  “No harm was done, and I arrived safely,” she said. She did not want to be responsible for heads on the block. She had learned that the gentleness with which the Turks had treated her did not necessarily extend to those who caused them displeasure.

  “I noticed that you were looking at our walls,” the Valida said. “The tiles on the walls spell out words from the holy Koran, messages directly from God. We are in the presence of God. My son, the Padishah, is the shadow of God on this earth. We must tell the truth here because God is listening.”

  A shiver ran down Mary’s spine. She had no intention of not telling the truth today, but she worried over what truths she would be asked to tell. But the Valida did not press her for information. Rather, she announced that it was time for Mary to tour the gardens and to be served lunch, and before Mary could contemplate anything further, she was taken by the arms and led into the room where she would change from her traveling clothes into her day dress.

  The eunuchs, yelling in loud and threatening voices, preceded the women into the garden, which faced the southern side of the Bosphorus.

  “They are searching the grounds, announcing that anyone caught spying on the women is risking the penalty of death,” Madame Pisani said in answer to Mary’s unspoken question. Satisfied that no one was present, the eunuchs allowed the women to pass through the gate and into a long avenue of shade trees that ran parallel to the high double walls of the seraglio. The women of the harem led the way for Mary. The gray skies had broken and the rain had stopped. Some of the ladies had loosed their tresses, which were also studded haphazardly with jewels. As they emerged from the shaded colonnade and into the sun, all modesty was discarded, and they happily exposed their faces, necks, and cleavage to the skies. They wandered down a long gravel path, past a grove of orange trees, and into the higher gardens, from which Mary was able to see a long stretch of the Turkish coast.

  The ladies led Mary to a grand kiosk, where a meal had been prepared. She was seated on a sofa with fine Dresden china and gold flatware before her. Innumerable dishes were placed on low tables.

  Hanum sat on a cushion beside Mary. “You will be waited on by all the Valida’s head maids of honor, even the wife of the Grand Vezir. It is the highest honor the Valida can show you.”

  “Which one is she?” Mary asked.

  Hanum pointed to an immense woman wearing red silk robes and matching shoes, the toes of which pointed to the sky. “Yusuf Pasha loves her above all six of his other wives. He has promised that if her son lives to the age of ten, he will banish the others and be faithful to her.”

  The woman was extremely polite as she presented Mary with a dish of roast chicken. Mary took a small piece and put it on her plate, asking the lady to sit beside her. Hanum made room for her. Another lady, seeing what was transpiring, came to sit near them. “This lady is the Sultan’s own Key Keeper,” Hanum said. “A very important position and valued by the Padishah.”

  Mary began slowly and carefully. If she was to speak on the matter of the vaccine in front of these two great ladies of the harem, she was not going to waste the opportunity. “I am a mother of two small children, and I understand what pain you have suffered in losing so many of your babies. I want to give you my sincerest condolences as well of those of Lord Elgin, for he, as a father, has only tender feelings toward his children, as I am sure is true of the pasha.”

  The woman blinked and nodded courteously as all of this was translated to her. She looked rather puzzled, though, as to why a stranger would initiate this sort of conversation.

  “I would like to offer to you something that might begin to relieve the sufferings of mothers and fathers in this city,” Mary continued. “English doctors have developed a vaccine against the smallpox. I had my own little daughter inoculated when she was just sixteen days old, and I am pleased to tell you that she suffered not at all, and that she is in the finest of health.”

  Mary recalled how jittery she was when her baby was inoculated. She watched the child for days straight, forgoing sleep, waiting for a bad reaction to the medicine. But none came. The babe ate and slept as well after the inoculation as before. She was a beautiful child, with black hair and bright blue eyes, and a perfectly turned ankle with which she would, in later years, according to Elgin, take many hearts. Mary was terrified of having her inoculated, but even more terrified of losing her to the man with the cart in the middle of the night. Mary decided that she could not advocate that other mothers take the risk of inoculating their babies if she did not do it herself.

  The Turkish women talked briskly among themselves while Mary and Madame Pisani listened with care. Finally, the wife of Yusuf Pasha spoke through the interpreter, who said: “If the pasha consents, she will send to you for this Dr. Scott and she will inoculate her son. The other ladies agree. If you are so confident to experiment on your own precious child, they are confident that your heart is sincere.”

  The large woman put her two hands together as if in conspiracy with Mary.

  “She wishes to see a picture of Elgin,” Madame Pisani said. “She hears that the two of you are very fond of each other.”

  Mary took the locket from her neck and opened it to show Elgin’s picture. If only he still looked as he did in the image! In recent months, his infection had come back, eating away horribly at what had been left of his nose.

  “How lucky you are that the man you love only has one wife,” the woman said wistfully.

  Mary could not imagine having this woman’s destiny, where all was tied to the heirs she produced. In the world of the Ottomans, however, it would not do for a man to discard wives who could produce healthy sons for a woman who had lost ten children to a disease. It was a brutal but practical way of thinking.

  The women rested indoors after lunch, after which Mary was taken on a tour of the harem. She was astonished at the number of women and girls the harem employed. She visited two rooms filled with young girls embroidering fabrics or performing intricate needlework on pillows, coats, and shawls. She watched for a while unseen by the workers as gold thread flew in and out of the linens and silks stretched tight on wooden frames. In an even larger room, a dozen females were weaving highly patterned kilim rugs, the kind Mary adored.

  At the end of her tour, she was treated to a performance by the harem choir. The girls were not the Sultan’s lovers or wives or favorites, at least not most of them, it was explained to her, but maids and
other slaves who were taught to play instruments and vocalize. Mary would have liked to hear native Turkish songs, but in her honor, and to commemorate the recent victory at Alexandria, they performed a charming rendition of “God Save the King.”

  By the end of the day, she had seen at least a hundred girls in the harem, each with a specific task. Where did they all come from? She couldn’t bear to think of little girls stolen from their villages and made to labor the day long for the Sultan’s further accumulation of wealth, and then, later, made slaves to his sexual desires. Or worse, ladies whisked from their ships by pirates—chaste, noble ladies such as herself—and forced into a life of sexual submission. And yet the workrooms of the harem buzzed with productivity. She did not see anyone forced or beaten, though she guessed that as soon as one caused displeasure, the punishment was severe. She realized that she had actually hoped to uncover some sordid tales of unwilling, captive women.

  “How do these large numbers of girls come into the harem?” she asked the woman who was Keeper of the Keys, hoping to receive an honest answer. “Are they captives of war?”

  “Very few. There are war orphans, yes. But most of the girls are brought into the harem because their families cannot care for them. Here, they are fed and sheltered and taught skills. They work to earn their freedom. When they are old enough, they are given to good men in marriage. That is the fate of most of them, which is orchestrated by God under the care of the Valida.”

  As if reading her thoughts, the Keeper of the Keys added, “Poor girls are not thrown out into the streets to make their living in disgrace as in some countries. Here, women are cared for and kept from the corruptions of men.”

  At the end of the day, Mary was called in once again to speak with the Valida. This time, the woman, in an ermine pelisse set on pink silk, appeared even statelier than before. Her scarlet spangled shawl was now flung over her shoulder. Mary had changed into a court gown trimmed in beads and sparkling sequins, which the Valida insisted on touching and admiring. She bade Mary sit near her on the sofa, and then asked her to remove her gloves, which Mary did. Did the woman wish to examine her fingernails? But Mary realized that the Valida was merely inviting her to stay. She complimented every aspect of Mary’s appearance, and then invited her to spend the night in the harem.

  “The waters are rough,” she said. “I cannot have so valuable a person risking her health by crossing the river at night.”

  “I am not afraid of the water,” Mary answered. “And I am most anxious to see my little ones at home.”

  “I merely wish to offer you our hospitality, and to lift the shroud of our customs for you. I know by the questions that you have asked here today that you do not understand the reasons for our seclusion from the world. Do you think that I do not know the world outside my quarters? You might think that we are restricted in our movements, but we understand that women must be kept pure. We are holy. We are the very vessels of life. God creates the baby stage by stage in the mother’s womb. That is why women must remain pure.”

  “I thank you for your hospitality,” Mary said. “But I am afraid that my babies will miss me if I do not return home this evening. I am sure that you, as a mother, understand.”

  “I am convinced, as is my son, that Lord and Lady Elgin must remain in Constantinople. The Padishah will build a new embassy for you, something elegant designed especially to your tastes. He is establishing the Order of the Crescent, by which he will knight Lord Elgin and a few special English friends of the House of Osmanh. The Sultan is informing Lord Elgin of these developments right now. I hope the two of you will rejoice in the friendship that we offer to you and to all English people.”

  Mary knew that speechlessness was not what was called for, and yet she had no idea what to say. She knew that her words would be scrutinized. Elgin’s philosophy in diplomacy was when one was unsure of what to say, one must opt for either silence or brevity.

  “You honor us in ways beyond expectation,” Mary said.

  “Now you may go, and God will watch over you,” the Valida said with an air of certainty.

  She called for her attendants, who laid parcels at Mary’s feet for her and for Elgin. “Tokens of our friendship,” the Valida said. “I beg you to accept.” Then the women who had accompanied Mary were given, one by one, rolls of bills in embroidered handkerchiefs.

  With the same three bows with which she had arrived, Mary took leave of the Valida and the other ladies. Once outside, Masterman and the other attendants were cackling over the contents of the handkerchiefs. Each had received English pounds, in an amount equal to twice what they earned for a year of service. Mary did not open her gifts, but put them aside, wondering all the way home if the Turks were correct in keeping their beloved females protected from the sins of man. It seemed to her a good idea in theory, but in practice it would be, for a woman such as herself, intolerable. Now that the Sultan was honoring the Elgin in new and greater ways, would the two of them be expected to remain in this strange and seductive land, where they would be spoiled beyond measure, but in which they would always be outsiders?

  Exhausted from her long day, Mary let herself be helped into the boat that would take her back across the Bosphorus. The waters were choppy again, but she let the lolling waves erase all the questions from her mind, and soon she found herself dropping off to sleep.

  The city of Athens, in the eighth year of the Thirty-Year Truce with Sparta

  WE STOOD ON RICKETY scaffolding—we privileged few of Athens—high above the floor of the Parthenon colonnade to view Pheidias’ latest sculptural tour de force. Defying all logic and convention, he had designed a frieze that would be set under the ceiling of the colonnade and would run along the entire perimeter of the building.

  Despite the fact that it was dark, and we were suspended in the air on slim pieces of lumber held together with ropes, we were too riveted to the display before us to feel fear. The sun was setting, leaving a glimmer of copper light on the horizon. The burgeoning night sky was glossed with a strange hue of midnight blue, and slaves held torches to light the great relief. Perikles had returned from the war, victorious, in time for the dedication of the Parthenon, and now held my arm as Pheidias addressed his small, elite audience.

  “Hundreds of feet of uninterrupted sculpture, the longest frieze ever created,” Pheidias said. He was not boasting, but merely stating a fact. “Unlike the metopes, which are individual works fashioned around several themes, the frieze depicts one event—one grand, continuous, dramatic event—that is to commence tomorrow at dawn. What I refer to, of course, is the Procession of the Great Panathenaic Festival.”

  This most sacred of rituals was performed every four years in Athens, and culminated in the presentation of a newly woven peplos, or robe, to Athena Polias, the small, olive-wood icon of the goddess that had not been carved by mortal hands but had fallen from the sky in ancient times to mark the location of the great city that the goddess wished to be built in her name.

  “I have created a sculptural representation of the entire procession held in the year of the Battle of Marathon,” Pheidias continued, gesturing toward his masterpiece, his white robe blowing in the gentle wind that had just come in from the north. “The ambitious building project conceived by Perikles and executed by myself is largely to commemorate that notable confrontation with the Persians that changed the course of Athenian history. In that year, the Great Panathenaic Festival was held a mere four weeks before the decisive battle. Fortunately, the Athenians had put on a particularly lavish show for the goddess. And that, my friends, undoubtedly is why the goddess fought with us and ensured our victory over the Persians despite their overwhelming numbers.”

  The audience gave the sculptor a polite round of applause. I was surprised to see some of the wives of Athens’s more notable politicians present. Normally, ladies did not attend public viewings of art, even if the works were shown privately to a small group, such as the one this evening.

  I was ev
en more surprised when some of these ladies boldly addressed Pheidias, asking him about his work.

  “Why did you choose to set the frieze against an indigo background?” one very finely dressed lady inquired as she fingered the gold choker at her neck.

  “Because, madam, it will make the figures more visible to the viewer, who will, once the scaffolding is taken down, be gazing at it from far below. That is also why the figures of the frieze are slightly deeper at the top than the bottom. Though you are among the lucky few who will see it at eye level, for the rest of the world, this alteration in the depth will make the viewing from below a much more vivid experience.

  “Only we few happy mortals and the gods will ever have the privilege of viewing it from this vantage point,” Perikles added, impressing upon this small group, some of whom opposed the funding of the Parthenon, how fortunate they were to share an honor with the Divine Twelve.

  “The frieze was carved in place,” Pheidias continued. “Frankly, I had nightmares about watching our painstaking work slip off the pulleys and smash into pieces on the ground. The scaffolding upon which you stand has held dozens and dozens of sculptors and painters, all of the highest talent and training. The painting staff was entirely from the school of our dear, recently deceased Polygnotos, the famed painter responsible for the murals of the Sacred Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, as well as for many of the vases to be given away as prizes at the competitions this week.”