Dearest Colly, she thought I shall nae tell ye of the two nights James Stewart spent in my bed. Not only would it hurt ye, my love, but ye’de nae believe that despite the fact the Stewarts have a reputation for being supurb lovers, our Jamie performs in a rather dull and perfunctory manner.
When Lord Hay arrived that night his mistress greeted him affectionately.
“Were ye ten years younger, sweetheart, I might suspect ye. What on earth did ye do to get Charles an earldom?”
“Spent forty years in a Turkish harem” she laughed.
“Witch!” He tumbled her onto the bed and kissed her soundly.
“His majesty said that I had given forty years to my country. I suppose he meant that had his father not sent mine as his ambassador to San Lorenzo, I should have remained home and not been kidnapped and sold as a slave. When ye think of it Colly, the royal Stewarts did owe me something.”
“Were they bad, those years away, my hinny?”
“No, Colly. There wasna a bad year in all the forty, except when my husband died. And that my love, is all I’ll say about it”
The following morning the weather turned from unusually warm, to wet and cold. Within a few days the colorful trees were stripped bare. Janet organized an expedition of children from the village to go nutting, for she suspected it would be another long and cold winter. She was a good liegelady and took care of her people. The barns at the castle were full with provisions—wheat, rye, and oat flours; salted and smoked meats and fish; edible roots and apples; sugar; and dried peaches, pears, plums and raisins. Days had been set aside in season for the village women to make their preserves, comfits, cordials and soaps. Those who went without did so due to their own laziness. No one, however, on Sithean lands would go hungry. The food would be given as needed monthly. Milk was given daily, and each family owned several chickens thanks to their lady’s generosity.
The countess of Glenkirk remonstrated with her husband’s sister, the dowager countess of Sithean, for what she called “foolish wastefulness.” Janet laughed to herself. Anne was like so many of the old nobles. She did not understand that well-fed decently housed and clothed peasants worked better than half-starved half-frozen wretches. Hunger and cold bred despair, rebellion, and physical weakness that was called laziness by both the church and the rich. Janet had no patience with this kind of attitude but kept silent and went her own way. If her family grew rich, it was because of her clever management and her policy of putting out her own effort as example to the peasants, a lesson she had learned from the Ottoman.
At New Year’s, Lord Hay presented his mistress with a heavy gold ring set with rubies and a golden brown velvet cloak lined in dark brown sable. On Candlemas he became a grandfather for the first time when his eldest son’s wife bore a son to be called James. On March sixth Janet became a grandmother for the twelfth time when Fiona presented Charles with a third son, Andrew.
In mid-spring word came at last from Istanbul. Young Aaron Kira had personally taken Janet’s message, going a shorter, albeit more dangerous way. Normally one would sail from Leith down into the English Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, through the straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. The ship would then sail through the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and into the Bosporus to Istanbul.
Instead this brave and resourceful youth had shipped out on a Kira-owned vessel for the Baltic port of Hamburg. In Hamburg he had bought a smaller boat and recruited some half a dozen young and adventurous Germanic Kira cousins to help him. They had sailed along the Baltic coast to the mouth of the Vistula River and then up the Vistula to its headwaters. Here he left five of the boys and the boat awaiting his return, taking only one cousin, Moishe. Buying horses in a nearby Cossack village, the boys rode to Gran, They were now safe in Suleiman’s empire, and here the Kiras had a network of posting houses to supply horses to their messengers. Within a few short weeks Aaron Kira and his wide-eyed cousin arrived safely in Istanbul.
Esther was astounded to see her nephew so soon, but when she read Janet’s message she understood. Enlisting the aid of Janet’s dearest friend, Firousi, she waited until she knew—thanks to her own spies—that Khurrem Kadin would be unavailable to Suleiman. The sultan was then invited to his aunt’s for a family evening, to see his half-sister and their children. Unsuspecting he went and after a time was discreetly hustled into a private room by Firousi. There he found Esther Kira who made him obeisance, and then without speaking a word handed him the letter. He broke the seal, little knowing that Esther, at his mother’s command, had already read the letter, and reseated it She watched as his face went from white to red, then white again.
“I must destroy the letter when you are sure you’re through, my lord sultan.”
“Why?”
“Because the sultan valideh Cyra Hafise is dead, my lord.”
“Do you know what is in this letter, Esther?”
“Yes, my lord Suleiman. Your mother wrote me, also.”
“I have already married Khurrem”
“I know, my lord.”
He didn’t seem surprised. Esther Kira, like his mother, had her ways of knowing things. “What shall I do, Esther? If mother heard rumors that I might marry Khurrem what will happen when she knows I have?”
“You married Khurrem in secret my lord. Divorce her the same way.”
“Two months ago I stood before an old mufti and wed with her. The old man died shortly afterwards. There are no witnesses to our marriage. I cannot divorce her without a witness.”
“I will be your witness, my lord. If I stand behind a curtain she need not know who it is; yet I can write your mother with truth.”
“Khurrem will be so angry with me, Esther. She has nagged and nagged at me for months to marry her.”
“Of course she will be angry, my lord. You should not have given in to her. If she complains, you must remember you are sultan! Besides, would you raise her above your mother?”
Several days later Sultan Suleiman, known in the Christian West as “the Magnificent,” stood in a hidden kiosk deep within the gardens of the Eski Serai and said to his wife of just two months, “I divorce thee. I divorce thee. I divorce thee.”
For a moment she stared horrified at him, then laughed.
“My lord, you must not frighten me again that way.”
“It is no game, Khurrem. I have divorced you.”
“You cannot without a witness!” she gasped
“There was one. Behind the tapestry, now gone through the door back there. If need be, this witness can be brought forth,”
“Why, my lord? Why? I thought you loved me!”
“I do, my dove, but I cannot raise you above my mother, the late valideh.”
“Sultan Selim never loved your mother as you love me! He could not have! He had four kadins, and god knows how many other concubines.”
“My father held my mother above all women, and not simply because she gave him four sons. Zuleika gave him as many. He recognized her greatness as I did I married you to stop your nagging. I divorce you because I have come to my senses. If you speak one more word to me on the subject, woman, I will have you sewn into a sack and dropped into the sea! Get down on your knees and thank Allah that I have made you my second kadin!”
Suleiman then stormed from the kiosk leaving a very frightened Khurrem, He was usually so manageable. The only time he ever showed any spunk towards her had been after his mother, Allah curse her, had spoken with him. Now the old bitch reached out from the grave to her! Perhaps Suleiman had some spine after all. Khurrem shrugged her shoulders. You could live with a man for years and not really know him. Oh well, she would simply be more careful in the future. Besides, Suleiman had been kind enough to divorce her privately. The rumors were thick that they had married She had seen to that Who need ever know that they were not married? The witness, whoever it was, would say nothing unless called upon by the sultan. She was safe, and no one would ever know the truth.
>
That very day Aaron Kira and his cousin, Moishe, began their return journey to the headwaters of the Vistula, to Hamburg, to Scotland, to Sithean.
46
THE YEAR 1536 was an eventful one for Janet
On April 5th, Ruth was delivered of her second son, Hugh. Marian was ecstatic. “I never thought to see one grandchild, let alone two,” she chortled.
Three months later, Lady Leslie received tragic news. It was brought to her by David Kira, Esther’s brother who had helped Janet’s son, Charles, to flee Ottoman Turkey many years ago. From the moment he entered her presence, she knew the news was bad. Her heart began to pound violently. She attempted to observe the polite amenities, but seeing her white face David Kira spoke out
“Not the sultan, my lady. It is Ibrahim”
Visibly relieved, she asked, “Dead?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“They say the sultan ordered it”
“Never! Never! He has always been too soft to take a life—especially of one whom he loves.”
“It is publicly said he ordered it It must be said to save the dignity of the throne. The truth is too terrible. The sultan had been ill with a bad cold. He had asked Ibrahim, as he often did, to join him for supper. Afterwards Ibrahim slept in the anteroom outside the sultan’s bedchamber, as be had done many times. Khurrem joined her lord that night and according to my information drugged him so that he slept heavily. She then took Sultan Suleiman’s seal ring with his personal nigra and filling in the name of Ibrahim Pasha on an execution order, signed it with the seal. Sending it to the executioners she returned to her own apartments. The next morning the grand vizier’s body was found thrown outside the doors of the Divan. He must have put up a terrible struggle, for the sultan’s anteroom was covered in blood.”
Janet’s face was like stone. Finally she spoke. “My daughter and her children?”
“Safe, and they will continue to be so. My informant overheard the sultan warn the second kadin that he could follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, Sultan Bajazet, if she so much as glances in the direction of Nilufer Sultan, or her children.”
Janet smiled grimly, remembering how Selim’s father had strangled his second kadin, Besma, after she attempted the murder of Selim’s four kadins and their children. She looked up at David Kira. Her eyes were green-gold ice.
“Can Khurrem be poisoned?”
“Impossible, madame. She touches nothing, not even a sweetmeat unless someone else tastes it first She keeps a special guard of both black and white eunuchs about her and rarely leaves the palace. It’s impossible to assassinate her.”
“Jesu! Jesu! My lord’s aunt warned me that I clung in my heart to my Western Christian ethics. I should have killed Khurrem when I had the chance, instead of leaving her to destroy the empire and my son. Only Mustafa stands between her and her goal. David! Esther is to warn my my oldest grandson! He is to be protected at all costs. The thought of Khurrem’s spoiled, weak oldest son following Suleiman is too horrifying. Esther is also to tell my son, Suleiman, for I dinna trust myself to write him again, that should anything else of this nature happen, I shall return from the dead claiming that Khurrem faked my death and had me imprisoned. There are more who would rejoice to see Cyra Hafise alive than the Khurrem imagines.”
David Kira did his duty. For the time being the world heard no more scandal from the Ottoman Empire, and Janet was able to once again settle into her new life.
In October, Adam’s fifth grandchild, Ian and Jane’s second son, James, was born. Janet’s woolen business thrived. At Christmas Gilbert Hay was finally married to Alice Gordon.
In May of 1538 the King James took a second wife, a wealthy and noble French widow, Marie of Guise-Lorraine. All Scotland rejoiced, for his first wife had died two years earlier, after a marriage of only six months.
Ruth’s first daughter was born several days after the wedding. She was baptized Marie, but called Molly. Gilbert Hay’s wife produced young Gilbert, nine months and three days to her marriage day. Charles’ and Fiona’s fourth son, David arrived November first. Proud of her sons, Fiona nevertheless wished for a daughter.
“Like you,” she smiled at her mother-in-law, “another Janet.”
The dowager countess of Sithean laughed. She was flattered, pleased, and secretly feeling very smug because of her latest letter from Esther Kira. Suleiman’s fleet under Khair ad-Din had scored a great victory at Prevesa. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles; the doge of Venice, and the pope himself had thrown their combined fleets at Suleiman—and lost! Venice was destroyed as a sea power and ended up paying the Turks for the privilege of being beaten by them. It cost three hundred thousand gold ducats. The old doge died of shame and grief. Despite the propaganda hurriedly manufactured by Christian Europe, the plain truth was that from the Straits of Gibraltar in the West to Famagusta in the East the Mediterranean was an Ottoman lake.
“How can you be so pleased?” asked Maria.
“Why should I care what happens to the Germans and the Italians?” snapped Janet “You know what they did in Tunis. The good Christian knights were so kind to the populace of the city that mothers with infants and children in their arms threw themselves from the walls of the town rather than submit to further savagery!”
The following year, 1539, there was some small rebellion in the north of Scotland initiated by a chieftain on the Isle of Skye. It broke the peace that had been kept for years in the highlands. None of this affected the peoples of Sithean and Glenkirk, however, who seemed to be living in an almost perfect bucolic existence. There was no war, and those families not caught up in the royal circle and its court politics, managed to live fairly sane lives.
Ian Leslie’s third son, Donald, was born and Gilbert Hay’s wife produced a second son, Francis, and Queen Marie bore Scotland another James. In 1540 James Hay’s wife bore another son, Ewan; Ruth had her second daughter, Flora; and Fiona got her daughter at long last—duly baptized Janet Mary after her grandmother, but called Heather because of the heathery blue color of her eyes.
Several weeks after her longed-for daughter’s birth, Fiona contracted milk fever. A doctor was sent for from Edinburgh. Too many children in too few years was his verdict. He could do nothing, and a few days later, Fiona died.
Janet couldn’t believe it Sweet Fiona who had been more a daughter to her than her own daughter.
Charles Leslie was devastated. He and his wife had known each other since childhood, but had been married less than nine years. He could not imagine life without his Fiona, and he had to be physically restrained from harming his aunt the countess of Glenkirk, who briskly told him, a week after the funeral, that the best thing for him to do would be remarry at once. His children needed a mother, she said. With his tide and the money coming to him one day from his mother, he could probably get himself a passable heiress. Charles damned her and her passable heiress to hell and stormed out of the castle.
“For God’s sake, Anne!” Janet exclaimed “Fiona’s scarce been buried a week! In time the pain will recede and possibly Charles will remarry, but now we must give him time to purge his grief.”
“He’d best do it quick! Those four unruly boys of his need discipline. Fiona was much too soft And what of the new baby? What kind of female will she grow up to be in this masculine household without the example of a good woman?”
Janet raised an eyebrow. “And what am I, dear sister?”
“You can’t mean you intend to raise those children yourself?”
“Until Charles remarries, why not?”
“Why not? Why not? You’re an old woman, that’s why not! You’ll be sixty at the end of this year!”
“I am younger at fifty-nine, my dear, than you are at fifty-two! What is age, Anne? It is but the passing of time. It is how you feel, and I feel magnificent!”
Anne Leslie threw up her hands in exasperation and stamped back to her own home. Janet Leslie’s mocking laughter followed her.
They were so young to be motherless, but at least Patrick who was eight, little Charles who had just celebrated his seventh year, and Andrew who was five, would have memories of their lovely mother. David at eighteen months and baby Heather would not It was sad.
Lord Hay, quietly coming in, put a reassuring arm about her. “Ye’ll manage, sweetheart.”
“Ah, Colly! I must be getting old.” A tear slid down her cheek.
“You?” He laughed. “Never, my darling! If ye live to be a hundred, ye’ll nae be old! Never!” Folding her in his arms the big, bluff earl, his dark hair finally showing silver gray, comforted her. “Yer deep in a fit of the glooms, hinny. Do ye think I don’t know how ye loved Fiona?” He stroked her lovely hair. “It will pass. It will pass. Right now the important thing is to help the children. How confused they must be wi’out Fiona.”
Safe in her lover’s arms Janet cried for the first time since Fiona’s death. Great wracking sobs shook her body, and the sound of her weeping filled the chamber. Her grief gradually eased, and she buried her swollen face in Lord Hay’s chest
“I must look a sight” she murmured.
“I have never seen ye look lovelier, my dear,” he said raising her face up. “Marry me, Jan”
“Really, Colly! I am in mourning.”
“I dinna believe it!” he returned.
“What?”
“Do ye realize this is the first time in seven years ye haven’t given me an outright No?”
She gave a watery chuckle. “It’s my weakened condition.”
“Never, madame! I will wager ye have never been in a weakened condition.”
The Kadin Page 45