by Jenny White
Further Praise for
The Sultan’s Seal
“Ms. White’s prose glints like the shores of the Bosphorus she brings to life with breathtaking detail. Unfolding in an exotic world of djinns, tube flowers, and belladonna, two mysterious crimes collide in a startling resolution. An astonishing debut novel that is impossible to put down.”
—Dora Levy Mossanen, author of Harem and Courtesan
“[White’s] evocative prose and plot twists pull the reader to a satisfying ending.”
—Blythe Copeland, Boston Magazine
“CSI goes Ottoman Empire…. Court life and customs…are thrillingly captured here, with readers easily transported back to those days when mystery and intrigue lurked around every corner.”
—Booklist, starred review
“It is an unputdownable read…. In her debut novel Jenny White has produced a multilayered story in a skillful blend of fiction and real history…. It is a book you just want to immerse yourself in.”
—Sally Roddom, Murder and Mayhem
“A page-turning history lesson and relevant allegory of today’s East-West divide…. White is bold and imaginative, able to find an original thread in this enormous pastiche, in order to weave a delightful story.”
—Elmira Bayrasli, Turkish Daily News
“White’s intelligent, sensuous writing marks a promising debut.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“White has a thorough knowledge of the country and period she writes about, and depicts them with considerable skill. The novel should be a pleasure even for mystery readers who aren’t particularly fond of historic settings. For anyone who is, this is the best of its kind.”
—John A. Broussard, www.ilovemysterynewsletter.com
“A terrific late nineteenth century police procedural that shines a deep light on Turkey at an interesting moment when the Ottoman Empire is starting to collapse…. Fans who enjoy a lot of history in their mystery will want to read Jenny White’s fine tale.”
—Harriet Klausner, The Midwest Book Review
“White skillfully evokes the turbulent zeitgeist of 1880s Turkey, and the atmosphere that she conjures is perfect…. A lavish enjoyable read.”
—Bethany Skaggs, The Historical Novels Review
“Excellent historical flavor and details permeate a fast-paced historical suspense novel.”
—Bookwatch
“White’s prose is full of silky, sometimes ominous lyricism.”
—Mopsy Strange Kennedy, The Improper Bostonian
“All the mystery, fantasy, romance and allure of the Ottoman Empire await in this historical fiction about the murder of an English governess.”
—BookWoman/BookMan
“White’s prose is dramatic, a subtle mix of fiction and history.”
—www.curledup.com
“An atmospheric experience…. She’s given herself a pretty high standard with which to keep up.”
—The Bohemian Aesthetic e-zine
“Lyrical writing, bright characterizations, and a sympathetic evocation of an era packed with intrigue and conflict.”
—www.poisonedpen.com
“A wide range of characters peoples this well-told story that draws deeply on Turkish society for its atmospherics and manners.”
—Alan Caruba, Bookviews
“This is, however, no ordinary crime novel…. White uses the story to paint a fascinating canvas…. Surely a recommended reading for lovers of both mystery and historical novels, it is a serious but fun page-turner.”
—Eric Barteldes, Greenwich Village Gazette
“The author is a professor of anthropology, and her expertise is plainly evident in her writing skills…[many] interesting and mysterious characters, many secrets to uncover and a lot of very good reading to enjoy.”
—www.rainboreviews.com
“A passionate debut…the writing is lyrical and the characters enchanting.”
—Publishers Weekly
The Sultan’s Seal
The Sultan’s Seal
Jenny White
W. W. Norton & Company
NEW YORK LONDON
“You are My Lord” by Seyh Galib and “Nedim to His Heart” by Nedim, translated by Bernard Lewis, and “You Have Shot Me So Full of Arrows” by Fuzuli, translated by Walter G. Andrews. From An Anthology of Turkish Literature, edited by Kemal Silay. Bloomington: Indiana University Turkish Studies, 1996. Used by permission of Kemal Silay.
“The Purpose of the Wine” by Bâkî and “Men String Their Cords of Tears” by Hayalî, translated by John R. Walsh. From The Penguin Book of Turkish Verse, edited by Nermin Menemencioglu, in collaboration with Fahir Iz. New York: Penguin Books, 1978.
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of these selections. Rights holders of selections not credited should contact W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 for a correction to be made in the next reprinting of our work.
Copyright © 2006 by Jenny White
Map design by Paul Guthrie
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Production manager: Amanda Morrison
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
White, Jenny B. (Jenny Barbara), 1953–
The sultan’s seal / Jenny White.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-393-07251-8
1. Governesses—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Young women—Crimes against—
Fiction. 3. Police magistrates—Fiction. 4. British—Turkey—Fiction. 5. Istanbul
(Turkey)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.H5763S85 2006
813'.6—dc22
2005023332
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
“The purpose of the wine is that the cask be pure inside.”
Our men of learning cannot plumb the sense these words convey.
—BKÎ
Men string their cords of tears to either end of postures bent with care;
From these they shoot the shafts of hope, unmindful of what made the bows.
—HAYALÎ
Contents
1. Dark Eyes
2. When the Lodos Blows
3. The Ambassador’s Daughter
4. June 15, 1886
5. The Sea Hamam
6. June 18, 1886
7. Your Rolling Pearl
8. Rules of Engagement
9. Memory
10. Hill of Stars
11. Your Brush Is the Bowstring
12. The Old Superintendent
13. A Perfect Fit
14. Blood
15. July 1, 1886
16. The Clean Soil of Reason
17. July 3, 1886
18. Kismet
19. The Crimson Thread
20. Avi
21. The Bedestan
22. Crevice
23. The Modernists
24. The Kangal Dog
25. Deep Sea
26. Salt, Not Sweet
27. The Smell of Roses
28. July 9, 1886
29. Visions
30. Feet Like Milk
31. The Girl Wife
32. With Wine-Red Necks
33. Elias Usta’s Workmanship
34. The Eunuch and the Driver
35. The Dust of Your Street
36. Sea Glass
37. Enduring Principles
38. A Shared Pipe
39. The Gate of the Spoonmakers
40. July 17, 1886
41. Beautiful Machinery
42. The Eunuch
43. The End of Dreams
44. The Past Is the Vessel of the Future
45. A Thin Blade
46. A Hundred Braids
47. Villa at Tarabya
48. The Net
49. The Floating Stage
50. Barely a Sound
51. The Ming Vase
52. The Eye of the Pool
53. Chaos in the Tapestry of Life
54. Death Is Too Easy
Acknowledgments
The Sultan’s Seal
1
Dark Eyes
A dozen lamps flicker across the water, moving up the strait in silence, the oarsmen invisible. A dry scuffling noise drifts from shore, the breeze too indolent to carry it very far. Wild dogs bark and crash through the bushes. There are snarls, a short yelp, then silence again.
As the boats cross the light of the full moon spilled across the Bosphorus, the fishermen take their places, actors on a luminous stage. In the stern of each boat a man rows, the other stands, holding a conical net attached to a pole. Attracted to the light of the oil lamps hanging from the bows, zargana fish crowd the surface. In a single motion the fishermen slip their nets through the black liquid, then raise them high above their heads. The sound of nets breaking the skin of water is so soft that it cannot be heard from shore.
There is a splash. The closest fisherman to land turns his head and listens, but hears nothing more. He casts his eye over the rocks and trees bleached by moonlight, what is beneath or behind them lost in shadow. He notices a circle of ripples moving outward from the shore and frowns, then points and mutters something to his brother, who is rowing. The other man shrugs and applies himself to the oars. It is so quiet that the fisherman imagines he can hear the scrabble of crabs across the stone point at nearby Albanian Village, where the current is so fierce that the crabs cannot proceed up the strait through the water. Centuries of crabs taking this shortcut have worn a path through the stone. Just an animal, he thinks, and tries to banish from his mind the stories he has heard about djinns and demons abroad in the night.
KAMIL PASHA GROPES on the bedside table for a match to light the lamp. He is magistrate for Istanbul’s Beyoglu Lower Court that includes Pera, where the Europeans have their embassies and business houses, and Galata, the crowded Jewish quarter below Pera, a warren of narrow streets that wind and coil down the steep hill to the waters of the Bosphorus and its inlet, the Golden Horn. The pounding on his door has given way to loud voices in the entry hall. Just then, his manservant Yakup enters with a lit lamp in hand. Enormous shadows sail across the high ceiling.
“My apologies for waking you, bey. The headman of Middle Village says he has come on an urgent matter. He insists on speaking directly to you.”
Squinting against the light, Kamil pushes back the satin quilt and stands. His foot slides on the magazine that has slipped off his bed. Sleep finds Kamil only when he loses himself in reading, in this case in the Gardener’s Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, several years out of date. It is now June in the Rumi year 1302, or 1886 by the Christian calendar. He had fallen asleep over the German botanist H. G. Reichenbach’s reclassification of Acineta hrubyana, a many-flowered orchid recently discovered in South America with stiff, unarticulated brown lips. Kamil has slept uneasily. In his dreams, an undertow of small, leather-skinned men, faceless, agile, pulled him down. Yakup, ever vigilant as are all residents of the wooden houses of Istanbul, must have come in and extinguished the oil lamp.
Kamil splashes water on his face from the basin on the marble washstand to dispel the numbing hollowness he always feels in those gray moments between waking and the first soothing intricacies of his daily routine—shaving, wrapping his fingers around the calm heat of a steaming glass of tea, turning the pages of the newspaper. The mirror shows a lean, tired face, thin lips pressed in a grim line beneath his mustache, eyes obscured by unruly black hair. A single bolt of gray arcs above his left brow. He quickly rubs pomade in his wet hands and slicks down his hair, which springs up again immediately. With an exasperated sigh, he turns to Yakup, who is holding out his trousers. Yakup is a thin, dour man in his thirties with high cheekbones and a long face. He waits with the preoccupied look of a lifelong servant no longer concerned with the formalities of rank, but simply intent on his task.
“I wonder what has happened,” Kamil mutters. Believing himself to be a man of even temperament, he is wary of the surfeit of emotion that would cause someone to pound on his door in the middle of the night.
Yakup helps him into a white shirt, stambouline frock coat, and yellow kid boots, intricately tooled. Made by a master bootmaker in Aleppo according to a method passed only from father to son, they are as soft as the skin at a woman’s wrist, but indestructible and impervious to both knife and water. Etched in the leather inside the shaft is a grid of tiny talismanic symbols that call on powers beyond those of the bootmaker to strengthen the wearer. Kamil is a tall man, slim and well muscled, but his slightly rounded shoulders and upward-tilting chin convey the impression that he is bending forward to inquire about something, a man lost in thought, bowed over old manuscripts. When he looks up, his moss green eyes contradict this otherworldliness with their force and clarity. He is a man who controls his environment by comprehending it. As a result, he is uninterested in things beyond his control and exasperated by that beyond his comprehension. Fate belongs in the first category. Family, friends, women inhabit the second. His hands are in constant motion, fingertips slipping over a short string of amber beads he keeps in his right-hand pocket. The amber feels warm, alive to his touch; he senses a pulse, his own, magnified. The fingers of his father and grandfather before him have worn tiny flat planes into the surface of the beads. When his fingers encounter these platforms, Kamil feels part of a mortal chain that settles him in his own time and place. It explains nothing, but it imparts a sense of peace.
He lives frugally, with a minimum of servants, in a small, ocher-colored wood-frame villa that he inherited from his mother. The house is set within a garden, shaded by old umbrella pines, cypress, and mulberry trees, on the Bosphorus shore above Beshiktash. The house had been part of his mother’s dowry. She spent her last years there with her two children, preferring the quiet waterfront community, where everyone knew her and had known her parents and grandparents, to the palatial mansion on a hill overlooking the Golden Horn from which his father, Alp Pasha, minister of gendarmes, had governed the province of Istanbul.
Kamil kept the boatman who for years had ferried his father on weekends to his wife’s villa. Every morning, Bedri the boatman’s knotted arms row Kamil down the strait to the Tophane quay, where a phaeton waits to carry him up the steep hill to the courthouse on the Grande Rue de Pera. On days when his docket is light, Kamil walks from the quay instead, delighted to be outdoors. After his mother died, Kamil had a small winter garden added to the back of the house. As magistrate, he has less time now for botanical expeditions that require weeks of travel, so he tends and studies the orchids he has gathered at his home from many corners of the empire.
Taking a deep breath, Kamil strides down the wide staircase to the entry hall. Waiting impatiently inside the circle of lamps held by Kamil’s servants is a short, red-faced man in traditional baggy trousers, his vest askew and one end of his cummerbund coming undone. His red felt cap is wound in a striped cloth. He shifts his weight restlessly from one sturdy leg to the other. Upon seeing Kamil, he bows deeply, touching the fingers of his right hand against his lips and then his forehead, in a sign of respect. Kamil wonders what has happened to agitate the headman to such an extent. A murder would have been brought to the attention of the district police first, not to the magistrate at his home in the middle of the night.
&
nbsp; “Peace upon you. What brings you here at this early hour?”
“Upon you be peace, Pasha bey,” the headman stutters, his round face reddening further. “I am Ibrahim, headman of Middle Village. Please excuse my intrusion, but a matter has come up in my district that I think you must be told about.”
He pauses, his eyes darting into the shadows behind the lamps. Kamil signals to the servants to leave the lamps and withdraw.
“What is it?”
“Efendi, we found a body in the water by the Middle Village mosque.”
“Who found it?”
“The garbage scavengers.” These semiofficial collectors begin just before dawn to gather the refuse washed up overnight on the shores and streets of the city. After extracting useful items for themselves, they load the rest onto barges to be dumped into the Sea of Marmara, where the current disperses it.
Kamil turns his head toward the sitting room door and the window beyond. A thin wash of light silhouettes the trees in his garden. He sighs and turns back to the headman.
“Why not report this to the police chief of your district?”
Kamil shares jurisdiction with two other magistrates for the European side of the Bosphorus all the way from the grand mosques and covered markets in the south, where the strait loses itself in the Sea of Marmara, to the frieze of villages and stately summer villas extending along its wooded hills north to the Black Sea. Middle Village is little more than half an hour’s ride north of Kamil’s villa.
“Because it is a woman, bey,” the headman stutters.
“A woman?”
“A foreign woman, bey. We believe Frankish.”
A European woman. Kamil feels a chill of apprehension. “How do you know she is Frankish?”
“She has a gold cross on a chain around her neck.”
Kamil snaps impatiently, “She could just as easily be one of our Christian subjects.”
The headman looks at the marble-tiled floor. “She has yellow hair. And a heavy gold bracelet. And something else….”