The Sultan's Seal: A Novel (Kamil Pasha Novels)

by Jenny White

  The magistrate motioned for him to stay where he was, then joined him. The room was small, however, and sound carried under the vaulted ceiling. Still breathing heavily, the surgeon told the magistrate, “He ran up the street and through the front entrance of an apartment building. I followed but just outside the back entrance is a big hamam. He must have entered the baths by one of the back doors. He could have hidden in any of the alcoves, or even run through it to the street in front of the hamam. I tried, but I couldn’t find him.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  “No, but his turban fell off. He had curly black hair and a beard. That’s all I saw.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry,” I whispered to Madame Devora.

  She didn’t respond. The neighbor, however, scowled and I backed away.

  “Will she be taken care of?” I asked the magistrate. “I’d like to help, if I can.”

  “I’ll let you know if anything is needed, Jaanan Hanoum. But usually the community takes care of its own people.”

  He crossed the room to Madame Devora and asked the woman in pink stripes to leave them alone for a moment. She frowned again crossly, but moved away. The magistrate squatted before Madame Devora, so his eyes were level with hers. I could feel him willing her to look at him.

  “Who was the man that ran from here?”

  Madame Devora froze in place, only her eyes in motion, anxiously scanning the room. I looked hard at her, willing her not to answer. Her reddened hands were clenched in her lap.

  “What happened to your son, Madame Devora?”

  “That woman killed him.” Her eyes locked onto mine.

  “That’s not true,” I cried out.

  “Was the man who ran from here involved too?”

  “It’s impossible,” Madame Devora whispered.

  “Impossible? Why do you say that?”

  “They were friends.”

  “Who was?”

  “It must have been…” She didn’t continue. I let out my breath.

  The magistrate signaled to his associate to bring Madame Devora tea from the kettle brewing in the kitchen.

  When the surgeon arrived with a glass of tea balanced on his thick fingers, the magistrate stood aside. The man handed Madame Devora the tea, took the magistrate’s place squatting before her, and addressed her in Ladino.

  Madame Devora’s eyes swept the room and stopped at my face with a look of hate. Then she responded in the rolling syllables of her dying language.

  “No.”

  I understood that word. Madame Devora put her tea glass on the divan beside her and wrapped her white muslin head scarf around the bottom of her face, hiding her expression and refusing to say anything more. She began to cry.

  The surgeon strode across the room and whispered to the magistrate. I positioned myself to hear what they were saying. I had spent long hours in this room and understood the qualities of sound projected by its thick walls and arched ceilings.

  “She told me this woman caused everything. If it weren’t for her, her son would still be alive.”

  “What does she mean by that? Was her son in an accident?” The magistrate bent his head toward his associate.

  “I don’t think so. I think he was killed. She told me a ‘Turko,’ a Muslim, brought the girl to this house. She claims not to know his name. Her son begged her to do this, although she herself thought it was wrong. She said she didn’t know when she agreed what they planned to do here.”

  “What did they do?”

  “She said they turned her house into a brothel.”

  My face burned.

  “I see.” The magistrate looked speculatively in my direction and moved farther away. It did him no good, as I could still hear.

  “Why did her son agree to this?”

  “From what we know of him, I doubt he would ever have dishonored his mother in such a way. Maybe he was coerced by this ‘Turko’ to put the girl up here. That might be a motive for a fight in which he himself was killed. Just speculation, of course.”

  “How long did her son know this man?”

  “Eight or nine years. She doesn’t know where they met. Her son told her very little—just said they worked together.”

  “At what, I wonder.”

  The rabbi of Galata hurried in. His velvet kaftan floated open behind him. A red turban wrapped around a felt hat framed his forehead. The rabbi’s eyes surveyed the room, taking in the situation. Seeing Madame Devora, he slipped off his outer shoes and walked toward her. A young man who followed behind carried their Holy Book.

  “We should go.” The magistrate’s associate was keeping a crowd of curious neighbors, mostly women, at bay at the end of the corridor.

  “TAKE ME TO my uncle’s house at Chamyeri, please.”

  A crowd of people had gathered on the street. The surgeon stood by an enclosed coach, his eyes darting in all directions. The magistrate spoke to him in a low voice. As soon as we were inside, the man vanished into the crowd.

  When we had settled across from each other and the coach began to move, the magistrate said, “I’ve sent ahead to obtain your father’s opinion on the matter of where you are to go.” Seeing my anxious face, he reassured me, “I revealed nothing, but I urge you to tell him what you told me. He is your father.” After a moment, he added, “It might not be as you think.”

  His attention was caught by a commotion on the street. When he turned back to me, his face slashed by light from the closing curtains, he offered, “If you wish, I will explain things to him.”

  “No, thank you, magistrate bey. I will do it.”

  A chain of amber beads slipped through his fingers in patterns as intricate as smoke. His long legs were tucked along the far side of the cab a discreet distance from my own. His eyes rested at a respectful remove, on the empty seat beside me.

  “How did you find me?” I asked him as the carriage negotiated the steep, tight curves. Jeering children followed us all the way up Djamji Street.

  “My associate’s mother.”

  “His mother?”

  “The women know everything that happens in the neighborhood. They watch from their windows and pass along gossip.”

  I said it sounded frightful.

  “But wonderful for enforcing public safety. Although,” he added, “they don’t necessarily tell us what they’ve seen. Your maid fell out of the carriage as it rounded a corner and ran into a courtyard to get help. Apparently no one offered to help her, although she said she attracted a curious enough crowd.”

  “I suppose they wouldn’t want to come to the notice of the police,” I ventured, “since suspicion would fall on them before anyone else.”

  He gave me a brief, curious look. “Yes, I suppose that would be one reason.”

  We fell silent as the carriage passed through a market area, unwilling to compete with the hoarse cries of vendors, alternately aggressive and cajoling, and the quarrelsome voices of prospective buyers.

  When we had rounded a corner onto the Grande Rue de Pera, he continued.

  “Luckily, your maid remembered the direction of the carriage. South toward Galata. My associate happens to live in Galata. One day, his mother visited a relative on Djamji Street. Some other women there began to discuss the old woman who lives across the street, Madame Devora. For some time, the shutters to her bedroom had been closed in the daytime. The women worried that she was ill, since her son didn’t seem to be around to take care of her and no one had seen her come or go. Yet just the other day a neighbor had seen her lowering a basket on a rope to the vegetable seller. She bought so much fruit she could barely pull the basket back up. They surmised from the quantity of food that she must be expecting guests, but then no one noticed any visitors.”

  “They probably knew just how much money was in the basket too,” I exclaimed.

  He laughed. “If these women were working for us, we’d solve many more crimes.”

  One front tooth was slightly awry. The hidden flaw
introduced by its maker into every carpet that marks it as the work of humankind, not Allah who alone is perfect. The stern, efficient magistrate was just another man.

  “Once the gossip started, I can imagine them bringing every detail to bear. Someone saw a strange man entering the building, a workman carrying tools, but no noise was heard from the building. The man apparently tried to keep out of sight, arriving in late afternoon, when the women’s husbands weren’t home yet and the women themselves were busy preparing dinner, but he was seen nevertheless. One hot night, the neighbors kept their carpets out on the sidewalk, sleeping in the open air. They said the mosquitoes kept them awake. A strange man came out of the building in the hour before the morning call to prayer. Unfortunately, they didn’t see his face.”

  He looked pointedly at me before continuing.

  “So they took action. They went to visit Madame Devora. Of course, they knew she was home. They know everything! When she didn’t answer her door, they became convinced something was wrong, and they delegated my associate’s mother to report it to her son, who came to me. We had already been looking in Galata, thanks to your maid’s information. And that is how we came to find you.”

  Thus was I found and lost all at the same time, in both cases through the tongues of women, a force that shamed and secluded me for nothing more than losing a bit of flesh, and then rescued me from a shame and seclusion that I desired. We stopped at an official-looking building and the magistrate disappeared inside. When he reemerged he brought with him a taciturn widow in an all-enveloping black charshaf that covered even her lower face, who accompanied me for the rest of the trip home.

  AT CHAMYERI, ISMAIL Dayi helped me from the carriage. The chaperone, who for the entire trip had stared silently through the gauze-curtained window, refused refreshment and ordered the carriage to return to the city. Ismail Dayi’s shoulders looked stooped and thinner under his robes than I remembered. His face was pinched, his beard flecked with gray, and small spots of red glowed on his cheekbones. I bowed before him, took his hand and kissed it, then touched it to my forehead. He pulled me up.

  “Jaanan, my lion.”

  “Where is Mama?” I asked, looking past him into the dim interior beyond the doors.

  He took my hand. “Come inside, my dear.”

  Violet was waiting in the entryway. An egg-yolk-yellow kerchief tied around her head emphasized her black eyes screened by long lashes, eyebrows like an archer’s bow laid across them. She moved toward me and we embraced. I inhaled the familiar smoky scent of her skin. Her cheeks under my lips tasted of salt and milk. But the tinder did not kindle into joy. The cook’s boat had been cut adrift, then burned.

  I pulled from her embrace and went to Ismail Dayi. He led me to his study, where we had spent so many happy winter evenings. Now the windows to the garden were open and the familiar scent of jasmine twined into the room.

  Ismail Dayi lowered himself onto the divan. Violet adjusted the cushions behind his back. He waved his hand to indicate that she should leave. With obvious reluctance, she backed out of the room. For some moments we sat silently, our limbs wrapped in the scented warmth from the garden.

  Finally, Ismail Dayi spoke.

  “My daughter.” His voice was husky—with illness? I did not know and I was suddenly ashamed of how much I had tested him.

  “My dear dayi,” I said, “you’re the one who has worried and suffered for all of us. I’m so sorry to have been an added burden to you.”

  “My daughter, there was never a burden as sweet as you. I thank Allah for bringing you into my life.”

  He paused for a moment, then continued.

  “Jaanan, I’m sorry, but I must tell you. Your mother has passed away.”

  I felt nothing. Or rather, only a rushing sound far away, as if a monumental wave were coming closer, but was still too far away for me to run for cover. How did I know about such waves? They were there in Violet’s sea, in the lost fingers of Halil the gardener. They were the crushing, grinding behemoths that tortured Hamza’s sea glass on their forges of sand until the stones glowed from within like blue eyes.

  I was speechless. What opportunities had I missed? My hand remembered the feel of cold satin like a ghost limb.

  Ismail Dayi tried to take my hand, but I pulled it away.

  “What happened?” My voice sounded too steady, too matter-of-fact, and I felt ashamed of that too.

  “She caught a draft and it went to her lungs. It was very rapid. May your life be spared, my dear.”

  He squeezed my arm. His touch opened a channel through which a current of sorrow began to flow. But I resisted it. Another vein of weakness when so much of me had run dry.

  The waves were nearer. I bowed my head and let them rage through me, but said nothing.

  Ismail Dayi stared sadly into the fire. “I never told her you were lost. I told her you had gone to your father’s. I didn’t want to worry her. She loved you greatly, my dear daughter.”

  36

  Sea Glass

  It was late spring that year when Mary finally came to visit me. I hadn’t seen her since the fall. I took her hand and led her into the harem reception room. Now that Mama had cut the thread that bound her to the world, I was mistress of the cool blue and white tiles and splashing water. My body moved to a different music learned in Galata. I felt powerful. I wondered whether something in Mary would stir in response.

  We sat on the divan. I signaled Violet to bring us tea. Mary was dressed in a loose white gown embroidered with red flowers that echoed the enamel blossoms in the gold cross she always wore at the base of her throat. It had been her mother’s, she told me when I admired it. A lace bodice hid the mole on her shoulder.

  Violet stood by the door, silver tray balanced in her hands.

  “Put it here, Violet,” I called, my eyes studying Mary. She seemed absorbed in the movement of the tray, following it to the low table, watching Violet’s strong hands pour the coffee into tiny cups.

  We waited for Violet to leave.

  “I’m sorry about your mother’s death. I thought, I must come to see you.”

  “Thank you, Mary. That is kind of you.”

  I said nothing to her about about my stay at Madame Devora’s. It was a willing union that undid the other, unwilling one. I had found Hamza’s sea glass necklace at the bottom of my jewelry casket and now kept it close to my breast.

  Our cups chimed in the awkward silence.

  “You know, I tried to come see you before, but your maid told me you weren’t here. She wouldn’t tell me anything more. Where did you go?”

  “I was at my father’s house in Nishantashou,” I quickly improvised.

  “Of course.” She looked at me curiously and I was suddenly afraid she had also sought me there. “I wish I had known. It’s much closer. Why didn’t you send me a message? Didn’t you know I was back?”

  Seeing my look of confusion, she spat out, “Violet, again.”

  I glanced quickly at the door, then nodded. “I’ve received no letters since winter.”

  I could see Mary fighting down her anger. “Well, we’re here now. I know you haven’t gone out much since you speared that bastard Amin last year. I’m sure a stay in the city did you good.”

  I was surprised that the mention of his name no longer affected me.

  “Well, I haven’t been invited to many society events since then. I suppose people blame me, and perhaps they’re right to. I was very stupid. I always thought I should be able to move about without a chaperone like any modern woman.”

  “In England, young women of quality”—she worked the word uneasily in her mouth, like a moldy fruit—“also are guarded by female watchdogs. It has nothing to do with being modern. We still hold the leashes of our own sex.”

  Women of quality. Mary did not seem to be quality in the English way, which I presumed to mean much the same as here—wealth and indolence. Was I still a woman of quality? I was wealthy, was I not? And inactive, again imprison
ed in my golden cage at Chamyeri.

  “You must have been bored out here,” she continued. “That Violet can’t be a very pleasant companion. She’s so sour she’d curdle milk.” I didn’t tell her that the object of her scorn was probably listening on the other side of the door. Her description of Violet irritated me.

  “She was my companion when we were younger, and she has been a good and loyal servant to my family. There is no cause to disparage her.”

  She reached over and took my hand. “I meant no offense. Forgive me.”

  My small hand nestled inside hers like a young bird.

  “I’ve missed you, Jaanan. We haven’t seen each other for a long time, but I haven’t forgotten.” She smiled at me uncertainly. “I wrote to you often. And I had to go back to England for a while. I hope you don’t blame me for not coming to see you after I returned. It was impossible to get up here. The roads were impassable and none of the delivery boats would take me. Believe me, I tried. And then, when the roads were open, I thought you went away. I wish I had known you were in Stamboul,” she added fiercely.

  I looked into her light blue eyes, the color of beads used to ward off the evil eye. When I didn’t respond, her hands parted the gauze panels of my veil and lifted them behind my shoulders. I felt suddenly naked, as I had never felt in the room in Galata.

  To cover my confusion, I said in a polite voice, “Please have some more coffee.” I rang the silver bell by my side.

  We sat silently until Violet arrived with the coffeepot. She looked at us slyly from under her lashes.

  Had I changed in some fundamental way? People project themselves onto the screen of society like shadow puppets. Perhaps the lamplight was too low and I was no longer recognizable. Had I forgotten my lines? Was there a plot at all? I no longer believed so.