She sent one of the black eunuchs for the doctor and when he came he looked little better than her poor mistress. He was grey and shaking, and his turban was awry. She bowed to him. ‘It seems you already know, Teacher, what it is that I would say.’
Haji Musa looked at her, as if he had taken a glimpse down the pit. ‘Feyra, I must tell you, your father is in danger. Don’t let him sail.’
‘My father? But I came to tell you my –’ she paused ‘– my mistress, she has passed away. You did not know?’
It was as if the doctor could not hear her. ‘I have already said too much. Don’t let him sail. His cargo is dangerous. It will kill him.’
Feyra froze. ‘His cargo? What is my father’s cargo?’ She was shredded by loss and confusion, sick of hints and intimations; it made her strident. ‘Tell me, quickly and plainly.’
Her teacher and mentor, the great Haji Musa, visibly shrunk before her. He backed away. ‘I have already said too much.’ His hands fluttered to his mouth. ‘Did you say your mistress was dying?’
‘She is already dead.’
The news seemed not to matter to him at all, a mere detail. ‘Then, Feyra, go home now. Do not be here when she is discovered. And take your father away, do not let him sail.’
‘Wait!’
He was already walking away. ‘I have already said too much. They may take my head for just this much. If I say more, I am surely a dead man.’
Feyra watched him scuttle off and knew that she would never see him again.
Not knowing what else to do, she walked through the quiet courts in the direction of the palace gates. Her mother had told her to go with Timurhan on his voyage. Her mentor had told her on no account to let her father sail. Both of them had spoken of his cargo. Nur Banu had named it the black horse, and Haji Musa had warned her it would kill him. Feyra felt suddenly very young. All she wanted to do was climb into Timurhan’s lap, pull his beard as she used to as a child, lay all before him and ask him what they should do.
As she passed the Sultan’s quarters she could hear the Sultan’s voice booming within. She quickened her steps, as if Murad himself might emerge from his rooms and strike her down for letting his mother die. If she’d listened more carefully, if she’d not been in quite such a hurry, she might have heard another male voice.
She might have recognized the second voice too. The Sultan was in conference with her father.
Chapter 4
Sultan Murad III had begun his reign as he had meant to go on.
On his return from the province of Manisa to claim the throne, he had ordered the strangulation of the five younger brothers his father had sired by other wives. The succession was clear; and now at nineteen, young, vigorous and unopposed, he was ready to put his life’s ambition into play.
According to the Kizlar Agha, with whom he’d just had an interesting conference, his mother should be dead by now. He was at last free of the tie that had of late been squeezing him like a noose and he would no longer have to brook her interference.
Conveniently, too, he had contrived to allow the Genoese to do the deed. His hands were clean, for while his suppression of his brothers had been popular with his people, and expected in a strong ruler, the murder of his mother, a well-loved figure, would have been a step too far. To blame the Genoese, though, was a masterstroke. He would have her Gedik strangled for negligence and denounce the Genoese who had, in his opinion, taken over too much of his city with their quarters in the Galata tower and the surrounding ghetto. He could not only mourn his mother with all civic honours, but also whip up righteous anger against foreigners. And such hatred would only serve to strengthen this latest, greatest and most audacious piece of foreign policy to ever have been attempted.
The Sultan sat on his throne and regarded the man standing obediently before him on the marble map of the known world that covered the entire floor of this vast presence chamber. The man was, appropriately, standing in the sea.
This man had once given an oath of utter allegiance to his father Selim and all his heirs. A one-time admiral, and now, in peacetime, just an old sea captain. Well, the old fellow was about to be an admiral again. The notion made the Sultan feel magnanimous, a sensation that he enjoyed, concomitant, as it was, with power. There would be one last fight for the old sea-dog. Sultan Murad III was about to call in his debt.
As he gave his instructions to the captain he thought he could detect the exact moment, the very second in their discourse where Timurhan had realized that he would never be coming back. This man who had been crossing all the charted waters of the Ottoman Empire and beyond since he was a boy, was now to embark on his last voyage. Murad enjoyed the moment. It was part of the whole picture. The gold of the room, the vast marble map, and the attendant white eunuchs, all deaf and dumb, having had their eardrums pierced and their tongues torn out at his command. The cloth he was wearing, the palace walls around him, the Harem full of women that he could take at a word. And, best of all, the power to end a man’s life and expect him to accept it. And the sea captain did.
Timurhan bin Yunus Murad was perfect for the task – no one knew the waters like him, he was a veteran of Lepanto and had seen enough atrocity in that greatest of sea battles to hate Venice and its Doge. And he had only one dependant; one whose care Murad would be only too happy to assume.
‘Our good doctor has played his part and found a case, from one of the temples outside the city. The white eunuchs will arrange for your cargo to be delivered to the dock tonight at midnight. You will sail in one of the Venetian ships that we captured at Lepanto. It is named Il Cavaliere.’
From the Sultan’s voice you might have supposed that he had been there. In fact it was Timurhan who had been at the skirmish which had resulted in the capture of this very galleass. The Corsair. The name meant as much to him as it did to Murad. The Sultan, who was familiar with every detail of his mother’s history, found the name amusing. He liked coincidences and serendipity – it made him feel that God was with him. ‘You will take the ship to Venice and wait.’
He rose from his throne and walked the map noiselessly, charting the ship’s route in his golden slippers. When he reached the marble rendering of Venice he walked deliberately all over the city. It pleased him to sully the place with his feet. ‘When you reach the mouth of the lagoon –’ he stood at the very place ‘– wait for a storm. Under the cover of a tempest, and in a Venetian ship, you have a good chance of slipping past the quarantine island.’ He indicated a small land mass on the map with a legend beneath which read Vigna Murada. ‘Here, they will keep you, if they catch you, for forty days, and all will be lost. The sailors are detained in almshouses and the cargo washed and smoked to be free of all contagion. I need not tell you, that if this came to pass, our venture would be at an end. Take your freight instead to San Marco’s basin, right before the palace of the Doge. It is here –’ he placed the point of his slipper precisely ‘– that you will release your payload.’
The Sultan waited long enough to be sure he would hear no demurral. The sea captain had followed him obediently, like the cur that he was. ‘Then, you will proceed to the lee of this island, named Giudecca. There you will find a safe house, here at the place called Santa Croce.’ The Sultan was confident that Timurhan would not understand the significance of the holy name, but swallowed the words a little, just in case. ‘Here you will find those who will shelter you and give you succour, sanctuary and sustenance. Then you will be able to sail safely back to Turkey.’ He delivered the lie breezily.
The sea captain, looking down at the map, was silent. The Sultan was used to silence in his presence but this one went on so long as to irritate him. Then it occurred to him that this man, who had been in his father’s presence many times but never in his, was cowed by his power and person. He was pleased. His mother, God rot her, always said he was as different from his father as night was from day. Of course this man was afraid of him. He was not his father Selim, a weak man, kind and merciful
, a sop and a sot. ‘You may speak,’ he said to the sea captain magnanimously.
Timurhan bin Yunus Murad was not, in fact, cowed by the Sultan. He thought him a vicious young puppy and not fit to lick the boots of his late father. He was silent because he was attempting to come to terms with this latest blow that fate had dealt him.
Timurhan was used to loss. He had found a woman he loved and loved him, and lost her to this Sultan’s father. He had thrown himself into his seafaring, risen to prominence at Lepanto, and lost his fleet. The only thing he had managed to keep hold of in his life was Feyra, and now he was to lose her too. The irony was not lost upon him. When his daughter was born, he had made a pledge of allegiance to Selim and his heirs in return for being allowed to take his daughter home and raise her in peace in the city. That very pledge had brought him here, to this room, to accept the mission which would separate him from Feyra for ever. He spoke at last, asking the one question that consumed his mind.
‘O light of my eyes and delight of my heart, what will happen to Feyra?’
‘Ah, your clever daughter. Yes, very clever,’ the Sultan said, thinking back to his illuminating conversation with the Kizlar Agha. ‘She already knows that which she should not.’
Timurhan held out both his palms, as if to ward off a blow. ‘Sire, I know that she has too much learning, but if you would, of your kindness, just let her remain in your mother’s employ—’
The Sultan interrupted. ‘My mother has chosen her side in this war, and for this, she will no longer be needing your daughter.’
‘But—’
‘Calm yourself. I do not deprecate your daughter’s knowledge of medicine, which I can only commend. No, a clever wife is an asset. But she is also beautiful, a fact, I note, that she is at pains to disguise.’
Timurhan asked the question with dread. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I am saying that in recognition of your services to my empire, I will take care of her personally. I have decided to confer upon Feyra the great honour of taking her to wife in the Harem as my Kadin.’
Timurhan was trapped. How could he reveal to the Sultan that Feyra was his half-sister, that he, a humble sea captain, had once lain with Murad’s mother? He would be cut down where he stood, and Feyra likely murdered too. Should he bow and accept the honour, go on the mission of death, and accept that Feyra would be safe and well but importuned by her brother on a daily basis?
The choice was not really a choice. He bowed.
The Sultan watched him walk to the door, smiling. Timurhan had underestimated him, as so many people did. Feyra was not the only one who knew something that she should not.
He knew that Feyra was sister to him, and he did not care.
Timurhan walked through the precincts of the Topkapi palace, aware that he was never likely to walk those courts again. As he passed the Harem, he wondered as he often did, if she was within. Always, the door was closed to his eyes, and the black eunuchs guarding it.
Except for today.
The outer doors were thrown open and the inner doors too. Reluctantly, as if even his male gaze were as intrusion in this place, he looked through the doors across a small courtyard to where another door lay open too. Beyond those second doors a woman was propped on her pillow. She was motionless, her flesh discoloured, and it seemed that she was dead. But as he looked she opened her eyes, eyes that were the colour of the sea.
Suddenly he was back twenty-one years, to the moment those same eyes had bewitched him at a masque at Paros. Those eyes had held his, and persuaded him to take her away, ride with her to his ship and steal her away to Constantinople. He held those eyes again now, for a last moment and then, realizing what he was witnessing – an ending, not a beginning – he turned away.
Chapter 5
Feyra could not remember, afterwards, what they had for dinner that evening.
She had prepared the various dishes, and carried them to the table, she had lit the brass lamps when the sun fell, she had laid out the knives and cups. She had carried different morsels to her lips, but tasted nothing.
While she’d prepared the food she had trodden over and over the pathways open to her. She could reveal everything to her father, and break the confidence of her dying mother. Or she could keep her counsel and say nothing at all. She had still not decided when she took her place opposite her father at the table. The one thing she was sure of was that she was not about to leave Constantinople. If her mother was gone and her father was leaving, the city was all she had.
Feyra studied Timurhan carefully. He seemed distracted. She gazed at his face, tanned and weatherbeaten by the four winds for four decades at sea – the beard, oiled to a point and now flecked with grey, the amber eyes, just like hers. He sat where he always did when he was home, at the head of their polished table, before the latticed window which pricked out his form with crosses and diamonds of light. He was silent, and he ate little more than she did.
Feyra respected her father, was obedient to him as all good daughters should be; she loved him, and, what was more, she liked him. But she was still a little afraid of him.
He was stern. He was jealous of her chastity and as such approved of her careful dressing. He beat her when she crossed him – for which she held him no grudge, for what father did not beat his daughters? – and kissed her when she pleased him. But lately, just lately, there had been a subtle, tiny change. Just now and again, when she uttered some remark at dinner, or spoke of her work, she noticed a change as imperceptible as an alteration of tide when the waters begin to turn and favour the converse direction. She’d begun to see some respect in her father’s eyes, and, what was more, a modicum of fear.
Knowledge was the source of this new power of hers. Once or twice he asked her opinion on medical matters, and sometimes he would defer to her, even in the company of his crew. Only last night, when their dinner was just an evening meal, he had asked her several questions about the care of an infected person, about how to contain a serious illness when a patient was in the close company of others. But he did so grudgingly. She could see that he did not like the change, that he felt like something was lost.
Feyra decided to tell her father something that would not break her mother’s trust but something that would help her decide what to do. ‘My mistress is dead.’
The words dropped and rolled between him and her in the silence, like marbles cast on the table.
Her father’s eyes flickered a little. ‘I am sorry,’ he said.
From those few words Feyra realized he already knew. And moreover, he was sorry, and sad and still in love. It was enough. Feyra dropped her platter with a clash and fell to her knees beside him. ‘Father, what should I do? She was raving at the end, she said all manner of strange things – should I return there tomorrow?’
He cupped her face. ‘Feyra. I am to go on a voyage tomorrow. And you are to return to the Harem, but as Kadim to the Sultan.’ He could not meet her eyes.
The blood beat in Feyra’s head. A thousand emotions crowded her brain and the overriding one was anger. All the effort that she had gone to, day after day since she reached adulthood, had been for nothing.
The Sultan had seen through the veils.
To repeat her mother’s history would be dreadful enough, but Feyra’s fate was worse: she would be wived to her brother, an offence against nature as well as womanhood. She grasped the hand that held her cheek. ‘No, Father,’ she said firmly, and then softened her voice for an appeal. ‘You will not let it happen, will you?’
He relaxed, and met her eyes now, as the answer was revealed to him. His fealty to the Sultan had been given in exchange for this dearest of daughters. If he was to lose Feyra anyway, what use was his fealty or his life? He would not go on this fool’s errand. He would take Feyra, take the ship without its cargo, and sail away, anywhere, where the Sultan could not follow him.
Perhaps they would go to Paros, a place that would always be paradise to him. He could still smell the lemo
n trees as he had swept past on that warm night when he had ridden after beautiful Cecilia Baffo, down to the sea. It had thrilled him that she was faster than he. He saw her now, turning back, laughing at him, terrified and adventurous and sick with love all at once.
He looked down at the face that he now held, a matchless face that he rarely saw uncovered. Feyra, so like her mother, yet so unlike her. On the hand that held his, he recognized Cecilia’s ring. There was so much for him to ask, and so much for her to tell; but there was no time. ‘I cannot let you go. Get your things. We must go now, before sundown.’
Feyra stood and fetched her cloak and buckled on her medicine belt. It was the work of a moment. ‘Ready,’ she said. There was no need to cover herself tonight, to apply those painstaking, useless disguises. She looked at her father and they shared a rare smile.
Timurhan opened the door and their smiles died.
Outside the door, blocking the dying light with his massive bulk, was the Kizlar Agha.
‘Captain Yunus Murad,’ he said in his strangely high voice, ‘I am to escort you to your ship where your crew awaits you. Lady –’ he turned to Feyra. ‘Take your rest. My deputies will guard your door and take you to the Harem at dawn.’
There was nothing for Feyra to do but say her farewells, to press her cheek to her father’s so hard that their tears mingled, and to wave and wave until he and the Kizlar Agha had turned the corner. She managed to stand until he was out of sight, then collapsed at the feet of the guards on to the pavings before her door.
The pavings where she’d once spun a top.
Chapter 6
Feyra lay in the dark, twisting the crystal ring.
She was no longer racked by indecision; she knew exactly what to do. She was merely waiting for her moment. She waited, and she twisted the circle on her finger, as if counting down the heartbeats until she could act.
The Venetian Contract Page 5