by Sara Pascoe
This gate looked like the pictures she’d seen of Disney World, and for a moment Raya wondered if the Ottomans had copied it. It had an arched entryway in the middle with fairy princess towers with pointed roofs on each side. Big, muscled guys stood around it. They were deferential to Raya’s chaperones, so the two she was with must be pretty high up, even though they weren’t royalty themselves. She would have been chuffed, if nausea from what she’d just seen hadn’t taken over. ‘Oscar, I’m scared.’
‘That’s the smartest thing you’ve said for a while.’
When they walked through this fairy princess gate, another, more serene park opened in front of them. There were rows of tall trees. It seemed cooler, but she wasn’t sure if she was fooled by hearing the breezes caught in the treetops.
There were fewer people, all well-dressed, and purposeful, like staff, not visitors. There were animals grazing, something like deer, but not quite. There were lots of large birds walking around. She almost tripped over one, who then opened its tail up into a fan of gorgeous big feathers. Peacocks.
Wonderful aromas floated from a row of low buildings with chimneys.
‘Might as well check it out while we’re here.’ Oscar started off towards the kitchens.
‘PLEASE stay with me,’ Raya said. Oscar trotted back to her, not looking his happiest.
The two men walked straight ahead along a marble colonnade. More columns. Raya’s stomach turned. She stole a look at the tops. The first man reassured her that only the columns in the first courtyard had heads.
‘Oh THAT’S reassuring,’ Oscar said.
‘Shut up,’ Raya retorted, grateful for head chat.
When they reached the third gate, the guards didn’t want to let Raya through. The Lord of the Doors was not shy in telling them it was Rachel Nazarlik of London, the famous fortune teller with the lucky eyes, making her appointed visit.
‘Well why didn’t you say so in the first place,’ the lead guard said as he stood back and let them pass. The Chief and Lord with Raya right behind made an immediate left, so that she didn’t get to see much of this third courtyard. She was ushered into the women’s quarters, the harem. Again, Musta was right. The décor was miles beyond anything she’d ever seen. Every inch of the walls and ceiling was covered with intricate patterns that then made other larger patterns when put together – geometrics, flowers and plants. There would be one design to about as high as your waist, then a band of tiles with Arabic writing, or a vine design, then other patterns above that. The pale marble arches to each room provided some visual relief amongst all the swirls and patterns. The ceilings, many of them domed with sky lights were also covered in designs. Intricately worked metal lanterns hung along the walls.
Raya glanced into rooms when she could. Lush Oriental carpets covered many of the floors that were otherwise done in the same cool marble as the arches. There were plush couches, fine wooden cabinets, and delicately etched metal tables. The windows stretching towards the high ceilings had decorative iron grates across them, their patterns complementing the many others. She wondered who they were keeping out. They passed an open passageway to a smaller courtyard where a number of young girls in sheer white, baggy trousers and long hair plaited with cords of pearls were playing with a ball – tossing it to each other and chatting. They were not wearing veils. A few of these young women looked at her before returning to their game. Servants went back and forth carrying all sorts of things.
‘Excuse me,’ Raya said.
‘Yes?’ The man glanced at her without breaking stride.
‘Aren’t we in the harem, the women’s quarters?’
‘Yes, we are.’
‘So why are there men here, like you two?’
Lord of the Door answered matter-of-factly, ‘Snip, snip, my dear.’ He made a scissors gesture with his hand in front of his crotch.
The two men continued along the maze of hallways. She hurried to keep up, and Oscar had to run. The Lord glanced over his shoulder towards Raya. ‘Don’t worry. It’s one way to move up in the world here at Topkapi.’
The Chief, hustling her along, said to Raya, ‘Come along now, Turhan Sultana’s expecting you.’
Raya was brought into a large room and Oscar followed. Every surface was exquisite, but the room was empty except for a sofa on a platform and a couple of chairs. The Chief stopped; she did the same. She’d never felt so nervous.
‘The Sultana has requested that we look after your cat while you have your audience with her,’ the Chief said.
‘Oh,’ she said, clutching Oscar, ‘I’d hate to bother you. I can look after him, he won’t be any trouble.’
The second man, the Door Lord swooped the cat out of her arms, surprising both the girl and cat. ‘It’s no problem. I assure you he will be fine. You see, the Sultana prefers no other energy in the room when she has a reading,’ he said and walked out with the cat. Raya’s stomach dropped, she swallowed hard.
Raya was bade to follow the Chief of the Girls to where the Sultana was waiting. They wended their way through another few turns down more hallways until they reached another room, smaller but just as decorated, where a young girl was sitting, not much older than Raya, maybe seventeen or eighteen. She was slim and fair, with hazel eyes, long dark blond hair and a delicate oval face. She was very pretty and knew it – she could have been one of the über-kids from Raya’s old life. Another woman stood at a doorway at the opposite side of the room. Raya wondered when the Sultana would arrive. Her nerves were jangling, her ears buzzing. The Chief stood at attention upon entering the room and signalled for Raya to do the same. She took a few steps back to stand next to him.
‘Turhan Hatice Sultana, I bring you Rachel Nazarlik of London,’ he said.
The teenager nodded. ‘Thank you, Kizlar Agha. That will be all.’ The Chief left the room soundlessly. The Sultana asked the woman by the door to bring the coffee now, enough for both of them.
Raya stood planted on the spot. Turhan clapped her hands and jumped up and over to Raya the minute the woman servant left the room. She leaned into Raya’s face. ‘Yes. Your eyes ARE the colour of a nazarlik, just as they say. Oh, you must be good luck then, and I hear your readings are absolutely brilliant…’ She prattled on, not unlike any teenager, except that she didn’t wait for Raya to say anything. She seemed to be used to doing all the talking.
The servant returned with a brass tray with two cups of Turkish coffee and a plate of pastries. The Sultana sat down on the high-backed, cushioned chair she had been sitting on to begin with and gestured for Raya to sit on the less ornate one across from her. The servant put the tray down on a table between them.
Raya, already full of adrenalin, didn’t want any coffee, but she felt she couldn’t refuse. Turhan chatted away. She asked Raya a few questions about herself. The Sultana, too, had come to Turkey from elsewhere. To her credit, she was interested in Raya and where she’d come from. But she also reminded Raya of the spoiled Karatay daughter.
Turhan finished her coffee, she nodded towards Raya, reminding her to start the ritual. Raya did her most thoughtful and dramatic version. She could see that the Sultana was testing her. Turhan would do things a bit wrong, start to turn the cup in the wrong direction, this sort of thing, then eye Raya to see if she caught it.
After they put the saucer on the cup, turned it a suitable number of times in front of the Sultana’s chest anti-clockwise, they placed it on the table. The Sultana snapped her fingers, and the servant waiting like a statue stepped forward with a gold coin. Not silver, but gold. The Sultana handed it to Raya and asked her to look at it for a good few seconds with those lucky eyes before placing it on the upturned cup. Raya tried to make her words sound like an incantation.
‘May this coin dispel all evil and bad will towards Turhan Hatice Sultana, her future and her heirs.’ The Sultana closed her eyes; she seemed to like Raya’s style so far.
They waited in silence for the cup to cool. Raya realised the Sultana was waiting
for her to start, so she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tilted her head as though she was checking the cosmic weather.
‘Let us begin.’
Raya was grateful to have had all that practice at the Karatays’s party – a dress rehearsal for today. As she started out with her usual patter about how the reading was done her mind was drawn elsewhere. The shapes in the cup came alive into violent scenes – including murder.
She hadn’t realised it, but her voice had trailed off as she stared into the cup. The Sultana touched the back of her hand.
‘Rachel of London, are you all right?’ the Sultana said. Then to her slave, ‘Please bring us a jug of sherbet and maybe a cool towel, Çeren.’
Çeren nodded, stepped out of the door, and spoke to someone else. Raya heard footsteps receding down the hall.
Raya blushed, mortified to have lost control of the process in front of the Sultana. But the Sultana seemed pleased, clapped her hands. ‘My goodness, you certainly DO see things in those coffee grounds don’t you? Tell me everything.’
Then two young men slaves entered, one carrying a small table, and the other carrying a tray with a jug, cups, and a bowl piled with folded towels. They placed these within reach. The Sultana thanked them and they left. Çeren poured two cups of sherbet. Raya gulped hers down. She hadn’t realised how thirsty she was.
‘Tell, me, what do you see?’ Turhan prompted.
Raya took a deep breath organising what she was going to say to this young Sultana, blinking back at her.
She’d been sold into slavery by the time she was eleven, then bought by the Topkapi Palace at twelve, when the Sultan’s mother, Kösem Valide Sultan gave her to her weird, creepy son. The mother was hoping this would keep him busy while she ran the show. Ibrahim’s mother, Kösem, was some bossy cow, all right. And that Ibrahim sure was one big bucket of weird.
Other images appeared. Ibrahim had been locked in a windowless prison cell as a child. One of his brothers killed all the rest – all the rest, that is, except for Ibrahim. Boy, these people were something. Ibrahim wasn’t released until his early twenties, messed up for good. He did horrible things to women and servants. No wonder his nick name was Ibrahim Deli – Crazy Ibrahim. Raya felt sick.
She looked up at the young Sultana, her face open and hopeful. Raya saw her in a different light. She was not simply a spoiled rich girl. Raya gave her a wan smile but didn’t say anything yet. She wanted to see the whole story before she spoke.
Raya saw that Turhan had become Ibrahim’s favourite concubine, then his wife, and that she had a baby boy, Mehmed. Being the mother of a male heir to the throne – now that was job security in this place.
‘I can see you are a very strong person, Turhan Sultana. You have come through many trials and horrors already. You were taken from your mother when you were still a child, stripped of everything you knew, even your name. Then, you were sold to the sultanate here, far from your homeland. Sultan Ibrahim’s mother paired you up with Ibrahim, to keep him happy. You gave him his first son.’ Raya paused to look at Turhan, to see how this settled with her. The Sultana flushed, but quickly put that in check. Impressive.
‘Yes, you see my past clearly,’ the Sultana said. Raya took this as a request to go on. She looked away from the coffee cup, filled her eyes with the intricate patterns on the tiles lining the walls, then looked back at the cup, turning it this way and that, to see if the same visions appeared. She wanted to make sure.
What lay ahead for Turhan was beyond anything Raya could have imagined. In a few years, Ibrahim would be strangled by the Janissaries. Loads of people were fed up with him, he was so strange and messed up.
Raya looked up for a moment and could see that this young wife wasn’t the squeamish type. In fact, it might please her, putting her young child in charge, which would mean SHE was in charge of the entire empire. Raya’s expression must have told it all.
‘What? What do you see, Rachel with the Lucky Eyes?’ the Sultana whispered.
Then Raya saw that the Sultana was not only a survivor, but a murderer. If not by her hand, by her order. She was going to have her mother-in-law killed.
After Ibrahim was executed and their child, Mehmed, rose to the throne, Turhan would become the Valide Sultan – Large and In Charge. But her mother-in-law, Kösem, wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Not after being boss lady for over thirty years. But it looked like it hadn’t occurred to her she might lose.
The Sultana’s gaze held steady and cool. A chill slid down Raya’s back.
‘Çeren,’ Turhan said softly, ‘please lock the door. Then come here and let’s hear what Rachel has to say.’
Raya didn’t hold back, she told her everything: Ibrahim’s execution; her mother-in-law, Kösem, trying to take over from Turhan; Turhan ordering Kösem’s execution and; Turhan’s struggles and successes in ruling the Ottoman Empire.
Turhan Hatice Sultana smiled. ‘Excellent, Rachel of London. You certainly live up to your reputation.’
‘Thank you.’ Raya blushed.
‘But I hope you didn’t think I brought you here merely to read my coffee cup.’ the Sultana intoned, all girlish notes in her voice gone.
‘Pardon me?’
The Sultana signalled for Çeren to pour more sherbet and took a sip before continuing. ‘You must appreciate that I have the best spiritual advisors in the empire available to me. Your reading WAS right on target – matches what I’ve been told before about my future.’
Raya was baffled. Had Oscar been right – was this about something else altogether?
‘I’m sorry, Sultana, I don’t understand…’
‘I think you do, Rachel of London. After all, we know you’re from the future – we’ve been waiting for you,’ Turhan continued.
‘What?’ Raya dropped the formal tone. Gobsmacked didn’t capture it.
The Sultana and her servant laughed.
‘I was told by the great spiritual advisor, Cinci Hoca that a young woman from the future would come – would help me like no one else could. I have people placed all over, as you can imagine. Some of them in the baths spotted you right away – on your first day here.’
Raya shook her head, not comprehending.
Çeren looked to her boss for permission to speak. ‘We were waiting for the girl from the future. We were told she would seem like a desperate refugee, but would be carrying a live jewel, like nothing anyone’s ever seen before–’
Raya gasped, ‘My mobile!’ With everything that had happened that day, barely missing getting hanged, she realised she’d lost track of it. When the workers at the baths didn’t return their dirty, tattered clothes, she hadn’t thought much of it. She wasn’t even sure her phone was still in her trousers pocket. It could have fallen out in the transport for all she knew.
‘Ah, so you admit it – you ARE from the future? You CAN travel across time.’ the Sultana leaned forward.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ was her automatic response despite their being close in age.
The Sultana spoke quickly, conspiratorially. ‘I need you to go back in time a few months and do something for me.’
‘I… I don’t know if I can, I mean I don’t have very good control over this yet–’
Çeren opened the door and stood aside. The Sultana led Raya down the hallway. She stopped by a window where a carriage waited outside – the fancy yellow one she saw stopping at the han this morning. The Sultana nodded to the man standing by the carriage door.
‘This may inspire you,’ the Sultana said. Raya’s heart was pounding. The man opened the carriage door and pulled out Macide, Abbas, Bryony and Kâtip Çelebi, Uncle Musta, all of them gagged with their hands tied behind their backs.
‘NO!’ Raya screamed before she could stop herself. Her voice echoed down the marble hallway. ‘LET THEM GO – THEY HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING WRONG!’
‘We know.’ The Sultana smiled again. ‘You have to understand, Rachel Nazarlik, governing is not for the faint-hearted. I
need a little insurance that you will do this one small favour for me,’ she said, but still did not say what it was.
Raya’s blood pulsed, she flushed hot. Everything slowed down, her senses heightened – she saw each stitch on the Sultana’s elaborately embroidered dress, she smelled the hibiscus in the courtyard, she heard a mother peacock and its babies somewhere on the grounds. She felt like a coiled panther, watching, readying for the perfect time to strike, to save her friends. If only she knew how and when.
‘Are you crazy?’ Raya blurted out, ‘Kill your mother-in-law? I CAN’T. I can’t do that!’
Çeren pointed out the window to Raya’s four friends still standing next to the carriage, bound and gagged. Abbas and Kâtip yelled things, but she couldn’t make it out. Raya tuned into Bryony as best she could – she never had to do it while also being frightened out of her mind.
‘Don’t do it – you have to let us go, Raya,’ came from Bryony. Could that be right – Bryony telling her to let them perish? That was what the Sultana promised – their deaths if she didn’t comply.
‘Bryony – NO! I can’t let you all die!’
‘Raya, you HAVE to. You can’t do things that change history – it could lead to many more deaths than just four. Believe me.’ She paused then added, ‘It’s part of our training…’ Bryony sounded sad beyond measure, afraid, and resigned.
Raya couldn’t believe Bryony could be so brave and selfless. This was not the muddled social worker she knew. What kind of training WAS it to become a proper witch? But she couldn’t bear the thought of their deaths. She tuned Bryony out. It was either that or faint, and her instincts told her that would only make things worse. She glared at the Sultana. Her breathing was laboured as though she’d been running, her cheeks were hot.
‘I’m not asking you to do the deed, of course,’ the Sultana purred. ‘You’ll contact my trusted advisor, Cinci Hoca, he’s expecting you in whatever time he might meet you, and he will arrange for the, um, “action” to be carried out, and the disposal. You just bring me proof. This removes me from the deed by one more step as well – should help with my popularity in the future, too. But the real reason I need your help with this is that I missed my chance. I need to keep my mother-in-law, Kösem Sultan, from appointing that worthless Grand Vizier, Sultanzade Mehmet Pasha – nothing but a corrupt yes-man. I need MY man in there – so I can REALLY make my mark on the Ottoman Empire.’ She paused looking into the middle distance as though she was imagining her future reign. ‘Yes, soon they will be speaking Turkish across all of Europe – even in England!’ Then she focused on Raya. ‘Well, as soon as we get rid of Ibrahim, of course. But all in good time.’ Killing her mother-in-law and even her husband were nothing more than necessary business moves for her.