by Sara Pascoe
‘You need to go back to approximately the twenty-seventh of January of this year. I worked it all out for you,’ she said, pleased with herself. ‘That’s four days before this idiot Sultanzade gets sworn in. Should be plenty of time–’
‘What would you consider proof that your mother-in-law’s dead?’ It sounded like someone else had asked the question. But it was her own voice she heard. There was no going back. Staying here made no sense, so she had to move forward, even if that meant going back further in time.
* * *
Without knowing how, and all on her own, without Oscar or Bryony, she did it. She transported back to the twenty-seventh of January, 1645. She’d felt her entire being, heart, body and mind focus with laser intensity on this one aim – and then she was there, in the Grand Bazaar, seven months prior.
The usual splendours of the bazaar radiated a creepy funhouse feel now. She pressed through the throbbing humanity along the cobbled streets towards the coffee house the Sultana told her to go to, to meet this advisor, Cinci Hoca. She stopped at the doorway. A young waiter served coffees to a table by the door when he noticed her.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes, I have been sent to speak with Cinci Hoca.’
‘I’m afraid he left about a half-hour ago. Won’t be back until tomorrow.’
She hadn’t thought of that. That would leave her with one less day to get all this figured out and finished.
She wondered about walking over to the han, and seeing if she could stay there. But the thought of seeing Macide and Abbas, before they ever knew her broke her heart and put her mind in an unhelpful loop. Instead she walked to the baths, and languished there for as long as possible. Finally, in the third room, after she’d had endless cups of sherbet one of the staff came up to her. A young woman she hadn’t seen before.
‘Are you Rachel Nazarlik?’
‘Yes,’ Raya answered.
‘We were told you might show up and need a room for a night or two. Come with me.’ Raya didn’t question it – one of the less weird things to happen today so far.
She was given what looked like a room usually used for some sort of beauty treatments. They left her with a clean sarong wrap to sleep in. Without appetite for food or ability to sleep she lay on the narrow bed and listened to the sounds of the last bathers, and the staff closing up for the night. They showed her how to open the door to leave should she want to, and then they left. The place went quiet – a cavernous sort of quiet.
Raya woke to the sounds of women’s voices and splashing. She must have dozed off after all. She was immediately filled with dread and adrenalin. This was her eleventh day in old and slightly older Istanbul.
She returned to the coffee house and Cinci Hoca was there this time. He was a big man, in his fifties with a neatly shaped white beard. His clothes were brocade and ornate.
‘Rachel Nazarlik, I’ve been expecting you,’ he huffed with his bulk. Drops of sweat dotted his brow below his white turban. He pulled a chair out at a table just on the outside of the coffee house. ‘Please have a seat.’ He gestured to a waiter who sped off.
She sat and looked at him, not sure what to say. How did this work? Did you say this stuff out loud? He seemed to be waiting for her to start. She was exhausted and wired at the same time. The waiter returned with two cups of the thick coffee and a couple of pastries. Raya figured she should eat something and forced the too-sweet square down. The muddy, bitter coffee was a welcome contrast.
‘I suppose you know why I’m here,’ she tried.
He nodded. ‘I believe so.’
OK, so HE’S not going to say it, she thought.
‘So, I’m here to… to make sure the “action” is completed.’ She thought she might as well use the Sultana’s terms.
He nodded again. But they could be talking about buying a tablecloth or walking a dog. She’d better be clearer.
‘Um, I will need proof of course, that the honourable Kos–’
‘Yes, yes, that the honourable person is no longer troubled by these daily struggles,’ he cut her off and raised an eyebrow. Of course, they had to be careful, they could easily be overheard.
‘And how do I get my, um, proof?’ she raised an eyebrow back.
‘Return here in four days and I will give you the item requested,’ he said as though he was talking about a tablecloth, rather than the treasured jewellery taken from the dead Valide Sultan Kösem – something she would never part with voluntarily according to Sultana Turhan.
Raya suppressed a gasp as best she could, four days would be her fifteenth in old Istanbul, too late to transport home to London.
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. I need to return to my boss, no later than two days from now. I’m under strict instruction.’ She held the older man’s gaze.
He didn’t seem like any big clairvoyant, empath or integrator to her. He seemed more like a businessman. He didn’t question Raya’s edict – that was one reason she doubted his skills.
He shrugged. ‘If you say so. Then you’ll need to get our “customer” to take their delivery sooner. Let’s see, how could we do this?’ He stroked his beard and looked out onto the bustling marketplace. ‘I know. Why don’t we tell her you’re my protégée, learning how to do your coffee cup readings and that I’ve sent you to read hers.’
‘You work for her too?’ Raya asked.
‘Why yes, of course,’ he said as though this was nothing unusual. Nothing unusual in arranging a murder as though it was a haircut. Nothing odd about getting paid by the murderer AND the victim. And nothing strange in meeting with someone who recently made a jump in time.
The fat man continued, ‘In the reading tell her you can see she is in great danger, and that she needs to go the third dock north of her mother’s summer home, her divanhane, on the Bosphorus. Tell her to wait there at three in the afternoon the day after the reading, and that someone she knows and trusts will come and take her away, in a boat to safety.’
Raya took in a deep breath. ‘OK, so how do I find her?’
There weren’t any secret words or knocks needed to find Kösem Valide Sultan. Fat old Cinci Hoca simply took Raya to her. Well, to her staff at the Palace, to be more precise. Raya didn’t see the Sultana Turhan, and didn’t know what would happen if she did, besides her head exploding. Would this Turhan of seven months ago know her? Would she know that her future self sent Raya back here now?
The staff had them wait in one of those amazing, overly decorated rooms. The woman servant came back. ‘Kösem Sultan would be delighted to have a reading by your new protégée,’ she said, ‘You know how she loves a good reading. She’s made room in her schedule for tomorrow, at eleven in the morning.’
Raya took a deep breath and held it to keep herself from saying anything stupid. Tomorrow would be her twelfth day in Istanbul.
She and Cinci were given rides in royal carriages to wherever they wanted to go. She was glad the young woman at the baths had said it would be OK for her to stay a couple of nights, although she hadn’t seen the need at the time.
She was starving after eating nothing besides a few pastries for the last two days. She rushed in and found the same girl worker. She said Raya had enough time to go and get some food before they would close up. She returned to the baths with her dinner where she had another surreal night of avoiding her own thoughts and listening to the sounds of water in empty rooms.
Raya woke in the wee hours – no sun through the skylights yet. She felt sick. How did she ever get herself in this situation – needing to trick someone into the arms of their assassins in order to save her friends? The Sultana was going to have Kösem killed eventually anyway – Raya tried to reason to herself. And if she didn’t go through with her part, she would have to live with the knowledge that her four friends died as a result. Four of the best people she’d ever known. Bryony even risked her life to try to help her in old England, although it hadn’t worked. Bryony. How could she do it – tell Raya to
let them die in order to save a load of other people none of them ever knew? She realised that would be the right thing to do, if you knew for sure all those other people were going to die. She went to the toilet and threw up.
By that time the baths were open and she decided she could do with one herself before meeting Cinci Hoca outside at ten o’clock as agreed.
* * *
Another ride in another royal carriage. None of it had the shine it did a few days ago. They stopped inside the first courtyard, the one that was the most like a small city in itself with throngs of people, conducting business or just sight-seeing. Raya and Cinci walked casually, blending in to the crowd. Cinci made sure Raya remembered the location to tell Kösem – which dock on the Bosphorus, and reminded her in staccato whispers to act horrified and upset when she ‘saw’ Kösem’s future in the cup. Like she needed reminding, or needed to act. She wanted to tell him to shut up. She wanted to be safe and sound with everyone back at the Cosmic Cafe – a fairy tale for sure.
Finally it was time for her appointment with Kösem Valide Sultan, the Mother of the Sultan and de facto leader of the entire Ottoman Empire. Cinci Hoca went with her – the proud mentor launching his prize student. This would douse any possible suspicions Kösem might have, according to Cinci. The more she got to know this royal bunch, the more being paranoid seemed smart.
After the formal introductions and Cinci’s hyperbole about her skills, the door closed and she was alone with Kösem Valide Sultan and her servant. For a moment, the horror of the situation melted away and she saw a regular woman in her fifties. Regular except for the authority she carried, the power she had, and of course her amazing clothing – bedazzling and bejewelled. Raya thought of Ms Watts, Macide and the various women world leaders she learned about at school. She saw Kösem fitting right in there with them, on her own page. She swallowed hard and smiled.
It was as though someone else was doing this, the reading for Kösem Sultan. She heard the words she said, and saw her hands move the cup through its ritual, but it didn’t feel like she was doing any of it. For a few seconds she saw the whole scene, including herself, as though she was hovering against the ceiling. The Valide Sultan asked some questions. Raya answered them. She asked some more, ‘How long will I remain in danger? How will I know when it’s passed? Who is this who wants me dead?’
Then it happened. Raya cracked. She trembled and tears ran down her cheeks.
The Valide Sultan gave the smallest motion with her head, and the servant left the room, clicking the door conspicuously. She reached across the small table and took Raya’s hands.
‘Tell me, dear, what’s troubling you.’ Her voice was calm, steady – a mooring for Raya’s storm of emotions.
‘Valide Sultan, I beg your forgiveness – I’ve told you the truth in that coffee cup – you ARE in danger for your very life. But it’s not exactly the way I said.’
‘I see,’ was all the Valide Sultan said, as though she heard this sort of thing all the time. Maybe she did. Then Raya told her more of the truth.
‘Someone DOES want to kill you, but you can’t go to that dock on the Bosphorus – that’s where the killers will find you. I’m SO sorry. I’ve been forced into this. They have four of my… family.’
The Valide Sultan lifted Raya’s chin with her finger and looked into her eyes. ‘And they’ll kill them if you don’t send me to my assassins?’
Raya nodded.
‘You still haven’t told me who has ordered my death. Anyone I know?’ her tone was world-weary sarcastic.
Raya didn’t want to tell her, although she got the feeling she had a good idea.
The Valide Sultan leaned back in her chair, folded her arms across her chest. ‘So what sort of proof does this person need?’
‘Jewellery, something very personal to you that you never take off–’
The Valide Sultan laughed. A big, open-mouthed, head thrown back laugh. Boy this woman was strong. ‘You mean something that wouldn’t come off, unless I LOST my head?’ She pulled out an old, gold, Greek cross on two chains from under her dress. ‘Two chains to keep from losing it. It’s from my homeland – and a secret I keep – shall we say, “close to my heart”?’ She unclasped the two chains holding the cross, pooled them into Raya’s palm, and closed the girl’s fingers around them. ‘How long do I need to hide?’
On her thirteenth day in old Istanbul, Raya snapped her laser focus onto her memory of the Topkapi Palace; on the hallway outside the room where she first met Turhan Hatice Sultana. With an ear-splitting whine and a flash of heat against her skin she was there, seven months forward, in late July 1645. This razor sharp ability to transport had come on with her last desperate need to go back to January. She didn’t know if it meant she had this skill for good. But she hoped with all her heart it would work at least once more, to get her back ‘home-home’ to twenty-first century Britain.
Something had shifted. It was as though a cog inside her had moved and meshed perfectly and powerfully with another gear she hadn’t known was in there. Twenty-first century London was where she wanted, where she NEEDED to be. And not just her, but her friends, too. She could no more part with Bryony, Macide, Abbas or Musta, than she could willingly part with a limb. She had no idea how she was going to make this happen, if it was allowed, or even possible, but like a missile on countdown for launch, there was no stopping her now from trying.
She had definitely transported to the right place, to the long marble hall outside the room where Turhan had first received her, but maybe this was the wrong time. Servants raced through the hallways, yelling and clutching clothing, household goods, even furniture. She had to duck into doorways to avoid getting mowed down.
‘What’s happening? Where’s everyone going?’ she yelled out but no one answered. They pounded past, their eyes like spooked horses.
‘Get out! It’s over!’ a servant girl she recognized screamed as she raced past, clothes spilling out of her arms.
‘What’s over?’ Raya shouted back, but the girl was gone. Raya dodged through the stampeding hordes to a window. And then she saw it.
Mayhem clogged the grounds of the Topkapi Palace. Janissaries fought soldiers in different uniforms. They were attacking each other with swords and knives. Others shot bows and arrows, or muskets. Some were on horseback. They were toppling statues, ramming buildings with logs. Dead bodies were strewn across the lawns. Others tried to carry them away, but it was useless, more dying by the minute. Camels, horses, and donkeys charged around frantically.
A young slave boy hurried down the corridor. She grabbed his arm. He swung around, fear in his eyes until he saw it was only a girl. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked him.
He looked at her like she must have been under a rock. ‘They’ve all joined forces – all our enemies. They conquered Istanbul a few days ago. And now they’re taking the Palace. Where the hell have you been?’ The boy tore away down the hall.
Raya slunk further along. She opened doors to the once glorious rooms, now littered with smashed furniture, tiles and lamps.
She had to find Bryony, Macide, Abbas and Musta. She made her way through the fleeing throng, and stood in the doorway to the courtyard. She smelled blood and rotting bodies in the hot sun. Someone had killed a bunch of peacocks seemingly for the heck of it. The prison blocks were in the second courtyard, and the harem where she was, was in the third. She didn’t want to transport there, didn’t want to land on a sword or soldier.
She pressed against the wall and surveyed the situation. Other servants and slaves slunk along, then ran across areas where arrows were flying. She scurried like a rat against the wall to the first ‘safe point’, imitating what she saw the others doing. Occasionally a soldier grabbed a servant girl and hauled her off. When she saw it happen again, she hiked her dress up and ran like hell, thinking at least one soldier already had his hands full. It worked, or she was lucky as she got to the second gate, now abandoned by any guards, a clutch of servants and
slaves huddled underneath, eyeing their chances of getting out of the Palace altogether.
She spied the prison block in the centre of the second courtyard, where the Sultana had ‘promised’ her friends would be when she returned. She fingered the Greek cross on the two chains around her neck. Useless now. There was a terrible clash of swords and shields to the right of the cell block. Other soldiers threw themselves onto the pile. This seemed to be her chance if you could call it that. She stared at the door to the cell block, saw nothing else but that door, then POP – she was right in front of it. It was open. She dashed in. The iron grated doors to the cells creaked on their hinges – all open. One door lay on the floor. Empty – the cells were empty.
Standing alone in the abandoned prison was a cool respite. But she wasn’t protected from the sounds of swords against shields, muskets firing and the screams when they found their marks. She thought about the han, the pink rendered wall around it and the gate until that was all she saw and BAM – she was there, too.
But like everything else in what had been her beloved city, it wasn’t the same. Soldiers with weapons filed out of the han. Carts piled high with supplies and goods from the bazaar rolled in. Two soldiers with metal breast plates and helmets stood guard with very long muskets. She pressed against the wall to stay out of their direct line of sight. They spoke in another language – not Ottoman Turkish, and not English. Transporting inside might not be a good idea. She had nothing more to lose. She adjusted her veil and headscarf, took a deep breath and walked up to them.