Part 32 (1/2)

”And you knew it was Elif?”

”Who else? She denied it, naturally.” Ibou blew out his cheeks. ”You cannot believe the spite and fury of these women, Yas.h.i.+m.”

”I wouldn't say that, Ibou.”

He got up. Yas.h.i.+m knew that all sorts of children lived in the harem-princes and princesses, slave girls, children adopted into the imperial family for political or diplomatic reasons. ”Who was the girl?”

Ibou shrugged. ”We call her Roxelana. The lady Talfa took a s.h.i.+ne to her. Very quiet little thing.”

”Why Roxelana? She's Russian?”

”Either that, or it's just because she has red hair.”

”And that's all you can tell me?”

”She has red hair. She didn't like her kalfas wearing their orchestra uniform. She didn't like their hats.” Ibou flung up his hands in exasperation. ”She's about five. Just a little girl, Yas.h.i.+m. Hyacinth would have been the person to ask, if you wanted.”

Yas.h.i.+m saw the tears welling up in the aga's eyes.

”Hyacinth? Why Hyacinth?”

”Because Hyacinth was responsible for taking her into the harem. It was Hyacinth who gave her the name.”

111.

SNOW was falling in scattered flurries as Yas.h.i.+m strode away from Besiktas. His head throbbed. He tore off his turban and walked on bareheaded, grateful for the cold and the thin wind and the darkness that all but hid the buildings around him.

He swung his arms, sucked at the cold air. He knew now precisely why he had chosen to live outside, away from the palace; precisely why Talfa's insinuations had made his flesh creep and his ancient fears rise up. Preen was right: he could not bear to be trapped. He beat his arms over his chest and thought of Ibou's subterranean rooms, of the women who dragged out their lives within the confines of a harem, of Kadri bursting his constraints and vaulting the walls of his palace school.

Shadowed, m.u.f.fled figures slipped past him in the gloom. Now and then he s.h.i.+vered, like an animal discovering its limbs after a long sleep: ever since that ceremony of the birth he had been laboring under a burden of dread. And dreadful things had happened. At Besiktas, a girl had become possessed by a demon: a demon of the mind that created the demon in her belly. Hyacinth's fear of abandonment was a demon, too, which plagued him remorselessly until he died falling from the bal.u.s.trade. Yas.h.i.+m was oppressed by thoughts of Fevzi Ahmet, the mentor whose example he had rejected, whose memory he had thought buried and contained.

Yas.h.i.+m stepped almost automatically into a caique. Later he could remember reaching the landing stage, but not how he had crossed the Horn, nor how he had come home.

Images floated unbidden into his mind: a little boy standing frightened in the snow; Pembe, the mother of the sultan's ruined child; a bloodstained sheet; Hyacinth's frail body in the pool. He shuddered: for a few moments he had felt that he was seeing with another eye. An evil eye, which roamed from Besiktas to Topkapi, picking out its victims, sapping their will to live.

Back in his apartment he riddled the stove, angrily, and added a scoop of charcoal. He stood for a moment warming his hands above the glow, then he wiped them and stripped the skin from a pair of onions, which he split on the board. He sliced the halves in both directions, and let the tears well in his eyes. One day, Ibou had said once, you will mourn the valide yourself.

He put a shallow pan on the coals and added a slick of oil. He smashed the garlic with the flat of a blade and swept it from the board with the onions into the pan. They began to sizzle on the heat, and he wiped his eyes. He peeled a few carrots, potatoes, and a k.n.o.b of celeriac, then pulled the chopping block toward him and began to slice the vegetables, first into strips, then into little dice.

He shook the pan.

The valide had once told him that a long life inside the harem depended on intelligence, not good health. But the valide was not well.

The onions were soft; he stirred in the vegetables, turning them in the oil.

It took a man or a woman to cast the eye. And there was one woman in the harem whose bitterness was active-and corrosive. Talfa was the senior lady in the sultan's harem. Talfa had intuitively divined Yas.h.i.+m's own fear of being pinned down in the palace, and played upon it. Talfa was bitter, and ambitious.

Perhaps she had frightened others? Pembe claimed that Talfa put the evil eye on her. Bezmialem had become a cipher. Elif had died at Besiktas, Hyacinth at Topkapi-but thanks to Tulin, the valide's handmaiden, he knew that Talfa had gone to Topkapi only days before, and talked of nothing while the valide dozed. Talfa had insisted on meeting all the sultan's ladies, so that they might meet her daughter, and then she had spoken to Melda. Taken her apart. Taken her aside for a little chat.

He sprinkled some sugar over the pan and threw in a couple of bay leaves. He covered the vegetables with water, and left them to come to the boil while he cleaned the mussels.

Talfa knew Topkapi very well, from top to bottom. She had been born there, after all. Talfa would know all about the engine. It didn't matter whether the engine really existed or not. He might spend hours in the palace, searching for a contraption that whirled people to their doom-and all he might find would be a dusty table in a neglected room.

Ibou said that Talfa and Elif hated each other.

But Talfa had a knack for divining people's fears, and playing on them. Elif 's stare-baby-where had that come from? Perhaps Talfa had suggested a desperate remedy.

It made her bleed.

By taking Melda to Topkapi, Yas.h.i.+m had thought he was protecting her.

Instead, he had isolated her. What was it the valide had said? To be truly alone-in here, at least-it's a kind of death.

Yas.h.i.+m tapped a mussel on the board. The mussel closed, and he tossed it into the bowl. Eventually he tipped the bowl and drained the juice into the pan. After a few minutes he stirred in the mussels.

Had Melda confided in Hyacinth? Talfa had something on Hyacinth that would make his heart sink, too.

Yas.h.i.+m took a bunch of parsley and chopped it on the board. He imagined Talfa dripping with feigned concern: ”Poor Hyacinth. With the valide gone, there'll be just you, won't there? You and the old women at Topkapi?”

Yas.h.i.+m raised his head, with a jolt.

It had happened so slowly, so inexorably, that he hadn't really noticed how Talfa had made herself queen of the harem. It was she rather than Bezmialem or Ibou who created and enforced the rules.

But if the valide moved to Besiktas, Talfa's influence as the senior lady of the harem would be eclipsed.

Yas.h.i.+m picked up the pilaki and moved it off the heat, to the table. He scattered the parsley over the mussels.

Then he washed his hands and wound the turban around his head, and went out into the night.

112.

THE valide looked at Yas.h.i.+m with her bright eyes.

”Am I going to Besiktas, Yas.h.i.+m? I can't remember.”

Yas.h.i.+m took her pale hand in his. He found the question difficult to answer.

”Perhaps, valide hanum. When you are feeling stronger.”