A Love for All Time (73 page)

“He will have to be happy without her now,” said Esther Kira. “Will it be done the usual way?”

“Yes. She will be placed in a weighted silk sack, and drowned off the Prince’s Island in the Mamara.”

“When?”

“It will be up to my son,” said Nur-U-Banu.

“No, my dear lady,” said Esther Kira boldly. “You must take the responsibility for this execution. The sultan is a man in love, and he will not want to see her killed, but it must be done. Not only did she attempt his death, but she said the most terrible things to him, and those words were heard by the physician and his assistant as well as the eunuchs and ourselves. The physician will be silent for he would not jeopardize his position, but the eunuchs will gossip, and by dawn the entire palace will know what Lady Marjallah said to the sultan, and it will not be an accurate version of her words, but rather a greatly embroidered tale.

“With every hour Marjallah continues to live the tale will grow, undermining the sultan’s authority. Then there is her nationality. She is English, and the sultan is just beginning to enjoy his relationship with the English. Has not the English queen just sent him a boatload of fine gifts? If the English find out that Marjallah is one of them that budding diplomatic relationship could be destroyed. It should be done today. Before the sultan has the chance to even think about it, and it is you, my dear lady, who should make that decision. Let the judgment be swift!”

“You are right, Esther Kira,” said Nur-U-Banu. “Murad will weaken, and forgive her, and she will continue to be trouble to us. If I had listened to you in the first place this would have never happened. I cannot forgive myself until Marjallah is dead!”

“You must show mercy in your judgment, my dear lady,” counseled Esther Kira. “Marjallah’s grief is what drove her to this act of madness, and we know that the mad are special to God. Let me go from you now, and I will return as quickly bringing with me a rare drug which will render her unconscious. You need not be unkind in carrying out her sentence of execution. The God we both worship does not abhor mercy.”

The sultan valideh nodded. “Hurry, Esther Kira! I would do this before the day ends, and there are but two hours till the sunset.”

When Esther Kira had gone the valideh’s own personal doctor came to offer her a sedative, but Nur-U-Banu refused it, and sent him away. Her own servants knowing her well discreetly let her be. They were there should she want them, but for now they remained out of sight. The sultan valideh was saddened by what had happened, and she was equally saddened by what she must do, but she would do it. It was that sort of strength that separated a ruler from those meant to be ruled.

When Esther Kira returned the two women went to Marjallah’s apartments. Two huge deaf-mute eunuchs guarded the doors. They were the fiercest of the palace eunuchs having been trained to kill without hesitation. Seeing the valideh they stepped aside, and unbarred the door to Aidan’s apartment. Within Marta and her daughters huddled looking quite terrified. Jinji was ashen with anxiety, and almost fainted when he saw the sultan valideh.

“Where is your mistress?” she asked.

Jinji pointed toward Aidan’s bedroom, and entering it they saw her sitting upon the bed, a vacant look in her eyes, her cat, Tulip, in her lap. Absently she stroked the beautiful beast, and his very loud purr was the only sound heard within the room.

“Fetch me a goblet,” said the valideh, and Jinji scurried to obey her, almost dropping the silver vessel in his nervousness. Nur-U-Banu took it from him, and held it out to Esther Kira who poured what appeared to be a cherry sherbet into the goblet. The sultan’s mother then held the beverage beneath Aidan’s nose, saying, “Drink it, Marjallah, and your troubles will be over.”

Without even the slightest protest Aidan took the silver goblet from Nur-U-Banu, and drained it down. Then she looked up and said, “Will you care for my servants, madame? I would not like to feel they suffered because of my actions. If it is possible I would free Marta and her daughters, and send them home. They were Javid’s gift to me, and are therefore mine to dispose of as I wish.”

“They shall be freed, and returned to their own land,” replied the valideh. “What of Jinji?”

“I would give him to Safiye. She will know how to use him best.”

The valideh nodded. “It will be done. Is there anything else?”

Aidan yawned. She was beginning to feel very sleepy. Her eyes were growing heavy, and it was becoming hard to form the words. “Tulip,” she managed to say, and then she fell back onto the bed.

“Tulip?” said the valideh. “What did she mean, I wonder.”

“Her cat is called Tulip,” said Esther Kira. “Let me give the beast some of the potion, and it can be drowned with her.”

Nur-U-Banu nodded, and called for a dish of chopped chicken which Jinji assured the sultan’s mother was the cat’s favorite food. The drug was mixed with the chicken, and sure enough the cat wolfed the treat down, falling quickly into a stupor upon the floor.

“It is a beautiful animal,” remarked the valideh. “What a pity it must be destroyed.”

“Its presence would only remind you of this incident,” said Esther Kira. “Now there will be no loose ends to tie up.”

The official executioners were called into Aidan’s apartment, and she was put with her cat into a sack that had been fashioned of pale mauve silk. The sacque was then removed via the Harem Death Gate, and taken down the slope of the palace gardens to a tiny dock where waited the man responsible for the removal of bodies from the Yeni Serai. Receiving the sack he dumped it into the stern of his little boat, and accepted from the executioners the traditional baksheesh. Then as the executioners turned back to the palace the boatman began to row his craft away.

It was sunset, and the rays of the setting sun spread themselves lavishly over the waters of the harbor turning that arm of the sea that pushed up into the city, which was called the Golden Horn, molten with bright color. Rhythmically the boatman responsible for the disposal of bodies from the sultan’s palace rowed on away from the city, and toward the deep water off the Prince’s Island where he had for years, and had his father, and his grandfather before him, followed their trade of dumping bodies from the palace. Sometimes they were the bodies of women dead in childbirth, or some other natural cause. At other times they were the bodies of those women sentenced to be executed. Some were executed alive if the sultan chose to be particularly cruel, and the boatman on those trips blocked his ears with softened wax so that he did not hear their piteous cries for he was not a cruel man. At other times the women were either mercifully strangled or drugged as the body he now carried had obviously been.

For a brief time the little vessel was blocked from sight of the land as it was passed by a large ship outward bound for the Aegean, and possibly the Mediterranean beyond. As the last rays of the red-orange sun dipped below the horizon there floated across the water the high, wailing chant of Istanbul’s chief muezzin, and his cohorts, all calling the faithful to prayer, and the small, bobbing boat was no more than a wisp of a shadow upon a darkling sea.

S
ir Robert Small’s vessel, the
Bon Adventure,
rocked gently at its berth on the Golden Horn in Istanbul’s teeming harbor. It was late afternoon, but even here on the water the air was yet still and damply hot. In the main cabin of the ship Conn St. Michael sat with Robbie, and England’s first ambassador to the Sublime Porte, William Harborne, about a heavy, rectangular oak table with fine carved legs. The rest of the room was as well furnished. The walls of the cabin were paneled, the span of dark linenfold hung here and there with silver sconces that had been hinged to move with the motion of the ship. Because of its location in the stern of the vessel the room had a fine large window as well as smaller windows on each side, but even with these ports open the cabin was stiflingly hot.

A window seat had been built into the stern window, and beneath it were several deep storage cabinets. Across from the main window was a large bed of heavy oak that had been fastened to the floor of the room upon whose wide and polished boards had been laid a fine Turkey rug of dark red with a black-and-gold design. The three elder O’Malley brothers threatened to wear a hole of serious proportions in that rug as they paced restlessly back and forth across the cabin; irritated by their inability to solve the thorny problem of their younger sibling’s wife.

“The whole bloody thing is impossible,” grumbled Brian O’Malley in his frustration.

“Impossible,” replied Conn, “is a word that I refuse to accept in this instance, brother mine!”

Brave words, thought Robbie, looking at Conn who had grown noticeably thinner over the last few months, and whose purple-shadowed eyes were evidence enough of his lack of sleep.

“My lord,” cut in William Harborne, “impossible is the only word that adequately describes yer wife’s situation. There really is no hope, sir, short of the sultan’s death, and I can assure ye that he is a robust gentleman, still in the first flush of his manhood.”

“There’s only one way then,” said Brian O’Malley impatiently, “and God only knows we’ve got the firepower for it! We’ll just have to bombard the infidel’s palace from the sea where it is the most vulnerable. Then we’ll be able to rescue our sister-in-law ourselves, and be off before they even realize she’s gone! It is as good a plan as any.”

“ ’Tis the worst thing we could do!” snapped Robbie. “Are ye mad, man?”

“Well there seems to be naught else to do, little man,” said Brian O’Malley surlily. “I haven’t heard ye English come up with any ideas. All ye can seem to say is that ’tis impossible.”

The English ambassador gritted his teeth, and hoped that when he spoke his voice would be a calm and reasonable one. “May I remind ye, Captain O’Malley, that this is not the Spanish Main. Yer swashbuckling tactics won’t do here. Remember, sir, that yer sister, Sir Robert, Richard Staper, and my own master, Sir Edward Osborne, have spent years working to open a trading partnership with Turkey. I cannot, will not, allow ye to destroy everything that we have sought to gain for England. I represent her majesty’s government, sir, and we must keep our relations with the Sublime Porte friendly relations. Turning yer cannons upon his majesty’s home in order to conduct a raid upon his harem is hardly conducive to
friendly relations
!”

Brian O’Malley grinned a rather evil grin at William Harborne, and said, “But we’re not English, man. When the dirty infidel complains, ye’ve but to tell him, and ’twill be the truth, that ’twas not the civilized English who came calling, but some wild Irishmen.”

William Harborne’s mouth tightened, and his hand slammed down hard upon the oaken table where he sat causing the pewter tankards upon it to jump suddenly. “Dammit, ye thick-headed bogtrotter! Get this into yer stubborn skull! The Sultan of Turkey is not some stupid fool of a man without a brain. Although I am certain that he would appreciate the subtlety ye’ve just offered me, and laugh heartily, he would still hold the English government responsible, and rightly so, for any breach of friendly relations.” The ambassador turned to Conn. “Lord Bliss, surely you understand?”

“Ye keep telling me that I have no hope of regaining my wife, sir,” said Conn quietly, “and right now I cannot accept such a thing, but neither do I propose to follow my brother’s well-intentioned method either. There must be another way, and we have simply not thought about it yet.”

“If there is, my lord,” said the ambassador, “I cannot think of it.”

“But, good sirs, I can,” came a voice from the cabin doorway, and Esther Kira hobbled slowly into the room, aided by her small blackamoor page, and leaning upon a silver-headed cane. “Thank you, Yussef,” she said to the boy, “now run back to the litter, and wait for me. You will find a bag of Turkish paste beneath my cushions for you, child.”

With a bright grin, the lad ran from the room, greedily licking his lips in anticipation of the waiting treat.

Conn had leapt to his feet at her entry, and now he helped the old lady to a comfortable seat, asking as he settled her, “What has happened, Esther Kira? Are ye telling me that ye can now help us?
Why now?
”

The bright-eyed old woman accepted his aid, and settled herself into a chair. Quickly she explained the events of the past hour at the palace; and drawing a quick, deep breath so she might continue on with her tale, she explained that the boatman who disposed of bodies in the sea for the sultan was a Jew, currently in debt to the Kira family. He would aid them in rescuing Aidan, and his silence was guaranteed. When she had finished speaking Esther Kira reached into the voluminous folds of her brocaded gown, and drew forth a folded square of mauve silk which she handed to Conn. “Open it, and fill it with something heavy, my lord. Do you understand me?”