The Architect's Apprentice (41 page)

Upon returning to the palace, Jahan found Chota alone. When he saw his old tamer, the animal trumpeted and stomped his feet. Jahan patted his trunk, offered him the pears and nuts he had brought along. In the past Chota would have smelled them long before Jahan arrived. But lately he had lost his ability to smell, along with his strength.

Perching on a barrel, Jahan told him about Nikola’s funeral. The animal listened to his every word, squinting in his usual way. When Jahan wept, Chota’s trunk slid around his chest, hugging him. Once again, Jahan had the impression that the white elephant understood everything he said.

In a little while they heard footsteps. Two shadows appeared at the door. Sangram’s lad, who had taken over, so resembled his father in looks and demeanour that they all called him Sangram, as though the same soul had been resurrected and death was merely a game. Abe, Chota’s keeper, was with him.

‘Jahan is here!’ said Sangram the son, happy to see the man he had known and loved as an uncle.

‘I’m here but where was
he
?’ Jahan rasped, pointing at Abe. ‘Why do you leave the elephant unattended? He’s got a broken toenail. Do you have any idea how that must hurt? It needs to be trimmed and washed. It’s a mess around this place. When was the last time you cleaned?’

Mumbling his regrets, Abe grabbed a brush and started to sweep every which way. In the sunrays falling through the wooden cracks, dust was swirling. Sangram the son approached with a troubled stare. ‘You heard the news?’

‘What news?’

‘Davud. He has been raised.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Everyone’s talking about it. Your friend is the new Chief Royal Architect.’

‘Our Davud?’ Jahan stammered.

‘Well, not
ours
any more. He is way up there!’ said Sangram the son, pointing at the ceiling, where a spider had woven a cobweb and a horsefly, long dead, dangled.

‘You mean they … opened the will?’

Sangram the son looked at Jahan with unmistakable pity. ‘They did. Your master wished him to be his successor, it appears.’

‘Well … that’s good,’ stuttered Jahan, feeling dizzy, as though a precipice had opened up under his feet and he was falling, falling fast.

A few days later Sinan’s wife Kayra, according to the custom, freed several of the household slaves. The first one to be granted
berat
*
was Sancha.

Jahan had always suspected that Kayra had mixed feelings about this unusual concubine under her roof – a woman who had shared things with her husband that she never could. If she had been averse to Sancha’s dressing up as a man and working on construction sites, she must have kept her feelings to herself. Even so, Jahan had little doubt that Kayra was aware of Sancha’s love for the master and didn’t like it at all. Between them the two women had dug a silent abyss that no one, not even Sinan, could bridge. And now that he was gone, Sancha’s was the last face Kayra wished to see. Still, she did not ill-treat her slave. Buying satins, taffetas and perfumes, she gave Sancha her blessing before she let her go. This is how, after decades as a captive in Istanbul, Sancha de Herrera, the daughter of a renowned Spanish physician, was freed.

She sent Jahan a letter. Her words burst with excitement and apprehension. Timidly, she asked if he would help her with the arrangements for leaving, because she did not know the first thing about what to do, where to begin. She said she would have loved to get Davud’s help as well, but that he was unaware of the truth. At times, she wasn’t even sure who she was any longer: Yusuf the builder or Nergiz the concubine. Jahan answered without delay:

Esteemed Sancha,

Your letter has brought me happiness and despair. Happiness because finally you are free to go. Despair because you are leaving. I shall come and help you next Thursday. Do not worry about being ready. You have been ready for this for a long, long time.

On the chosen day, Jahan visited her in Sinan’s house. For the first time since they had met, he saw her wearing a dress – an emerald-green gown with a cone-shaped skirt that brought out the colour of her eyes. On her still-short hair was a matching headdress of the sort ladies wore in the land of Frangistan.

‘Don’t stare at me like that,’ she said, blushing under his gaze. ‘I feel ugly.’

‘How can you say that?’ protested Jahan.

‘It’s the truth. I’m too old for pretty clothes.’

Watching her cheeks turn a darker shade of pink, Jahan said quickly, teasingly: ‘Imagine, if all these years the masons had known there was a beauty among them, they’d have stopped work to write you poems. We couldn’t have built a thing.’

She chuckled and cast her eyes down; her fingers ran along the pleats of her gown, under which was a farthingale of whalebone. ‘It’s so tight I can hardly breathe. How do women manage this?’

‘You’ll get used to it in no time.’

‘Nay, it’s going to take me years. I’ll be dead by then,’ she said, smiling – a smile that instantly disappeared. ‘I wish he had seen me like this.’

Above them the sky was blue and bright, as still as a looking glass. Outside, a cart rattled by. Peeping out of the window, Jahan saw it was loaded with cages of falcons, their eyes hooded. Distracted by the birds, he had not realized that Sancha, beside him, was weeping. A lad who was a girl, a mute with the gift of speech, a concubine yet an architect, she had lived a life of lies and layers – no less than Jahan.

‘What is upsetting you?’ Jahan asked. ‘I thought you’d be overjoyed now that you’re free.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said, unconvincingly. ‘Only … His grave is here. Everything we did together. He has more marks on this city than any Sultan.’

‘Master’s gone,’ Jahan said. ‘You are not leaving him.’

She tried, for a brief moment, not to talk about him, struggling with herself, losing. ‘Do you think he loved me?’

Jahan hesitated. ‘I believe he did. Otherwise why would he have allowed you to join us? He’d have been in trouble if anyone found out.’

‘He put himself in danger for me,’ Sancha said with a speck of pride. ‘But he never loved me. Not the way I loved him.’

This time Jahan did not respond. Nor did Sancha seem to be waiting for an answer. She said, ‘I heard there is a Venetian ship setting sail in two weeks’ time.’

Jahan nodded. Several times in the past days, he had observed its topmast looming over the roofs and trees. ‘I’ll make arrangements.’

‘I’d be grateful,’ Sancha said. Trepidation flickered in her eyes. ‘Come with me. There is nothing that binds you here.’

Jahan was surprised to hear her speak like this. All the same, he decided to take it lightly. ‘Ah, we’d build mansions for Spanish grandees.’

She held his hand, her touch soft and cold. ‘We might find a patron. I have made inquiries. We could take care of each other.’

Watching her familiar gestures, Jahan felt a stir in his heart. He saw what she saw. United by the memory of the master, their hearts numb to all but their craft they could work together. Love was not needed. Better without it. Love only brought pain.

‘If I’d been younger, we could have had children,’ she said slowly, as though weighing each word.

Despite himself, Jahan beamed. ‘Girls with your eyes and your bravery.’

‘Boys with your curiosity and kindness.’

‘What about Chota?’ Jahan murmured.

‘Chota is old. He has been happy in the palace. He’ll be fine. But you and I need to go on building –’

‘
Wisdom does not rain from the sky, it springs from the earth, from hard work
,’ said Jahan, remembering the words of their master.

‘The dome,’ Sancha went on. ‘We should raise domes that remind people there is a God and that He is not a God of revenge and hell but of mercy and love.’

Jahan rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes.

‘I’m frightened,’ she said. ‘It’s been such a long time since I was torn from my father’s land that I’m a stranger to their ways now.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Jahan said, trying to reassure her.

‘I will, if you come with me. What do you say?’

In that moment Jahan understood that life was the sum of the choices one did not make; the paths yearned for but not taken. He had never felt as much compassion for Sancha as he did now – the moment when he understood that he would refuse her. She saw it in his face, his resistance. A flash of hurt flickered in her eyes, but she did not cry. Her tears she kept for the master, her one and only love.

‘Pray remember me,’ Jahan said.

Only the slightest break in her voice betrayed her disappointment when she said, ‘I shan’t ever forget.’

About a week later, the Venetian ship, a three-masted carrack with a rounded stern, was ready to return home. The Venetian traders had been losing their privileges to French, Dutch and English merchants. The Captain wore his unhappiness like the jacket that wrapped him tight. Even so there was enough of a bustle to distract him from his worries. The toing and froing of sailors loading the barrels and sellers hawking their merchandise. A small gathering of passengers waited off to one side: Jesuit priests, Catholic nuns, travellers, a British well-born fanned by his servants. Other than these the rest were rough seamen.

Shielding his eyes from the sun, Jahan looked around, unable to see Sancha anywhere. It occurred to him that she might have changed her mind. Perhaps when she woke she realized that the land of her childhood was far and elusive, a dream impossible to reclaim. But then, as he zigzagged his way through the barrels waiting to be
loaded, he saw her before him, her shadow extending away from her, as though it and only it had decided to stay.

To his surprise, she had gone back to her apprenticeship clothes and stood beside him as a man. ‘I like it better like this.’

Jahan looked over her shoulder for porters. There were none. ‘Where are your things?’

She pointed at a rucksack on the ground.

‘Your robes? Kayra’s gifts?’

‘Don’t tell her. I gave them to the poor.’ She opened her bag, showed him the carved box Sinan had made for her. Next to it were a dozen scrolls and a necklace of some worth. ‘I’m taking these. Master bequeathed them to me.’

They walked silently until they reached the ramp that connected the ship to the land.

‘I did not get a chance to wish Davud farewell,’ she said. ‘Give him my regards and good wishes. I can’t believe he is the Chief Royal Architect now.’

‘I shall tell him,’ Jahan said pensively. The truth was he had not been able to congratulate Davud himself. He hadn’t felt like it. He inhaled a lungful of air. ‘Make sure nobody finds out you’re a woman. If you sense any –’

‘I can take care of myself.’ She held herself ramrod straight.

‘I know you can.’

She lifted her eyes to his. ‘I … had a nasty dream last night. You were trapped. You called for me but I couldn’t find you. Be careful, will you?’

Someone shouted an order from the stern of the ship. Jahan felt his throat closing. Everything was changing, flowing, like sand between his fingers. Mihrimah had crossed the great divide and he couldn’t wait to join her when his time came; the master and Nikola were gone; he and Davud rarely saw each other; Chota was not long for this world; and now Sancha was leaving. He had been wrong to pity Nikola for being alone. He was just as lonely. For a moment the
desire to accompany Sancha, the one person who cared for him, was almost too strong to endure. He would have gone had it not been for the elephant.

That afternoon, under shrieking seagulls and a wash of sunlight as gauzy as muslin, he watched the prow of the ship slice with ease through the water, at every heartbeat taking the mute apprentice, and her story, further and further away.