The Aviary Gate (11 page)

Cariye Lala took a wooden implement like a flattened spoon and scooped up a small amount of paste from the proffered pot, smearing it deftly, here and there, on to Celia's skin. The
ot
, a sticky, clay-like substance, felt not unpleasing at first, smooth and scented and pleasantly hot to the touch. Celia lay back and tried to breathe slowly and calmly – a tip which Gulbahar had given her after her first time when she had not understood what was about to happen, and had brought both shame and disgrace on herself by slapping the Senior Bath Mistress smartly across the face. But it was no good. A searing pain, as if she had been branded by a red-hot flat-iron, spread across the whole of the sensitive flesh of her sex, making her sit violently upright with a cry.

‘Child! Such fussing!' Cariye Lala was unrepentant. ‘This is as it must be. See, how smooth and sweet you are to the touch.'

Celia looked down and saw tiny droplets of blood, no bigger than the minute prickings of a fine embroidery needle, on her sheared flesh. And where a few moments ago there had been a golden and womanly bush between her legs, she now found herself gazing, with a kind of fascinated horror, at the naked apricot-shaped bud of a little girl.

But Cariye Lala had not finished yet. Pushing Celia down once again, she busied herself with a pair of small golden pincers, pulling out any stray hairs left behind by the
ot
. The servant girl held a candle for her, so close that Celia was afraid that she would let fall some of its wax on to her skin. But even with the candle to help her, the old woman had to bend so low in her labours that Celia could feel her hot breath and the furzy tickle of hair against her still-smarting flesh.

How long she was in the ministering hands of Cariye Lala, Celia could not have said. After the Under-Mistress of the Baths had satisfied herself at last that not a single impious hair remained upon her body, Celia was allowed to sit up again. Scrubbed and plucked and rubbed all over with a succession of herbs and unguents, her fair skin glowed now with an unearthly translucence in the hammam's pearly gloom. Her nails were polished. Her hair, dried and waved so that it shone like tarnished sunlight, was braided with strings of freshwater pearls. More pearls, the size of hazelnuts, hung from her ears and were coiled discreetly at her throat.

Celia did not know whether it was the heat of the bathhouse, or the smell of myrrh from the little brazier which the girl kept stoked in the corner of the room, but little by little she had begun to relax. Cariye Lala's ministrations were rough sometimes, but she had not meant to hurt Celia in the way that some of the other senior mistresses sometimes did, with their sly pinches and hair-pullings at the smallest infringement of the rules. A kind of passive indifference to her fate had taken hold of her. Cariye Lala's slow but matter-of-fact ways had a soothing effect. It was restful not to have to think.

It was, then, with only a faint sense of unease that she allowed her lips and then her nipples to be coloured with rose-tinted powder, an unease that did not lessen when she felt Cariye Lala slide one of her hands deftly between the tops of her thighs. A finger parted the lips of her sex, probed expertly, and then pushed inside.

With a cry Celia leapt to her feet as if she had been bitten. The vessel of
ot
at their feet spun across the floor, shattering against the wall. ‘Get away from me!'

Backing into the far corner of the room, she found herself in an unlit alcove, the third of the interconnecting rooms in the Valide's hammam. Except for the shadows there was nothing here with which to cover her nakedness. Somewhere above her came the sound of
running water. Celia crouched down with her back against the wall. A droplet of something warm and dark trickled down the inside of her thigh.

Cariye Lala made no attempt to follow her. Celia saw her laugh and shake her head. Then she turned to the servant and by hand-signing, the customary language of all the palace servants, issued a swift instruction.

‘You can come out now.' For a moment Cariye Lala stood in the doorway to the little alcove, a small figure, hands on hips. ‘Don't be afraid.'

In the darkness, Celia felt as if her heart was going to leap from her chest. But the old woman's voice was not angry.

‘It was this, foolish child, look,' she held out a tiny cedar wood box traced with silver filigree. ‘Perfume.' She sniffed the contents of the box. ‘The Valide herself sent it for you.'

‘Go away!' Celia felt her eyes beginning to smart.

‘Tsk!
' Cariye Lala clicked her tongue against her teeth impatiently. ‘It's what you wanted, isn't it?' She cocked her head to one side; her eyes sparkled like a little old blackbird. ‘Look – for you, I use only this finger.'

She held up her hands, and Celia saw that the nails of all her fingers were long and curved. Only the index finger of her right hand, which she was bending slowly backwards and forwards, was short and neat. ‘Think yourself lucky. The others don't always trim theirs.'

Celia allowed herself to be coaxed back into the second room. There was no fight left in her now. A chemise of lawn-cambric, so fine it was almost transparent, was put on her. Cariye Lala talked away, sometimes to herself, sometimes to Celia, admonishing and soothing at the same time. ‘What kind of a fuss is this, there is nothing to fear. He's only a man after all. And look how beautiful the skin is, just as they said, white as cream, without a flaw. Pleasure, what pleasure to be had here. But we mustn't be so afraid, no, no, not good, not good at all.'

For the moment she made no attempt to touch Celia again. Instead, from amongst the jars at her disposal, she picked out two more small boxes; one silver, the other gold. Taking them to where the diffused daylight fell most brightly in the centre of the room she opened them both, scrutinising their contents carefully.

‘Hmm, hmm … Hot? Or warm?' Celia heard her say to herself. She watched as Cariye Lala held out both boxes in the palm of one hand, and then, spreading out the fingers of the other hand, moved them from side to side over the two boxes as if she were divining for water. ‘Warm? Or hot?' She looked at Celia speculatively. ‘No, not the itch,' she shook her head, her voice almost inaudible, ‘not just yet.'

From the gold box she took what looked to Celia like a brightly coloured bead and handed it to her. ‘Eat this.'

It was a small lozenge, covered in gold leaf. Obediently, Celia swallowed.

The servant girl came into the room again now, bringing a cup of something hot for Celia to drink and a plate of fruit. Cariye Lala took them from her and then waved the girl away. She selected a piece of fruit, a pear of the long, narrow variety, then she sat down next to her. ‘Now, girl,' Cariye Lala patted her arm. ‘You won't be afraid now?' It was half-question, half-admonishment.

‘No, Cariye,' Celia replied. But even as she spoke, her heart bounded suddenly and painfully in her chest.

‘Don't worry, there is still time.'

Cariye Lala held out the pear, as if offering Celia something to eat. Celia shook her head: the thought of food made her feel sick. But then she saw that the old woman had begun to eat the pear herself.

‘Now watch,' Cariye Lala was saying, grasping the bulbous end of the pear firmly in one fist. ‘See: first you hold it like this. Make sure to put your thumb here,' her thumb began to make a small circling motion on the green speckled skin at the base of the pear.

Celia's gaze flickered quickly from the pear to Cariye Lala, and then back again. The old woman raised the fruit to her lips as though to take a bite, but instead of opening her mouth, the tip of her tongue began to perform the same small circling motion against the base of the pear. A warm prickling feeling, beginning in her newly shorn armpits, slowly flooded up Celia's shoulders, into her neck and cheeks. Cariye Lala's still-circling tongue slid up the stem of the pear towards its tip, circled it briefly, and then descended again. A fleck of spittle glistened on her upper lip.

Celia wanted to look away but she could not. Outside the hammam some unseen hand, the servant girl's perhaps, had checked
the flow of water into the fountains, and there was now absolute silence in the room. Cariye Lala's old pink tongue made its way busily up and down, up and down. And then her wrinkled lip hooked suddenly over the tip of the pear and she thrust it deep into her mouth.

A scream of laughter, high-pitched and shrill, rose in Celia's throat, only to die, still-born, against her lips. At the same time she became aware that something strange was happening to the rest of her body. A feeling of warmth, quite different from the sense of prickling shame which had consumed her just moments before, enveloped her: a feeling of lassitude, warmth and physical ease. With a small sigh, her shoulders drooped. Her fingers, which had been clenched into fists, unfurled. Her heartbeat slowed. Cariye Lala's display was not finished yet, but now, by some miracle, Celia found that she was no longer afraid to watch. Her face, which had been stretched tightly, absurdly, into a rictus smile, relaxed. A feeling of lightness, of buoyancy almost, took hold of her, while at the same time she had the sensation of being encased in velvet. Although she did not know it, the effects of the opium that Cariye Lala had given her had begun to take effect. She was flying now, fluttering like a caged bird, somewhere up near the domed and pierced ceiling.

At that moment there was a banging – the sound of staves on wood – in the corridor outside. ‘They're ready for you,' Cariye Lala dried her lips sedately with a corner of cloth. ‘Come: it's time.'

Celia rose weightlessly to her feet. The servant girl, who had appeared again discreetly, helped her into a floor-length, sleeveless gown in lightly padded silk. Cariye Lala took up a censer of smoking coals, and between them they bathed Celia in the smoke, wafting it amongst the folds of her gown, beneath the fine, transparent lawn-cambric of her chemise, between her legs, behind her hair.

Celia stood passively, watching them – and it was as if she could watch herself now, as well as Cariye Lala and the girl – with dreamlike detachment. A shaft of late sunlight crept in through the dome in the ceiling, slanting through the steam. All her movements had become slow and dreamy. The eunuchs, it had been explained to her earlier, would escort her to the Sultan's rooms, but even this thought no longer had the power to make her heart hammer at her breastbone, and her mouth turn dry. Instead she lifted her hand to
examine the small gold rings which Cariye Lala had placed there. She thought of Paul. What would he think if he could see her now? She smiled at her fingers, although they didn't seem to belong to her any more. They waved in front of her like the small pink and white fronds of a deep-sea anemone.

‘Kadin
.' Gradually, Celia became aware that the servant girl was trying to speak to her. With both hands she was holding out the drink that she had brought in earlier, which had stood untouched on the tray. But Celia had no desire either to eat or drink.

‘No.' She shook her head.

‘Yes, my lady, yes.' For the first time the girl dared to look up into Celia's face. Her face was small and pointed, but her eyes seemed wild, darting towards Cariye Lala who stood with her back to them, carefully locking her caskets. Even in her drugged state Celia could see the fear in the girl's face; smell it, almost, on her skin.

The servant girl's voice trembled. ‘Please,
kadin
, drink.'

Slowly Celia lifted the little bowl to her lips. The liquid had cooled, and she drank it easily in three mouthfuls. The drink, she noticed, had a curious bitter aftertaste, just like Cariye Lala's golden lozenge.

With Cariye Lala and the girl behind her, Celia emerged from the hammam and crossed the Valide's courtyard. At the gateway she hesitated; and then, for the first time since she had been brought to the palace, found herself stepping over the threshold of the House of Felicity. A small, false, note of freedom sang down her spine.

But she was not free. Hassan Aga, the Chief Black Eunuch himself (whose fate, although he did not know it yet, was almost as close at hand as Celia's), and four of his eunuchs, were waiting at the gateway to escort her to the Sultan's rooms.

Eunuchs: Celia regarded them with a little shudder of revulsion. Even after several months in the harem she was still not accustomed to these amphibious creatures, with their flabby bellies, their eerie, high-pitched voices. She remembered seeing one once with her father, in the Piazza San Marco in Venice. The eunuch was part of a delegation of merchants sent by the Great Turk. He was a white man, although he wore the flamboyant robes of his adopted compatriots, and had become, for a day or so, a marvel in that city of marvels, a wonder to rival the gypsy mountebanks and the Circassian wrestlers, and even the miraculous speaking image of the Madonna
situated above the doorway of the church of San Bernardo, which were the Serenissima's newest and most popular sideshows that summer.

She had been a little girl then, small enough for her father to lift on to his shoulders. ‘Look, the
castrato
, the gelded man,' he had told her, although she had only a dim notion then of what this meant. She remembered the rough silkiness of her father's beard as she clasped her fingers round his neck, and her first fascinated sight of that strange hairless creature, his soft woman's face blinking mildly back beneath the folds of his turban.

There was nothing mild about the eunuchs who guarded the House of Felicity. From the beginning they had always seemed to Celia like creatures from another world with their heavy bodies and their bloodshot eyes, their skins so black it was as if all the light had been sucked out of them: creatures who moved, half-seen, on noiseless feet about the dimly lit corridors encircling the women's quarters, hardly more real, and no less terrifying, than the
efrits
that the old black serving maids said lurked in the shadows of the palace at night.