The Aviary Gate (15 page)

‘Is it poison?' Safiye spoke from outside the pool of light now illuminating the room. Her figure, heavily veiled, cast long shadows against the wall.

‘Yes, poison,' the words seemed to catch in the man's throat, ‘without a doubt.'

Hands, dry and warm, felt along the hairless and once smooth skin of Hassan's face and upper body. A faint smell of sandalwood.

‘Lesions. See, there are lesions everywhere. Poor devil.' There was a gentle pressure on the side of his head. ‘And he has bled – from his ears.
Tsssh
…' another involuntary intake of breath, ‘and from his eyes. Who could do such a thing? Who would want to inflict such suffering?'

‘Never mind that. Will he live?'

The man passed his hands, palpating gently, over Hassan Aga's monstrously distended stomach. ‘His internal organs are swollen, swollen to many times their usual size.' He picked up Hassan Aga's wrist and held it between his fingers for a long time. ‘But – by some miracle – his pulse is steady.'

‘Tell me,' she could only repeat, impatient now, ‘will he live?'

‘The Chief Black Eunuch has the strength of many men,' the man sat back upon his heels, ‘with the right care, it is possible that he will live.'

‘Then you must help him – you have the powers …'

‘Alas, I fear that my powers, as you call them, can do little to help him now. As you can see, the damage is already done.' The man looked around the damp, windowless room. ‘What he needs is proper care. Not here. He needs light, air …'

‘He will get all those things,' Safiye said shortly. ‘Even I can't keep the Chief Black Eunuch hidden indefinitely. But I needed you to see him first, before anyone else. There is something else that he needs. Make him a talisman – for protection – the most powerful that you can. And if he lives, you will be rewarded, richly rewarded, I swear it. I have been generous enough to you in the past, haven't I?'

For a while the man did not answer her. Then eventually, with a bowed head, he said, ‘I will do as you wish, but first there is something I need to know: who are his enemies? And how do you know that they will not try this again?'

‘There is no need to fear.' Safiye Sultan stepped out of the shadows into the pool of light cast by the man's lamp. ‘You are under my protection.'

‘You know I don't fear for myself,' the man said. He spoke so softly his voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘Do you know who did this? Indeed, Majesty, you must tell me.'

There was a long pause.

‘I do.'

‘Then you must tell me their names. The talisman won't work without them.'

Hassan Aga strained to hear Safiye's reply, but all he caught was the sound of blood drumming in his ears.

Later, much later, Hassan woke again. There was a pressure in his bladder and he knew he needed to urinate. They must have given him water to drink or liquid of some kind to replace the fluids he had lost.

The pressure grew more insistent, but he knew he could not urinate without his quill. He put a hand to his head, but the tall white cap of office inside which it was normally pinned was not there. Gathering all his strength, Hassan Aga rolled himself over on to one side. The effort set his heart hammering. From this position he reached out with one arm, blindly sweeping the cold stone floor – but there was nothing. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, and between the thick fleshy folds on the back of his neck.

They had tried to poison him, his mind was quite clear now. They had tried to kill him, but they had not succeeded. He knew what they did not, that Hassan Aga had the strength of ten men. But without his quill, without the ability to urinate, not even the strength of a hundred men could save him.

Hassan Aga, Little Nightingale, lay back on the straw mattress, his swollen bladder screaming. His eyes began to close again, and as they did so so his gaze caught a line of daylight seeping into the room. There was a doorway, then. His mind wandered again. He remembered how they had put him in the hole up to his neck in sand, and how the girl would come to him and press the pieces of gourd to his mouth to soothe his swollen lips.

Lily. Poor Lily. They had been just children then.

Gathering all his strength, he rolled over on to his side again, and this time found that he could push himself up into a squatting position. He waited like that for the pounding in his heart to subside. A memory came to him, startling in its clarity, of how Lily and he had sat together and watched the sky turning above them through the long desert nights. He felt a stab of something he could not put a name to, in a place which might have been his heart; could it be remorse that he was feeling?

Hassan Aga stood up and began to walk towards the light.

‘Annetta!'

‘Celia.'

‘You're back.'

‘As you can see.'

‘I wondered … where have you …?'

‘Shh!' Annetta put her finger to her lips. Two damp tendrils of hair clung to the sides of her neck. ‘She'll hear you.'

She jerked her chin in the direction of the Chief Mistress of the Girls, a sour-faced Macedonian with a big nose, who was patrolling the courtyard outside the
cariyes
' communal bathhouse. She carried a hazelwood switch in her hand which she was not afraid to use with zeal on those who indulged in too much chatter.

‘Something's happened,' Celia whispered, kneeling down beside Annetta at one of the stone basins.

‘What sort of thing?'

‘I don't know. But I thought you might – didn't you say yesterday that you had a strange feeling about something? Early this morning there was a commotion. People shouting. Didn't you hear it?'

‘Actually shouting?'

Both Celia and Annetta had been in the House of Felicity long enough to appreciate the seriousness of any untoward noise penetrating the usually monastic silence of the Valide Sultan's quarters. A group of senior mistresses stood in the courtyard, speaking together in low tones. From the upper chambers came the sound of running feet, the distant echo of muffled voices.

‘Actually, I do know something.' Annetta glanced quickly behind her at the Mistress, who was now giving orders to one of her servant women, ‘but you must
swear
not to say anything.' She gave an anxious shiver. ‘They've put
cariyes
in a sack and drowned them for less.'

‘What are you talking about?' Celia looked about her uneasily.

‘They've found him, that's what.'

‘Found who?'

‘
Him
. The Chief Black Eunuch.'

Celia looked at Annetta blankly. A vision came to her of that terrifying form, a black giant in his tall white cap of office, almost mincing with his absurd swaying gait down the passageway ahead of her. She remembered how his black skin had glistened; the way the thick flesh rippled at the base of his neck.

‘Was he missing?' she asked tentatively.

‘Don't you know anything, goose?' Annetta looked at her in exasperation, but for once had no sharp retort. ‘They said he had gone away to do business for the Valide in Edirne. That was yesterday. Then some of the Chief Gardener's guards found him, collapsed somewhere in the palace gardens. They've no idea how he got there.' She pressed her lips to Celia's ear. ‘I made the eunuch Hyacinth tell me, you know, the one who is in love with Fatma, the Valide's first handmaid. They say he is horribly disfigured – poisoned—' The words seemed to catch in her throat. ‘It is not certain yet whether he will live or die!'

To Celia's amazement tears had sprung into Annetta's eyes.

The Macedonian had been replaced by one of her under-mistresses, a Georgian woman, who now approached them. Her pattens clattered against the marble floor.

‘Enough of this,
cariyes
.' She brought her switch down against the basin, but without as much malice as the Chief Mistress, who was fond of creeping up on the unsuspecting, inflicting bleeding welts on the backs of their hands. ‘Everyone to their rooms now, by order of the Valide.'

At once the other girls in the bathhouse rose to their feet obediently and filed out. Celia saw them signing to one another, the language used by everyone in the palace when the rule of silence was enforced.

Celia stood up, shielding Annetta as best she could. From the expression on the Georgian's face, she knew that she had been
recognised; felt, for the first time, the power of her new status. Although she was not yet an official concubine, none the less the woman's face clearly told her she was still
gÖzde
. She would be worth breaking a rule for – for the time being, anyway.

The knowledge made her strong. ‘Madam …' She bowed low to the Georgian, thankful, for the first time, for the formal manners that the harem had taught her. ‘I find … I find that I am unwell. Yes.' She put her hand to her stomach, then said with all the authority she could muster. ‘I have asked Ayshe, the Valide's handmaid, to escort me to my room.'

‘Well …' The under-mistress took a step back, and looked doubtfully between them. Seeing her hesitate, Annetta put her hand under Celia's arm.

‘Her Majesty the Valide Sultan recommends a cold compress on these occasions.' Before the woman could make any objection, she had steered Celia to the door. ‘I will see to it immediately, Under-Mistress of the Girls.'

‘A cold compress! I had my hand on my
stomach
, not my head … what must she have thought?'

‘Luckily it doesn't matter what she thought; we didn't give her time to think.' Annetta shook her head at Celia, half-laughing. ‘Well, well! So this is where they put the Sultan's new
culo
is it?' Looking round the tiny room to which, as palace etiquette required, they had moved Celia the day before her encounter with the Sultan, Annetta traced her hand along the cool green tiles, then put her eyes to the lattice work at the top of the door, which gave out on to the Valide's courtyard.

‘Why, you can see everything from here,' she observed.

‘And everything can see you.'

‘Well, what do you expect?'

Although Annetta still looked a little pale, she seemed to have recovered her usual wits. Celia saw her sharp gaze sweep quickly over the room, taking in the silk cushions, the richness of the tiled niches in the walls, the mother-of-pearl-inlaid doors. In an open chest lay the cambric shirt that they had dressed her in when they took her to the Sultan; the cloak lined with sable they had folded round her afterwards. The room was very small, and apart from these
few things quite bare, but in the ordinary
cariyes
' quarters, as Celia well knew, half a dozen girls shared a spartan space not much bigger than this.

Annetta was not one to waste time on small jealousies. Already she was opening the door into the courtyard a crack, testing its hinges. They creaked.

‘Hmm. Might have known. She never leaves anything to chance.'

‘How much longer will they keep me here, d'you think?'

‘Has he asked for you again yet? Taken your precious cherry and written it down in his great big book?'

‘Not yet.' Celia did not know whether she felt more shame or relief at this confession.

‘Then who knows?' Annetta shrugged. ‘A day, a week.' Her expression was one of feigned indifference. Then, nonchalant, ‘So, did he give you anything?'

‘Just these earrings.' Celia took a small box from a niche in the wall. ‘Pearls, and gold, I think. You're allowed to take anything that he leaves behind. Here,' she held them out with both hands. ‘You have them. I owe you. For Cariye Lala, remember.'

‘Much good it did you. My!' Squatting down on the floor, Annetta held the earrings up to the light. Her black eyes gleamed. Then she put one of the pearls between her teeth and bit into it experimentally. ‘Freshwater,' she pronounced, half-accusingly, as though Celia had been trying to pass them off as something else. ‘Not such good quality as sea pearls, but quite as big as pigeon eggs.' She dropped them carelessly back on the bed. ‘Want my advice? Ask for emeralds next time.'

Celia put the earrings carefully back into the box. There was a short silence. Then she said, ‘I didn't want it to be me, Annetta. In fact, I wish with all my heart it had been you.'

‘Nice fresh
culo
for that fat old man?' Annetta pulled a face. ‘No thanks. You still don't understand, do you? I grew up in one brothel, and that was enough for me. Because that's all this place is, just a brothel with one fat old client. And then everyone pretends it's some extraordinary honour to be chosen by him.
Madonna
!' She turned on Celia, furious suddenly. ‘Well, they got a bad bargain when they brought me here. Did you ever wonder why I ended up in a convent? My mother once tried to sell me to an old man like that, and I bit him
so hard I swear he'll never touch
culo
ever again. I was only ten, just a little child. If they ever try to put me with that old cockerel,' she jerked her head towards the Sultan's quarters, ‘I swear I'll bite him too, so I will.'

‘Enough!' Two spots of colour appeared in Celia's cheeks. ‘One day you'll get us both killed with that tongue of yours, I swear it.'

‘I know, I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—' Feverishly, Annetta began to pace the tiny room. ‘There's something strange going on today – can't you feel it?'

She pushed the door into the courtyard open and put her eye to the crack, but there was no one there. She turned to Celia again, her hand plucking nervously at her throat. ‘Why is everything so quiet? I thought you said you heard shouting?'

‘I did. Early this morning, from the Haseki's room.'

‘From Gulay Haseki's room?'