The Harem Midwife (12 page)

“How fortunate for her that I purchased her.”

Hannah rearranged herself on her cushion; her legs were falling asleep but she dared not stretch them. “Leah needs time to accustom herself to the palace and its ways. She is overcome with grief.”

“Her spirits will improve when she is cared for.” The Valide grimaced slightly. “I suspect she was as filthy and brown as a goat when you examined her. Will she be worth all the creams and perfumes and attention we will lavish on her?”

“I think not, Your Highness.”

“Really?” The Valide picked up a fork and stabbed a pastry with too much force, sending it skittering to the floor. One of the dogs pounced on it and wolfed it down before Kübra had a chance to grab the beast by the collar. “Leah is to be a gift to my son. She will be presented to him—and soon. I repeat: Is she or is she not a virgin?”

“Leah will know nothing of the womanly art of pleasing a man in bed,” said Hannah.

“Nonsense, her inexperience will make her more appealing. Time is of the essence,” said the Valide. “Not too
much delay or the Sultan will forget her, nor so little that he fails to experience lusty anticipation.”

The Valide spanked her hands together in a way that demanded a response. “Answer my question—now,” she added, as if the gesture were not enough.

Though, of course, Hannah had never laid eyes on the Sultan, she knew him to be a man old enough to be Leah’s grandfather, with a pendulous belly and hooked nose. There was no taking the words back once they had left Hannah’s lips. “She is a virgin, Your Highness.”

“Wonderful!” the Valide exclaimed. “I want to see the chubby fist of a princeling waving at me over the side of that cradle.” She indicated the corner of the room where a cradle rested against the wall. “Not a lot to ask, is it?” Nurbanu arched an eyebrow. “If you succeed in breaking Safiye’s spell, you will have my undying gratitude.”

“I shall do my best,” Hannah replied, trying not to think about the lie she had told and its possible consequences.

“I do not have to tell you that if her meeting with my son goes well, you shall have a handsome reward.”

Hannah bowed her head. Isaac would be well pleased with her.

“Mustafa reports that you have a tranquil effect on the girl. When the Sultan summons the girl to be brought to his divan,” she added, “you shall be present at their couching.”

THE WIND PLAYED
with Cesca’s hair, unknotting her careful chignon and whipping it about her shoulders like an untidy cape, just as it had every morning for the past three weeks since she had boarded the
Aphrodite
at the Port of Venice.

She gathered up her blond hair and twisted it around her hand into a figure eight. Then, holding the hairpins between her lips, she jabbed them in one by one until her hair was secure. She recalled as she gripped the ship’s railing meeting with Foscari a month ago—on God’s firm earth and not on the pitching deck of this ghastly ship. Yes, it was a foolish and risky thing for Cesca to have
accosted Foscari after the funeral. Anyone could have seen them together and guessed she was up to no good. Even worse, when she told Foscari what she wanted of him, he could promptly have had her arrested. Neither of these outcomes came to pass. For once, luck was with her. And her own good judgment. Something about Foscari suggested he would be on her side.

Cesca had hidden in the woods behind a thicket of blackberries on the path from the Jewish cemetery to confront him as he returned from the burial. She had called softly to him as he walked past, the last person in the funeral procession. When he glanced up, she beckoned him to follow her. He broke away from the other mourners.

“Hurry!” she whispered at him. “Come on!”

If he was surprised by her behaviour, he gave no sign of it.

Cesca felt her heart racing, her mouth dry from desperation and rage. She knew she looked a mess—dust-grey clothes, dirt-streaked face from crawling around Leon’s study looking for her ducats—but Foscari was evidently not a man to be disconcerted by the sight of a hysterical woman. With a jerk of his head, he tossed his chestnut hair off his face and calmly drew her farther away from the road, cautioning her to lower her voice.

“What is it you want of me?”

Cesca snatched the papers from her skirt and shoved them in his face. “Read these and tell me what they signify.” As he took the papers from her, she glanced down at his shoes, an infallible sign of a man’s wealth. Not as new as she would wish, but why would he trouble himself
to put on his best boots to walk down a country road to a Jewish cemetery? She waited for him to demand a price in return for his efforts—a kiss, or a quick grapple in the bushes. Either of those she would happily have provided, but to her puzzlement he made no such requests. It was only later, when it was far too late, that she realized Foscari was not a man to be satisfied by fleeting rewards.

Squatting on the ground, he smoothed the first paper on a large rock and studied it for a moment. Foscari was not young, nor was he old, perhaps near to forty-five, although he still had the strong, square teeth of a younger man. The pouch of flesh on his neck, the hollows under his eyes, and his beak of a silver nose gave him the look of a stately raptor.

“This,” he said, holding up the black-bordered parchment with the oak motif, “is written in Latin, which fortunately for you, I read fluently.” He read the promissory note aloud with such ease, it was as though he were reading a simple broadsheet. “Leon made a loan of a hundred ducats to one Isaac …” He paused, then spoke with a hint of surprise in his voice. “Levy—a relative?”

“Leon’s brother. He lives in Constantinople. A silk-maker by trade.” Cesca knew the names of both Leon’s brothers. He had complained about them often enough—their lack of attentiveness to him, their failure to heed his advice in business matters, their profligate wives.

“To whom is he married?” Foscari asked.

“Hannah Levy, a midwife.” Cesca could have sworn from the look on Foscari’s face that he knew this name.

He studied the second document, the one adorned with a border of peacocks’ tails. Grecian urns and mating doves and flowing ribbons graced the corners. “This is the nuptial agreement Leon and Grazia signed before their marriage. That much I can deduce from the fanciful embellishments.” He tapped the figure in the middle of the page. “Grazia’s dowry was one hundred Venetian ducats. The rest is a puzzle. It is written in Hebrew and another language, which I believe is Aramaic. Give me a moment.” He squinted and held the document to the sun. “No, it is of no use. I cannot read it, but I can guess at the gist of it because I doubt it differs from most prenuptial agreements. It probably has a number of clauses about remarriage and what happens in the event of children and so on.” Foscari looked up at Cesca. “However, I suspect the provision that would interest you is that the widow, Grazia, in the event of Leon’s death, is entitled to the return of her dowry. It is a common clause.”

Cesca hoped she did not look as confused as she felt.

Foscari took hold of her chin and forced her to meet his eyes. “It is clear as a crow in a pail of milk.”

“Not to me it isn’t,” said Cesca.

“Look,” he said with an air of exaggerated patience. “Leon lent to his brother, Isaac, the one hundred ducats he received from his wife, Grazia, as her dowry. At Leon’s death, according to the agreement, the ducats are to be repaid to Grazia. So”—he pulled a red handkerchief out of his breast pocket like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and wiped his brow—“Isaac now owes Grazia one hundred ducats.”

The anger rose in Cesca like flames from a fire, turning her face red, preventing her from breathing. Her ducats were gone! They were worlds away, in the hands of Leon’s brother.

A week after her meeting with Foscari, she had boarded the
Aphrodite
bound for Constantinople to claim what was hers.

I am the widow Grazia Levy
, Cesca repeated to herself as she had so many times in the past three weeks. She wore Grazia’s dress and her pearls and carried her valises. Wouldn’t Grazia be surprised when she opened her cupboard to find her favourite dresses gone along with her maid? Luckily for Cesca, Grazia was a convert. Grazia might have learned the Jewish prayers and the blessings over challah and candles on Shabbat, but she looked and acted as Christian as Cesca.

Cesca’s scheme was flawless, she reassured herself as the wind sprayed an arc of salt water on her dress. Grazia had never laid eyes on Isaac or Hannah. They had never laid eyes on her. Posing as Grazia, Cesca would demand the return of her dowry money. They could not refuse. It was written right there in the contract she had in her valise.

With a hundred ducats in her purse, there would be nothing so rare or so costly that she could not possess it with a snap of her fingers. Roasted meats stuffed with chestnuts, fresh mutton, warm baths in fragrant oils, silk dresses spun with golden thread!

In the interim, there were difficulties. Of course, like all the passengers, she had had food when she boarded. But Leon’s ring, diamond or not, had fetched only enough for passage, not much in the way of provisions. The ship had run into unfavourable weather. Some windless days they were becalmed for hours. The crew would kedge a laborious course by rowing out several lengths off the bow in a small boat and dropping anchor. Then a sailor would heave hand over hand on the anchor line to pull the
Aphrodite
toward him, repeating the tedious process over and over, yet making such slight progress it hardly seemed worth the effort. Then there came squalls so fierce they were blown off course. The winds would claw at the sails, tear at the rigging, and snatch the tears from her eyes before they could wet her cheeks.

By the time they had pulled into the provisioning port of Valletta in Malta to take on fresh water, Cesca’s hips were more slender. Her breasts, which had been firm globes of flesh, white and fragrant as peaches, when she sailed out of the port of Venice, were smaller by the time they rounded Cyprus. Cesca’s trunk, once full of dried meat, fish, salted pork and beef, now sat empty; her supply of flour was wet and crawling with insects. No woman could subsist on twice-baked biscuits moving with weevils—biscuits so dry they required a cup of precious rainwater to force the crumbs down her throat. But perhaps she was doing herself a disservice. Perhaps she wasn’t as unappealing as she felt. Was any woman dispassionate in taking the measure of her own beauty?

Cesca was desperate and hungry. She wedged herself between two gang-casks and a sail bag, praying she was invisible to crew or passengers while she did this awful thing, which she must do if she was to survive. The rat had been nibbling at the lace securing her pink shot-silk purse. She had snatched off her boot and given it a smart whack, then promptly put it, writhing and squeaking, into her pocket. Now, with her handkerchief covering her hand, she reached into her pocket and fished out the crippled creature. She dropped it between her feet with a soft plop and it lay there twitching.

She bent down to examine it, trying not to dwell on the sharp, pointed teeth and the tail—hairless and pink against the dark planking of the deck. She must control herself or else the energy she expended in repulsion would exceed the nourishment she might derive from this morsel.

Her mother’s words came back.
To live, you must eat, my precious girl
. Yesterday she had eaten a shag, a gift from the bo’sun, if something which has been paid for in services can be considered a gift. Her stomach was ungrateful for the bird and soon it was part of the green froth swirling at the waterline.

It would be a month or so before they landed. A mere month. Not so great a length of time. Perhaps less, if God sent wind to fill their sails and, with His mighty hand at their stern, hastened the
Aphrodite
into port. Today they were making good progress. The ship was knifing through the waves, leaving a white foam in its wake. If Cesca could survive a little longer, what a future awaited her.