The Sultan's Eyes (15 page)

‘A whim of a sultan is a very powerful thing,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘People have died for less.’

‘The Admiral said that other people have been allowed to run presses from time to time — some Spanish Jews, an Armenian fellow,’ said Willem.

‘But only certain kinds of books,’ said Al-Qasim, ‘and only with permission.’

‘It’s lucky, then,’ said Valentina, ‘that we have the ear of the new Sultan, or at least his Eyes. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the law changed.’

I opened my mouth to retort and closed it again. Could it be true that my friends were so unhappy? Was it possible that they would risk everything by returning to Venice? Had I really been so blind, so preoccupied?

I looked over at Al-Qasim for guidance. He was chewing the inside of his lip thoughtfully, staring down at the coals in the fireplace.

‘The palace need never know we are printing anything,’ said Willem. ‘We’ll find a warehouse somewhere noisy, down near the docks, maybe. We won’t sell any religious books here, if you don’t want to. So really, we aren’t doing anything so very wrong.’

‘We will not steal anything but knowledge, Isabella,’ Valentina said. ‘The Sultan will still own his precious manuscripts. We will simply borrow the words in them and release them into the light, where they belong.’

‘Although if they are worth that much …’ said Willem.

‘I think you’d best be quiet, young man,’ said Valentina. ‘This is not your finest moment.’

Willem sighed and mumbled something I didn’t catch. He hung his head. Valentina, on the other hand, seemed more animated than she’d been for months.

‘Can I come with you tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘I want to see these lost books for myself.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Al-Qasim. ‘I don’t know what to do about them yet.’

‘It’s simple,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I’ll ask the Sultan if he’d like to read them.’

That’s exactly what I did.

Al-Qasim and I decided that honesty would be the best approach, although there were limits to what we would disclose. I had no wish to betray the trust of my new friends, so the Sultan and Ay
e would have to know about the printing press one day. Just not quite yet. It was too risky. One of them might object or ban us from the secret library. So Al-Qasim agreed to discuss the matter with Nuri Effendi, and I undertook to ask the Sultan for permission to access the hidden books.

It was just as well.

‘Your Magnificence, I have something to tell you, and a request to make of you,’ I said to the Sultan as soon as I arrived the next day.

‘I have something to ask you, too,’ he said. ‘You will sit.’

I took my customary cushion at his feet. Ay
e settled onto the window seat beside him. We often sat like this for hours, just the three of us. It had come to feel so familiar, so precious, these quiet times of reading and talking.

‘What is it, Your Magnificence?’ I asked.

‘I wish to know,’ he said, ‘what you found in that locked room behind the library.’

I shouldn’t have been surprised. In the seraglio, everyone knew everything. I smiled. How had my friends and I ever imagined we could keep it a secret?

‘That is exactly what I was going to tell you about,’ I said. ‘It’s very exciting news — at least, I think it is.’

‘Colonel Orga reported to my grandmother that you and your friend broke in there.’

‘He saw us there, yes. But we didn’t break in. Al-Qasim borrowed a key from the library. No damage was done.’

The Sultan grinned. ‘That is excellent. I can’t stand Colonel Orga. He always reports things to my grandmother. When I’m older, I’ll have him posted to the desert somewhere.’

‘What did you find, Isabella?’ Ay
e asked.

‘Wonderful things!’

‘Can I see?’ said the Sultan.

‘Of course. They’re your wonderful things.’

So I led them both, followed by a troop of guards, through the courtyard and along the hallway to the hidden library. Al-Qasim and Nuri Effendi were already there.

‘Here we are, Your Magnificence,’ I said. ‘The secret knowledge of the ancients.’

‘What is all this?’ The Sultan climbed up onto a bench and gazed around him. ‘Books?’

‘But such books,’ I said. ‘Collected by your forefathers and kept safe for decades. Perhaps centuries. In here, we think, are treasures that have been lost forever to the rest of the world. But not to you. And not any more.’

Ay
e picked up one of the bundles of parchment from the table. ‘This is in Greek. Is it very old?’

‘It is from many centuries ago,’ I said. ‘Possibly even millennia. It’s difficult to tell.’

The Sultan scowled. ‘Nuri Effendi, how is it that we didn’t know about this?’

Nuri Effendi bowed. ‘Your Magnificence, the palace library was divided up many years ago by your uncle Mustafa. He decreed that only certain books should be kept for the main library, some for his own private collection, some for the palace school, and other material that … that did not seem important to him was locked away.’

‘For what reason?’

‘He probably did it to spite the blessed memory of our grandfather,’ said Ay
e.

‘Who, like you, was a scholar, Your Magnificence,’ said Nuri.

‘Mustafa was demented,’ said the Sultan. ‘We all know that.’

‘Nevertheless, Your Magnificence, it would seem his commands were carried out,’ said Nuri. ‘That was before my time here.’

‘And since then?’ asked the Sultan.

‘Since then, I have spent many years bringing together the many libraries in the palace, as your grandmother has wished. I regret that this room was unknown to me until this morning. I had been told it was a storeroom belonging to the school masters.’ He fell to his knees in the dust. ‘Please forgive my ignorance, Your Magnificence.’

‘But surely there is nothing to forgive,’ said Ay
e, smiling at her brother. ‘This is marvellous. All these books have been hidden in here, all these years, safe, waiting for a sultan who can appreciate their worth.’

‘That’s me,’ said the Sultan with a grin.

‘Yes, Your Magnificence,’ I said. ‘It certainly is.’

I meant it, too. With all my heart.

It was only a few days later that a messenger from the Jonsons delivered a note requesting my presence. I would have happily made some excuse, but the scowl on Al-Qasim’s face was enough to convince me I had no choice in the matter.

The Admiral and Lady Elizabeth were in the reception room when I arrived. He offered me a seat while she called for tea, and we smiled politely at one another. Near the window stood a young man whose face looked vaguely familiar. I studied him out of the corner of my eye.

‘Forgive me,’ said Admiral Jonson. ‘I believe you once met my son under less fortuitous circumstances. This is Constantine. Newly arrived on the boat from Plymouth, and only a little worse for wear.’

I fell back as if someone had slapped me across the face. Constantine Jonson didn’t move or acknowledge me in any way. I
stood slowly and took a few steps towards him, trying to recognise in him the man who had arrested my father. His hair hung over his eyes, no longer the shorn stubble worn by Cromwell’s troops, and he leaned heavily on a stick.

He bowed. ‘A pleasure, ma’am.’

‘You are more polite than the last time we met, Captain Jonson.’

My tone was venomous, and he winced.

‘I am no longer a captain nor any sort of officer.’

That voice. I recalled it so clearly, throwing accusations and threats at my father.

‘Why is that?’ I asked. ‘Did you get tired of bullying professors and their daughters? Or did General Cromwell throw you out of the army for lack of manners?’

The Admiral sighed. Deeply. I couldn’t really blame him for that, as my own manners had so completely deserted me yet again.

I glared at Captain Jonson — Constantine — then turned my back on him.

‘Is that why you called me here?’ I almost spat the words at the Admiral. ‘To be in the presence of the man who sent my father to his death?’

He sighed again. ‘No, Mistress Hawkins. Far from it. Please take a seat.’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘As you wish.’ He motioned to his son to sit, but he, too, remained standing. The Admiral chuckled. ‘Oddly, you two have more in common than you will ever know. Both too stubborn for your own good, apart from anything else.’

‘Please, Mistress Hawkins,’ said Lady Elizabeth. ‘Remember yourself.’

‘Forgive me, madam,’ I said. ‘This is something of a shock.’

It was all I could do not to bolt for the door, the street, the nearest carriage, anything to get away. But another look at Lady Elizabeth’s face made me hesitate.

‘I’m sorry, Admiral Jonson,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘You have been nothing but kind to me. What is it that you wish to discuss?’

‘Good news, I think,’ said the Admiral. ‘So you must not confuse the message with the messenger.’

‘Very well.’

‘My son —’

‘Where is he?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

‘Justinian.’

‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘Nose stuck in a book somewhere or other, no doubt. He may even be attending to his duties for once. He has a veritable Ararat of paperwork before him at present.’

Constantine coughed. His father glanced up at him.

‘But you’re right, he should be here for this,’ he added.

‘No, please, there’s no need to disturb him.’

But I wasn’t quick enough. Admiral Jonson pulled the bell rope near the fireplace. I took my seat and we all waited awkwardly while a footman ran to fetch Justinian, who arrived at the same time as the tea tray. He wiped his hands on his coat and bowed to me, his face grim. I gave him a feeble smile.

‘Here he is, covered in glory and book dust, as always,’ said the Admiral. ‘But today’s news is not to do with Justinian. No, no. It’s Constantine to whom we must pay attention. He has brought a special dispensation, all the way from London.’

‘What for?’ I asked.

‘Why, for you, Mistress Hawkins.’

‘What on earth can you mean?’

I forced myself to look at Constantine, who didn’t appear to enjoy being there any more than I did.

‘You are absolved of any wrongdoing in the matter of your father’s escape from prison,’ he said. His voice was deeper than I remembered, and not quite as harsh. ‘The matter has been discussed at the highest levels of government.’

‘But … but why?’ I glanced from one to the other, all three men so similar and yet slightly different, and all staring at me expectantly.

‘Your father was the escapee, not you,’ said the Admiral. ‘You were merely his foil — his instrument.’

‘If they believe that, sir,’ said Justinian, ‘they don’t know Mistress Hawkins very well.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said the Admiral with a smile. He turned to me. ‘But trust me, my dear, it’s better for you if that’s what people think. Much safer.’

‘I don’t understand why anyone even cares about it,’ I said. ‘Let alone the highest levels of government.’

‘Don’t worry about why,’ Constantine snapped.

His father raised a hand. ‘What my son is trying to say is that the past no longer matters. We are here to discuss the future.’

‘What future?’ I said.

‘Any future you like, Mistress Hawkins. You no longer have to hide here on the fringes of Europe like a fugitive. You are free to return home to England.’

Free to return home. I never imagined I’d hear those words. They crowded into the empty spaces of my heart, spaces long ago sealed up and buried: shouting, echoing, clamouring.

But I couldn’t pay attention to them, not in that room, with
those faces gazing at me, with the man whose knock on our door had robbed me of that freedom in the first place.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said carefully, hoping my voice wouldn’t betray the shivers of fury inside me. ‘I will consider what you have said.’

‘Consider all you like,’ said the Admiral. ‘You have a week. Next Friday, the ship that carried Constantine here will return to Plymouth, and you will be on it.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Is something wrong, Mistress Hawkins?’ asked Lady Elizabeth.

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said the Admiral. ‘It’s not every day one is exonerated and freed from exile.’

I tried to think of something sensible to say, but so many thoughts and feelings crowded my mind and my heart that none of them was distinct enough to shape into words. I’m not often lost for words. Master de Aquila would have been amazed.

‘She won’t go,’ said Constantine, into confused silence. ‘I warned you.’

‘Nonsense,’ said his father. But he didn’t sound very certain.

‘Why …’ Slowly the mist around my thoughts cleared. ‘You made this happen. Why?’

A flicker of pain crossed the Admiral’s face. ‘That’s simple, Mistress Hawkins. What happened to you and to your father was an injustice, one in which my family, unwittingly or otherwise, played a part. We have endeavoured to set it aright. That’s all.’

‘You have?’ I swung around to face Constantine. ‘Even you?’

He nodded. ‘Even me, astonishing as that may seem.’

‘You are different,’ I said. ‘Both of you.’

Constantine limped slowly across the room to stand beside Justinian, a fair, more muscular version of his brother.

‘We are a different family now,’ said Lady Elizabeth. ‘It was the war. We suffered a great deal, then as now — as did so many, including you.’

‘You see before you our two remaining sons,’ said the Admiral. ‘My eldest, James, lies buried on a battlefield somewhere in England, near a town not worth defending.’

‘Your father warned me, that day,’ said Constantine, ‘about fighting against my brothers.’

‘I remember,’ I said.

‘He said he pitied us,’ said Constantine. ‘And so he should. It might have been my bullet that killed James at Marston Moor.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Justinian. He put one hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘It haunts me, though,’ said Constantine. ‘Every night. Every hour.’

Admiral Jonson sighed. ‘Each of us who remains has changed beyond recognition.’

‘Grief does that,’ I said. ‘I know it only too well.’

Lady Elizabeth’s gaze dropped to her hands in her lap. The Admiral smiled again, but it was a brave smile, filled with sadness.

‘Grief and disappointment,’ he said. ‘The new England that some of us hoped would emerge after the battles did not turn out quite the way we imagined.’

‘You call it disappointment,’ said Constantine. ‘I call it betrayal.’

His father’s faint smile vanished. ‘We will call it no such thing where we might be overheard.’

So there were spies here, as Justinian had once hinted. I tucked that snippet of information away in my mind to ponder later — after I’d managed to comprehend what these men were trying to tell me.

‘In spite of all that has happened, to us, to you and so many others,’ said Constantine, ‘I do believe this Parliament has achieved reforms to the army and the country that will be remembered forever.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said. ‘It is the same government that forced me to flee my own country.’

‘I didn’t say that all Parliament’s actions are reasonable or fair,’ said Constantine.

‘The irony is that I believe my father would have supported a good government, a parliament of the people,’ I said. ‘But you never gave him the chance.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t.’

‘I, too, made my displeasure known: in Parliament, in the press,’ said the Admiral. ‘You, of all people, know how that story ends. It is much the same story as your own, and even our Ambassador’s.’

‘Is that why you were sent here, Admiral?’

‘Something like that.’ He nodded, and allowed himself another slight smile. ‘Cromwell believed he was punishing us by posting me to the utter ends of the earth. If he’d thought for a minute about the names I’ve given these boys, he would have known I’ve dreamed of visiting Constantinople my whole life.’

‘So you see, it’s come out all right in the end,’ said Justinian. ‘More or less.’ But there was no consolation in his voice.

‘Perhaps we understand one another a little better, then, Mistress Hawkins?’ the Admiral said.

‘Yes. At least, I think I understand.’ I took another breath and met his gaze properly for the first time.

‘It’s difficult for all of us,’ said Lady Elizabeth. ‘We share in many sorrows.’

‘I know,’ I said.

I looked at her careworn face, her beloved boys, and her husband — so cheerful, so obliging, even in his own grief. All at once it felt as if the stout defences I’d built around myself and my past had crumbled: not completely, but a little. Enough for me to speak.

‘I hope you will forgive me, then, for my rudeness earlier.’

Constantine waved a hand. ‘On the contrary, you are quite right to despise me. I would do the same, were I in your shoes. I was unspeakably rude to both you and your father that day. In my defence, I can only say that my orders were so abhorrent to me that I wished to have it over and done with quickly.’

‘I see.’

Constantine lowered himself into the armchair nearest the fireplace. ‘It wasn’t quite how I imagined army life would be. Any of it. I was sick to my stomach most of the time.’ He looked up at me. ‘You are also right to suggest I have been dismissed from my commission, although it was not for the reason you guessed.’

‘I think we’ve said enough on that topic for the moment, dear,’ said Lady Elizabeth.

Her son looked at her and nodded. ‘Of course. I apologise. I will have to learn the ways of diplomacy now.’ He smiled. ‘It’s not my natural milieu.’

‘You will adapt quickly enough, my boy,’ his father said. ‘I have managed it, although I’m more at home on a ship’s deck than in a drawing room.’

Justinian was staring at me, I could feel it, but I wouldn’t catch his eye. It felt, oddly, as if I had been dropped into the middle of the family’s conversation, as though I had no place here, in spite of the invitation.

I got to my feet. ‘Forgive me, ma’am, I think I should go.’

‘But I’ve not yet poured the tea.’

I don’t even recall what vague excuses I made, but I left in a whirl of bows and apologies, and ran all the way back to our street.

I pushed away the memory of young Constantine Jonson and that face I had despised all these years; his weary voice, his wounded eyes, his brother gazing at me.

There was room in my mind and my heart for only one thought, one feeling. I could go home. Home.

It wasn’t something I’d ever expected. But then, before the dreadful day when the troopers and Constantine Jonson attacked Cambridge, it had never occurred to me to go anywhere else. Everything I needed was there: my father, our books, our home; the orchard, the kitchen garden with its high stone walls, grass sweeping down to the river. Even now, if I close my eyes I can see the way the light edges the leaves late on a summer afternoon, the outline of trees against the sky, blackbirds scattering into the fields. I can hear the river splosh against soft mud, the washerwomen singing in the sunshine, the laughter of students in a tavern somewhere. The bells. Father’s pen nib scratching on clean paper. I can smell violets and fresh-baked bread and lemons. A pike roasting over low coals. Ink and musty pages. My old woollen cloak drying in the hallway.

Is that what home is? A collection of sights and smells and sounds? Or is it where your heart dwells? The place you simply must live or run mad? The city, the house, the road, the palace pavilion where you are at peace?

I knew I was homesick. I’d felt it every day since the morning I’d left Cambridge with Nanny, bouncing about in the carriage with my basket on my knee. It was most painful in Amsterdam, in those dark wintry days of loss.

In Venice, it had been different. The city in the sea felt to me like a new home. It wasn’t the same as the place I was born, but it was comforting.

Exiles like me and Al-Qasim adapted to being afloat in the world and searching for a mooring. Valentina and Willem didn’t feel like that. Nor did the Jonsons. They all believed that one day they’d go home: to Venice, to Amsterdam, to England. They knew it in their bones. They could see themselves walking familiar streets, imagine how it would feel. Homecoming. I’d had to let go of that yearning years ago.