The Thieves of Darkness (13 page)

Michael couldn’t help laughing. “Mr. and Mrs.?”

KC looked at Michael and smiled. “Only in your dreams.”

Michael smirked as he shook his head. “Nickel tour of what?”

Hamer led the way, the group of twelve moving as if psychically linked. Hamer came to a heavy pair of black doors, set into the marble of the Divan. He grasped the thick, ancient ring that stood in as a handle and yanked open the doors, holding them ajar for the group to enter.

“When girls passed through this doorway, the Gate of Carts, and entered the harem for the first time,” Hamer said as he looked over his shoulder, “they were told that once they passed through, it would be the
last time they tasted the outside world. Of course, we will waive that rule for you ladies today.”

Hamer’s joke brought laughter from the six men on the tour.

“We’re taking a tour of the harem?” Michael said as he leaned into KC’s ear.

“I knew you’d be excited,” KC joked.

Michael and KC took up a position to the rear of the group as they walked en masse down a long corridor, listening to the guide’s polished speech.

“Harem. The single word conjures up a host of images in the Western world. A place of naked women in Turkish baths engaged in orgiastic relations with the sultan. A collection of women whose sole purpose is the sexual pleasure of their owner. In fact, the harem was the section of the palace that housed the sultan’s family and was known as the seraglio. While it was filled with hundreds of concubines, the most beautiful women in the kingdom, it was far more formal than you could imagine. It was a world unto itself, with a stratified hierarchy, schooling, love, intrigue, and even death.

“The imperial harem of Topkapi contained several combined households. The sultan’s mother, known as the Valide Sultan, was the most powerful woman in the empire, holding control over the harem, advising her son, and sometimes even acting in his stead. The sultan’s favorite concubines, called kadins, were considered the equivalent of wives. By law the sultan was permitted to have only four. The harem also housed the sultanas, the daughters of the sultan, and their households. There was a contingent of slave girls, odalisques, who served the needs of the harem. And, as you have surmised, a vast collection of concubines, whose ages ranged between seventeen and twenty-three years, with their sole function to entertain the sultan in his bedchamber. But to dispel a myth, there was no sexual free-for-all, no multiple partners in the same night. These women, these concubines, were not only beautiful but educated and refined under the strict tutelage of the harem schools.

“Most of the girls were kidnapped or purchased either out of slavery
or from their peasant parents. They were usually between the ages of seven and fifteen when they arrived and came from beyond the confines of the Ottoman Empire. While some girls were found within the sultan’s lands, many came from afar, with a heavy representation of Europeans. Georgians, Germans, and Hungarians were brought to the court for only one purpose, to serve the sultan. And while their nationalities were varied, they all possessed the common denominator of extraordinary beauty.

“They were schooled in the arts, poetry, how to play instruments such as the harp, and singing. They were taught how to speak and read Turkish, the ceremonies and customs of the harem and the Empire. They learned sewing and embroidery, and the art of erotic pleasure—”

“I never heard those words used in the same sentence before,” an obnoxious, heavyset American cut in.

Hamer ignored the man’s remark. “But most of all, the women that came into the harem were nearly all Christian and they were all forcibly converted to the Islamic faith.

“On average there would be over four hundred concubines in the harem, but their numbers would sometimes swell to more than a thousand. A concubine would only have relations with the sultan once unless she possessed a great skill or became a favorite of the ruler. If she did not become pregnant or a favorite, she would be gifted to viziers—the sultan’s advisors—generals, or other dignitaries, and VIPs.

“The harem contains over four hundred rooms, all of which are exquisitely decorated with elaborate tiles and/or paintings of uniquely rendered designs…”

The tour guide continued talking as they walked along, but Michael and KC did not pay much attention as they meandered through a labyrinth of corridors, past hundreds of rooms. There were sleeping quarters, large bathhouses, pools, spacious gardens, fountains, endless corridors, and apartments for the sultanas, the kadins, and the Valide Sultan. There were dozens of rooms for the acemis, the young student girls, and open-air courtyards and balconies. Every room, every wall
was adorned with extraordinary and intricate art—mosaics, paintings, calligraphy, countless masterpieces.

Michael and KC were both looking about as if studying for an exam, taking in the surroundings, memorizing the halls and doorways, capturing it all as they walked.

“The harem was divided into three sections,” Hamer continued. “The actual harem, where the concubines, acemis, odalisques, and other women roamed; the sultan’s private rooms, where he would visit and be entertained by the women; and the barracks for the black eunuchs, the guards of the harem.

“According to Muslim tradition, no man could cast his eyes on another man’s harem, thus someone less than a man was required to watch over the imperial harem. Eunuchs, as a result of castration, were considered a nonthreat to the sanctity of the harem, as they could not be tempted by the women of the harem, and thus were considered unquestionably loyal to the sultan.

“Eunuchs tended to be male prisoners of war or slaves, castrated before puberty and condemned to a life of servitude. At the height of the Ottoman Empire, as many as seven hundred eunuchs served within the seraglio.

“White eunuchs came from the conquered Christian areas of Georgia, Armenia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Germany. Black eunuchs were captured or gifted from Egypt, the Sudan, and the upper Nile, and transported to markets in Mecca, Medina, Istanbul, and the Mediterranean. All eunuchs were castrated en route to the markets by Egyptian Christians or Jews, as Islam prohibited the practice of castration but not the use of castrated slaves.

“White eunuchs served in the administrative functions and did not interact with the concubines. The black eunuchs, who unlike the white eunuchs had their entire genitalia removed, served the women of the harem directly either as servants of the kadin wives or the daughters of the sultan, as guards of the concubines, or as the master and overseer of the concubines.

“The chief black eunuch, called the Kizlar Agha, was the
third-highest-ranking officer of the Empire, after the sultan and the grand vizier. He was the commander of the halberdiers in the position of pasha, the equivalent of a general. He had unlimited access to the sultan, and was the private messenger between the sultan and the grand vizier.

“Every evening, the Kizlar Agha led the selected concubine to the sultan’s bedchamber. His duties were to ensure the protection of the women, to purchase the concubines for the harem, and to oversee the promotion of the women and eunuchs. He acted as a witness for the sultan’s marriage and birth ceremonies and arranged all the royal ceremonial events, such as circumcision parties, weddings, and gatherings. He delivered sentences to harem women accused of crimes, and was responsible for taking the guilty women to the executioner, who would place them into sacks and drown them in the Bosporus.

“While the black eunuchs protected the concubines from outsiders with true devotion, willing to give their lives, intrigue, betrayal, and rifts were more than common in the harem. The women desperately wanted to become kadins and would conspire against one another to reduce competition. It was considered the highest honor for a concubine to become pregnant with a son who had the potential to one day become sultan, thereby making the mother of the child the Valide Sultan, the most powerful woman in the Empire. As a result, there was intense competition and jealousy, which led to various dangers up to and including murder perpetrated by the concubines themselves. There were many occasions where a concubine would be found dead or never found at all.

“These deaths were ominous and left many of the women feeling unsafe in their palace cage. There was one devastating tragedy under Sultan Ibrahim I, when his lover, Sechir Para, told him that one of his concubines was secretly meeting with a man outside the palace. Ibrahim went insane with jealousy and had his chief eunuch torture several concubines to discover the identity of the mysterious girl. No one revealed the traitor, so Ibrahim had every single one of his harem women—a number thought to be at least 250—tied to weighted sacks and thrown into the Bosporus. Only one of the concubines survived, saved by a French ship. The Valide Sultan, Ibrahim’s mother, became so
enraged with jealousy of Sechir Para’s power that after the drownings she had her strangled in the middle of the night by her chief eunuch.”

The crowd fell into silence as the romanticism of harem life was slowly stripped away.

Hamer led his charges down a long flight of stairs and descended into a large room of blue and white tile. Marble water basins were anchored to the walls with a golden spigot protruding above each. There were large marble tubs in each of the four corners of the spacious room and a host of marble benches.

“This was the hamam of the Harem, what you would call a steam bath and the Europeans bastardized into the phrase Turkish baths. They were very important in everyday life, thought to cleanse not only the body but the mind and soul. They were a place where a woman could free her mind of the troubles in her life.”

In the center of the floor was a large grated drain, three feet square, made of polished brass. It sat flush with the marble floor, its latticework providing one-inch holes for the drainage of the steam bath’s waters.

Hamer started back up the stairs as he continued talking about the hamam, its history, and its perceived medicinal benefits, but neither KC nor Michael was listening. They both stood over the drain. KC pulled a coin from her pocket, dropped it, and waited to hear it hit bottom. Three seconds later there was a splash.

“Shit,” KC said upon hearing the water. “There’s a cistern down there.”

“So…”

“I hate working in water.”

“That’s where you need to go?”

“This place is not the room as it was hundreds of years ago; it has been prettified and restored. The Piri Reis chart you saw in that case in the Treasury was found down here in a pile of rubble, but what they found was only half of the chart. The chart was actually torn in two, the other half hidden away down below us almost five hundred years ago.

“There were passages underneath the palace used to smuggle concubines in and out. They were controlled by the black eunuchs who had
the command of the harem in their hands. There used to be hidden stairs in here but they’ve long since disintegrated and their access has been sealed up.”

“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan.” Hamer’s voice startled KC and Michael. They turned to find him looking at his watch and pointing up the stairs.

“Sorry,” KC said as she and Michael hustled up and out of the hamam. They rejoined the tour group but again stayed in the rear.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” Michael said with a smile.

“Why did you do it?”

“Do what?” Michael asked, genuinely confused.

“Steal. Why did you do it?”

Michael hated that word,
steal
. He hated the words
thief
and
criminal
. They were words used in court, in prison. He thought about her question, he thought about why, but he couldn’t answer her. The conversation was too personal; Michael thought it more intimate than sex. He had never bared his soul to anyone; he had never even discussed why he was a thief with his deceased wife, Mary. No one knew the whys of Michael. So he answered in the best way he knew how. “Why did you?”

KC looked at Michael, hating questions answered with questions, but if one is to be trusted one must learn to trust. “My sister.”

“Your sister made you do it?” Michael joked.

KC smiled. “In a way. Our mother died. I was fifteen. We had no money.” KC paused as she ran events through her mind. “Sometimes in life we are forced to do things for the ones we love, for the ones we care about, no matter how distasteful they may be.”

Michael nodded.

“They were going to separate us, stick her with a foster family.” Sadness crept into her voice. “She was only nine. And it was the only way I could think of to make enough money for us to survive.”

“You raised her?”

KC nodded and Michael felt awful. It was a whole new side of her,
one that he hadn’t expected—a child forced to raise a child, forced to find her way in the world.

“I became her mother, her friend. I had to help her with her homework. Imagine, I left school, stopped learning the ABCs in order to work, and I had to help her with math, her foreign-language homework. But it worked out. As the years went by, whatever she was studying, I ended up learning. I speak four languages and I’m pretty good with trigonometric functions, I just don’t have the diploma.”

“And you never got caught?”

“No.” KC shook her head. “I did only a few jobs a year. High-end. Art and jewelry. Things that could easily be moved.”

Michael bowed his head as they continued walking.

“And you know,” KC continued, “I hated myself every time. I was scared to death that I would be caught, thrown in jail, that Cindy would be thrown out on the street. But the thing that scared me the most, what woke me in the middle of the night, was that she might find out what I was doing. I had become a criminal. Everything I preached to her about right and wrong, honesty and integrity, I was violating. I had painted a picture of what was wrong in the world to her, and you know what? It was me. I was what I didn’t want her to become. I wanted her educated, in the best job. I wanted security for her. And in order for her to achieve that, I had to put my sense of morals aside and do what I had to do.”