The Aviary Gate (17 page)

‘But she was only this far away …' Celia held out two fingers and saw that her hand was still trembling.

‘I know … your face!'

A kind of hysteria seemed to take hold of Annetta. She rolled from side to side, knocking off the golden cap that she wore pinned to the back of her head.

‘Stop it! Please stop …' Celia shook her by the shoulder. ‘You're beginning to frighten me.'

‘…
can't
.'

‘You must.' Another thought now occurred to Celia. ‘Besides, you're not supposed to be here. You must go back. Won't the Valide be wondering where you are?'

‘No. She sent us all away for a few hours. She usually does when the Malchi woman comes.'

The mere mention of the Valide, however, had an instantly sobering effect. Annetta sat up and dabbed at her eyes, suddenly businesslike again. ‘
Madonna
, I'm hungry, I swear I could eat a horse.'

‘Hungry?' Celia looked at her in amazement. A faint feeling of nausea at the thought of food came over her. But Annetta was smoothing down her hair and pinning her cap back on as if nothing at all had happened, as if the tension she had felt earlier had simply evaporated.

‘In the convent,' she began, cheerful again now, ‘they always said I laughed too much, and ate too much …' She stopped suddenly. ‘What's that?'

‘What's what?'

‘That, look, on the doorstep.'

Celia stood up to look.

‘How strange.'

‘Why so?'

‘It looks like … it looks like sand,' Celia said. ‘Blue and white sand. In a pattern,' she peered at it, ‘like a sort of eye.'

‘An eye?' Annetta scrambled off the bed, and made as if to pull Celia back bodily from the threshold. ‘Don't touch it!'

‘Don't be silly, of course I'm not going to touch it.'

But, unsteady still on her feet, when Annetta took hold of her she lost her balance, lurching over to one side. As she did so she pushed against Annetta, who stepped over the sand. There was a short uncomfortable silence.

‘What have I done?' Stricken, Annetta looked down at her foot.

‘Nothing, nothing. Come inside now.'

Speaking to her as soothingly as she could, Celia pulled her back into the room and shut the door. The two stared at one another.

‘Well, we know something about Esperanza Malchi that we didn't know before.' Annetta's pale face stared back at Celia through the shadows. ‘I swear to God, that woman is a witch.'

Where did they find him?'

‘By the north kiosk, Majesty. Just inside the palace walls.' Safiye Sultan surveyed Hassan Aga's bloated body which lay before her on a bed of cushions.

‘What's that in his hand?'

‘A piece of reed, Majesty.' The eunuch lowered his eyes. ‘He used it to empty his—'

‘I know what he needed it for,' Safiye interrupted impatiently. ‘Is the physician here?'

‘Yes, Majesty. He is waiting in the pages' quarters. Shall I call him in?'

‘At once.'

At her signal another of the eunuchs positioned a stool for her, two more brought in a folding screen behind which she would sit while the physician made his examination. Safiye Sultan sat down and looked around her. They had not yet managed to carry Hassan Aga into the main infirmary, and had placed him instead in a large room, nearest the harem gates. It was a sunless place, bare except for its tiled walls. The Valide's appearance in this part of the harem was so rare that she could feel the cluster of eunuchs huddling together in the corridor outside, their black faces mute with wonder at the events of the past few hours. The mere thought of them – open mouths, slack jaws, their hands signalling to one another in the silent language of the palace – all of it made her suddenly furious. What fools! They think I can't hear them when they speak with their hands, she
thought, when their presence alone, their fear, deafens me. Fools, all of them. Any one of my women has more sense than they do. All except for Hassan Aga, of course. What had he been thinking of, breaking out like that? Did he not trust her to keep him safe? Well, whether she liked it or not, it was all out in the open now; and besides, even she could not have kept the poisoning secret for much longer. As it was, it had given her vital time to plan, to manoeuvre. Safiye glanced again towards the prone figure. Found in the gardens … well, I can guess who you were looking for. Something of that old familiar feeling – was it excitement or was it fear? – shivered down her spine. He would not betray her, surely? Not now, not after all these years.

At her signal the physician was ushered in. How different the official palace physician was from the other one. Safiye Sultan watched him as he shuffled by: a white eunuch from the palace school. His face had an unearthly pallor, greenish-white, the colour of a spider in an old garden.

Bowing reverently in the direction of the screen, the physician made his way towards the makeshift bed on which Hassan Aga lay. A group of senior black eunuchs drew back a little to allow him to approach. There was complete silence as the physician put his ear to Hassan Aga's chest, at the same time feeling tentatively with two fingers for the pulse on his throat.

‘In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate,' he pronounced in a quavering high-pitched voice, ‘he lives!'

A collective exhalation of breath, like the sigh of wind through autumn leaves, rustled through the room.

Encouraged, the physician took Hassan Aga's arm, and examined the palm of his hand carefully. The nails on his hand were thick and curved, yellowing like old elephant bone. For a long time there was silence again. With a stillness imposed by years of rigid discipline the eunuchs stood motionless. Then at last a single voice spoke out, ‘Tell us, what has happened to our chief?'

It was the youngest of the senior eunuchs who spoke. Taller and broader-shouldered than the others, his voice – gentle and fluting as a girl's – was strangely at odds with his powerful physique. Emboldened by this display of independence, other voices now spoke up.

‘Yes, tell us, tell us!'

At once, as if some spell had been broken, there was movement in the darkened room. From behind her screen, the Valide could see their white hats nodding together

‘Was he poisoned?'

Through the lattice, Safiye saw that it was the same creature who spoke, the eunuch Hyacinth.

‘Ahhh, no …!' She heard their sharp intake of breath. ‘Not poison!'

Some of the younger eunuchs, who had been standing silently out of sight in the corridor outside, now began pressing into the room. ‘Who has done this, who?' The sound of their voices trilled eerily around the room.

‘Silence!' It was one of the senior eunuchs, the Keeper of the Gate, who spoke now. ‘Let the physician examine him. Stand back!'

But if they heard him they paid no heed, jostling together to get a view of their chief.

Holding up his hand for silence again, the physician drew back Hassan Aga's robe. All at once, with a flash of panic he covered him up again, but not before a terrible stench, a charnel-house gust of pus and putrefying flesh, filled the room.

‘Ahhh … he's dying.'

‘Rotting, rotting from the feet up.'

The eunuchs moaned together in their shrill voices.

‘Whoever did this will pay for it. We'll turn them into heads and trotters.'

‘Wait!' The young eunuch Hyacinth was now kneeling down on the floor beside Hassan Aga's body. ‘See! He moves!'

And it was true. Before them all the immense bloated body had begun to stir. His lips moved silently.

‘In the name of Allah he speaks!' the gate keeper said. ‘What does he say?'

The eunuch Hyacinth leant down and put his ear to Hassan Aga's lips.

‘His voice is too weak, I can't hear him.'

Hassan Aga's lips moved again, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.

‘He says … he says …' The eunuch Hyacinth's soft forehead puckered as he strained again to hear Hassan Aga's words. Then he
stood up, a perplexed expression on his face. ‘He says it was the sugar ship that the English sent. It was their sugar ship that poisoned him.'

Less than than a mile away, Paul Pindar, secretary to the English embassy at Constantinople, stood on the deck of the
Hector
.

A whole day had passed since the interrupted visit to Jamal al-Andalus in his tower, but he had had no chance to return. The affairs of the embassy – preparations for the long-delayed delivery of Queen Elizabeth's gifts to the Sultan, and to the ambassador's long-awaited presentation of credentials – had taken every waking moment. Today would in all probability be the same. Only that morning one of the most senior palace officials, the Chief Aga of the Janissaries, had sent a request to come on board and inspect the
Hector
, and the ambassador had ordered all hands on deck to receive him.

Now, despite the preparations going on around him for the arrival of the janissary chief, Paul cut a solitary figure as he stood listening to the familiar creak and groan of the ship's timbers, feeling the rising swell beneath his feet.

The sun beat down dazzlingly upon the navy-blue waters of the Golden Horn which was now full of the usual midday traffic: fishermen's caiques and little swift-moving skiffs, the long narrow barges used by palace officials going about their daily business; the unwieldy rafts that plied their way up and down the Bosphorous from the silent forests of the Black Sea with their supplies of firewood and furs and ice. On the Galata shore, a dozen or so tall ships lay at anchor. An Ottoman man-o'-war rowed past on its way to the Sultan's naval shipyards.

If Paul saw any of this, he gave no sign. His gaze was focused on one thing alone: the golden roofs and spires of the palace. Was it possible that Carew had not been mistaken and he really had seen Celia that day? He strained his eyes towards its now familiar contours: the Tower of Justice, the long pepper-pot row of kitchen chimneys. In the distance, between the tips of the cypress trees, he saw a sudden flash of sunlight catching on the glass of a shutting window. Might that have been her, he thought wildly, looking down on them from some hidden casement? In all his years as a merchant he had heard far stranger travellers' tales: stories of honest Englishmen who had turned Turk and were now doing very well for themselves
in the kingdoms of the East. There were several of them, to his certain knowledge, right here in the Sultan's palace.

But Celia? Everyone knew Celia Lamprey had died two years ago, shipwrecked and drowned alongside her father and every man on board her father's merchantman. He remembered how, on the long voyage to Venice all those years ago, he had loved to watch her sitting at the bow of the boat looking out to sea; how gentle she was, and how fearless too. Remembered how he would make excuses to go and sit with her, how they would talk for hours. How she had ravished him, and every man on board, with her pearly white skin, and her hair like spun gold. His Celia, food for the fishes now, at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea. Paul shivered. Was it possible that she really had come back from the dead? She still came to him in his dreams sometimes, calling to him like a dying mermaid, her long hair wrapped around her neck, dragging her down, down, into the green abyss.

And what if it were true? What if Carew really had seen her, and by some miracle she were still alive, a prisoner now in the Sultan's harem, what then? He could not sleep, could not eat for thinking about it.

‘A penny for them, Pindar.' Thomas Glover, his fellow secretary at the embassy, a great red boar of a man, came over to where he stood.

‘Hello, Glover.'

With an effort Paul turned to greet him. Glover was accompanied by three other embassy men, the two Aldridge brothers, William and Jonas, English consuls at Chios and Patras respectively, and John Sanderson, one of the Levant Company's merchants who also acted as the embassy treasurer. All four were dressed as though for a high holiday. Compared to Paul's sober black form, they made an outlandish group.

‘What's this, not brooding again? Come on, Paul. You know the Turks have never loved a sad man,' Thomas Glover said.

‘As if anyone could be sad to look at you, my friends,' Paul forced himself to smile. ‘Thomas, you shine like a comet. What's this … new sleeves?' He put his hand out to feel Glover's elaborately slashed and pinked sleeves of crimson silk tied to an embroidered doublet of fine, blond suede. ‘And quite as many jewels as a Sultana. I believe there's a law against it somewhere.'

‘I knew you'd like ‘em.' Thomas Glover grinned down at him, the
sun flashing against the heavy gold hoops in his earlobes. Two large rose-cut amethysts gleamed against the blackness of his high-brimmed hat; precious gems, topaz, garnet and moonstone, glittered on the fingers and thumbs of each hand.

‘So, what news, gentlemen?'

‘As a matter of fact, we bring great news. They say the Sultan himself is coming by boat to inspect the
Hector
this morning.'

‘Well, well, that'll be one in the eye for the French ambassador.' Paul felt his spirits begin to lift.

‘Not only de Brèves, but the Venetian Bailo, too,' Jonas, the second Aldridge brother, added. ‘We all know how those two stand on their diplomatic etiquette.'

The two brothers were nearly as richly dressed as Glover. Instead of gemstones, they wore knots of iridescent birds' feathers in their caps.

‘We do indeed,' Paul said. ‘What do you say, Glover? You know the ways of the palace better than any of us. Will the Great Man really come?'

‘It's always hard to second-guess the Porte, but on this occasion I think it's very likely.' Thomas Glover fingered his bearded chin, his rings glittering.