The Aviary Gate (3 page)

Although the first call to prayer of the Mohammedans had come more than half an hour ago, there was still little commerce visible that morning either on the waters or in the city beyond. A slight mist, tinged now with the very faintest wash of rose (a colour, Carew had learnt, that was not only peculiar to the Constantinople dawn, but also the very same colour as rose-petal preserve) still veiled the waters and the shores beyond. Presently a single small caique, the narrow rowing boat of the Bosphorous, pierced the mist, rowing slowly towards the Pera shore. Carew could hear the slap and dip of the oars, and then the cry of the seagulls as they circled above it, their bellies flashing white and gold in the dawn light.

And then, as he watched, the mist lifted from the opposite shore, and the Sultan's palace, with its cypress trees like black paper cut-outs, its domes and minarets and towers, was revealed suddenly: an enchanted city, rose and gold, trembling over the misty waters as if suspended by djinns.

‘Up early, Carew,' a voice came from beneath him, on the garden side of the wall, ‘or haven't you slept?'

‘My master,' John Carew, lounging carelessly against the wall, saluted in the direction of the voice, and went on cracking nuts.

Paul Pindar, secretary to Sir Henry Lello, the English ambassador, considered briefly the rebuke, one of several, that rose to his lips, and then decided against it. If he had learnt one thing in all the years of his acquaintance with Carew it was that this was not the way to deal with him, a fact of which he had, as yet, not been able to persuade the
ambassador, nor was likely to. Instead, with a brief glance towards the still-sleeping house, he swung himself up on to the wall.

‘Have a nut.' If Carew saw Paul's briefly raised eyebrow he gave no sign.

Paul regarded the lounging figure thoughtfully for a moment: the hair, curly and unkempt, hanging to his shoulders, the body, slight but taut and finely made, and as full of suppressed energy as the stretched string of a bow. He had often watched Carew at work, marvelling at the precision and grace with which he moved, even in the smallest and hottest space. A faint scar, the result of a kitchen brawl, ran down one cheekbone from his ear to the corner of his mouth. For a while the two men sat together in companionable silence, a silence honed by the many years of their unlikely friendship.

‘And what nuts are these?' Paul said eventually.

‘They call them “pistach”. Look what a green, Paul!' Carew laughed suddenly. ‘Have you ever seen such beauty in a mere nut?'

‘If the ambassador sees you here, Carew, after he expressly …'

‘Lello can go hang.'

‘You'll hang first, my friend,' Paul replied evenly. ‘I've always said so.'

‘He says I'm not to cook any more, at least not in his household. I'm to leave the kitchens to that flat-footed lump of lard Cuthbert Bull, that great baboon who doesn't know enough to boil a Bosnian cabbage …'

‘Well …' Paul took another nut, ‘you've only yourself to blame.'

‘Do you know what they are calling him?'

‘No,' said Paul. ‘But doubtless you are going to tell me.'

‘“Fog.”'

Paul made no answer.

‘Do you want me to tell you why?'

‘Thank you, I think I can guess.'

‘You're smiling, Secretary Pindar.'

‘Me? I am his esteemed Excellency's most humble servant.'

‘His servant, Pindar, but there's nothing humble about you, had he the wit to see it.'

‘And you know all about humble, I suppose.'

‘On the contrary, on that subject, as you well know, I know nothing at all. Except for the humbles I bake in his pie. I know all about servants, though.'

‘Not nearly enough, Carew. My father always used to say so in all those years when you were in his service, if “service” is the right word for your theatricals, which somehow I rather doubt.' The older man spoke mildly enough. ‘Our esteemed ambassador is quite right on that at least.'

‘Ah, but your father loved me.' Unperturbed, Carew cracked a nut open dextrously with one hand. ‘Until he gives me a kitchen back, Lello can go hang. Did you see him on that morning when Thomas Dallam and his men opened up the great box at last, to find his precious gift broken and mouldy? Our Thomas – who for a Lancashire man has quite a way with words, by the by – said to me, and this is rare, this is, he said Sir Henry looked as if he were straining on a stool.'

‘You know, sometimes you go too far, Carew.' Although Paul's tone was still mild, he threw the handful of nut shells he was holding away from him with an impatient movement. ‘He is the ambassador and should command your respect.'

‘He is a Levant Company merchant.'

‘He is the Queen's Envoy.'

‘But first and foremost he is a merchant. A fact that's only too well known amongst the other foreigners here in Constantinople, especially the other envoys, the Bailo of Venice and the ambassador of France, and they despise us for it.'

‘Then they're fools,' Paul said shortly. ‘We are all of us merchants now, since we are all in the service of the Honourable Company, and there is no shame in it. On the contrary, our fortunes, yours and mine – and the fortunes of our whole country, you mark my words – are riding on it. And that fact has never harmed our standing with the Turks. In fact, they hold us in greater esteem now than they ever have.'

‘But only when it's politic for them to do so.'

‘But so it is; very politic.' Paul said shrewdly. ‘Not just for trade, which benefits them just as much as it does us, but because we have a common enemy: Spain. They might try to play us off against the Venetians and the French, but it's just a game. The fact is that they
need us almost as much as we need them. Did you know that the Sultan's mother, the Valide Sultan Safiye, who they say is a powerful lady (although Lello, I fear, will never credit it) corresponds personally with our Queen? She has already sent her gifts, equal in value to the ones we brought to her from England, and will do so again, I am told. I'm to take them with me when I return.'

‘How can anyone have power, incarcerated in that place?' Carew indicated the domes and spires on the far side of the shining waters below them. ‘The Great Turk himself is all but a prisoner there, our janissaries say.'

The early-morning mist had dispersed completely now, and a dozen or so caiques, and some other bigger vessels, had begun to ply their trade along the shores.

‘They say there are hundreds of women in there, all slaves and concubines of the Sultan, and that for as long as they live they may never show their face to any other man.' Carew continued.

‘Their ways are not our ways to be sure – but perhaps it is not entirely as we think.'

‘They are saying something else about the Valide Sultan,' Carew turned to Paul again, ‘that she took a strong liking to the gentleman-like Secretary Pindar when he went to deliver the Queen's gifts to her. Dear God!' Carew's eyes glittered. ‘Fog must have strained upon more than a stool when he heard that.'

Despite himself Paul laughed.

‘Come on, Paul, what's she like? The Sultan's mother, the favourite of the old Turk, the Sultan Murad. They say that when she was young her beauty was such that he was faithful to her, and to her alone, for more than twenty years.'

‘I didn't see see her. We spoke through a lattice. She spoke to me in Italian.'

‘She's Italian?'

‘No, I don't believe so.' Paul remembered the shadowy presence behind the screen, more felt than seen, like a priest in a confessional. He remembered a powerful perfume, mysterious as a night-scented garden, at once sweet and earthy; a vague impression of many jewels; and then that miraculous voice, low and rich and velvety. ‘She doesn't speak like a native-born Italian,' he said, adding reflectively, ‘but her voice is more beautiful, I think, than any I've ever heard.'

The two men, falling silent again, looked out across the waters of the Golden Horn once more, towards the distant black spears of the cypress trees and, beyond them, the half-hidden towers of the Sultan's palace. Suddenly it was no longer possible to avoid the real reason that had brought them together in the early-morning privacy of the ambassador's garden.

‘The girl, Paul …'

‘No.'

‘She's in there, Paul.'

‘No!'

‘No?
I
know it.'

‘How do you know it?'

‘Because I saw her, Paul. I saw Celia with my own two eyes.'

‘Impossible!' Paul grasped Carew's wrist, and twisted it hard. ‘Celia Lamprey is dead.'

‘I'm telling you I saw her.'

‘You saw her with your own two eyes? I'll put out your eyes, Carew, if you're lying to me.'

‘On my life, Pindar. It was her.' Silence. ‘Ask Dallam. He was with me.'

‘Oh, don't worry, I will.' He let Carew's wrist drop. ‘But make no mistake, John, if any Turk comes to hear even a whisper of this adventure, it will be death to confess it.'

‘What have you found?' Eve threw the shoulder bag in which she carried her books onto the chair next to her and sat down opposite Elizabeth's. They had arranged to meet in the café on the first floor of Blackwell's bookshop in Broad Street.

‘The captivity narrative I was telling you about.'

‘No kidding. Really?' Eve dragged off her woollen hat, making her short black hair stand up on end. ‘Where?'

‘In the Oriental Library Reading Room. At least I'm pretty sure I have. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I came across it literally two minutes before the library closed, but I just had to tell someone.'

Elizabeth told her about the piece of paper she had found folded into the pages of the book.

‘So how do you know that's what it is? It could be anything – a shopping list.'

‘No, it couldn't. It's about Celia Lamprey. It has to be.'

‘No shit, Sherlock.' Eve's eyes, framed by her thick black glasses, gazed at Elizabeth owlishly. ‘One of those strange “intuitions” of yours,' she made inverted comma signs with her hands, ‘I suppose?'

‘Something like that.' Elizabeth put her cup down. ‘Look, just hurry up and get yourself some coffee, will you? I want to tell you the rest.'

She watched Eve walk across to the counter, a small fierce figure, incongruously dressed in a 1950s red and white print dress and Doc Marten boots.

‘Manuscript or printed?' Eve said when she came back.

‘Manuscript.' Elizabeth did not hesitate. ‘I'm guessing,' she added quickly.

There was a thoughtful pause.

‘You do know there's no such thing as psychic, don't you?' Eve said after a while. ‘Especially when it comes to research grants.' She spoke as if to a very small child.

‘Oh, please.' Elizabeth rolled her eyes. ‘What rubbish you talk sometimes.'

‘Rubbish? You'd better watch what you say. Mind you, I've noticed that you
do
have a talent for the lucky guess. All right then, I'll bet you fifty quid you are right about the paper you've just found.'

‘What! I've just told you that!'

‘You said yourself you haven't even looked at it. So just how can you be so sure?'

‘How?' Elizabeth shrugged. God only knows, she thought. But oh I can. Always have done. Elizabeth thought of that frail smell, and when she finally allowed her fingers to brush the paper at last, a sensation – like what? The puckering of a sea breeze on some smooth surface, a whisper against her skin. So … precise, really. ‘Intuition. That's all.'

‘Shame you don't have that kind of intuition about the present.'

‘What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? Could we leave the present out of this, please?'

Another owlish look, then Eve softened.

‘OK.'

The café was full of early Christmas shoppers sheltering from the cold. The air was muggy with the smell of wet wool and coffee beans.

‘So. Do you want to tell me about it?'

‘Well, it was just the most incredible piece of luck really …' Elizabeth pulled her chair in closer towards Eve. ‘You know I've been looking for a possible DPhil thesis on captivity narratives?' For months Elizabeth had been researching accounts written by Europeans who survived being taken captive, mostly by Mediterranean corsairs. ‘Well, the other day I found myself reading an account by this man, Francis Knight. Knight was a merchant who was taken captive off the Barbary coast by Algerian corsairs, and spent seven years in captivity in Algiers.'

‘When was this?'

‘In 1640. It was dedicated to a man called Sir Paul Pindar, a former ambassador to the Ottoman court. That seemed odd to me, why should Pindar have any particular interest in captives?' Elizabeth paused for a moment. ‘And then I found something even more intriguing. Someone had pencilled in a note on the preface page, next to the name of the dedicatee: it said simply, “see also the narrative of Celia Lamprey”.

‘This stopped me cold because there are no known captivity narratives written by women before the eighteenth century, and even then they're pretty rare. But the other name – Pindar, Paul Pindar – did ring a vague bell.'

‘So you found something about him?'

‘He has a pretty long entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. Pindar was a merchant, and an incredibly successful one. He was apprenticed at seventeen to a London merchant called Parvish, who sent him the next year to Venice to act as his factor there. He seems to have stayed in Venice for about fifteen years, where he acquired what's described as “a very plentiful estate”.'

‘He was rich, then?'

‘Very. In the late sixteenth century merchants were just beginning to make big money out of foreign trade – proper fortunes, like the later East India Company nabobs – and Pindar became hugely successful. So successful, in fact, that the Levant Company sent him to Constantinople to act as secretary to the new English ambassador there, another merchant, Sir Henry Lello. That was in 1599. From there he seems to have had various other diplomatic appointments, as consul in Aleppo, and then later back in Constantinople again, this time as James the First's ambassador … But none of those really seem to have mattered. The really critical moment for Pindar was this 1599 mission, when it seems that the whole of the British ability to trade in the Mediterranean hung on the presentation of a gift to the new Sultan, an extraordinary mechanical clock …'