The Aviary Gate (42 page)

‘What's come over you?
Santa Madonna
, it's not
me
you should be worried about, it's
you
who's really going to be in trouble now.'

‘Shh!' Looking round her, Celia put a finger to her lips. ‘Come on,
think. Cariye Mihrimah. Have you ever heard of anyone by that name?'

‘I knew that the Chief Black Eunuch used to be called Little Nightingale. But Cariye Mihrimah? No,' Annetta shook her head. ‘I've never heard of anyone called by that name.'

‘If we can find out who that person is, well, I think that's the key.'

‘The key?'

‘The key to everything. To finding out who poisoned the Chief Black Eunuch and who was really behind the death of Gulay Haseki,' Celia said, impatient now. ‘The key to why the sugar ship – a subtlety in the shape of my father's boat, with my name on it – has somehow got mixed up in this. It's all connected, I'm sure that's what the Haseki was trying to tell me.'

‘But they've found out who did it, it was her all along!' Annetta was almost wailing now. ‘What about the horoscope that Hanza found?'

‘I've never believed that, have you? Does anyone? Anyone could have planted it. You remember the day we saw Esperanza Malchi deliver something to her apartment? Someone took it in, but I never saw who: did you? I think Gulay knew something like that was going to happen. She said so in as many words to me. She certainly knew she had enemies. Enemies dangerous enough to make her want to give up being Haseki.'

‘Oh, so that's what she told you, is it?' Annetta gave Celia a withering look. ‘Aren't you forgetting something? Gulay had a
son
. He could be the next Sultan, which means she would have been the next Valide. The stakes don't get higher than that. When the present Sultan came to the throne, all nineteen of his brothers were murdered – don't you remember Cariye Lala's stories? And Gulay knew that unless she won, that's what would have happened to her son too. It still could,' she added grimly.

‘I'm not denying that. But I still think it was part of her plan.'

‘Has it ever occurred to you that that might have been what she wanted you to think? That she had her own reasons for telling you about the Nightingales?' Annetta shivered, and pulled the coverlet up around her shoulders. ‘The more I hear about all this the less I like it.'

‘You're wrong,' Celia said. ‘You've got to trust me on this. And now – please – will you tell me exactly what you saw?'

‘Oh, very well, I'll tell you.' Annetta sighed, closing her eyes.

‘That night – the same night that you were taken to the Sultan for the first time – I couldn't sleep,' she began. ‘I kept thinking about you. Wondering if you were – safe. Wondering,' Annetta gave a ghost of a smile, ‘what kind of tricks Cariye Lala had up her sleeve, and whether she was worth the money we paid her.' Annetta's eyelids flickered. ‘So much seemed to depend on it, and I knew it might be our only chance to succeed. Scores of girls come through here, and most of them are never even looked at. But you, Celia, you are beautiful and gentle, and you carry yourself like a noblewoman. I knew you would be noticed. Whereas me, well, look at me,' she laughed, ‘just a scrawny thing with black hair, that's what the nuns always used to say. No one – far less the Sultan – was ever going to look at me. But I have wits, good sharp wits, and between the two of us – well, two is better than one.

‘Anyway that night, as I told you, I couldn't sleep. If you remember, there were very few of us here that night. Apart from the novices, most of the women were still at the Valide's summer palace and were not due to return until the following day. I came down to the bathhouse for some water. It was so quiet. I remember seeing my own shadow in the moonlight and thinking that this was what it must be like to be a ghost.

‘It was then that I heard a noise – the murmur of voices speaking very quietly to one another – coming from somewhere inside the Valide's quarters. I wondered if it had something to do with you, so I went over to the door which connects the Courtyard of the Cariyes with her antechambers, so that I could listen better. Then, just as I got there, the door opened violently, and out came Cariye Lala. She was carrying something in her hands: the sugar ship. We both nearly jumped out of our skins – I think it was as much as we could do to stop ourselves from screaming out loud – and for one horrible moment I thought that she was going to send me to the Harem Stewardess, but instead she simply handed me the sugar ship and said that she had been told to take it to the Chief Black Eunuch's room, but that I would do just as well.'

‘So that's how it got there?
You
took it! My God, Annetta—' Celia stared at her friend. ‘So now there are two people who know where you were that night?'

‘Oh, Cariye Lala is harmless enough, everyone knows that.' Annetta clicked her tongue impatiently, ‘the question we have to ask is
who
sent
her?
'

‘Yes, yes, but one thing at a time.' Celia ran her fingers across her eyes feverishly. ‘First tell me what happened when you reached Hassan Aga's room?'

‘That's the strange thing, there was no one there,' Annetta said. ‘I put the ship down on a tray that had been set out next to his divan, but not before I'd had a good look at it. I'm so sorry, goose, I know I should have told you,' she looked at Celia and swallowed, ‘but anyway, after I'd put the subtlety down on the tray I wasn't sure what to do. It occurred to me that perhaps I should wait and tell Hassan Aga what I'd brought him, but no one came,' she glanced at Celia, ‘so I thought, here's my chance, I'll have a look around …'

‘You
what?
' Now it was Celia's turn to look horrified. ‘In Hassan Aga's room?'

‘Well, you're one to talk.' Lowering her voice, Annetta leant a little closer towards Celia. ‘And just listen to this, I did find something – or rather, I
heard
something. I heard the sound of a cat.'

‘A cat – what's so extraordinary about that? This place is full of cats.'

‘But the sound was coming from
inside
one of the walls. I listened and listened and eventually I traced the sound to behind the tiles on one of the walls, the one immediately opposite his divan. The sound of this poor cat became louder and louder, so I ran my hands up and down the tiles and eventually I found a sort of catch in the wall. I pulled at it, and straight away a whole section of the wall just sprang open before my eyes.'

‘A secret door! Another one!'

‘Precisely. And inside the door was a cupboard, quite a large one, easily big enough for someone, even a great fat eunuch, to hide inside. And there was the cat—'

‘Poor thing!'

‘But not just anyone's cat. Imagine! It was the Valide's great white cat, you know the one? With the creepy eyes?'

‘Of course I do,' Celia said in amazement, ‘but what on earth was Cat doing there?'

‘I'm coming to that. When I opened the door the cat shot out of the cupboard – he almost knocked me over he was in such a hurry to get
out – and I saw that at the back of the cupboard there was another door.'

‘I think I know what you're going to say—'

‘Exactly! Behind the second door there I found a secret staircase. Just like the one you found in the Haseki's apartment.'

‘So that's why you were so interested in the different entrances to her apartment. Do you think the two might be connected?'

‘Of course. That must be how Cat got in there, he must have found a way in through one of the other entranceways, and then got trapped. Anyway, I was still inside the cupboard when I heard the sound of voices coming into the room behind me.' Annetta looked at Celia uncomfortably. ‘What could I do? There was no time to get out. I just had time to close the cupboard door, with me inside it this time, before Hassan Aga came in.'

Celia stared at her.

‘I know, I know,' Annetta shrugged. ‘Don't look at me like that. It was stupid – but then again, maybe not so stupid as it sounds. The old rhinocerous wasn't alone. Oh no, he was with a girl, Cariye Lala's servant girl from the Valide's bathhouse. I could see them both quite clearly though a spy-hole in the back of the door.'

‘The girl with the braided hair? I remember her.' Celia said sharply. ‘She was helping me to prepare that night. I don't think I've seen her since then.'

‘That's because she's dead.'

‘Dead?' Celia echoed. ‘Her too?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘But how?'

‘That girl – that innocent-looking young girl – turned out to be the Chief Black Eunuch's very own
culo
.'

‘Impossible!'

At the sight of Celia's horrified face, Annetta gave a wry laugh. ‘You think that because these eunuchs are gelded man and they can't actually fornicate for real,' Annetta made an eloquent gesture with the fingers of one hand, ‘that they have no affections, no desires? Or—' she cocked her head to one side, ‘that they cannot satisfy a woman in other ways? Well, if what I saw that night is anything to go by, it is quite to the contrary. She wrinkled up her nose in disgust. ‘But of all the unnatural, beastly acts I ever saw—'

‘You didn't—'

‘Well,' Annetta gave a nonchalant shrug, ‘I've told you before, one brothel is very much like another. But it wasn't so much what he did to her, or made her do to him, as all that fawning and cooing and cajoling.
Faugh
!' she shuddered. ‘It was enough to make me sick. Do you know, I think he might really have felt something for her, the poor deluded fool. It was all, “my little faun”, and “my little flower; here, strip for me, my little song thrush, let me see you naked, let me kiss your little feet, let me suck your little nipples, so soft, so sweet, like tender pink tulips.”' Annetta crinkled up her face, imitating the eunuch's curious cracked falsetto voice. ‘All that baby talk,
ugh
! That monstrous grizzled old hippopotamus nuzzling all over her, I wanted to burst out of the cupboard right there and then, I tell you, and slap his fat ugly face.'

Celia, still staring at her mutely, looked faint at the thought.

‘But as you can see, I didn't.'

‘Clearly.'

‘And then I saw her reach out and take something from the sugar ship.'

‘Snap off a piece of the sugar, you mean?'

‘No.' Annetta was frowning. ‘I think that there must have been something already hidden inside the ship. In fact, I'm sure of it. I hadn't seen it myself, because it was dark, and in any case I wasn't looking for anything; but she must have known it would be there, because she went straight for it, and put whatever it was in her mouth.'

‘And he didn't see her doing it?'

‘No. He had turned to get a shawl to put round her shoulders. She waited until his back was turned.'

‘And then what?'

‘When he was sure she was quite comfortable – and he seemed to
want
to wait on her – imagine it, the Chief Black Eunuch, as if he were a servant girl! Then he tried to kiss her mouth. She didn't want him to, at first. I saw her turn away from him, but he insisted. He pushed her down on to the divan, pinning her underneath him so she couldn't move. I could hear – oh it was too disgusting! – the sound of his wet lips, sort of sucking at her, chewing at her mouth, licking her all over her face like a dog.' Annetta gave a disgusted
shudder. ‘I couldn't bear to watch any more. So I just sat inside the cupboard with my eyes closed. It wasn't long afterwards that I realised that something was wrong. It was the girl who cried out first – a cry of pain. And I thought, well, I thought he must have done something to her; you know, actually violated her in some way, I don't know how – with his fingers, perhaps, or even a false manhood – oh, believe me,' she said, catching sight of Celia's horrified face, ‘I've seen worse than that. But then he cried out too. And then I heard other sounds – and smelt … oh my God, you can't imagine what it was like.' Annetta's face was white. ‘Vomit everywhere, their own soil, the stench of it! But then it was all over. The girl was dead within a matter of minutes.'

‘So you think she put poison in her mouth,' Celia said slowly, ‘and when he kissed her, I suppose it poisoned him, too.'

‘No, no.' Annetta was vehement. ‘I'll wager a thousand ducats or more that she had no idea she had taken poison, far less intended to poison the eunuch. She probably thought it was some kind of love potion …'

‘Well, she certainly had access to all sorts of things. Cariye Lala has a whole apothecary shop inside that special box of hers. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for her to have taken something from there when no one was looking.'

‘But then why go to all the trouble of hiding it inside the sugar ship? In any case, she couldn't possibly have known that I was going to bring it in and put it on that tray … oh God!' Annetta put her head in her hands. ‘All this is making my head spin. No, no, it's all wrong. Besides, why would she bite the hand that was going to feed her? To be the Chief Black Eunuch's lover – revolting though that sounds to you and me – would have given that girl more power than she can ever have dreamt possible. Almost as much power as the Haseki herself. No, someone else was using her, I'm sure she couldn't have known what she was really doing. Someone else was behind it all, I'm sure of it.'

‘Someone who knew that she was going to visit him that night.'

‘Perhaps even someone who had sent her there on purpose, who knows?' Annetta shrugged. ‘But wait until I tell you what happened next.

‘I waited a long, long time – or so it seemed to me – inside that cupboard.' Annetta swallowed nervously at the recollection. ‘I was so
frightened, you can't imagine it, goose, almost too terrified to move. If anyone had found me there, I knew they would surely think I had had something to do with it. Eventually, after what felt like hours, I plucked up the courage to leave. I was so sure by then both of them must be dead. I opened the door and had just begun to pick my way across the room when I heard more voices, more people coming. So back I went – what else could I do? – back into that blessed cupboard again. And who should come in but the Valide herself, with Gulbahar attending her, and Esperanza Malchi.'