The Aviary Gate (44 page)

On the corner there was a ruined house, its doorway nailed up with boards. Marius stopped and pulled her to him suddenly, pressing her up into the niche of the doorway.

His lips hovered just over hers. ‘Now can I kiss you?'

He rocked her to him, pulling her by the lapels of her coat.

No
! that voice inside her head was still screaming at her, but it was no use. She could feel his breath against her throat, in her hair. With a sigh her eyes closed, her neck and throat arched towards him. He came to find me, was all she could think. How often have I dreamt of this? There was a time when I would have sold my soul for this. But when she kissed him, his tongue felt cold against her lips.

‘Christ, it's freezing here.' He pulled away from her at last. ‘Can we go somewhere?'

‘Yes, I know somewhere.'

She took him to her favourite café on Istiklal Caddesi. It was dark, and so cold Elizabeth was sure she could smell snow in the air. She walked ahead now: up the street selling musical instruments, past the graveyard of the dervish
tekke
, their turbaned headstones sliced with moonlight.

‘Where are we exactly?' Marius followed her up the narrow streets.

‘We are in Beyoğlu; in the old days it was known as Pera, the area where the foreigners always lived.'

She took a short cut through one of the narrow
pasajs
. It opened up into a kind of half-square, where old men were drinking tea and playing dominoes by the light of a 1930s street lamp. They looked up when they saw Elizabeth. Marius hesitated behind her.

‘Are you sure it's safe?'

‘Safe?' With a laugh, Elizabeth turned to him with surprise. Was it her imagination, or did he look different all of a sudden? Smaller. Less substantial. ‘I suppose it depends what you mean by safe.'

Inside the café it was warm, lit with brass lamps like a Viennese coffee house. The walls were lined with glass and mahogany panelling. Elizabeth ordered tea and cakes. When the waitress had gone, she saw Marius looking at her.

‘You look different,' he said at last. No longer amorous; reflective, rather. ‘You look beautiful, Elizabeth. Really beautiful.' She had the strange sensation that he was looking at her for the first time.

‘Thank you,' she answered simply.

‘No really, I mean it.'

Usually Elizabeth would rush in to fill the silence with words; but this time, she thought, she would let him speak first.

‘You didn't reply to my texts,' he said after a while.

‘No.'

Another silence. He picked up one of the teaspoons on the table and started to drum it against his hand. My God, Elizabeth thought, it can't be. Marius is nervous!

‘I've missed you, baby.'

‘Have you?'

Had he? He sounded as if he might actually mean it.

‘Yes, I have.'

How odd, was all she could think; how very odd to be sitting here with Marius. She was having a conversation, but it seemed to have nothing to do with her. Now that the initial shock of seeing him had worn off, she found she could look at him with composure. Good-looking, unshaven: the sleazy handsomeness of a fairground attendant.

‘What do you want, Marius?' Mildly curious. ‘What happened to her? The other girl, I mean, the blonde.' But even this thought, this
once excoriating thought, no longer seemed to have any power over her.

‘Oh, her … she meant nothing.'

‘No. No, I don't suppose she did.' Elizabeth put her teacup down. Her hand was quite steady. ‘So, why
are
you here?' She heard herself with amazement.

‘I've come to take you back. Come to take you back with me.'

He trifles with your heart
.

Elizabeth heard the words quite clearly. She looked round, half expecting to see someone sitting on the bench next to her. Where did they come from, those words? Once, back in Oxford, she had thought she had heard Eve say them; and then Haddba. But this time there was no one there.

Instead, sitting on the other side of the café, she caught sight of a young woman in a navy coat, long dark hair falling over one shoulder. Elizabeth was struck by how serene the young woman looked and, in the very same instant, saw that it was her own reflection.

‘Why are you laughing?' Marius said. ‘I said I've come to take you home.' He repeated the words as if he thought she could not have heard him.

‘You mean you've come to rescue me?'

‘You could put it like that.' He seemed puzzled. ‘I don't see why it's so very funny.'

‘I'm sorry,' Elizabeth wiped her eyes, ‘you're quite right, it's not funny. It's … well, sort of sad really.'

In her handbag she heard her phone buzz with a new message. She looked at the screen quickly, and then without saying anything put it back into her bag.

There was another short silence.

‘You've met someone,' Marius said at last.

When Elizabeth looked at him again it was with a strange vertiginous sensation, as if she were falling, falling, not downwards, but somehow upwards.

‘Yes, I have, as you put it, met someone.' She looked at him with her head slightly to one side.

‘But that's not it.'

‘Not it?'

‘That's not why I'm not coming back with you.'

She stood up, and then, leaning over, kissed him lightly on the cheek. He watched her collect her things together.

‘I hope you know what you're doing, Elizabeth,' he called after her. ‘Will you be safe?'

‘Will I be safe?' she stopped at the door. ‘No, it's better than that. Much, much better.' She turned to him: she was walking on air. ‘I'll be free.'

The two old women let Celia cry. Between them somehow they pulled her out of the courtyard and into the bathhouse, pushing her down behind one of the marble basins, shielding her from the eyes of the other women and harem officials who occasionally passed across the courtyard on their daily round. They said nothing, but took it in turns to stroke her hair, and made strange little clicking noises at her between their teeth.

Eventually Celia had no more tears left to cry. She sat on the marble floor between the two basins and allowed the women to dry her face, and to press cold cloths over her swollen eyes. Her breathing returned to normal, but instead a feeling of fatigue so overwhelming came over her now that she could have lain down on the cold marble floor and slept.

‘But I can't stay,' she said, more to herself than to either of them. And in place of fatigue, a creeping sensation of dread came over her at the thought of what she still had to do.

She looked around her, at the fluted marble basins with their golden taps shaped like dolphins, and tried to collect her thoughts. The last time she had been in here to bathe was with Annetta and the Valide's other handmaidens. There had been a conversation, what was it about?

Celia looked at the two old women again, and as she did so a feeling of disquiet began to come over her. She took Cariye Tusa by the hand.

‘
Cariye
…' Celia said, ‘how old are you?'

‘I don't know, Kaya Kadin,' the old woman shrugged, ‘just old,' she said simply.

A thought – or was it a memory? – was seeping slowly into Celia's mind.

‘Do you remember – the old Sultan?'

‘Of course we do.'

‘We were here before anyone,' her sister said, nodding and smiling with pride. ‘The others were all sent to the Palace of Tears, but not us. We served the Harem Stewardess, you see, Janfreda Khatun.'

That name,
Janfreda Khatun
. A memory then. Definitely a memory.

‘That's right, everyone left. Everyone. Even the little princes. All nineteen of them. Dead, all dead. How we cried!'

Where had she heard those words before? Celia's heart skipped a beat. And those eyes – not so blue, perhaps, but somehow … milky. Where had she seen those eyes before?

‘Then you, who are such senior ladies here,' she smiled at them encouragingly, ‘perhaps you can help me find someone.' In an effort to keep her voice steady, Celia spoke slowly. Her mouth was dry. ‘Will you help me – do you know – Cariye Mihrimah?'

Cariye Tusa shook her head. ‘Oh, no, she's gone, long ago. Didn't you know?'

‘What are you saying, sister?' Cariye Tata's blind eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘I hear her all the time.'

Cariye Tusa turned to her. ‘You hear her, sister?' she seemed astonished. ‘You never told me.'

‘You never asked.' Cariye Tata's face was as innocent as a child's. ‘She came back, right here to the bathhouse.'

‘Are you sure?' Celia felt tears start in her eyes. ‘You're sure it's Cariye Mihrimah?'

‘Oh, they don't call her that any more,
kadin
. They've given her her old name back, I don't know why. They call her Lily, or at least that's what Hassan Aga calls her. Lily. Such a pretty name. Only the rest of us don't call her that, we call her Lala.' The old woman gave Celia a radiant smile. ‘So that's what we must all call her now, if you please. Cariye Lala.'

Celia ran to the Valide's Courtyard where she found the Haseki's old apartment exactly as she had left it the night before. On the floor lay
the broken cup, the single beaded slipper, discarded as before. There was the doorway at the back of the cupboard, and the set of tiny stairs leading to the hidden corridor. At the top she found the second doorway. Quickly she made her way through it into the passageway, inching her way along, past the fork in the way, past the spy-hole into the Valide's apartment, and finally, out of the cupboard door and into Handan's room.

As before it was very warm and close in the room. Despite the richness of the furnishings, the brocades and embroidered hangings, the fur-lined robes hanging from their pegs on the wall, Celia was struck again by the room's unkempt air, the strange, almost feral, feel to it. In one corner was a sandalwood chest. On top of it was a bowl of dead flowers and a gold box encrusted with rock crystal and rubies, crammed with various pieces of jewellery – mostly diamonds and a magnificent aigrette made of an emerald as big as a rock – but even they had a dusty, tarnished look about them: the empty riches of the discarded concubine.

At the sound of her footsteps something in the bed stirred.

‘Handan Sultan!' Celia went over and knelt on the floor beside her. ‘Don't be afraid; it's me, Kaya.'

A sound, like a tiny sigh, came from the frail form beneath the coverlets.

‘Handan Sultan, I think I know who Cariye Mihrimah is,' she said, ‘but I need you to tell me if it's true.'

From beneath the jewel-like mask, Handan's kohl-lined eyes stared out at her. They were open, but so glassy that Celia almost doubted whether she was awake at all.

‘Handan! Please, can you hear me?' Celia spoke softly in her ear. She shook the skeletal shoulder and as she did so, the coverlet slipped from Handan's shoulder. A terrible smell, at once rank and sweet, like a nest of old mice, hit the back of Celia's throat so powerfully she almost gagged.

‘I don't think she can hear you,
kadin
.'

Celia span round so fast she almost knocked the brazier over.

‘But you mustn't worry,' said a gentle voice from behind her, ‘she's not quite awake, but not quite asleep either. Handan is doing what she does best. Dreaming. Lots and lots of beautiful dreams. Let's not disturb her, shall we?'

‘
You
! But we all thought you were—'

‘Dead?' Gulay Haseki stepped into the room. ‘Well, as you can see, I'm not,' she smiled. In one hand, she held the little jewelled slipper. ‘And look, I've found my shoe.' She gave one of her charming, merry laughs. ‘You poor child, you look as if you're about to faint! I'm so sorry if I gave you a fright. Do you want to touch me?' She put out her hand coaxingly. ‘Make sure I'm not a ghost?'

‘Oh, yes!' Celia rushed to take her hand and pressed it to her lips. ‘Oh thank God, thank God,' she kissed her fingers, pressed the palm of the Haseki's hand to her cheek. Her skin felt cool to Celia's hot face. ‘Oh, I thought they'd …' Tears filled Celia's eyes. ‘Oh, I thought …'

‘I know what you thought,' Gulay said. ‘I knew that they would try to accuse me. That unfortunate affair with the Chief Black Eunuch was too good an opportunity to pass up. The Valide had a horoscope made, which predicted Hassan Aga's death, and had it planted in my room. Fortunately, I found it, and had it switched, so when they opened it – that day in the Great Chamber, when we were all watching the tumblers – all they found was a recipe for making soap.' She gave a soft chuckle. ‘Imagine their faces. Imagine
her
face, the poor little fool.' She drew her hand away from Celia's eager embrace. ‘Rather clumsy of them, don't you think? The Valide must be slipping.'

‘So it was the Valide, all along.' Celia could hardly speak. ‘Oh, I knew it couldn't be you. And what about Hanza?'

‘Oh, don't worry about
her
,' Gulay gave one of her merry little laughs, ‘she's not coming back from the dead.'

Celia watched her move over to Handan's divan. When she walked it was with an exaggerated undulation of the hips. In the quiet room, the stiff brocade of her dress made a soft susurration. She sat down on the divan, and picked up Handan's hand, feeling her pulse between her fingers. The Haseki looked up at Celia thoughtfully, her head to one side. Her face, with its perfect proportions, was exactly as Celia remembered it: the creamy skin, the soft dark hair and eyes as blue as a winter sky. Diamonds glittered in her ears and had been stitched to her headdress, so many of them it looked as if she had been touched by hoar frost. ‘Hanza …' the Haseki said softly, almost to herself. ‘The little bitch was getting ideas above her station. You know that as well as I do.'