Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind
.

T. S. Eliot â
Four Quartets

Prologue
Oxford: the present day

The parchment, when Elizabeth found it, was the amber colour of old tea, frail as leaf mould.

A small folio sheet, it had been folded carefully three ways so that it fitted perfectly between the pages of the book. Along one of the folded sides was a watermark. Elizabeth looked back at the catalogue entry quickly â
opus astronomicus quaorum prima de sphaera planetarium
â and then at the folded sheet again.

I've found it.

Her throat felt tight. For a moment she sat quite still. The librarian had his back to her, was bending down over a trolley of books. She looked up at the clock on the wall opposite: five minutes to seven.

She had five minutes till the library closed, perhaps less. The bell had already rung, and most of the other readers were beginning to pack their things away. But still Elizabeth could not bring herself to unfold the paper. Instead she picked up the book and, holding it carefully ajar, the spine of the book cradled in her cupped hands, she raised it to her face. Carefully, very carefully now, she told herself.

Then, with both eyes closed, the sniff of a tentative cat. And at once: snuff and old dust, a faint whiff of camphor. And then the sea, definitely the sea. And something else, what was it? She breathed in again, very gently this time.

Roses. Sadness.

Elizabeth put the book down, her hands trembling.

Chapter 1
Constantinople, 31 August 1599
Night

âAre they dead?'

âThe girl, yes.'

A slim figure, two thin gold chains just visible on delicate ankles, lay sprawled face down amongst the cushions on the floor.

âThe other?'

The Valide Sultan's
kira
, the Jewess Esperanza Malchi, brought her lantern a little closer to the face of the second body, spreadeagled clumsily on the divan. From the pocket in her robe she brought out a small jewelled mirror and held it close to the nostrils. An almost imperceptible film clouded the surface of the glass. âNo, Majesty. Not yet.'

In the shadows by the doorway to the little bedchamber, Safiye, the Valide Sultan, the mother of God's Shadow Upon Earth, drew her veil a little closer round her shoulders, shivering despite the closeness of the night. On her finger an emerald the size of a pigeon's egg, briefly catching the light from Esperanza's lantern, glittered like a cat's eye. âBut it cannot be long. What do you think?'

âIt won't be long, Majesty. Shall I send for the physician?'

âNo!' the reply was sharp. âNo physician. Not yet.'

They turned towards the dying figure on the divan, a massive mound of soft black flesh. On the floor beside the divan was an upturned tray, its contents spewed across the floor. Thin stains of some dark liquid, food or vomit, glimmered like spiders' threads amongst the cushions. Another thin black stain trickled from one ear.

âPoison?'

âYes, Majesty.' Esperanza gave a curt nod. âLook â¦' she bent down and picked something up from amongst the broken porcelain.

âWhat?'

âI'm not sure. A child's toy, I think â¦ a ship.'

âIt doesn't look like a toy.'

Esperanza peered at the object in her hands more closely, and as she did so a piece came away in her fingers. âNo, not a toy,' she said, consideringly. âA sweetmeat, made of sugar.' She made as if to bite off a piece.

âDon't taste it
!' Safiye almost knocked the sugar toy from her hand. âI'll take it, Esperanza. Give it to me â¦'

Behind the divan was an open window which gave on to a green and white tiled corridor where jasmine grew in pots. In the cloistered sweetness of the night, suddenly, there was a noise.

âQuick, the lamp.'

Esperanza damped down her lantern. For a few moments the women stood without moving.

âA cat, Majesty.' Safiye's handmaid, veiled like her mistress so that Esperanza could not see her face, now spoke softly from the darkness behind them.

âWhat time is it, Gulbahar?'

âJust a few hours till daybreak, Majesty.'

âSo soon?'

Outside the window a sliver of night sky was visible in the space above the corridor's high walls. Now the clouds parted and a flood of moonlight, brighter by far than Esperanza's lantern, filled the room. On the walls of the little bedchamber the tiles seemed to shiver and tremble, silver-blue and silver-green, like water in a moon-viewing pool. Motionless beneath them the body, naked except for the thinnest wrapping of white muslin around the loins, was illuminated too. Safiye could now make out its contours. It was a woman's body, soft and almost hairless: the voluptuously naked hips, pendulous breasts, nipples the colour of molasses. A monumental sculpture of flesh. The skin, by day so shiny and black, now had a dusty matt look to it, as if the poison had sucked out all its light. And at the corners of the lips, which fanned out hideously fat and red as hibiscus flowers, bubbled flecks of foam.

âMajestyâ¦' The Jewess's eyes flickered nervously towards Safiye. âTell us what to do, Majesty,' she urged.

But Safiye seemed not to hear her. She took a step forwards into the room. âLittle Nightingale, my old friend â¦' The words were no more than a whisper.

The heavy thighs were splayed out on the cushions, as unmindful of modesty as a woman in childbirth. The cat, which had been nosing around the fallen debris on the floor, now sprang up on to the divan. The movement caused some of the thin muslin covering to come awry, exposing the parts beneath. Esperanza made as if to cover them again, but the Valide Sultan, with a quick movement of her hand, stayed her. âNo. Let me look. I want to look.'

She took another step into the room. From her handmaid Gulbahar came a small muffled sound, an almost imperceptible sigh. Like the rest of the body, the groin was completely hairless. Between the plumpness of the thighs, where the parts should have been, there was nothing. In their place was an empty space: a single angry scar, sinewed and scorched as if by a burn, where a single slice of the knife had once, in some unimaginably far-distant moment of his unimaginably long life, sliced off the penis and testicles of Hassan Aga, chief of the Valide Sultan's black eunuchs.

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