She pointed to a garden wall that made a kind of bulge which adjoined the synagogue. The black spires of three cypress trees showed above it and the summit of the gray wall itself was softened by snowy drifts of jasmine.
"Is this the ghetto of Constantinople?" Marianne asked, struck by the cheerless desolation of the houses.
"There are no ghettos in the Ottoman Empire," Bulut answered gently. "On the contrary, when the Jews were driven out of Spain by the Inquisition they found a welcome here where they could be free and even respected, for racial prejudice is a thing unknown to us, as it has always been. Black, yellow or brown, Arab or Jew, it is all one to us as long as they contribute to the prosperity of our empire. The Jews live where they will and gather of their own free will about their synagogues, of which there are now some forty in the city. The greatest number are to be found in the adjoining district, but this community is not to be despised."
"But even if they are not forced to live here, surely they must be very poor, if not actually in want?"
Bulut laughed. "Don't be taken in by the impoverished look of the houses hereabouts. They are very different inside, as you will see for yourself. The children of Israel are a prudent race, for although they get on well enough with us Turks they are like cat and dog with the rich Greeks of Phanar, who hate them because of their all too often successful rivalry in trade. For this reason they prefer to keep their wealth hidden away from prying eyes and not to provoke their enemies by the splendor of their homes."
Yet in spite of her companion's reassurances Marianne could not overcome a feeling of inexplicable discomfort and uneasiness. It might have been due to the two shadowy forms which, whether they were there or not, had now become discreetly invisible, or to the valley itself, which might have been charming in spite of its tumbledown hovels if it had not been built up against the forbidding walls of the Arsenal, scarcely more cheerful than a prison with the warlike figures of the janissaries mounting guard on the battlements, the lighted matches for their muskets in their hands. But there the Arsenal was, solid and menacing, like a dike built to stand between this wretched district and the sea. Even the little river vanished beneath its walls, as though it, too, were flowing into captivity through the low arched opening guarded with thick iron bars.
But when she tried to explain this gloomy impression of hers, remarking that it was sad to see the Nightingale River ending in a cage, her companion only laughed again.
"We aren't mad!" she exclaimed. "Of course we've sealed the valley off from the Golden Horn! None of our sultans wants to see another invader repeating Mehmet the Great's exploit."
And she described with pride how, in the spring of 1433, the Sultan Mehmet II, in his determination to reduce the city of Byzantium by sea as well as by land, had had his fleet carried over the hill of Pera with the aid of a slipway made of planks of wood greased with mutton fat and lard. Having been hauled up to the head of the valley by a system of rollers and pulleys, the ships had gone swooping down through Kassim Pasha and into the Golden Horn, to the terror of the besieged.
"We have been careful to take precautions," Bulut finished. "It never does to give one's enemies ideas."
In the meanwhile, the araba had come to a halt before a carved cedarwood door opening into a garden wall. Underneath a thick coat of dust could be seen a lot of rather primitive designs of flowers and leaves, above which hung a small bronze doorknocker which Bulut Hanum was already working with an impatient hand. The door was opened almost at once.
A servant girl in a saffron robe stood there bowing deeply. The many scents of the garden leaped to meet them, filling their nostrils as though they had each been handed a bouquet of flowers. The sharp tang of the cypress trees mingled with the sweetness of the jasmine, and the fragrance of fruiting orange trees with that of dying roses and clove pinks, and there were other, less easily identifiable scents.
It was a garden full of contrasts. The rampant jungle growth of the roses contrasted with the neat, well-ordered beds, marked out with box, which were the domain of the medicinal plants. Herbs both beneficent and deadly grew there thickly, around a semicircular pool into which a trickle of water splashed endlessly from between the worn jaws of an antique stone lion.
The maidservant, still bowing obsequiously, trotted before them toward the house which, although somewhat less dilapidated than its neighbors, forfeited all this slight advantage by an architecture so improbable that Marianne could not restrain a grimace of distaste. The thought of spending as much as twenty-four hours in this nightmare of wood and stone depressed her unutterably. It was made up of a weird juxtaposition of brick and carved wood, interspersed with panels of Brusa tiles decorated with fabulous monsters, the whole surmounted by an astonishing assortment of turrets, balconies and onion domes. Bulut Hanum, however, was evidently well accustomed to the oddness of it, for without abating one jot of the dignity due to a friend of the Valideh she directed her well-rounded person to a brassbound door beneath a flattened arch and passed inside.
Marianne followed her through a tiny entrance hall and found herself on the threshold of a large room, dimly lighted by a bronze lantern hung on long chains from the ceiling, from which came a number of little, flickering flames. Below it stood a tall woman who bowed as they entered but did not speak. Nor was there the smallest hint of obsequiousness in her bow. She bowed and that was all. Marianne stared at her in amazement.
Without quite knowing why, she had been expecting a short, fat, oily creature, not unlike the secondhand clothes dealers who were to be seen about the Temple in Paris. The woman who stood calmly and silently observing her could not have been more different.
Rebecca's face, framed in the gold-embroidered headdress worn by Jewish women, was the color of ivory and set in it was a pair of large, black and singularly penetrating eyes. A hooked nose and a mouth rather too heavy could not rob her of a degree of beauty which was derived chiefly from the very real intelligence of her expression.
Marianne's uneasiness increased as she took her seat automatically on the low divan that Rebecca waved her to. She felt a fluttering inside her that presaged the onset of an inexplicable sense of panic. She felt that she was threatened by some danger against which there was no possible defense and she forced herself to fight it while Bulut Hanum made the first move in the conversation, for it was surely ridiculous. What had she to fear from this quiet and all in all rather distinguished-looking woman, when she had come here prepared to submit to the dubious practices of some dirty, evil-smelling crone? Where was her courage and her will to be done with the intolerable burden within her?
But the more she tried to reason herself out of it, the more insistent grew her fear. There was a buzzing in her ears, preventing her from hearing what Bulut was saying, and a mist before her eyes, blurring the outlines of the shelves of books and of pots and bottles of every size and shape which alternated with the panels of stamped leather on the walls. She gripped her icy hands together as hard as she could to fight off the nausea that was creeping over her and at the same time, paradoxically, a wild urge to run away…
A firm, warm hand slipped something between her cold fingers and she sensed that it was a glass.
"You are sick," said a voice, and the deep musical tone of it surprised her, "but more than that, you are afraid. Drink and you will feel better. It is sage wine…"
Marianne put the cordial to her lips. It was sweet, strong and mild at once. She took a few cautious sips and then emptied the glass and handed it back with a grateful smile. Her surroundings had become clear again but so too, unfortunately, had Bulut's voice as she chattered on incessantly with expressions of sympathy and compassion for the French princess's obviously exhausted nerves.