Palewski looked at him intently. “My dear fellow, this won’t do. Is Marta awake?”
“She made the tea.”
“I was afraid it might be too early.” He flung back the coverlet and went to the door.
“Marta!”
Yashim heard Marta hurrying up the stairs.
“Marta, my dear. Our friend Yashim is feeling a little out of sorts and wants a capital breakfast to set him up. Coffee, eggs, bread. Can we manage? There’s a blueberry jam that’s just arrived from the village, we’ll have some of that. Cheese, olives. What else? Perhaps some of the-ah-diplomatic sausage, too. Lay it out in the salon, will you? Looks like a lovely day, we can eat at the window. Bit of fruit? Thank you, Marta, you’re splendid.”
He turned to his friend and rubbed his hands vigorously. “No more misery, Yashim. The girl’s gone-Lefevre’s girl, I mean-and she’s done the best thing. Can’t have her moping around in a foreign city with no one to talk to but you. France, that’s the place for her. Just let me pull on a few things, and I’ll be down in a moment.”
Yashim was having coffee in the sitting room when Palewski rejoined him.
“She doesn’t know that her husband was Meyer,” Yashim said. “But yesterday she met Millingen.”
He told Palewski what Amelie had said.
“And she was holding something back?” Palewski frowned. “I don’t get it, Yash.”
Yashim sighed. “Neither do I,” he admitted.
99
Supported by a sturdy slave girl on either arm, the valide descended from the litter in the great hall of the sultan’s palace at Besiktas. At the foot of the steps she graciously inclined her head to acknowledge the attendance of the sultan’s highest household officer, the chief Black Eunuch.
He stood at the head of a party of ladies, all dressed in the latest French fashion, ranged with their parasols for a stroll through the palace gardens; many of them craned their heads to see the valide better. She smiled at them, nodding.
“Ibrahim Aga,” she said. “Mesdames.”
The sultan’s concubines returned a murmured greeting. The chief Black Eunuch bowed deeply. “Valide.”
“I see you are filling out, Ibrahim. It’s most becoming.”
Ibrahim Aga smiled uncertainly. “Thank you, Valide. May I present the ladies?”
He escorted her down the line. The girls curtseyed, modestly lowering their eyes until the valide had passed. Now and then she put up a pale hand to straighten a lace jabot or to pinch a cheek, and for every girl she had a flattering word or two. “What lovely hair! Very pretty. A little less rouge, mademoiselle, perhaps. Your smile is charming,” and so on. The ladies blushed and smiled.
At the end she turned to the kislar aga. “They are a credit to you, Ibrahim. They dress well, and seem altogether charming. I am delighted to see them taking advantage of the garden. We did not always have such a luxury in my day.”
“Yes, Valide. We walk out every morning.”
The valide nodded and sighed.
“They need exercise, Ibrahim. Take me to the governess.”
The ladies bobbed politely as she began climbing the stairs. How very trivial they looked, the valide reflected, in their French gowns and corsets, their shawls and silk pumps: no more consequential than a tray of Belgian chocolates. A manufactory: yes. In her day, at Topkapi, how she and the others had prided themselves on their style-the way they wore color, the arrangement of their hair, the artful collage of shawls and pelisses, silks and furs. Then they had paraded like a pride of she-tigers, jewels ablaze, loose-limbed and glorying in their fine skin and perfect teeth! Not like these girls, these fashion plates, these trained canaries in their cage.
It was such a shame!
She paused at the top of the wide stairs, leaning on the rail. How very dead this palace was, how still. The French paintings hung unexamined on the stairs, like the epitaphs of soldiers who had died and were not remembered. Empty, straight-backed English chairs were ranged against the walls.
At the top of the stairs the chief governess was waiting to make her obeisance. Tall and plump, wearing traditional harem dress, she carried a long staff tipped in silver; a bunch of keys at her belt clanked softly as she bowed. At her signal, several girls stepped forward to help the valide out of her satin coat and conducted her to a sunlit room overlooking the sparkling water of the Bosphorus. She felt the breeze on her face. Sinking onto a gilded sofa she let the girls gently arrange her hair and smooth the creases in the folds of her robes. One girl plumped the pillows at the valide’s back; another fetched a stool for her feet.
“May we humbly offer a cooling sherbet, Valide Sultan?” The governess indicated a tray.
The valide settled back against the cushions and sighed. Always the same tender rituals, the same half-concealed glances of affection and respect: she should have made her visit sooner.
She took a sip of sherbet and returned the glass. Then she glanced at the governess and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
The imperial governess stepped up and took her place at the valide’s side, standing motionless with folded arms and lowered eyes. The sultan’s first wife, mother of the crown prince and the future Valide Sultan, glided into the room like a swan. With an elegant bow, she approached her imperial mother-in-law and took the hem of her robe in one hand. In a signal of respect and obedience, she made a motion of touching the hem with her lips and putting it to her forehead.
“How is Mecid, our imperial grandson, daughter?”
“He is praying for your good health, Valide.”
The remaining three Kadinefendis entered softly to greet their mother-in-law, one by one bowing and bringing her hem to their lips. They moved with graceful calm, silent and unhurried, and stood back to attention. The valide spoke to them kindly, and they blushed and smiled. Looking at their beautiful faces, their pretty smiles, she felt a lump rising to her throat.
Two girls helped her to her feet. The Kadinefendis bowed demurely, and the valide put her hand on the aga’s arm.
“ Allons,” she said. She felt her heart fluttering in her breast.
Doors opened silently at the approach of the odd couple, the Black Eunuch with the tiny white woman hanging from his arm, taking slow, careful steps across the polished parquet. At monotonous intervals, the valide looked down through thickly curtained windows onto the Bosphorus below-a scene of activity that was at once vigorous, silenced, and remote. At last the valide entered the sultan’s bedroom.
The shutters were half drawn against the glare of the sun, and for a few moments the valide paused on the threshold, peering around. She moved slowly across to the bed. The aga fetched a chair, and as she sat down she groped on the counterpane for her son’s hand.
She found it, bony and cold: for a moment her heart skipped a beat, but then she felt the faint returning squeeze of his fingers, and saw the pillows twitch as he turned his head.
For a long time neither of them said a word.
“My little lion,” the valide said softly at long last, and with her other hand she bent forward and traced her fingers across his brow, to brush aside a lock of hair.
“Mother.”
She squeezed his hand. “Courage, always,” she whispered. It should never be like this, she thought; the old bring no comfort to the dying.
A mother cannot bury her own son.
The sultan’s eyes slid away from hers. “He does not come.”
The valide said nothing. The crown prince was young and yet afraid of death.
The sultan shifted slightly under the bedclothes. “There is much that he cannot understand, Valide.”
He breathed with difficulty, and speaking was a struggle, but he spoke for several minutes, still holding his mother’s hand, unburdening his mind.
The valide heard him out in silence.