Jenny White - The Sultan's seal

I have made some interesting discoveries. I hasten to assure you that I was not pushing myself forward, but that the information fell into my hands much like a ripe apple falls from the tree into the apron of someone standing, quite by chance, beneath it.

Yesterday I visited the grand vizier’s wife, Asma Sultan. Her father was Sultan Abdulaziz, who was deposed in 1876 and then committed suicide. The sultan’s ministers forced him to abdicate because they wanted a constitution and because he was bankrupting the empire with his extravagances. Mother told me he kept a thousand women in his harems and had over five thousand courtiers and servants. He built two new palaces just to house them. Asma Sultan’s mother was one of his concubines. Mother met her once, before the coup. She said she was tiny, with a pale cameo of a face. She thought her beautiful and romantic.

At that time, Asma Sultan was already married, so she escaped the fate of her mother and the other women in the sultan’s harem after he killed himself-banishment to the old, crumbling Topkapi Palace. Asma Sultan’s husband was made grand vizier in the new sultan’s government, so she is now very powerful. I don’t know what became of her mother. I hesitated to ask in case the answer was unwelcome. Understandably, she is quite bitter about the coup against her father. Apparently, her husband was involved, and she witnessed her father’s suicide. Isn’t that dreadful? I feel very sorry for her. Despite all her wealth and power, she is a sad woman.

She seemed quite concerned to wish Father well, as if she knew about his condition. For obvious reasons, we’ve tried hard to keep it from becoming public knowledge. Still, she did ask me to tell him that she-I think she meant the empire-continues to rely on him, so perhaps I misinterpreted her words and she was not referring to Father’s illness at all. I didn’t tell Father. If he thinks word has gotten about, it would just make him more anxious.

I did learn something that might be of interest to Kamil. Asma Sultan implied that her nephew, Ziya, was killed on a trip to Paris by someone from the palace. This happened right around the time that Hannah also was killed. I’ve since learned that Ziya’s fiancée, Shukriye, was in and out of the harem where Hannah worked, and that Shukriye too disappeared from the city soon after. She was married to someone in Erzurum, on the other side of the country. So many simultaneous disappearances and deaths of people who knew one another surely can’t be coincidence? In any case, Shukriye is returning soon to visit her ill father. Being a man, Kamil won’t be able to approach her, so I’ll pay her a visit and see what I can learn about Hannah.

Bernie sends his best. He requested that I add a note to Richard. Bernie wants to know whether he remembers the Chinese poem about a brush and a bowstring (I hope I’ve remembered that correctly), and to tell Richard that he has recently come across the poem again in a surprising place.

Well, with that mysterious flourish, I will end this missive. As always, I send my love to Richard and the boys. Don’t let them forget me.

Your loving sister,

Sybil

On a September day in the Rumi year 1294, or 1878 by your reckoning, I accompanied Hamza as he led his horse toward the main road. Slick yellow leaves plastered the ground. The forest exhaled a dusty, pungent odor of rain. It was one month since I had found the woman in the pond. Madam Élise was gone and Ismail Dayi was away, so Hamza had come to visit openly. He wanted to see Mama. She served us tea in the reception room, pleased at seeing him after all this time.

“Mama so enjoyed your visit, Hamza. I haven’t seen her this lively in a long time. It makes me happy to see her smile; she doesn’t very often. I wish you would come more often.”

“Your mother has always been very good to me.”

We reached the gate.

“It has always surprised me that your father took a kuma,” he said without looking at me, “given his views.”

“His views?”

“He’s a modernist, Jaanan. A man who believes, as many of us do, that the empire will survive only if we learn the secrets of Europe’s strength. Some think it’s enough to copy their technology. But there’s more to it than that. If we are ever to be respected as a great power again, we have to join the civilized world. That means we must change the way we think and live.”

He turned to face me. “Polygamy has no place in this new world.”

“Who will decide what’s allowed in this new world of yours?” I asked with an asperity that surprised me.

“Scientists, statesmen, writers. There are more of us than you might imagine, Jaanan. Some of us have gone to Paris, but we have many supporters here as well.” His voice was low and rapid. “We publish a journal, Hurriyet. Perhaps you’ve seen it in your uncle’s library. I know he collects reformist journals, although I don’t know whether he reads them. You should read the journals, Jaanan. We are going to rip the empire up by its rotten roots and plant it in the clean soil of science and rational thinking.”

I felt rather alarmed at the extent of what he was proposing. There was nothing rotten here that needed fixing. Science and rational thinking rattled dry as bones in a cup.

But I did not say any of these things. To please him, I would look at the journals later.

Hamza smiled down at me, and tugged gently at a curl that rested on my shoulder beneath the loose drape of gauze.

“I won’t be able to come see you for a while, princess.” The soft, stretched vowels and sibilant tail of the French word wound themselves about me and muffled his unwelcome news in a haze of pleasure. “I’ll be traveling.”

“For how long? Where are you going?” I asked plaintively.

He shook his head. “I can’t say. I have to be careful. The sultan has suspended parliament. He’s gambled away a third of the empire to the Russians. If not for the British, we would have lost Istanbul and much more. And just when we need Europe most, he’s threatening it with a worldwide Muslim revolt that he claims as caliph he could lead. It’s time for us to act. We’re Turks, Jaanan. Your ancestors and mine rode the steppes of Asia, women and men together. There’s no need for religion in a Turkish empire. Religion is the enemy of civilization.” He cupped my chin in his hand and added softly, “But not everyone wants change. I don’t want to get you or your family into trouble, so I can’t come here anymore.”

“It’s also your family.”

I felt angry at Hamza and his politics that took him away from me. I didn’t think my evenings studying Islamic texts with Ismail dayi were uncivilized. I took a step backward in protest. Hamza reached out his hand and gripped my arm so tightly that it hurt.

“Hamza!” I yelped in protest, and pulled away, but he drew me over so that his head was next to mine.

He slid an object into the shawl tied around my waist, his hands leaving a burning trail, and whispered, “Your eyes are as luminous as this sea glass.”

Then he dropped my arm and, without another word, mounted his horse and rode away.

I reached into the folds of silk and extracted a smooth green stone that seemed to glow from within. It was encased in gold filigree, hanging from a slender chain.

Could this beautiful object really be the mundane shard of a medicine bottle after years of being battered by the sea and scoured by sand? I felt then that there was a meaning to be grasped, a parable of some kind, but it eluded me.

Dearest Maitlin,

Father has had one of his spells again. I think Mary Dixon’s murder has upset him. He cannot bear to be reminded of Mother’s death, of any death. He sleeps in the library and takes all his meals there. I will see to it that his mind remains untroubled by such things in the future. Otherwise, he is as dutiful as ever, seeing to the interminable paperwork himself. He recently let go of his secretary because he said he wasn’t to be trusted. Perhaps Father is right, since after his dismissal, the man remained in Stamboul and has set himself up as an agent of trade instead of booking return passage to England. That may sound melodramatic in Essex, but it is true that, here, one must always be on guard against spies in the pay of the sultan or other foreign interests, even British ones. I still worry about Asma Sultan’s concern for Father’s welfare. How many people know about his decline?