Jenny White - The Sultan's seal

After this, the family moved permanently to his mother’s house. Kamil’s father came twice a week, bringing his documents and a small retinue of assistants. He settled himself to work at a table under the short, sturdy pine tree overlooking the roses and, beyond them, the strait. Kamil’s mother refused to let the servants pour her husband’s tea, but took the empty glass herself to the samovar steaming on a nearby table. She spilled the remnants in a copper bowl, washed the glass with hot water from the spigot at the samovar’s base, emptying this water too into the bowl. Then she carefully poured two fingers of the rust-black concentrate from a small china pot atop the steaming brass urn, topping it up with hot water. Holding the glass against the light, she carefully inspected the color of the tea, adjusting it with more tea concentrate or more water until the color was just right-a brilliant brownish red that she called rabbit’s blood. She brought the glass to her husband balanced on her smooth palm and bent to place it on the table before him.

Enraptured by this peaceful memory, Kamil drowses. His grasp on the book weakens and it slips from his hand. He is awakened by the clink of glass against glass. For a brief moment, in the late afternoon shadows on the patio, he thinks he sees his mother standing by the door. Her face hidden behind a wing of cloth, she is wearing Sybil’s dress. When she moves into the slanted sunlight, he sees it is Karanfil, the cook, bringing him tea.

“I’m like the cook on a Black Sea grain ship. The cook is set afloat in a small dinghy attached to the ship by a long rope, so that when he cooks over a fire, he doesn’t endanger the ship with its combustible cargo.”

Violet and I were walking in the garden. Over my shoulder, the sky smoldered orange behind the hill. Our leather slippers made delicate scuffing sounds on the paving stones as we approached the pavilion. The sky over the strait had been leached to ash.

“How do they get the food from him?”

“They wait until he has put out the fire, then pull him back in. But it’s dangerous. If there’s a storm or a fire, he is lost.”

“How do you know this?”

“Hamza told me.”

Violet said nothing, but I sensed her disapproval. She never liked Hamza and spied on us when he visited until I scolded her for it.

I had not heard from Hamza since the dinner at our house in Nishantashou, even in the weeks since Amin Efendi’s attack. This weighed on me. If he had sent a message, Aunt Hüsnü might not have bothered to pass it on to me here. Nevertheless, I was hurt by his silence. He must have heard what Amin Efendi had done. The city vibrated with the news.

My feelings had not been steady since the attack. Self-pity overtook me during sleepless nights. I disowned it and wished to cut it from me like a useless limb. The bitter rage I relished, as it made the pain recede. But my anger flooded over. I snapped at Violet, and raged silently at mother, Ismail Dayi, and Hamza for not protecting me, even though I knew they could have done nothing. Most of all, I was angry at myself for having gone along with the charade of visits. But beneath the anger was a calm lucidity, a new confidence that I was closer now to understanding death. That it was really rather simple, after all.

THE GARDEN PATH wound around the base of the small hill on which perched the glass-walled pavilion. Violet wandered a few steps ahead of me, but my eyes were drawn to a motion inside. At first I reached out to alert Violet, but then withdrew my hand at the thought it might be Hamza. Her dark profile turned back toward me. Behind her, the sky was ash gray.

“Go inside,” I told her. She looked surprised, then displeased. Without a word, she swung around and marched toward the house, the tail of her head scarf swinging hard with every step.

I waited, gazing toward the water, until she had closed the door. My ears strained for Hamza’s nightingale call, but found only the commotion of common birds. The ashes in the sky bled and infected the air, now dense with dusk. An owl mourned in the forest.

I turned and climbed the path to the pavilion. The door was ajar. I pushed it open and slipped inside. No one was there. I sat heavily on a cushion. Most of the shutters were closed and the room was dark and chilly, but I no longer cared enough to rise. I heard a moan and realized it had come from my own chest.

I remember clearly the small, cool hand that settled on my arm out of the darkness. I looked around at a bright shimmer suspended in the dark, like a white veil. Startled, I said nothing.

The apparition settled beside me. Its hand moved to my cheeks and stroked them dry, first one, then the other. A small kindling.

“You mustn’t cry,” the face said in English.

“Mary? Is it you?”

“I came ’round to see you, but your maid said you weren’t at home. So I decided to rest here for a bit before driving back. It’s such a long way. I left the driver snoring in his carriage outside the gate. I guess he’s used to long-winded women’s visits.”

“I didn’t know you were here.”

“You weren’t at the Palais des Fleurs at the usual time, so I sent you a message at your father’s house. I was worried you might be ill. Then I heard about what happened to you and that you were staying up here, so I had to come see you. I didn’t realize it was so far. I sent you a message to let you know I’d be visiting today, but you never responded.” She shrugged. “I came anyway.”

“I never received any messages from you, Mary, either at Nishantashou or here.”

Mary sat back, frowning. “But I sent them. The messenger said he gave them to your maid.”

For a few moments we gazed at the ink-washed sky outside the unshuttered pavilion window, each lost in our own thoughts. What else had Violet kept from me?

“So you had no idea I was coming,” Mary said incredulously.

“No,” I responded, smiling at her, “but I’m very pleased you’re here. I too wanted to see you, but life became too, how shall I put it, different. Else I should have sent you a message too-or responded to yours. You are so kind to come all this way.”

“I’m sorry about what happened, Jaanan.” She moved closer, linking her arm through mine. We looked for a while at our reflections in the black dusk of the window.

“You know,” she whispered finally, “something like that happened to me too.”

Her hand remained hot through the cloth of my sleeve.

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my eye on her reflection. Her hair looked like it was made of light.

“Your fiancé?” I asked finally, to help her.

“No. Punishment.” Her voice was bitter.

“For what?”

“For not wanting them.”

I didn’t understand the meaning of her words, but saw she was sad and angry. She withdrew her hand and sat, head bowed, in the shadow.

“There were three of them. A lodger and his cronies. They saw me kissing a woman friend. They spied on me in my room while we were together.”

“What evil is there in a kiss among women?”

Mary looked at me wonderingly.

“When my friend left, they forced their way in and said they’d hurt me if I didn’t do the same to them.”

“How awful,” I exclaimed, remembering the stories of young women who flung themselves to their deaths rather than be touched by a man before their wedding day. I supposed that included a kiss, although now that seemed harmless enough to me.

“What did you do?”

She said softly, “I did what they wanted. What else could I do? They threatened me. They said they’d tell the landlady. I worked there, in the kitchen. I would have lost my position. I had no place else to go.”