Wu Ming - Altai

Nasi muttered an Amen . I couldn’t take my eyes off the balcony. Reyna, Dana, Bula, Esther, Nurbanu, Shah, Ismihan.

You may indeed set above you as your king one of your brothers, and he shall not take many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away .

The words of Ismail, in front of the mosque of Mihrimah Sultan, before he left for Bandirma: “Back in Europe, none of you can imagine that the women of the harem capable of moving money, fleets, armies.”

The words of Donna Reyna, at the military parade in the hippodrome: “There’s something common to all women who are forced to live in the shadow of a great man, weaving tapestries in the silence of a palace.”

If what the prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place, that is a message that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed .

Don Yossef feared Sokollu, poured wine for Selim, offered a place to Solomon Ashkenazi in the aristocracy of the Island of Zion. He had managed to block communications between the bailiff, the Doge and the Grand Vizier, but he was too much enthralled by them to notice that very similar messages, rather than in the shoes of a Jewish doctor, could travel among the belongings of a Jewish doctor’s wife, with the fabrics and brocades of a Jewish businesswoman, between the breasts of a chambermaid, on the lips of a princess, between the fingers of a queen, in his own wife’s bedroom.

Dana’s words, when I had asked her about the strange relationship between Donna Reyna and her husband: “You must have noticed, Don Yossef doesn’t appreciate the attentions of women.”

Perhaps he had no idea how many women were devoting their attention to him.

That night, in bed, Dana’s hand slipping under my clothes repelled me. I was irritated by her caresses, and pushed her away. It was an instinctive movement, completely uncalculated, but it fired my suspicions about the day just past. The worm was gnawing at my mind, even though it was my body taking the initiative.

She mocked me, saying that I had been wrong to refuse the halva with the cannabis resin. Over the past few days I had been in a dark mood, I needed to let myself relax, to set aside my nagging doubts.

I said no, this wasn’t the moment to set them aside, and she must have noticed something in the tone of my voice — something that troubled her and put her on her guard.

Part of me was unwilling to yield to suspicion, afraid to open a door that might reveal my nemesis waiting on the other side. But the worm needed to be crushed.

“Some days ago, after the parade, you told me you had to take charge of some matters for Reyna, but when I asked you what they were, you wouldn’t tell me.”

She nodded, surprised, as if that episode had already slipped into a corner of her mind, amongst unimportant memories, ready to be erased.

“I know you were carrying a message. I saw Donna Reyna hand it to you, and believe me, it’s very important for me to know what it was.” I looked her straight in the eyes; she grew increasingly bewildered.

“It was a letter for Nurbanu Sultan. But you. .”

I gritted my teeth, fists clenched. I had been right. Dana was yielding, and I mustn’t ease my grip on her. “No buts: Listen to me carefully. The next time Donna Reyna gives you a message of that kind, you bring it to me right away, you understand? Even if it’s sealed I know how to open and close it without anyone noticing, without suspicion falling on you.”

“I can’t do that, Manuel. Do you realize what you’re asking of me?”

I did realize, yes, and it wasn’t anything very terrible or dangerous. I insisted, and she refused again. Once, twice. “Come on, don’t tell me you’re the only serving girl in the world who doesn’t read her masters’ correspondence.”

“I’m not a serving girl,” were the only words she managed to say, but I realized that by now she was neither startled nor frightened. She was defying me, and that gave me a pang in my heart, right in the spot where my self-love lay.

“You know why Donna Gracia denied you the honor of going with her when she went to die?”

“She wanted me to stay with her daughter,” she said in the irritable tone of someone who is being forced to repeat herself.

I gave her a joyless smile. Once I would have accepted that explanation, but now it was not enough. Not if I wanted to discover the truth. “Wasn’t it more that she didn’t want you beside her?”

She drew herself up in silence. The moon lit her face. “It’s too late to ask.”

I had struck home, I had hurt her and I was pleased. She turned again, ready to flee. I jumped from the bed and joined her. I gripped her shoulder and forced her to look me in the face. “Perhaps she didn’t trust you. Perhaps she thought you were unworthy.”

She pulled herself free. “Stop it, Manuel. I haven’t done anything to deserve these insults.”

I pretended not to hear. “Or did Donna Reyna tell you stay?”

Again she tried to leave, and again I held on to her, with both hands. “I’ve already told you,” I shouted into her face, “in this palace everyone has to answer my questions. Anyone who doesn’t deserves my suspicion, even if they stuff me with drugged cakes and slip into my bed every night.”

I studied the effect of my words. Dana looked at the floor, and didn’t resist when I raised her chin. Her black hair smelt of almonds, as it had the first time I had smelled it.

“I don’t believe in your devotion to Donna Gracia. You told me that Yossef Nasi saved you from a marriage you didn’t want, to a fat provincial bey. Since when has a harem slave chosen to be a chambermaid rather than the wife of an important imperial functionary?”

Now her eyes were filling with tears of rage, and I realized that I had crossed a line.

“Marrying a Muslim would have meant converting,” she said in a harsh voice. “Christian servants happily barter God for an easier life. I don’t change my faith as one changes one’s clothes.” She was talking about me, she wanted to return the barb, but she couldn’t hurt me. These allusions to my past life now sounded strange and distant to my ears.

“Yes, you’re not one to betray, you are true. The point is. . to whom have you been true for all this time? Donna Reyna? Nurbanu Sultan?”

She turned her back on my sarcasm, but I held her back once more and pushed her against the wall. She slipped down and crouched with her knees against her chest, like a deer surrounded by dogs. Quivering, I bent over her, drenched in sweat and struggling to overcome my desire to strike her.

She wept in silence, not sobbing, just tears slipping down her face, bent double as if she had been dealt a fatal blow. I nodded to myself.

“Both, of course. Nurbanu sent you here to plot with Yossef Nasi’s wife. Those letters aren’t full of ladies’ gossip, are they?”

“You’re mad,” I heard her murmur.

I walked over to the window and sought comfort in the air of the Bosphorus, but it was as thick and dense as a mildewed wall. “Perhaps. And perhaps this city isn’t all that different from Venice. Back there I was betrayed by a woman. That isn’t going to happen again here.”

I heard her getting up and I didn’t turn around. She left without a sound, leaving me prey to my obsessions, my eyes lost in the night.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength. The kabbalist Meir interpreted that line of the Qoheleth as an invitation to completeness.

The will is not enough, he said, to bond with an important task. You need a soul that is all of a piece. My own had been much mended, but I hoped the Lord would grant me a new one. The soul of a raptor, which would plunge down on its prey, its instinct incorruptible by doubts or hesitations. A creature capable of seizing the body and the mind for an enterprise that waited only to be accomplished: defending Yossef Nasi from the perils that surrounded him.