Cybele's Secret - Juliet Marillier - Cybele's Secret

I glanced up, shaking my head to clear it of such ridiculous notions. Across the library, the black-clad woman unfolded her rag of embroidery, and I saw on it, executed in rich color and with what looked like immaculate stitchery, an image of a girl dancing: a girl with rippling black hair and violet-blue eyes, just like my sister Tati. The woman gave a nod and folded her work away.

This was crazy. I was letting my imagination get out of control. If someone was trying to send me cryptic messages about a quest or mission, they would hardly do so in Irene’s library. I drew a deep breath and turned my attention back to the manuscript. Before I went home today, I would work out what those squares in the border meant.

I did not realize how much time had passed until I heard my hostess’s voice. She was standing by the next table, gazing at me quizzically. “Your powers of concentration are extraordinary, Paula,” she observed.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, rising ungracefully, for my legs were badly cramped. I glanced over toward the door. Stoyan did not appear to have moved at all. His gaze was intent, watchful. “I do have a habit of getting caught up in my reading.” I was tempted to show Irene the manuscript and ask her if she could see the pattern I had been poring over without success. I hesitated. There was something strange going on here, and I could not explain it without revealing that I was familiar with matters magical and otherworldly. This was something my sisters and I did not talk about, save amongst ourselves. I picked up the leaf of paper to put it back in the box, then hesitated, looking at the fragment again. Where a few moments ago there had been small, clear writing squeezed into the narrow space between the text and the border, now there was nothing at all.

“Is something wrong?” my hostess inquired with a little frown.

I put the paper back in the box, slipping it partway down the pile of documents. “Nothing,” I said. “I didn’t get quite as far as I hoped this morning, that’s all. It’s a frustration common to scholars.”

“You’re tired,” Irene said with a smile. “You’ve been working too hard.”

I glanced around the library. A number of folk were now seated there reading or writing, unobtrusively dressed women who might perhaps have donned these plain robes or cloaks or gowns to pass through the streets to Irene’s haven without attracting too much attention. I had been too absorbed to see them come in. The black-clad person with the embroidery was gone.

“Do tell me if you’d like any translation done,” my hostess went on. “We’ll help all we can. But now you most certainly need a rest from study. Ariadne, please tell Murat we’ll take coffee in the camekan after our bath.”

The green-clad girl bowed and left us. I could not be sure if she was a superior kind of servant or a scholar in training. I did like her name, which I knew from the legend of Theseus.

“I imagine you would like to make use of the hamam, Paula,” Irene said. “I have a woman who does a wonderful massage; just the thing after sitting still over a book for so long.”

“Thank you.” I was still puzzling over the woman in black and the disappearing writing, wondering if I could actually have imagined both. I didn’t think I was as tired as that.

The bathhouse was in a separate building at the end of the long colonnade that sheltered Irene’s house from the noonday sun. I could see from the tight look on Stoyan’s face that he wanted me to give Irene a polite refusal and head for home, but I made it clear to him that I was not prepared to sacrifice this opportunity, and he settled to wait once again, this time in the garden by the hamam entry. My hostess and I walked into an airy outer chamber, marble-floored and furnished with shelves and benches. It was both light and private; openings in the domed roof let in the sun, while the windows were shielded by screens pierced with small apertures in a flower pattern. On the wall were pegs from which clothing might be hung. A robed woman with skin darker than any I had seen before offered us folded cloths. I took one, hoping I could guess their purpose without needing to ask.

“I imagine your upbringing was quite restrictive. You will not be accustomed to disrobing before others,” murmured my hostess as another attendant closed the door behind us. “I am so used to this, I hardly think about it anymore.”

“I have four sisters. We all shared a bedchamber.” I followed Irene’s lead, slipping off my gown, shift, and smallclothes and wrapping the cloth around my body. I could not help noticing that while my wrap covered me from armpits to thighs with its edges overlapping by two handspans or more, my hostess’s generous curves were barely contained in a cloth of the same dimensions. Irene’s skin had an olive sheen against the white of the linen. Beside her, I felt like a winter creature, a pale thing that seldom saw the sun.

“Give your things to Nashwa; she will look after them. This little wrap is called a peştamal. Another word of Turkish for your vocabulary. Did you bring fresh clothing?”

“Oh. No, I didn’t think—”

“I’m sure we can find something for you. It is so refreshing to put on clean linen after the bath.” She spoke to the bath attendant in Turkish.

“There’s no need…” Now I did feel embarrassed. Istanbul was full of public bathhouses, wells, fountains, and cisterns. Islamic prayers were always preceded by ritual ablutions, so it was unsurprising that facilities for washing were so common in the city. I wondered if Irene thought me grubby and uncouth.

“Come, Paula, let us go through. Take a pair of these slippers; they’ll keep you from coming to grief on the wet floor of the hamam.”

I selected a pair from a shelf by the inner door. They were set on little wooden stilts that lifted my feet a handspan from the ground and carried their own kind of peril. I staggered after my hostess into a chamber whose heat hit me like a blow. Sweat broke out instantly all over my body. Basins were set at intervals around the walls, with copper piping running along above them and spouts extending over each receptacle. This roof, too, was domed but was far higher than that of the entrance chamber. Holes pierced in the stone admitted sunlight; in the chamber’s corners burned lamps in intricately wrought brass holders. In the center stood a big marble slab, damp with condensation. On various benches a number of women sat chatting. All were completely naked and apparently quite at ease. At one of the basins, a girl had been washing her hair; it hung down her slim form to her knees, ebony-dark. On the far side of the slab, a small, capable-looking female clad in a shiftlike garment and sandals was administering a massage to a lady who lay on her stomach, eyes closed.

“Here we sit awhile and sweat,” Irene said, seating herself on a bench and slipping out of her peştamal in one movement to expose her ripely mature body, all lush curves and smooth bronze skin. Her dark eyes met mine. I saw it as a challenge and took off my own wrapping before sitting down beside her.

“You have not been in a hamam before?” she asked me.

“Never.”

“It is quite significant in the lives of Turkish women, Paula. A visit to the hamam is not simply an opportunity to bathe. It is a social event, a highlight of the week. At the bathhouse, women can exchange their news, look over prospective daughters-in-law, enjoy the company of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Some stay all day.”

“Really?” Clearly I had been missing quite a bit as a result of Father’s extreme caution over my personal safety.

“After the sweat, we wash here in the hot room, and if you wish, Olena will provide the massage,” Irene said. “She has magic hands; I recommend it. There is a small, deep pool in the next chamber, not so hot. I like to immerse myself there before drying off. You will not find that in the public hamams; it is a refinement I chose to add. As a child, I swam in the ocean. I miss such freedoms. When we are dry, we take refreshments and chat. If you enjoy the experience, you must come back and repeat it whenever you wish.”