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.
“
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.
“With God’s help,” she said at last. “The people will stay quiet.”
She felt the pressure of his fingers as they clenched around her own.
100
GEORGE Compston picked up the note and turned it over in his hands. He walked through the embassy tapping it against his teeth, looking for Fizerly.
He found him with his feet up on a desk, rubbing olive oil onto his mustache. He started when he saw Compston.
“Got a note,” Compston said carelessly.
Fizerly swung his legs to the ground. “Is she pretty?”
Compston opened the note, read it quickly, and blushed.
“I’m afraid that’s between me and these four walls, old man,” he said rather thickly.
Fizerly shrugged. It was so infernally hot.
Compston read the note again. He’d lit a spark there! A Turkish Byron enthusiast—whatever next?
It was from that eunuch, Yashim.
101
THE sou naziry slid from his horse and passed the reins to an apprentice. He knelt on the rim of the tank and plunged his hands into the cold water: it had been a hot ride, even beneath the trees. He wiped the dust of the road from his face and the back of his neck. Leka presented him with a towel.
