The Kislar aga rolled from the divan and clutched the babbling eunuch by the shoulder.
“Who is dying? Show me.”
Yashim followed. The fluttering eunuch ran half stooped with outstretched arms along the corridor, like a startled hen. Girls clutched their hands to their breasts and pressed themselves to the wall, their mouths ovals of surprise.
At the foot of the stairs the eunuch seemed to droop, clinging to the newel post for support.
“Up there, aga! The dormitory…”
The aga brushed past him, and they mounted the stairs two at a time. At the top the aga whirled down a corridor. He flung a door back with a blow from his open hand and stood there, panting, turning his head from side to side.
A girl sprang from the side of the bed with a scream of fright, her hands to her ears. Ibou strode forward and grabbed her wrist; the girl winced and bent at the waist, refusing to lower her hands.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
Yashim saw it all like a tableau from the doorway: the girl squealing, Ibou gripping her wrist in his long hand, his eyes swiveling to the bed under the window, and the bed itself, with a white satin quilt embroidered minutely with multicolored flowers.
Beneath the quilt, black hair trailing wide across the pillows, lay another girl, staring straight at Yashim. Her eyes glittered like black pearls. As Yashim stepped forward into the room, the hairs prickling on the back of his neck, the girl in the bed moved very slightly: her jaw sagged.
“He said-blood!” Ibou shook the girl again. “Where is this blood!”
The eyes of the girl on the bed did not follow Yashim.
“She’s dead,” he said quietly.
Ibou turned his head and his eyes grew wide as they moved from the girl’s face to the flowered quilt draped across her body.
In the center of the bed, between the shape of the girl’s thighs, a new flower was blooming on the patterned quilt, growing larger and brighter than all the rest.
74
The Kislar aga twitched the quilt back.
Yashim took one look and turned his head away.
The aga’s jaw dropped. His grip on the girl relaxed. She wrenched herself free and blundered to the door.
Yashim made no effort to stop her.
The girl on the bed lay naked from the waist down, her legs outspread above a dark stain between her thighs. Deep welts were scored across the skin of her belly, as though she had been clawed by a great cat; fresh blood still oozed from the livid marks.
Ibou put his hand to his mouth.
“Go, Ibou. This is what you must do. Get green tea and ginger, straightaway.” Yashim laid a hand on the aga’s arm. “Have it sent to this room. Immediately, do you understand?”
“She’s dead.”
“Yes, she’s dead,” Yashim agreed. “The tea is for me.”
He saw Ibou’s color beginning to return.
“Then go and find the girl. What’s her name?”
“I–I don’t know.” The aga yawned suddenly, flashing his gold teeth. “Her name is Melda.”
“Find Melda.” Yashim spoke slowly, with emphasis. “Find her, and take her to your room. When you are there, wait for me.”
Yashim steered the aga toward the door. All the man’s strength seemed to have drained away: he moved without protest, his head bobbing.
“Tea, Ibou. Then find Melda. I’ll join you in your room.”
With the aga gone, Yashim closed the door and rubbed his hands over his face.
He had no expectation of recognizing the dead girl. He knew a few of the harem girls by sight, but for the most part they were anonymous, like beautiful cattle. Naked, unadorned, only the manner of her death distinguished her from a hundred others behind these walls. He wondered what the aga could tell him; what Melda knew.
He spent some time examining the welts on her belly. He examined her hands. There were faint traces of blood on her thighs, and her skin had already begun to cool when he turned her carefully onto her side. There was a deep pool of blood on the sheet beneath her.
He plucked at the sheet. When it did not give way he looked and saw that it was the thin mattress, and the sheet had gone.
He found the sheet easily, under the bed. It was screwed into a loose ball and it was soaked in blood.
75
Melda collapsed onto the divan, weeping.
She was dressed in the usual harem motley, a jumble of tailored and traditional costume bought in Paris and the Grand Bazaar, Turkish slippers peeping out from beneath French petticoats, a slashed and striped velvet jacket over a bodice of ruched silk, a corded girdle and a muslin shawl.
Yashim drew up a stool and perched on it, one leg drawn up, wrists dangling.
“Melda, my name is Yashim. I want to talk about what happened to Elif.”
The girl covered her face with her hands.
“She was ill, Melda, wasn’t she? Something inside, that was hurting her very badly. She should have seen a doctor.” He frowned. “You know what a doctor is, Melda?”
Melda’s shoulders heaved. Very gently, Yashim took her wrists and lowered her hands.
“Melda?”
She turned her face away.
“Tell me,” Yashim urged. “Tell me what happened to Elif.”
She shook her head convulsively.
“I-have-seen-the engine,” she gasped.
“The engine?”
She dragged her hands free and clapped them over her ears, rocking to and fro.
“I don’t understand, Melda.”
Her eyes grew very wide, and she moved her hands to cover her mouth. Outside, the muezzin was calling the faithful to Friday prayers.
“How could you understand?” she burst out. “You-did you step out from a rock, or drop from a stork’s beak? Did I grow like an apple on a tree? No!” Bright spots had appeared on her cheeks, and her hands were clenched. Gone was the court lisp, the fluting voice, the trembling eyelash. Melda spoke in the stony voice of the mountains where she was raised; and she evoked an ancient bitterness, as old as the pagan gods of Circassia. “Men plant children in our bellies, and we bear them until we die.”
Yashim rocked slowly back.
Melda turned her eyes on him and then, like a snake, she drew back her head and spat.
“Elif was pregnant.”
Yashim remained motionless, gazing at the girl’s face. “The sultan chose her?”
The Kislar aga had said nothing about that, Yashim thought. Everything about a girl was carefully considered before she was promoted to gozde: her looks, her bearing, her conduct. To be selected to share the sultan’s bed was a very high honor: from it, with ordinary luck, flowed all the rewards the sultan could bestow upon a woman-
