from? Perhaps Talfa had suggested a desperate remedy.
It made her bleed.
By taking Melda to Topkapi, Yashim had thought he was protecting her.
Instead, he had isolated her. What was it the valide had said? To be truly alone-in here, at least-it’s a kind of death.
Yashim tapped a mussel on the board. The mussel closed, and he tossed it into the bowl. Eventually he tipped the bowl and drained the juice into the pan. After a few minutes he stirred in the mussels.
Had Melda confided in Hyacinth? Talfa had something on Hyacinth that would make his heart sink, too.
Yashim took a bunch of parsley and chopped it on the board. He imagined Talfa dripping with feigned concern: “Poor Hyacinth. With the valide gone, there’ll be just you, won’t there? You and the old women at Topkapi?”
Yashim raised his head, with a jolt.
It had happened so slowly, so inexorably, that he hadn’t really noticed how Talfa had made herself queen of the harem. It was she rather than Bezmialem or Ibou who created and enforced the rules.
But if the valide moved to Besiktas, Talfa’s influence as the senior lady of the harem would be eclipsed.
Yashim picked up the pilaki and moved it off the heat, to the table. He scattered the parsley over the mussels.
Then he washed his hands and wound the turban around his head, and went out into the night.
112
The valide looked at Yashim with her bright eyes.
“Am I going to Besiktas, Yashim? I can’t remember.”
Yashim took her pale hand in his. He found the question difficult to answer.
“Perhaps, valide hanum. When you are feeling stronger.”
She closed her eyes, and smiled faintly. “I wonder. I wonder what Dr. Sevi would suggest.” Her eyelids flickered, and he felt the pressure of her hand relax.
Yashim stooped and put his ear close to her lips. A silver carafe, fluted like a swan, stood on a small inlay table. Yashim grabbed at its neck and went to slosh some water into a glass. But the carafe was empty.
He thrust it into Tulin’s hands. “Fetch water. Fill it.”
She took the carafe and ran with it to the outer door.
Yashim turned back to the valide. He smoothed a skimpy lock of hair from her forehead. She was papery to the touch; papery and thin. At his touch her eyes flickered, and moved slowly toward him.
“Papa.” Her word was scarcely a breath, just a shape on her lips. “Papa.” Her eyes fixed on him now, watery and old and very deep. “Je me suis perdue,” she murmured. I am lost. “Mais-ca va bien.”
He read the question in her eyes: the old question that always lay in the eyes of the dying. Her look was full of tenderness, as if the answer were already known, like a secret between them-the secret by which all men and women were bound, as long as men lived and died.
He could not betray that look by moving his own eyes until the girl came back and Yashim heard the sound of water in the glass.
He bent forward carefully, and brought the glass to the valide’s lips. The water ran across her tongue and he heard her throat catch. He brought the glass to her lips again. She swallowed slowly, closing and opening her mouth.
He let her breathe, then tried again.
After a while her eyes closed. The glass was almost empty.
He looked into the valide’s face, noting the veins in her eyelids and the translucency of her skin. Bending very close, he caught a faint sigh from her lips.
“I am going to fetch the doctor.” He went out into the courtyard. In the eunuch’s room he scribbled a note for the doctor, advising him to come with all possible speed, and handed it to a halberdier.
“Not Inalcik,” he added. Inalcik was young, courteous, and French-trained; he was always consulted by the ladies of Besiktas. “You must ask for Sabbatai Sevi. Do you understand? The old Jew.”
“Sevi the Jew.” The halberdier bowed.
But it was young Inalcik who came, smooth and serious in a black frock coat, stepping very precisely over the old stones of the courtyard with his bag in his hand.
He went into the valide’s chamber and remained there for twenty minutes, listening to her chest through a stethoscope, examining her eyelids, writing notes in a yellow book with a fountain pen.
When he emerged he looked solemn. They met Sevi at the gate to the harem. He wore a long coat, edged with velvet, and a blue skullcap. Dr. Inalcik looked surprised, and amused.
“A second opinion, Dr. Sevi. I approve, heartily.” His eyes twinkled as he outlined his own diagnosis to the Jew, who stooped to listen. “I hope you will be able to do more than I have achieved,” he added.
Sevi opened his hands. “I am very old, doctor. So is the lady.”
As Yashim led him to the valide’s room, Sevi stayed him with his hand. “The mind?”
“Wandering,” Yashim explained. “It has been like this for-” He screwed up his eyes, casting back. “A month, maybe more. Now, I think, she spends more time at home-her childhood home.”
Sevi nodded. “Perhaps she had a very happy childhood. Can she walk?”
“I haven’t seen her walk in weeks.”
“Then why not a visit to her childhood home? It’s easier on the feet.”
He came without a bag, or instruments of any kind. He knelt by the divan and took the valide’s hand in his own. After a while he peered more closely at her fingers.
Yashim felt a twinge of doubt. In Sevi’s day, the doctor often examined a woman through a curtain. Childbirth, disease, all manner of conditions had to be treated by the doctor without actually touching, or even inspecting, the woman’s body; it was the tradition, it maintained propriety.
“Modern medicine,” Inalcik had remarked, as he clipped open his bag and retrieved his stethoscope, “goes rather deeper to the sources and the causes of discomfort and illness.”
The old Jew remained on his knees for some time, watching the valide’s face, absently rubbing her hand in his.
He seemed to have gone into some sort of dream. Yashim gave a discreet cough and the old man sighed.
He unfolded slowly, and stood up.
“Poison?” Yashim asked.
Sabbatai Sevi looked at him sadly. “Poison? No. The valide sultan,” he added gravely, “is extremely thirsty.”
113
Roxelana dreamed. She dreamed she was all dressed up like a big bear. Furry boots. Furry hat.
“You must catch it this time, silly!”
“I will try, my precious!” The kalfa smiles at the little girl. But it is hard to catch a ball made of snow when the light is beginning to fade.
Roxelana knows this. It is what makes her laugh.
She says: “You may sit in the arbor. I am going to play.” When the kalfa crouches down to put a shawl around her, Roxelana tells her about the bear. The kalfa is Elif.
The kalfa laughs, smoothing her hair, but her eyes go out toward the garden.
Roxelana runs to the tree, taking big steps in the snow, like a bear. She is a bear and can hide behind the thick black trunk. There is not as much snow on the ground here.
