“Will you see them home, Abdullah?” my lady asked. “Give them the honor of a khadim which usually they cannot afford? That is the least we can offer them since they refuse to stay overnight with Aunt Mihrimah—they say they do not mean to insult her hospitality, but it is a statute of their holy order.”
So that is what I did, after seeing Esmikhan herself safe in Sokolli Pasha’s palace. As I left the Suleimaniye, the men’s recitation was just breaking up as well. I picked my way back through the dispersing crowd and as I did I suffered the odd sensation of being watched. How can you think that? I wondered. Among so many hundred pairs of eyes? And usually a sense of being watched only meant that someone averted his eyes from what discomforted him to look at—like the crippled or very deformed.
For all the bustle, the mosque’s dome settled an austere calm over the gathering gloom. The air above and around me winked now with lamplight and the first stars like an inversion of the flashes of black-on-white on an ermine stole. Heaven seemed very close, grappled to earth by the chain-gray of the monument’s four minarets. The casual elegance of the vast courtyard reigned like a man born to his station, like the personation of the departed monarch whose spirit so permeated the place. It hung above me like a canopy as I took the retreating steps. I had no more business. It was time to go.
Then all at once what fading light remained congealed upon a bit of white and my eye was riveted. I saw a small glass vial, set carefully on the stone sill of one of the barred arcs of window that pierced the perimeter wall. As all the world moved around me, I stood and gazed without moving a muscle at the wonder of it. How could such a delicate thing not be crushed in the press? And then I wondered, if it had attracted my attention, how had it managed not to be picked up and claimed by the first passerby.
Then I saw it was vetro a filigrana, the delicate canes of white glass embedded in clear that was a hallmark of the Venetian factories. I could not resist, any more than most men could resist averting their eyes from me. I picked up the bottle and claimed it as my own.
And next I knew it was mine. A gift. Within the vial’s narrow mouth I found a scrap of paper. I tipped the fragile glass upside down and knocked the paper free.
It was too dark to see clearly. I sensed more than saw what this note might mean. With a pounding heart, I dashed to the nearest streetlamp just lit by the passing lighter with his coals and long pole, there at the boundary between the mosque’s precincts and the profane world. I read. The words were Venetian. I knew the hand. It was as if I could smell my friend. Husayn. But in fact, with some sense deeper than knowing, I had expected this all along.
I gave the ascending mosque stairs quick scrutiny. Turbans drifted by in the half-light like so many bubbles, and, among them protruded plenty of round, tight felt dervish hats like so many shoals in a smooth-flowing stream. Just the crowd a Koranic recitation could be expected to attract. But among them I could not distinguish Husayn, my family’s friend since I was a child, the man who, blaming himself for my sorry fate, had renounced the merchant’s life and taken on that of a wandering dervish. He had taken on the part of a guardian angel as well. Now he had come again.
“The signorina plots the overthrow of the new Sultan and of your master who holds him wobbling on his throne,” the note read. “Keep your lady away from the triumphal procession.”
XXXI
Upon arriving home, I learned that a message had arrived there, too. It was from the master, addressed, as usual, to me. “You know you could read these yourself,” I told my lady who had stayed up with anxiety. She watched me break the formal seal bearing the tugra of the Grand Vizier with such intensity that I grew clumsy. “He means them for you.” I didn’t even believe my own words. I knew by now that her scruples would never allow her to open something addressed to someone else, particularly not through the Grand Vizier’s seal. But I also knew the man I served would never write directly to his wife, the daughter of his present master.
“What does he say? What does he say?” Esmikhan had to clap her hands to contain herself.
“Merely that he is at the farm he owns on the outskirts of the village of Halkali. That is less than a day’s ride from here. He means to wait with the army, tomorrow see to preparations for your royal father’s entry, and then be with you the evening after. That is good news, lady, isn’t it?”
“But if he is less than a day’s ride, why can’t he come tonight? Or tomorrow at least? Be with me at night, then ride back out to his duties in the morning?”
“Duty calls him, lady. There is much he must see to with the army.” More than I would tell her. More than perhaps even Sokolli Pasha knew. The small glass vial was making a very heavy lump in my sleeve.
“Go see him, Abdullah,” my lady insisted. “Take him my welcome.”
“Lady, not tonight.” There is nothing like a day of Koranic recitation to make one feel weak and stupid. Besides, I felt the weight of the bottle—and the note it contained.
“Tomorrow, then. First thing in the morning. Abdullah, please. You must. I haven’t been in his bed for seven months. Please.”
