Tasha Alexander - Tears of Pearl

Every corridor and nook in this house reminds me of the pleasant days you and I spent together as children. Just this morning I pried open that loose board in the solarium floor—the one we begged the butler not to have fixed—and found the box we’d hidden there long ago. Do you remember? In it there’s a copy of Candide, a badly written statement pertaining to the outrage we felt at not being allowed to pursue employment as pirates, and a splendid collection of small rocks. All things considered, I do believe we’ve done well to abandon our thoughts of pirating.

Give Colin my best, and implore him to take care of you. I don’t want to hear any stories of you being embroiled in intrigue while you’re away.

I am, your most devoted friend, etc.,

Ivy Brandon

“Madam?” Meg opened our bedroom door a few inches after knocking. “An urgent message has come for you from the palace.”

I pulled myself away from the perfect comfort of Colin’s arms and sat up. The room was dark—tightly fit shutters keeping out the sun—and our silk quilted duvet and cotton blankets a perfect pool of soft warmth. The furniture, neither particularly Western nor Eastern, had simple, pleasing lines, and there were niches, lined with flower-painted tiles, cut out from the wall for candles on either side of the low mahogany bed. “The queen? Come in, Meg.”

“No, madam. Not Buckingham Palace. Top—Top—Oh, I don’t know that I could ever figure out how to say it.” She shrugged and handed me an envelope heavy with the scent of lavender.

“Topkapı Sarayı .” I leaned back as Colin raised a mountain of bright silk-covered pillows against the headboard. “A place undoubtedly full of exotic treasures, Meg. I’d love to see it, and you would, too.”

“Oh, madam, I’m not sure I’d want to go there. There’s a harem, you know. I might never come out.”

“I shan’t let the sultan claim you, Meg,” Colin said. “Without you here, Emily might force me to do her hair.”

“Thank you, sir.” Meg blushed, not looking at him, still embarrassed at finding him in my room. “Is there anything else you need?”

“No. We’ll be down for breakfast in another hour or so,” Colin said. She dipped a curtsy and left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

“That long?” I kissed him. “What if I’m hungry before then?”

“I’ll try to keep you distracted.”

“You’d better.” I opened the envelope. “I can’t imagine the sultan using fragranced paper.”

“I can’t imagine the sultan writing to a European woman.”

“He’s very cultured,” I said. “And more Western than I’d expected. Surely you don’t doubt I could charm him?”

“Quite the contrary. But though he may be cultured, he’s a difficult man. Extremely paranoid—won’t allow electricity in the city because when someone explained to him how it works, he mistook ‘dynamo’ for ‘dynamite.’ ”

“Perhaps he’s overwhelmed. He is, after all, ruling an empire in an advanced state of decay—a situation that’s growing worse faster than expected. People accustomed to being in a position of strength often assume it will last. I often wonder about our own empire.”

“Britain is not in a state of decay at the moment,” he said. “But our way of life is a precarious one that must be protected with vigilance if we don’t want it to slip away. All of Europe will be affected if Turkey becomes more unstable—instability has a way of being contagious.”

“So we’re witnessing the decline and fall of the Ottomans?”

“Due in large part to the excessive and obscene spending of Abdül Hamit’s predecessors. They’ve done more palace building than prudent this century—and that went a long way to bankrupting the empire.”

“Why would anyone with Topkapı Sarayı at his disposal want another palace? I’ve never heard such exotic descriptions of a place.”

“It’s ordinary to anyone who lives in it, I’d imagine.”

“Not to the concubines when they first arrive and are prepared to meet the sultan. Only think how awestruck they must be to find themselves ensconced in such luxury.”

“Your imagination is running quite wild, Emily. At any rate, the sultan now lives at Yıldız, not Topkapı.”

I unfolded the paper I was holding. The letter was written in a confident, elegant hand. “This is from someone called Bezime. She says she’s Abdül Aziz’s mother. Who is Abdül Aziz?”

“He was sultan before Abdül Hamit’s brother, Murat.” Colin sat up, propping his pillows behind him. “And a master of excess, particularly after he visited Europe. I believe he had twenty-five hundred in his harem.”

“Twenty-five hundred?” I asked.

“The number does include both slaves and eunuchs as well as the concubines, wives, and children. Murat followed him to the throne but ruled for only three months or so. He was mentally unstable, completely unfit to rule an empire, a raging alcoholic. So he was deposed, and Abdül Hamit the Second succeeded him and agreed to a constitutional monarchy. The Year of Three Sultans, they called it.”

“When was this?” I asked, kissing his fingers as he spoke.

“1876. You’re distracting me.”

“Good,” I said. “But a constitution? There’s no parliament here, is there?”

“Not anymore. Abdül Hamit dissolved it years ago.”

“What became of Murat? Nothing pleasant, I imagine.”

“His brother let him live—although he did announce Murat’s death in the papers. He’s imprisoned in a palace somewhere in the city.”

“Is he still ill?”

“Perhaps Bezime can enlighten you on that point. I’ve not the slightest idea.”

“She writes to invite me to visit her at Topkapı Sarayı .”

“Which is the old palace. Where discarded harem girls go to do whatever it is they do after they’re discarded.”

“It must be a dreadful life. Tedious.” I sat up straight and turned to the window, my bare feet dangling off the edge of the bed.

“Tell me you’re not thinking of opening the shutters,” Colin said, scowling as I crossed the room. I flung them aside without answering him and pushed the tall windows out, a gush of watery air filling the room.

“It’s a glorious day,” I said. “Don’t be so lazy.”

“Lazy? No, my dear. Never lazy.” He sprang up, swooped me off my feet, and dropped me back on the bed. “Stroke of genius, actually, letting in the light. I much prefer being able to see you.”

I smiled. Breakfast would be more than late.

Within moments of arriving at the palace—the huge outer courtyard of which contained the Imperial Mint, the newly completed Archaeological Museum, and a bakery from whose windows wafted the most delicious yeasty smell of fresh bread—I decided that should I ever be discarded, I would be quite content to find this the site of my banishment, although I did momentarily reconsider this position as a guard led me past the Executioner’s Fountain. I paused in front of it, imagining the men who, over hundreds of years, had washed in it their bloody hands and swords after public beheadings.

We reached the end of the courtyard’s path and Topkapı Sarayı ’s Gate of Salutations—a tall structure with two pointed towers the likes of which I would have expected to find on a medieval European castle. My guide led me along a diagonal path, lined on both sides by tall, carefully shaped trees, through a second courtyard to the entrance of the harem, where he remanded me to the care of a tall, dark-skinned eunuch, the only sort of man other than the sultan who would ever be admitted to the harem.

“If you would follow me.” He bobbed his head in what might be construed as a bow of sorts but did not meet my eyes. The rich voice with which he spoke was not at all what I’d expected, nothing like the stories I’d heard of the castrati, whose angelic sopranos had charmed all of Italy during the Baroque age. Although he sounded like an ordinary man, there was no trace of whiskers on his perfectly smooth face. “Her Highness has been waiting for you.”

“It took me longer to get here than I expected,” I said, moving more quickly to match his pace, my heels catching in the spaces between the smooth black and white pebbles formed as a mosaic to look like directional arrows down the center of an otherwise cobbled pavement.

“You should never be late when the valide sultan has summoned you.”

I was not quite late, but I thought it best to restrain myself from pointing this out. “Valide sultan? I thought Perestu was valide sultan?”

He turned to look at me. “She is. But here it is Bezime who matters. It is unfortunate she lost her official position.”

“Unfortunate, perhaps, but inevitable,” I said. “Every sultan has his own mother.”

“Abdül Hamit’s mother died when he was young. Both Perestu and Bezime cared for him when he was a boy. This so-called inevitability was in fact a matter of choice.”

“You speak very freely,” I said, shocked to hear a servant give opinions—particularly opinions about the royal household—to a stranger.

“I am a favorite of many in the court, Bezime included, and have nothing to fear, no reason to hold my tongue.” He stopped walking and faced me directly. “You are not used to educated slaves who wield their own power.”

The flash in his black eyes made me suspect he was trying to shock me. Instead of registering the slightest surprise, I squared my shoulders and straightened my back. “No, I’m not. We don’t have slaves of any sort in England. And I admire very much that you are educated.”

“Everyone in the harem is educated.”

“You mean the women?” I asked.

“Yes. Of course. You’ll not find more cultured ladies anywhere. You think the sultan would want to surround himself with ignorant fools?”