The Drowning Guard: A Novel of the Ottoman Empire (8 page)

“She is a murderess,” snarled Ivan Postivich. “She sends innocents to their death. She will find a way to murder me as well when it pleases her.”

“Not all is as simple as Good and Evil,” answered the voice. “In time you will learn how intricate they weave the tapestry of the royal Ottomans. To unravel it, you must know which thread to pull.”

With that, the harem girl’s slippers rasped across the mats and Postivich could hear her steps disappear down the corridors beyond the elaborately carved screens.

Mahmud’s own doctor, Stephane Karatheodory, was summoned to the Princess’s chambers, parting the phalanx of hysterical harem girls with an agitated wave of his hand. The women fluttered away like frightened pigeons, but only a few paces, their fine silks still rippling as they lighted once more, hovering over the ailing Esma Sultan.

“Get them out of here!” commanded the Imperial physician, his Greek disposition piqued by the ignorance of the harem. He addressed the Head Eunuch sternly. “And do not let more than one attendant and guard in this room at a time.”

As he approached the Princess’s bed, he was struck with the aroma of jasmine, roses, and lilies. Every inch of the royal chamber was lined with vases of flowers in various states of bloom. Harem attendants wiped the floors with concentrated perfumes that emitted such a heady scent that the Sultan’s physician gagged.

The doctor, an erudite man who was said to have the command of eighteen languages, shook his head at the ignorance of the Princess’s court. He sneezed into his handkerchief and cursed vehemently in Greek. Flowers, courtiers by the dozen. It was no surprise that the Princess was bedridden and failing by the minute.

“She refuses nourishment and has not slept in three days,” pronounced Nazip, wringing her freckled hands. “We have tried preparing all of her favorite dishes, even pigeon in spices, but she will not even look upon food.”

“What did you eat Sultane, three days past?”

The Sultane raised her chin from her pillow. “Very little. The last I remember eating was a bite of fresh fig from the garden. Oh, by Allah’s name?! What is that hideous stench?”

The physician raised his eyebrow and looked around.

“I smell nothing, your Princess, but the lingering closeness of your court. On the contrary, I smell the overpowering fragrance of the flowers. Open the windows at once!”

“She says she smells death, everywhere, sir,” whispered the slave girl. “We have brought every sweet-smelling flower of the garden to her room to ease her mind. She will not abide the breeze from the Bosphorus.”

The physician considered her words, blinking like an old turtle.

“I presume your tester took a bite first to ensure the figs were not poisoned?”

The Princess turned her head back into her pillow. “I was entertaining. I fed the fruit to my guest first.”

“And is he well now?”

The harem girl turned away, her hair sliding across her shoulder.

“He has since left us. I do not know his whereabouts,” muttered the Sultaness. “Do not mention him again, physician.”

The old doctor studied her face, half turned to him. He noticed a yellowed
bruise on her bare shoulder and various other welts that inflamed the white flesh along her neck. He was a wise man and did not inquire further, having heard the rumors of the immoral conduct of Princess Esma Sultan.

He had been present at her birth, overseeing the midwife’s work. She had been a squalling infant from the first, colicky and fussy in her mother’s arms. But her standing as the favorite child of Sultan Abdulhamid allowed her education and privileges normally given only to Ottoman princes, never women. Her loyal friendship with her half brother Mahmud had sealed her position from the moment of her cousin Selim III’s death.

Even a physician could not touch an Ottoman princess without express permission and close supervision. He asked for her to spit on a little golden plate, then to describe her symptoms and the hours of their occurrence. Her eyes were clear but haggard, shadowed by blue half-moons.

As he studied the spittle on the plate and watched her listless eyes, he noticed a spasm along her right eyebrow, a nervous twitch.

“I ask permission to examine you, Esma Sultan. Ready her under drapery, eunuch.”

Stephane Karatheodory stepped beyond the drawn curtains while Esma Sultan undressed and was swathed in linens.

“You may approach, Doctor,” said the Head Eunuch. “We will observe you.”

Karatheodory laid his hand gently on the Princess’s arm and raised her palm to his eyes where he could better examine it.

The doctor felt how she flinched when he touched her white hands, drawing them quickly back into her wide sleeves.

“Greek! You must give me notice before you touch my hands,” she warned.

“I beg your forgiveness,” said the doctor, waiting for her to return them to his outstretched palm, like a beggar supplicating. When she finally extended her left hand, he studied the white moon in her thumbnail and the newly applied henna on her wrist. Her skin was cool and damp, a pale blue white. With the supervision of two eunuchs, and wild-eyed scrutiny from the patient herself, the physician probed the Princess’s abdomen. There was no evidence of pain from the pressure of his fingers.

Princess Esma pushed his hand from her belly, agitated at his touch. She threw the linen sheet over her nose, her eyes rolling back in her head.

“The stink of rotten flesh haunts me,” she cried. “How can you not abhor it? Are you all fiends? My tongue can taste the stench, it is so thick!”

The old doctor said nothing.

“I dream of the Bosphorus choked with flesh. Heads bob in the current like
melons thrown into the sea! Angels plunge into the brine and though they flap their wings desperately, they cannot lift their souls to heaven.”

The physician waited, silent. When she seemed a little calmer, he whispered to her. “We must speak in private, Esma Sultan.”

The Princess looked up from her pillow, creasing her brow. But she waved away the guard and her handmaiden, though the Head Eunuch Saffron refused to leave, folding his massive arms over his chest in a stance of defiance.

The Greek physician nodded and waited until the other servants had left the great room.

“When you were born, it was the worst year of the Angel of Death,” he began. “A third of Constantinople died from the plague and there seemed to be no hope for any of us. You were born, a blessing, a girl. You would not have to compete with your brothers to be Sultan. The harem rejoiced at the birth of a beautiful daughter they could bathe and spoil.”

“What good is it to be a mere woman?” cried Esma, throwing her head back on the embroidered silk cushion. “To be married and remain behind a harem wall? It is to be held prisoner from womb to grave and never be truly born. And if it were not for my husband’s death, I should live the same fate.”

“Yes. It is highly unusual for a princess never to remarry, especially more than a decade after the loss of her husband. You confound all of Constantinople.”

“I would rather have my head on a stake gawking at the fishmongers outside Topkapi than to ever take another husband.”

“A daughter is spared the ugliness of a man’s world,” replied the doctor, scratching at his beard. “That was Mohammed’s command, was it not, to remain sequestered from the rougher, more brutal sex?”

“You dare quote the Prophet to me, you Greek? Our Prophet demanded men’s respect of women, not sequestration! Besides… I saw, old physician. I saw enough brutality for a lifetime.”

The doctor considered.

“Perhaps you should tell me what you saw.”

The Princess covered her mouth with a kerchief but spoke through the cloth, her voice muffled.

“I saw the murder of my uncle, Selim. He took refuge in the harem and the murderers dragged him out to the courtyard and butchered him under the lime tree. They hacked him to bits with their scimitars. The blood splattered and puddled, clinging to the leaves where I used to play.”

“You indeed saw too much, Princess. A woman should never see these things. She hasn’t the constitution.”

She raised up on her pillow, supporting her weight on her forearm.

“The constitution? Your words mock me and all women! I watched an old slave woman save my brother in an oven when they came to murder him. There is my constitution! When they learned of her cunning, I watched three of the animals rape her, to pay for her loyalty to the Sultan’s family. A servant woman who saved a male Ottoman! No assistance from men, no protection!”

“All of the Ottomans seem doomed to suffer,” mused the doctor. “But I come to you to heal your condition.”

The doctor hesitated. “If you belonged to my religion, I would tell you to confess your sins against God to the Patriarch priest. Then you would at last have rest in your confession and be at peace with God.”

A great silence filled the immense room, so that even the old ear of the doctor heard the wooden rakes of the gardeners outside the palace window, scratching at the fallen leaves in the courtyard.

“You dare prescribe your pagan rites to an Ottoman Princess!” said Esma Sultan, suddenly sitting up in bed, a cobra ready to strike.

Karatheodory realized he had gone too far, but he was too old and respected to fear the Sultan’s sister’s wrath.

“I have only speculated what I would prescribe were you of the Holy Byzantine faith,” replied the doctor calmly. “Since you are not of my church, I can only suggest that Allah will decide your destiny and cure you of the headaches, dreams, and sleepless nights; these visions of dead men choking the clear clean waters of the Bosphorus. I have potions that will induce sleep and a headwrap soaked in soothing lavender oils to ease your headache. But I can only treat the symptoms of your disease. There is something that haunts you that I as a man of physical healing, cannot reach.”

“You are too old to cure anyone,” pronounced Esma Sultan, turning away from the man. “You are dismissed to drink the spirits in the tavern that have polluted your mind so as to render you decrepit and useless to the Ottoman Sultans. I shall tell my Angel brother so!”

The physician nodded that he understood and a guard instantly appeared to escort him to the palace gates.

It had been days since Esma Sultan had left her bedchamber to walk in her gardens or visit her beloved library. Bezm-i Alem and the other harem women
took turns bringing the Ottoman Princess sherbets and fruitwaters, offering barley water and honeyed baklavas from the Greek cook, Maria. Nazip offered her the opium pipe, which she took at first, until she became sickened by the drug. Esma Sultan swore she smelled dead bodies, foul with rot. She retched silently into a copper bowl by her divan while Bezm-i Alem pressed damp cotton cloths to her forehead.

The harem woman gathered flowers from the Princess’s immense gardens and sent boys to the Bazaar to buy even more from the vendors, but nothing could ease her anguish. Every vase, even the most precious enamel vessels from Topkapi, burst with pungent blooms. The harem sniffed the air like dogs, trying to discern any aroma but the cloying sweet fragrance of the myriad bouquets, while Esma Sultan raged at their ineptness and pressed lemon-scented linen handkerchiefs to her nose, barely breathing.