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Chapter 2
District of Eminönü
Constantinople
 

When Hannah heard the clatter of wheels on the cobblestones and the tinkle of harness bells outside her window, unaccustomed sounds in this neighbourhood of people on foot or on horseback, she peered through the shutters. To her astonishment, there was a carriage in front of her house. Throwing the window wide open, she leaned out.

It was not the Imperial Harem’s best carriage, nor its worst. Yes, the Sultan Murat III’s tughra, the intricate calligraphy of his name,was painted on the carriage door in gold. Yes, the bay mare wore ostrich plumes on her head. Yes, her martingale, the chain draping the beast from breastplate to noseband to prevent her from tossing up her head, was finely crafted, but it was made of silver not gold and the mare was past her prime, spavined, and a single animal, not one of a matched pair. No liveried driver sat up top in the narrow seat of the landau, just grizzly old Suat, a slave from Circassia, his mouth as usual pressed into a scowl, his lips a slit of disapproval. His turban was askew and finger-marked from the constant readjustments required while lumbering through uneven streets. He slumped in his seat, reins slack on the horse’s rump. Many times, in her still clumsy Osmanlica, the language of the Empirethat she had learned from her neighbours, Hannah had tried without success to coax a smile from Suat’s toothless mouth.

Even with the carriage at a standstill, the bells jingled in rhythm with the mare’s heaving sides. They were intended to warn everyone on the street that an Imperial carriage approached and all within hearing distance must scuttle away lest they glimpse a woman from the harem. But who except midwives like Hannah or women of the worst sort would be foolhardy enough to venture into the streets after dark? What on earth could be so important as to warrant coming to Hannah’s door so late? Not a birth at the Imperial Harem, that much was certain.

Two years ago, shortly after Hannah and Isaac had arrived in Constantinople from Venice, the very same carriage had come to her door to take her to the Imperial Harem for the confinement of Safiye, the Sultan’s beloved wife with whom he had been besotted since he had first set eyes on her many years ago. . Some said she had bewitched him. How astonished Hannah had been that night to hear the carriage come to a halt in front of their house, a dwelling far grander than anything they could have afforded in Venice. In Venice, they had lived in a cramped one-room flat hidden behind the heavy wooden gates of gates of the ghetto.

Her Constantinople neighbours had peered curiously from behind their latticed balconies as Hannah rattled off in the carriage that night.

She had not been prepared for the sight of the Imperial Harem--the black eunuchs, the vast rooms, the brilliant blue and white İznik tiles, the swooping roofs of the pavilions, the delicate sherbet made with snow packed in burlap and then transported by cart from Mount Olympus, sixty kilometres away.

Only the blood and the screams of the birthing mother had been familiar. Poor Safiye had laboured valiantly but her travail ended in disappointment. How had Hannah ¾a Jewess, a foreigner, a newcomer to the city, a fugitive from Venice¾come to the attention of the palace? She had her friend, Ezster Mandali, to thank. Ezsther, a Sephardic Jew, a pedlar to the harem and confidante to the Valide, had recommended Hannah’s skills to the Sultan’s revered mother. Someday, may God be listening, the palace would buy silk tents from her husband Isaac’s workshop. Naturally, the palace had several midwives already¾capable country women with placid smiles who steadied mothers on the walnut birthing stool and allowed Allah’s hand to do the rest. This was not Hannah’s way. Hannah relied on herbs, used different instruments, and asked questions of those with more experience than she possessed. She gave courage to the faint of heart, poured strength into the weak, and gave hope to the discouraged.

When Hannah had alighted from the carriage the night of Safiye’s confinement at the Imperial Palace, a fleet-footed slave girl from Aleppo grabbed her hand at the entrance to the harem and together they raced through the gardens, past the Valide’s private hamam, the steam baths, until they reached the Sultana’s birthing kiosk, specially prepared for the event. It was draped with panels of embroidered silk set with rubies, emeralds and pearls, depicting harmonious scenes of the heavenly gardens of paradise. The quilts and bedcovers were red. Suspended over the divan hung an embroidered bag which Hannah knew contained the Qur’an. At the foot of the divan was an onion stuffed with garlic and impaled on a gold skewer. This was to ward off the Evil Eye. The gold washing bowls, porcelain ewers and other utensils rested on low lacquered tables. A variety of sweetmeats and sherbets were arranged on thin grey-green celadon dishes. Hannah later learned the Sultan and his family all ate from such dishes as a precaution. The glaze of the tableware turned black upon contact with poison.

Hannah should have felt awed by the splendour of the pavilion, the ceiling supported by marble colonnades, the floors of cedar and sandalwood giving off the most delicious fragrance, the gossamer textiles, the richly dressed attendants, slaves and concubines, but all she could think was how grateful she was to have her birthing spoons, the silver forceps that had helped her liberate many an obstinate baby from its mother’s womb.

Several women surrounded the Sultan’s wife, Safiye, as she laboured on her birthing stool, all of them trying their best to relax her by rubbing her back and her hands, by holding golden beakers of lemon water to her lips. But the space at Safiye’s right was empty. Her mother-in-law, the Valide, was conspicuous in her absence. It was a known fact that the two women had no affection for each other. Idle tongues speculated on the reasons why.

Hannah went to the basin of hot water in the corner and washed her hands. She wrung out the cloth the slave girl handed her, moved through the other women surrounding the Sultana, and took the open space to Safiye’s right. She wiped the woman’s forehead. The Sultana grasped the arms of the horseshoe-shaped birthing stool while the usual palace midwife, a stout woman from Amasia, cried out three times without conviction,“Allah Akbar” ¾God is most great.

Hannah nodded to the midwife, who took her cue and retreated to a corner of the kiosk.

Safiye was mad with pain, her eyes rolled back in her head. A young odalisque stood by helplessly, patting her hand. Hannah noted with approval that the birthing stool was fashioned of walnut, the sturdiest and luckiest of woods. The odalisque caught Hannah’s eye and gave a small shake of her head. It told Hannah what she needed to know: the Sultana’s travail had been long and unproductive.

In Constantinople, birthing was always a social occasion. All the women of the harem, from the most beautiful concubines to the lowest slave girls, were present in the room. Surrounding them were storytellers, eunuch dwarfs, jesters, jugglers and musicians. That night an astrologer sat off to the side, studying his chart. To Hannah’s annoyance, he muttered, “Not an auspicious time to be born.”

Crouched on a rush mat in the corner was an old woman performing a lead pouring. As the molten lead sizzled in her pot, the crone gave a toothless grimace and shrugged, indicating that the lead had not hardened into bright, clean shapes, which would have been a good portent, but into misshapen, twisted forms. Hannah was grateful that Safiye was in the midst of a birth pang and not aware of the ill omens surrounding her.

A dwarf dressed in a red turban and green kaftan approached Hannah and pulled a silver coin from behind her ear.

“Please,” said Hannah, “let us all stand back and give Her Excellency some air.” She turned to an old woman with a long nose like those from the town of Sinope on the Black Sea. Hannah knew she had been the Sultan’s wet-nurse years ago, and asked, “How far apart are the pangs?”

“Since the last call to prayer, two minutes apart. We have tried everything. The child has no way to come out. The djinns have sewn her womb closed.” Djinns were the tiny demons that tormented and interfered in every event, causing endless misfortune.

“Shush,” said Hannah, hoping the wet-nurse was mistaken. “A mother’s mind is easily discouraged by the words overheard during her travail.” She felt a surge of protective affection for Safiye. If this crowd of onlookers could not be optimistic, could they not depart and allow Hannah to get on with the task of saving this stubborn baby?

Safiye had more to worry about than simply birthing this child. Her only son, Mehmet, aged fifteen, was delirious with typhus and might not live to hear the call for morning prayers. If there ever was a time when the Empire required a male heir, it was now. Hannah stood for a moment studying the contorted face of the woman writhing on the stool. It was a lovely face but not a Venetian one. Long black hair, blue eyes, a rarity in this world of dark eyes and flat, high cheekbones. Rumour was that she was from Rumelia and had been brought to the palace when she was twelve.

Many busybodies thought Safiye overly interested in affairs of the state and other matters of no concern to women. Some feared the Sultan relied too much on his wife for advice. Whatever the truth of it, she would not be eavesdropping at the grilled window of the Privy Council , listening to state secrets, anytime soon. If Safiye survived, this birth would weaken her for months to come.

Kübra, a slave girl dressed in a plain blue kaftan with a long braid down her back, approached Hannah and said loudly, “Safiye must scream more softly. The Valide is trying to pray and finds the noise unsettling.”

Hannah opened her mouth to protest, but the girl, bending low as if to readjust her belt, said in a whisper only Hannah could hear, “The Valide wishes me to convey her thanks for your assistance last month in a certain matter.” The girl cast a sympathetic look at Safiye and walked off in the direction of her mistress’s private quarters. Hannah was touched by the Valide’s message, but tried to put the embarrassing event out of her mind and concentrate on Safiye.

The dwarf, swaying from side to side, turned clumsy cartwheels around Safiye. He bobbed up behind her birthing stool and then performed a somersault, as though fired from a cannon.How anyone could imagine that a woman in labour would enjoy all of this noise and confusion, Hannah could not comprehend. At home in Venice, the birth room was a hushed, secluded space, with only a midwife and perhaps the labouring woman’s mother and mother-in-law. Here the entire harem believed a mother’s suffering was cause for celebration. Perhaps if the confinement was an easy one such antics would comfort and divert the labouring mother, but when a labour was difficult, it could only make matters worse. And suppose in the end, there was no reason to rejoice? Suppose the confinement concluded with a dead mother or a dead baby? Or both? A crowd would only amplify the sorrow.

Hannah motioned to a nearby musician playing a stringed instrument. “Play something soft and soothing. Her Excellency is tired. Help her to relax between her pangs.”

Hannah rubbed almond oil on her hands and bent her head  close to Safiye’s ear. “I am Hannah. I have come to cajole this baby out of you.”

The Sultana tried to smile but her lips quivered. “I am in so much pain. Is there something you can give me?”

Hannah took Safiye’s hand. Opium would deaden the pain but it would also weaken the birth contractions, and this child had already dawdled in the birth passage too long. “Let us first see what can be done without opium. The poppy sometimes slows the baby’s breathing.”

“In that case, I will manage.”

“Brave and wise,” said Hannah as she squatted in front of the birthing stool. She waited for a pang to pass and then felt Safiye’s abdomen, moving her hands up and down and around. The child’s head was in a good position. A steady pull from the birthing spoons might ease it down farther. Hannah pressed her ear to Safiye’s belly. The baby’s heartbeat was slow and faint.

Hannah loosened the drawstring of her linen bag and took out her birthing spoons, which had been fashioned in Venice by a silversmith. They resembled two soup spoons with shallow bowls and gently curved handles, fastened together in the middle by a removable pin. Hannah blew on them for luck and cradled them in her hands to warm them. Her reflection in the spoons showed a drawn, white face with large black eyes, surrounded by a cloud of dark hair. She recited the prayer she always murmured at such times: “If it pleases God, may I do no harm.” Then she said softly to Safiye, “The birthing spoons are of no use if you are sitting upright. I know it is not the custom to give birth in a prone position, but if you lie down I can reach inside you and grasp the baby’s head.”

When Safiye nodded weakly, Hannah motioned two slaves to help the Sultana onto the divan and settle her into a reclining position.

Safiye’s eyes widened when she saw Hannah’s birthing spoons. “You plan to use those?”

“Do not be frightened. I have done this many times before.”

The jugglers ceased tossing balls; the astrologer looked up from his charts; the dwarf’s gymnastics came to an abrupt halt. Everyone was staring at Hannah as though she were a magician.

Hannah announced, “This is an instrument to help ease the child into the world. You will see.”

A look passed between Hannah and Safiye.

The Sultana nodded. “If it will help my son.”\

All labouring women wished for a son. None had more need of one than Safiye. Hannah unhinged the spoons and worked first one and then the other into Safiye’s passage until Hannah could feel them slipping into position, the baby’s temples cupped in the shallow bowls of the spoons.

“Now, push.”

Safiye gave a grunt and tried her best.

Hannah gently compressed the spoons and as the womb contracted, she pulled. The baby’s head emerged. Hannah felt a wave of relief. The Sultan was a small man, built low to the earth, with a large head and broad shoulders. If his baby shared these traits, it would not bode well for his wife’s confinement.

At the next contraction the shoulders should have slipped out, then the rest of the tiny body. But that did not happen. There were two more pangs accompanied by much pushing and groaning, yet the shoulders would not emerge.

Hannah said, “Do not lose courage. You and I are working together and with God’s help will get this child born.”

The Sultana groaned in reply.

Not for the first time, Hannah was struck by the absurdity of a fully formed baby trying to pass through such a tiny orifice. It was a blasphemous notion, which many might construe as a criticism of God’s design. “Take a deep breath. Rest while you can. Your pangs are good and strong. It will not be long now.”

“I am trying,” said the Sultana.

“I know you are―”

Just then, Safiye screamed and arched her back, her hands clutching at her breast.

A babe could suffocate if it lingered too long in the passage. Hannah did not waste time listening for a heartbeat. She withdrew her birthing spoons and reached her hands into the passage, thanking God for her small fingers. One tiny shoulder was caught fast on the sharing bones, the girdle that held the pelvis together. May it signify a healthy, broad-shouldered boy, Hannah prayed. A lusty heir was all that was lacking in this palace of sloe-eyed, heavy-lidded, voluptuous beauties, but the child was jammed inside its mother like a chimney sweep caught in a chimney pot atop one of the grand palaces in Venice.

“Another moment and we will have your baby out, cara.” Hannah should not have addressed the Sultana with such familiarity, but the endearment came involuntarily to her lips.

She rotated the head and compressed the infant’s shoulders to draw it out. Newborns were always malleable, their little bodies as soft as warm wax. A moment later, she felt rather than heard the burst of noise, like the small explosion of a cork withdrawn from a wine jug. The child had been so compressed that its shoulder had come loose of its moorings. The small bone of the upper arm had slipped from its socket. The baby slithered out, screaming. Hannah held it tucked under one arm and studied its angry red face. Poor mite. The shoulder joint was an angry red knob. No wonder the infant wailed so.

Perhaps a shoulder dislocation was not an unusual problem, but it was Hannah’s first experience with it. There must be something she could quickly do to persuade the shoulder back into place. She searched her memory for advice from other midwives.

Safiye clenched so hard at the folds of Hannah’s skirts that her knuckles were white. “Please help my baby,” she whispered.

The musicians played more loudly, shaking their tambourines and beating their drums to camouflage the child’s screams. If they would only cease their terrible racket, maybe a solution would occur to her. The baby was in agony, the tiny red face a mask of pain. To do anything would be better than to do nothing. She must act.

Hannah set the baby down on a cushion. The child was slippery with blood and mucus and the white waxy substance that covers all newborns. Covering her hand with a cloth, Hannah grasped the baby’s upper arm and rotated it until she heard a soft popping noise. This noise, coupled with the child’s screams, made Hannah’s ears ring and her body grow hot and then cold.She swallowed, wishing for a breeze off the Bosporus to penetrate this pavilion, which had grown stuffy with the aloes burning in a gold censer and the breathing of too many people and the crackling and spitting of hymeneal torches. So much pain, so much blood. But the child was no longer crying.

Safiye lay with her eyes closed, sweat dripping down her face. “A healthy child?” she asked.

“A happy outcome. You are blessed.” Hannah held the baby up to face the crowd, clutching its  slippery body firmly under the arms. All eyes were fixed on the newborn.

The band fell silent, tambourines on the floor, drums abandoned. The fiddlers stood with their horsehair bows  hanging at their sides. A number of the women of the harem withdrew handkerchiefs from the long folds of their tunic sleeves and began to cry quietly. Everyone was exhausted and relieved. No one dared to praise the beauty or vigour of the child for fear of attracting the Evil Eye.

Hannah laid the baby down  on a cushion and rubbed it with a cloth, watching the little chest rise and fall. Finally, the diviner murmured, “Ugly little thing.” There were a few grunts of assent, then a silence so profound that Hannah could hear the gibbering of the monkeys from the menagerie far away in the Third Courtyard.

The only other sound was the infant, breathing noisily, its tiny pink body still filled with birth fluids. Hannah withdrew her iron knife from her linen bag, preparing to cut the birth cord. Then she realized her error and put the knife down. The Sultan must perform this ritual. He would name the boy. He would face Mecca, his son raised in his arms, and he would recite the Call to Prayer and the Declaration of Faith. Hannah signalled to Mustafa, the chief black eunuch, who had just entered the pavilion and now approached the Sultana’s divan. Chief Black Eunuch is an official title.

“Would you advise the Sultan of the birth of his s¾”

Hannah’s request was cut short by Mustafa’s hand on her arm. He pursed his lips and shook his head, glancing at the infant. Hannah followed his gaze. For the first time she saw what she had been too busy to notice before but what had been appallingly obvious to everyone else in the room¾the swollen lips of female genitalia.

There was no need for the Sultan’s attendance. No need to announce the royal birth by firing off the cannons outside the Walls of Justinian. No need to do anything, except to bathe the little princess and nurture her until she was of an age to make a good marriage. Raising a girl, as the old proverb went, was “like planting a fig tree in the neighbours’ garden.”

Hannah cut the cord and then handed the child to the young wet-nurse. The girl carried the child to a golden basin filled with warm, fragrant water and gently washed her. Then the wet-nurse placed three sesame seeds on the infant’s navel for good luck. She swaddled the child and wrapped her in a blanket. She tied a blue-beaded amulet to the baby’s shoulder over the spot that had caused such anguish. Someone placed a bottle of sherbet with a piece of red gauze tied over the top next to Safiye. Had it been wound around the bottle’s neck, it would have signified the birth of a boy. A braid of garlic was hung over the golden cradle to keep away the Evil Eye.

One more thing had to be done. Hannah turned to the exhausted mother on her divan. “Try to stand up so the birth cake will come free.”

Two slave girls helped the Sultana to rise. An attendant handed Hannah a bowl, which she placed between Safiye’s legs, and the birth cake fell into it with a gratifying plop. How messy this part was and yet how necessary. The cake must be complete. If it was torn or disintegrated, it meant segments left behind in the womb. Hannah flipped over the contents of the basin with a pair of ivory tongs an attendant handed her, feeling ridiculously like a soothsayer studying entrails for omens.         

“Good. We have it all out.”

The slave girls lowered Safiye back onto the divan.

When she was comfortably settled, Safiye reached for the baby and clasped her to her breast. Hannah smiled at the sight of the two of them, Safiye tearful and happy, oblivious to everyone’s disappointment that the child was female. The baby was pink as rose-water sherbet and breathing strongly now. A slave girl removed the soiled linen from the divan and brought in fresh towels scented with sandalwood with which to bathe Safiye.

The Sultana was exhausted, every movement an effort, and barely able to cradle her tiny infant.

Hannah said, “Shall I bind you now or would you prefer to wait?” In accordance with custom, the wet-nurse would suckle the child for two or three years. To prevent the Sultana’s milk from coming in, Hannah must wrap strips of linen tightly around Safiye’s breasts. It would be painful for a few days, but then her milk would cease.

“I prefer to wait. You have earned my mother-in-law’s gratitude as well as mine,” Safiye murmured, her eyes never leaving the baby’s face.

So she had heard Kübra’s whispered thanks from the Valide. Even in the midst of her travail, Safiye was attuned to the actions of the woman who held the power of life and death over every woman in the harem.

Hannah knelt next to Safiye and whispered in her ear, “You have a lovely princess. Next year I will deliver you a little prince. I am certain of it.”

“I am happy with my daughter. I shall name her Ayşe. I shall have the pleasure of her company all of my life. Whereas a son? Who knows what might happen.”

Hannah said, “It is a wise woman who is content to receive what God has bestowed upon her.” The Sultana was referring to the cruel custom of fratricide, which had been the practice of the Imperial House of Osman for a hundred and fifty years. When her son, Mehmet, if he survived, took the throne from his father, he would be obliged to have any younger brothers and half-brothers strangled to prevent a war of succession. It was a custom that appalled Hannah.

She replaced her birthing spoons, her cloths, her herbs and potions and salves in her linen bag and rinsed Safiye’s blood from her hands. The baby was dozing in her wet-nurse’s arm. In a short time, little Ayşe would be nursing contentedly.

In forty days there would be a celebration in the hamam. Hannah would be invited to attend because she had delivered Ayşe. A duck’s egg would be broken into a bowl and rubbed onto the baby’s skin to accustom her to water and keep her safe from drowning.

And yet, far more serious dangers than drowning faced the princess and, indeed, everyone in the realm as Hannah and every subject in the realm knew. The great Ottoman Empire was in as much peril as if an enemy army were camped outside the walls of the city. The Empire, the mightiest the world had ever seen, stretched from Budapest on the Danube River to Aswan on the Nile and from the Euphrates almost to Gibraltar. It included the Balkan Peninsula, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia. It encompassed the Black Sea to the east and the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf to the south. Fifty million souls, freeborn and slave--Muslim, Jews, and Christians―lived within its realm, but without a healthy male heir, there would be civil war. The enemies of the Empire--most of Christendom, including Habsburg Naples and Sicily, and even the Muslim neighbour to the south, Persia--would tear it from gullet to groin like wolves bringing down a stag.

Two years had elapsed since that memorable night, the birth of the Sultana’s princess. Mehmet had recovered from typhus but he remained sickly. His circumcision had been postponed many times because of frequent bouts of ill health. The Sultan continued to rule, though he rarely left the palace and seemed content to leave the affairs of state in the capable hands of his mother. And worst of all, the Empire remained in a perilous state.

For two long years, there had been no births, no pregnancies, no stillbirths, not even a royal miscarriage. Safiye had failed to bear a son. The Sultan had failed to sire another heir, whether by Safiye or any of the harem girls. The Grand Vizier Mehmet Sokollu, was not happy. Mustafa, the cChief bBlack eEunuch, was not happy. The Valide was not happy.

Only Safiye with her precious two-year-old daughter Ayşe, whom she petted and spoiled like a doll, was happy.

Hannah’s beloved husband, Isaac, came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Together they looked from the window of their home into the street below where the little mare snorted and stirred restlessly in her traces outside the front door. Theirs was a district of twisting streets, a neighbourhood of foreigners―Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Circassians¾any number of people from remote corners of the Empire.

Isaac rested his chin on her shoulder. “Do you have to go out so late?” he asked, knowing she had no choice when the Imperial Palace called.

 “Whatever tonight’s crisis, it is not a birth,” Hannah said.

 “I will stay up until you arrive home safely.”

“Please, go to bed. You need to rise early tomorrow.”

Hannah’s friend Ezster had confided behind a cupped hand one afternoon in the mikvah why there had been no more harem pregnancies and why it was unlikely that there would be any in future. The Sultan could not perform with anyone other than Safiye. It was believed the Sultana had placed so powerful a curse on his genitals that he was useless with other girls. If Ezster was correct, then God Himself was powerless to set matters right.

But if Hannah was not being summoned for a birth, then what was she summoned for? Most likely, an odalisque, a royal concubine, suffered from a difficult menses that Hannah could treat with hot compresses and a tisane of camomile. Or perhaps Safiye required an elixir to aid in conception? Or was it a repetition of the Valide’s embarrassing difficulty?

Prepared for any eventuality, Hannah tucked into her linen bag an assortment of herbs, and, just in case, her birthing spoons. Almost as an afterthought, she packed a fresh peach, newly picked from her garden. From a few streets away, she heard the thud of the watchman’s metal-tipped staff on cobblestones as he made his rounds, admonishing those without serious business to return to their homes before he locked the city gates.

Isaac watched his wife packing. “I am so proud of you, Hannah. I know life in Constantinople is difficult for you and yet you make the best of it, even earning the trust of the palace. Imagine! You are so valued that the Valide herself calls you out in the middle of the night . . . although I wish she would restrict herself to daylight hours.”

“The Valide does not value me half so much as I value you, Isaac. Without you, this transition in our lives would have been impossible,” she said. Although Hannah spoke calmly so as not to alarm Isaac, she was worried. No one, especially women, travelled the streets at night if they could help it. It must be a dire emergency to justify the appearance of the carriage at her gate.

He smiled and kissed her.

Hannah and Isaac went downstairs and stood in the street, waiting for Suat to dismount and open the carriage door. The stars hung so low it seemed as though they had been hurled into the heavens by an unseen hand.

Hannah looked back at their house and spacious grounds. They had bought the property from a prosperous arrowsmith whose workshop had handily converted into a workspace for looms, trays for mating moths, drying cocoons, and all the paraphernalia of silk-making, including an orchard of mulberry trees in the back. The purchase came with a parrot, Güzel,which Hannah could hear screeching even from a block away. Soon after they took possession of the house, it became apparent why the arrowsmith’s wife had left the creature behind. This beautiful bird from Afrika, with lustrous grey plumage and a tail of vivid red, knew no greater pleasure than to lure an unsuspecting person to its perch. Then it would stretch out its scrawny neck waiting for a caress. As soon as a finger appeared, the bird would slash with its black beak, leaving behind a bleeding cuticle or punctured thumbnail. The creature would then fill the house with shrill, human-like cackling while it squatted on its perch, shifting its weight from one scaly leg to the other.

Isaac turned Hannah towards him and straightened her veil. As a Jewess, she was not required by law  to wear a veil, but at certain times it suited her to pass for Muslim. Now, she wanted to avoid the attention of roving gangs of Gypsies only too happy to gawk at the imperial landau and the woman inside. She wore a silk dress and pearl earrings. The silk was from their workshop, of course, spun from their own worms, woven by Isaac on their loom. The cloth had been dyed in a vat of madder and oak kermes and turmeric to give it a reddish hue.

Suat held open the carriage door. Hannah gathered her skirts, and Isaac handed her into the compartment and closed the door behind her. He leaned up through the carriage window to kiss her goodbye, patting the velvet pouch around her neck, adjusting it so it nestled next to her skin. Isaac wore a matching pouch. Even Matteo, their son, wore such a pouch. Without the constant warmth of their bodies, the silk eggs would fail to hatch and provide a new crop of pupae for the next mothing season.

Isaac smelled of lemons. He regularly rubbed lemon juice on his hands to remove dye used for the silk. In the light from the pine-pitch torch, his eyes shone.

“Good night, my darling,” he said. “All will be well. Administer a poultice, mix up an herbal decoction, place your cool hand on an anxious forehead, and soon you will be back. ”

Isaac’s optimism usually steadied her, but now, when all the signs pointed to an urgent situation¾the time of night, the closed carriage, the impatient way Suat was glancing from the mare to their house and back again¾it made her nervous.

Constantinople had been the start of a new life for her and Isaac. They had used the ducats Hannah had brought from Venice to purchase their ample house. Jews were permitted to buy property in the city. Even more startling, Ottoman law permitted married women to own their own property. Hannah had not imagined such a thing was possible.

“Give Matteo a kiss for me,” she said.

A feeling of peace came over her as she thought of Matteo, her three-year-old son. Early this morning through half-closed eyes, she had seen him at the doorway of their bedroom, trailing his blanket. She pretended to be asleep. He folded himself over on all fours, head down, knees pressed together. Then he rabbit-hopped to their bed. Without saying a word, he squeezed himself between her and Isaac and pulled the covers over all of them. She hated to leave knowing that he would likely wake in the morning calling for her, but what was she to do? Hannah could not possibly refuse a summons from the Imperial Harem.

Before she had a chance to blow Isaac a kiss, as was their custom on parting, Suat clucked to the mare and they were off. Hannah was flung back, hitting her head on the roof of the carriage as theylurched into the narrow cobblestone street.

Later that night, when she returned from the palace, she would recall the look on Isaac’s handsome face as she was leaving. She would wonder if they ever again would enjoy the intimate conviviality and the gentle jesting that had always typified their marriage before that night. The events at the palace were about to change everything.

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