An Evil Eye

10

At the sultan’s palace at Besiktas, the lady Talfa was jingling an enormous bunch of iron keys threaded onto an iron loop.

“Some of you girls,” she announced, “will receive keys yourselves as you settle in to your duties. That will be a matter for the Kislar aga to arrange, with my help, naturally.”

They were on the ground floor of the palace, where the windows were shuttered on the inside with diamond-shaped lattices to prevent anyone from looking in.

The girls avoided one another’s eyes, anxious not to be thought overbold. Many of them hoped to receive a key and to be allotted an important task. They had already inspected the laundry, under the lady Talfa’s direction: there would be a laundry kalfa, maybe two. They had looked into rooms containing the coffee sets for the coffee kalfa to manage; a silver room, stacked with plates, trays, and ewers; a china room, whose china kalfa would preside over the proper storage and cleaning of the Chinese porcelain.

The lady Talfa had familiarized them with each part of the building she knew so well. Baths had a key; so did the dressing rooms, where the sultan’s linen would be stored, properly folded and stacked away, and his frock coats, brushed every day and inspected for any sign of moth or dirt, with lengths of silk and muslin for his turban. There was even a slipper room, to which a slipper kalfa would possess the key.

The girls who followed the lady Talfa were used to luxury, but the scale of Besiktas bewildered them; the number of potential responsibilities and duties excited them. Some of them had forgotten their training and wandered openmouthed, eyes darting from precious silks to the immaculate polished parquet and marble on the floors. All of them were feeling weary, and slightly overawed.

Which was just how the lady Talfa wanted it, as she turned a key in the cellar door.

“Bring the lantern,” she said, “and follow me.”

They descended a stone staircase. Some of the girls reached out to clutch each other: it was quite dark, and the shadows that raced across the vault overhead seemed sinister and demonic. Somebody tripped and squealed.

At the bottom of the steps, the lady Talfa turned and held the lantern at her shoulder. Her face was plunged into dark shade. The girls, feeling the cold, shivered; they wondered why they had been brought down here.

“I have a duty, as the senior lady in the palace, to pass on a warning. The harem has many rules, as you know, and many traditions. Some of these ensure the smooth running of the sultan’s household. Some are upheld for your comfort and protection.”

The girls stood still, listening.

“There is one rule above all that you will be expected to obey, and that is the rule of silence. We are a family. We will have our disagreements and our rivalries, no doubt, as a family will. But what goes on here, in the sultan’s harem, is a matter for us and for no one else. You will see and hear things that will surprise you. Perhaps they will even upset you. But these are for us, and for us only. Do you understand?”

The girls murmured assent. They understood they had to keep their secrets.

Now, they hoped, the lady Talfa would lead them all upstairs, out of this dank cellar.

But the lady Talfa had turned, swinging the lantern. “The penalty for a girl who talks, or infringes the most serious regulations, is severe and horrible. Look.”

The lamplight settled, and the girls craned their heads, peering into the gloom.

“Do you see the table?” Talfa demanded.

They nodded. It was a plain wooden table with four stout legs. On the table lay several coils of thin cord.

“Can you see that the table stands on a block of stone?”

Talfa crossed to the table and set the lantern down.

“A girl who disobeys the regulations here will soon find herself on this table. She will be strapped down, unable to move. Then, one of the eunuchs will engage the engine.”

The girls were wide awake now. They shuffled closer together, unwilling to come too close to where the lady Talfa stood behind the table like a priestess at the altar.

“The engine, hanum?”

“A turning engine. When the lever goes down, the table will start to spin. Around and around, faster and faster. The stone here”-she tapped her slippered foot-“slides back, and as the table turns it begins to sink down through the floor.”

She paused, as if she expected a question: but the girls were far too nervous to ask it.

“Under this floor there is a tunnel, from the Bosphorus.” She held up a finger and rotated it in the air. “Once it is set in motion, the engine cannot be stopped. The table sinks into the water, and the girl is drowned.”

The girls stared at the table wide-eyed.

“Some of you may have heard about this place already. It would be better that you had not: the girl who spoke of it-well.” She pursed her lips; there was no need to spell it out. “None of you, I am sure, would want to make the same experiment.”

She picked up the lantern and walked back to the steps. The girls behind her jostled for position, each of them trying to climb hard on the lady Talfa’s heels. No one wanted to be the last to leave that cold, dark vault.