The Venetian Contract by Marina Fiorato Read Free Book Online Page B

tiptoed from the room.
    Feyra knew it was time to find the doctor. She stumbled back to the Hall of the Ablution Fountain. The last time she had been here her world had been the right way up. Now her entire future was uncertain and she had found and lost a mother in a brace of hours.
    She sent one of the black eunuchs for the doctor and when he came he looked little better than her poor mistress. He was grey and shaking, and his turban was awry. Shebowed to him. ‘It seems you already know, Teacher, what it is that I would say.’
    Haji Musa looked at her, as if he had taken a glimpse down the pit. ‘Feyra, I must tell you, your father is in danger. Don’t let him sail.’
    ‘My
father
? But I came to tell you my –’ she paused ‘– my mistress, she has passed away. You did not know?’
    It was as if the doctor could not hear her. ‘I have already said too much. Don’t let him sail. His cargo is dangerous. It will kill him.’
    Feyra froze. ‘His cargo? What is my father’s cargo?’ She was shredded by loss and confusion, sick of hints and intimations; it made her strident. ‘Tell me, quickly and plainly.’
    Her teacher and mentor, the great Haji Musa, visibly shrunk before her. He backed away. ‘I have already said too much.’ His hands fluttered to his mouth. ‘Did you say your mistress was dying?’
    ‘She is already dead.’
    The news seemed not to matter to him at all, a mere detail. ‘Then, Feyra, go home
now
. Do not be here when she is discovered. And take your father away,
do not let him sail
.’
    ‘Wait!’
    He was already walking away. ‘I have already said too much. They may take my head for just this much. If I say more, I am surely a dead man.’
    Feyra watched him scuttle off and knew that she would never see him again.
     

     
    Not knowing what else to do, she walked through the quiet courts in the direction of the palace gates. Her mother hadtold her to go with Timurhan on his voyage. Her mentor had told her on no account to let her father sail. Both of them had spoken of his cargo. Nur Banu had named it the black horse, and Haji Musa had warned her it would kill him. Feyra felt suddenly very young. All she wanted to do was climb into Timurhan’s lap, pull his beard as she used to as a child, lay all before him and ask him what they should do.
    As she passed the Sultan’s quarters she could hear the Sultan’s voice booming within. She quickened her steps, as if Murad himself might emerge from his rooms and strike her down for letting his mother die. If she’d listened more carefully, if she’d not been in quite such a hurry, she might have heard another male voice.
    She might have recognized the second voice too. The Sultan was in conference with her father.

Chapter 4
    S ultan Murad III had begun his reign as he had meant to go on.
    On his return from the province of Manisa to claim the throne, he had ordered the strangulation of the five younger brothers his father had sired by other wives. The succession was clear; and now at nineteen, young, vigorous and unopposed, he was ready to put his life’s ambition into play.
    According to the Kizlar Agha, with whom he’d just had an interesting conference, his mother should be dead by now. He was at last free of the tie that had of late been squeezing him like a noose and he would no longer have to brook her interference.
    Conveniently, too, he had contrived to allow the Genoese to do the deed. His hands were clean, for while his suppression of his brothers had been popular with his people, and expected in a strong ruler, the murder of his mother, a well-loved figure, would have been a step too far. To blame the Genoese, though, was a masterstroke. He would have her
Gedik
strangled for negligence and denounce the Genoese who had, in his opinion, taken over too much of his city with their quarters in the Galata tower and the surrounding ghetto. He could not only mourn his mother with all civichonours, but also whip up righteous anger