The Harem Midwife

by Roberta Rich

  “For the love of God, did you even consider the consequences? You have taken a terrible risk, and for what? A slave girl.”

  “A Jewish slave girl.”

  “All you had to do was tell the truth and your family—your son and your husband—would remain safe.”

  Hannah opened her mouth to respond, but Isaac went on, his voice rising. “We are not living in your beloved, civilized Venice. Constantinople was conquered by nomadic tribesmen who swept in on horseback out of the plains of Anatolia. A hundred years ago they burned, sacked, and defeated Christian Byzantium. They were merciless then. Do you think they have changed? If you are found out, your head will be on a spike, with mine and Matteo’s right next to it.”

  Hannah tried to quell his fears. “The Valide was kind to me. I drank sherbet with her and we talked of Venice and how we both longed for the city.”

  “The Valide is kind to her dogs until they shit on the floor,” Isaac said impatiently. “Do you not see that your lie is a reflection on all Jews? In Venice, we were confined to the ghetto, cramped into a tiny loghetto. Jews were not permitted to work except as dealers in second-hand goods or as moneylenders. But here, it is different. Jews have been treated well by the Ottomans. Sultan Beyazit welcomed us after King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled us from Spain. Do you remember Beyazit’s words? He said, ‘You call Ferdinand a wise king and yet he impoverishes his own country while he enriches ours.’”

  “Isaac, do not lecture me.”

  “Here in Constantinople, no one thinks your birthing spoons are any more sinister than a pair of scissors.” He glanced at her and then looked away as though he could not bear the sight of her face. “This tolerance for Jews could vanish faster than blood sinks into the ground after battle.”

  When she tried to speak, he held up a hand. “Think, Hannah. Is there a way you can set this right?” He stood towering by her bedside, looking down at her. “Can you say the girl begged you so piteously you agreed to lie for her but that you now have come to your senses?”

  His tone was so harsh that she hardly recognized it as the voice that moments earlier had been speaking so lovingly. Her back was growing cold.

  “Please, Isaac. Take off the cups.”

  Isaac went to the window and closed it, then came back to bed and pulled the cups off her back, lining them up on the floor. When he was done, he lay next to her, his back propped against the headboard.

  “You know as well as I do that it is not wise to say how happy we have been. To do so attracts the attention of the Evil Eye. But I will say it aloud. We have been happy here. We have a son, a house—”

  “—each other.”

  “A business. Now, with one lie, you have jeopardized everything.”

  “If I had not intervened, this girl—”

  “—would have killed herself? Is that what you are going to say?”

  Hannah felt dizzy with fatigue.

  “You put the interest of a stranger before the interests of your family.”

  “It is called pity, Isaac.”

  “This is not pity, Hannah. This is idiocy. I know the difference even if you do not.”

  Hannah’s feet were bare, her slippers on the other side of the room. She would not ask Isaac to fetch them for her.

  “I do not lack compassion,” said Isaac. “And I have done a number of foolish things in my life, but I would never do anything to endanger you or Matteo. You know what the palace is like—a viper’s nest of intrigue. This slave girl and this lie will be found out.”

  “Her name is Leah.”

  They were silent a moment.

  “Isaac, do you remember in Venice the neighbour’s little brown-and-white spaniel that got out of the house and was wandering the streets when she was in heat? Every male dog from the district away came sniffing around. Remember the pack of them snarling at each other and yipping in the alley? They broke her back with their weight.”

  Isaac had turned away from her and gave no sign he was listening.

  “Because it was too late to save the dog, the neighbour asked you to drown the poor creature in our washtub. To put her out of her misery.”

  Isaac said nothing.

  “When you came back into the house with the dog’s limp carcass in a sack on your back, your eyes were wet with tears. So it would have been tonight, Isaac, if I had revealed the truth about this girl. This child who has barely started her courses would be sold as a whore.”

  Finally, he turned to face her. “Your analogy is a poor one. I risked nothing in drowning the spaniel. I did a favour for the widow next door.” He shook his head. “What are you going to do?”

  She refused to think about Leah’s future. Instead, she said, with all the conviction she could muster, “There is nothing to worry about. If the couching goes ahead, the Valide has promised me a great deal of money. I know ways to hide the truth about the girl. With that money, Isaac, we can enlarge the workshop.” She spoke with a tone of finality, settling herself with her back to him.

  Just as she was falling into sleep, she felt Isaac move closer to her. Their horsehair mattress squeaked as he pulled the covers over them.

  “Good night, Hannah.” He patted her shoulder, but did not kiss her as he usually did. “If the Sultan discovers this girl is not a virgin, it will be you who is stuffed in a sack and drowned like the neighbour’s spaniel.”

  CHAPTER 10

  MATTEO SCREAMED WITH glee at the sight of Möishe, who resembled a shaggy bear, carrying aloft a mothing tray. The weaver, who lived with the Levy family in a little cottage in the back of the property, lumbered to the other side of the garden, then lowered the heavy wooden tray onto a pair of sawhorses.

  Hannah leaned over and kissed the top of Matteo’s coppery head. “Someday, you will be big enough to help Möishe in the shop and strong enough to carry a tray like his. In the meantime, perhaps Möishe can make a special one, just for you.”

  It had been a fortnight since Hannah’s visit to the palace. She had tried to banish the memory of Leah. She imagined a blank wall like the one from her loghetto years ago in the Venetian ghetto, whitewashed and unadorned. She imagined writing words on the wall with a quill and pot of ink, words that made her happy. Words like Isaac, Matteo, challah, and Seder wine. That was how she quieted her mind and erased disturbing thoughts. This morning her technique was not working. Instead, her mind projected images, like a camera obscura—Leah’s green eyes, the glint of the knife, the Valide’s unsettling gaze. Hannah blinked and tried again: Isaac, Matteo, carnations, Iznik tiles. It was no use.

  Möishe looked at her from the other side of the garden, wriggled his eyebrows, then pursed his lips at Matteo and pretended to frown. “Are you a good boy, my son?” he called.

  Matteo raced toward him, waving a stone he had picked up. He spied a mourning dove perched on a branch of a mulberry tree. “Möishe, watch me throw this at the bird!”

  Möishe stepped forward and gently pried the stone from Matteo’s fist. “No, don’t tease the dove.”

  “But all the other boys do it—Hikmet and Abdul.”

  “My friends do stupid things too. They go to taverns, they chase bad women. So what? Are we the sheep that follow the goat to the slaughterhouse?”

  Möishe tousled Matteo’s hair, then went back into the workshop to sit at his loom. No one was as skilled a weaver as Möishe, who had learned his trade in Lucca but departed that city for reasons he would not reveal. Soon the thump of the loom pedals came drifting out the open door into the garden.

  Hannah held Matteo’s hand as he climbed onto his tightrope and proceeded to walk a few wobbly steps before jumping off. Isaac had rigged it so that it was only a few finger-lengths from the ground. He had made it out of the thickest rope he could find.

  “Mama!” Matteo shouted. “It is a wonderful thing to have. A tightrope.”

  “Indeed it is, my son,” she said, letting go of his hand and bending to pick some rosemary from the bush near the kitchen d
oor.

  The bell rang, and Hannah heard Zephra open the front door. She went to the entrance and saw her friend Ezster and Ezster’s daughter, Tova. Ezster was carrying a basket of candles. Tova stood at her side, arms folded across her belly, heavy with child.

  “How delighted I am to see you both.” Hannah took the basket from Ezster. “Your famous candles. I am so grateful. I have been reduced to using those foul-smelling rush candles that are so hard to keep lit.”

  Ezster sold those candles of hers as fast as she could haul the hard, yellow wax from the beekeeper. The mice and rats did not dare nibble at Ezster’s beeswax candles as they did with tallow ones, leaving holes that caused the candles to topple and set fire to curtains and baby blankets. Ezster’s graceful tapers did not fuss and sputter and spit and gutter into greasy curls of smoke, casting more shadow than light. They burned clear and odourless. Her secret? Anchor rope that she first soaked in boric acid, dried in the sun, separated, and then used for dipping as wicks. Ezster and her donkey were a common sight at the shipyards. The ship chandlers saved their old rope for her.

  “We have come to ask if you would be my midwife when my time comes,” Tova said.

  Ezster added, “We know there is no one better in the Empire, and we’d both rest easy knowing you were there at the birth.”

  Hannah smiled at Ezster and Tova, who were good and loyal friends.

  “Of course. I would be honoured. Just send for me. I will fly across the street as swiftly as a goldfinch.”

  “Thank you, Hannah,” Ezster said, squeezing Hannah’s arm.

  Tova said, “The baby is due in a few weeks.”

  “I am not planning on being anywhere but here—God willing,” said Hannah.

  As the two women turned to leave, Tova called over her shoulder, “And bring those birthing spoons with you. I have a feeling this is going to be a large baby and stubborn like his father.”

  Hannah laughed. “No one is more stubborn than that man.” In truth, she liked Tova’s husband, who reminded her of a young Isaac.

  Once the women were gone, Hannah took up her knife again and returned to the garden to finished cutting herbs.

  The front door bell rang again and Hannah thought it was Tova and Ezster returning to tell her something they had forgotten to mention earlier. Matteo raced off to investigate, leaving Hannah behind in the garden. Hannah listened to the exchange of voices drifting in from the entranceway—a melodious female one and Isaac’s deep bass. She heard the front door closing.

  Matteo ran back to Hannah’s side and tugged at her hand. “Mama, come. A woman has arrived. You must come and meet her.”

  Just then, Zephra hobbled in from the small orchard in the back of the garden, her apron plump with lemons, dragging her left leg bent from arthritis. Hannah gave her a bunch of rosemary to add to the capon she was about to pluck for Shabbat dinner. The old servant could denude any bird, from duck to dove, from pheasant to peacock, as deftly as a lady plucking the keys of a harpsichord. Hannah rubbed her hands on her skirt and made her way to the door.

  A surprise visitor. Not Tova and Ezster. My God, Hannah thought, I must look a mess. She patted her hair, winding a stray lock behind her ear. In Venice she had always been welcoming to company. Here, because of Matteo, she was wary. Even now, after all this time, the fear of losing him populated her dreams.

  Hannah stopped short before she reached the door. A graceful figure stood in the entranceway, her hand on Isaac’s arm, a slight breeze from the open door shifting the blond curls at her neck. The rest of her hair was caught in a snood held in place with silver hairpins. Two valises rested at her feet. Her red dress, the pleats knife-sharp, was nipped in tight at the waist. The sleeves were loose and fluttered at her sides. The dress was an elegant sight compared to the trousers and kaftans the Mohammedan women wore. Matteo walked over to the woman and touched her dress. The woman did not turn, and stood chatting with Isaac as the sun streamed in, checker-boarding the floor.

  Matteo raced back to Hannah, who swung him onto her hip. She listened as Isaac spoke in the mellow, informal tone he used for family and friends. Hannah moved closer.

  Isaac was now clasping both of the stranger’s hands as though about to dance a gagliarda. “I cannot believe I am meeting you after all these years,” she heard him say.

  Together they turned to look at Hannah.

  “Hello!” the woman said, reaching out a graceful arm. “You must be Hannah.”

  Seeing up close this woman’s porcelain skin and long-lashed blue eyes, Hannah realized it was possible to be too beautiful. She had to glance away, and then looked back to ascertain that her eyes had not imagined the elegant figure, the huge blue eyes set in the oval face, the small mouth, the skin as white as cream, and the cheeks blushed pink.

  They moved out into the garden and stood outside the workshop where Möishe sat bent over his loom. He stared at the woman, the shuttlecock still in his hand. Tiny golden filaments of thread floated into the air, some of them settling on the guest’s red dress, making it shimmer.

  Hannah looked at Isaac, who stood gazing at this stranger, standing too close to her, his mouth open.

  “I am your sister-in-law, Leon’s wife. I am Grazia. And,” she said, turning to Matteo who was also gazing at her, mesmerized by her beauty, “I am your aunt.” She took a slender finger and ran it down Matteo’s nose, then lightly pinched one of his cheeks.

  Was this really Leon’s wife? And if so, what in the world was she doing here in Constantinople, so far from Rome, and so soon after her husband’s death?

  Hannah wiped her hands on her apron and kissed Grazia, aiming for her cheek but kissing the tip of her ear because Grazia turned her head just as Hannah bent toward her. She inhaled the fragrance of citrus and bergamot. She and Isaac had received a letter from Yehuda, Leon’s son from his first marriage, advising them that Leon had died, but a visit so soon? Had Isaac known Grazia was coming but neglected to tell her?

  “Very pleased to meet you,” Hannah managed to say.

  If Hannah had known Grazia was coming, she would have put on her best blue dress and washed her hair. A guest such as her sister-in-law deserved special dishes, a clean house, a new coverlet for her bed, and new curtains. The spare room needed to be whitewashed. The room was not a guest room at all but more of a storeroom, piled high with mothing trays and skeins of silk thread. Was it too late to tell Zephra to prepare a special dessert of ground pistachios and spiced apricots?

  “You must be exhausted from your journey,” said Isaac.

  In fact, she looked nothing of the kind. She looked as though she had been enjoying excellent meals and had just emerged from the baths. A garnet wedding ring, too loose on her finger, and earrings set with amethysts were her only jewellery.

  Hannah tugged at the patched grey dress she always wore when she did housework, riddled with holes from the splash of lye when she made soap.

  “I sailed on the Aphrodite,” said Grazia. “A long trip, nearly seven weeks, but I find the sea air so bracing.” She smiled, displaying teeth as white and even as pearls.

  When Hannah had arrived in Constantinople two years ago after her sea voyage from Malta, she looked like the survivor of a shipwreck—wishbone thin, with matted, lousy hair. Matteo and Isaac had been the same sorry spectacle. This slim woman in fitted velvet seemed to have survived the voyage without so much as a grease stain on her skirt, or a tear in her sleeve.

  “The sea is rough this time of year,” said Isaac. They returned inside where Isaac picked up Grazia’s valises and moved toward the stairs leading to the guest room.

  Matteo, usually shy, surprised Hannah by scampering over to Grazia to bury his face in her skirts.

  Grazia bent down so they were at eye level. She threaded her fingers through his curls. “Look at you! Such a big boy! Why, you are as tall as a bouquet of lilies.”

  “Matteo, can you say hello to your aunt?” Isaac said, with what seemed to Hannah to be too much insisten
ce.

  Matteo stared at Grazia.

  Grazia said, “We shall be great friends by and by.”

  “What a pleasure to have you here,” said Hannah. If only Grazia had not arrived just now, when Hannah had so much on her mind. Grazia would be another mouth to feed, but maybe they would chat and laugh and exchange confidences like sisters. Hannah missed the company of women from her part of the world. “We have no family in Constantinople,” Hannah said, “which makes you especially welcome.”

  While Isaac led her through the workroom and upstairs to their living quarters, Hannah hurried out to the summer kitchen in the garden to see if Zephra was finished picking beans. The old servant was adding more broth to the soup.

  From overhead, she heard Grazia and Isaac walking back and forth in the guest room between the cupboard where the bed was rolled up and put away for the day, and the wall niches for storing clothes. She heard the scraping of Grazia’s valise being dragged across the floor. When Shabbat was over, Zephra could clear it out and place sprigs of lavender between the bedsheets and hang the pillows out the window to air. Isaac came downstairs.

  Hannah spoke with Zephra about dinner and then climbed the stairs and joined Grazia in the spare room. She had already unpacked a suitcase containing three dresses and hung them in the clothes press. They looked too big for her, but perhaps Grazia had lost weight on the voyage. Exactly how long was she expecting to stay with them?

  “Leave your unpacking, Grazia. Come downstairs. Zephra will bring us some tea while you tell us of your journey. Isaac will join us in a moment. He went to talk to Möishe about some matter.”

  Her sister-in-law smiled and dropped the chemise she had been folding to put away in the wall niche. “I understand Ottoman ladies do nothing all day but sip tea.”

  Hannah laughed. “Just the rich ones with lots of servants.” She turned to the door and said over her shoulder, “Come, we shall have a cup.”