Stealing Athena

by Karen Essex

  She felt the all-too-familiar narrowing of her windpipe as the flow of air into her nostrils seemed to cease, as if the air were evaporating out of the room. She opened her mouth to breathe, afraid that she would divert the attention of Dr. MacLean—who could recognize the onset of one of her choking attacks—away from Elgin, who needed it more. Holding her breath, she forced herself to go to Elgin. Avoiding as best she could the sight of the leeches, she lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed it, smiling at him and at the doctor. She raised her index finger to signal that she required a moment out of the room—please, dear God, let them think she had to relieve herself—and then rushed out of the door. She ran into her private bedroom, struggling with the shutters that opened onto the balcony, coughing and at the same time trying with futility to push the air out of her lungs, sounding like some failing steam engine. With the last burst of her energy, she thrust herself outside, throwing her chest over the railing in case she vomited, holding on to the wrought iron, and shaking it as if the violent action would enable her to exhale. She sank to her knees, trying to calm herself, trying to release some tiny spurt of air so that she could stay alive until the choking stopped, which it inevitably did, but only after causing her to wonder, with every attack, if she would again survive.

  The contractions in her throat began to diminish, until at last she could release shallow breaths through her mouth. She sat on her skirts, clutching the rail, slowly letting the air into and out of her lungs, and looking out into the night. It was cold and clear, starlight dancing upon the waters of the river. At the bottom of the hill, she saw what looked like a merchant pulling a cart loaded with bolts of white muslin, but it was a strange time of night for a peddler to be out of doors. The man was knocking at the door of a house. The door opened, and someone handed the merchant another bolt of fabric, which he tossed upon the pile. As he pulled the cart down the street, a woman ran from the house, chasing him, trying to grab the goods off the cart. She pulled at the fabric, rolling out a length of cloth as if unfurling a sail, revealing an inert body, perhaps the corpse of a boy. The cart stopped, and a man came from the house, covered the body again, and took the woman inside.

  Mary had heard that the bodies of the victims of smallpox were taken away in the middle of the night to avoid outbreaks of hysteria, but she’d assumed that the disease was confined to certain city quarters far away from the elegant row of embassy palaces where they lived. Perhaps Elgin was right: though the weather was no worse than the inclemency in Scotland, there was something in the air that was making him sick. He showed no signs of smallpox, which was a relief, but that was not to say that any of them, especially her unborn baby, would remain immune forever.

  THE ELGINS HAD BEEN warned against extending invitations to high-ranking Turks to visit them in their home; the Turks would simply not come, and it could present a diplomatic embarrassment. But the Capitan Pasha had heard that the ambassador was gravely ill and came immediately to see if he could be of service to Lady Elgin.

  “I shall teach you my secret passion,” Mary said to him, knowing she was being provocative, but also trying to protect her husband. She knew that she mustn’t allow the pasha to see Elgin in his condition—the Turks’ confidence in her husband had to be maintained at all costs.

  “My husband has a mild croup, that is all. But you must not visit his room. He would never recover if he thought that he had exposed you to his illness,” she said.

  “What is this about your passion?” The pasha was smiling.

  “It is called whist!” she said.

  “Lady Elgin, you are in trouble. At this game, I already excel,” he replied.

  Mary thought that she had the evening under control. But while teaching the pasha one of her strategic moves, she found herself revealing to him her fears of giving birth in a strange land. She told him of the horrible sight of the child’s body being taken from his mother, and her dread of such a thing happening to her own firstborn.

  “I promise, on my honor, that I will protect your child as if it were my own son or daughter.” His eyes softened as he looked at her, and she wondered if he was going to produce a tear to match the ones that had welled up in her eyes.

  “You need the companionship and conversation of other ladies,” he said. “I have seen it before with ladies who come to us from other places. I would like to extend you an invitation to my home so that you may meet my sister.”

  “But is she not the wife of the Sultan?” Mary asked, reeling from both the invitation to the private home of a Turk and the offer to meet a sequestered woman.

  “She is haseki, his favorite. But when I am at home, he allows her to live with me and keep me company and help me to manage my household. She has heard many stories of you and wishes to meet you at once.”

  The invitation to his home represented an unprecedented offering of friendship and honor, Mary knew. The additional gift that arrived the next day exceeded the limits of generosity. It arrived in a golden box, delivered ceremoniously by a handsomely dressed messenger, perfumed and plumed. Elgin had bathed and dressed for the first time in a week, and he peered over her shoulder as she lifted the lid, exposing a sapphire of astonishing size sitting on a little gold velvet pillow. His note read:

  The poets of old believed that the heavens were a great sapphire cradling the earth. May this small gift represent my assurance of the protection I offer to you and to those you love.

  The stone was a dark blue, the color of the sky just after sunset, and it was set inside a ring of diamonds that hung about it like stars round a planet. Mary thought that the sapphire itself might contain the heavens within its glittering facets. She rolled the stone in her hand, eyeing its sharp angles and icy flat surfaces. It seemed to embody some strange quality of infiniteness, and Mary felt as if she could lose consciousness somewhere inside of it. Had it been infused with some sort of spell, designed to make her love the pasha?

  “I wonder, does he wish you to wear it in your navel?” Elgin asked, breaking the enchantment.

  Though he had lost weight from his ordeal, and his eyes seemed to sit in a face ever more hollow, Elgin’s cheeks were pink again, though he looked older now.

  “My dear, the Capitan Pasha has made the most extraordinary offer,” she began. “His sister is in residence at his home this week, and she has insisted on meeting me.”

  “Delightful,” Elgin said. “You shall undoubtedly come away with yet more loot.”

  “The extraordinary thing is, she insists that I spend two nights at their home.”

  “That is extraordinary indeed,” he said, his face inscrutable, as if he was trying to determine how he felt about the matter. “You don’t suppose that he will take advantage of your situation and kidnap you into his own harem and raise our child as his own?”

  “I didn’t realize that you were so fond of the plots in ladies’ novels,” Mary said. “Besides, it would be a disaster for international relations. Otherwise I am sure that he would not be able to resist me. Only the threat of beheading by the Sultan could make him control himself in my presence.”

  “What matters, madam, is that you are able to resist him. Shall I remind you of what Julius Caesar said upon divorcing his second wife after she was merely suspected of adultery? That the wife of Caesar must be above suspicion?”

  “If you do not think it proper for me to stay the two evenings, I will decline the invitation.”

  “On the contrary, I want you to go. Is the sister of the pasha not the favorite concubine of the Sultan?”

  “The pasha declares that she is.”

  “Then do go. And enjoy yourself.”

  “So I am above your suspicion?” Mary slid her hand up Elgin’s chest and neck and played with his earlobe. “Which I should be, since I love my Eggy above all.”

  “The point is, Mary, we are going to need the Capitan Pasha’s influence, and perhaps his sister’s as well if she has the Sultan’s ear.” He took her hand and kissed it, resuming hi
s diplomat’s demeanor. She did not like it when he acted in his private life in the same manner as in his public one; when he kissed her hand formally as if she were some envoy’s elderly wife and not his beloved. Like all women, she instantly felt—and mourned—a severing of intimacy.

  “I received letters this morning from Hamilton and the others in Athens,” Elgin said. “Their access to the temples on the Acropolis is being severely restricted. The Turkish disdar in command is demanding exorbitant bribes to allow them access to the Parthenon. We will run out of funds before the simplest of tasks is complete.”

  “And how is the pasha to help with access to something in Athens?”

  “He can use his influence with the Sultan to get us permission to set up and work at will. Months have passed, Mary, and nothing has been done. Meanwhile, the artists and craftsmen on the payroll are draining our resources. The work must be expedited or the mission will fail.”

  Elgin’s face lost its color as he spoke. All good humor and appearance of health vanished and a deep furrow bisected his forehead.

  “By inviting you to spend two evenings in his home with his sister,” he continued, “the pasha is practically elevating you to membership in his family. And what would a proud and noble Turk not do for his family?”

  “I shall send Duff with a reply accepting the pasha’s kind invitation. And I shall miss you. Will you visit me?”

  “Of course. Unless you think that my presence will intrude upon the pasha’s fantasy that you are a part of his harem,” Elgin said.

  Mary could not tell if he was joking or not. She smiled at him, letting him think that she considered what he said quite foolish, but she wondered how far her husband—who in most circumstances quaked with jealousy when men attended to Mary—would go in letting her serve his ambitions.

  In the city of Constantinople, January 1800

  THE AFTERNOON SUN WARMED the sandy-colored bricks of the pasha’s home, bathing the structure in a golden glow. The house was not of palatial size—at least not compared to the Sultan’s palace—but it made an imposing presence high above the banks of the river, appropriate to the fact that its occupant was in command of the Sultan’s armies. The main structure of the palace complex was a domed building, with four pointy towers at the corners. High walls of the same bricks with geometrical cutouts surrounded the entire complex, including its courtyards, garden, and outer structures, small buildings that Mary supposed were used as kitchens and for sundry other purposes.

  She had brought with her three maids and a lady interpreter, Madame Pisani, a very pleasant woman about forty years of age, the wife of the court dragoman, who, with her husband, was from an ancient Venetian family. A male interpreter, foreign or otherwise, who was not a husband or a blood relation would not be allowed in the same room as the Turkish women. The palace’s high walls made Mary think of a medieval fairy tale, which was only fitting because that was how she had come to think of the aristocratic Turkish women—like imprisoned princesses in fairy tales of old. She was anxious, if not a little nervous, to see if the reality of the women’s lives bore any resemblance to her fantasy.

  Soon, however, she was in the aura of the ladies’ enthusiastic welcome. Rather than feeling she was in a prison, in the women’s quarters she felt as if she was being invited into a warm hive, buzzing with female activity. Surrounded by cousins, aunties, and widows of brothers and other relatives, Hanum, the Capitan Pasha’s sister, greeted her. All were introduced by name, and by where they lived and with whom, and by their relation to the pasha, none of which Mary had any hope of remembering. But each took her hand, holding it until the introduction was complete and then passing her on to the next kinswoman. Mary thought them beautiful, one and all, with their thick, dark hair—some black as night, some lighter and as luscious as honey or caramel. The eyes staring at her were in shades of brown and green, bright and shimmering like leaves in a forest before a strong rain.

  Everyone was talking, and Madame Pisani was trying her best to keep up and make certain that Mary knew which lady was making which comment, but she soon gave up in confusion. Mary reached for the small gifts she had brought, English music boxes that would play pretty tunes when the tops were opened, and handed them to the ladies. As soon as the music was released, they gasped as if they were being presented with the most delightful magic, though Mary was sure that they had seen such devices before, and that sheer politeness was driving their enchantment.

  The afternoon had been thoroughly planned. Mary and Hanum sat on silk-covered couches and had tea, speaking through an interpreter while the others listened. Mary did not know whether Hanum held authority over the others because they were in her brother’s home, or whether it was her particular position with the Sultan, whom she referred to as the Padishah, that made the others behave deferentially. Or whether it was simply a hierarchy agreed upon in advance, under which they would present themselves to this foreigner.

  Throughout their conversation, Mary’s eyes kept wandering around the room, which was decorated with exquisite painted wallpaper, mosaic tea tables, and intricate silks and carpets. Birds in delicate, ornate cages chirped along with the women as they spoke. Mary showed Hanum a picture of Elgin that she kept in a locket.

  “He is most handsome and worthy of the love of a great lady such as yourself,” Hanum declared through the interpreter.

  “Please ask Hanum to repeat that when she meets Lord Elgin,” Mary replied.

  A momentary hush fell over the chatty room. Mary sat uncomfortably until she realized her gaffe. Hanum would never meet and address Elgin, or any man outside of her family, unless, as she later gathered from Hanum herself, the Padishah tired of her and married her off to some respectable official in his government. She remembered what one of the Turkish interpreters had told her about conversation between men and women. Women’s voices are soft and beautiful, and the melody of their speech is arousing. Therefore, they must not be heard speaking to strange men.

  But here in the pasha’s harem, the women spoke freely, exchanging stories of their families, and Mary related her impressions of Constantinople. All the while, many of the women embroidered, working with such skill that they could speak, listen, and look away while moving a needle in and out of the fabric. One of Hanum’s younger cousins worked furiously on a sampler of sorts, the kind of needlework an English girl would do of a wise saying or the alphabet to learn the skill. Mary asked through Madame Pisani what the girl was working on, and everyone in the room began to laugh.

  “She was hoping that you would inquire. That is why she is sewing so demonstratively,” said the interpreter. “It is a quote from Mihri Hatun, a lady poet who wrote many centuries ago. ‘A talented woman is better than a thousand untalented men, and a woman of understanding is better than a thousand stupid men.’”

  Hanum muttered something to her cousin, something that Mary thought might not be intended for her ears. She turned to Madame Pisani, hoping for an accurate translation.

  “Hanum says that her cousin is intelligent but rebellious, and as she gets older she may discover that while rebellion may be a sign of intelligence, it is not a sign of wisdom.”

  “It is not a sign of wisdom, perhaps, but it is a sign of youth,” Mary said to the girl, wondering how she would have felt if her destiny had been cast to the will of others. What might have become of her if she had had no power to choose the direction of her life? If her father had not listened to her and consented to the marriage with Elgin? If she had never had discourse with another man and could not compare the tedious hours spent with some potential suitors with the excitement she felt in Elgin’s company?

  “Your baby is a boy,” Madame Pisani announced, interrupting Mary’s thoughts. An older woman smiled at Mary as she explained that the baby was carried low in the womb, which clearly meant that she was going to have a son. “Insh’Allah.”

  Mary explained that she would love to give her husband a son, but would be grateful for a daughter. “W
e are all of us daughters,” Mary said, waving her hand as if to encompass all the women in the room. “My father has shown nothing but pleasure with me.”

  The women began to squabble among themselves until the interpreter, in her lilting Italian accent, delivered the litany of questions: Was the sickness worse in the beginning of the pregnancy, or did it worsen as time went on? Were her feet hot or cold? Was Elgin gaining weight as the pregnancy progressed? Were her looks improving, or did she look in the mirror as the months wore on and get depressed? Mary tried to answer all the questions, as if turning evidence over to a jury. A conference was held, and then the verdict was pronounced. The grandmother had been correct: the baby was definitely a boy. One of the young women stood and spoke directly to Mary as if giving her a blessing. Her words sounded like song, which she sang first in a strange language that Mary did not recognize, and then repeated in the language of the Turks, which Mary had heard enough to recognize, if not comprehend.

  “Farah is the one who recites from the Holy Book. She says that God has spoken His will, and it does not matter if the child is a boy or a girl,” the interpreter said. “‘To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. He creates what He wills. He bestows female children to whomever He wills and bestows male children to whomever He wills.’ Of course, we have the same philosophy in Venice,” she added.