The Harem Bride

by Blair Bancroft

  “Parles-tu français?” the giant inquired, speaking the familiar French one might use to a child.

  Penny was so delighted to hear words she understood, she nearly fell to her knees and kissed the hem of the giant’s elaborately embroidered robe. And recognized on the same instant that her mind had been shockingly affected by her twelve days in captivity. The proud, independent, carefree Miss Penelope Blayne was already fading into a person from another world. Horrified at her weakness, Penny thrust out her chin, straightened her shoulders, and informed this man that she did indeed speak French.

  “You are in the Topkapi Palace,” he told her. “A gift from the merchant Mustafa Rasim to his magnificence, Selim, Sultan of all lands of the Ottomans. You are an odalisque. Do you understand this word?”

  “A slave?” Penny ventured.

  “More than a slave,” the black giant replied, with a look that indicated he questioned her intelligence, or decried the ignorance of foolish foreign females. “I am the Kizlar Agha, the Chief Black Eunuch,” he announced. “I am master of the Sultan’s seraglio. A man of great power. A man to be obeyed. A man to be feared. Do you understand?”

  Penny nodded, for the moment too intimidated to speak.

  “You are now part of the Sultan’s harem. You will learn to serve the wives of the Sultan and the women who are his favorites. You will also learn how to please the Sultan, if it should ever come to pass that he wishes to honor you with his presence. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Excellency” Penny managed. There was nothing in his words she had not come to understand during her time with the women of Mustafa Rasim. Events there, even without a mutual language, had been made all too clear.

  “Your name is now Gulbeyaz. Rose White. You will answer to it at all times. Gulbeyaz,” he repeated. “You will do as you are told, not only by me, but by the other eunuchs, by the Sultan’s wives and favorites, and by the more experienced odalisques. A golden treasure you may be, but you have much to learn. Anyone here may command you. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  “The Valide Sultana, the Sultan’s mother, is the great lady here. You will kiss her hand, you will prostrate yourself before her. The wife of our former Sultan, Nakshedil Sultana, is also of great importance. It is she who has taught us to speak French.”

  Aimée de Rivery! Penny’s hopes soared. Surely—

  “To Nakshedil Sultana, you will not prostrate yourself. She does not care for such formalities. You may, if she indicates she wishes it, kiss her hand.”

  She would kiss her feet, Penny thought, if only the French Sultana would help her get out of this place! But what a slim hope. If Aimée de Rivery had not been able to get herself out, how could she help anyone else? But, then, perhaps after . . . after she had borne a child, there was no going back. Perhaps even after one night there was no return to the Western world, to the green meadows of Kent, to the cold and haughty eyes of the ton.

  “You are now the property of his magnificence, the Sultan Selim,” declared the Kizlar Agha, rising to his feet. “You will put away all childish thoughts of the world you have known. You are the odalisque, Gulbeyaz. You are here to stay until life leaves your body.” He waved her toward the door in a gesture not dissimilar to a farmer shooing chickens. “Go now. The guards will take you to the seraglio, where you will do as you are told. Do not forget!”

  Penny nodded and, almost sightlessly, pushed her way through the damask curtain. There was no hope. At sixteen, her life had come to an end. Silently, forlornly, she allowed the eunuch guards to lead her away.

  Miss Cassandra Pemberton’s temper, usually well-contained by the certainty of her power to control the world around her, grew progressively more uncertain as the length of her niece’s disappearance approached one month. Assaulted by guilt, her confidence shattered, she was reduced to taking out her frustration on the two gentlemen who were making the greatest effort to help, Lord Elgin and Viscount Lyndon.

  “Your reliance on something called “bundle women” is absurd,” she cried, brandishing her plain tan parasol as she paced the exquisitely knotted carpet in the ambassador’s reception room. “You must send another petition to the Grand Vizier, demand an audience with the Sultan. If you will not, then I must go myself!”

  “No!” “That you will not!” Both men spoke at once.

  “Miss Pemberton,” the viscount said, containing his youthful anger with some difficulty, “you will only succeed in doing more harm than good. We are trying to conciliate the Grand Vizier, not incite his fury. We must wait until one of the bundle women reports that she has actually seen Miss Blayne in the Sultan’s harem. Only then do we dare challenge the Vizier.”

  “Believe me, Miss Pemberton,” Lord Elgin added, “we are very much on sufferance in this empire so much larger than our own. The Sultan may have welcomed our help in driving Bonaparte out of Egypt, but, partly thanks to the dratted Aimée de Rivery, he is, at the moment, more inclined to favor the French than the English.”

  “But you tell me women have no power,” Miss Pemberton shot back, glaring.

  The ambassador, wearied by Miss Pemberton’s constant nagging, minced no words. “Aimée de Rivery gained her power in a manner I doubt you would wish to emulate, ma’am.”

  Cassandra Pemberton gasped. Viscount Lyndon turned sharply away to hide his face. And then, because he had grown considerably older and wiser during the anguish of the past month, Lord Lyndon mastered his emotions and managed to address Miss Blayne’s aunt with both sympathy and sincerity. “I promise you, ma’am, the moment we hear Miss Blayne is definitely inside the Sultan’s seraglio, Lord Elgin and I will be on our way to the palace.” Though how they would pry young Penny loose from her imprisonment the viscount could not yet imagine.

  Hastily, Lord Elgin rang the bell for his majordomo. Miss Pemberton found herself ushered to her carriage with the ambassador’s assurances—undoubtedly insincere, she grumbled to herself—still ringing in her ears. But Lyndon was showing far more bottom than she had expected in a gentleman so young. Yes, if anyone could rescue her dear Penny, it was Jason Lisbourne.

  A tear coursed down Miss Pemberton’s cheek. She, who had vowed never to cry like a silly girl, was once again on the verge of being awash in saltwater. Oh, Penny, dearest child, is there any hope left? For I fear the men do not think so.

  For Gulbeyaz, the White Rose, newest odalisque in the seraglio of Sultan Selim—ruler of an empire that stretched from Russia through Arabia to North Africa, and from Greece to the Caspian Sea—there were more lessons. She learned to walk more daintily, with steps that seemed to float above the tiles. She prepared coffee over and over again until she earned a nod of approval from the Kislar Agha himself. She continued her lessons in the other skills necessary to an odalisque, not all of them to do with lotions, potions, and scenting her clothes. In short, Miss Penelope Blayne studied humility and the acceptance that women are placed on earth solely for the pleasure of men.

  Blessed with intelligence and the resiliency of youth, Penny conquered her shock, and as one day passed into the next, she raised her eyes and attempted to make sense of this exotic, indolent life, as walled off from the Ottoman Empire as it was from her beautiful countryside so far away in England. She even acquired two new friends, Ayshe and Leyla, dark-haired, dark-eyed beauties of about her own age, who took her in hand and introduced her, by way of gestures, giggles, grimaces, and groans, to the ways of the seraglio outside the hours of their “training.”

  Yet, in spite of being in the midst of the restricted life of the harem, Penny still found it difficult to imagine that these women would never see the outside world except through a latticed window. They would never go shopping in the Grand Bazaar, never see a play they did not perform themselves. They would not know the thrill of riding a ship under full sail, the wind blowing their hair. They would not dance and flirt or have the opportunity to choose a mate. They would never be seen by any male other than the Sulta
n and their eunuch guards.

  With no society but their own, the sultan’s women were forced to improvise. Their amusements ranged from fortune-telling to childish games. Some told stories, others wrote poetry. Almost all enjoyed the lush gardens with gilded gazebos, ponds with colorful fish, the sounds of nightingales, canaries, and doves, overlaid by the cries and squawks of parrots, macaws, and peacocks. And many liked to peer out the latticed windows facing the Bosphorus, watching ships come and go, the only sign there was a life outside the seraglio. Still others, having long since given up hope of becoming a wife, or even a favorite of the Sultan, settled onto their cushions, a hookah their only comfort, dreaming away the days of their confinement. Still others, Penny discovered, even more thoroughly shocked than by her lessons in how to please the Sultan, found pleasure with the eunuchs or with each other.

  She would never adapt, Penny vowed. Never accept this was to be her home for the rest of her life. There had to be something more for her. There simply had to be.

  Jason. Dearest Jason. Somehow, during her time of trial, this young man Penny scarcely knew became an intimate friend. Her dream lover, who would surely rescue her from her terrible fate.

  He would, he would. She knew he would.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Eight

  The bundle woman was quite certain. She had seen the English miss in the Grand Bazaar. How could she not notice such a fair young virgin? And, yes, young master, the new odalisque in the Sultan’s seraglio was the same girl, there was no doubt. The Jewish woman, obviously sympathetic, also imparted a second bit of helpful information. A custom that, to his credit, took Jason Lisbourne aback only for a moment. If what the woman told him was true, there might yet be a way out of this coil. Both the bundle woman and Faik left the villa of Lord Lyndon much pleased by the gold in their purses, with promise of far more to come if the woman’s information proved true.

  But even for the British Ambassador who had managed to get approval from the Ottoman Empire to remove the marble friezes from the Parthenon in Greece, an appointment with the Grand Vizier was not easily granted. Particularly, when neither the Grand Vizier nor his Magnificence, Sultan Selim, wished to hear what Lord Elgin undoubtedly wished to say. But the day came when excuses waned and the matter could no longer be postponed. Lord Elgin and Lord Lyndon were granted an audience in the royal throne room.

  Jason noticed, with interest, that the Sultan was wearing what was likely his most impressive sleeveless robe, heavy scarlet silk edged in ermine, worn over a garment of gold brocade. Lord Lyndon also noted that in a room full of men with colorful robes and full black beards, he and Lord Elgin appeared oddly bare in their shaven faces and tight English jackets and fitted breeches. But there was no way they could blend in, after all. They were here to ask the unthinkable—the removal of a female from the Sultan’s seraglio.

  Lord Elgin stepped forward, bowed low before the Sultan, the only man seated in this vast room of Ottoman dignitaries and guards. The Scottish lord’s petition was simple. He desired the return of Miss Penelope Blayne, a young Englishwoman who had, quite by accident, he was certain, become part of the Sultan’s harem. Miss Blayne’s relatives, represented by Viscount Lyndon—Lord Elgin gestured toward his companion—were most distressed and wished to have her returned to them immediately. If his Magnificence would be so kind—

  “You must be aware this is not possible,” the Grand Vizier interjected, the dragoman interpreter precisely imitating the official’s sharp tone. “No woman leaves the seraglio.”

  Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, squared his shoulders, summoning all his stubborn Scots ancestry to aid him. He spoke slowly and clearly so the translator would be certain to interpret his words correctly. “Lord Lyndon is the eldest son of an earl, the heir. In England an earl is a great pasha. It is known that, on occasion, his Magnificence, the Sultan, may give one of his women—if she is untouched—as a gift to a great lord. I therefore assure you that Jason Victor Granville Lisbourne, Lord Lyndon, is such a lord, and I humbly request that he be granted this gift, a token of respect between our countries.”

  The Grand Vizier began to speak, his words fading into silence at a wave of the Sultan’s hand. “If such a gift is made,” Sultan Selim intoned, “it is required that the pasha marry the girl immediately.” His dark eyes regarded the viscount with considerable interest, as if certain the young man would refuse.

  Jason bowed so low his head nearly touched his knees. Ever since the bundle woman had told them of this ancient custom, there had been little doubt it was the only hope for Penelope’s rescue. He was reconciled to the inevitable. “Your Magnificence, I would be honored to take Miss Blayne to wife.”

  “You may return in two days time with whatever man of your religion you choose,” the Sultan decreed. “You will be married here. You will spend your wedding night in the palace so we may know the matter is properly accomplished. And then you may take your woman and go.”

  Jason had thought himself prepared for almost anything, but a wedding night in the palace . . . with a hundred eyes watching. Impossible!

  While Viscount Lyndon suffered from speechlessness, Lord Elgin made a sincere, and properly flowery, speech of thanks. He bowed. Jason, recovering his outward aplomb, also bowed, and the two men backed their way out of the presence of his Magnificence, Sultan Selim the Third, ruler of the Ottoman Empire.

  Good God, Jason groaned, how will I manage?

  On a day a little over a month after Miss Penelope Blayne’s kidnapping at the Grand Bazaar, events seemed to be repeating themselves. Penny was bathed, oiled, massaged, scented, and dressed in the fine garments she had worn at her presentation to the Sultan. The Kislar Agha escorted her back down the shaded passage that ran between the seraglio and the throne room. Two eunuch guards brought up the rear.

  Penny’s heartbeat quickened. She was out. Though still in the palace, she was out of the harem, which was very odd indeed, for the Sultan came to his women, not the other way round. But there was no time to think why. Their small procession entered the throne room, Penny following demurely behind the Kislar Agha, eyes cast down, as she had been painfully taught. She did not see the Sultan, the Grand Vizier, the Grand Mufti, the Sultan’s Sword Bearer, the Chief Executioner, the bodyguards, or the many other men surrounding them. She kept her eyes fixed on the tips of her soft kid slippers and wondered if she was to be given away yet again because she had failed to live up to the standards demanded of an odalisque in the royal palace.

  Suddenly, the Kislar Agha gripped her arm and drew her forward. “Is this the woman you seek, my lord?” the giant black man inquired in French.

  Penny’s eyes snapped up to follow the Chief Black Eunuch’s gaze. Jason! And Lord Elgin! And a third man in English garb. But a month’s training was enough to keep her in her place. She did not cry out, she did not attempt to run. But her heart soared, as did her prayers.

  “I cannot know, Excellency,” the viscount returned calmly, “unless I may see her face.”

  The Kislar Agha turned to Penny. “You may not remove your veil, but you may speak.”

  “‘Tis I, Lord Lyndon, Penelope Blayne.” Dear heaven, she did not sound at all like herself! Her voice was husky from disuse, strangled by a rush of emotion. In truth, she could barely hear herself over the pounding of her heart. Penny stumbled on, for this, she knew, was the moment, her only opportunity to save herself. “The night we met you took Aunt Cass and me to the roof of the Embassy, so we might view the city and the waters below. You . . . you are related to my aunt, Cassandra Pemberton of Pemberton Priory in Kent, England.”

  “Enough,” the viscount declared. “I accept this woman is Miss Blayne.”

  And there, in the throne room of Sultan Selim, with the Reverend Philip Hunt, chaplain to the British Embassy officiating and Lord Elgin and the Kislar Agha as witnesses, Miss Penelope Blayne, age sixteen, became Lady Penelope Blayne Lisbourne, Viscountess Lyndon.

  The wedding feast went on for wh
at seemed like hours. Penny, attempting to recline gracefully, and patiently, on a bank of tasseled cushions in a modest-sized private chamber not far from the sounds of revelry, jumped to her feet and began to pace the thick colorful carpet. She had had a month’s training in humility, in effacing herself, in living only to serve. But to be excluded from her own wedding feast—that was definitely the outside of enough! She had peeked out the curtains and seen the trays pass by, held aloft by a veritable stream of stalwart servants and piled high with every sort of tempting morsel. She had heard the soft whispers and giggles of the odalisques who excelled at dancing as they rustled by and then the enticing drift of music as the girls performed for the male wedding guests, who were undoubtedly enjoying themselves hugely while she waited, alone and forgotten.

  Was she truly married? Or was all this just another entertainment for the Sultan’s amusement? Would she and Jason go home in the morning, or would they disappear, their bodies joining the others who had displeased the Ottoman Sultans, resting forever on the bottom of the Bosphorus?

  Penny broke into a tremulous smile as the heavy scarlet velvet curtains parted, and Ayshe and Leyla appeared, bearing food and drink. As the girls released their veils, the sight of these two familiar faces, brought tears to Penny’s eyes. She allowed herself to be coaxed into eating, for, surely, the girls would not appear so happy and excited if they did not believe Gulbeyaz was well and truly married and on her way out of the seraglio.

  If only she had been able to learn more than a few words of their language . . .

  When all three girls had eaten as much as they could hold, Ayshe and Leyla, eyes shining with excitement, settled themselves more comfortably onto the cushions beside Penny and proceeded with graphic gestures to remind her how a woman treated her master, particularly on her wedding night. One month as an odalisque in the harems of Mustafa Rasim and Sultan Selim the Third had not made Miss Penelope Blayne immune to blushes. Unshockable, perhaps, by what she might see, but the girls’ reminders of what was expected of her when face to face with Jason Lisbourne was almost enough to send her scampering back to the seraglio.