The Sultan's Seal: A Novel (Kamil Pasha Novels)

by Jenny White

  Kamil sighs. “Why do I have to drag everything out of you? Can’t you simply tell me everything you saw?”

  The headman looks up helplessly. “A pendant, bey, that opens like a walnut.” He cups his hands together, then parts them. “Inside one shell is the tughra of the padishah, may Allah support and protect him.” He reaches one cupped hand forward, then the other. “Inside the other are odd characters. We thought it might be Frankish writing.”

  Kamil frowns. He can’t think of any explanation for the sultan’s personal signature to be on a piece of jewelry around the neck of a woman outside the sultan’s household, much less one with European writing. It makes no sense. The tughra, the sultan’s seal, is affixed on special possessions of the imperial household and onto official documents by a special workshop on the palace grounds. The tughranüvis, royal scribes charged with creating the intricate and elegant calligraphic design of the royal name, and the royal engravers are never allowed to leave the palace for fear that they could be kidnapped and forced to affix the signature to counterfeit items. Since the empire is so large and such forgeries might go unnoticed, the only solution is to keep the sultan’s “hands” close by his sleeves. Kamil has heard that these scribes carry a fast-acting poison on their person as a further precaution. Only three people hold the royal seal used for documents: the sultan himself, the grand vizier, and the head of the harem household, a trusted old woman who grew up in the palace. Royal objects made of gold, silver, and other valuable materials are engraved with the tughra only on their orders.

  The headman’s roughened fingers clasp and unclasp as he waits before Kamil, head bowed, eyes shifting anxiously across the marble floor. Noticing his increased agitation, Kamil realizes the headman thinks Kamil blames him for awakening him. He eases the frown from his face. Kamil remembers that even law-abiding citizens have reason to fear the power of the police and courts. The headman is also a craftsman responsible to his guild master for his behavior and afraid of bringing official wrath down on his fellows. He probably brought the matter to the magistrate’s attention instead of the Middle Village police because of the gold found on the body. The local police might have stripped the body of valuables as efficiently as the garbage scavengers and he might be held responsible. But the sultan’s seal and the fact that the woman might be European also indicated that the matter would fall under Kamil’s jurisdiction of Pera. While the sultan had given foreigners and non-Muslim minorities of Pera the right to administer their own district and to judge cases related to personal matters, like inheritance and divorce, the population still relied on the palace for protection and the state courts for justice in other matters.

  “You did well bringing this to my attention immediately.”

  The headman’s face relaxes and he bows low. “Long life to the padishah. May Allah protect him.”

  Kamil signals to Yakup, standing just outside the hall door. “Ready a horse and send messengers to Michel Efendi and the police chief responsible for Middle Village district. Ask them to meet me at the mosque and to keep away idlers until I arrive, especially the garbage scavengers. They’ll pick her clean. I want to see that pendant. The police are to make sure nothing is disturbed.” He adds in a low voice so that the headman does not hear, “And the chief is to make sure the police disturb nothing.”

  “I sent a messenger to the local police, bey, and told my two sons to stay with the body until I returned.”

  This headman has healthy ears, Kamil notes.

  “You are to be commended, Headman Ibrahim. I will make sure the proper officials are notified of your diligence and desire to please the state.” He will ask his assistant to send a commendation to the headman’s guild boss.

  “I rode here on a neighbor’s horse, Pasha bey, so I can show you the way.”

  THE VILLAGERS HAVE pulled the body out of the water and onto the quay and covered it with a worn sheet. Kamil pulls back the cloth, looking at the face first, out of respect and a certain reluctance. In the year since he was appointed magistrate, most of his cases have involved theft or violence, few death. Her hair is short, an unusual style, pale and fine as undyed silk. Strands of it cradle her face. A cool breeze strokes his neck, but he can feel the heat crouching in the air. Already he is sweating. After a few moments, he pulls the sheet away slowly, exposing her naked skin to the sky and the burning eyes of the men around her. The sharp ammonia stench of human excrement from the rocks at the base of the quay makes him jerk his nose away and step sideways toward the corpse’s legs.

  He can no longer avoid looking at her body. She is short and slender, like a boy, with small breasts. Her skin is stark white, except for a dark triangle at her pubis. Crabs have begun their work on her fingers and toes. She wears no rings, but a heavy gold bracelet weighs down her left wrist. The currents have cooled her body, so it has not yet begun to change into a corpse; it is still a dead woman. Later, she will become a case, an intellectual puzzle. But now he feels only pity and the shapeless anxiety death always awakens in his body. She is not pretty in the accepted sense; her face is too long and narrow, her features too sharp, with wide, thick lips. Perhaps the face in motion might have been attractive, he muses. But now her face has the cool, dispassionate remove of death, the muscles neither relaxed nor engaged in emotion, her skin an empty tent stretched over her bones.

  A gold cross hangs from a short chain around her neck. It is remarkable that the cross has not come off during the body’s tumultuous ride through the currents, he thinks. Perhaps the body has not come far.

  He bends closer to examine the necklace. The cross is wide and showy, of beaten gold, decorated with etched roses whose outlines have been filled in with red enamel, now cracked. The metal is twisted where the chain passes through, as if it had snagged on something or someone had tried to pull it off. He lifts the cross with the tip of his finger. Hidden beneath it, in the deep hollow of the woman’s throat, is a round silver pendant, simple but beautifully designed. A thin line bisects it.

  He leans closer to the dead woman’s neck. A damp, mineral cold seems to rise from the body, or perhaps it is his own face that has become clammy. He looks up into the glare of the strait to steel himself. Drawing a deep breath, he returns his attention to the pendant. He inserts his thumbnail and pries the halves apart, angles them so that they catch the morning sun, and peers inside. A tiny recessed lock that had held the halves together is broken. The inner surface is engraved with a tughra on the top half and, on the bottom, strange markings—as if a child had tried to draw a picture using only short, straight lines—unlike any European language he has seen.

  He lets the cross and pendant fall back onto the woman’s neck and turns over her wrist to examine the bracelet. It too is unusual; as wide as his hand, it is woven of thin filaments of red and white gold in a checkerboard pattern. The bracelet fits tightly around her wrist, held in place by a slim metal post inserted into interlaced channels.

  The crowd of locals jostling to see has increased; it is time to move. He gestures to one of the policemen.

  “Cover the body and bring it to the hamam.”

  The policeman bows, pressing his fist solemnly against his forehead, then against his heart.

  Kamil looks around for the headman, who is standing proudly in a knot of local men, answering questions. The two strapping young men flanking him must be his sons, he thinks with a twinge of regret. Kamil has not married, despite his parents’ and now his sister Feride’s introductions to any number of suitable young women from good families. He would love to have a grown son or daughter, but the emotional messiness and demands on his time he imagines would be made by a wife and young children repel him.

  “Where was the body found?”

  The headman leads him down a short flight of steps to a narrow rocky cove behind the mosque. The rococo mosque stands on the tip of a spit of rock that stretches out into the Bosphorus like a hook, making a natural barrier. It looks like an ornate wedding cake of white marble
on an outstretched hand. On its southern side is a small open square where men come to sit and drink tea under the plane trees, watching the fishermen make their boats ready and mend their nets.

  Kamil picks his way, stepping carefully to avoid the night’s effluvium. He squats at the water’s edge. Opaque in the early light, it sloshes heavily against the rocks as if weary.

  “This is where they found her. There’s a whirlpool that washes things up. My sons are fishermen and were in the square cleaning their boat when they heard a commotion. They ran over and stopped the scavengers from taking the bracelet.”

  “Your sons are admirable young men, Ibrahim Efendi.”

  The headman bows his head, suppressing a smile. “Thank you. I’m proud of my sons.”

  “Did the scavengers take anything else?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I’d like to speak with your sons.”

  Kamil questions them. The younger boy, his mustache still only a soft shadow above his lip, answers so earnestly that his words pile up one on another and the magistrate is forced to ask him to repeat. The body had been caught on a rocky protrusion and the young men happened upon the scavengers just as they finished pulling it onto the shore. They had called their fellow fishermen over and together they kept the scavengers from looting the body while the younger brother ran to fetch his father. The men had no idea who the woman was. This did not surprise Kamil, since the only women whose faces these men were likely to have seen were their own relations or women of easy virtue. While the Christian and Jewish subjects of the sultan did not always veil their faces, they were nevertheless modest and did not display themselves to strangers in the streets unnecessarily. Kamil sends the eager young man to find the village midwife. He will need her help to examine the body. From his elder brother, Kamil learns that the fishermen had heard strange noises coming from shore the night before, the barking of wild dogs and a splash.

  The men place the body on a board that only moments before had carried loaves bound for the bakery ovens, drape it with the sheet, and carry it up a narrow dirt alley between the overhanging roofs of wooden houses. Their feet stir up white puffs as they pass. Soon the householders will emerge for their morning chores and sprinkle water on the streets to lay the dust. Pigeons and doves murmur behind the high garden walls.

  The hamam is a square stone building topped by a large round dome. Since it is early, the fires that heat the pipes under the floor have not yet been stoked, and water does not yet flow into the basins set into the wall around the room. The gray marble rooms are cool and dry. The men file through a series of small echoing antechambers until they reach the large central room beneath the dome. When the hamam is in use, bathers soak in this room in cascades of hot water brimming from marble basins in a haze of steam. Kamil directs the men to lay the body on the marble belly stone, the round, raised massage platform dominating the center of the room, and to light the lamps.

  “Good morning.” Michel Sevy, the police surgeon, appears behind Kamil, startling him.

  “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

  Kamil had requested the young Jewish surgeon’s assistance on this case, as on others, not just for his medical knowledge, but for his skill in documenting the telling details of a crime scene in his notes and sketches. Still, Kamil finds Michel’s habit of appearing at his elbow, seemingly out of nowhere, vaguely disquieting, as though it were not in his power to command Michel. Rather, the surgeon arrives as a djinn might, stealthily and unpredictably.

  “You must have galloped the entire way from Galata,” observes Kamil dryly. Michel’s heavyset face and thick neck are red from exertion. His hair and mustache are the color of wet sand and his large, doleful eyes an indeterminate hazel. They roam the room slowly as he takes off his outer robe and hands it to the policeman by the door.

  Kamil reflects that Michel reminds him of the brown spiders in the northeast mountains. The spiders were the size of a fist, but their coloring perfectly camouflaged them in the low, sere brush, so that travelers did not see them until they were underfoot. They were fast and, when they ran, let out high-pitched squeals, like babies. He had seen a man die after being surprised and bitten by such a spider. Usually, Michel’s penchant for colorful dress draws attention to him that his person does not, but when pursuing criminals into their neighborhood dens, Kamil has seen Michel in dun-colored pants and robe that render him all but invisible.

  Today Michel is wearing baggy blue shalwar trousers under a red-striped robe held in place by a wide belt of yellow cloth. His black leather shoes make no sound as he walks across the marble floor toward the belly stone. He moves with the careful deliberation of a wrestler.

  “I was curious. The messenger gave me only half a story. Something about a drowned foreign princess.”

  His smile fades as he looks down at the dead woman.

  “Besides,” he continues, looking more serious, “this is partly a Jewish neighborhood, so I thought I could be of some assistance.”

  Despite Michel’s abruptness, Kamil appreciates his direct answers, so different from the usual polite circumlocutions with which conversations are initiated. He finds that people often are afraid to tell him what they know, in case they are wrong. They also are afraid to say that they don’t know something. His teachers at Cambridge University, where he had studied law and criminal procedure for a year, assumed that when questioned, a person would answer with either truth or falsehood. They had no concept of Oriental politeness that avoids the shame of ignorance and shies away from the brutal directness of truth, and that encourages invention and circumlocution as the highest markers of ethical behavior.

  Accuracy in a subordinate means sacrificing the buffer of respectful indirectness and obfuscation of problems that would have spared his superior from worry. But Kamil, laboring since his youth under the heavy mantle of his father’s status, is only too happy to shrug it off.

  “I HAVE the tools.”

  Michel pulls a leather-wrapped kit from his belt and places it on the belly stone, at the head of the corpse. He takes a folder of thick blank paper from a saddlebag, and a narrow lacquered box from which he extracts a pen and several sticks of fine charcoal.

  “Ready.”

  “We’ll wait for the midwife. In the meantime, go to the street and see what you can learn. Was anyone traveling last night or out on a boat and did they see or hear anything? The fishermen mentioned barking dogs. Did anyone notice an unknown woman in the vicinity? Also, send two policemen along the shore north of here. Her clothes are missing and there may be some signs of a struggle. Perhaps someone heard something in one of the other villages near the shore. Have them check in the coffeehouses. That’s always the best way to learn anything. On your way out, clear the room of onlookers. Have them leave the lamps.”

  Michel does as he is told and then is gone, leaving the door ajar.

  A few moments later a woman in a frayed cloak appears in the doorway just inside the circle of light. Her head and shoulders are draped in a brown shawl. Slipping off her outer shoes, she pads softly across the marble on leather socks. She removes her cloak and shawl with swift, practiced motions, folds them neatly, and drapes them over a nearby basin. Underneath, she wears a striped robe over wide trousers and a kerchief tied around her graying hair.

  “Are you the midwife of Middle Village?”

  “Yes, my name is Amalia.” She averts her face modestly, but alert eyes sweep the room. Seeing the body on the marble slab, she comes forward.

  “Poor woman.” She smoothes the hair gently away from the dead woman’s face.

  “Is this as she was found?” She moves to the body and begins examining it. She is used to being in command of a situation and seems oblivious that she is sharing this activity with a magistrate.

  “Yes. We need to know if she has been tampered with and anything else you can tell us. I will wait over here.”

  He withdraws to the outer shadows and waits at a discreet distance,
but where he can still see what she is doing.

  The midwife’s practiced hands probe the body of the dead woman.

  “A woman in her twenties, I would say. Not a virgin. She has not previously given birth; there are no signs of stretching.”

  Kamil frowns. “Perhaps she killed herself over the loss of her honor and threw herself into the Bosphorus. She wouldn’t be the first girl to do so. Some of the Franks are as fastidious in their expectations of women as we are. If she is unmarried, it could ruin her.”

  “Possible, I suppose.” Amalia moves her fingers over the dead woman’s face and pulls up her eyelids.

  “Dark eyes.” She bends closer and then looks up abruptly. “Look at this, Magistrate bey. The eyes are blue, but the pupils are too large. There is only a small rim of blue visible. Perhaps she was drugged.”

  Kamil steps forward and looks down at the woman’s eyes.

  “What could cause the pupils to expand like that?”

  “Apoplexy, but she’s far too young for a disease like that.” She thinks for a moment. “Many years ago, an old uncle in my family died of opium poisoning. He had such eyes. At the end, he was a bone with huge eyes, black like cups of coffee.”

  Kamil feels chilled and plunges his hands into his pockets.

  “Opium poisoning?”

  She looks at him curiously, alert to a change in the quality of his voice. “Yes, but I don’t think that can be the case here.” She points at the body. “She’s too healthy. Opium addicts stop eating and taking care of themselves.”

  “But maybe she just started smoking opium. Maybe it’s not that far advanced.”

  “Then her eyes wouldn’t be dilated. That happens only at the end.”

  “At the end,” Kamil repeats in a low voice. Abruptly, he walks over to one of the basins against the wall. He turns the spigot handle, releasing a gush of water. He quickly turns it back, but not before wetting his sleeve.

  Amalia watches him carefully and reaches her own conclusions. “If there is anything—” she begins, but Kamil cuts her off.