The Blessing Stone

by Barbara Wood

  And so Katharina went nightly to Asmahan’s apartment after that, taking her embroidery kit on the pretense of stitching something for the concubine but in truth to get acquainted with Bulbul, a chubby, fair-haired, and sweet-tempered little boy who, when the terrible moment came, was going to have to go quietly and willingly with his new mother.

  It was a cool, cloud-cast morning, with a light drizzle falling over the city of Constantinople. The Mistress of the Costume came hurrying into the Pavilion of Doves, where her assistants were sewing an ensemble for a lucky girl who had been selected to visit the sultan’s bed, and she slapped the needle and threads from Katharina’s hands. “It is the sultana! She has sent for you!”

  Katharina’s heart jumped. The sultana! Had she found out Asmahan’s secret plan?

  A eunuch was waiting to escort her, a formidable looking man she had never seen before. Clad in elegant robes, his turban richly plumed and made of gold fabric. His nose had been sliced off long ago and replaced by a golden beak, making him look like a mythical creature. He uttered not a word to Katharina as he turned and led the way. She followed, curious, but when they approached the forbidden Pearl Gate, she began to shiver with fear. How many had passed under this archway never to return? If the sultana had found out about her secret collaboration with Asmahan, she had no hope of leaving these rooms alive.

  Katharina had not thought it possible that living quarters could be more sumptuous than Asmahan’s, but the sultana’s private suite took her breath away. She had heard that the sultana had a passion for pearls, but the sight that met her eyes surpassed all imagining. The wall hangings, draperies, footstools, divan cushions, and even the floor mats were woven with pink, white, and black pearls. And sitting on a thronelike chair (also imbedded with hundreds of pearls) was a woman so covered in pearl-studded garments that she looked as if she had stood in a snowstorm. Katharina had never seen so many pearls on one person. How could the woman walk with so much weighing her down?

  Safiya’s eyes were as hard and fixed as her precious pearls, and they studied the assistant seamstress with inscrutable candor. Katharina tried not to fidget beneath the cold gaze, and she tried not to stare. Heavy kohl outlined the woman’s upper and lower eyelids, nearly obscuring her eyes, and she had so much rouge on her lips it looked as if she had eaten jam and forgotten to wipe it off. Despite the heavy cosmetics, it was apparent the sultan’s favorite concubine was old—surprisingly so. Katharina had heard that Safiya was almost forty. How strange that the sultan should summon this woman back to his bed when he had his choice of a hundred nubile girls.

  Safiya’s pregnancy was well advanced.

  Her voice was like a scimitar, sharp and deadly. “You have been visiting Asmahan. Why?”

  Katharina tried to keep from trembling. “She likes my embroidery, Lady.”

  “I find your work mediocre. Asmahan has no taste.” The black-rimmed eyes bored through her. Katharina felt her heart rise in her throat. “Why are you shaking, girl?”

  “I have never”—Katharina licked her dry lips—“been in such magnificent company, Lady. It is like looking upon a goddess.”

  Katharina had no idea where the words had come from, yet they had an effect. The sultana seemed to soften a little; even a woman so exalted was not immune to flattery. “You are to do something for me,” she said, not a woman to waste time. “Do it well, and I shall grant you any wish.”

  Katharina could barely disguise her shock. “What is it you desire, Lady?”

  “You are to spy on Asmahan. Watch what she does, whom she sees, and listen to what is said. Then you are to report to me. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Lady. Is there anything in partic—”

  “Everything,” she snapped. “Tell me everything that goes on. It will be up to me to decide what is important.” She eyed Katharina thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “Perhaps you owe some loyalty or allegiance to Asmahan. That is your own concern. Do not let it get in the way of this task I have assigned you to. But in case your heart should weaken, remember my promise to grant you anything you wish, if your report pleases me.”

  The sultana sighed and placed heavily jeweled hands on her swollen abdomen. “I carry the sultan’s heir,” she said, an unnecessary announcement and one leaving no room for misinterpretation: that Asmahan’s son did not stand a chance.

  As Katharina started to leave, the sultana’s hard-edged voice cautioned: “Take care, girl, for as you will be watching Asmahan, so shall you be watched. Your every step will be reported to me.”

  Katharina continued to go to Asmahan’s every night under the pretense of embroidering for her, but she was burdened now with a new and terrible secret. While she played with Bulbul and told him stories and sang to him, with Asmahan looking on with great sadness for these were her final days with her son, Katharina wondered what to report to Safiya, wondered if she should confide this new development in Asmahan, and wondered if Adriano would ever be found. During the day, wherever Katharina went she imagined hundreds of unseen eyes watching her. The palace was honeycombed with secret doors, hidden passageways, and screens with peepholes. Spies spying on the spy. Each night, when she went to Asmahan’s apartment, she asked, “What news of Don Adriano?” And each night the response was, “I have no news,” until Katharina began seriously to think that the sultana had more power than Asmahan. If I report this plot to her, will she rescue Adriano for me and set us both free? “I will grant you any wish,” the powerful Safiya had said.

  And then one evening Asmahan said, “The danger to my son grows. Safiya has vowed that he will not be the sultan’s heir.”

  “But what if the sultana’s child is a girl?”

  “Then she will murder my son out of jealousy. Each day his life is in increasing danger. I grow fearful. My eunuch has found a bodyguard whom we can trust. The man will stay with Bulbul every minute until the day of departure.”

  “How can you be sure you can trust him?” You cannot even trust me! Katharina cursed the fate that had put her in such a situation—to help Asmahan or turn spy and ask the sultana’s help in finding Adriano.

  “Are you a good judge of character, Katharina? Perhaps you can tell me yourself whether we can trust this man.” Asmahan pointed toward her private garden, where Bulbul liked to sail little boats on the fish pond.

  Katharina went out under the night sky and saw, standing beneath a weeping willow, a tall human figure draped in a robe—a man, thin and gaunt, with a ragged beard and hair past his shoulders. And when he turned, she saw eyes recessed in dark hollows, and deep lines etched on either side of a mouth that had not smiled in a long time.

  He stared at her for a moment, and then recognition dawned on his face. “Praise God in His mercy,” he whispered, and he took a faltering step toward her.

  Katharina reached him first, and emaciated arms went around her in the most tender of embraces. She felt skin and bone beneath the robe, and wept on a shoulder that had wasted away.

  Adriano wept with her, for he had thought he would never see her again.

  “How—?” she began, drawing back and drinking in his image with her eyes.

  He wiped the tears from his face and said, “While I sat in the stinking hold of a slave ship, I thought of a girl I had met, a very brave girl, who left the safety of her town, left a life of comfort and security to go out into the world to find her father. No dangers or perils would dissuade her from this path, not even being shipwrecked on an island with a stranger. When I heard the determination in her voice, and saw the strength of her spirit, I thought, Surely I can be as this mere girl. I offered a prayer to the Blessed Virgin, renewing my vow to restore Her sovereignty in Jerusalem, and to be reunited with my brother knights on Crete, and while I slept the Blessed Mother came to me in a dream and told me that I was no good to her dead for martyrs did not build churches, and that she needed her soldiers alive. So I discarded my knight’s cloak while on the slave ship, and divested myself of any evidence of
my true status, so that when we were brought out of the hold of that ship at the docks, no one knew my identity. I feigned muteness, but when they saw my size, the overseers sent me to work in the brickyards for the work on this palace is never-ending. Ever since, I have been building the very walls that have been keeping us in.”

  He took Katharina’s soft smooth hands into his hard calloused ones. “What kept me alive was the vow I made to the Virgin, for I must return to Jerusalem. But also, thoughts of you, Katharina, kept me alive, for I knew that you would have the strength and fortitude to overcome this misadventure.” The ghost of a smile played at his lips. “And I thought that surely I, a knight of the Brotherhood of Mary, can do what a mere girl can.”

  Asmahan came into the garden then, paused to observe the unlikely pair in the moonlight—the plump girl in silks, the skeletal man in rags—and said, “I decided, Katharina, that you should not travel alone, for it might draw attention to you. You should be in the company of a man whom you can say is your husband. He would be protection for you and my son. I have enough money and friends to find a place for the two of you, and Bulbul, on a caravan. I will give you letters to take to my family. My father is Sheik Ali Sayid, a rich and powerful man. He will reward you well for what you have done.”

  Katharina looked at Asmahan through eyes swimming with tears. All thoughts of Sultana Safiya and spying and intrigue fled her mind. She was aware of only one thing: the rough and calloused hand holding hers.

  Asmahan said, “My spies have told me of a caravan that leaves for Samarkand at the first full moon. I will ask the sultan permission to visit the mosque that day. I will tell him it is my father’s birthday, and I wish to honor him and offer prayers for him. The sultan will not refuse. I will take my child with me, and of course a retainer of ladies and eunuchs for protection. You and your Spaniard will be among them. We women pray behind a screen in the mosque so that the men cannot see us. You will be able to slip out unseen, with my son, and my eunuch will take you and Adriano to the place where caravans depart. Afterward, I shall return to the palace.”

  Katharina finally found her voice, though it was difficult on this magical of nights. “But surely the sultan will notice the boy is missing.”

  “The sultan is currently preoccupied with ridding the empire of the Knights of Rhodes,” Asmahan’s eyes flickered to Adriano, “and so his visits with our son are infrequent. By the time he learns that the boy is missing, you and Bulbul will be well on your way and no one will know where you have gone.”

  Katharina did not wish to ask it, but she had to for it was a reasonable question: “Why can’t you go?”

  “If I were to disappear, it would be noticed at once and a search would be launched. The sultan’s men would find me within days. But it will be many weeks before it is noticed that Bulbul is gone and by that time, it will be too late to pick up your trail.” She handed Katharina a packet. “You will travel first to Baghdad, which is at the edge of the Ottoman Empire. For this first part of the journey you will travel under the sultan’s protection. I have had papers drawn up that will grant you safe passage. From Baghdad you will join a caravan bound for Samarkand, and for that part of the journey you will be under my father’s protection. I have been in secret negotiations with the ambassador from Samarkand. He has drawn up the necessary documents. My father is a powerful man, his name is feared. You will be safe. Once in Samarkand, he will reward you handsomely for what you have done. And once you have handed Bulbul into my family’s care, you will be free to go anywhere you wish.”

  Baghdad, Samarkand…So far from Jerusalem, so many miles in the wrong direction! But Katharina thought of little Bulbul and then of a baby that had been given up nearly nineteen years before by a widowed father who had gone off in search of a blue stone. This little one’s plight was much like her own. And here, his life was in danger.

  “Lady,” she said. “I have no words to express my gratitude. For finding Adriano and for—”

  Asmahan held up a jeweled hand. “I do it for my son, and no other reason. Keep him safe, and speak to him often of me.”

  Katharina did not see Adriano again after that, for as a man he was not allowed in the company of the women and therefore was only with the boy when Bulbul was summoned to the sultan’s private apartments. But Katharina continued to visit Asmahan each evening, taking silks and embroidery, and every morning reported to the sultana that Asmahan had gossiped about the other concubines and harem politics, wondering if the sharp-eyed woman could see through her subterfuge. Each night, in her alcove in the dormitory, Katharina gazed at the painting of St. Amelia’s Stone and felt her heart race with hope: very soon now, she and Adriano would once again be free and she would be once more on the road to the blue crystal and, God willing, her family.

  Two days before they were to execute their plan of escape, word spread through the palace like fire: Safiya was in labor. All activities were suspended as everyone waited anxiously for news. Asmahan kept Bulbul close, while Katharina waited in the dormitory for word.

  And then it came: the sultana had given birth to a son.

  They had run out of time. The instant the newborn was placed at her breast, Safiya claimed her legal right to have Asmahan’s son locked in the Cage. Almost at once the younger concubine’s eunuchs and guards deserted her. There was no longer any question of going to the mosque to offer prayers for her father. It was only a matter of hours before the sultana’s eunuchs arrived to take Bulbul away.

  Although Adriano still believed all Turks to be godless heathens and his sworn enemies, nonetheless this concubine had saved his life and reunited him with Katharina, and so he was her avowed protector. At least, protector of her son, for ultimately nothing could be done to save Asmahan. With the aid of her faithful eunuch, Adriano scaled the garden wall and, with Bulbul strapped to his back—asleep, as he had been given milk laced with poppy juice—went back over the wall, helping Katharina up behind him. Under the cover of night, they followed the eunuch through the maze of outer walls and alleys that surrounded the palace, and eventually into the labyrinthine warren of streets and hovels of the city. Before they left, Asmahan had given Katharina a small wooden chest filled with gold dinars, the coin of the Ottoman Empire. They had embraced and Asmahan kissed her son for the last time. Now, as Katharina and Adriano followed the eunuch to the vast caravan encampment, she knew the fate that awaited Asmahan once her deceit was discovered, it was the same punishment for all harem women who transgressed the sultan’s rules: she would be sealed in a sack with a cat and a snake and thrown into the waters of the Bosporus.

  The caravan departed at dawn, a thousand-camel train that carried perfume and cosmetics from Egypt and along the way would pick up colored glass in Syria and fur from the Eurasian steppes—all bound for China where the people had a passion for such things—to be exchanged for silk and jade, which would then be brought back to the western nations where people had a passion for such things. Along the way they met entertainers bound for China—jugglers, acrobats, singers, magicians—and coming from the East, monks, scholars, and explorers bound for Europe. Although they would find wildlife along the way, Katharina and Adriano took along provisions of bread, dried fruit, salted meat, and hard cheese, as well as plenty of water. And they delighted in being a carefree threesome: Adriano the protector, Katharina the nurturer, and Bulbul their “son.” As Constantinople and its terrors fell behind them, as they rode beneath the sun and in the fresh air, and ate wholesome food and found myriad things to laugh at, the life and strength returned to Adriano. His body fleshed out and his spirits began to shine again through his eyes. Katharina told him only once that he was free to go to Jerusalem now, that he was not obligated to make the long journey to Samarkand with her, but he silenced her with a vow not to leave her side until her promise to Asmahan had been fulfilled. After that, he said, they would return to Jerusalem together.

  As the caravan snaked its way eastward, Katharina—who had once thought, jus
t a few miles onto the Adriatic, that she had seen most of the world—encountered the desert for the first time, and the terrible wonder of sandstorms that rose up with such suddenness that death claimed the traveler who was not alert. She and Adriano soon learned to watch their camels; if the beasts suddenly started snarling and burying their faces in the sand, it meant a sandstorm was coming, even though the day was clear. Riders immediately wrapped their noses and mouths with cloth, and all of a sudden the storm was there, fierce and swift, and over in an instant.

  Along the way they mostly camped in the open, under the stars, at oases and crossroads, but sometimes they stopped at garrisons and caravansaries, where they found inns and proper beds, and musicians and lively entertainment. As they passed between golden sands and deep blue sky, beneath scudding white clouds and the shade of emerald-green palm trees, the journey took on an unreal aspect for Katharina, who held Bulbul in her arms as their camel swayed and rocked them into semislumber. Ahead she watched Adriano, with his broad shoulders and straight back, a man of deep convictions and devotion to God, a man of mystery, too.

  The moment of falling in love, she could not pinpoint. Perhaps it had even been as far back as her first sight of him on the docks in Venice. Or watching him at prayer on the deck of the Portuguese ship. Or as they slept in each other’s arms on a deserted island, feeling like the last two people on earth. Whenever and wherever her love for him began, she kept it a secret, for Adriano had his own road to travel, as she had hers. She would never speak her heart, but keep her love close to her, protecting it in the special chamber where she held her mother, and her father, and now even the tragic concubine Asmahan who had saved their lives.