The Venetian Contract by Marina Fiorato Page A

afraid.
    ‘I heard your speech and song. I thought you were one of the sirens they tell of who hug the shores of Greece, for we must be in those waters by now.’ So Death was not ignorant of the sea. ‘Now I know you are a mortal. I heard you suffer as I have suffered. I am sorry for you, that you are here, but glad for me.’
    Feyra reached out her hand and placed it on the pewter in an involuntary gesture of pity. She expected the metal to be cool, but it was warm to the touch as if some fever raged within.
    ‘What is your history?’
    ‘I must ask you a question first. Are you loyal to our beloved Sultan Murad?’
    Feyra had a thousand answers to this question.
He is a murderer. He is my brother. He wanted me for his wife
. Instead she fell back on formula. ‘He is the delight of my eyes and the light of my heart,’ she answered carefully.
    ‘But are you
loyal
? For I cannot tell what I would tell, unless I know.’
    Death was making a deal. Feyra had read the Persian tales, and understood the process – an exchange of clandestine stories as a testament of faith. A captive princess must bargain with her dark captor for her freedom. She had seen the illuminated marginalia of the texts in the Topkapi library; a dusky maiden, cross-legged in voluminous breeches, conversing with some monstrous chimera, her hands held high, her fingers spread like a fan.
    Although she had never read of a lady gaming with Death before, Feyra knew what was required. She must tell him a secret before he would tell his. As if it were all a part of this unreality, she began, crossing her legs in the formal manner of the Ottoman storyteller.
    ‘On the twenty-first day of the month
dhu’l-qa’dah
in the year of 982, it so fell out that I was appointed
Kira
to our beloved Sultan’s mother, Nur Banu. When our beloved Sultan’s father Selim Sultan died – may he walk in the light of Paradise – it so happened that our Sultan Murad was far from the palace in the Province of Manisa, where he was then the governor. My mistress Nur Banu, knowing that his jealous brothers would attempt to take the throne, took the notion to conceal her husband’s death. She charged me with the task, and I caused the great kitchens to make a subtlety out of ice, a frozen coffin shaped just like the casket where you now lie, and in this way, in the heat of summer, we preserved his dead flesh. Over the next several days we took him out to prayer to be seen in his litter by the people, and even to the hippodrome to preside over the chariot races, propped in his golden throne. In this manner we preserved the fiction that he still lived. For twelve days Selim lived in his coffin of ice, for twelve more days than God had granted to his natural life, until Murad returned toConstantinople. On Murad’s accession to the Ottoman throne, Nur Banu acquired the title of Valide Sultan for her pains, and Selim was placed in a casket of silver and laid in the Sophia for all to see and mourn. So, it may be said, it was my privilege to aid in securing the throne of our beloved Sultan. This I have never told a living soul.’
    Feyra waited for the ensuing silence to end. In the tradition of the sagas, the maiden would either be taken to the underworld, or another tale would be told in return.
    ‘On the seventh day of this month of
sibtambir
in this year of 983,’ she heard, with some relief, the voice from the sarcophagus begin, ‘it pleased God that I fell deathly ill in the mountains on the way home from a long journey. There was no one to assist me but a shepherd. He put me on a hurdle and dragged me to a hilltop temple where the imams were skilled in physic. They looked at me but once before they gave me my own chamber and left me for dead. But when I woke from my fever I found myself attended by the Sultan’s doctor, Haji Musa himself.’ Feyra heard the name of her mentor with a jolt. She also registered the note of satisfaction in the voice; Death, it seemed, could