Free The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman Page B

yet.’
    For a moment the two stood together, not speaking, suddenly shy of one another. In the courtyard where the old women had been sweeping sunlight shifted slowly. Servants’ voices, and the sound of water flushing across stone, carried from the women’s hammam which gave on to one side of the courtyard. The same half-empty holiday feel affected even this, the very heart of the harem. Kaya, unused to these long watches, swayed uncomfortably, lifting her little feet slightly one after another in their soft kid boots.
    â€˜How much longer? My back hurts.’
    â€˜Patience, goose …’
    â€˜You’ve said that before …’
    â€˜And don’t sway, for pity’s sake, she hates that. Stand still, can’t you?’
    Another silence.
    â€˜I miss you Annetta.’
    â€˜And I you, Celia.’
    In the courtyard a trickle of water flowed slowly from the doorway of the hammam on to the hot stone.
    â€˜Don’t cry, goose.’
    â€˜Me? I never cry.’
    â€˜You’ll make your nose red.’
    â€˜He said that, do you remember? The day we were sold.’
    â€˜Yes. I remember.’
    How could she not? Celia thought back to that day when they had first arrived at the House of Felicity. After the shipwreck – how long had it been? two summers now, by her reckoning – there had been a long journey, an even longer sojourn with the slave mistress in Constantinople, and then one day, just a few months ago, with nowarning at all a litter borne by eunuchs had arrived, and the two of them had been put in it, and brought here to the palace. A great lady had bought them as a gift for the Sultan’s mother, they had been told. They were no longer Celia and Annetta, but Kaya and Ayshe; but beyond that no one thought to tell them anything of what lay ahead.
    Celia remembered the sickening sway of the litter as they made their way through the city, and how at last they had passed through a brass-studded door, bigger and more doleful than any she had seen in her life. It was so dark inside that at first they could hardly see. She remembered instead her sense of dread as the eunuchs brought them down from the litter, and then her own voice crying out –
Paul, oh Paul
! – as the door ground shut behind them.
    A sudden flurry and a clapping of wings as two pigeons came to roost on the sloping roof above them made both girls start.
    â€˜Annetta?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Do you think we’ll ever forget? Forget our real names, I mean. I asked Gulbahar once, and she said she couldn’t remember hers.’
    â€˜But she was only six when she came here. Of course we’ll remember. We’ll remember everything.’ Annetta’s eyes narrowed. ‘How could we forget?’
    â€˜And you do want to, don’t you?’
    â€˜Of course I do, goose!’ There was a short silence. ‘But we’re here now, and we must make what we can of it. You know, Celia, perhaps it would be better if …’ Annetta stiffened suddenly, ‘shh!’
    â€˜I can’t hear anything.’
    â€˜Gulbahar’s coming.’
    â€˜But how … ?’
    â€˜I watch her, it’s how she does it,’ Annetta’s voice was barely a breath in Celia’s ear. ‘But never mind that now: just listen. Whatever you do, try not to say too much. She’ll use everything you tell her,
capito
? And I mean everything. But she doesn’t want a milksop either. And whatever you do, don’t try to play the fool.’ Her dark eyes darted to the door and back. Celia stood beside her, deathly still now, a pulse, like the small quick beating of a frightened bird, in the skin behind her ear. ‘Mark this, Celia: something has happened—’
    â€˜What kind of thing?’ Celia turned to her in alarm. ‘And how? How do you know?’
    â€˜I … don’t really know. It’s just a feeling I get.’ Annetta