Free Harem by Colin Falconer Page B

mother is sacred, and never more so than now. Everything will be done to ensure your comfort.'
    'There is one thing, Highness.'
    'Yes?'
    'I want a bodyguard.'
    Hafise looked startled. 'A bodyguard. Why?'
    'I am frightened.'
    'Of what?'
    'I have heard rumours that I will not live to see my baby born.'
    'Who dares threaten you - threaten the Sultan's child?'
    Hürrem averted her eyes. 'I don't know. It might just be gossip.'
    She is lying, Hafise thought. She knows who it is but dares not say. There is only one person who would wish her dead. Gülbehar! But surely Gülbehar was not capable of that?
    'If you think such rumours might have any base, you should have your servant girl taste all your food, even try on your clothes before you wear them, in case the fabric has been impregnated with poison. As a precaution I will have the Kislar Aghasi assign you one of his eunuchs.'
    'Thanks you, Crown of Veiled Heads.'
    'Nothing - nothing - must endanger the Sultan's son. Do you understand?'
    'Yes. Yes, I understand.'
     
    ***
     
    The Kapi Aga watched from the North Tower as she appeared from the long shadows and sat down on the marble bench beside the fountain. She opened her Qu'ran on her lap. She had come to the garden three days in a row. There was only one reason to go there and that was to speak to him alone. But why? What was she thinking? Soon she might be Suleiman's wife - so what more did she want? They could not continue with their trysts; but if he did not go down to meet her, what might she do then?
    She could not betray him without betraying herself. But then, who knew what she might do? It had never occurred to him that she might harm Meylissa. It struck him for the first time that she might be mad.
    He must know what she intended or he would never rest.
    He scurried from the room, locking the door behind him, then went down the wooden steps to the courtyard.
    He hesitated when he reached the iron gate. This must be the last time, he promised himself, the very last time. He put the key in the lock. The key and the lock! he thought. Just like men and women; you place it here, you find the fit, the tumblers fall and you open the way to dreams and nightmares. There was nothing as compelling as a locked door.
    He slipped inside. Hürrem looked up at him and her eyes widened in surprise. She dropped the Qu'ran, stood up and screamed.
    The Kapi Aga froze. He heard moaning and realized it was him. He turned to run, fumbled with the keys and dropped them on the marble flags.
    She screamed twice more as he fumbled on the ground for the keys. He fumbled with the lock and when he finally threw open the door he found himself staring into the startled face of one of his own guards.
    He ran back into the garden. 'You little whore,' he shouted, and drew the jewelled dagger from his pelisse and slashed at her. Hürrem shouted and fell back, the stroke scything the air inches from her face.
    The guard rushed at him. The Kapi Aga heard the blade scythe the air and then the dagger was gone, and with it his right hand. There was no pain, just the horror of it; the stump and the spurting of bright blood.
    He fell to his knees and tried to prise the dagger from the fingers of his own severed hand. If he could kill her now, it would be all right. They could do what they wanted with him as long as he knew she was dead. But then the guard dragged him towards the gate and he screamed again, this time at the sudden white hot pain in his arm. Puddles of his own blood soaked the cobblestones around the little witch in the green taplock. He tried to scream a curse at her but then another guard appeared and struck him with the hilt of his yataghan and he groaned and his head fell back.
     
    ***
     
    The hawk soared on the updraught from the baked cobblestones of the city, then wheeled towards the Bosphorus, hovering again over the walls of the Topkapi Saraya. Its golden eye picked out the twin towers of the Gate of Felicity, where the head of the