The Harem Midwife Read Online Free PDF

Muslim neighbour to the south, Persia—would tear it from gullet to groin like wolves bringing down a stag.

    Two years had elapsed since that memorable night, the birth of the Sultana’s princess. Mehmet had recovered from typhus but he remained sickly. His circumcision had been postponed many times because of frequent bouts ofill health. The Sultan continued to rule, though he rarely left the palace and seemed content to leave the affairs of state in the capable hands of his mother. And worst of all, the Empire remained in a perilous state.
    For two long years, there had been no births, no pregnancies, no stillbirths, not even a royal miscarriage. Safiye had failed to bear a son. The Sultan had failed to sire another heir, whether by Safiye or any of the harem girls. The Grand Vizier Mehmet Sokollu, was not happy. Mustafa, the Chief Black Eunuch, was not happy. The Valide was not happy.
    Only Safiye with her precious two-year-old daughter Ayşe, whom she petted and spoiled like a doll, was happy.
    Hannah’s beloved husband, Isaac, came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Together they looked from the window of their home into the street below where the little mare snorted and stirred restlessly in her traces outside the front door. Theirs was a district of twisting streets, a neighbourhood of foreigners—Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Circassians—any number of people from remote corners of the Empire.
    Isaac rested his chin on her shoulder. “Do you have to go out so late?” he asked, knowing she had no choice when the Imperial Palace called.
    “Whatever tonight’s crisis, it is not a birth,” Hannah said.
    “I will stay up until you arrive home safely.”
    “Please, go to bed. You need to rise early tomorrow.”
    Hannah’s friend Ezster had confided behind a cupped hand one afternoon in the
mikvah
why there had been no more harem pregnancies and why it was unlikely that therewould be any in future. The Sultan could not perform with anyone other than Safiye. It was believed the Sultana had placed so powerful a curse on his genitals that he was useless with other girls. If Ezster was correct, then God Himself was powerless to set matters right.
    But if Hannah was not being summoned for a birth, then what was she summoned for? An odalisque, a royal concubine, suffering from a difficult menses that Hannah could treat with hot compresses and a tisane of camomile? Or perhaps Safiye required an elixir to aid in conception? No, something more serious. Was it a repetition of the Valide’s embarrassing difficulty?
    Prepared for any eventuality, Hannah tucked into her linen bag an assortment of herbs, and, just in case, her birthing spoons. Almost as an afterthought, she packed a fresh peach, newly picked from her garden. From a few streets away, she heard the thud of the watchman’s metal-tipped staff on cobblestones as he made his rounds, admonishing those without serious business to return to their homes before he locked the city gates.
    Isaac watched his wife packing. “I am so proud of you, Hannah. I know life in Constantinople is difficult for you and yet you make the best of it, even earning the trust of the palace. Imagine! You are so valued that the Valide herself calls you out in the middle of the night … although I wish she would restrict herself to daylight hours.”
    “The Valide does not value me half so much as I value you, Isaac. Without you, this transition in our lives would have been impossible,” she said. Although Hannah spokecalmly so as not to alarm Isaac, she was worried. No one, especially women, travelled the streets at night if they could help it. It must be a dire emergency to justify the appearance of the carriage at her gate.
    He smiled and kissed her.
    Hannah and Isaac went downstairs and stood in the street, waiting for Suat to dismount and open the carriage door. The stars hung so low it seemed as though they had been hurled into the heavens by an unseen hand.
    Hannah