The Venetian Contract Read Online Free PDF

spores, his organs riven and pulped, indistinguishable from each other, the viscera as one.
    Feyra thought quickly, running in her mind through all the remedies she knew, everything she carried in her belt. Nothing would help. If she’d been here, God above, if she’d only been here when the grapes had been eaten there might have been something. She had some tallow beads in one of the little glass vials, which, if chewed, would induce instant, violent vomiting above and purging below. But even then, by the time the symptoms manifested themselves, by that first initial illness, it was already too late. And besides, Feyra thought grimly, as Kelebek had reminded her; if she
had
been here, as Nur Banu’s
Kira
, she would have tasted the grapes and would now be waiting for her own death too.
    Feyra thought for a moment. It was too late for her mistress – now it was all about who she could save. The Odalisques were all beauties, all virgins, they all hadmaterial value to the Sultan. The Odalisques would be left alone. ‘Leave us, all of you,’ she snapped to them, and watched them exit.
    Kelebek remained, Kelebek who was plain and five-and-twenty. Feyra saw in her mind’s eye a sack darkening with water, being pulled down until Kelebek’s screams were silenced in a bubbling final cry. Feyra strode to the window where a gold filigree box caught at the filaments of the morning sun. She snatched off her headscarf and wrapped the box around and around, till there was not one telltale glimmer. She thrust it in the girl’s hands. ‘Kelebek, take this box and –’ she rummaged in her breeches ‘– three
dirham
. Take a boat to Pera. Where is your father’s house?’
    ‘Edirne.’
    ‘Sell the box at Pera and buy a mule and ride it there. Ride all the way to Edirne, and don’t stop. Then have your father find you a nice man from the village and marry him. Your time at Topkapi is over.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘The Valide Sultan is going to die, and you gave her poisoned fruit.’
    Kelebek began to tremble. ‘How … but I didn’t … I didn’t
know
…’ Her head weaved from side to side, and she moaned, as she struggled with this information. ‘Can you not … there must be … have you nothing in your medicine belt to aid her?’ For Kelebek, and the concubines too, Feyra’s belt was nothing short of miraculous, a panacea for all illnesses, cures brought forth from each little stoppered bottle. Feyra looked the girl in the eyes and shook her head.
    It was enough. Kelebek took the box and hurried away.
    Feyra leapt back up the stairs to the bed and tore back thecurtain. Fear made her strident. ‘Who is Cecilia Baffo?’ she demanded.
    Nur Banu Sultan, relaxed on her embroidered pillows, laughed again; but this time it was a nervous, false trill. ‘I’ve really no idea, Feyra. Now, please get my writing materials.’ But Feyra did not budge. Her mistress had not known that she had been ill, had not remembered those dreadful few minutes when she twisted and writhed in her coverlet, but she knew very well who Cecilia Baffo was.
    Feyra sat down on the bed, unbidden, and looked Nur Banu Sultan full in the eyes. She spoke very clearly, and a little loudly. ‘Listen to me, mistress. The grapes the Dogaressa left you were poisoned with the spores of the Bartholomew tree. When you first ingest the spores, for half of an hour, you feel dreadfully sick, as if death is at your door. Then, very quickly, you feel better. Your skin has a bloom on it, your eyes sparkle. You have no memory of what has happened to you. Your body is fighting the spores, and your humours even find some benefit in them from the opiates within the poison. You will feel, for an hour or so, better that you have ever felt. I will order you some goat’s milk and some hard tack bread to slow the absorption. But soon, very soon, you will feel worse again, much worse, and soon after that you will not be able to speak. Knowing this now, is there