The Architect's Apprentice (39 page)

The coldest day in forty years, they called it – the day Mihrimah died. Street cats in Scutari froze while jumping from one roof to the next, hanging in the air like crystal lamps. The mendicants, the pilgrims, the roaming dervishes and those of no fixed abode had to seek refuge in alms houses for fear of turning into ice. Why she chose such a day to leave this world, Jahan would never know. She was born in spring and loved flowers in bloom.

She had been ill for months, her health declining despite the number of physicians around her increasing every day. Jahan had seen her six times during those dire months. On each occasion she was a bit thinner. More often he had seen Hesna Khatun, the reluctant courier. The old woman would come to the menagerie bringing messages from the Princess and wait to one side while Jahan composed his answer. Jahan would take his time, choosing his words carefully, despite the nursemaid huffing and puffing beside him. Finally, with a glare she would take his sealed letter and vanish.

Thus it was a letter Jahan was expecting that January morning in 1578 when the nursemaid appeared in the menagerie, wrapped in a fur cloak. Instead she said, ‘Your Highness would like to see you.’

Closed gates opened wide before him; hidden halls were illuminated. The guards who saw him coming turned their heads, pretending not to notice. Everything had been arranged. When Jahan reached her chamber he fought hard to keep his smile intact. Her face was inflamed, her body swollen. Her legs, her arms, her neck, even her fingers were bloated, as though she had been stung by the wasp she had been running from as a girl.

‘Jahan, beloved …’ she said.

Jahan stopped feigning equanimity and buried his nose into the trimming of her bedspread. That was where he had been all this
time – somewhere on the edge of her existence. Seeing him crying, she lifted her hand and said softly, ‘Don’t.’

Immediately Jahan apologized. Again, she said, ‘Don’t.’

The air in the chamber felt stale, because of the closed windows and the heavy curtains. Jahan had a sudden urge to open them but he stayed put, motionless.

She ordered him to come close, closer, despite the burning gaze of Hesna Khatun. She placed her hand upon his hand and, though they had touched before, always on the sly, this was the first time he felt her body open up to his. Jahan kissed her on the lips. He tasted the earth.

‘You and your white elephant … have brought joy into my life,’ she said.

Jahan tried to utter something to raise her spirits, but he could find no words that she would allow. A while later a servant brought her a bowl of custard, flavoured with rosewater. The sweet scent that any other day would have whetted her appetite now made her retch. Jahan gave her water instead, which she drank thirstily.

‘When I am not around you may hear things about me that you might not like.’

‘No one may dare to say such things about your Highness.’

She gave a tired smile. ‘Whatever happens after I am gone, I want you to think of me with warmth in your heart. Will you promise to take no notice of gossip-mongers and slanderers?’

‘I shall never believe them.’

She seemed relieved but instantly frowned as a new thought crossed her mind. ‘What if you doubt me?’

‘Excellency, I’ll never –’

She didn’t let him continue. ‘If you ever have suspicions about me, remember, behind everything there is a reason.’

Jahan would have asked her what she meant had he not just then heard a shuffle of approaching feet. Her three children were brought in, walking in single file. Jahan was surprised to see how tall Aisha had become since the day he had last seen her. One by one they kissed
their mother’s hand. A deferential silence hung in the air, the youngest boy pretending to be composed, though the tremble of his lower lip betrayed him.

Once they had left, Jahan gave Hesna Khatun a painful look. He could see from her constant fidgeting that the nursemaid wished him to leave. He didn’t want to go. It was a small relief when Mihrimah, sensing his discomfort, said, ‘Stay.’

As darkness descended, her breathing turned shallow. Jahan and Hesna Khatun waited on each side of her, she praying, he remembering. Hours passed in a haze. Well past midnight Jahan fought to keep his eyes open, seized by an irrational conviction that so long as he watched over her she would be fine.

The call to prayer woke Jahan up. There was no movement in the room, not a sound. Seized by a cold panic, he staggered to his feet. He stared at the old woman, who looked like she had not slept a wink.

‘Gone,’ Hesna Khatun said acidly. ‘My gazelle has gone.’

Ten months later Sinan and the apprentices put the finishing touches on Sokollu’s mosque. A central dome, eight arches, eight piers and a two-storey courtyard. An enclosed portico bathed with sunlight from copious windows adjoined the nigh-on square prayer hall. The
minbar
was of pure white marble framed with turquoise tiles. Around the interior of the mosque ran a balcony, dainty and elegant. Though not as majestic as a Sultan’s mosque, it had a strong character, like the man himself.

The Grand Vizier Sokollu arrived to view the construction, escorted by advisers, sentinels, lackeys and flatterers. He inspected the building that would make him immortal, asking endless questions, impatient for the labourers to finish. He carried himself with dignity, the most far-sighted man in the empire, always astute. By now he had served under three Sultans: Suleiman, Selim and Murad. How he had survived for so long, when many a statesman had lost his head for the slightest failing, was a question many asked. He was rumoured to be assisted by a female
djinn
who was besotted with him and whose name no earthling could pronounce. Whenever Sokollu was in danger, this
djinn
warned him.

Jahan watched the fuss from a distance. He had not forgotten that faraway day in Szigetvar, when they had placed into Chota’s howdah the body of the deceased Sultan Suleiman, all the while pretending that he was alive. Since then, like a dedicated carver, time had chiselled Sokollu’s features, giving his face a stern look. It was in that moment, as Jahan was thinking how much the man had aged, that the Grand Vizier stopped and turned back. His eyes gleamed when he saw the mahout.

‘The elephant-tamer,’ the Grand Vizier exclaimed with a contemptuous snap of his fingers. ‘Why, you have white in your hair. You have aged!’

Jahan bowed respectfully and said nothing. Since Mihrimah had gone, he felt his years more heavily than ever.

Sinan joined in. ‘Jahan is one of my best apprentices, my Lord.’

Sokollu asked Jahan how he was doing and where the elephant was, though he did not pay attention to the answer to either question. In an hour the Grand Vizier galloped away. Jahan did not take his eyes off him until he became no more distinct than the shadows along the road and was, eventually, swallowed by the dusk. That same night a storm blew down the staves, bent over the trees and flooded the pits, leaving everything in disarray.

Next morning Jahan found the site covered in mire. Dirty rivulets ran on all sides. Ahead of him a dozen labourers were pushing to dislodge a cart stuck in sludge. Another team was erecting a massive timber with the help of steel pulleys, shouting in unison
Allah, Allah
, as though the construction was a holy war to be won. On the sloped roof there were workmen mending the damaged parts. Wherever he looked he saw people working away to fix things. The only one not working was Chota, wallowing in a brown pool, delighted.

There was a makeshift shed outside the mosque, opposite the narthex, where the master retreated whenever he needed to rest. On that day, suffering from back pain, he spent the afternoon there, lying on a flat surface, wrapped in warm towels. A Jewish physician arrived and drew two bowls of blood from him to release the malignant humours. He then applied poultices to his aching joints.

After the evening prayer the door was opened and the master walked out, pale and drowsy but otherwise fine. He waved at Jahan, and was about to mouth a salute when something strange happened. One of the workmen on the roof who was pulling up the lead sheets lost control of his load. The rope he was holding snapped, sending the entire load plummeting just as Sinan was passing by.

A cry pierced the air. Loud, sharp and distinctively female. It was Sancha. Three words spilled from her lips, ‘Master, watch out!’

The lead sheets came down with a horrible crash. Sinan, having
miraculously veered aside, was spared. Had he not moved, they would have sliced him in two like the Sword of Damocles.

‘I’m fine,’ Sinan said when they ran to him.

That was when, one by one, all heads turned to Sancha. She blushed up to her ears under their prying stares, her lip sagging.

Into an awkward silence Sinan said, ‘How blessed we are to hear Yusuf’s voice. Fear loosens tied tongues, they say.’

Sancha, trembling, lowered her head, her body that of a rag doll. During the remaining hours of work she avoided everyone. Jahan dared not go near her. The workers were suspicious.
There is a
hunsa
among us
, they whispered with sidelong glances. Someone who was half woman, half man, forever stuck in limbo. The possibility that Yusuf was a woman had not occurred to anyone.

The next day Sinan’s Chief Apprentice was absent from the site. And the day after that. It was explained that, feeling unwell, Yusuf had to go away for a few weeks. Where or how, no one inquired. Somehow all and sundry, having stumbled upon a secret, had sensed that it was better, safer, to know nothing. Only Jahan understood that this was the end – Sancha would not be working with them again. She would be putting herself and the master in peril if she were to return. She had gone back to the life she abhorred: the life of a concubine.

The same week Jahan was wending his way through the site, lost in thought, when he glimpsed a rope that Chota had trampled in the mud. Unthinking, he picked it up. As he inspected it, his face sank. The two strings on the sides had snapped, leaving the fibre splintered, while the strings in the middle were shorter and straight, as if slashed by a blade. Someone had thinned the rope by cutting its core. Outside it looked like an ordinary rope; inside it was weak as an eggshell.

Straight away Jahan went to see his master. ‘Someone laid a trap.’

Wordlessly, Sinan squinted at the rope. ‘Are you saying this was no accident?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ Jahan said. ‘Why did you come out of the shed, master?’

‘I heard someone call for me,’ said Sinan.

‘Must be the same person who planned this. He knew the rope would break because he cut it. Poor San … Yusuf tried to save you. And now he is doomed!’

‘Since you know so much already …’ Sinan said, his eyes infinitely sad, ‘you should know she is at home with my family.’

‘Master, working with you is her only joy. You ought to bring her back.’

Sinan shook his head. ‘I cannot have her here any more. It isn’t safe.’

Jahan pursed his lips, trying to bite back words that he might regret afterwards. ‘Are we not going to investigate who did this?’

‘What can be done? I cannot interrogate every man on the site. If the workers suspect I don’t trust them, they’ll lose their will to work.’

Uneasiness came over Jahan. He, on the contrary, believed that Sinan should question everyone until the culprit was found. He said, in a voice he didn’t know he was capable of, ‘Michelangelo mourned his assistant like his son. Whereas you … don’t even care for us. Glass, wood, marble, metal … Are we not like these in your eyes, mere instruments in your constructions?’

Into the ensuing silence Sinan said, slowly, ‘That’s not true.’

But Jahan was no longer listening.

Even with one apprentice missing the master finished Sokollu’s mosque on time. Prayers were chanted; hennaed sheep and rams were sacrificed. Sokollu, glowing with pride and joy, gave
baksheesh
to the labourers and freed a hundred of his slaves. Shortly afterwards, at a
meeting of the
diwan
, a man dressed up as a dervish asked to see the Grand Vizier. Like Sokollu, he, too, came from Bosnia. For a reason nobody could fathom, then or afterwards, Sokollu gave him permission to come in, to come close.

He was stabbed by the stranger, who was caught and killed before anyone could discover the reason behind the bloodshed. Sokollu, Sokolovic, the Grand Vizier and one of the last patrons of architecture, was gone. The female
djinn
, if there was one, had failed to warn him this time.

After Sokollu’s assassination the Sultan would appoint a succession of viziers, one after the other, none coming close to their predecessor. All at once, it was as though a lid had been lifted and the boiling cauldron underneath exposed. The imperial treasury was empty, the coins not worth their value. The Janissaries were furious, the peasants upset, the
ulema
dissatisfied, Master Sinan too old and too frail, and his mute apprentice no longer by his side.