The Tournament (31 page)

My teacher’s destination was, of all places, the Sultan’s animal menagerie.

Getting there meant passing through three guarded gates, and at each gate I lied to the gate guards, saying that I was travelling with my master (I never called him that at any other time, as he was not my master at all, merely my teacher) and had fallen behind. Bored or not caring, they let me pass.

I descended the broad grassy hill leading to the menagerie. A light rain fell. Leafless branches spread out above me like claws in the darkness. Then, out of the rain, the high brick wall of the menagerie appeared and there I saw the shadowy figure of my teacher pass through the menagerie’s main gate.

I could only assume he was meeting someone—discreetly, in the dead of night—to further his investigation. I darted toward the main gate and slipped through it after him.

The Sultan’s animal enclosure was a different place after dark. I heard the shuffle of small creatures moving over branches in the monkey cage, the deep inhalations of the sleeping bear, the grunts of a pacing tiger. The elephants, however, stomped and trumpeted anxiously, as if something was bothering them.

The light rain made the slate stones slippery, and I trod with soft halting steps, searching for Mr Ascham.

But the decorative trees and the ring of bushes surrounding the central bear cage now became a most inconvenient barrier to viewing the whole menagerie. All was bathed in shadows and the veil of slow-falling rain—

The scream of rusty hinges cut through the air, then—
clang!
—there came the sound of a heavy gate slamming shut, followed by the click of a lock turning, then hurried footfalls outside the wall.

My heart stopped. I spun.

Someone had closed the main gate behind me
, and then locked it, locking me—and Mr Ascham—inside the menagerie.

I turned quickly, my eyes searching for my teacher, for another exit, for something, anything, and then in that desperate state I beheld something even more terrifying than the closing of the main gate.

I saw that the barred door to the cage housing the three grey wolves lay open.

I WOULD HAVE SCREAMED then and there for the sheer fright of it but at that moment a leather-gloved hand clamped over my mouth and yanked me back into a thick bush.

‘Bess, shhh,’ my teacher hissed, his eyes peering out into the darkness. ‘Be very quiet, we’re in danger. We’ve walked into a trap.’

‘What are you doing out here?’ I asked in a whisper.

His eyes surveyed the menagerie as he spoke. ‘I should ask you the same question. I received a note tonight. It said that if I desired to know who killed the visiting cardinal, I was to come here after midnight, alone, without Latif, and all would be revealed.’

‘The wolf cage is open . . .’

‘I know.’

‘Which means the wolves are out . . .’

‘I know.’

One of the elephants trumpeted again, this time more loudly. I looked over in that direction and—abruptly—through the veil of drizzling rain I saw the shadow of a large wolf slink by in front of the elephant, its head low, its legs tensed, searching for prey.

I tapped Mr Ascham on the shoulder to point it out when without warning my teacher was thrown violently forward by a second wolf that had hurled itself into his back. That wolf now stood astride Mr Ascham, snarling and snapping, and it lunged at his throat, but my teacher rolled and lashed out with his forearm, striking the animal in the snout, and it yelped as it was hurled sideways and Mr Ascham leapt back up into a crouch.

We hadn’t even heard it. It had stolen around behind us without so much as making a sound—

And then I heard a snort and felt a warm wash of air touch my right ear.

I turned my head very slowly. The third wolf stood
right next to me
, not a foot away, looking directly at me with its pale pitiless eyes.

It leapt at me. I dived sideways. It missed. I rolled. It stood, its paws slipping on the wet slate stones, readying itself to leap again. It wouldn’t miss me a second time. It leapt again. I shut my eyes and threw up my arms in pathetic self-defence as I heard Mr Ascham, too far away, yell, ‘No!’

Nothing struck me.

Instead, I heard a pathetic yowl and the crack of breaking bone and I looked up to see the Russian bear, impossibly huge in the darkness, one of its hairy arms stretched through the bars of its cage, gripping the wolf in one of its mighty claws. It had caught the wolf by the throat in mid-lunge and snapped its neck like a twig. My sideways dive had brought me alongside its cage. The bear began to eat the wolf. I like to think the great beast rescued me, but I think it just saw the opportunity to snatch a tasty meal.

Mr Ascham grabbed me at a run. ‘This way! Move!’

I didn’t know where he was taking me and I didn’t care so long as it was somewhere safe.

I saw the two remaining wolves pair up and watch us, as if regrouping to decide how to catch this unexpectedly troublesome prey.

Mr Ascham never stopped moving. He thrust me in through a cage door, hurried through it after me and slammed the barred door shut behind us before reaching through the bars and ramming the bolt home.

Then he sat, breathless and panting. It took me a moment to realise where we were and when I did, I snorted appreciatively at my teacher’s solution to our predicament.

We were in the wolves’ cage.

A moment later, the two grey wolves stood before us, confused and confounded, pacing in obvious frustration at the easy meal that was now out of their reach.

Mr Ascham turned to me. ‘Now. What on earth are
you
doing here?’

‘I saw you leave our quarters and I was worried for you, so I followed you.’

‘
You
were worried about
me
?’ He laughed softly. ‘I suppose subsequent events have proved your fears to have been well founded.’ He tousled my hair. ‘Thank you for worrying about me, little princess. I’m honoured to be so highly regarded in your thoughts.’

‘What do we do now?’ I asked. My teeth began to chatter. I suddenly felt very cold.

My teacher saw this and he put his arms around me. ‘There’s nothing much we can do until the animal keepers arrive in the morning. While these lodgings are not quite up to the usual standards expected for a princess, they are adequate for our current predicament. Here, stay close to me and keep warm. This excitement has put you in a state and your body is reacting adversely. Stop talking now and just breathe deeply. Hopefully, you will sleep.’

I did as he told me, enclosed in his strong arms and his wonderfully large cloak, warmed by his body. I burrowed my head into his chest. Despite our grim surroundings, I had never in my life felt so protected, so totally
enclosed
by another human being. I could have stayed in his arms forever. Handsomeness be damned. With his soft round features and his big nose, Mr Roger Ascham may not have been considered fetching by the ladies of London, but with his razor-sharp mind, his kind heart and his extraordinary ability to see things through other people’s eyes, as far as I was concerned, he was the most beautiful man in the whole world. All those silly girls who had rejected Roger Ascham’s invitations to dance would never know what they had missed out on.

And, of course, he was right again. My body
was
in a state, reacting to my twin excitements of that night—in the cisterns with Zubaida and here in the menagerie with the wolves and the bear—and as my heart gradually slowed and my body warmed, I could feel a heavy sleep coming on.

The two wolves took up sentry positions right outside our cage, lying there in wait, while in the centre of the menagerie the great bear feasted happily on his catch, the sound of crunching wolf bones echoing throughout the walled enclosure.

I couldn’t resist the heaviness of my eyelids any longer and they closed and, forgetting all the things I had to tell my teacher, I fell into a deep sleep.

Mr Ascham held me close that whole night. He did not sleep. He guarded me. My teacher. My knight. My protector.

Just before dawn, the Sultan’s chief animal keeper and his assistant arrived at their menagerie to find the natural order of things overturned: two wolves in the central area, two humans in the wolf cage, and one very satisfied bear in its cage with fresh blood all over its mouth.

At first, the animal keepers refused to release us, despite our claims to be agents of the Sultan. I think they suspected us to be poachers whose plans had gone awry. The sadrazam was called and when he arrived some time later with a cohort of guards, he just looked at my teacher and me with a shake of the head.

‘Why am I not surprised?’ he said. Then, to the animal keepers, he said: ‘Get them out.’

At length, the keepers lured and captured the two loose wolves and reversed our situations. Mr Ascham and I thanked them profusely and hurried back to the palace. By this time, dawn had come, although it was still raining.

Before we hastened back up the hill from the menagerie, however, Mr Ascham did one last thing. He crouched to examine the muddy ground outside the main gates of the menagerie.

‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.

‘I assume that you, I, the animal keepers, the sadrazam and his men all kept to the paved path to get here. But I’m guessing that whoever trapped us inside the menagerie hid somewhere out here and then stole across the muddy ground to close the main gate behind us. I’m looking for . . .
this
.’

I crouched beside him and saw what he saw, and I marvelled at his acumen.

There in the mud was a fresh set of footprints, footprints made by a pair of wooden-soled sandals, the left one of which had a V-shaped nick in it.

FOR ONCE, ELSIE HAD got to bed before me. When I returned to the room I shared with her, I found her curled up in her bed, blissfully asleep.

Exhausted from my stressful night-time adventures with first Zubaida and then Mr Ascham, I dropped into my bed, an act which unfortunately woke her.

She leapt to my side, excitement personified. ‘Bessie! Bessie! I did it! I did it! I snared the Crown Prince!’

I could barely keep my eyes open. ‘Really?’

‘I had him inside me, stiff as a flagpole. Oh, Bessie, it was simply
divine
. And after the raptures I gave him, I think I might have a very good chance of becoming his queen after all!’

Tired as I was, I was keen to hear her tale. And she was ever so keen to tell it.

Elsie said, ‘After I was granted access to the Harem—leaving you and Zubaida outside, I’m so sorry!—I was escorted to the Sultan’s private bath chamber, which was simply a paradise on earth, far grander than the prince’s bath-house. It had several hot-water pools made of marble, all built at different levels and all connected by tumbling waterfalls. Steam rose everywhere, making every nubile young body in there shine like polished bronze.

‘But while the bath-house might have been larger, the gathering was smaller: only the Crown Prince, a handful of his friends and six girls, including me.

‘When I entered the bath-house, I saw that Crown Prince Selim had ensconced himself on a marble platform that jutted out into one of the larger pools and on which sat a wide marble throne. Two naked Persian girls fed him grapes while a third with gigantic breasts bent over in front of him, offering him her body.

‘He saw me enter the bath-house. We locked eyes.

‘While I held his gaze, I loosened my dress, letting it fall to the floor, exposing my body to him. But my nakedness was different that night. Remember how I told you about that fashion among the Persian girls: to increase their allure, they shave the hair around their pudenda, with some even shaving it all off to create a sleek smooth look. Well, so had I. My nether region was completely hairless. The Crown Prince saw this and he smiled.

‘Then, while still maintaining eye contact with me, he stood from his marble throne and entered the bent-over girl in front of him, all the while watching me. The girl squealed with delight as he pumped her but his every thrust was clearly directed at me across the chamber.