The Blue Hour

Chapter 9: Peresto

Sleep came quickly. She dreamt. When Mustafa woke her again she felt strong and clear-headed, ready for a new day. But the night was still young and Mustafa brought distressing news. It's Hamid, he signalled in ixarette.

"Is he safe?"

He nodded. He made a few signs that made no sense to her, water conduits, escape, softa, Jurad. He shook his head: she would have to see for herself.

Unobserved, they made their way through the harem to Hamid's apartment in the adjacent Palace-of-the-Heirs, decorated in European style like the rest of the palace, a result of Medjid's love for long discussions with his Armenian architect and outlandish orders to European warehouses.

She found Hamid curled up on the walnut baldaquin bed. His clothes - the kaftan of a simple Turk - in a dirty, bloody heap on the floor.

"You crawled through water conduits," she asked for the third time. She tried to imagine it but failed. Until this moment, she had not known the conduits existed. It was unimaginable they could serve as a way in and out of the palace. And unsettling. Medjid would turn in his grave if he knew.

But it was possible. Medjid had built a modern palace to rival that of the Queen of England, so he had installed central heating, and baths equipped with running water. Apparently, Jurad, Hamid's Master of the Chambers, had discovered the construction plans and bribed eunuch guards to turn a blind eye.

She inhaled Hamid's scent of sweat and blood. If he was still alive, it had to be because Allah willed it. The Valide already thought him treasonous, and treason was punishable by death. Or, at the very least, the limited freedom she had painstakingly negotiated for him over the years, would be taken away from him.

"Freedom," Hamid scoffed and turned his gaze away from her.

"Yes, freedom. They'll do it again: no more books, no more Reshid to teach you about the world, no visitors from the outside, not even from the harem. Just your brothers and a cluster of women for company. It's only been a year, and you have already forgotten it?"

She waited. The Palace-of-the-Heirs, the residence of the dynasty's adult males, was better known as the 'golden cage'. A place where the royal princes awaited either death or coronation. It was introduced centuries ago as a more humane form of succession than the gruesome practice of fratricide.

In the Ottoman tradition, the empire was the common property of the Osman dynasty. All male descendants had equal rights to the throne. When the empire was young, the heirs to the throne fought for the throne in bloody civil wars, splitting the empire and causing great suffering. To spare the people and preserve the unity of the empire, wars were replaced with fratricide. By killing male heirs inside the palace through political tricks and deceptions, succession could happen without waging war.

When a couple of centuries later, Sultan Mehmed III strangled nineteen brothers and half-brothers, several in their infancy, people were outraged at the cruelty. Such bloody successions also jeopardised the survival of the Osman line by reducing the number of claimants to the throne to dangerously low levels.

Fratricide was abolished and the 'golden cage' introduced. All male heirs where confined at puberty to prevent them from gathering followers, incite rebellion or lead a coup. They were deprived of all contact with the outside world, could not grow a beard or have children, and were forbidden to continue their education. When the time of succession came, the 'cage' was opened and the eldest male offered the throne. He was, of course, inexperienced and often psychologically disturbed by a lifetime in isolation.

Medjid had been raised in the 'cage' of the old Topkapi Palace. When he took the throne he had never seen a map of the empire. Hamid and Murad had spent more than ten years in the 'cage' of the new palace. By escaping the palace, even for one night, he had struck at the heart of a system which had been integral to the survival of the Osman dynasty for centuries. It was tantamount to treason. It was unimaginable.