Leonora plucks Bellida’s sleeve. “Do we have a seamstress on staff at the moment? You look hot in this dress. Surely summer clothing must be commissioned for you and your family.”

She tries to think. Ines usually organizes this kind of thing for her, but she does not recall. Perhaps. Perhaps not. She has been so busy organizing the wool factory. The machines are ready now, large wooden frames for spinning the wool. The storage has been organized, and the dyes have been sourced. And — she smiles in satisfaction — she has even been in correspondence with agents in the Ottoman Empire.

If she is fortunate, as she will be, as the Almighty smiles down on her efforts to make money, if nothing else, then she will land a contract to supply the Janissaries with their woolen uniforms, so that when they march out to war…

She is getting carried away with her scheming, and Bellida is here, waiting to know — what? Yes. She is dangling new dresses in front of her, to calm her spirits. “Bellida, dear, speak to Ines—”

“About Yishai?”

“Sorry? Ah.” Ines is a wise woman, but Leonora has to think about this one, about what Yishai needs and wants and how it all fits into her plans.

“No. About new clothing for the summer.”

Bellida’s face pinches and small red blotches appear on her cheeks. “It is not…”

The foreman is waiting. And really, it is not her task to smooth over her son’s marital wellbeing. If Bellida is displeased with Yishai, then let her talk to him herself.

The clothing will do it. A new dress and a cape, too. It will help in the meantime.

“And not only for you. Order for the children, as well.”

Bellida dips her head, but Leonora cannot tell if she is simply hiding her anger. “Thank you kindly, honorable mother.”

***

It is as she inspects the great, wooden frames that the cry comes through the      town and men and little boys run into the wool factory.

“Sheep!” they cry. “The sheep have come.”

She runs outside after them, following them up the hill so that she can have a view to the west.

Sheep. There are sheep as far as the eye can see. They are still a while away, it will take them half a day to arrive, maybe more. But the hilltop and the valley beneath it are no longer green and brown but a grayish whitish moving mass of cloud.

“The best wool in the world,” she murmurs.

Next to her the foreman grunts, “Better than the English stuff?”

“English wool is strong but coarse. This is supple and strong and fine. It will make the finest cloth.”

“Good enough for a prince.”

“Indeed.”

Not just good enough for a prince. Good enough for a sultan. Good enough for a sultan’s army. Wool. Who would believe that something so soft will be something so strong?

***

“Psst. Bilhah.”

Bilhah slips into her seat, breathless. She has come from Katerina, who was ordered to embroider professions of faith onto the shirt she has sewn, but is having a crisis of sorts. Bilhah sat with her all night as she sobbed and Bilhah schemed, and this morning it was almost impossible to rise from her sleeping mat, despite the noise of the girls dressing and chatting around her.

Bilhah turns. The girl next to her — tall and lanky, like she should be a dancer, but who knocks into everything and is always spilling the ink and breaking her pens — motions to Yasemin in the front.

“She has been waiting for you.”

Bilhah feels the girls’ eyes on her as she walks to the front of the room, and she straightens her back. Let them be curious. Another voice in her mind: Just do not let them be jealous. Yasemin takes an interest in her, clearly, and it is because they are both Jews in a strange land.

Although there is nothing to be jealous of, really. Yasemin is not a climber. She has no influence. A friendship with her means nothing here in the palace.

Yasemin pushes aside her veil and urges Bilhah to sit. She pushes a letter across the desk to her.

Bilhah lifts it and examines it before she begins to read. She recognizes the writing. It is that sprawling italic penmanship of that woman from the Holy Land.

“There are records about this woman,” Yasemin says.

“It is not the first time she has written.”

Bilhah casts a net through her mind, trying to remember if there was anything more than professions of loyalty and flattery. There was. Something about the walls of Jerusalem. Perhaps she has lost her mind?

“She is a woman of wit, wealth, and influence,” Yasemin says as if she has read Bilhah’s mind. She is thoughtful. “I would like to meet her one day. One of our own.

“But now she is talking business. Read it.”

Sometimes when Bilhah reads, she does not even pause to identify whether the missive is written in Italian, Spanish, Persian and she is even becoming comfortable with Arabic. But this woman’s Spanish is distinct. It is an old-fashioned tongue, as if she learned the language forty years ago, maybe fifty, and never moved from the stiff, cumbersome turns of phrase that most have dropped from their vocabulary.

Bilhah’s eyes scan the page. She looks up, puzzled.

Yasemin taps her fingers on the table. “Do you see what she has done?”

With Yasemin, it is safe to admit to ignorance.

“She is playing on the fears of Hurrem Sultan. What does this woman want?”

Bilhah looks through the letter once more. “To rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.”

“Correct. Now, what is Hurrem Sultan most afraid of?”

Bilhah thinks back to her conversations with Aisha. “Of not being loved by the people.”

Yasemin gives a half nod. “Almost. Being loved by her people is the solution. She is afraid that the Sultan will be deposed by some power seeker and she and her children will be killed. The solution is to be loved by the people.”

Bilhah thinks back to the water fountain near the Golden Horn. A gift from Hurrem Sultan to the people of Istanbul.

“Now, the group who poses the most danger is the Janissaries.”

“The guards?”

“They are not just our guards. They are a highly trained army, comprised of the elite of society. If the general or commander decides to stage a coup, they have the best trained forces at their disposal.”

Bilhah’s head starts to spin. “But surely they are loyal to the Sultan?”

“They have sworn loyalty, yes. But at the end of the day, everyone is only loyal to his own interests, would you not say?”

“Yes,” Bilhah says emphatically.

“So this woman from the Holy Land, this Leonora, she is dangling a prize before Hurrem Sultan. Persuade your husband to build the walls of Jerusalem and I — with my wool factory that produces the best garments in the world, higher quality even than the wool of England and the Low Countries — will produce uniforms for your Janissaries. Coats and blankets of the finest Merino wool.”

Bilhah’s head works quickly. “And so they will love her, too. She will buy their loyalty through a warm blanket and a smart coat.”

Yasemin shrugs. “People are simple. Sometimes what moves them the most is a good, hot meal and a respite from the bitter cold. Give them that and they will give you everything in return.”

“Including your life and the lives of your children.”

“Exactly. And that is why I want you to take this letter and show it to Hurrem Sultan herself.”

Bilhah’s heart starts to pound.

She looks up at Yasemin. “There are people offering business deals every day. And you pass them on to the buyers and the commercial people and who knows who. But this letter you are sending straight to Hurrem Sultan?”

Yasemin raises her arms. “Power brings privilege. I have a little power here in this great universe that is the palace, a firmament with stars and suns and moons. I am only a little dust floating in the deep, but a dust speck can have her moment, too. If I want the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt, then I have the chance to send this directly to her attention. And you have the chance to be my messenger.”

Yasemin, too. Like the Spanish woman. All agitating for the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt, as if that will fix the world, as if that will fix all that is wrong inside.

Only she, it seems, simply wants things to remain the way they are.

When Bilhah asks people how to find the reception room of Hurrem Sultan, she receives one of three responses. Some girls stare. Others girls start to giggle and make fun of her — why not ask in the menagerie? And the last group looks at her in admiration, asking with their eyes — and how do you deign or dare to draw near?

Where is Aisha when she needs her? Aisha, who every day approaches the Sultana to give her day’s prediction in the stars.

Those who do know, simply point to the palace’s interior. Inward. Inward. Inward. That is the place of Hurrem Sultan — the silent, inner center of it all.

Bilhah walks through the hallways, under gilded arches and past mosaics. She stops, here and there, to stare, to allow her eyes to pull the thousands of tiny pieces together so that they form a picture. Sometimes the image appears. Most times it does not, and she is left frustrated, questioning the beauty of the aquamarine and burgundy and green, above all a thousand shades of green, that stare down at her from the walls.

She pauses before the innermost prayer hall. Calm yourself, Bilhah. Calm yourself. You are simply a messenger of Yasemin. You are a new odalisque, simply doing your job, in an attempt to serve the Ottoman Empire.

She steps inside. It is plain here; the opulence of the outer layer of the building is missing. It is cool, too, for the sun trickles down through slits high in the walls, so that the place is flooded with light, but protected from heat.

An old woman approaches her. Bilhah bows her head.

“I have a message for Hurrem Sultan.”

“Then come this way.”

Bilhah follows the woman through the prayer hall and to a vestibule beyond. There, she knocks on a plain wooden door and then pushes it open.

With her hand on Bilhah’s back, she pushes her inside. Bilhah stares at the silken veil in front of her. Just as Aisha told her, it is the color of the middle of the ocean — a blue that turns into green that ripples into violet. It is the most beautiful color she has ever seen.

She stumbles into a bow that turns into a curtsy.

The woman’s voice, when she speaks, is low and slightly hoarse, but it carries, as well, the lilt of laughter. “Well. And who do we have here?”

Bilhah grips her hands together. She swallows again and again, but forming any word feels like an impossible feat.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 807)