The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [47]
I did my best to explain. To most people, the word “palace” means a single very big building planned to house a monarch. Of course, there are usually a few smaller buildings around it, but the big building is The Palace. Although the word “Seraglio” really means “palace,” it isn’t at all like one. It is an oval-shaped walled area over two miles in circumference, standing on top of the hill above Seraglio Point at the entrance to the Bosphorus; and it is a city within a city. Originally, or at least from the time of Suleiman the Magnificent until the mid-nineteenth century, the whole central government, ministers and high civil servants as well as the Sultan of the time, lived and worked in it. There were household troops and a cadet school as well as the Sultan’s harem inside the walls. The population was generally over five thousand, and there was always new building going on. One reason for this was a custom of the Ottomans. When a new Sultan came to the throne, he naturally inherited all the wealth and property accumulated by his father; but he could not take the personalized property for his own personal use without losing face. Consequently, all the old regalia had to be stored away and new pieces made, a new summer palace had to be built and, of course, new private apartments inside the Seraglio, and a new mosque. As I say, this went on well into the nineteenth century. So the Seraglio today is a vast rabbit warren of reception rooms, private apartments, pavilions, mosques, libraries, gateways, armories, barracks, and so on, interspersed by a few open courtyards and gardens. There are no big buildings in the “palace” sense. The two biggest single structures happen to be the kitchens and the stables.
Although the guidebooks try to explain all this, most tourists don’t seem to understand it. They think “Seraglio” means “harem” anyway and all they are interested in apart from that is the “Golden Road,” the passage that the chosen girls went along to get from the harem to the Sultan’s bed. The harem area isn’t open to the public as a matter of fact; but I always used to take the tourists I had through the Mustafa Pasha pavilion at the back and tell them that that was part of the harem. They never knew the difference, and it was something they could tell their friends.
Miss Lipp soon got the idea, though. I found that she knew something about Turkish history; for instance, who the Janissaries had been. For someone who, only an hour or so earlier, had been asking if the Seraglio was the old palace, that was a little surprising. At the time, I suppose, I was too busy trying to answer her other questions to pay much attention. I had shown her the guidebook plan and she was going through all the buildings marked on it.
“The White Eunuchs’ quarters along here, are they open?”
“Only these rooms near the Gate of Felicity in the middle.”
“The Baths of Selim the Second, can we see them?”
“That is part of the museum now. There is a collection of glass and silverware there, I think.”
“What about the Hall of the Pantry?”
“I think that building has the administration offices in it now.”
Some of the questions I couldn’t answer at all, even vaguely, but she still kept on. Finally, she broke off, swallowed her second raki at a gulp, and looked across at me.
“Are you hungry, Arthur?”
“Hungry? No, Miss Lipp, not particularly.”
“Why don’t we go to the palace right now then?”
“Certainly, if you wish.”
“Okay. You take care of the check here. We’ll settle later.”
I saw the eyes of one or two men sitting in the café follow her as she went back to the car, and I noticed them glancing at me as I paid for the drinks. Obviously they were wondering what the relationship was—father, uncle, or what? It was oddly embarrassing. The trouble was, of course, that I didn’t know what to make of Miss Lipp and couldn’t decide what sort of attitude to adopt towards her. To add to the confusion, a remark Harper