“Next time your Papa gets angry. Next time, you must use your mind to build a wall around yourself, one brick and another and another"
IT is midafternoon by the time Bilhah reaches for the letter: that space in the afternoon when time folds into a plump pillow and invites you to rest your head. She yawns and turns the letter over. The seal on the letter is familiar: a great splash of red wax embossed with that mythical creature, a phoenix rising from a flame.
Bilhah stares at it a moment, tiredness forgotten. She knows exactly where this letter is from. In the Room of Words in Istanbul, she was never the one who broke the seal, but always, before she started to read, she would piece together the two ends of the parchment and rub her finger over the symbol stamped into the wax.
She breaks open the seal. It is that parchment, the goat parchment. Finely rendered, but still slightly rough and uneven. And the familiar handwriting: close and cramped, each letter finely formed, but shaken off the pen in haste, so that they lack beauty.
To the Honorable Sir Abraham Castro
Bilhah looks up and rubs her eyes. It is hot in the work tent. Maybe she should go and get some fresh air. But if she does, invariably one of Castro’s cronies notices and gives her another five tasks. Instead, she closes her eyes, just for a moment. She is back in the imperial palace, with Yasemin by her side. She misses Yasemin. The woman was wise, she knew the art and craft of words, and also of the palace. She knew what words to whisper into which ears, when to nod and when to object. Bilhah misses her.
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