IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON and Hannah was chopping onions for a beef stew. Matteo and Grazia should have returned hours ago from the Parade of the Circumcision. Of course, Matteo would be enjoying the jugglers, the magicians, and the bears, but Hannah worried that Grazia would exhaust him. Grazia would let him drink too much sherbet and buy him dozens of sweetmeats, which he adored. Oh well. How often was a prince’s circumcision celebrated with a parade lasting fifty-three days?
The house seemed deserted without the boy’s exuberant cries. By this time in the afternoon he could be counted on to fling his bedsheet over his shoulders like a cloak and charge up and down the stairs. Other days, he would be in the garden practising walking his tightrope.
Before Hannah took the baby to Tova’s to be nursed, she must go to Grazia’s room to find Matteo’s old swaddling bands. Lately, a few ordinary items had gone missing. It must be the work of the djinns. This morning, it had been Matteo’s blanket. Matteo had been inconsolable and sobbed throughout breakfast. He flung himself from his chair, refusing to sit at the table or eat his bread until Grazia searched the house and came back with the blanket.
“Where was it?” Hannah had asked.
“Oh,” Grazia said, “in the garden.”
Odd. Hannah hadn’t seen it there, but no matter. Matteo was overjoyed to have it back and sat clutching it to his chest.
Now, Hannah held the baby upright, patting her back while she climbed the stairs to Grazia’s room. The sleeping mattress was neatly rolled up and put away. The cupboard doors were closed. The curtains were blowing through the open casement window.
Something was very wrong. The bottles and jars of creams and scents and oils that were always arranged on the low table under the window, Grazia’s precious blue enamelled box containing red powder—all gone. The room had been used by the previous owners as a storeroom for turbans. The walls were lined with niches. Grazia had used these for storing odds and ends—gloves and shoes and a hat. Now they were empty.
Hannah searched the closet for her suitcase, but all she found was dust.
“Isaac! Isaac!” she called. “Come, quickly.”
Moments later, she heard Isaac bounding up the stairs.
He came in, his hands and the front of his apron stained green from dye. “What is wrong?”
Hannah paced back and forth, holding the whimpering baby. “All of Grazia’s things are gone.”
Isaac surveyed the barren room and looked into the closet. “There must be a simple explanation.”
Hannah stared at Isaac, wanting to shake him. “Isaac, she has Matteo. All her clothing and personal effects are gone. Do you not understand? She has taken Matteo!”
“What? But … why?”
Why could not Isaac, who was so much wiser in the ways of the world than she, realize what had happened? “We have no time to waste!” Hannah’s voice was so loud that the baby began to cry, reaching a crescendo that made it impossible to hear what Isaac was saying.
Zephra came into the room. “Please take her to Tova for a feeding,” said Hannah. Jessica’s angry pink face nodded over the old servant’s shoulder as Zephra left the room.
“Isaac, we must look for him—and fast.”
“But there must be some expl—”
Hannah interrupted. “Isaac, no.” This was not a Talmudic debate about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Now was the time for action. A thought struck her. “This morning, when they left, Grazia insisted on taking Matteo’s blanket.” Hannah could not explain it, but there was something about Grazia’s insistence that had disturbed her. Matteo’s blanket—the only thing that linked him to his natural parents.
A look of alarm crossed Isaac’s face. Finally, he was beginning to see.
“We will find him. Don’t worry,” he said.
They hurried to the front door, where Isaac took his berete from the hook. Hannah slipped on her sandals. She called to Zephra to tell her they were going out, before remembering that she had already left with the baby for Tova’s house. Hannah wrenched open the front door and together they ran out.
“They must be heading through the crowds to the docks,” Hannah said.
“It will be impossible to get through the crowd in a carriage. Let us go by foot.”
Several streets later, they encountered the parade. “Isaac, how will we find them?”
Hand in hand, Hannah and Isaac squeezed through the crowds, ducking past the various guild floats, including the chalk-makers’. The men riding on top of the wagon were crunching chalk in their hands and using handfuls of it to whiten their faces. A band followed in their wake, playing eight-fold Turkish music.
A cart lumbered by, drawn by massive draught horses pulling the silversmiths and their forges. Which of the many floats would Matteo insist on seeing? The carpenters building a wooden house? The bricklayers raising a wall? The silver thread-spinners? The saddlers? The felt-makers? The confectioners’ guild that flung their sugary delights into the crowd—Lips of the Beauty, Hanum’s Finger, and Ladies’ Thighs?
Thousands of people were milling about, mothers holding babies in their arms, fathers carrying children on their shoulders. She spotted a red-haired boy, arms extended to catch a piece of marzipan thrown from the confectioners’ float. Her heart nearly stopped. But he was an older child, five at least, and not as handsome as Matteo.
A mime spotted Hannah and Isaac rushing through the forest of people and followed them, stroking his beard in imitation of Isaac. Isaac tossed a coin at the man, trying to get rid of him, but it only encouraged the mime and soon he added ribald gestures to his act.
They pushed and shoved, Isaac shouting for people to move aside. It was too much movement, too much, too fast. She stood for a moment to catch her breath.
Isaac pulled her arm and they raced along the Street of the Armourers, side-stepping a cart piled high with cooked sheeps’ heads. In the distance was the blue expanse of the Bosporus. Now Hannah had a stitch in her side. She cursed herself. Just when she needed all of her endurance, she seemed to have none.
“Are you all right?” Isaac asked, slowing.
“Of course,” she said. “I am fine.”
Hannah pressed her fist into her side, grabbed Isaac’s hand, and carried on.