Authors: Kelly Gardiner

The Sultan's Eyes (30 page)

In one sense, this book was born several years ago when I visited Istanbul, heart pumping, and trudged for many happy days through those ancient alleyways and spent hours gazing breathlessly at the dome of Aya Sofia or the old city walls.

The Sultan’s Palace in Istanbul is now called Topkapi, and many of its courtyards and tiled pavilions are intact. Its collections of weapons and the sultans’ clothes are unmatched. Several buildings in the harem were destroyed by fire in 1665 and rebuilt by Mehmed IV, so you can walk the corridors that he and Turhan Hadice walked later in their lives, although they are not quite as depicted in
The Sultan’s Eyes
, which is set before the fire. Apart from that, the pavilions, the Golden Way, the gardens and
courtyards, the gates, even the
kafes
, are all still there. So, too, are the spice market built by Turhan Hadice, the great mosques and minarets, the bazaar, stretches of the aqueduct and city walls (now surrounded by roads and houses and petrol stations), fragments of the Hippodrome, Aya Sofia (Sancta Sophia) and Aya Irini (Hagia Eirene), and of course the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus Strait. The gazelles, sadly, are gone.

In Venice, the Doge’s Palace, which is still much as it was in the seventeenth century, is one of the city’s most famous buildings. Visitors can inspect the Inquisitors’ chambers with their
Bocca di leone
(Lion’s Mouth) letterbox and dungeons, wander up the Golden Staircase (
Scala d’Oro
), through the Hall of the Great Council and the Doge’s apartments, and gaze up at paintings by artists like Tintoretto and Veronese. Even though our
signora
is fictional, I like to imagine her living in the small but perfectly formed Palazzo Contarini Fasan, popularly known as Desdemona’s House, right on the Grand Canal.

Like Isabella and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, I’ve sailed — aboard the glorious tall ship
Star Flyer
— from Istanbul through the Dardanelles, past Gallipoli and Troy, and across the Aegean Sea. I, too, hung over the rail and imagined the ancient past. I didn’t know, then, that I would write this story. But Constantinople, like Venice, had its hooks in me long ago, before I ever set foot in either place. Books will do that to you.

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Work on this book was supported by the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust, which provided me with a Creative Time Residential Fellowship for a month’s blessed writing retreat in Brisbane.

During the research phase, I spent many happy afternoons in the State Libraries of Victoria and Queensland searching out information on daily life in Venice and Istanbul: everything from coins and shoes to the Sultan’s zoo. I confess to borrowing any number of books from the excellent La Trobe University Library, even though
The Sultan’s Eyes
has nothing whatsoever to do with my studies, and to constantly renewing loans on travel guides and travellers’ accounts from the City Library in Melbourne.

My writing buddies, Paddy O’Reilly and Fran Cusworth, provided hours of distraction and laughter and endless cups of tea, as well as the odd moment of focus during our ‘Shut Up and Write’ sessions.

Everyone at HarperCollins is a delight, especially my publisher Lisa Berryman. Nicola O’Shea again knocked my manuscript into shape, while proofreader Libby Volke and editor Kate Burnitt posed glorious questions such as ‘I thought the General Post Office in England didn’t open until 1660?’. You’ll notice we’ve continued Jane Waterhouse’s design concepts from
Act of Faith
, enhanced
by Christa Moffitt who also created the sumptuous cover for
The Sultan’s Eyes
.

As was the case with
Act of Faith
, the internal design of this book features real printers’ devices, illustrations and frontispieces from the wonderful collection of the State Library of Victoria. Many thanks to my colleagues at the Library for all their support and encouragement over several years, and to Jan McDonald in the Rare Printed team for her expert advice.

Lastly but most importantly, Susannah Walker supported me in every conceivable way. As always.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Kelly Gardiner is the author of
Act of Faith
, the Swashbuckler trilogy of pirate adventure books for young readers and the picture book
Billabong Bill’s Bushfire Christmas
.

She is a journalist, blogger and editor who has worked on websites, newspapers and magazines, and her travel writing, articles and poetry have been published in leading journals and magazines.

She is currently undertaking her PhD in Creative Writing at La Trobe University and works at the State Library of Victoria.

She lives in Melbourne, Australia.

www.kellygardiner.com

O
THER BOOKS BY
K
ELLY
G
ARDINER

ACT OF FAITH

OCEAN WITHOUT END
THE PIRATE’S REVENGE
THE SILVER SWAN

C
OPYRIGHT

This project was supported by a Creative Time Residential Fellowship provided by the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust.

Angus&Robertson

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
, Australia

First published in Australia in 2013

This edition published in 2013

by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

harpercollins.com.au

The right of Kelly Gardiner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollins
Publishers

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Gardiner, Kelly, 1961–

The sultan’s eyes / Kelly Gardiner.

ISBN: 978 0 7322 9480 9 (pbk.)

ISBN: 978 0 7304 9984 8 (epub)