Authors: Juliette Waldron
Caterina bowed her head submissively.
"Ayhan," she said, "I am very thirsty."
"And hungry, too, I expect. If you lie
still and do as I say, a drink will be brought to you."
Caterina did as she was told, sitting up
against the pillows.
"Now relax. Part your legs. After the
paste is on, be still or it will get where it is not supposed to be and really
hurt you. While it works, we'll cover you and you can rest. Zehra will get you
drink."
While this final ordeal was going on, Zehra
trotted away and then returned from somewhere carrying a cup.
"What is it?" Cat asked, as the
girl knelt and raised it towards her.
"It is made of barley. Boza it is
called," explained Ayhan. "It will strengthen you and quench your
thirst."
With exquisite skill, Zehra fed Caterina sips
of the faintly sweet, chilled drink. After the long fast and the enervating
bath, it was heavenly. Boza proved to be cold, smooth, and thinly sweet-and-sour,
with a delicate after taste of cinnamon.
When Caterina began to complain that the
paste was hurting, Ayhan scraped it away with a mussel shell. Then she rinsed
with very hot water.
"Ow! You're boiling me!" Cat
tried to shield her already insulted private parts.
"We must get all the paste off, Red
One. Either that or it will eat another hole in you," Ayhan said with a
grim smile.
Cat could still feel the dreadful burning
so she endured it, allowed the sponge to send scalding water over the tenderest
places and down the inside of her thighs.
"The first time is the worst,"
said Ayhan. "Eventually you won't have to do it more than once every month
or so. The hair becomes—discouraged."
She lifted Cat's arm and stroked the tender
nakedness underneath. "Now, red barbarian, you begin to approach beauty.
Ah, but what is this?" she suddenly asked, touching the spot that was
always extra tender.
As she did, Cat felt a shock of terror
strong enough to revive her. She could see Aunt Teresina leaning over her with
a bit of ice wrapped in a towel, pressing it against the place where the spider
had bitten, the place that had always afterward been marked with blue.
"It's a scar!" Fear surged to
panic when abruptly the door opened, and a large, enormously fat black man came
towards her, accompanied by the two eunuchs who'd escorted her from the small
room.
Feeling dizzy sick, Cat crossed her arms
over her breasts and clenched her knees together. She'd never been naked in the
presence of so many people in her life.
"This is the Chief Eunuch in charge of
the women," Ayhan announced. "He is a physician. He must see whether
you are already bred and if you are healthy. Nothing else will happen. Now
don't act crazy. Just lie still and it will soon be over."
Under the direction of this huge personage,
apparently yet another of the black castrati that the palace seemed to be full
of, the two men seized her arms and held her down upon the couch. The one whose
nose she'd bloodied took a cruelly painful grip.
There was nothing else to do but submit.
When the examination was finished, the huge man grunted to his feet. As soon as
she was released, Caterina curled into a ball and hid her face. After saying a
few quick words to Ayhan, the Chief Eunuch left the room. To her relief, he
took the others away with him.
"It is all over now," said Ayhan,
patting Caterina as she sat, trembling and rubbing her aching arms. "He
says you are healthy and that you are not pregnant. You are to be kept and
trained to be an odalisque."
Then she was led into a small antechamber
with a dry floor, pegs on the walls and benches. Here stout Zehra had set out a
complete set of new clothes.
First there were a pair of pants, very
full, which reached to Cat's ankles, then a smock of a fine green silk gauze
edged with embroidery. It had wide sleeves and was closed at the neck with a
diamond button. Over this went a long flowing caftan which she recognized as
the same sort of garment Christoph had had made for her. This one, however, was
beautiful, of a greenish blue color and embroidered beautifully with winged
horses.
"Do you like the Pegasi?" Ayhan
asked. "It was thought to be most appropriate for you."
"Do you know about my mare? Where is
she?"
"All I have heard is that the horse is
wild and very valuable, more valuable than any barbarian would have the sense
to know. She will be well cared for, just like you. And she is yours no longer,
Red One. In the harem you own nothing, not even your freckled skin."
Cat swallowed the lump in her throat,
stared down at the tiny winged horses, so skillfully rendered. For an instant
she imagined herself on the back of one, soaring through the sky, back to
Heldenberg, back to the arms of her husband…
Zehra was offering her the last piece of
clothing, a waistcoat of a brilliant green, closed with jeweled buttons.
Numbly, Cat put it on. Next she was told to sit so that her hair could be
combed and braided.
"Ayhan..."
"What now,
girl?"
"I thought Turks dressed their wives
in black long tunics."
"What? Oh, the feradge is what you
mean. Yes, that is how a woman, if she ever goes outside of the harem, must
dress. If you ever see the outside of these walls again, you will wear the
feradge and a yashmak, too."
"Yashmak?"
"Yes, a veil that covers your face and
hair. I will show you how to wear it. In time I will teach you all you need to
know in order not to sin."
"I will die if I cannot ride
again," said Caterina softly.
"Then you will die."
Afterward, she was escorted back to the
little room. She almost didn't recognize it, for in her absence a barred window
had been unshuttered and a couch had been moved in, one covered with blankets
and pillows. There was also a low table and a Turkey carpet. Upon the table sat a
plate of something which smelled wonderful, a kind of stew poured over steamed
grain. Beside that sat a basket of cherries and a pitcher that looked to be
full of more of the delicious Boza.
"Go ahead, Red Mare Woman. Eat. Sleep.
You will see no one until I come tomorrow to begin your training."
The door locked. As soon as she heard the
soft scuffle of slippered feet departing, Cat hurled herself down on the carpet
by the table and began to stuff the strangely spiced stuff into her mouth with
her fingers. Later, lying on the comfortable divan, stomach full of strange but
excellent food, body clean and warm blankets wrapped around her, Caterina wept
long and bitterly.
How long could she survive inside a cage?
How could she sleep when such images of
horror crowded her mind?
After she'd cried for a long time, a
profound lassitude arose, from the food, the hot bath, the skillful massaging
of her body by the slave. It wasn't long before she found release in sleep, the
most profound since her capture.
* * *
The sun was well up the next day when the
door unlocked. There stood Ayhan.
Behind her stood plump
Zehra carrying a tray of breakfast.
"You will wash, and then you will have
a lesson on how to eat properly.
And no nonsense!"
She indicated the door, outside of which Cat caught sight of the skulking,
ominous Sulmuh.
Obediently, Caterina washed her hands and
face in a basin. Then she sat down upon the carpet by the table.
"Sit like this. Cross your legs."
Ayhan folded herself gracefully down beside her. When Cat reached for food with
both hands, the old woman dealt the left one a stinging slap.
"That hand is unclean. It is to be
used only for the call of nature. You may never use it to eat."
Caterina, who was hungry,
repressed the urge to hit back.
"Watch me. Use your fingertips, just
the ends." Every move Ayhan made in bringing the food to her mouth was
astonishingly elegant.
"Only three fingers.
Don't
gobble."
* * *
In the courtyard below the birds sang so
beautifully that, for fleeting moments, she felt almost happy. Open to the sky,
the area was only partially paved. The remainder was filled by a garden of
dwarf trees and bright flowers. There were two sparkling fountains.
For a few hours every day, Cat watched a
crowd of gaily dressed women and romping children enjoying the sunlit garden.
"All you see here, kadins, concubines,
odalisques, children, and slaves of the Pasha." Ayhan explained.
"Kadins are wives. Islam allows a man to have four, but if he is rich he
may also have four concubines, as well as any number of odalisques, who are, as
I've said before, slaves of the kadins. A man may take any wife's handmaid he
chooses to his couch." Caterina shook her head, utterly amazed.
"In the west there is a custom of
mistresses. All rich and powerful men have them. One way or another true male
nature will express itself."
Every day Ayhan sat with her, teaching her
the language and telling her stories about the ways of the harem. Caterina was
an interested and often horrified listener, for the world Ayhan described was a
web of conspiracy, betrayal and murder. The Pasha's mother was said to have
poisoned a rival and to have done the same to the woman's small children in
order to make inheritance safe for her own sons after their husband had died.
"We are a hard people, Red Mare, which
is why we always triumph. Among our men it is brothers against their cousins,
cousins against the world, but it is even harder for women. In the seraglio, a
woman has no ally but her own wit. Remember what I tell you, for if you
displease the Lady Mother you will be sent to the marketplace, where I'm sure
they will receive a good price for your healthy body and red hair—even if you
aren't a virgin."
It seemed that as an odalisque, Caterina
would be a slave, but she would also be given a slave of her own, who would
bathe her, carry her food and see to her wants. She would have to learn the
same skills herself in order to care for her mistress, whichever among the kadins
chose her. She also learned that many of the women in the seraglio were
Circassians or Croats who had been bought as slaves, trained and converted. The
household was modeled, as far as this Pasha's wealth allowed, upon that of the
Great Turk in Istanbul.
* * *
At the end of the first week Caterina was
taken again to the baths. This time, the steaming room was filled with the same
women and children she'd daily watched in courtyard. "These are the
kadins, their odalisques and the children. They will be seeing you for the
first time. Some of them might even touch you, so behave with civility."
This time the bath was a much more amenable
experience, especially because the miserable burning paste needed only a brief
application. The careful Zehra soaped and scrubbed her until her fair skin was
flushed and red.
During the last week she had tried talking
to Zehra in German, but the girl had only smiled, patted Caterina's cheeks
affectionately and shook her head. Ayhan had explained. "Zehra knows a
little Turkish and when you know some too,
then
you
can speak. She is a slave from the east somewhere. Maybe Armenian, but no one
here speaks her native tongue, so we don't know. She isn't pretty, but she's a
good slave."
All around Caterina, women of many colors were
washing each other, bodies and hair. She was surprised to see how free they
were in their nakedness, how some of them even put up a leg on the stools and
allowed their half naked servants to examine them. Apparently this was a
searching for renewed growth of the despised hair, because the paste pot made
its appearance after several of these examinations.
Other beauty treatments were in progress as
well. One woman appeared to be dying her hair, with the help of several slaves.
With the quantities of burning depilatory and black dye that were flowing
across the floor today, Caterina understood the purpose of the tall pattens—to
keep one's feet above the mess!
All the wives were there, and Cat felt
their eyes speculatively upon her. Ayhan had told her that the Pasha had four
kadins and had sired children upon them all, as well as upon two concubines and
several of the odalisques. The children were everywhere, more subdued than in
the garden, perhaps because of the steamy heat. They ranged in color from olive
brown to extremely fair. One of the kadins, Ayhan had told her, was an
Egyptian.
Today, Caterina saw her up close. She was a
beautiful coffee color, very dark, but with fine features and an astounding
figure. It was rare, Ayhan said, for this pasha to take a dark skinned woman,
but the woman's beauty and some political advantage which Ayhan alluded to had
caused him to marry her. Muazzez, as she was called, was the daughter of a
pasha, a noblewoman of sorts, if such a thing could be said to exist in this world
of absolute male domination.