Reign of the Favored Women (12 page)

Women finally found their place in the official reality of Belqis’s words. His Royal Highness Muhammed’s mother, “Most favored of the veiled and modest heads, the most exalted fleshly cradle of princes” sent greetings to “the support of Christian womanhood...trailing skirts of glory and power, woman of Mary the mother of Jesus’s way.”

Safiye returned to the subject of mothers-in-law. “Mothers-in-law here in the East are given much greater power in the formation of marital alliances than I remember in the West. Mothers are, after all, the only ones in a position to know prospective brides, for such a veil of modesty hangs over womenfolk that men will never broach the subject among themselves without risking censure of the deepest kind for their rudeness. Nonetheless, it is not until I had your example that I realized just how powerful I might become in this next stage of my career.”

Safiye caught my eyes and smiled slightly. How much, I wondered, of this intimacy was also flattery? Machiavelli could turn on the Machiavellian, could he not? I couldn’t tell and didn’t dare take my eyes from the manuscript to think of the matter longer, for the Fair One’s bangles were winking even faster across the page now.

“Although the Ottoman imperial house does maintain an ancient prejudice against marrying beneath them—and since they are the greatest empire in the world, finding peers must needs be difficult—I think, with your inspiration and that of Signor Machiavelli, I shall accomplish something.”

A touch of fear crackled along my spine. Now this was an area that might well affect me, my lady, and little Gul Ruh. I sent another protective glance out into the courtyard. All seemed well, but the light blinded my eyes so much that I couldn’t read Safiye’s writing for a moment after I returned to the dappled light within. I listened to Belqis’s phrases instead, still in praise of Catherine.

“May her last moments be concluded with good...Let there be made a salutation so gracious that all the rose garden’s roses are but one petal from it and a speech so sincere that the whole repertoire of the garden’s nightingales is but one stanza of it, a praise which brings forth felicity in this world and the next.”

I shivered again at the invocation of sincerity in a letter meant to lay a false scent and reminded myself to read more of the real one.

“I beg your understanding of the position I am in here in the East before you condemn my simpleness. I had to get to the position of favorite first. Favorite is not the comfortable once-and-for-always of a wife under the Catholic sacrament of marriage. Even having attained this position, I was still unsure of it for many years. I resisted the realization that the more children I have to bargain with, the more bargains I can strike.

“In any case, with your example, dear sister queen, what I had tried to escape when I feared my only weapon was my good looks I have now embraced. And I once thought these Turkish women so benighted in their slavery to fertility! I doubt I shall, at this point, manage to equal your own ten offspring, but I am pleased to announce that after Prince Muhammed and little Aysha—and due to Murad’s visit to the capital over the winter—a third imperial heir is on the way.”

This was news indeed! Esmikhan, I was certain, had not been told yet, or she would have been able to speak of nothing else, not even the plight of the poor widow Huma. Granted, before the letter got to France, the new prince or princess might well be born. At any rate, its imminent arrival would no longer be possible to keep a secret. But that Safiye would tell this distant queen she’d never met before she told my most devoted lady was a matter to be considered. I knew I couldn’t break the news to Esmikhan; the hurt would kill her.

Safiye sharpened herself a new pen—one of the reeds they used in the East instead of the quills of the West—and wrote on. “What an alliance that would be, my Aysha with your youngest, Hercule. The age difference is not so sharp as that between your son and Elizabeth, and the forging of Catholic to Protestant would be nothing to it. Everything from Constantinople and Paris would be crushed to powder between that alloy. I know your priests would not approve, not to mention the muftis. Still, it is pleasant to dream.

“And there is always Muhammed to your Marguerite—should you find Navarre more trouble than you can safely keep under house arrest and in need of more drastic remedy. The muftis even encourage Muslim men to marry infidel women, hoping for conversion. And women’s beliefs, of course, are of little account. I don’t think I can promise you my son will not take other wives and concubines, as the religion here allows. Marguerite might be distressed—but I imagine your nature is such that you can see the advantage here, even if youthful romantic hearts cannot.

“The shrewd mother, you have taught me, must think of such things from the cradle. At any rate, the first thing in Muhammed’s case, here among the Muslims, is to have the lad circumcised—he would never be considered a man and marriageable before this.”

What Safiye planned on that front—converting Muslim ritual to her will—I did not read. The lavish greetings having taken up more than half of her paper, Belqis must ask confirmation for her brief mention of Huma’s daughters. Then she closed: “May this reach you at an august time whose every moment is more precious than several years...”

But Safiye continued to write and I alone noticed the discrepancy. The light had now changed so that I was unable to see enough to make a full sentence of it. She turned the watermark crown upside down and crammed lines in the margins.

Meanwhile, Belqis was distracted by what she had left to do and my lady, who did very little correspondence of her own, by Belqis and her ritual. And, I must confess, such was the glamour of the scribe’s actions that I was entranced myself and failed even the attempt to move where light on the Venetian page would be better.

An imperial scribe uses gold dust for drying the most important documents instead of sand. Belqis uncorked a dal of the precious substance and sprinkled it from the head of her letter to the foot. Then she curled the paper up into a funnel and let most of the gold slip back into its container to reuse next time. Unlike sand, however, a certain amount of the gold was expected to linger, dazzling the receiver with yet more opulence.

Safiye contented herself with sand for her letter, then quickly folded the paper in western fashion, from the top down, because Belqis was waiting. Over this smaller white packet, Belqis folded from the bottom up and finally placed the seal. Before the warm wax smell, scented with jasmine, had had time to fade and the imprinted tughra to harden, the scribe plucked up a little box that sat next to the vial of gold dust. She poured the contents of the box into her hand—they were gems—and chose from among them three tiny but exquisitely cut rubies and a diamond. These she set artfully among the bars of the seal’s calligraphy like birds in a cage. Thus Belqis, all unwittingly, crowned her masterpiece with yet one more diversion from the communication’s true import.

And this was none too soon, for just at that moment, Nur Banu sailed unannounced into Safiye’s room, her dark eyes crackling with fury. She didn’t even stop to answer little Gul Ruh’s happy chirp of greeting out in the yard.

“What is the meaning of this?” Nur Banu’s black eyes flashed like two more jewels among the king’s ransom she wore about her person. I always found some pathos in the lavishness of her dress, as if she hoped to prove her life was satisfying by such things.

“The meaning of what, O most favored among the veiled heads?” Safiye’s quotation of the phrase of elaborate reverence so recently used in her own cover letter assured me she was playing innocent and had ulterior motives here as well.

“You are tempting the will of Allah and planning for Muhammed’s circumcision.”

“Yes, planning.”

There was much at stake between the two, for Prince Muhammed was the son of one woman and the grandson of the other. And how a boy takes this important step into manhood, or so the saying goes, will determine the path of the rest of his life. Though she might conceal them here in the East, I knew Safiye at least had just explained her motives to a European queen, or as nearly as I was ever going to learn them.

Safiye gestured Belqis to pack away the correspondence, but she otherwise gave no gesture of welcome to the woman who, as mother of her lover, deserved respect. I remembered, as the Fair One must have done, that her eunuch Ghazanfer was away running messages, else Nur Banu, no more than the widow Huma, would not have gained entry here.

Safiye continued: “My lord, the royal prince’s father, has given his permission and spoken to the necessary officials. It is all arranged.”

Esmikhan offered a polite greeting to her stepmother in an attempt to ease the tension. It didn’t work.

Nur Banu fumed: “I’ll wager you didn’t even consult the astrologers.”

“The astrologers have been consulted.” Safiye spoke as if to console, but nothing could be more calculated to aggravate than her words. “They have given a day a fortnight from now as the most auspicious.”

“A fortnight. That’s not enough time.”

“It pleases me well. The weather should be settled by then.”

“Not nearly enough time.”

“The astrologers say there will not come a better day for over a year.

“How can we prepare for a prince’s circumcision in two weeks?”

“Well, we certainly cannot if we must spend our time sitting around arguing.” Safiye gestured after the departing scribe. “Personally, I have seen to many important things today and if you’ll allow me—”

“The festivities that must come before, the foreign dignitaries to invite, the gifts to acquire? I don’t care who you think you are, you cannot work miracles. It will seem my grandson—Allah forbid-—is a merchant’s brat, a peasant, a wild Turk of the steppe, no Ottoman prince to be made a man with so little care.”

“Nevertheless, it is settled.” Safiye shrugged the wealth of her thick blond hair off both shoulders. “My man has made a decision, since your Selim is incapable. And Murad arranged that it pleases his father as well—may he reign forever—since
I
pleased
him
so well during his recent visit to Constantinople.”

Safiye smoothed her hand over the snug pearl buttons down the front of her yelek. She blushed with obvious pleasure—and unshakable beauty—obviously thinking of another fruit of the prince’s attention which as yet only she and I knew.

Nur Banu’s cheeks flushed, too, but with fury and an unbecoming clash against the redder splotches of rouge there, against her hennaed hair so orange and stiff it might have been forged of brass. “Yet you will not go where you belong, to my son’s side in Magnesia.”

“And why should I, when he is content to make the trip north often enough?”

“You have no shame that he may be neglecting his duties for the likes of you?”

“None. Besides, Murad knows he must have someone here in the capital to watch out for his interests.”

“Surely his own mother has nothing but his best interests at heart.” Nur Banu pressed the place in her chest where such concerns resided as if it pained her.

“Surely he is not convinced of that since he is content to fulfill my requests over yours. Such as speeding up this barbaric rite—if I cannot talk him out of it altogether.”

“Of course it must be done, you impious girl. But not so young, not so young. What shame and ill omen it would be—Allah forbid—if a son of Othman and heir to the throne should cry out when he was cut. By old tradition, the ceremony should be put off until the boy is twelve or fourteen.”

“But the vision of my sweet small son sobbing and clinging to his mother for comfort as he faces manhood appeals to me more,” Safiye said.

“His tears? I have never noticed that his tears do aught but irritate you up until now. Fine mother that you are, you are probably the last person he would turn to for comfort.”

“I have also heard that a few tears now are preferable to the serious threat of infection in an older boy.”

“Your only true concern is to hurry Muhammed into manhood so you can wield a man’s power through him ere he’s cut his eyeteeth.”

Safiye made no attempt to deny the accusation. “I am, after all, the only mother he has.”

“Consider how my son listens to the only mother he has before you tempt Allah with such pride. Someday, my girl, if Allah so wills, you, too, will lose a son’s love to an ungrateful whore.”

“Any whores I find will be stoned at once.”

“That’s what ought to be done to you.” Nur Banu threatened with a gesture.

“I see no hand lifted against me—only your empty one. And if I am fated to lose my son to another—which Allah forbid—then better to circumcise him now, before such a calamity can happen.”

Through all of this, Esmikhan had offered little reconciliatory chirps which even I did not hear. But now I could no longer ignore her agitation, and moving to her side, I bent and asked if she were not ready to go home.

“I cannot yet,” she murmured under the row. “I must see if the Quince has something for my pain.”

I had never been able to understand why my lady persisted in trusting her health and that of her children to the palace midwife. Esmikhan could have chosen another. I wished she’d chosen another after the death of her first little son. After two more dead sons, still she had persisted. Now she could scold my skepticism, “Abdullah, the Quince gave me Gul Ruh.”

At what a cost of health! I might have replied. But Esmikhan was nothing if not trusting as well as bound and determined to do things “the way they ought to be done.”

“Everyone has always used the palace midwife,” she always said. And “you can’t blame the Quince for things that are due to the hand of Allah.”

So I comforted myself that if there was witchcraft, one might as well go to the witch to undo it. And the ashen pallor of Esmikhan’s face urged me there wasn’t time—yet once again—to hunt up someone new. Her sickly look should have reminded me earlier that we had this errand today.

The discord she was obliged to witness probably triggered this bout of pains in her lower belly in the first place, I thought as I offered her my arm. “Let me take you to the infirmary, then.”