Reign of the Favored Women (16 page)

Above the fountain and behind were the blocks on which malefactors’ heads were displayed as example. Two were there now, their faces melted by the heat and by a day or two’s decay into grins that seemed to mock those who’d thought it was punishment to mete out death.

The Church of St. Irene across the great yard had been turned into an armory when the Turks had conquered. All those empty weapons and uniforms made me think myself a witness to a battlefield when all the living had gone home. Perhaps the church had looked just so on the morning after the Turks’ conquest when the thousands who had crowded there hoping either heaven or the enemy would see in it some sort of asylum had been disappointed. And the Turks had left it just as they found it at the end of the battle for these hundred years.

“Gul Ruh Sultan!” I called. “Prince Muhammed!”

But my voice echoed without reply off the polished brass of a wall of shields.

I thought I would save time in the infirmary, because the sick could reply if they had seen a little girl and boy that day. But they would hardly answer, grabbing my clothes and demanding news of the fire. All their doctors and attendants, as well as any who could walk, were out carrying pots of water, and those left behind had suffered the greatest anxiety, smelling the smoke for hours.

Had the children gone beyond the Imperial Gate, then, out of the palace altogether? To Aya Sophia, perhaps, whose great domes were even now casting long shadows over the wall? They were not allowed there, but it was better to think they had the whole wide world to wander in rather than that they were still somewhere in the harem.

I had gone so far, close to running all the time. It had been several hours, through one call to prayer at least. And my heart, which fear sent racing even faster than my pace would actually have caused, begged for rest. Who knows? I rationalized. Someone else may have already found them. I should at least check with my lady to see how she fares.

I took the long way round through the Gate of the Dead (“Allah shield us,” I said for protection against the restless souls, louder than usual). The shorter routes were blocked by flames. I met Ghazanfer on my way and he told me, in no more than eight words, that they’d found nothing, that his mistress had gone one more to look in the Eve of the Sultan and sent him to look in the garden again. His face, which was as tight and as hard as a mustard seed, told me he was blaming himself, as he always did when things did not go well for Safiye.

Some enterprising soul had set up the division of haremlik and selamlik there in the garden—a row of cypress and a rose hedge were the demarcation—so at least there was the relief of modesty. How they had moved my lady to this place I do not know, for she was too prostrate now even to take the water her ladies were offering her, and she had to take it on her wrists and temples with a cloth instead. One glance at her was enough to tell that she had had no news, either.

Esmikhan met my eyes with her huge brown ones and I shrank from them. I remembered the night of the lovers’ nightingale in Konya, how those eves had fixed me in that same way and demanded a miracle. And I had given it to her, given her a man’s love in the only way I knew how, given her the blessed wonder of that child.

Even the cuckoo has fled this garden this afternoon. There will be no nightingale in the smoke tonight. I can work no more miracles.

I tried to pass that message to those eves, but they would not hear it. If I offered no comfort, they would not let me near. So I left with just that glance. I must appear to still be full of hope in the search. I must.

I stumbled across the men’s section, unseeing, unconscious of where my feet were. Someone, I became aware, was giving the call to prayer. At this point no one thought carrying one more pot of water could be more important than an appeal to the One Without Equal. All around me, men instantly dropped what they were doing and, rugless, turned to face across the ashes of the kitchen, across the Sea of Marmara. They faced that City which for most would always remain only a dream, but which, at that moment, was more real than anything else in between.

My mind was in such confusion that I remained standing, and might have stayed so, a scandal and, to some, a curse to all the proceedings. But fortunately a tug at my hem brought me to my knees in time for the first prostration.

The slow, rhythmic movements of the ritual brought a calmness to my heart I had almost forgotten. We progressed through the form—but progress is not the right word unless going around in a circle and ending up where one started is progress. But as we followed our cycle, I began to see that it was grass into which I buried my face. There were tulips blooming beside me with the dull black scent of their anthers. And overhead were trees. Trees! Plane trees with their new yellow-green foliage! And I had begun to feel as if all life had ceased. The end of the sunlight filtered through those leaves and came down upon us like a shower of gold coins. A shower of gold coins, the ancients said, brought the god to a maiden and gave her new life. These coins, too, would buy nothing in the market. Only in one’s soul did they purchase the love and peace of God.

At the final prostration my ransomed soul at last looked out for others. I noticed the man beside me, the one who had tugged me down, and then I saw I knew him. It was the long-headed overseer of the kitchen supplies.

Why is he not still by the fountain in the fire line? I asked myself, but immediately received the answer: Both of his hands were swathed in rags. He must have burned them quite badly. How careful he was, even laying them on his knees as he prayed. With those hands he had tugged me down, saving me blasphemy, bringing me peace. What pain had it caused him? I was grateful.

We smiled at one another in the peace at the end of the prayer, and when that was past, I asked him politely how he’d got his hurt.

He made a brave attempt to smile, though the memory tinged it with grimace as he replied, “Those damned Arabian dates.”

My heart leapt to panic pace again as I heard those words and recalled what my hopeless, before-prayer task had been. It was only with the greatest effort that I beat my heart to a calm and made myself stand and hear the end of his tale.

“After I fled the building and was already lending a hand with the water,” the fellow said, “I remembered them. The storeroom was thick with smoke when I got there. The smells—I cannot tell you. It was as if a Bedouin were cooking—no art, they cannot keep from burning everything. Scorched rice, blackened joints. The jugs of very fine oil in the corner leapt to a blaze that water would only spread.

“But I found the casket and brought it out. The closest exit, towards the kitchens, was now totally engulfed in flames. Like a straw sucking up a lemon-orange colored sherbet, they came so fast I could hardly turn before the smoke was affecting me terribly. Just at the door, I tumbled to the ground. A janissary-—may Allah forever favor him—saw me and pulled me feet first from the flames. But not until the casket I clutched in my hands like life itself became so hot that it took my baked-on skin with it.”

I winced and murmured some blessing upon him.

He braved another grimace-smile, and continued, “But, praises to Him, it has pleased Allah to send a favorable outcome to this little history. The physicians have great hope for my hands, and the dates, though somewhat melted as if they’d been baked inside a pastry, are sound—or at least they were when I left them. Still, knowing with whom I left them—-”

I interrupted here, as calmly as possible, to tell him why his story did not have a happy ending. “The young Prince will never enjoy those dates at the hand of his mother,” I said, “and your brave sacrifice was in vain.

To my surprise, the man laughed. “Well, from his mother, yes...” Then he stopped himself because here in the open with the harem just a rose hedge away, one couldn’t gossip as freely as in the closed storeroom of the kitchen. “Let me tell you what I did then.”

I saw he had not understood the import of my message. The heir to the Ottoman throne was dead, and with him my pretty little mistress, the joy of all our lives. But before I could say so in so many words, he continued.

“As soon as I regained some sense after my ordeal, I sat with the casket between my knees and I grew angry. All I went through—and for what? That woman—whichever one it would be in the end, the mother or the grandmother—she would give me a ghrush or two for my pains and take the prize to the boy to win the glory for herself. As if she had dived into the flames to get them!

“‘Fool! Fool!’ I cursed myself. ‘You may be a cripple for life, set out on the street with no pension to beg, and no one will ever hear of you again.’

“Then I thought. By Allah, there is so much confusion here. Surely everyone will consider it a miracle that these dates were saved and got to the Prince’s hand at all. They will never stop to care by whose offices. But if I give them to the Prince myself, he will remember me as the others would not. He will remember me when, Allah willing, he is Sultan. He would never let me go begging then.

“And just then, as luck would have it, whom should I spy but the young Prince Muhammed and his lady cousin.”

“You’ve seen them since the fire!” I cried. “Alive?”

“Oh, very much alive, Allah bless them. They’d heard the fuss and come running to see. They were really a nuisance to the firefighters as well as a danger to themselves. Here is something I can do, I thought, to help the struggle, even though my hands are now useless.

“So I went at once and salaamed before the young Prince and offered him my gift. Then, as I led them out of harm’s way, I told the two of them something of how I’d saved the casket.” (Knowing him, he probably drew it out with great detail.) “The little lady—oh, such a tender soul! She wept so delicately at the tale, and, though the Prince, being so superior, was at first loath to say anything to me, she insisted that I honor them with my company.”

“You have been with them?”

“The honor was mine, I assure you. If nursemaiding is always this pleasant, I wonder that it is not the most sought-after job in the Empire.”

“Where were you?”

“Down at the bottom of the garden.”

“At the end of the garden!” Why hadn’t we thought to look there? Perhaps because it was the safest place.

“In such a pretty little bower...”

“How long?”

“Oh, hours and hours. I only left them when the sun began to sink and I knew I must pray soon.”

“Are they at the end of the garden now?”

“Well, I don’t know.” The man seemed surprised at my eagerness. “I told them they should try and find their mothers. They might be worrying now that it was coming dark.”

“Oh, if you only knew!”

“You know, his highness, the young Prince, let me have a bite of one of those dates. The young lady held it for me, and fed me like a little bird so I wouldn’t injure my hands. I tell you, I shall not taste anything so divine ‘til I, with Allah’s favor, enter Paradise. And when I got up to leave, the young Prince rose on his feet, to his full height—oh, and he looked the very embodiment of his great-grandfather, Suleiman, may Allah have mercy on him.

‘By Allah,’ he said, ‘and you, Gul Ruh, are my witness. I swear this day that when I, by divine favor, wear the sword of my father Othman, I shall not forget this man and the bravery he has shown this day. I swear I shall...’ “

But by now I was laughing so hard with relief that tears were streaming down the sweat dried on my face. Convulsed with sobs and chuckles, I could do nothing but hug the fellow, then leave him standing there, muttering, that he never could understand the sexless ones.

I found my lady in the same state, laughing and crying by turns as she washed the remains of the priceless dates off her little daughter’s face with the edge of her veil. She tried to scold, but she was too relieved to make much of it.

I remember Muhammed standing by, too, his sulky self again now that he was in public. He was crying, and that exaggerated the scar on his cheek, a reminder of a time when his mother in her ambition had had other things on her mind. Someone had told the Prince, in haste more than unkindness, that that was the end of it. He would have no circumcision now, for the fire had thrown everything into disarray and besides, it was an awful omen. They had forgotten to add that the ceremony would surely only be postponed a year or two. He was quite convinced this meant he should never be a man.

If he could not be a man, then he would have his nurse. At this they told him hush, no, he couldn’t have his nurse but they would run and get his mother instead, who would be greatly relieved to see him alive and well. Muhammed knew, as only a child can, that he would get no comfort from his mother. But what he didn’t know, and what they couldn’t find words to tell him, was that his nurse would never comfort him again either. Mad with worry, she had thrown herself back into the flames to try and find her charge. Some had gone after her and dragged her back by force, but the agony of her burns would not let her live the night.

It had been a common curse under the boy’s tyrant of a great-great-grandfather to say, “May you be Selim’s vizier.” Those officials lost favor so quickly and were so short-lived, it was said, that they never left the house without their last testaments on their persons. Some in the harem took to saying the same sort of thing with reference to Muhammed—”May you be chosen as the young Prince’s next nursemaid”—for he had lost two under very bitter circumstances in the eight short years of his life.

I could hardly help but pity the boy. Nor could I blame him when the next person he threw his much-agitated affections towards was neither nurse nor tutor. The one with whom he hoped to share his own immortality of childhood was my own little mistress Gul Ruh. I instantly wished to turn his affections otherwise.

With the fire contained but by no means cold, and with what had been their home only ash and black, heat-cracked marble, the immediate problem became u-here to house the nearly eight hundred women of Selim’s harem. The janissaries and male attendants could sleep on the ground in the garden. Indeed, they were trained for nothing if not such hardship. But to have his women sleep exposed to a naked sky was a dishonor even—or especially—a sultan could never live down.