Reign of the Favored Women (19 page)

“I can only hope,” she said quietly with a heady, lily-scented smile, “that my son is as full of questions as you, my friends, when he sees her. He is prone to addictions, and the only way, it seems, to rid him of one is to give him another. And for that next one, yet another...”

“You mother of the jinn!” Safiye hissed under her breath. “You wouldn’t.”

Others bade her be still and not insult their hostess so. Had they not all vowed before Allah and under a satin slipper to obey her? But Nur Banu continued in calm confidence and raised her hand as a sign of peace. I have known the ambassadors of such peace to wear daggers up their sleeves in the Divan.

“Forgive me, mother of my grandson, if I offend.” The Queen Mother smiled gently. “You are with child and cannot wish to entertain Murad now. Truly, I thought only to give you a rest after these thirteen years. Even Suleiman was never so constant to Khurrem Sultan, and her power never seemed to lack because of it.”

Safiye was on her feet now, calling her ladies and eunuchs to her. She would leave at once and endure such treatment no longer.

When she had gone there was an awkward pause in which the little slave girl stood dumb and helpless in the center of the room, very near to tears. She thought she had failed in this, her first test.

“Nay, come here, child,” Nur Banu called to her when she saw her dilemma.

The girl went at once, like a mouse scurrying to the safety of its hole, and sat submissive at her mistress’s knee.

Nur Banu reached out, lifted up the heavy hair, and laid the back of her hand against the girl’s white marble cheek. “Supplant one addiction with another,” Nur Banu murmured.

The girl looked up with bewilderment and tears in her black eyes. “Excuse me, lady?” she asked, and I knew she could hardly put two words of Turkish together as yet.

Nur Banu smiled into those eyes. “You’ll do perfectly, my dear. Just perfectly.” And she planted a tender kiss on that alabaster brow.

Even so, I don’t think the girl quite knew what all the business meant. All she did understand was that the hands that fed and clothed her, that had come now to be like those of her lost mother, they were pleased with her. That was enough. She leaned up against her mistress’s knees and purred in gratitude.

Esmikhan and I saw no reason—indeed, it would have been rude of us—to leave Nur Banu’s party with Safiye. Then, as the afternoon progressed and the lilies lost their scent with too much smelling, we noticed several curious activities. First, one of Sofia’s eunuchs (not Ghazanfer, a new khadim) came and murmured something to one of Nur Banu’s, who passed the word on to his lady.

Nur Banu smiled, stroked her pet girl’s hair, then called the Fig to her. The Quince was not present—I could never escape the thought that this was because my lady had come. But the Fig pursed her lips as if at something sour and then turned a little of her mentor’s green. Nur Banu gave the apprentice a whiplash look. The Fig bowed and left with Safiye’s eunuch.

They seemed totally disconnected events at the time, and nothing for us to worry about. But when, at our own leisure, we finally did return home, we found Safiye there—and in labor, in imminent danger of miscarriage.

“You’ve brought this on yourself, haven’t you?” The Fig, laying out her simples on a low table, hardly offered sympathy.

And Safiye was hardly subdued. “I? It’s that demon’s dam of a mistress you’ve got. She’s the cause.”

“No. I know. A little powdered fern, a little iris root—it’s the oldest trick in the book. Girls have been ridding themselves of the fruit of illegal love with that since time began. By Allah, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mother Eve herself brought those plants with her from Eden, they’re so useful, so divine.”

“You think I want to lose my baby?”

“Of course. How else will you ever compete with Nur Banu’s little Hungarian?”

“By Allah, two live princes are worth much more than one not even lusted for yet.”

“Very well. Let me have a look at you and see what we can do.”

“Don’t you dare touch me.”

“Do you want to save this baby or not?”

“Not by your hands.”

“What’s this?”

Safiye shot the Fig a withering glance. The midwife got the message, whatever it was, and looked sidelong at Esmikhan, fearing she might have understood, too. She was more cautious with her next words.

“You’ve always trusted mc before.”

“You’re in her employ.” I wasn’t sure who that “her” was. “She’d like nothing better than that I lose it—and maybe other things while we’re at It.

“Didn’t the Quince give you a fine, strong son? Without even a stretch mark, by Allah.”

“That was then. Now—”

“Why did you send for me, then? The lilies were so nice—”

“I didn’t send for you. It’s that new eunuch. He got in a panic and didn’t do as I told him. I’ll see he’s punished. Ghazanfer wouldn’t have made such a mistake.”

“So where is Ghazanfer?”

“Away. On other business,” Safiye answered laconically. “Ghazanfer wouldn’t—”

She interrupted herself to press her eves together and pant heavily for a moment or two—the first such interruption we’d seen since we’d entered the room. I found myself disbelieving that distress. Even at six months, Safiye was as tight as with her first. Quince or no, I said to myself, she’s not going to lose it.

Esmikhan was much more trusting. “Please, Safiye, dear,” she said, sitting at her friend’s side and taking her hand. “Let the midwife look at you at least.”

“Esmikhan, if you’re a decent hostess, you will take that pagan woman out of this room this instant.”

“Safiye, please—” Esmikhan knew what it was like to lose a child.

“Esmikhan—” Safiye was vicious.

“Perhaps, madam,” Esmikhan said quietly to the midwife, “if you’d be so good. Just for a moment. While I talk to her and try to make her see—

“And you don’t need to be polite to her, either,” Safiye snapped. “What has she ever done for you?”

“Safiye, how can you say such a thing? After all—”

“You can’t even walk any more, thanks to the Quince.”

“Safiye, I was almost dead. At least I am still alive. And I have my precious Gul Ruh, thanks to Allah and the Quince.”

“Yes? Well, what about the others?”

“Please, Safiye. Don’t speak of what is Allah’s will.”

“Allah’s will? Was it Allah’s will?”

“Yes, of course.” Esmikhan was truly shocked—and the most horrible thought Safiye’s words could conjure hadn’t even crossed her mind. It was merely the suggestion that something could happen in this world that was not Allah’s will which appalled her.

“Hhm.” Safiye sniffed skeptically, but then turned her concentration to her distress once more.

“It’s all right, Esmikhan Sultan,” the Fig said with a sniff of her own and began repacking her supplies. “You don’t need to ask. I’m ready and willing to go.”

Still Esmikhan was so distressed that such unpleasantness had happened under her roof that she made the supreme effort and personally saw the midwife out of the room with only one of my assistants to take her arm.

I watched them go, then I turned back to Safiye. My mind was unsettled by things that had been said and I wanted to know—

Safiye was on her feet. I grabbed her eyes with mine as one grabs a naughty child to give it a firm scolding—not for standing, but for putting on what was obviously an act. It could be to no good purpose.

She was prepared for my glare, however. She met it not with firmness, but with an all-consuming softness like some animal gone limp and playing dead as the hunter approaches. I dropped my eyes at once in self-defense, but it was too late.

Sweet Jesus, but she is beautiful! I thought. The reversion to Venetian language and faith were but emblems of the surge of youthful passion I felt. I managed to offer this prayer before rationality left me altogether: Lord, don’t let her ask me anything. I won’t be able to refuse her if she asks me...

I saw her eyes roll into a fog of unconsciousness like almonds rolling into a vat of honey. Whatever there was of a man left in me rose, then stumbled, awkward on unused feet. My arms took her weight in them as she fell. The satin of her robe was slick with body heat and with straining to meet across her growing belly. I could feel the coursing of her blood beneath it.

I let that golden head sink back into the pillows on the divan and my hand reached for a taste of that pomegranate cheek.

“Ghazanfer,” Safiye murmured.

My hand fell back, confused and hurt that it was not my name her lips formed.

“Where’s Ghazanfer?”

“I’ll see if I can find him, lady,” I said coldly, finding I was indeed able to rise to my feet.

With surprising speed and strength for any woman, but especially for one about to miscarry, she sat upright and caught my hand. “Veniero,” she hissed at me. “There is a doctor in the selamlik. A Venetian. A guest of Sokolli Pasha. Bring him to me.”

The lapse into Italian and her laconic style made me believe she was on the very edge of delirium. But her brown eyes caught mine totally washed of their honey sweetness, sharp as arrow points.

I appeased her with a baby word my nurse used to use, full of endearment, yet promising nothing.

I left the room and stood a moment or two in the next, trying to shake her influence from me as a dog shakes water. In the end I still could not sort out what she wanted me to do from what I really ought to do and so I sent my fastest assistant to find Ghazanfer. I saw Esmikhan, her ladies, and the rest of my seconds in to sit with Safiye and—maybe—to keep her from rashness or dishonor in the meantime. Then I myself went down to the selamlik to see about this doctor.

Many of Murad’s scholars and poets had, like Safiye, taken to sulking on Sokolli Pasha’s hospitality when they were out of favor. Six men were in the midst of a lively discussion when I entered the room. Their language was Persian, for the physician, though he had traveled widely in lands further east, learning the lore of his profession, had but passed through Turkey before, an omission he was swearing to remedy.

My master, among his six or seven other languages, had a smattering of Venetian on which he would sometimes fall back for politeness, but which he was too unsure of to use readily. He found it more useful to pretend ignorance and overhear.

Three of the other men—the Egyptian astronomer and two of the best-loved poets alive—knew not a word. It can be unnerving to learn that the tongue you grew up thinking all the world spoke has not been worth the while of such great minds to learn. Only the sixth man present, the sea captain and dragoman, once Andrea Barbarigo, now called simply Muslim, would have been more comfortable in Italian. But this meeting was not to honor him, so he could be content to sit quietly to one side and try to pick up a phrase here and there of the Persian.

Barbarigo looked at me as he always did, with eyes one could not help but pity. He had tried, I knew, many times to reestablish contact with Safiye now that, as a renegade, he had made a name for himself in the Turkish navy. But now that he was all Turk, she no longer had any use for him. He was all Turk, he had to have the morals of one. I could not take any more time to feel sorry for him then.

My personal interest in poetry and the mystics had increased my knowledge of Persian so I had no difficulty in catching the drift of the conversation—the medical works of Galen as they are translated and commented upon by the Arabs—nor in finding a pause when I could present my problem to my master.

“Abdullah,” he said, falling into Turkish and touching my arm as if he feared I had the fever. “Abdullah, whatever can you be thinking? A woman of the Sultan? To expose her to the scrutiny of a man, and a stranger at that?”

Barbarigo overheard and raised an eyebrow as he must any time the word
woman
was pronounced in his hearing, however rarely that must be. I shifted so my back was more fully to him and tried to speak lower. I pleaded that she was a Venetian and more used to male doctors than a Turkish lady would be.

But my master replied, “She will not have the usual midwife? Then send for another and wait for her to come.” He continued then with something I had not considered. “If we set this precedent, all of our women with skill in medicine will soon be overshadowed by the men who have more interest in high fees than in health. The women will have no place to practice and never receive the honor due to them. My guest has just been telling me how in Venice many women of the higher families have men, men not even of their kin, attend them in labor. It has become the fashion. What, may I ask, have men to do with the things of birth? Muslims cannot dishonor their women so.”

I made one final, desperate attempt. I pleaded that the Sultan would blame his Grand Vizier more if, because of his negligence, either Safiye or the child were lost than he would if he allowed the best and most immediate medical treatment, even if it happened to be male.

Now my master touched my arm again to calm me and said, “Very well. Until the midwife comes.” He added that he would be interested to see this man’s art in practice. “But you must arrange it so that when this veiled one is treated, not even her face may be seen.”

We moved quickly and there was really not so much to be done. Gul Ruh had female tutors for all of her subjects from recitation of the Koran—at which she did very well, having now almost a third of the scripture committed to memory—to needlework. But for Persian, Sokolli Pasha was unsatisfied with anyone but this great poet with whom he even now conversed. Gul Ruh was as yet a child but it was still a delicate situation as many of the texts they were to study would of necessity be love poems. By devising a large screen to stand between student and teacher and having a eunuch present at all times we managed to keep the tongues from wagging.

We set this screen up for Safiye and the doctor in the
mabein
, the room a neutral zone between the
haremlik
and
selamlik
. Our mabein had more the air of a schoolroom, smelling of ink and book bindings, for the master hardly visited my lady any more, even in duty.