Reign of the Favored Women (21 page)

The Grand Vizier chuckled rather harshly—at himself, it seemed. “I guess after eight years of Selim—Allah favor him—I’ve grown too used to making appointments as I see fit. This is the Creator’s compassionate way of reminding me I am not Sultan. I am just the Sultan’s slave, after all.”

“And I, master, am your slave.” Could he take any comfort in that? Probably not, but it was the best I could offer.

The lamplight made his smile seem thin and crooked. “Yes, well, let us hope the Sultan himself be not a slave.”

“To the harem?” I asked, astonished at the idea.

“Yes. To his favored women. But Allah knows best.”

My master turned a lamp to the papers on his desk and I understood that, as I could or would say no more, I was dismissed.

I had to confess the name Ghazanfer Agha had a certain melody to it, slipping off the tongue as if grown together in one piece. And I certainly heard it plenty of times off plenty of tongues in the months that followed. Everyone in the world, or so it seemed, had business with Ghazanfer Agha. And, as rooms for a kapu aghasi had yet to be rebuilt in the Sultan’s palace, they had to be found in ours, etched out of the Grand Vizier’s space in the selamlik because more often than not, the matters of Safiye’s head eunuch were with men. The most powerful men in the world.

Safiye watched the office grow with more satisfaction than she watched her own belly.

And my master threw up his hands and took his work elsewhere, a stranger in his own palace.

The most pressing order of the new kapu aghasi s business was to get the pilgrims off to Mecca. The seventh month of Rajab was fast upon us, the time when the faithful would have to set off from Constantinople if they hoped to make the arduous journey in time for Dhu’l-Hijja. Of course, all the imperial city, especially the Sultan, would have a hand in their send-off, deputizing their proxies, displaying the largesse they would commission to go in their place. Some of the treasure would be given as safe-passage insurance to the wild Bedouin who beset the pilgrims’ path, some to be traded with pilgrims from other lands, the remainder to enrich the dual shrines themselves.

The gifted mosque lamps—many, I was quietly gratified to see, of Venetian glass—stacked up in our hallways and closets. Gorgeous rugs of the finest knotting, the gold-embroidered green case which contained the Sultan’s bejeweled compliment to the Sharif of Mecca...Then of course there were the black lengths of finest silk embroidered with Koranic sayings in pure gold that would go to replace the covering of the Holy Ka’ba. The first half of a thousand needlewomen’s work had gone up in the palace fire, so this lot had to be scrambled for.

Finally came the day when those obliged to stay behind gave the departing pilgrims a rousing procession. Albanians and Bosnians, leaping with new converts’ enthusiasm; wild, anciently pious men from the Asian steppes; naked and flagellant dervishes from Anatolia—these swelled the ranks of the locals. This year as every year, the journey began with a joyous circuit outside the city walls while man and beast were still fresh and exuberant enough not to require that every step mean progress.

The display was always so stirring that many dropped their pedantic responsibilities then and there and joined up. The rest promised themselves and their god, “Next year, next year,
inshallah
.”

The Sultan’s proxies formed the high point of the entire parade, the head of the column, great as a small army. These in turn were led by two sacred camels of ancient and reverend pedigree, never used for profane burdens. The first camel, draped in rich clothes of scarlet and gold that hid it almost completely, carried the
minhal
, the high pinnacled litter of gold that caught the sun and winked its holiness in all directions. The second camel bore only a small curved saddle of green velvet with silver trappings. This represented the saddle of the Seal of the Prophets himself.

“Allah, Allah,” a hundred thousand throats moaned as the shadows of this simplest, yet holiest of sights touched them. Some of the more credulous dropped to the ground and rubbed their foreheads in the dirt as this camel passed by, as if indeed the Prophet Muhammed had not died nearly a millennium before but rode there in our very midst.

After these two first camels came many, many more, just in the Sultan’s party alone, for every night on the way a great red and gold tent would be erected to house the Sharif’s letter and the green saddle. This tent had to be carried, along with twenty camel-loads of treasure for the maintenance of the holy places, and all this needed grooms, drivers, slaves to load and unload, water carriers, and cooks; and many of these contrived to bring their families along.

This was only the beginning. Thereafter followed thousands of the Faithful, equal, we are told, in the eyes of Allah, but hardly so to human eyes. There were great men, easing a guilty conscience with the journey but still unable to travel without a great following. Their women came behind in closed sedan boxes-—sometimes it was hard to tell harem from baggage and eunuchs from porters. There were poorer folks who had saved all their lives for a donkey which, Allah knew, would never make it through Syria let alone the waterless Hijaz. Or a mangy camel which they could as yet drive only with difficulty; the balkings, runaways, and sudden sit-downs were a constant disruption to the proceedings.

A large division of the army marched by like rods of iron in the height of discipline, reminding one and all that more than nature might be the enemy on the journey. Then, in a generous sprinkling like salt over the whole mélange, there were the very, very poor—dervishes, beggars, and paupers—who meant to walk the whole way. Some had not even made provision for carrying water and could hardly be told from the empty-handed audience except, in some cases, that they seemed even less prepared for an arduous journey. They would have to look to the mercy of Allah and a propensity for charity among their fellow travelers—greater on the road than at home—to carry them every step of the route.

* * *

No sooner were the pilgrims safely on their way than, in her eighth month of pregnancy, Safiye’s rooms were ready for her under Sultan Murad’s roof at Topkapi. The Fair One would let nothing hinder her from returning there, to the thick of the fray, although her new midwife thought it very ill-advised in what had already proven to be an eventful pregnancy.

Organizing the exodus without much help from the over-burdened Ghazanfer Agha caused me a great deal of stress. Before the last casket of gems was quite out our harem door, I had come down with that bane of all my race, a urinary infection so excruciating I could not leave my bed. I’d begun by passing blood through the silver catheter my lady had given me as a poor substitute to flesh. In the flurry, I’d ignored it until fever and nausea allowed me to ignore it no longer.

I dosed myself with the usual flax tea and quantities of pomegranate juice. But on that particular day at the height of my illness, I’d long since drained the juice pitcher. The tea water had gone cold and unappetizing on an indifferent stomach, and I was too sick to go for more. Well, it was my own fault, wasn’t it, for being so efficient when I was well that no one else in the palace ever learned to take any responsibility on his own?

I was feeling so miserable, lonely, and uncared for—this being a disease of such indignity, the very embodiment of our mutilated, less-than-human state—that I had begun to actually hope it might kill me. I would not be the first of my kind to die this way. Nor—and this added to my grey outlook—would I be the last.

Earlier I had hoped for a visit from my lady. Wouldn’t she be anxious that I was not at her side? Then I did not wish it, knowing only too well that getting her down the stairs and through the corridors to my room would be more trouble than it was worth. And though such a pilgrimage may not begin that way, in the end it would be
my
trouble she caused rather than the relief she hoped for, so basically lazy and helpless were my seconds. I wished Esmikhan happy—and quiet—where she was.

Perhaps, then, my young lady would come, having the run of the place as she did. For a while I hoped for that cheer, and regretted that her mother must have warned her “not to bother poor, sick Uncle Abdullah today.” Then I did not want to spend the energy it would take to meet Gul Ruh’s liveliness. I didn’t want to see the cloud of concern that would drift across the vivid whites of her eyes. And since nobody else in the world mattered, I wanted death before I’d let others see me in my shame, even one bringing me more juice or giving the embers in the brazier a stir on that cold, wet fall afternoon.

Presently, however, before a forgetting sleep could come, someone else did enter the room. It was the last person I wanted—or expected. It was Ghazanfer Agha.

I made a clumsy struggle to get to my feet; any man who drags
Agha
around after him should at least have his hem kissed.

“Pray, do not stir yourself,
ustadh
,” my guest insisted hastily. Don’t I know the agony of such things? Is that what his tone implied? It was impossible to tell.

Ghazanfer made his great bulk comfortable on my rug—the only place left in my small cell to sit, what with me taking up all the divan. I hoped this did not denote an extended stay.

Once settled, my inexpedient guest launched into a long and formalized speech. He thanked me and mine profusely and wished us “the eternal blessings of Paradise” for the “saint-like hospitality” we’d shown to him and his.

What does this man want? throbbed through my aching head. It occurred to me—I was not so fevered as all that—that high officials are removed from the normal rounds of sociability. They never make personal visits—unless they want something.

I tried to think of some belonging he or his women might have left behind. I tried to remember some unintentioned slight, some word I might be required to pass on to my master—in my condition! I worked my fever-papered tongue in dry desperation.

Ghazanfer suddenly stopped in midflattery and scowled like a demon at the low table set between us. Whatever I’ve failed to do, I thought, I will pay for it now. At least with those monster hands about my throat, it will not be the lingering death of the infection for which I’d been preparing.

The Agha could move quickly for one so large, and such movement was invariably frightening to us lesser mortals. In a moment, he snatched the pitcher up off the table. I flinched and covered my tender groin, expecting to be showered with broken crockery in an instant. Instead, Ghazanfer stormed out into the hall. I heard him collar the first maidservant he came to, shame her for neglecting “the
khadim
, your most careful protector” and ordered “more juice and more hot water, quickly, as you fear Allah.”

I heard the scurry of terrified slippers. What fear of Allah when Ghazanfer Agha was in the room? Then the awesome man returned and sat down quietly again as if half ashamed of his size—or his calling—and what it did to others.

He worked on the brazier a little but said nothing until I made an attempt: “How...how is the peace of your harem?”

The great, torture-hardened face cracked into something like a smile. I must be delirious. A
kapu aghasi
could hardly be burdened with a harem. Unless you called that greatest of all sanctuaries, Mecca and Medina, his preserve. But this man, at this time, did not set his sights quite so high.

“My lady Safiye,” he began chattily, almost amiably, “had just received news of a ‘weakness in the enemy lines,’ hence her haste to return to the palace of our imperial master.”

“Weaknesses? In enemy lines?” I was too sick for riddles.

“The little Hungarian—Nur Banu’s Hungarian—who wasted no time in captivating Murad’s heart, has also wasted no time in becoming pregnant.” Did I detect a little native pride in this fellow Hungarian? Against his own lady?

I decided I was seeing things and said, “So Safiye and her shortly-to-arrive little one have some competition then?”

Ghazanfer presented me with another quiet almost-smile. “But my lady has two new weapons in her own arsenal.”

“Weapons?” The fever worked on the image and made me shiver.

“And, like a soldier more foolhardy than courageous, she can hardly wait to try them out against the enemy.”

“More than the awaited child I read you to mean.”

“Yes. The first is the doctor.”

“Doctor?”

“You know, the Venetian you fetched for her when her life and that of the awaited child were despaired of.”

“She’s gotten people to believe that he was responsible for her sudden, miraculous recovery?”

“Even Murad—Allah extend his reign for eternity—even the Sultan was impressed enough that he has given his own personal permission to allow the man of medicine access to her anytime she felt the midwife was not doing a good enough job.”

“Poor Safiye,” Esmikhan would say when she heard of this, echoing the opinion of many other women. “My brother no longer loves her as he used to. To be so careless about whom she sees! Where has the old jealousy gone?”

But I remembered the fellow’s purported skills in the ways of women. At the time, I’d thought Safiye wanted them for herself. I should have known she was subtler than that. Now I saw, without words, that there were other wombs in Murad’s harem. The doctor would not have to enter the harem, just pass his knowledge and potions on to Safiye. Could Safiye blind a man who, by report, had endured untold other privations for the sake of his science? The man was old, the juices drying—Still I did not doubt it. In the shadow of her strength, he, too, could believe that all acts done in her name still had a virtuous objectivity, would still lead to knowledge that would still lead to truth that would still and ever be good.

God knows she’d blinded me. I suffered for it continuously.

While my thoughts waded through fever, Ghazanfer’s quick mind scampered on ahead. “‘Spare no trouble, no expense.’” He was reciting for me Safiye’s instructions to him concerning the acquisition of her second new weapon. He had not.