Reign of the Favored Women (49 page)

Esmikhan replied politely that, yes, the festivities had been worthy of his majesty.

“Tell me. Sister,” Murad asked, applying color with a brush no more than three hairs wide, “which do you think was the greatest festivity? Your wedding to Sokolli Pasha, may Allah favor him, in that tumbledown town of Inönü, or these most recent events?”

Esmikhan smiled, remembering a similar test question placed before his vizier by her legendary grandfather, Suleiman the Magnificent. “My wedding, of course,” she replied, “because you favored it with your presence. And even this most recent circumcision, magnificent as it was, could not boast such an illustrious guest for you were busy being host.”

Murad smiled and applied gold leaf with a liberal hand. “And you, my young niece?” he asked. “Did the festivities please you?”

“Indeed, Uncle, majesty, very much,” Gul Ruh replied. When pressed to tell her favorite event, she confessed that her mind was a blur but that perhaps the confections made of spun sugar in the shapes of animals and plants suited her fancy most.

“What about the religious debates?” the Sultan asked, looking sidelong up at her from his paper. “Did you enjoy them?”

“The religious debates?” Gul Ruh asked, confused and half fearing she was being led into a trap. Quick calculation told her that while the debates were going on, her mind had been full of her cousin’s death. She had been seeing black witches in the circumcision pavilion. Did her uncle wish her to confess something? Something that would make life in Safiye’s harem even shorter and more intolerable? Deciding with a deep breath that martyrdom was perhaps the best alternative to the Christian convent Islam had to offer, she concluded the truth would be best to tell in any case.

“I’m sorry, most illustrious uncle. I’m afraid I did not watch any of the debates at all. There were other entertainments, you see...”

“No, I don’t suppose silly girls’ minds find much of interest in the intricacies of Holy Law.”

“Actually, I usually find it quite interesting, but I...”

“Well, I am glad you found entertainment elsewhere more suited to your sex and nature.”

Gul Ruh wanted to say that the events that had interrupted her at that time had not been at all to her liking, but she remained silent. Her uncle continued without noticing her hesitation.

“Nevertheless, I am sorry you missed this particular round. I’m convinced you would have found much of interest in it.”

“I will try and pay more attention next time,” Gul Ruh promised.

“Good,” Murad said. “I suspect you will find great opportunity to watch the religious banter back and forth to your heart’s content in the very near future.”

The Sultan blew gently on his miniature to let it dry, then held it up for his audience to admire. They did, as ardently as he could wish. Murad had made a representation of the very debates they had been discussing, with himself an avid listener in the center of the page. To the right was the circumcision pavilion with—edited for history—Muhammed smiling bravely through a window.

“Do you recognize the man debating here?” Murad asked.

Gul Ruh had been struggling so with the emotions the sight of the pavilion brought to her that she hadn’t even bothered to look at the left-hand side where the debaters were. But a quick glance failed to enlighten her. Her uncle had striven not so much to render individual characteristics as to meet the miniaturists’ traditional criteria for showing handsome pious young manhood. One handsome, pious young man looked pretty- much like another. Gul Ruh did not recognize him.

“A remarkable young man.” Murad began to describe with words what the picture failed to make plain. “He cannot be much over twenty. Still he defeated many of his elders and betters most brilliantly in a discourse as lucid and learned as it w as to the point. The son of the late Mufti, I am told, but the youngest son and with still manv, many years of successes ahead of him.”

“
He
won the debates?” Gul Ruh exclaimed. She almost pronounced the name “Abd ar-Rahman” aloud but caught herself in time to keep her uncle thinking she did not recognize the man from his descriptions either. “Such a young person, I mean?”

“Yes. Won quite handily. Not only that, but he made me so drunk on his words that I hardly knew what I was saying. As a prize, I offered him anything at all it was in my power to give, even to half of the Realm of the Faithful.”

“What did he say?”

“‘Forgive me, O Shadow of Allah,’ the young man said, ‘but the Realm of the Faithful is not yours to give.’ Then he quoted page and verse proving that it was given to me in trust from the Most Merciful and I should not even jest of giving it away, et cetera, et cetera. But finally he came around to saying that there was something it was in my power to give him that he desired more than anything in the world. Can you guess, Gul Ruh, what that might be?”

“Such a modest young man!” Esmikhan exclaimed.

“No, I cannot guess,” Gul Ruh said, feeling her heart pounding in her throat.

“Modest, Sister, maybe. But he is not above demanding for riches when they fall near his hand. He has asked me to give you to him, Gul Ruh, in marriage. What do you think of that?”

Gul Ruh could say nothing, but dropped her head and pretended to examine her hands. I do not doubt that if I, too, had examined them I would have found them wet with tears.

It was Esmikhan who had to reply, “What did you tell the young man. Brother?”

“I asked him to look in his books and see if there isn’t a commandment not to give women in marriage against their will. ‘Even a sultan is bound by this,’ I told him. ‘I must ask the young lady’s will in this matter before I make promises like that.’

“Ah, it was gratifying! To beat the winner on his own ground! Hurry and anxiety, those are two things a debater must avoid at all cost and that young man let them get the better of him in this case. I think I could have been something of a legist if only...

“Still, I gave him my word to ask the young lady and do what I could to sway her opinion if it could be swayed. What am I to tell him? That she looks sullen and says nothing? I fear the young man is to be disappointed and I shall have to give him half the Realm of the Faithful after all, to mollify him.”

“Oh, no. Uncle, please!” Gul Ruh exclaimed, then sank into modest\-and tears again.

Murad laughed and repeated “ ‘Oh, no, Uncle, please’? It sounds as if she has turned him down, does it not?”

Gul Ruh managed to catch her mother’s hand with ferocity and this prompted Esmikhan to say, “Now, Brother. Don’t be a tease. You may tell the young man to make his preparations for—for the earliest day at his convenience.”

“It will be my pleasure,” Murad said. “And though the treasury is already broken by this circumcision, I think we can find enough to get together a wedding at least to match yours. Sister. And there will be an Ottoman heir or two to grace it, besides.”

Gul Ruh quickly kissed her uncle’s hem in gratitude.

“My only worry now is...” Murad folded his hands and looked sharply at Gul Ruh over them. “Just how these two young people came to be of such a common mind. I fear a leak in the security of my harem and that, khadim, is your department.”

The sharp, dark eyes of the Shadow of Allah fell on me. I could feel them, but I couldn’t meet them, and that must declare my guilt. The entire world must be guilty in his presence.

The Sultan laughed. “Still, if you will assure me my honor has nothing to fear by this match—”

I assured him quickly.

“Then be off with you, girl,” the Sultan said, planting a quick kiss on each of his niece’s eyes, “and may you be as happy a wife as you are a bride.”

So Abd ar-Rahman and Gul Ruh were married before the summer reached its peak, and my young lady went off with a whole train of slaves and eunuchs to be her own mistress—under Umm Kulthum, of course. Had she not been so overjoyed by the prospects for her future, she might have spent more time rejoicing at what a relief it was to escape the Serai.

Safiye had the good grace to realize when she had been defeated fairly and honestly. I think her only consternation was that it should have been innocence and virtue that defeated her instead of more devious machinations.

For my part, I had my faith restored in the possibility of a present-day princess living happily ever after.

It was probably in a mad attempt to revenge herself for the failure of her plot against Muhammed during his circumcision that Nur Banu infiltrated the ranks of the eunuchs with another product of the knife of Mu’awiya the Red. This fellow was caught and disposed of long before he got as far as the Persian, but word of it came to Murad, and the Sultan took steps to see that neither party took his honor so lightly again.

By imperial decree the whole household was reorganized. Instead of white and black eunuchs in charge of the women together, from now on it would be blacks only who, in the heart of Africa, are cut off right at the belly and hence can prove no threat at all. Or if they did, by accident or design, avoid this fate, it was assumed their race would render them less attractive even in desperate eyes.

Ghazanfer Agha, myself, and a few of the other more trusted white eunuchs were spared immediate shift to the outer household. It would take years to build up the necessary black population—only one in three or four survives the severity of that operation—and the change could happen but slowly. White khuddam glutted the market and suffered such a drop in price that, in spite of myself, it preyed heavily on my self-esteem.

Then, after a few months of dreadful uncertainty we were finally promised our positions for life.

“Which may not be long, under the circumstances,” Ghazanfer mused pessimistically.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Although as Esmikhan’s particular slave, the word would have to come directly from her before I faced transfer, nonetheless I had felt great relief at the announcement and did not want to be bothered with clouds that day.

“Just look,” Ghazanfer Agha told me, and called my attention to the fact that Safiye seemed, in but this short time, to have accumulated far more than her share of the black attendants. “She knew this decree was coming before the Sultan made it,” Ghazanfer explained. “She’d been buying up every black khadim the moment he hit Cairo for months. And if you don’t think there are the ambitious among them...but enough about us. I think it’s clear who has won the upper hand in this harem now.”

And indeed it was. Almost as if buying that second Mu’awiya eunuch were a final act of desperation, Nur Banu seemed to have signed her own death warrant with it. She retreated to the small private garden palace she owned in her own right near the Edirne Gate and was reported to be ill.

“Ill? The witch? Nonsense!” Safiye declared.

But when a fortnight brought no news of improvement, my lady began to worry, particularly when rumors of “poison” began to fly.

I found poison difficult to believe. “Nur Banu Kadin has always been too careful of such things,” I assured my lady. “She will eat nothing that has not sat upon her celadon plates, and that green ware wall turn black in warning at the first touch of anything unwholesome. She is always vigilant against mercury, monkshood, scorpions—all the usual methods.”

I thought, but not aloud, that Nur Banu would not be poisoned because she herself was mistress of the art and continued, “Besides, if it were poison, wouldn’t we have heard—Allah forbid—of her death by now? Safiye would not do such a job halfway.”

“Abdullah, you should not say so.”

“Or we should have heard of her recovery, now that she is in her own palace with only her own slaves about her.”

“I mean you should not suggest Safiye could have a hand in poison. It is some secret witch, some infidel enemy, not Safiye.”

I sighed. Esmikhan would never believe the worst of which I knew her friend was capable. My lady had known she could not befriend both sides of the conflict. She had come to live on Safiye’s side of the demarcation line only after a long struggle with her heart. The deciding factor had been the thought that Nur Banu was Valide Sultan, there-

fore Safiye was the weaker. Still she refused to credit more than a slight jarring of personalities to the fray: “It is the same with mothers- and daughters-in-law the world over.” I knew it was useless to try to shove a darker sin than simple liveliness and a strong desire for her own way upon my lady’s best friend.

Still, Nur Banu was my lady’s stepmother, as close a being to mother as she could remember, although nurse had the more tender connotations in her mind. When Nur Banu’s retreat had extended more than a month, Esmikhan knew she must make the effort to cross Constantinople to pay a call.

Safiye did not thwart her. “Yes. Please go and find out what the old scorpion is up to.”

“Safiye!” Esmikhan pleaded compassion.

Safiye was unrepentant. “I’ve no doubt it’s some sort of witchcraft of her own and we must be warned.”

Safiye even lent the new carriage she had as a lavish gift of friendship from England’s Queen Elizabeth. I’m not certain how the Fair One juggled this relationship at the same time as her continuing one with Catherine de’ Medici, who was more powerful in France than ever. I can only imagine that Catherine and Safiye shared secrets like Italian schoolgirls at the end of the garden when the nuns are elsewhere. And where was the room for a third in this? What fates were decided between the three women will never be known. But I am sure no life from the Sea of Marmara to La Manche was unaffected.

I would have thought close ties with France would preclude them across the Channel. But then, the unfogged eyes of power know no love of country, no boundaries. Safiye’s correspondence with England’s Elizabeth was a little more public if for no other reason than that it had to go through the dragomans for translation. Elizabeth’s letters spoke of a Muslim East and Protestant West crushing the idolatry of Catholicism between them.

“Perhaps so,” I heard Safiye reply aloud and offhandedly. Religion—anybody’s—had never been of overriding concern to her. “But if England had not thrown out Latin with the Church, I could have done more for Elizabeth. She and I could have communicated better.” It is my suspicion that Safiye never did take Elizabeth’s envoys more seriously than their persistence demanded. “In that northern climate,” she insisted, “people have no time for culture. They are too busy trying to keep warm.”