Reign of the Favored Women (10 page)

We made our laborious way after Gul Ruh’s happy skipping to a song she made up about “Beautiful Aunt Safiye’s beautiful curtain of modesty,” by which I felt the child might have inherited some of her uncle Murad’s penchant for poetry. Not to mention that of her natural father, with his bunches of flowers and quotes from the Persian. But I did not allow myself to think too long in that direction. For all I knew, Ghazanfer might read such thoughts in my walk and he’d already given me cause to believe he held too much of this ammunition against my lady in his arsenal.

“You know I must,” Esmikhan panted. “A mother’s grief is at stake.” She did not say more, the labor of walking strained her breath already. And I did not argue further lest it tax her beyond endurance.

And what could I say? The two women were as close to each other as legal sisters-in-law might be in Venice. And Esmikhan always considered Safiye her best friend, though what Safiye’s feelings might be were more equivocal.

And I must confess to some gratitude when Ghazanfer, having seen to the comfort of our bearers and the rest of my lady’s attendants, caught up with us and offered—sincerely enough—to help. When Esmikhan smiled her thanks, he lifted her up into his giant’s arms and carried her the rest of the way. And I followed, smarting in my ineffectiveness, carrying only my lady’s cane.

* * *

“I received a visit from Huma yesterday.” Over an hour later, Esmikhan, sustained by sherbet, sweets, and sunset clouds of pillows on Safiye’s divan, had sufficiently recovered from her exertions and the pleasantries of formulaic greetings. My lady broached the main purpose of our journey.

Safiye was busy with her voluminous correspondence and hardly concealed her annoyance at the interruption. “Not that woman again!”

“Safiye, how can you speak in such tones of a woman whom Allah, in His impenetrable wisdom—may we all submit to Him—has chosen to use so cruelly?”

“Last week she pestered your aunt Mihrimah, the week before, Nur Banu, and in between, at every Divan, at every Friday procession to prayers, she approaches the stirrup of the Sultan himself. I have even heard your level-headed Sokolli Pasha, Esmikhan—spurred by his harem, no doubt—speak for her.”

“And why not? How else is a poor, weak woman to get justice in this world of mighty men if she doesn’t tear her veil and make a scene? This is what the protection of our screens and eunuchs is for.”

Safiye shook her head in pity, seeing no logical connection. “Every vizier and pasha’s plagued by her,” she said, “until there’s no room left in their heads for anything else.”

“But Safiye! The poor woman—”

“She is poor. And so of little consequence.”

“Safiye. On the last day, Allah will command His angels to seize and fetter those who did not urge mercy for the poor during their lives. It is my religious duty to petition the French embassy. Aunt Mihrimah has done the same. I am surprised Huma has not come here.”

“She has. Ghazanfer,” Safiye said with a glare in my direction, “knows enough to turn such people away.”

“Even my husband the Pasha has—”

“Sokolli Pasha has refused the poor French ambassador—who’s only a man trying to do his job, after all—any more concessions until this matter is resolved.”

The tension showed in white patches on my lady’s face. “And why shouldn’t my husband refuse him? My father the Sultan—may Allah favor him—has released three French captives in good faith and hope of exchange. But nothing is forthcoming from the infidel French. Nothing.”

“Esmikhan, the widow Huma’s daughters were taken nearly twenty years ago.”

“By the Knights of Saint John.”

“So was I. So was I.” Safiye could not resist a glance in my direction. We’d been taken by the Knights together, she and I. And though she might acknowledge this, the fact that our misfortunes must be laid squarely at her door was not admitted even in her eyes.

“The girls were on their way with their father and brother to Holy Mecca,” Esmikhan said. “The sanctity of their pilgrimage was violated by those pirates.”

“As ships going to Mecca have been known to suddenly turn pirate when it suited them and attack Christians heading towards Jerusalem.”

“They haven’t. They wouldn’t.”

“You, my dear friend, have little experience of how the world works.”

“I don’t want to know. Not such a world as you see, Safiye.”

Safiye shrugged her perfect shoulders up into her perfect blond braids. “The fact remains that Huma’s daughters have been in France twice as long as I have been in Turkey—most of their lives, in fact. They can hardly remember anything else.”

“How can you say so? That any girl would ever, ever forget her mother. I haven’t forgotten mine.” Esmikhan’s eyes misted with tears. “And she died when I was born.”

At that moment, the little girls—Gul Ruh and Safiye’s Aysha, just toddling—came running in from the fountain and plantings of the private courtyard. As mother of a prince, the Fair One was entitled to this perquisite of air and space in the harem world, otherwise rather sterile and cramped in accommodations. Aysha stumbled on the threshold and it was Gul Ruh who picked her up and mothered her out of her tears, although there was less than a head’s difference between the two. Aysha already had Safiye’s long, dancing limbs under her.

Aysha’s bevy of nurses came secondarily. One changed the bands of diaper cloth covering the little girl’s sex, of which she was as yet carelessly unaware. A child graduated to such swaddling when she would no longer stay put in a cradle. One nurse swept the soiled bands off to the laundry. The third stopped her mouth with a knob of marzipan knotted in a square of linen. Safiye herself did nothing but drape her graceful arms over her desk to protect the work.

I had to wonder if the marzipan had been soaked in poppy-head water as well, for very soon the toddler had suckled herself to sleep. She was allowed to nap just where she fell, a little hillock of flowered red-and-gold silk amidst the blooms of the finest Isfahan rugs laid three deep on Safiye’s floors, the year as yet too early for the tile beneath to be exposed.

“Hush. You mustn’t bother Aysha Sultan now,” Esmikhan told her daughter. “Come here and sit by me.”

Grudgingly, Gul Ruh took the second option offered her, to go and toss a ball in the yard with the now unemployed nurses for a while. Encrusted with jewels whose gold casings could cut skin if thrown too hard, the ball was in fact not much of a plaything. But it was the best to hand in this world where the most common everyday objects were too readily gaudied past all usefulness.

“Isn’t Muhammed here yet?” my little lady pleaded of Safiye, leaning back as long as she could on a nurse’s hand.

Esmikhan gave a little cough of warning and Gul Ruh remembered her manners. “I mean, my honored cousin Prince Muhammed—may Allah smile on his house until Judgment Day.”

“You know the single-reason-for-my-being has lessons with his eunuchs and tutors during the day.”

The way Safiye rattled off the euphemism to avoid using the preciousness of her son’s name mimicked Gul Ruh’s attempt at manners. At the very least Baffo’s daughter was irritated at yet another infantile interruption. Fortunately, I think the nuances of tone were lost on the child. my little lady probably did believe Muhammed was her aunt’s reason for being. She was her own mother’s reason for being, Esmikhan made no secret of that. And a child of Gul Ruh’s same age in Italy, I reckoned, would still be encouraged to believe in the old witch La Bafana to keep up the good behavior until Epiphany. There was no reason to confuse a childish mind by insisting on a distinction between the prince himself and the power he represented to his almond-eyed mother.

“Can’t I go to him?” my little lady asked.

“Goodness, no,” her mother exclaimed. “To the palace school?”

“I should like to learn at the palace school. It would be less boring than tossing a ball around.”

“Perhaps, when you’re older, my treasure,” Esmikhan said, “We might get you your own tutor at home. A nice, pious woman.”

“It would be more fun with Muhammed—may his final hour be blessed.” The two phrases existed in two different childhood worlds.

“I know, my mountain spring,” Esmikhan said no. “But you could still come and sit with me. I could comb out your hair for you.”

“Oh, Esmikhan. You won’t leave that child a hair on her head by the time she’s ten with all your fussing.” Safiye spoke with an impatient shuffle of papers.

Gul Ruh chose the nurses then, and thoughtfully invited the little dwarf girl Murad had recently given his lover to come and play, too. Still, in a way she couldn’t quite express, my little lady fully understood that the slaves, who would treat her always like a princess, might well render her as useless for her task of living as the jeweler’s enthusiasm had made the ball for play.

During this interruption by the children, Safiye had gone on with the day’s correspondence. Between her and her scribe, they had gotten off half a dozen letters. Safiye’s correspondents, those I saw, included viziers and sandjak beys, as well as the Persian ambassador: a bellicose note. Words even went to Joseph Nassey, consoling him that it wouldn’t be long now before he got the Cypriot kingship Selim had promised him. Hadn’t the island fallen, true to the Sultan s oath? Wasn’t Safiye herself pulling in every favor she could on his behalf? But Nassey must be patient. What good would a war-ravaged countryside be for a king, anyway? It was better to wait and let the janissaries clean up the place yet a little more.

One letter Safiye even snatched out of the scribe’s hand, saying with a mixture of conspiracy and impatience, “Let me deal with that one.”

In no time at all, she had jotted off a note in her own hand and folded it before the ink could quite have time to dry. Safiye did not give her product the distinguishing mark of her seal, but handed it at once to waiting Ghazanfer, who knew without telling where he must go, and did so with a silent bow.

Esmikhan, for her part, could contain no other thought in her mind when children were present. Only when the rhythmic toss of the ball accompanied by a childish rhyme droned in from the courtyard with the laziness of dust motes did my lady manage to pick up the thread of her purpose where she had dropped it.

“Huma’s daughters have been forcibly converted to Christianity.”

“There are worse fates,” Safiye said, setting aside her writing with a sigh. “Besides, why would the mother want them back now that they are so corrupted with heresy and would have to bear the punishment for apostasy if they came?”

“The law of Allah is merciful. It understands that we women are weaker than men and is not so severe on us in such cases.”

“The girls’d go to prison at any rate, even if not to the gallows. I say those girls are better off where they are. Catherine has made one her treasurer. The other is a lady-in-waiting, a post of honor, not of servility as you and Huma may imagine. Besides, I understand they are married in France.”

“They were forcibly married. To strangers. And too young.”

“Like me, Esmikhan? Like you?”

Esmikhan shifted, and I went to help her plump the cushions up more comfortably.

“The girls must have children of their own by now,” Safiye suggested. “How can the mother think it a mercy to move them from their own children? What that widow really needs is to remarry herself. I may even be able to suggest someone suitable if I set my mind to it.”

“Do you think so, Safiye? And would you do that?”

“It would certainly give her something else to do so the rest of the world could get on with business.”

“Perhaps the king of France would be willing to put up the brideprice so some poor but worthy gentleman could—”

“That is asking quite a bit, Esmikhan.”

“A widow is in no hurry, not like a younger woman.” My lady’s memories of her own youthful infractions were a little too transparent in the self-condemning tone of her voice. I silently pled with her not to betray herself, for there could be no worse person to give such information to than Safiye—if the Fair One didn’t already know.

Whether she did or not was difficult for me to discern, but she did snort something like a laugh.

Esmikhan forcibly set down her own memories and returned to the matter at hand. “And I think the daughters also ought to write to their mother. One little note at least, to assure her they are happy and well. If they cannot write themselves, they must go to a scribe. And I think you could write to France’s Valide Sultan to order them to give their poor mother ease.”

“Very well,” said Safiye, letting out her breath with the force of her decision. “Luck is with you. This is my day for letters. One more cannot hurt.”

I came fully alert. Safiye could be talked into doing nothing for others she hadn’t already decided to do on her own. I must watch carefully.

“Oh, Safiye. You will not regret it.”

To my horror, Esmikhan was trying to get up to bow her gratitude. I managed to settle her back down. No matter what Safiye’s promise, I knew it could not be worth the trouble of sending for seconds to help my lady return to the divan should her constitution not prove up to the exertion.

I was greatly relieved that my lady contented herself with saying, “Allah will reward you in the next life if not in this.”

Safiye waved the possibility of God away with a flash of her long, elegantly hennaed and many-ringed fingers. “This must be the most formal of letters,” she then instructed her scribe. “Queen to queen.”

The scribe I recognized now as Belqis, a girl of beautiful Tatar features originally bought for Murad. Safiye’s greater charms, if not to say skills, had long ago supplanted her. Realizing her hopes in this direction must come to naught, Belqis had diverted her energies to the pen instead. That Safiye trusted her correspondence to this hand said something of Belqis. So did the fact that the scribe no longer bothered to conceal a premature grey creeping down the long, straight strands of her raven hair. The stains on her fingers were ink, not henna.

The conclusion of all of this was that Belqis and her art were a pleasure to watch, as fascinating as a dancer who takes equal care to hone her skills. Belqis began by taking a fresh sheet of paper out of her tooled red cowhide portfolio. The paper was thick and clearly of Eastern make, yellower than what they were making in Venice, and without watermark: Muslim paper-making firms were never so anxious to advertise their names as the profit-conscious West. The size of a large napkin, half as wide as it was long, the page’s thickness and color gave the impression of parchment, which Eastern paper-makers continued to yearn for even when that medium was too dear.