Reign of the Favored Women (18 page)

Murad sent one of his men running at once to warn my master of the situation. But it took more than an hour for the man to make it around the point, over the great rocks slick with rain with the waves crashing on them, to the city gates where he could gain access.

Eventually my master Sokolli Pasha, with a few men (I was among them) and torches, opened the gate and let the wayfarers in. Yet we did not at once fall upon our faces and welcome our new sovereign. No, Sokolli Pasha had warned us as we hurried to the gate. One of Selim’s five younger sons might have somehow gotten word and was now set on usurpation. It had been at least two years since any of us had seen the heir. Murad’s next youngest brother, in spite of their different mothers, was very like him in features, and the journey had made this man both thinner and darker. We raised our torches against the wind and peered intently.

“Only if you would stake your life that he is Murad,” we were warned. None of us could go so far.

Sokolli Pasha coughed apologetically (for the man might very well be our next master) and said one more test would have to be passed. Although he had just traveled ten days almost without pause, fresh horses were brought and we rode to the palace on the outskirts of town which had been Nur Banu’s residence since the fire.

Many have called my master “Sultan Maker” as if there were some sort of blame to that. But let it be known that never was the harem more powerful than on that night. Nur Banu came from her chamber, still in crumpled clothes and bleary-eyed from sleep. She stood, stared, then threw open her arms with joy. “My lion,” she cried, the term of endearment all mothers of princes give their firstborn sons. With those words and those words alone, she made an emperor.

I suppose had I had a plot up my sleeve, I could have wielded my own power that night. As neither my master nor any of the other officials went into the room where Nur Banu was, nor would have known her from any other woman if they had, it all rested on the testimony of my two colleagues—Nur Banu’s Kislar Agha and Ghazanfer—and myself.

But the thought never occurred to me to counter the will of Allah in this matter. I gave the sign to my master as we reentered and we instantly all fell flat on the floor, declaring Murad to be our new master, the power of our lives and the Shadow of Allah.

A weary but happy smile crept over the face that wore the paprika beard. “By Allah, I’m famished,” he declared. “Have them bring us some food.”

As we got to our feet to fulfill this order, even the least suspicious among us could not help but exchange guarded glances. That his first words as Sultan should be these! That was an ill omen in anybody’s eyes.

My lady took these events—the death of her father and the succession of her half-brother—quite well. Considering that Murad’s success meant the death of all five of his brothers including Esmikhan’s own full-blood brother, Jehanghir, she took it amazingly well. She never held it against Murad; it was ancient Turkish law.

Murad had, in fact, wished to show mercy. But the Mufti soon convinced him that individual mercy was never so great as mercy shown to the people at large. The new Sultan’s vast subject populace would ever praise him that he had spared them any opportunity for civil war. So five little turbaned sarcophagi joined their father’s great one in the high-ceilinged and heavily tiled mausoleum on the grounds of Aya Sophia. There they rest as unashamedly as if the plague had merely touched them with the hand of Allah.

My lady’s stepmother’s sorrow was not so tempered by faith, and this grieved Esmikhan more than the actual murder. But her stepmother was soon moved along with the little Cypriot and any other woman or boy who had ever known the late Sultan to permanent retirement at Edirne.

Esmikhan wept at the separation as if at her stepmother’s death—she knew she would never be able to make such a long journey as that to visit—but in a few weeks distance made all those griefs bearable.

Selim’s death caused Safiye griefs, too. Though they were less permanent, they were no less hard to bear—at least for the fiery daughter of Baffo.

She, along with her son, daughter, and the rest of her suite, arrived in Constantinople after a more leisurely journey from Magnesia—though one not without discomfort as it was midwinter. Safiye then discovered that she, no less than Murad, should have made the trip in ten days if she wanted to be certain her position was consolidated. The way it was, Nur Banu had had two or three full weeks in which to immure herself in her son’s affections, and when Safiye did arrive, Nur Banu was well prepared.

Nur Banu had arranged an elaborate ceremony whereby every member of the harem—from treasurer to wardrobe mistress, from keeper of the jewels to Mother of the Heir Apparent—would pass in review before her and, by placing her hand under the Queen Mother’s foot, swear her unquestioning obedience to her will. It was along the lines of the more public ceremony a new sultan always held whereby the head of the janissaries (primed by a lavish gift), the head of the enclosed school of pages, of the corps of eunuchs, the poison tasters—all vowed to fulfill the master’s least desire as they loved their lives and Allah.

This ceremony with her enemy’s crimson satin slipper was almost more than Safiye could endure, but she had little choice in the matter. Murad approved his mother’s move and was seated, nodding with agreement, at her side throughout. Safiye dared not even balk. But she comforted herself that oaths by Allah did not mean quite so much to her as they did to people who had been born to that Faith.

And Safiye found herself desperate to please the Sultan at every turn. Now that he was Sultan, she wanted to be at Murad’s side every moment, for every decision and firman. But Constantinople and the Empire at his fingertips gave Murad other diversions he had not had in the provincial sandjak.

The rapid rebuilding of the palace to his own extravagant specifications was, for example, a high priority. Murad had gained a taste for building with his mosque in Magnesia. Now he even ordered the construction of an observatory in the grounds under the direction of the great Egyptian astronomer Takieddin.

This scholar’s observations had led him to theories not unlike those of Copernicus, that Pole who has caused such a flurry in Christendom by saying that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the universe. The same Arabic scholars laid the foundation for both of their work. Takieddin found no more favor for his notions among the Muslim clergy than Copernicus among the Christian.

Perhaps this is just as well. Not that I do not believe these men; their arguments are convincing as far as my knowledge of physics and mathematics will carry me. I just do not think, for the sake of the common man—that man walking behind his oxen on a clear, still day with no time for science—that God should be allowed to be any further above us than a voice will carry.

Be that as it may, in the end, at the Mufti’s insistence, the edifice was turned from an observatory into just another kiosk in the gardens. Instead of allowing the stars to become our guideposts to higher Being and His knowledge, they now serve as they have always done: to mark the leagues of love in nights full of more earthly pursuits.

Now as Sultan, Murad was able to indulge in his fondness for poets, musicians, and dancers as well. He brought artists from as far away as India, no expense barred. A pair of Italian painters were popular for a while, their naturalistic lines finding favor more because they were exotic and magical—like a conjuror who can pull a real orange from midair—than that anyone thought to emulate them. True art, as anyone knows, does not need to copy life exactly, but rather give a light and airy, delicate representation of it so we may see through familiar forms to higher things.

One day, instead of waiting to be called for, an impatient Safiye sent to interrupt her lover’s business with herself. I was present when the reply came.

“My master begs to decline,” Ghazanfer said, his green eyes downcast. “He has just received inspiration for a new poem he would write to share with his friends at their next banquet. He said you would understand.”

A look of absolute panic crossed Safiye’s face before she could check it. She realized she was no longer so young. She had born three children, one dead, one of them a girl. She was twenty-five, an age at which slave girls were customarily retired from waiting on the Sultan, it being assumed that after that age, there was no hope of them catching his eye. They were given to faithful spahis or janissaries to honest wifehood, or they became seamstresses and laundresses to those women who still had hope.

Safiye had taken good care of herself. She had neither borne too many children nor sat too long on cushions to lose her figure. Her hair still had the wonderful luster that had first drawn the Prince to her, but anyone who saw the great baskets of lemons that followed her to the bath each day knew it was no longer so easily come by.

Her influence might last only months, weeks. Maybe one could count it in the stanzas of Murad’s latest poem. Every moment the Sultan spent at some other pursuit was time lost for her. Safiye knew it. And she was scared. Scared as neither pirates nor storms at sea nor roaring flames in the harem had been able to frighten her before.

And so Baffo’s daughter determined to do something neither books nor paintings nor even the stars could compete with her in. By the summer of that year, after two or three dearly bought private interviews with the master, she had accomplished her design.

It was at a party given by Nur Banu in the gardens of the summer palace for the purpose of admiring the lilies in bloom. Aunt Mihrimah was the one who spoke first as Safiye came forward to greet her with a kiss.

“Safiye, my dear, are you—?”

Safiye, who had been wearing heavier garments than the heat would allow and unbuttoning her waist higher than she really needed to yet, was elated that it had been recognized at last. “Yes, madam, it’s true. Gul Ruh will soon have another little cousin to play with.”

The party was immediately alive with exclamations, congratulations and questions:
when was she due? what did she hope it would be?
(another son of course), and
how did she feel?
Those who were barren came to her to crave a talisman that Allah might likewise favor them.

While all of this was going on, I stole a look at Nur Banu to see how she was taking this disruption of the order of her party and the usurpation of her status as hostess and center of attention. To my surprise, I saw neither anger nor frustration in her eyes. Her demeanor seemed as sweet as the heavy scent of the lilies that hung like a liqueur over the garden. Her look seemed, like some of the gaudier hybrids, to have a cultivated, almost artificial air.

I could not suppress the thought, nor yet would I find explanation for it: It is as if she knew all along. Almost as if she planned it this way. Nur Banu, I thought, might well have learned of Safiye’s condition from spies or bathhouse attendants, but that it could in any way serve her purposes I could not imagine. Yet, I thought, it almost seems as if she sees that Safiye has fallen into her trap.

Nur Banu bided her time. She sat on a rug with her hands quietly folded in her lap until the furor raised by her rival’s announcement had settled like dust in a stifle. Nur Banu was content to wait until, of her own accord, every woman fell silent, took a seat, and looked up at her hostess expectantly. When even Safiye could not resist the raising of the bow of her brow in wonder, Nur Banu at last began.

“Oh!” exclaimed the Valide Sultan as if suddenly coming to herself under this general scrutiny. “What sort of hostess must you think me? That you have all been here so long and I have yet to offer you refreshment.”

She clapped her hands sharply and immediately a slave girl stepped through the doorway of the kiosk, bearing a ewer of rose water, an empty bowl, and a napkin. With downcast eyes and perfect manners, the girl moved among the guests from the most honored down to the least to allow each to wash her hands and face of the dust of the road. There was utter silence as she did so, but not because of her actions. It was a courtesy expected even in poor homes where only a pitcher of well water might substitute for that of roses and a younger daughter, perhaps, for the slave.

But “Not since she first presented Safiye,” one who had been in attendance on both occasions recalled afterwards, “Never since Safiye has Nur Banu—or anyone else for that matter—produced a girl of such exquisite beauty.”

She was like some tiny white porcelain vase in which one sets a single violet upon a shelf and it beautifies the entire room. Beneath the lucid skin, her bones seemed like a bird’s, supple and breathtakingly fragile. Although it hurt one’s stomach—the fear that even breath might break her—yet one could not hold back the desire to immediately scoop her up in one’s arms, protect her, fondle her, prove to every sense that she was not just air.

Her blackbird eyes showed intelligence beneath the thick and perfect curve of lashes, so there was more than just a shell. Her hair, which Nur Banu had dressed for her under a small purple cap and gossamer veil, fell to the knee, thick, black, and curly, of such mass that it seemed greater than the rest of her body put against it. And her breasts, which on any other frame would have seemed of average size and beauty, on hers were voluptuous, two soft mounds of honey-almond paste.

No two women could be more unalike than Safiye and this girl, the former tall and fair, the latter tiny and dark. But each was the perfection of her type. Probably only once in so many years does the Almighty allow such beauty upon the earth, or we should all destroy ourselves for its sake, like offerings upon a heathen altar.

At last the party could contain itself no longer and began to ask all at once: “Where did she come from? How did you find her? She must have cost a fortune. What do you plan for her?”

Nur Banu smiled and replied, “She’s Hungarian. I can’t tell you how we scoured the markets for her...” until the questions and answers were all a jumble and could not be matched. Then it was better to let Nur Banu have the floor and say what she would say.