Sofia (20 page)

Pits on her hands indicated that the rest of her body was equally ravaged and a roughness on the pitting spoke of the ongoing abuse of hot, sudsy water. The world was generally relieved of the sight of this poor face because it was kept down on its work of scrubbing floors. Indeed, a patch of damp over the woman’s belly and on each knee confirmed that she had already been about that task this morning and was called away unexpectedly.

The ravaged face grew uglier still with the confusion the woman was presently suffering: the peculiarly acute confusion the very ugly feel in the presence of the very beautiful.

Sofia had enjoyed the advantage of that confusion all her life. In the normal course of things, she wouldn’t have given that face a second glance. She couldn’t bear ugliness, had no patience with it, beyond knowing she could rule it absolutely. Besides, she almost believed it was catching. Reason did tell her she was more likely to catch the pox from the Quince, who showed no sign of ever having contacted the disease, than from the mopper of floors who plainly had. Reason assured her that one who had survived the ordeal was henceforth immune. Reason had very little to do with aesthetics, however.

But then, just as Sofia was on the verge of rejecting that pitted face all together, what should she hear from those sadly pitted lips but a soft, shy whisper. “
Buon giorno, Madonna.
“And she knew that, besides a roaring case of smallpox, the woman had also, at some point in her life, managed to catch a little Italian as well.

The seraglio had need of many languages and, considering the widely varied origins of its inmates, was usually able to provide. Italy was not one of the more common sources. This gave Sofia a sense of the relative power of her homeland, pride that not all His Serenity’s posturing, calls for arms, and a greater defense budget were in vain.

Of course, this was the purpose behind calling the charwoman up off her knees. It was a strange Italian, southern— Naples, or perhaps even Sicily—and now heavily troweled with Turkish. But Italian nonetheless. There were words here, not just jumbled sound.

Sofia leaned forward, eager to hear more, as she hadn’t heard an intelligible word since—well, since that young Veniero. A sweet enough lad, but of no consequence after all.

The Quince, too, awaited the next Italian phrase with impatience. When it was not immediately forthcoming—the uneven lips trembled in pursuit of speech—the Quince joggled the charwoman with her elbow and repeated the phrases she wanted to convey.

Following a deep breath, the poxed lips firmed and spoke. Sofia strained—and heard the same phrase repeated slowly, deliberately, syllable for syllable—in Turkish once more.

The Quince’s meaning was more plain. “Idiot!” Anyone in the world could have understood the sense of her outburst. “You’re speaking Turkish. You’re just repeating the same words I said, only slowly, like baby talk. Come on, woman. Italian. You’re from Italy. Remember the Italian!”

After another great strain, exaggerated by the fluster the scolding set her to, the charwoman finally dredged up something more. Sofia clung to every stammered gasp.

“Good day. I am—”

Distress overwhelmed the woman once again as she couldn’t remember the name that went along with the language . A Christian name—the groping for it tortured her already tortured face. But there was no hope for it. The name was too far gone.

“I am Faridah,” she finally settled for, “and this is the Quince. She is our woman—our woman with the babies.” She struggled for meaning, the precise term beyond her. But Sofia had already guessed “midwife.”

“A pleasure. I’m Sofia.”

Sofia didn’t want to delay the communication any longer than the agony of the present pace. Hoping to push things along with the immediacy of a hug, she got to her feet—and uncovered the large red stain on the blue-and-white ticking of the mattress beneath her.

After the mortification, the tears, and the apologies, the Quince took matters firmly in hand. She enlisted the charwoman’s strong arms, but Sofia had to bear her end of the bloody clothes and bedding, too.

In this way, the harem’s newest slave was introduced to the laundry, where teams of two dozen women steamed and sweated at once. She learned her way to the fresh bedding stocked along the walls in every room where sleeping was done, the wardrobe where linen, cotton, and woolen garments were issued, more mundane than brocade and cloth -of-gold, but clean and eminently serviceable.

“Until you get clothes of your own,” the Quince explained tantalizingly.

The Quince showed her the latrines, one large room containing five separate closets and space for ablutions. A flush of cleansing water harnessed on its wash from mountains to sea perpetually sounded in the bottom of the dark holes.

Hard by, in a little cubicle, a girl of eight or ten was occupied full time cleaning and carding the soft absorbent wool required by over five hundred women. Concealment of the offending fluids of one’s body would not be possible here. In fact, Sofia mused, the entire palace probably knows a woman is pregnant before she knows herself. But then, she carried the thought further, perhaps it was only trying to shuffle their lives into life paced by men that made women’s concealment necessary.

“But don’t toss all of it with the wool down the latrine hole,” the Quince said, handing her a palm-sized earthenware pot with a rough cork stopper.

It took Sofia some time to understand what the midwife was asking her to do with this pot because she could not believe that what the charwoman translated could possibly be true. But eventually, by question and gesture, she confirmed the sense.

“As long as you remain a maid, save as much of your flow as you can. I can get a good price for it. Why, don’t you know? The monthly blood of a virgin, either taken internally or used as an ointment, is the best cure known for the scourge of leprosy.”

Sofia was so impressed by this value placed on what she was accustomed to considering the vilest of things that she didn’t think to ask if she could profit herself from the project until it was too late to do so with any tact. They left the little jar on a shelf in the latrine until her next visit and went on.

After that, the Quince introduced her to the kitchens. Her time of month, it seemed, was Sofia’s introduction to the whole complex, as if the buildings were actually clustered according to her need. Her condition was the key to their layout, not whatever it was that dictated dwellings where men were lords.

The three women could actually only peer at the kitchens—ten double domes all smoking at once—across a broad courtyard. Every one of the cooks, not even considering the hewers of wood and drawers of water needed for such a vast operation, were men.

“Usually food is brought over at mealtime by the halberdiers,” the Quince explained. “Such a man you see across the courtyard now. When he comes here to the harem, he will drop the two long side tresses of his wig-hat down before his face so he can look neither to the right nor to the left and thus invade our privacy. Periodically, the halberdiers also bring us a supply of wood for our braziers.

“At mealtime, a bell will ring, and you must make yourself scarce from this entry hall until the halberdiers have set the platters down, exited, and the eunuch rings the bell a second time. Then you know it is safe to come into the hall and—if it is your duty—retrieve the platters from these banks of marble. You see the counters are so contrived that hot dishes remain hot and cold dishes cold. The accepted order among us is to serve and enjoy one dish at a time, and that is how they must be served. You will eat with the rest of the girls in your mess. I will introduce you to one or two of them shortly and they’ll help you find your way.

“As you’ve already missed your breakfast today, I will have a eunuch run across the way and bring you something. Something special for your time of month. Yes, special orders are always possible. Salt and pickles are not good. Nor meat, not during your menses. But we will send for hot water for some tea. I will provide my usual preparation for this time of the month from my dispensary: angelica with a touch of myrrh and lots of cream and honey. Yogurt is good. Parsley, chickpeas, pomegranate, if we haven’t seen the last of them this year. A cucumber, but, alas, they’re out of season. Some fresh hot bread and—”

“And
taratir at-turkman
?” Sofia asked.

The Quince smiled at something that needed no translation. “Yes, one or two of those won’t hurt. The cook in the Crown Prince’s kitchen makes the best pastries. I will be certain you get some of his.”

The warm tea and good food amazed Sofia with its ability to perceptibly ease the tension in the heart of her pelvis. She tried to thank the midwife for what seemed little short of a miracle with as much grace as the clumsiness of translation would allow.

The Quince answered the thanks with a snort and looked away. Sofia couldn’t tell whether that snort meant, “I’m only doing what any fool should have known to do for herself,” or “Don’t mention it. I’m only doing my job.”

Faridah gave no translation for the snort. The midwife took the gratitude as an invitation to say more which, in any case, she needed no encouragement to do. If the little charwoman could hardly keep up with the transfer of words, that didn’t matter, either. Over many years, Sofia would come to have the Quince’s lectures memorized. Health was a subject the harem never tired of and the midwife never tired of exhorting in that direction, even when her hands were not needed.

“It’s good to have new blood,” the Quince began. “We are always looking for new blood. You don’t know how difficult it is to provide the masters with bed partners sometimes, as no matter what schedule she’s on when she enters our realm, it doesn’t take too long before any girl’s cycle is drawn to coincide with that of our Valide Sultan.”

“Valide Sultan.” Sofia tried the word on her own tongue and found it as sweet as the honey in her tea. “Who is that?”

“Who is that? Only the most powerful woman in the empire. The most powerful woman in the world. The mother of the Sultan.”

“And who is that?”

“Technically, there is no Valide Sultan at present. Our master Suleiman the Lawgiver—Allah save him—he lost his mother long ago. Since the death of his beloved wife and the mother of his heir, Khurrem Sultan—Allah have mercy on her soul—the household has been divided. The Shadow of Allah’s daughter Mihrimah Sultan takes care of our lord’s most immediate needs. For the rest, we have only the mother of the son of the heir to be our head.”

“And who is that?”

“The woman whose four hundred ghrush bought you— Nur Banu Kadin.”

Sofia knew without being told that this was the name of the wonderful woman with the piercing eyes. Baffo’s daughter also looked carefully beyond the translator to the face of the midwife as she replied.
The Quince doesn’t like the marvelous woman.
The thought surprised the harem’s newest slave; she would not have thought it was possible to be in the presence of those eyes and not be impressed. Then she remembered how the midwife’s tongue had caressed the syllables “Khurrem Sultan” and decided maybe it was only a matter of missing a dead woman and the difficulties of accepting anyone else in her place. Still, the caution with which the charwoman hedged her translation spoke of looking to her own neck.

This was all very interesting, Sofia thought, and useful information to have from the very start. There was something more, something she couldn’t quite put words to. It had to do with the Quince. She didn’t have to listen to the midwife long to realize the midwife loved women and their bodies almost to distraction. To her, they were divine, perhaps the only sort of true divinity in creation. There was something, too, in the way the Quince had handled Sofia from the very start, that very first inspection in Nur Banu’s presence. Gentleness, reverence were sensations that came to mind. Sofia had sometimes felt the same from men, even from their eyes alone. From the best sort of men, the men she knew would be the easiest to manipulate although manipulation seemed absurd with this strong and self-possessed woman.

Whatever it was, Sofia would gladly hear treatises on women’s health all day long to glean such tidbits.

“Sometimes we’re even obliged to send some girls to other palaces,” the Quince continued. “To the New Palace just outside the city walls or even farther afield, to the summer palace in Edirne—just to get them on a different schedule so they can serve the master when everyone else cannot. The birth of a baby gives one the strength to set her own rhythm for a while. Change of life, a girl just starting out, these, too, can cause oddities. We did have such a struggle getting the young Princess Esmikhan Sultan on a regular schedule. Exposure to the full moon helped. Now she cycles with her mother to the day.

“A woman at her time is at the height of her powers.” Did the Quince even blush and turn away under what she thought was the cover of Faridah’s translation? “You don’t need to worry about this yet, but that is why she should not be with a man until she has visited the baths and washed holiness from herself afterward.”

An incomprehensible argument ensued between the two women at this point. The charwoman translated something about “gross impurity” and “the curse of Mother Hawa— Mother Eve” by which Sofia understood that not everyone in the East believed what the midwife’s study had led her to. Probably very few in fact did, else the timid charwoman would never have dared to contradict so. Clearly, if she’d a mind to feel sinful, Sofia would feel right at home here in the land of the Grand Turk. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go as far as the Quince finally got their go-between to urge her, either.

“This is your Sabbath, as men have imposed one holy day on us once a week according to their schedules, Friday in Islam, Saturday among the Jews, Sunday where you come from. You should not waste this holy time on everyday tasks, nor should you allow your attention to be broken by male concerns. You should experience all of your being exactly as it is, and concentrate on its messages. This is the way to health, in the body, in the mind, and in the world at large.” Sofia decided that, with the Quince’s aid toward ignoring what she couldn’t change about her physical being, she at least wouldn’t let her curse time distract her again. She would hold as tight a rein as ever woman held upon the maverick of her body. No guilt or any other further discomfort would mar her concentration on her goals. She did intend, in any case, to let no one draw her to their cycle, not even Nur Banu Kadin with the piercing eyes.