The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (15 page)

The coach had moved slowly but steadily though the seething mass of worshipful humanity that thronged the streets. However, when it began the ascent to Palace Point, the two women inside found themselves buffeted from side to side as if by a turbulent sea. Not for nothing was this road known as the Path That Made the Camel Scream. The women took it in good spirit. The younger of the two, Princess Saida, although somewhat fatigued, always welcomed an opportunity to escape her grandmother’s perfumed cloister. Beside her, Lady Hürrem, the Sultan’s Second
Kadin
, inhaled the excitement of the crowd like a heady perfume.

“Thrilling, isn’t it?” she inquired.

The young woman agreed. The hero of the day was her father. Never before had she felt so close to him. Or so distant.

“I am pleased to have brought you along, Saida,” said the Second
Kadin
. “It is not right for a young girl to be locked up in the harem, especially not a royal princess. How long is it since you’ve been outside the gates of the Old Palace?”

The girl considered before she answered. In that shark pool of envy and ambition that was the harem, a motherless girl learned early to watch her tongue.

“I believe it was two years ago that my grandmother took me with her to a celebration at the hippodrome,” Saida answered after a pause. “When my brothers were circumcised.”

“And before that?”

“I remember some picnics on an island in the Sea of Marmara — I believe it is called Kinali — when I was a little girl.”

“Well,” said Hürrem, “you are not a little girl anymore. You are a woman, Saida, a princess of the royal blood. You must begin to get used to the world you will live in when you marry.”

The girl stiffened. “Marry?”

“Of course, marry,” Hürrem continued, heedless of the girl’s discomfort. “Don’t tell me you have never thought of it. Every young girl thinks of marriage. Why are you shaking? Does the thought of marriage disturb you?”

Yes, it does, lady.
The girl bit her tongue to keep the words from coming out.

“What upsets you? Leaving the harem?”

Yes!

“Leaving your grandmother?”

Yes!

“I do wish you would answer me. You are a clever girl. Surely you must realize that, much as she loves you, your grandmother cannot hold you close forever.”

Yes, she can.

“Will you always love me, grandmother?”

“Always.” Her grandmother’s voice echoed in her memory.

“Say you will never send me away from you.”

“As long as there is breath in my body, I will never send you away.”

Everyone in the harem knew that the Valide Sultan and her son, the Sultan, doted on the motherless princess. So everyone had left Saida to her grandmother’s tender care. At least they did until the Russian
Kadin
Hürrem began to cultivate the old lady and offered herself as a second mother to the Princess Saida — in her own words, “to add some joy to her life.”

“If you look through the slit in the curtains you will see the twin towers of the Gate of Salutation,” she instructed. “Over to the right, in front of the Hagia Sofia.”

Obediently, Saida peered out through the curtains.

“Do you see them? Are they not majestic? Oh, I do love this palace. The views. The gardens. So much more amenable than that dilapidated old wreck where we live. And so much closer to your father. Have you ever thought what it would be like to live in Topkapi Palace with him?”

A month ago, the question, coming at the girl unexpectedly, would have thrown her. And although this was their first time out together, she had had several weeks to get used to her stepmother’s abrupt twists and turns of mind. In truth, Saida had never given a thought to living anywhere but in the Old Palace where she was brought up.
Why would she expect me to think about living in Topkapi?
she wondered.

Unable to find a quick explanation, she neatly turned the question back on the questioner. “Have you ever thought about it?” she inquired sweetly.

“Oh, yes,” came the answer. “I dream about it. Every time your father invites me to join him there, I cannot help but think how wonderful it would be not to have to go back to the Old Palace at the end of the visit but just stay there, close to him. It is my heart’s desire. But I am fated to live out my days surrounded by women and gossip, with a city between us.”

The lady sighed and then shrugged. “Of course, it is very different for a princess. You will leave the harem when you marry. You will have a palace of your own with slaves to do your bidding and an obedient husband — he had better be or your father will have his head on a pike. Not like me, who will always be a slave.”

“But you are a
kadin
, a mother of princes.”

“Second
Kadin
,” Hürrem corrected her.

“But my father loves you beyond all women. I know that from his letters to you, the poems he writes to you, and the jewels he sends you.”

“I would give them all to be a simple wife, to live with the man I love as free women do, together with our children.” Hürrem’s face softened into dreaminess. “A royal family like the Osman clan was in the old days. Then you would be a true daughter to me.” She caught herself. “Of course you are like a daughter to me now, a beautiful daughter, but I see you do not share my dream. Perhaps I have underestimated your love for your father.”

“Oh, no, Lady Hürrem. He is the sun and moon to me.” This time Saida spoke without hesitation.

“Spoken like a royal princess.” The Second
Kadin
nodded her approval. “Your grandmother has raised you well. But I fear she has hidden you away in the harem too long. Perhaps it is time for a move.”

“Oh, no, I could never leave my grandmother. She has watched over me from the day my mother died. And, now that she is old and failing, it is my duty to stay by her side.”

“And she feels the same love for you. We have often spoken of you.”

“You have?”

“We two are of a mind, the Valide Sultan and I. She loves me because I have given her son two sons of his own to carry on the line should a calamity strike Prince Mustafa, Allah forbid. Your grandmother is a wise woman. She understands Ottoman ways. The First
Kadin
gave the Sultan only one living son. All the rest have died in the womb. I believe there is something wrong with her insides. With me, he now has three more sons and the succession is assured.”

“But my brother Mustafa . . .” Saida had lost her poise in the labyrinth of this conversation.

“Your half-brother Mustafa is the Crown Prince. The heir. And if it is the will of Allah, he will succeed his father when our beloved Sultan is . . . I cannot bring myself to say the words.”

“May God grant him many more years of health and strength,” Saida finished her sentence for her. But the princess’s mind was flooded with questions she dared not ask. There had been no mention of the other
kadins
. Or of the Valide Sultan. “What will happen to the harem?” she blurted out.

It was Hürrem’s turn to be confused. “The harem? Nothing will happen to the harem,” she replied. “It will remain in the Old Palace. All I’m thinking of is a special place for our family here in Topkapi Palace. And, by the way, if you are concerned about tradition, I must tell you that until a few decades ago, there were always women in Topkapi Palace. Did you know that?”

Indeed, Saida did not. And Hürrem was only too pleased to enlighten her. The Russian might not be literate, but she had made it her business to acquaint herself with the customs of her sultan’s people.

“You seem to think that my plan is some dangerous innovation. But in fact it is the revival of a tradition almost one hundred years old. Understand this,” she continued with a wag of the finger. “From the day your honorable ancestor, Mehmet, completed his palace — from the very first day — rooms were set aside for particular women that the Conqueror wished to keep close to him.

Believe me, Princess, I know my history. You have my word on it. There have always been women in Topkapi Palace.”

11

IN THE COACH

The Second
KADIN’S
research was faultless. There had always been women in Topkapi: unacknowledged, unofficial, but ever present. On the day that Mehmet, the Conqueror of Constantinople, decamped from his old palace in the middle of the city and removed himself to Palace Point, rooms were quietly set aside in his new palace for visits from his girls. He took with him to Topkapi his kitchens and his stables and his treasury and the school for his pages and his Great Council, the
divan
, and his cooks and his grooms and his household troops and his wardrobe and his dressers and his tasters and his barbers and his kennels and his hospital and, of course, his doctors. But his harem, the dwelling place of his women and children, he pointedly left behind in the Old Palace under the watchful eye of his mother, the Valide Sultan.

The Prophet himself declared,
Heaven lies beneath the feet of thy mother
. A man could have many wives and many slaves. He could cast off the unwanted ones and take others at will. But he could have only one mother. She occupied a unique place that nothing could alter save death. Who, then, could better be entrusted with his most valued personal possession — his women? Under the watchful eyes of a succession of Valides, girls from all corners of Asia, Europe, and the Ottoman Empire — taken as booty or sold into slavery by their parents or bestowed on the Sultan as gifts — were selected, groomed, educated, and finally presented to the Sultan by his mother for his approval. His selection having been made for him, he would then pay a visit to his harem for an afternoon dalliance.

But no man, least of all the Shadow of God on Earth and Master of Two Seas and Three Continents, relished being forced to mount a horse and ride halfway across a city just to spend an hour or two of pleasure. Or to announce the visit twenty-four hours in advance as protocol proscribed. Or to go through the elaborate ritual that these visits entailed: the girls lined up to greet him, to sing and dance for him, to joke with him, to serve him sherbets made with their own hands — much as he might love sherbet.

Then came the business of having to choose one girl over the rest and, after that, the interminable wait while the chosen one was washed and oiled, her body scraped free of every trace of hair with a sharpened mussel shell, her nails dyed, her underarms hennaed to ward off any sweat that might be generated by the act to come, Allah forbid. In spite of the Sultan’s exalted status as the Unique Arbiter of the World’s Destiny, the harem had its customs and there was nothing the Sultan could do to speed up the process but sit patiently sipping sherbet with his mother.

Before the reign of the Conqueror, things were different. The first Turkoman tribes who filtered down from Mongolia over the steppes of Central Asia were simple nomadic people seeking pasture land for their flocks. While searching for fresh fodder, they became aware of the riches passing along the Anatolian trade routes — silks, spices, and furs. Almost at once, the welfare of their herds began to take second place to the rich rewards of raiding for plunder. To these so-called march warriors, raiding soon became the business of life and booty, the prize. For them, home was now more often the saddle than the tent. In this uncertain world, the harem evolved as a haven where tribes of march warriors could sequester their women safely during their long absences.

In those early days, the Osmans were one of many tribes allied in a loose Turkic brotherhood ideally suited to casual brigandage. But the push westward soon had them nibbling at the boundaries of the Seljuk Empire, a vast territory that stretched from the mountains of Central Asia to the ancient ports of the Aegean Sea. Gathering around them a makeshift army composed of raiders, landless peasants, shepherds in arms, Sufis, and misfits, the Osman tribe began a westward trek that swept aside everything in its path. And somewhere on the long trek from the Caucasus to the Aegean, the Osman
beys
renounced their shamanism and became
ghazis
, fighters for the glory of Islam.

They were chewing up the old Roman Empire as if at a feast. Then down from his Asian stronghold galloped their fellow-Mongol, the dreaded Tamerlane. Like a thunderbolt, he decimated the Osman army, executed their sultan, and turned his sultana into a slave. By everyone’s measure, this ignominious defeat spelled the certain destruction of all Osman hopes. Yet in an astonishing show of resilience, a new Osman leader, Mehmet, arose from the ashes to repel the Mongol hordes. Then poised on the far western edge of Asia, Mehmet brought his army face to face with Christian Europe at its eastern extremity: Byzantium.

The outcome was inevitable. Constantinople had never recovered from its brutal sack by the marauding armies of the Fourth Crusade. Weakened to the point of paralysis by their Christian brethren, the Byzantines proved no match for the hungry Turkomen. Converging on the capital from north, south, east, and west, the battle-hardened central Asians drove from the field the last viable military remains of the once mighty Eastern Roman Empire. A pitiful remnant withdrew to the safety of their capital, Constantinople, to await the coup de grâce. On Tuesday, May 29 of the year 1453, Mehmet the Second captured the ancient city of Constantinople, renaming it Istanbul and erasing the last trace of a Christian presence in Asia.