The Sultan's Daughter (36 page)

And yet, what right had I, a Venetian, and Ferhad, born an Albanian, to second-guess the will of the God of these people among whom we were strangers? And Esmikhan, though the daughter of the Sultan, had a Circassian mother. No doubt even she was undeserving of a special dispensation from this God’s age-old laws. Such thoughts kept the more rebellious ones in check.

Then, however, I thought of the sanction I had received—or thought I had received—from Husayn. A wandering dervish is considered by all to be the most beloved of Allah.

“Sometimes the man of Allah can best fulfill the will of the Merciful One not by obeying His laws but by breaking them.”

Still, I was not certain Husayn’s vision was altogether holiness. Sometimes, I feared, it was madness, too.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday came, following one another as they have since the world began. Saturday night. I surveyed my defenses as the general of a besieged town might walk along the parapet on the eve of an attack. I had insisted that my seconds keep watch through the night, waking in shifts so if the slightest noise came from the grille between the worlds, they would hear it. I tested the doors and the windows as if the enemy might try to break in with battle-axes. No, all was safe. The siege would be lifted tomorrow. We, the defenders, leaving rather than the attackers. And the only weakness was in my heart.

I went to bid my lady good night and found her weak with tears. She lay in the arms of the governor’s wife and his daughters, who had vowed to spend the night with her. They thought it was leaving them that caused her such sorrow and were doing everything they could to return the compliment to so great a lady.

I helped the slaves bring out bedding and went to lower the lights, but Esmikhan protested that she had no wish for sleep that night, and darkness would only haunt her more. Then I sat on, helpless, having no desire to return to my lonely room to face my conscience burdened by her flushed face and eyes, so puffy and bruised they looked as if someone had been beating her.

Outside the lattice at the window to her room, a nightingale began to sing. It was the first any of us had heard that year—sweet warbling like the quaver of a sob—and we all held our breath at the cool evening beauty of it. Poets say that the nightingale is the rose’s lover, but the two can never meet, for the rose is guarded by jealous thorns. Hence, the exquisite sadness of the bird’s song.

Had I not known it was impossible, I would have sworn this wild creature was the final farewell message of Ferhad to his own well-guarded beloved.

I have never heard a poet call the song of the nightingale the voice of Elias, and perhaps that would be considered blasphemy, but that is what it suddenly became to me. Seeming neither mortal nor yet quite divine, it taught me, or rather made me remember what I had learned the first time I stood in a head eunuch’s room and saw the two doors. Being neither male nor female, I was yet able to unite the two and make them whole. What power was there! It was divine, I could call it no other: to bring together what men had torn asunder, to create harmony out of discord and joy out of sorrow. By imposing the harem and all other separations between His creatures according to class, race, nationality, and species, Allah had created the discord and sorrow. Though these were necessary, they were only to teach us the opposites. If the work and glory of the God of Islam were not to finally show compassion and mercy, then I understood nothing of my adopted religion, nor of the one I had abandoned either.

The bird’s song also had a profound effect upon my lady, but, because she was only half of a whole, it sent her into a pit of even greater despair. She was too weak to give anymore force to her tears so they collapsed in upon her, and I thought perhaps she had fainted. The governor’s wife and her daughters cried out with sympathetic sorrow, and began to bathe my lady’s wrists and forehead with rosewater and rue.

I spoke to them, matching my words to the rhythm I heard from the nightingale. “Perhaps, my gracious hostess, it would be better if I spent the night with my lady. It would be less wearing upon your delicate selves and less sorrowful for her.”

The women were shocked and hurt. Would I deprive them of these last hours of joy and companionship? I, nothing but a cold, dowdy eunuch who can never have known true attachment even as they enjoyed between the same sex?

I was too sure of myself to be hurt by their words. I was sure and, though the others missed it, Esmikhan must have felt my confidence. She opened her eyes and met mine with the first look of interest I had seen from her in days. I replied to that look with one of calm—one might almost say pious—resolve and she sensed that, too. She found the strength to raise to her elbows and, when her attendants tried to stop her, to push them away.

“Leave us. Just a few minutes,” she begged of them. “I will certainly call you back if I need you.”

The women left with many doubting and grumbling glances backward. The maids, too, were waved out of the room, then my lady sat right up and asked, “Will you, Abdullah?”

“It is not a question of my will but of Allah’s,” I said. “But I will do what I can.”

I left her then at once and found Ferhad sitting with our host in the selamlik.

“Why, Abdullah!” the governor greeted me. “You are just in time. Ferhad has finally agreed to join me in a glass of wine. He actually asked for it. I did not press him at all. Will you join us?”

Ferhad raised his goblet to me, giving me all the credit for his fall from perfect discipline like a naughty boy blaming his comrades. When he took a sip, I could tell he did not enjoy the burn of alcohol, but he thought it might help him face what the morrow would bring. Even at the rate he was going, I knew I had to stop him soon or he would be of no use to himself or to my lady. I politely declined our host’s invitation, and then I was inspired to say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just had a small request. It is such a little thing, it can wait ‘til we get to Constantinople. My master has a good knowledge of Persian.”

“What is it, Abdullah?” the governor demanded.

“Nothing, really. Only my lady was reading some poetry and the poet makes too many classical Persian allusions for her to manage it on her own. The poem is very beautiful—an old one about the nightingale and his beloved rose—but unfortunately we can’t quite make sense of it. I have the manuscript in my room and..”

“I’m afraid my Persian was all learned in the barracks.” The governor laughed.

“But I have had experience with the poets,” Ferhad said. I had guessed both answers before I asked.

“But I can see you are not in the mood,” I said.

“I don’t know...” Ferhad began.

“If sometime tonight you do feel you could spare the time. I’ll be awake all night alone in my room with the manuscript. I have packing to do…”

I bowed to leave but even as I did, I saw that the young spahi, so used to making cryptic love messages of his own, had had no trouble reading through mine. He set down his goblet and was abruptly his former, stalwart, hopeful self.

Back in the harem, I discovered that my lady had put on a fresh gown of deep pink and red that became her so well. She had also washed her face and fixed her hair. Had I not seen her just half an hour before with my own eves, I would have found it hard to believe such a drastic change could come over anyone. But still, she was not altogether of one mind. The same thoughts and fears that had been plaguing me for months were now transferred to her.

“What if... “ she said, and that beginning was finished in the pause by everything from…
he should not come or coining, should not find me to his liking?
to...
we should be discovered? It is death to commit adultery
. But such thoughts only added to the thrills that swept cold up her back and then fired her cheeks at intervals.

For my part, I was calmer than I had been in all those months. The decisions were now all out of my hands and I felt wonderfully free. I took her hand and pressed it, and she surprised me with a little kiss on the cheek. Then I left the room as if to use the lavatory. When I returned, Esmikhan’s room was empty. I thought I would be nervous, waiting up like a mother whose daughter is undergoing the test of virginity on her bridal night. I thought I would start at every sound, expecting any moment to be discovered. But I blew out the lights, unwound my sash, set aside my dagger, and climbed into the bedding as if I were in my own room. I fell asleep almost instantly, exhausted with relief, and I do not think I have slept better since.

I returned to my room when I awoke in the morning. My bedding was neatly folded as if it had not been touched, but in the air was the definite, though delicate smell of sex, so incongruous in a eunuch’s room. I opened the window and it faded at once without a trace—like dew before sunlight. The nightingale gives way to the morning lark.

Never have I seen my lady so radiant as when I held the curtain for her to climb into her sedan to begin our long trip home. That that night had been one of a kind did not matter. She had been loved and cherished truly and completely and that was more than she had ever hoped to enjoy in her life. Our hostesses must have been somewhat insulted by the cheer with which she could leave them now it was day. Esmikhan was so full of joy that she sang. The notes carried through the sedan walls and lightened the porters’ steps. I think it was even heard by Ferhad who, on pretense of a morning ride, saw us some little way out of town.

The good humor lasted for days; we made excellent time and it rubbed off on the whole party, including the maids, who were remarkably free from quarrels and grumblings about having to be kept cooped up so long.

Whatever happens,
I told myself,
I shall never regret having done this for her.

Such good moods, no more than spells of good weather, cannot be expected to last forever. But this one seemed to—over two weeks—and it was only stopped by something very physical. My mistress suddenly became violently ill. We stopped for a few days but she showed no signs of recovery, even with the best attendance. Finally she insisted that we try to continue, in spite of the fact that we had to stop every hour or so for her to spill her insides over the Turkish landscape. This even when there was nothing in her stomach but sour fluid to spill.

At first I thought it must be bad water, but none of the rest of us got it, and spring, when the water sources are cool and swollen with melting snow, is hardly the season for dysentery. I did not know what to think, only began to fear what the master might learn or guess. Instead of the bright, blooming rose promised him from the gardens of Konya, what I brought him was faded and brittle instead, as if it had spent the entire journey crushed in the bottom of a saddlebag.

At last we arrived in Constantinople, four days late instead of early as our progress at first had led me to hope. As soon as I saw my lady comfortable in her old haremlik again, I prepared to go to the selamlik to carry to the master the news of our safe arrival, but also to warn him that his wife was in no condition to receive him.

“No, no, Abdullah. You must not tell him that,” Esmikhan said. “You must tell him I will see him as soon as it is convenient for him.”

“But my lady. You are so weak you can hardly walk.”

“Still, I must. I must appear as healthy and as desirable as possible.”

She made an attempt here to sit up and look in at least middling health. My face, I suppose, betrayed severe doubt, for she said, “Oh, Abdullah! Do you know so little about the woman you are meant to guard, that you cannot tell when she is pregnant?”

“My lady,” I said in disbelief and then came up with a reason not to believe. “You were never this sick before.”

“That is because this time it will live. I know it, Abdullah. Allah has answered my prayers.”

“And sent you your wish by an illegal love.”

“Yes,” she said, without a note of regret.

“Then you must meet with the master. By Allah, even tonight, and he may grow suspicious.”

“Yes,” Esmikhan said, but there was still no fear or doubt. It was all very dutifully matter-of-fact.

As soon as we could do it without arousing suspicion, and when her sickness had eased off a bit, I went with my lady to break the good news to the others in the imperial harem. It was to be an afternoon spent pleasantly with cool drinks and gossip. The old Quince would perform all her magics by which she made babies strong and well-favored and by which she could tell the sex and the fortune. In return, Esmikhan would tell them every detail of the pilgrimage. Some favored few might even be taken by the elbow and honored, in a corner apart, with the full story of the answer to her prayers.

Esmikhan was at once sorry not to see Safiye among the women that greeted her with hugs and kisses on both cheeks. “And where is my Safiye’s sweet little baby? Why, he must be a big boy by now—over two years old. How I wish to see them both!”

“Ooh, haven’t you heard?” One of the girls could not blush and keep quiet like the rest. “Prince Murad has arrived in the city this morning, totally against his father’s wishes.”

Now there was no use for discretion and all the others joined in: “He has abandoned his sandjak.”

“Rode day and night.”

“Safiye refused all his entreaties to join him in Magnesia.”

“Even after the child had grown.”

“They say,” giggled a maid, “the prince is quite out of his mind with desire.”

“That girl,” Nur Banu muttered like the plunge of an icicle from the eaves. I sensed a new cool hatred there, more than just a mild jealousy that her son had not called for her to join him in the mabein that afternoon as well.

At this point one of the lesser officials of the palace eunuchs drew me aside and made a request. It seemed that the veal—that special food of eunuchs which is supposed to keep us as tender as young cattle and not fire us like the red, full-grown meat men eat—had been tainted last night. Now nearly all the staff was too sick to walk, including the officers down to this man. Even he was the color of limestone with a greenish cast. My lady would be safe here in the heart of the harem, he said, but would I be so good as to come and lend a hand in the halls near the mabein? It would not be so bad if they were deserted as they had been for months, but since the young prince Murad had so suddenly arrived, there was much activity that had to be monitored.