I idly glanced over to see what had caught her and the baby’s attention. Esmikhan had found a scrap of paper concealed inside the locket. She opened the paper, looked at both sides, then shrugged and folded it again.
“My very sweet mountain stream, I think it is nothing. Only scribbling. Or it is a magic spell which, I pray Allah, you may never have need of.”
Esmikhan quickly snapped the paper back in the locket lest uninitiated use of such magic cause bad luck. But before she had time to return the locket to the box, it was snatched a little too roughly from her—by the Kira.
“I’m sorry, most gracious Esmikhan Sultan,” Esperanza Malchi said. “This particular piece is not for sale.”
“I was only curious about what was inside...”
“It is nothing,” the Kira said, and put the locket, instead of back into the box, into her bosom.
“There, see, I told you, honey blossom. It is nothing.” These words gave the impression the world is really good, kind, and free from all intrigue. My lady lied.
The rest of the women had followed the Kira back to the divan and took up their places again. The ruby necklace, I discovered, had found its way around Safiye’s neck.
I was not surprised. How to describe Safiye to those who never saw her? Lover to my lady’s brother. Prince Murad, heir to the Ottoman throne. Mother of his only son to date, Muhammed, who was three years old. This mundane recital of functions falls far short. That she was the most beautiful woman in the world, even seven years after I first fell under her spell in a convent garden in Venice, I was not alone in believing. Brown eyes as cool as autumn leaves, a promiscuity of golden hair, skin as flawless and unchanging as marble. Tall and wallow, she had movements like a ribald song.
And beneath these features lay a soul with perfections of its own. Perfect in ambition, perfectly unflinching of either love or mercy to gain its own ends. Like demon-cold at midnight, she took the breath away.
The exorcism I had undergone to break her spell over me was hardly something I would recommend to the rest of her victims. What the tumble from Venetian seaman to harem eunuch had left me, I’d only just begun to call a life again.
Suffice it to say that Safiye—whom I’d once known as Sofia Baffo—got everything she wanted. My purpose was simply to see that what she got cost nothing more of me, nor more of those souls who, in spite of everything, had become so dear to me.
As far as I was concerned, Safiye could have the Kira’s ruby necklace. It sat against the white flesh of her neck as if it had seeped there from the inside, as if alabaster could really bleed.
“Send the bill to Prince Murad, Magnesia,” Safiye said, admiring herself in a mirror, “for I shall have this.”
“How dare you!” Nur Banu was livid.
Nur Banu had been Sultan Selim’s lover—once upon a time—and had produced Murad, his first-born son. As such, she was nominal head of the imperial harem. Her four hundred ghrush had bought the golden-haired Venetian beauty for her son’s bed. Safiye, of course, had long ago outstripped the older woman’s tutelage. Nur Banu was the only one who still attempted to contain the natural force she’d unwittingly loosed upon the world.
“How dare you demand such things of my son?” Nur Banu asked. “You refused to spend more than three months with him this winter. And half that time you were on the road.”
Safiye smoothed the pearl-button closure of her yelek across her flat abdomen: the unconscious gesture I knew from my lady when she was with child. Was it possible Safiye had an additional reason to be smug about her trip to Magnesia?
She’d come through the birth of little Muhammed with beauty and power unscathed, the latter enhanced here in the East in ways she had not quite appreciated before. If one prince was a good thing, two must be twice as good. So such a condition was possible, even though my lady had no rumor of it yet and the tight, willowy figure didn’t show.
I reminded myself I was a eunuch, with but abbreviated knowledge of such things. I returned my attention to the matter at hand.
Nur Banu was firing these words at her opponent: “I wonder my son doesn’t sell you and spare himself considerable expense.”
“He cannot sell the mother of his son.” Did only my ears hear the echo in Safiye’s voice that indicated, perhaps, two sons?
“Any more than he will marry her.”
“But forgive me, gracious lady.” Safiye’s contrition was obviously a mockery. “Had I known you admired this necklace so much, I never would have presumed to speak for it first. Though Allah knows why it interests you. Against your dark and blotchy skin it would be lost. But—very well—each one is allowed her own taste.” She reached behind her lovely neck for the clasp. “Please, Kira, send the bill to the Sultan himself and say, ‘For his favorite.’ “
This was followed by an awkward silence, for everyone, including the Kira, knew that whoever Selim’s present favorite was—and it was as likely to be a boy he bought rubies for as a girl—it was not Nur Banu. The mother of his eldest son, she had her food and household expenses paid for, but any extravagance was out of the question.
Dramatically, in the silence, Safiye slipped her hands forward and to her lap. The silence persisted. Safiye smiled. The insults were glossed like cheap plating on tinware. The rubies stayed on Safiye’s neck.
Later, after we’d made our farewells, my lady pulled me close and whispered, “There was something written on that paper in the locket.”
“Something?”
“I’ve been able to think of nothing else since I saw it.”
“A Koranic verse, perhaps, to ward off the evil eye?”
“No, Abdullah. I have
