That bitter fruit, the Quince, suited the woman better than even the most heartless of mothers would have thought to name a daughter at birth. There was, in fact, something of Sofia’s old aunt about the woman, the aunt having had the aspect of a crab apple, and this one the greener but no less astringent cast of quince. But her aunt’s true nature had been so compressed by the wimple and enforced maidenhood it was hard to tell what she might have been if left to herself. With the Quince, there was no guessing. She was just the way God made her—and she had probably overruled Him on any count that mattered.
Very little gray showed under the woman’s plain, no-nonsense caplet that was tied to her head at an angle more careless than rakish with a silk scarf. The silk was the green of olives. Anyone with any care for appearances would have told her that even a border of gold sequins could not keep this color from accentuating the similar sallow green of her own complexion.
Still, the black of the Quince’s hair declared her to be younger than the acidity in her eyes at first betrayed. No honey of social grace could mask the bite of those eyes. Had she thought about it, Sofia might have realized that such unrelieved tartness came from much unromantic staring death in the face. Death—and life as well, for who was to say which could disabuse a woman sooner?
The Quince smelled of her namesake as well: the vague scent of linens packed for the winter among lavender, cloves, wormwood, and ripening fruit. Her black hair continued down into her face: not only upper lip and chin were covered by a decided brush, but the quince-fuzz made ingress to the cheeks as well.
There were many reasons for harem nicknames. Why should it be not so when each one had been winnowed by a hundred female tongues? But this Sofia had no way of knowing vet, and was not likely to learn as long as the wall of language stood between them.
To the end of breaching that wall, the Quince pushed the second woman forward. Without the push, it was clear, she never would have come forward on her own. The reason for such reticence was evident at first glance. At some point in her early life, this second woman had contracted smallpox. She had survived the disease, making her one of the lucky ones, although the ruin it had made of her face might give her cause to doubt that fortune. The pustules had littered her cheeks with craters, swelled one side grotesquely and eaten up half her nose and as well as every hint of eyelash.
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.
