Sofia couldn’t tell Turkish labeling from the elaborate tendrils that twined about the pharmacopeia, but her nose was assailed by the smells of their contents. Sweet cloves and cinnamon, sharp garlic and bitter gentian. There were the darker odors of moss, clay, and virgins’ blood, as if she’d walked into the very heart of her own pelvis. Animal parts preserved in brine—all slaked with a wash of alcohol. For ever after, the sharp, clean odor of alcohol would return the scene to Sofia’s mind, the scene and the pervading sense of power.
She had seen apothecaries before, of course. There was even a sister in the convent. The Quince’s domain differed on two counts. The first was that any Venetian herbalist, when he wanted to praise a remedy as the best, most powerful of its kind, most fail-proof, even bordering on black magic, would never hesitate to dress it up in adjectives indicating “secret of the East,” “the Muslim’s cure,” “ripe with the wisdom of the most wise Avicenna.” Turks, from Avicenna down, were known to be the most skilled physicians in the world. The wealthiest Western noblemen hired them when they could, and here she was, Sofia Baffo, in the presence of one who treated Eastern nobility. The Quince had no need to point elsewhere for her justification.
The second impressive point was that this was a woman. The best medicine in Venice came from men, for women were never allowed in medical universities, in Padua or Seville. The convent herbalist made it clear—and Father Confessor behind her made it clear as well—that she was only good for the day-to-day comfort of women. Serious ills required male power and a man would certainly be called when they occurred.
There was none of this in the Quince’s air. She was the best money could buy and she knew it. Ironically, a great deal of her confidence came from the harem walls and the close society they created. Here, plainly, even if more serious disease did crop up, a man could never be resorted to.
And now this woman was going to work a miracle and make Sofia impervious to smallpox.
Ever after, when she’d smell alcohol, Sofia would remember the sense of power in that room. A shiver would run down her spine every time she thought of it, remembering having to strip naked in that unheated room. Remembering the Quince’s scrutiny of her. And remembering all that power focused on her unprotected skin. This, for once in her life, was not power she could aspire to. A power of life and death, a power to thwart even the almighty will of God. She shivered again for neither cold nor nakedness.
But she could aspire to make such power subservient to her own.
“Engraft away!” she ordered.
“We usually do this in the fall,” the Quince described as she made her preparations.
Sofia sat and waited with a quilt about her shoulders on a small cot with Faridah translating beside her.
“After the hot weather is past is the best time, but Nur Banu Kadin agreed with me that we were early enough in the season that there will be no complications.”
“Inshallah,” Faridah added.
“And that your beauty was too precious a thing to trust to the tender mercies of a summer.”
The Quince went on. “All those to be engrafted—children around seven or eight are our prime subjects, but all the new girls, too. All these we usually take on something of an outing to the Sweet Waters of Europe. It is a diversion. Women ask their friends, ‘Shall we take the children to get smallpox next week?’ much as they may ask them to come for sherbet.”
“I can hardly believe such a thing,” Sofia said, fishing for assurances.
“Well, you wouldn’t. Men don’t know the secret, actually. No male physician could engraft you. The secret is kept among women, and mothers get their sons protected before they leave the harem, before they can remember just what happened to them.”
The Quince had availed herself of a large, sharp needle which she heated over her lamp. In her left hand, she held a walnut shell filled with a yellow, pus-like matter.
“The best smallpox,” the midwife described it. “Sometimes we have to send for it from quite a distance, although the foreign communities in Constantinople are usually able to provide. Sealing it in a shell keeps it from drying out before it is needed. There is cowpox here, too, taken from the udders of cows. It was the observation that maids who milked cows with the pox were immune to the pox themselves that first taught my teachers this method.
“Now, the Greek Christians,” she went on, “when they perform this engrafting, believe one should mark each arm, the breast and the middle of the forehead as a sign of their cross. But as each place I touch with this needle will leave a scar, I prefer to let the forehead alone. And the breast where a lover may rest his head. Let the Christians have their superstition. I will mark four spots instead, one on each hip and on each arm. Believe me, if the master gets so far with you, he will not contain himself for a little dimple in each of these places.”
The Quince eased down the quilt and made a quick jab at Sofia’s right arm. The newest slave flinched, but it was no more painful than a scratch. Then the midwife gathered up as much of the pus as would fit on the end of the needle and smeared it into the blood beading at the wound. The application was a little cold, but it didn’t sting. Faridah helped to cup the place with another walnut half which she bound on with linen strips. They repeated the process on each limb and then Sofia was allowed to get
