“Really! Such a young servant! Does he know his duties at all?”
“It is not a question of duties,” another voice chimed in, brimming with delight. “Such a young one, of such handsome face and features! I wonder if he is to guard Esmikhan or to woo her!”
“In my father’s harem,” fussed a stern old hag, “we were given no guard until he was clearly passed his prime or had been well disfigured by the pox. There is a tradition of the Prophet to support such caution. I know. My father was...”
“Sokolli Pasha is so old,” said yet another, nearly hiccoughing with giggles, “that he has sent another man to be groom for him in his place.”
Now the whole hall shrieked with laughter and the sweet young voice of my mistress cried out above them all, “Silence, for the love of Allah.” But they laughed more all the same.
“Where are your eunuchs, ladies?” I managed to gasp. “Is a fistfight such a novelty to you that you can only stand and stare?”
I sparred to the right, but caught the wall behind my opponent instead. “For the love of Allah”—I took a blow to the face and felt the blood swelling at the base of my nose that made my voice sound nasally—”call your eunuchs.” Then I got in a pair of good ones, cleverly fending off a jab to the kidneys. “Tell them to pull him off me”—next I got a hold on the prince’s arm, which he only escaped by ripping the fine damask of his caftan’s sleeve—”or I will do him harm.”
“Do me harm, will you?” The young prince choked with rage and hit me such a blow to the jaw that I was speechless after that. “We’ll see who does the most harm.”
“Ah, Veniero, Veniero!” Safiye’s Italian rose above all the rest. She stood, wringing the corner of her flimsy costume which was, for her, earnest concern. “This isn’t a convent, my dear Veniero. This is a harem. Don’t you know by now that to be found in another man’s harem is death?”
The mortification that she had known me in my former strength (which was, in fact, a weakness, groveling at her feet) was enough to invigorate me to get the prince by the shoulders in a strong hold and keep him there. This same emotion pushed into my throat and could be heard in my next words.
“And don’t you, my beautiful Sofia, know how to tell a eunuch from a man?” I forgot all Italian then and said it in Turkish so there’d be no mistake. “Even now, you look for secret lovers in castrati such as myself? Sofia Baffo, I am a eunuch. Thanks to you—” I turned to the prince. “Master, I have no designs on your women. I am a khadim.”
XXXIX
“Come here to the light and let me have a look at what you’ve done to yourself.”
In her own room, Esmikhan Sultan led me by the hand as gently as a child to the lamp that swung on a chain from a low beam.
“That eye will not be good.” She set me on the divan and leaned over to inspect. Attar of roses escaped her bosom as she did so with a scent that was noticeable even through the clots of blood forming in my nose. “And your lip is already swelling.”
With a few quick orders, she sent her maid scurrying off for the equipment that shortly allowed her to sponge my wounds with warm water smelling of steeped comfrey and myrrh. The odor of disinfectant brought back a nightmare of events I had to push from my mind with a physical gesture as if I were struggling with the prince once again. Esmikhan Sultan sat back and waited for the pain to pass me. She said nothing, but the sympathy in her eyes brought me more quickly into control.
“You know, ustadh, I haven’t named you yet.”
As if I were a puppy; I stiffened at the thought.
“I’m sorry,” my lady said. “I meant to warn you it might sting. I’ll try to be more gentle.”
I couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t her ministrations that made me flinch. I tried to relax my hand back into hers as she dabbed at my knuckles that had missed her brother’s face and hit the stone wall behind him instead.
“Lulu,” she announced. “I’ve always wanted to name my first khadim Lulu. Lulu if he was white, Sandal if he was black.”
“For the love of Allah!” The words escaped me. “Not Lulu.”
My lady blinked in surprise, as she would have if a puppy—or even an infant—had protested at his naming. I closed my eyes with renewed horror at my situation. These pampered women considered their eunuchs at the mercy of their wills no less than they did infants and puppies. I could not endure it.
“You don’t like Lulu?”
I was incapable of answering such unfeigned astonishment.
“It means a pearl and I thought—Pearl for a white, Sandal, the sweet-smelling wood, for a black. We always name our eunuchs such names. Don’t you know? Hyacinth, Narcissus. For precious metals or perfumes.
“You don’t like Lulu.” She repeated the idea in an attempt to convince herself. “You looked so much like a beautiful, rare pearl when I first saw you this afternoon.” She laughed a little as she gently daubed at my blackening eye. “I must admit you don’t look much like one now. More like blotchy marble. Or a carbuncle. Shall you go through life with the name Carbuncle?”
“My name is Giorgio Veniero.” I hissed at the sting of pronouncing a dead patronym.
My lady rocked back on her heels and blinked at the sounds in incomprehension. That eunuchs should have names—or lives, even—beyond what their mistresses gave them was clearly novel to her.
“Giorgio Veniero,” I repeated. “Veniero.”
She made a couple of attempts at the foreign syllables, making them sound like the sort of disease my uncle once caught from whores. By San Marco, she was simple, protected so unnaturally
