No doubt most women in Venice were the same. Safiye remembered the aches in her knees after a long convent vigil and remembered, too, that she must not think of “home” anymore. As long as inertia was expected of her, she could never really be settled in either place.
She tried to think where the blocks to her action were. The old man, surely. Sultan Suleiman, after a reign of over forty years, showed no signs of dying.
Idly, but not for the first time, Safiye wished him dead, just to see how the pieces might fall with that great keystone gone. Interesting chaos, ready for the swift and clever to form at their own will.
Her thoughts moved to the next step. Poison was the most obvious means for a woman to use on a man: quiet, easy of access, needing no physical strength or even incriminating contact.
And the Quince would provide.
Safiye, in the past months, had even checked on the dishes the Sultan preferred and how they were served—only to discover that he had incorruptible poison-tasters.
Damn these veils that kept her from using her wiles as lavishly as she’d like! Then she’d learned about the celadon porcelain on which every morsel the great lord ate was served. The pale grayish-green of its glaze would reportedly turn an incriminating black if it came in contact with anything the least bit unwholesome. Poison Safiye could consider, but her mind balked to face such magic.
Nur Banu used the same priceless ware.
In any case, having watched Suleiman as well as lattices and curtains would allow, Safiye—like most of the vast empire—could hardly imagine the world with him dead. The magnificent Shadow of the Faithful roved from one end of the greatest empire in the world to the other with an energy that would have worn down many a younger man. Indeed, it taxed Safiye’s intelligence to keep up with him in her mind. This season he was north, battering at the walls of Vienna. Next she heard, he was east, beating the insolence out of Persia’s Shah, the Grand Heretic, then ordering the movements of his corsairs out at sea and against her homeland. Now looking ‘round the Pillars of Hercules towards restoring Spain to his Faith, now south, against Yemeni or Ethiopian rebels. Or taking on the Portuguese for control of the Persian Gulf shipping routes to India.
Well could this magnificent man boast in his inscriptions: “In Baghdad I am the Shah en-Shah, in Byzantine realms the Caesar, and in Egypt the Sultan. Allah’s might and Muhammad’s miracles are my companions.”
She had observed him in procession on several occasions. Of course the face was not always easy to see within the press of crowds. Often she saw only the turban, the great turban which, in the blaze of sunlight, assaulted the eyes with the purity of its whiteness. Topped with royal heron feathers, it was nearly a third the size of the man himself. This bulbous creation was formed from fifteen lengths measured from the tip of the monarch’s nose to the end of his outstretched finger, fifteen lengths of the finest silk and linen woven together. And a du- plicate turban was also wound around the end of a pole and carried before him as he progressed, carried by some honored aga who made it bob and nod in recognition of the cheers so that everyone could think he got a good view.
But she had actually seen the man full on. Then his sharply hooked nose, eyes deeply sunken with wisdom into the tough, bony face, the sparse beard just graying that hid nothing of the force of his mouth and jaw—these had set her heart fluttering to the martial beat of his accompanying drums. Gossips told her he covered a sickly complexion with a red paste makeup, but she saw no sign of it, only a ruddy, healthy glow, tanned with the out-of-doors and vigorous activity.
And such splendor surrounded that face for the press of a hundred men in any direction that, it was said, more than a few men were made rich each time he passed. This was just from the gems knocked loose of their casings and casually left behind in the dust for the fortunate to bend and claim.
Although Safiye called him “the old man”—and worse—disparagingly and aloud any time she chose, to herself Suleiman was, in fact, an astonishingly magnificent piece of manhood. Even so little a thing as his arrival in Aleppo the previous fall for overwintering reverberated glory from the inner heart of the harem to the end of Christendom. She would leave the keystone in place, as a pattern of what she might attain. He deserved every honor the world showered on him—nay, more. How she wished to honor him herself—personally. If only to selfishly drink his splendor to her own.
“I wish I’d been bought for his bed.” Safiye sometimes couldn’t help but openly contradict herself. “Instead of just for his grandson’s, so now I can never know him.”
“No, you don’t,” Nur Banu always reminded her with a snap when such words were overheard. “He already has a son, a grown son, old enough to be your father. And a grandson. My son, and your lord and master. You just wait your time and do as you’re told.”
That was the hard part, the waiting. And waiting for this glorious Sultan’s death...Why, any son of his was much more likely to die first. Suleiman had, in fact, already buried three sons and the single heir left to him, Selim, didn’t seem much longer for the world.
Ah, here was the weakness. Prince Selim was a much more profitable chink to pick at in the bastion of Allah’s will. Upon first glance and, again, from a distance, Safiye had also been impressed by this presumptive sultan of forty as well as by his father. But now she saw easily through
