But she’d think, That’s where all you men keep your brains. One cut takes it all.
Esmikhan also had the best of luck with her husband. The Vizier, unlike Prince Murad, was already at the peak of his powers. Sokolli Pasha often held meetings of highest state right there under Esmikhan’s innocent little nose. That’s another reason why it was good to visit the princess as often as possible.
It was just as well that Esmikhan was no more sensitive to her blessings than to call them “the will of Allah.” If she were, poor girl, she would really be a force to reckon with. More than courtesy visits and a midwife would be needed to deal with her.
Safiye had offered Murad’s sister a great sum for that eunuch. She’d had her prince offer even more. Esmikhan had merely laughed a silly little laugh and refused to sell him “for anything in the world.” Safiye wouldn’t be at all surprised if the eunuch himself had something to do with that refusal. Esmikhan, left alone, would do anything to please. Anything.
On the other hand, Veniero, though smart, might not prove biddable enough. Indeed, he showed only signs of rebellion. Towards anyone but Esmikhan.
No, Safiye decided, she had better keep looking. She would find some khadim, intelligent but perfectly beholden to her as well. Courage, too, would not go amiss; he should be willing to die for her. Such criteria were easier expressed than met. Her beauty, the key to most of her power over men as well as women—women usually made quick treaty with her open threat—seemed to have but uneven effect on the sexless.
With such thoughts—and a sigh—Safiye made herself move from one velvet-lined box to another, the harem roomier but no less confining than the sedan.
From the sedan through this long passage, a woman had to remain veiled. She took them blind, these uneven stone floors and surprisingly stepped thresholds, plunging from the light of the yard into the narrow, windowless corridor. Safiye negotiated it only by the knowledge of frequent use and by passing from hand to flaccid hand of the ever-present colonnade of eunuchs.
And by the sounds. The brassy, open, official, tantalizing sounds of the Second Court milling for the session of the Sultan’s Divan grew fainter and more unreal as if being gargled by this throat of marble and tile. And then swallowed completely by the rhythmic lash—heard almost as frequently—of punishment dispensed in the eunuch’s courtyard.
Then Safiye realized what sound was missing today. The whistle and beat of the scourge was unaccompanied by any lament from the tortured. Brushing aside the next pair of guiding hands, she took an unguided turn to the left. Stopping to adjust her eyes to a return to light as she stepped to the edge of the eunuch’s courtyard, she watched. The shadow of a plan condensed in her brain.
VI
Six free-standing columns opened onto the eunuch’s yard. Their gray stone capitals, sharply, newly carved with lotuses in relief, declared them to be the exquisite work of Sinan, the imperial architect. Incongruously, a rough wooden canopy hazarded against them, protecting the tilework and the dormitory rooms on the southern wall from extremes of weather. And under this canopy, Safiye saw a pair of great black eunuchs, bulls more than men, rhythmically executing the grim punishment.
The other eunuchs, whites, who were supposed to be guiding Safiye forward to her own rooms, had a keen interest in their black brothers’ proceedings. With their tall, sugarcone hats, fur-lined robes in cinnamon red and candied-violet blue, their too-sweet smells, they seemed to be confections, left in the sun and melted to the spot. They ceased paying any attention whether their other veil-wrapped charges tripped and fell while scurrying through the dark passage to the inner chambers. And they made no grunt of protest when Safiye stopped to watch along with them.
One of their own, lying on his back at such an angle that Safiye couldn’t see his face, had his legs hoisted up and caught in the wooden bastinado stocks. The black eunuchs laid onto his naked soles with thin, whip-like canes.
This was a preferred form of punishment for odalisques: they might not be able to walk for a month afterwards, but their beauty remained intact. Ten blows was a good number for women; the most recalcitrant rarely required more than fifteen to learn proper obedience.
But Safiye counted twenty lashes as she stood and watched before she gave up counting. The victim was not a black man. White, or rather, earth-colored, tawny, like a lion. His publishers’ reeds caught bits of bruised and swollen pink flesh. Tiny droplets of blood arced up and behind the bullmen’s dark, felty heads with each swing of their great black arms. But still there was no sound from the victim. The shudders that ran through his prone body seemed due more to the vigor of the blows than to his own quailing.
“Come away, my Fair One.” Nur Banu was at Safiye’s elbow, speaking gently. “This is not a scene you need to watch. It may linger with you and spoil you for my son’s bed tonight.”
This concern for the sensibilities of Murad’s favorite was something Nur Banu hadn’t shown in a long while. Jealousy and competition had welled up too divisively between the two women; Safiye knew Murad’s mother could see her only as a supplanter. Safiye, in one part of her mind, knew she should accept the overture with open arms. She had been waiting for just such a move, looking for the chance to make one of her own. It was not helpful to have the harem’s head woman so constantly at odds with her, suspecting every move she made.
But the spectacle before her wiped all good intentions from Safiye’s mind. “Who is he?” she asked, and budged no
