“Any other woman’s whims—like another heart’s veins are a mere distraction from my own.”
Safiye was relieved that the Quince interjected no more of her endless refrains. Here in this self-same harem room where she had snatched destiny, Baffo’s daughter could now feel little more than annoyance—at anything and everything.
The packing, the bundling up of a smooth, seamless life into any number of various, separate bundles—that annoyed her.
And there was the women’s chatter accompanied by two competing musical renditions, one vocal and sad, the other an instrumental for lively dancing. The plash and purl of an indoor fountain, in play for these warm spring evenings, contributed a third rhythm, all its own.
There were the crazily mingling scents of tulips and perfumes and sweets and sherbets, and a brazier smoking with sandalwood chips and ambergris at which three or four women were fumigating the folds of their garments.
The glint of jewels collided with rich fabrics and the explosions of color and noise that were the pet parrots—
All this tossed together, all collided, jarred, intensified, then was thrown back at the observer with double the force from the walls of tiles and mirrors.
The Quince spoke with an indulgent smile, as one might warn a child: “Nur Banu must call your retreat rudeness if not out and out insubordination.”
“At this moment, I don’t care.”
Safiye retreated into the mirror. Was this self-defense as she waited for the call from Prince Murad—and dissipation of another sort? Perhaps it was true, but she wouldn’t hear the Quince say it.
“Two years ago, Prince Murad’s mother paid four hundred kurush for a Venetian girl of breathtaking beauty, outbidding the Sultan himself. This is an investment Nur Banu hoped—in a most irreligious way—would gain value with the years, not slip from her control like so much quicksilver through her fingers. Insuring such devotion was no simple task. You must know that, having undertaken to work for loyalties among the women yourself, behind Nur Banu’s back.”
“I have to do something with my leftover garments: Murad, like his grandfather, is shown the honor of never seeing me in the same dress twice. I give them away.”
“Does it become tedious after so many months, this nudging of a man towards endless fascination?”
“What? Don’t you like tonight’s outfit? I liked the green flowered damask particularly well when I first saw it. But now you mention it, that was by daylight. Those saleswomen! It does lose something by lamplight. The colors muddy, somehow.”
“My heart, you would look beautiful in anything, and rags turn to riches by your touch.”
Safiye was silent, enjoying the sound of that flatters.
Presently, the Quince had to coax her out of her silence. “On whom will you shed tonight’s used petals, beloved rose of my garden?”
Safiye whispered, no louder than the sound of her hand over the damask’s nap: “Even with such gifts, I know never to trust over much beyond the rim of my own being.”
“The girls who are not favorites of one Ottoman male or another—with their own sources of riches—they have to dress in strict livery every day but holidays, don’t they? Novices in green, menials in a rust.”
“Nur Banu can tell at a glance who’s who, who’s out of place. A woman has to be in harem service a very long time before she’s allowed fur trim. Look! Those who have it wear it even on a warm evening such as tonight, to show off.”
“You are beyond that stricture in any case.”
“But I know most of what I give away has to be sold outside the palace for a little spending money.”
“Not what you give me. Everything you’ve ever given me I have still, in a special place, treasured.”
“You never wear them.”
“Dear heart, I never even wash them. They smell of you.”
Safiye laughed her knowing skepticism at such flattery. “When my gifts are sold, that limits their effect. And in any case, none of it has effect outside the harem.”
“Are you sure?”
“None that I can see.”
“Perhaps your own treatment of your lover’s mother teaches you that gifts are no hedge against treachery.”
“You don’t like Nur Banu, either.”
“No. An old—difference of opinion. Your dislike seems more tinged with—remorse or guilt, shall we say?”
“I am simply reminded that Nur Banu never sees Selim—her son’s own father—at all anymore. She cannot afford to be so self-sufficient. And her influence dies at the harem’s grate. Ah, when I am mistress of a harem of my own...”
All at once, Safiye found herself in the center of a profound hush, as if a gale had suddenly dropped. The parrots had reduced their chatter of Koranic verses and “Who’s the fairest of all?” to sporadic chuckles, throaty with the tension even they could feel. And Safiye knew that she had been addressed from somewhere outside the circle of her being and that she had failed to respond. Perhaps even her alabaster face had betrayed more of her thought than she usually hoped for. Or had the splash of fountain failed to keep her conversation to the Quince’s ears alone—?
Then Safiye saw what the intense concentration on herself had allowed her to ignore: that Nur Banu—who had left the entourage to twitch without her for a while like some beast with its heart torn out—Nur Banu had now returned to claim her place in the room.
IX
Nur Banu claimed the central seat on the divan—always left vacant in her absence—leaned back and draped one arm on the cushions to either side of her. Bracelets swagged with the elegance of silk from her arched wrists, one pearl-seeded slipper dangled with studied nonchalance from a single toe. Nur Banu was no longer young, though she seemed younger tonight than she had for a while, Safiye thought. And the cords in her neck, the slight sag of her cheeks—attended to, though no longer much aided by almond cream—commanded in a way tauter flesh could not.
The girls on the floor to either side of Nur Banu had turned towards her, their feet tucked
