“Well, go on, my love,” Safiye prodded, knowing full well the word he could not read was ‘son.’ “What else does she say?”
“More of the same,” Murad said, taking his own voice again. “And then she closes with her usual effluence: ‘Allah’s mercy keep your eyes...May he exalt you as the exalted constellation of the Big Dipper...This worthless slave...Your eternal mother.’“
“You read that very well, my love,” Safiye said. “I could almost hear her in the sedan with us.”
“Thank Allah she’s not.”
And the shutter, which Murad had earlier opened, now slammed decidedly shut behind him. Over her own giggles, Safiye heard the chair’s bearers curse. The prince had made a lunge for her and the men outside struggled to keep the conveyance upright against such a heated shift in the balance on their shoulders.
Perhaps it would be better to say she traveled with him, to any place the governorship took them. She was pleased to think that she was never further from the bey of the entire sandjak—and hence its most inner workings—than the bearers could bring her.
And often much closer than that, as they were at this instant, rocking the chair in a lover’s embrace.
Safiye hitched her hips, hindered by Murad’s weight and the deep nap of the sedan’s velvet upholstery against her layers of summer silks. That Murad could read her his mother’s letters in the midst of defying them was a reassuring sign. It was so reassuring that she smoothed her henna-stained fingertips up under Murad’s jacket and down into his waistband.
She pressed his forehead to her lips as she urged, “Your mother writes such things and you defy her?”
“Let her rail all she wants,” Murad punctuated with kisses, on Safiye’s throat, on her eyes and cheeks. “This letter’s two weeks old or more. What does it matter what she thinks, here where I am bey and her notes but one scrap of paper out of a hundred?”
“And yet you won’t defy her in the one thing that is most important to me and...”
Safiye didn’t finish the sentence. She felt Murad’s whole torso stiffen and withdraw. The topic of marriage was a constant between them, though she tried to avoid it precisely because of this reaction. She often feared she nagged, though she never meant to. She sounded like a parrot trained with but one phrase.
And like a parrot who doesn’t please, she thought, I can just as easily be sold.
“I’ve never promised Mother anything—anything but that,” Murad bit back on the full voluptuousness of his lips, making them but a thin line between moustache and beard. “She is my mother. She must be content with that. And you, too, must learn to be content, my fairest one. You are with me all the time.”
“That only makes it harder, not to have the dignity of being your wife, being something people only snigger at.”
“Perhaps they snigger at you in Venice. Here, no one would dare. Please, love, be content that there is nothing I would rather do than make you my legal wife before all the world, as my honored grandfather made my grandmother—Allah’s blessings on her.”
“Do it then.”
“I gave my mother my word.”
“Break it.”
“I—I can’t.”
“You won’t.” Safiye turned from him sulkily. “And no woman would ever be good enough for her precious boy.”
Even without looking, Safiye knew he winced at the word ‘boy.’ “But she does have a point,” the ‘boy’ defended himself. “The reason the sons of Othman do not usually marry dates back over a hundred years...”
“I know. Tamerlane.”
“When we were but a small people, Tamerlane overcame us.”
“And you still haven’t redredged the harbor at Izmir.”
“Tamerlane carried off the beloved wife of my ancestor Bayazid the First in chains. Did unspeakable things to her. It took his sons years to overcome the shame of that and win the respect of their people again. Now that we are great, there are no princesses in either Europe or Asia worth polluting the royal bed for the political alliance...”
“Pollution! I like that!”
“I didn’t mean you, my love.” He touched her shoulder and she shook him off.
He tried a different tack. “Slaves don’t offer the threat to our honor that a wife does.”
“You are telling me you are so weak—now, under your grandfather whom the world calls magnificent—that you must fear a Tamerlane’s chains?”
“No, I swear I would die rather than let such a thing happen to you. But even in such a time, there are things...”
“What things?”
“You forget the brigands who took you from me? I was prostrate with grief all those ten days.”
“Brigands will not happen again.” The promise in her voice might have suggested that she herself had been responsible for their capture and could have prevented it.
“As Allah is my shield, they will not. But it was during that time of grief that my mother extracted this vow from me. I have only to remember how sharply my honor was cut at that time to recall the feelings—and renew my vow. Allah witness, my love, I cannot break it while she lives.”
“You want a child first,” Safiye accused.
“I’d like a son, yes. What man does not? But such is my love for you that I’d as soon have my brother ascend to the throne at my demise...”
“Allah forbid it!”
“...Than to abandon you, whom I love more than life. She is my mother, Safiye.”
“I see.” Safiye knew the ice in her voice would fire him.
“Perhaps—perhaps I may talk her into rescinding the vow she made me give her.”
“If I don’t go hunting with you, perhaps.” Safiye felt Murad squirm uncomfortably as she retreated from him.
“Perhaps, if you, Safiye, with your gift of words, may help me compose another letter.”
“You’re the poet, your majesty.” He hated it when she gave him that royal title. “She will not allow it for jealousy. Your father never married her.
