The town was blessed with another imperial mosque already, the one Suleiman had built for his own mother, Murad’s great-grandmother. Safiye caught a glimpse of it now across the edge of her view and knew the architect had been no Sinan. A heavy, primitive thing, the low dome seemed but a flattish blister such as days spent hiking up and down these hills might well raise on unaccustomed feet. She hoped silently that Sinan would have more success in dealing with—and matching—the terrain.
Murad had every confidence in his grandfather’s man. “...Sinan says that a severe rectangle cutting straight across the slope will be the best plan.” His parallel hands gestured the direction.
“A rectangle will not be too mundane?”
“The light angelic touch of Sinan with arches and domes will remedy that. Then, there will be room behind on a different level for a medresse—a religious college—a public kitchen to feed the poor—”
Safiye happened to catch the eye of an old woman watching them with dull interest from the closest of the hold-out houses. Silently, the prince’s favorite tried to send a message across the distance that separated them: See? You’ll be perfectly well cared for if you give up that shack of yours. A public kitchen! Peasants in Venice never had such fortune.
Behind her, Murad was still cataloguing the wonders of this child of his inspiration. “... Costly tile from Iznik throughout the interior.”
“You’ll let me have a hand in their choosing?”
“Of course. And the facade will be pierced by a thousand thousand holes, more light and air than dead stone.”
“You will fill these holes with glass, I suppose.”
Murad looked a little crestfallen, an emotion Ghazanfer couldn’t translate. “The plan specifies only open air, spaces small enough to keep out birds, large enough to let in refreshing breezes.”
“It should be glass,” Safiye insisted.
“Well, bottle glass was mentioned as a possibility. But unfilled holes would be lighter.”
“Bottle glass! Why not real stained glass? From Venice, say. The best glass in the world.”
“That would be nice,” Murad sighed. “But then we’d have to put a second skin—bottle glass—on the outside to protect such treasures.”
“Common houses have glass where I come from,” Safiye said, on the verge of taunting.
“Terribly expensive. On a sandjak bey’s salary?”
“You are getting the local people to save their souls and contribute a little, I hope?”
“Yes. And my aunt Mihrimah, having already built a mosque of her own, is helping as well.”
“And you will not always be limited to a sandjak ‘s income.”
“Allah willing.”
“Nothing at all will ever happen if you wait on Allah.” Safiye was glad Ghazanfer censored out that part of her comment. But he did faithfully say the rest. “If you can have two minarets, I would not dismiss stained glass as out of the question, either. And you forget, my prince and my life, you were born in Magnesia. This monument is in honor of that. But Venice is my home. You should let me see what sources I can tap before you settle for a wall of empty holes.” It wouldn’t do to get any more specific about Venice than that.
“I take it the project pleases you, my Fair One?”
Murad spoke directly to her now, for, having seen what there was to see on a site but newly leveled, they had returned to the sedan. And it was high time to escape the punishment of the sun.
The bearers unfolded themselves and recovered their places as reluctantly as ratted hair. And Ghazanfer stepped aside with his usual silent tact to let the conversation turn immediate again. Until the sedan door closed behind them, their talk could not claim the intimacy of touch. Yet touch was the only way Safiye could think of to express her true delight at all she had seen and heard.
“It pleases me more than I can say,” she exclaimed and, feeling that her effluence sounded too insincere, she defied convention and reached out a hand to her prince to substantiate her words.
Murad stepped beyond the contact in order to serve modesty, but she could tell that the mere attempt impressed him.
It was Ghazanfer’s arm she felt instead as the eunuch helped her up into the blood-red velvet lining of the sedan, now as hot as oven bricks. Soon, soon veils and constrained hands could be discarded.
“That’s good.” Murad continued the dialogue behind Safiye and her servant. “And I must give the Venetian glass some thought.”
“Give it no thought. Simply do it.” Safiye was impatient with heat and veils as much as with the prince.
“Yes, because, in a way, I’m building this great mosque for you.”
“For me?” Safiye hoped her new purr tone carried through the veiling. She fumbled to remove the white silken gauze sweat-plastered to her face—in order to breathe, if for no other reason.
“In a way, yes. For Allah, of course, first of all. But I have made a vow and offer it to the Creator if He will but grant us a son...”
Murad’s voice foundered—not from heat, but from emotion.
And Safiye stopped what she was doing and kept her face covered, just a little while, until the door was shut upon them and the chair lurched up to the bearers’ shoulders. She did not want the emotion in her face betrayed, not even to Murad. A mosque for herself, she had been thinking. Nur Banu could claim no such honor. Only the greatest men had mosques of their own. And the women? You could count them on one hand: Suleiman’s mother; Haseki Khurrem, his beloved; Mihrimah Sultan, his daughter. That was privileged company indeed. Of course, this mosque would probably not wear her own name. They’d call it the Muradiye. But she would know, he would know—he’d just confessed. God would know. Perhaps most important of all, Nur Banu would know. Safiye would see to it that Murad wrote his mother this much—in his very next letter.
Now this talk of divine vows—that put a new
