Certainly she felt the wind carried her veils behind her like a banner on the battlefield and Murad, she knew, would follow like the good soldier he was. Did soldiers, she wondered, feel such urgency as they rushed towards the enemy? And was glory what they longed to embrace? Or the beautiful maidens, the hour is of paradise?
The idea the Koran gave her that she might be riding towards a celestial court full of doe-eyed and divinely insatiable page boys pressed a groan up from the warmth of her saddle leather. For she had never attended to religious discussion carefully enough to know if this pious promise was meant for her or only for the appetite of a Selim. Used as she was to making the world over in her own image, Safiye assumed she led the ranks of the blessed herself, and the thought brought a rigor to her thighs. The horse, a sensitive, spirited creature, took this pressure as an urging to go forward faster still.
Attendants, guards, and hunters dropped like the sun behind the west-riding hills at her back. Ahead rose the Boz, the Gray Mountains, her destination, but untrue to their dull name in the golden afternoon sun.
There was no rush. They planned no more than to reach the encampment by nightfall. Slaves were even now setting up the tents and seeing to supper, others sorting out the hawks and hounds, jesses, pistols, pikes, beaters, and net men. Her haste was unwarranted.
She knew she wasn’t trying to escape from Murad. Through Murad’s power lay her own. And she remembered how handsome he had seemed, his turban neatly re tied, fresh from the inspiring company of officers. She could look over her shoulder now and see him still as attractive, pursuing just behind the screen of her dust. But she also knew the urge she felt was not toward the highly staged world of the hunt, either. In spite of her direction, didn’t she long for escape from this actor’s box where the prince could hardly prove himself a prince? Didn’t she long to have him succeed in a world where mistakes were not impossible?
At that moment Safiye saw an opening in the trees to her left. As if in confirmation of her theory, she spontaneously dragged the bridle in that direction, off the cart-sized and rutted road, onto a path that quickly closed chestnut branches over her. The foliage was close enough to stroke her hair and pluck at the red silk shalvar on her knees.
“Safiye, don’t.” Finding that first order useless, Murad, behind her, amended it. “Wait!”
But the throb of horse hooves in her ears overrode him. Over her shoulders along with her braids, she threw the prince a laughing dare to follow.
The warm, leathery smell of tannin bit her flirtatiously on the nose, for besides the still-green burrs on chestnuts, the sky was erased by oaks and the ground by thickets of sumac. It was perceptibly cooler here in the shade than on the road, and the sudden half-light threw a second veil over her face.
Thus half-blinded, an unexpected scramble in the underbrush made her think either Murad had closed quickly or her own horse was scrambling on the tangle beneath her hooves. But when, five steps later she still had her seat, she knew it was neither.
Before either panic or confusion could touch her, the shadow she heard more than saw took on definite form, and that form was a deer. A stately fallow doe leapt off at an angle towards her right. A good omen for the hunt. But even with so quick a glance, Safiye saw the velvety nose, quivering with terror, and the big, sad eyes—the eyes of a paradisiacal houri.
Such a vision was enough to make her breath pull up sharp and her heart stop, not for fear, but in wonder mixed with desire. The doe has a fawn with her somewhere, seemed an obvious thought. One still young enough to hide while she draws the hunter’s attention off.
She pulled up at the perfect awe of such a thought and her mare sidled to a halt. Safiye had seen deer before on other hunts, both dead and alive. But mother love and self-sacrifice were otherworldly wonders to her. She sat frozen, matching her heavy breathing to that of the horse beneath her, and fought to overcome this debilitating reverence enough to go on. Mother love and self-sacrifice she would condemn as weakness in a fellow human, but in a dumb animal it was difficult to disparage.
Safiye couldn’t fathom the instinct. She could never accept it, but she couldn’t deny it either. This instinct, like the ancient weeping woman of stone, plunged her into confusion. She’d ridden on the horns of that confusion since she’d left the shrine. Confusion was the enemy she battled.
The sight of the deer was powerful enough to make her sue for a momentary truce. She would turn the mare and go back, comply with the world’s expectations until morning renewed her strength.
A ride like she’d enjoyed today would never have been hers in Venice. She took consolation in this thought. She had done some riding in her youth, but never as much as in the past five months. Even if the nuns had approved, she would have had to go sidesaddle in order not to tangle her skirts.
And never on such a lively little mount as I’ve had to work with since coming to Magnesia. Intelligent, yet so willingly obedient...She relished the use of these horseman’s terms which six months ago she could not have appreciated. Yes, I know. Ghazanfer would have me say “Thanks be to Allah” after a thought like this. But with a final restorative turn to her rebellion, she refused to do so, even in her mind.
Then, in the middle of this thought, and the middle of drawing the bridle off to the right, the horse beneath her suddenly screamed and
