“Madam, what is the matter?” My lady attempted to raise her awkward bulk to assist, for her guest suddenly seemed to demand it.
“Nothing,” said the older woman in a tone that betrayed a bold-faced lie.
“What can I get you? Some watered yogurt? Sherbet?”
When the Quince managed no reply to this but a weak gesture, Esmikhan sent for both, and a warming broth besides.
“Madam, please, have a seat.” My lady was on her own feet now and caught her guest by the elbow. She signaled everyone else still in the room—including me—for cushions and rugs.
I was just behind the quince-shaped hips, plumping pillows, when the midwife found the strength to put up a little protest. “Your child has not been born yet, majesty?” she choked. And I saw that, in nervous hands, she was fingering a large gold coin—such as one might offer an infant as a birth gift—too distracted at the moment to find a place to hide it.
“Mashallah, no,” Esmikhan replied. “But let’s not worry about me right now.”
“But we figured...”
“Yes, I figured it would be here by now, too.” Esmikhan shrugged, other concerns on her mind. “This one is tenacious, that’s all. Allah willing he may be of life as well.”
“But—but they told me you’d delivered.”
“Who told you that? Madam, you must relax.”
“Some...someone.”
“Allah’s will, I wish they were right. I’d have no complaint if I’d finished with this business a fortnight ago, as we’d thought.”
“But she said, clear as day, ‘Yes, the princess delivered.’
“She—whoever she is—must have confused it with another time. It is easy to do, I suppose. Mashallah, there’ve been so many...” Esmikhan’s voice faded as her concern for the Quince reached another peak. “Madam, what ails you? Can I send Abdullah for a physician?”
“No physician, no,” the Quince said with a sudden vehemence that gave her the aspect of returning health. “Those charlatans. I’ll be fine, a good deal better than if you send for a physician. Just a momentary ... a momentary weakness, I assure you. I’ll be fine.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then seemed to resign herself—to death? Something just as momentous passed before the bitterness of her face. But when she opened her eyes and breathed again, the midwife seemed almost herself.
“Madam?” my lady asked.
“I’ll be fine,” the Quince repeated. “Maybe a little pilaf.”
Esmikhan quickly set the rest of her meal and a napkin before the other woman. The napkin afforded, I felt, no use for its station, encrusted with gold thread on every crossing of warp over weft as it was.
“Khadim?” the Quince said then through one mouthful, her fingers reaching after another.
“Madam?” I had almost regained my post after the flurry with the pillows but stepped from it once more with a little nod.
“Down in the sedan chair is a green and gold kerchief of comfits. Fetch it for me, will you? I think—I think they may help. My heart...”
“Of course, madam.”
“Oh, and khadim?”
I turned back at the door. “Madam?”
“I will be prevailing on your hospitality. Until the child is born. You can send the men back to the palace for my things.”
“Madam?” I stopped and asked only because I couldn’t believe my ears had heard such a complete about-face.
“Abdullah, at once,” my lady ordered impatiently, still very much concerned that any vexation of her guest might exacerbate the frightful condition once more.
So I went, found the kerchief, and gave the orders. I had no doubt I’d found the right bundle. It was the only thing in the sedan, no medicines, no spells as a midwife on anything more than a social call must surely carry. I wondered at this, but not overlong. The bundle I found exuded the heavy smell of an evergreen forest—mastic gum—and seemed innocent enough.
Somewhat less reassuring was the conversation I had with the bearers. We exchanged small talk as they prepared for the trek back to the imperial palace. I had seen to it that they were offered refreshment and narghiles to warm themselves in the lower rooms while they waited out the Quince’s return and I hated to see them torn from such comforts in any rush.
So I said something innocuous like: “It was certainly nice of the Quince to come so soon upon her return from Magnesia. She can hardly be rested from her journey.”
The head bearer was a Greek, with brows that met in the middle of a heavy forehead over a hooked nose. He gave this reply: “Not at all. The midwife’s been in town these two, three weeks. She did seem to want to keep her presence a secret, but nonetheless she delivered a set of twins in that time—mashallah—and two or three others. All wonderfully healthy babes, thanks be to Allah. Cured a few rheumatisms and fevers as well. Now if she could only cure me of the life of a bearer...”The fellow shifted his shoulder muscles in his own form of cure.
I didn’t know what to make of this information, so I followed the drift of our pleasantries from there in their usual fashion. At length the men sloshed off in ankle-deep mud and were soon lost from my view in the fog.
But I stood staring at the spot where they’d disappeared for some time after. It seemed odd to me. First, that the Quince should be back in Constantinople so soon before Safiye’s time. By St. Mark—or whomever one prayed to in such events (I was beginning to forget things like that)—this didn’t bode well for the empire’s heir.
Even more disconcerting was the notion that the midwife should have been avoiding us once she did return. Although it was clearly her place to be with the princess throughout the confinement, the Quince had given priority to other cases instead. She had purposely stayed away from my lady until—well, until some informant, confused in her facts, had said the baby
