These are sharp blades, I thought as I handed them to her with a complaisant little bow. Imagine them sinking into my flesh—or worse, my lady’s. My hand found the hilt of my own dagger and shifted it somewhat out of my sash, just in case.
The happy bevy of women brushed the last of the salt out of Esmikhan’s hair and replaced her cap, its veils and its ruby-rose ornaments. While they were so distracted, the Quince slipped behind them to my lady’s vacated cushion on the divan. I followed the healer closely, saw her secret the two cutting implements behind the cushion, and got a firmer grip on my dagger. I had faced a pack of brigands in defense of my lady’s honor; I would not hesitate to face a midwife.
“She sits to the left, she sits to the left.” Safiye’s declaration after having observed Esmikhan’s attempt to settle back down on her cushions brought me up short.
Wondering, delighted with surprise, Esmikhan withdrew the hardness she felt through the figured velvet and wool stuffing of the left side of her cushion. It was the knife.
With another shrug, the Quince announced, “A boy. She sat on the knife. That means a boy.”
Only another harmless divining device. I really did get too jumpy when Safiye was in the room.
“Mashallah, a boy for certain.” Over all the renewed exclamations of joy, Safiye’s was the only one that seemed to contain a hint, not so much of sorrow, but almost of doom.
“Mashallah” my lady echoed her guests. “Oh, but I grieve to have you here, Quince.”
“Esmikhan, lady, why say you so?” Nur Banu asked.
“Because her presence is a clear indication that no baby more royal than my own is expected in the coming months.” Esmikhan reached for Baffo’s daughter’s hand. “Dear Safiye, can’t you give me word that my child will have a little cousin to play with?”
Safiye, it seemed, had so little hope of becoming pregnant that she couldn’t even hunch her shoulders and say, “If Allah is so pleased.”
One of Nur Banu’s slaves, Aziza, began to accompany the conversation and the feasting with the same haunting tune my lady had sung earlier:
“One thousand and one tales have been written about me.
My home is this place where gods are buried.
And devils breed.
The land of holiness.
The backyard of hell.”
Aziza had a lovely voice. She was a pretty thing, too, but now consigned to the rank of menial since Prince Murad had rejected her in favor of Safiye. I suppose she sought to ingratiate herself to the company in the best way she knew how. She would show she was not unpleasantly aloof.
After Safiye had achieved her purpose—the entrusting of Esmikhan and her unborn child to the astringent mercies of the Quince—Baffo’s daughter had completely turned from the society of the room. She gazed absently now through the latticework of polished olive wood. Even a guest who’d been to two weddings and a circumcision before she entered our rooms would have shown more interest in the dainties that Esmikhan presented. It was nothing short of ill-mannered to ignore platter after platter, crowded rim over rim beneath the tulips on the room’s three low tables.
My lady personally supervised the kitchen and was not averse to getting her velvets dusted with flour as she turned out the various Turkish sweets as delightful and voluptuous as their names: “Woman’s Navel,” “Ladies’ Thighs,” “Lips of the Beauty.” There was lokhoum, that fruit paste that called for the stirring of two pots over the flame simultaneously, in white grape, mulberry, apricot, and quince jelly flavors. And of course, my lady had turned out hundreds of deep-fried “Little Bonnets of the Turks,” one entire extra tray for no other reason than that they were Safiye’s favorites. But these, too, Baffo’s daughter seemed to ignore that day.
I surprised myself by taking Safiye’s negligence personally. It wasn’t presumptuous to include myself in the credits for the stacks of treats with which we dazzled, honored, and rather overwhelmed our guests. I had done what was asked of me to make these trays for the palate what the intricate inlay of mother-of-pearl and ivory of the new rooms were to the eye. No, I realized as my offense grew. I took pride in my part, though a year ago I would have scoffed at it as being something “any housewife can do.” Of course, any Turkish housewife was confined to that house. She needed her eunuch to make things run smoothly, and I had done it. Why else was I hovering around up here with the women instead of downstairs with my cronies if not to see how it all went?
If I say so myself, my lady and I were learning to work well together. Economy meant nothing to her, as a princess first and now a Vizier’s wife. She was used to having any desire appear at the first thought, and it became my challenge to work that magic for her. Spurred by her taste and delight in the best the world had to offer, and the world’s best marketplace, Constantinople, out our front door, I had shopped. When desire to disparage the skill had crept up on me, sometimes just to keep my self-respect, I had remembered my training under my dear dead uncle. To haggle, bargain, and trade was done by the richest of merchants as well as the lowliest housewife.
So I gave credit to myself, even if the ladies gave it to their hostess. All my trips to the bazaar for fabric swatches before she finally settled on that figured magenta velvet for the divans that ran around three walls. All the purchasing of skilled seamstress-slaves for the gold work on drapes and coverlets. All the hauling of Persian carpets back and forth as they failed to please in the salon’s afternoon light. Not to mention the
