“She puts him up to it.” Aziza had stopped singing and stepped out of place now to express her resentment.
Safiye took, or seemed to take, no notice of the accusation and Nur Banu did her best to silence the other girl, even if she could not nullify her.
“He does it to prove himself a great man,” Nur Banu said, “worthy of the sword of his ancestors.”
“Worthy of the Fair One’s love,” the Quince purred cattily through her smoke.
Aziza seemed more comforted to find her suspicions confirmed by the wise old woman than she had been when they were simply brushed aside. At least she did not think it out of place to give one more comment. “He even takes liberties with Suleiman, the Sultan—may Allah preserve him—all at her instigation.”
“Suleiman is a far greater man than his grandson has yet become,” the midwife said. “He takes little notice of Murad’s pretensions.”
“He does indeed take notice,” Nur Banu defended herself through her son. “He is proud to have such a grandson.”
“Well, he may be forced to take notice at this latest request,” the midwife admitted, “as one must take notice of a mosquito when it bites.” The Quince was perhaps the only woman in Islam who could speak her mind freely to Nur Banu and get away with it. “Murad has bitten the teat, we may say, and the wet nurse must turn from her pleasure at the candy tray to slap him, be he prince or no.”
“He asked for a ship to take him—and Safiye—back to Kutahiya for the summer,” Nur Banu continued her defense. “You are staying here with Esmikhan this year, else you would remember, my dear Quince, how wretched that journey overland is.”
“How dangerous and full of brigands,” Aziza added with a look at Safiye.
“And how one cannot be blamed for making every attempt to avoid it,” Nur Banu concluded.
“But to ask for a galley when the Faithful are now in open war against the infidel of Europe and every vessel is needed for the defense of our shores?” the Quince said. “Add to that the fact that as the mainstay of his harem Murad has a Christian girl, the daughter of a very powerful governor of the Venetian Republic for whom great ransom has been offered. No, the wet nurse Suleiman must be doting in his old age if, besides letting Murad suck at his power all winter, he lets the boy now take a bite.”
Safiye turned from the window to the company with a smile that startled us all with its indication that her mind had not really been absent, but had carefully and with deep scrutiny overheard every word of the recent interval’s conversation.
“Then the Sultan is doting, may Allah preserve him,” she said, weighing her words for just the right measure of disrespect and surprise, and watching like an alchemist for the various reactions they caused in every face present. “For my lord, the prince, sent me word just after morning prayers today. I am to meet him quayside on Thursday in the afternoon. He has been promised the galley, and we shall have such a luxurious cruise down the coast at this time of year!”
Nur Banu rejoiced in the sharp-stroke victory of her protégée as if it had been her own, and those who lost the foray sank quietly into their cushions.
Only the Quince ventured a “Well, we shall see” afterwards, and the talk moved hastily on to other, lighter things.
As a matter of fact, the Quince was said to take omens from her smoke, and she was no less prophetic this time than at others.
III
“Does my grandson think he invented love?”
Suleiman’s magnificent fuming found its way to the depths of our harem. The Sultan’s own love for Khurrem, of blessed memory, was the subject of popular poetry throughout the empire. He could not be outdone by a mere boy.
“Allah willing,” Suleiman concluded his tirade, “Murad will learn some sense before he ever comes to the throne of Ottoman, our ancestor.”
What Murad found at the quayside that Thursday morning, there in the presence of Safiye, ready in her traveling clothes, with all her bags and servants, was an old, leaky ketch that barely stayed afloat to carry them across the Bosphorus. They had to make their way back to Kutahiya the same plodding way everyone else did.
When this tale made its way through our lattices, I had to laugh out loud. I had, after all, been on board a ship with Sofia Baffo and would regret it the rest of my days. My laughter, however, grieved my lady endlessly, and three full days afterwards, she was still scolding me for one word of torment I’d side-cast at Safiye during the party.
“I merely suggested to Sofia Baffo that her childlessness may not be only in the hands of the Almighty,” I defended myself.
“But I asked you specifically to be nice to Safiye when she came.”
I stiffened and she felt it. “I am always nice to Safiye,” I said.
“No, you’re not.”
“As nice as she deserves. And infinitely nicer than she is to me.”
“Just try to ignore all that.”
“As Safiye ignores me?”
“When she’s in a good mood.”
“Like a rug beneath her feet.” As if to emphasize the phrase, I began to pace our new, deep-piled rugs. The subject of Safiye always made me nervous.
My lady watched me from the divan where, dappled with lattice-strained light, she was teasing a kitten with a peacock feather. “I’m afraid it’s a khadim’s lot in life to be ignored much of the time.”
“And what about when she is restless and irritable?”
“You two do have some spectacular exchanges.”
“She starts them all.”
“She only has to look at you wrong and
