“There is.”
“Something more than that she won’t see me, else she simply wouldn’t send you at all.”
“I am merely considering—how much of this you need to know.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, tell it all,” Andrea spouted. “You can give me no greater sorrow than you already have.”
The great eunuch shifted on his little chair with a dangerous creak and there seemed not air enough in the narrow room for the two of them. “The tale has little to do with my lady.”
“Tell it, ustadh, and get it over with.”
The green in the eunuch’s eyes shifted towards the flimsy boarding of the wall over Andrea’s head.
Andrea resisted the temptation to turn and follow the khadim’s eyes, afraid any sign of nerves would make the gelding skittish and drag the story out even longer.
“My lady bade me,” the eunuch began, “relate to you something that happened to me yesterday morning.”
“Nothing else?” What happened to a eunuch could be of little consequence anywhere.
“Nothing else,” Ghazanfer replied. “But attend me first before you turn a deaf ear. Are you aware that I was once guardian to Mihrimah Sultan, Selim’s sister?”
Andrea shook his head. He still couldn’t discern any reason why he should hear the tale, drawn with such difficulty from the huge freak, as if his mind were shut by a door that had not been swung in years. But Sofia, Andrea reminded himself, trusted this creature.
So Andrea worked up more concern in order to say, “I beg you, ustadh, continue.”
“It was almost six years ago now, when Selim, our present master, was as yet only crown prince.”
Andrea noted the eunuch did not recite the customary formula praying for an eternal reign when he spoke Selim’s name. Did this betray treasonous thoughts against the master who owned him, body and soul? It certainly would explain why the eunuch felt a need to confess something he dared not speak even to others of his kind, perhaps to no other breathing soul. Andrea scooted closer to the hard edge of the cot.
“There was in those days a youth among the imperial pages whose fair features and gentle manners won him a friend in everyone he met. He was all but guaranteed quick advancement among Suleiman’s—Allah keep his soul—closest attendants. But then Selim came to Constantinople on an obligatory visit to his father—may Allah rain blessings on our departed sovereign—and it was not two days before Suleiman’s son claimed the child as his attendant as well. And Selim demands a little more of his favorites than our departed master ever did. Alas, the poor boy’s severe Christian upbringing did not allow him to accept the master’s attentions with anything but utter distaste. And, you must know, Selim is not easy on his lovers, be they male or female.
“In his grief, the lad turned to me for consolation. Many’s the early morning he would creep into my room before the hour of prayer. I’d wash the sex from him and—perhaps—if the master had been excitable that night—signs of rougher use—signs of favor many another slave would have been proud to wear.
“Then the lad would cry himself to sleep in my arms. Perhaps I did wrong by this. If I did—Allah is my witness—I meant no harm. Perhaps it was wrong to coddle the boy so. I should have been teaching him clearly: No love a slave enjoys can ever equal the love of his master. Unfortunately and unknown to me, my young friend began to leave Selim for my room as soon as the prince slept, without being dismissed, without learning if his master had further desire of him. One night—and perhaps Selim had been told by jealous tongues to beware—we were discovered thus—like a mother with her babe, and the master thought the worst.”
How could Ghazanfer speak of such things so impassively? Yet he did, reciting these terrors as no more than credits and debits in an accounting book. The eunuch was indeed a monster, humanity cut from him along with the rest of it.
“I was taken to the Seven Towers. Surely you must know of the place on the outskirts of the palace walls, and if you have not heard of the infamous tortures that occur there, I will not disturb your nobility by a rehearsal of mine. Suffice it to say it was in the eunuch’s hospital that my lady found me.”
Andrea found his mind wandering to where Sofia might be now, if she could not be with him. He could not believe Ghazanfer would be sitting there, so intent on his tale, if his lady were any place but safely tucked inside the imperial harem. Although—and perhaps this was what the monster was trying to tell him—a harem might be anything but safe.
Ghazanfer continued, “Selim had determined I was to suffer eternally—eternity, at least as far as he has control over it. I was to be slowly brought to the point of death, then brought to health, then death again, as long as flesh could endure it. The master came several days to watch, and brought my friend—”
Now, with the mention of torture and in spite of his distraction over Sofia, Andrea could not help but find the taciturn eunuch’s tale gut-wrenching and compelling. He shivered, as if the Towers’ shadows touched him, and when Ghazanfer faltered, encouraged him to continue.
“I will tell you, my young Venetian, I’d not been under this treatment long before I was at the point of seeking my own death. It was then my lady found me and, I know not by what magic, contrived to buy me as her own. I was pleased to think Selim had forgotten his jealousy in a new love, and was easily persuaded of the fact.”
Some of what the eunuch must have endured Andrea saw in his ravaged face and much-broken fingers—things that had only repulsed before. And the young man heard it in the tenderness and utter devotion with which he approached reference
