“Finally, think of her poetry, her beautiful voice, that caressing she gives that most romantic of tongues learned at her mother’s knee. Could you live with yourself knowing you had denied the world that pleasure?”
No, Murad found in his heart that he could not. Nur Banu was not to be totally unsatisfied, however. Mitra was banished from the imperial presence for one full year. But Murad made the decree as if he himself were to blame and it was penitence laid to his own head.
Safiye could not have been more pleased under the circumstances. She made plans at once for the woman to be sent to the fresh, open air of the palace in Edirne where her sons would grow healthy and strong and all three of them would be far from Nur Banu’s intrigue. Safiye also arranged for musicians and poets to accompany the party and for a courier to go up there once a week with word of the latest in literary fashion and the Sultan’s personal taste.
Though a year is a terribly long time in the short life of a concubine—-her glamour may easily fade in that period—it is not so very long in the life of a reciter of poetry. And, as the separation decree was couched in such terms of personal denial by the Sultan, it was easy to imagine that their reunion would be a passionate and enduring one when it happened—if a weakness in Murad’s resolve did not cause it to happen sooner.
All of this Safiye had seen to before she bothered to go and tell Mitra of her reprieve. Relief quite made the poor woman swoon, but as soon as she was brought to her senses, she was on the floor again, on her face in deep gratitude and humility before the mistress who had saved her life.
“How shall I ever be able to thank you?” she asked Safiye.
“Dear child, your life is all the thanks I need,” Safiye replied. She smiled and, taking the younger woman’s face in her hands, kissed her tenderly on each cheek. “And remember, I still have part of a bargain coming to you—your freedom on the day Murad should die.”
“Allah pray that day is years and years away,” Mitra said. At the moment, she truly meant it.
“And only then did Mitra go and kiss her own babies,” concluded Gul Ruh, whose busy scouting had brought the rest of the report to my sick bed. “And after all those hours when she thought she would never see them again!”
Gul Ruh kept close by my side the two days I spent recuperating and by the time I got up to be myself again, Mitra and her sons were gone.
But it was not three months after this that another horrible tragedy struck. I happened to be sitting with Ghazanfer Agha—to whom I now owed my life—in his usual spot to the side of the central atrium when a sudden movement on one of the balconies across the way attracted our attention. We had time only to focus when what seemed to be a small bundle or a doll passed through the railings and tumbled the full two stories down to the marble paving below.
Both Ghazanfer and I were on our feet in an instant. He ran to the bundle, but I paused only long enough to confirm my worst fears—that it was indeed a child, the little son of one of Safiye’s gift-girls to the Sultan. I ran then, taking the stairs three at a time to the place from which we’d seen it fall. The spot was deserted. I ran as far as reasonable in one direction, then the same distance in the other, to no avail. By that time, the shrieks of the nurse followed by those of the mother, then the curses of Safiye and all of her suite brought a confusion and crowd to the entire courtyard. It was useless now to try to sort it out.
I came down the stairs slowly, resisting the earth’s pull all the way, then stood racked with disbelief and horror beside Ghazanfer. Having confirmed that the child was dead, my companion stood aside now to make way for the chief mourners.
“I saw no one,” I confessed my defeat.
“No,” he replied. “I didn’t think you would.”
“But I saw...didn’t you see? Or did my eyes just trick me? I thought I saw someone up there at the railing with the boy.”
“Your eyes did not trick you. I saw it, too.”
“But the guardian, even if she was careless, surely she would not vanish like that.”
“I doubt very much it was a ‘guardian.’ “
“You mean you think the boy was pushed?”
“Nur Banu has gotten her revenge for the death of her false eunuch.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Can’t you? You lived a sheltered life with the Grand Vizier.”
Then I had to admit I could find no other belief to match what I had seen. “A child just learning to walk!” I exclaimed.
“So it looks like an accident and is impossible to prove as anything else.”
“But just a child!”
“A child who is the son of the Sultan and will someday grow up to vie with others for the throne.”
“Who would do such a thing? Even Nur Banu—”
“The place is crawling with such people,” Ghazanfer Agha assured me. The subject was as distasteful to him as it was to me, but he knew he must continue. “You are just new among us on a permanent basis, else you would realize it happens more often than anyone would confess. On both sides, I hate to admit, but it happens.
