Here the great eunuch shrugged and said, “I suppose I only mean to apologize for the cold way my lady has treated yours since these events. Without cause, I believe, and because it is causeless, it cannot last long.”
His prophecy was true and the grudge, which hurt my lady deeply, did not last past Ali Pasha’s remarriage. But this was not so much because Safiye had learned restraint but because there were other plots afoot. Not the least of these was the marriage of Prince Muhammed and my Gul Ruh.
LV
Safiye was in the midst of paying court to Gul Ruh with a new jeweled caplet and rather-too-intimate caresses on the hair: “Ah! how my son will love these dancing braids.”
My young lady replied with the words—one could almost hear the tones—of Nur Banu, “Aunt Safiye, you know full well my cousin Muhammed cannot marry me—or anyone—until he is circumcised and becomes a man.”
It angered Safiye to be told so—and in such tones—but she could not deny it was true. No matter how she influenced Turkish taste towards the Venetian in everything from fabric and costume to medicine—for which the Republic should always be financially grateful—this she could not change. Even the Hand of Allah in the form of the terrible fire that had thwarted the first attempt to make her boy into a man could not put it off forever. Muhammed could not rule unless he was a full Muslim and he could not be a Muslim with his foreskin intact.
And every year it was put off meant only a greater danger of serious infection accompanying the operation. In fact, it clearly seemed to be Nur Banu’s plan to put off the rite forever so that Muhammed might never rule.
This taunt placed in the mouth of unsuspecting Gul Ruh was enough to call Safiye to her duties as a Turkish rather than a Venetian mother. She proceeded at once to do what she could to circumvent Nur Banu’s authority and once more set the preparations in motion. Nonetheless, the planning did take nearly a full year in total. And this was not all on account of Murad’s desire to see that his son and heir was circumcised in glory such as the world had never seen before. It was also in part due to Nur Banu’s constant and often successful attempts to see that the rite might never be celebrated, with or without glory.
Whenever the flurry of preparation grew white hot, Gul Ruh shied and sulked from it as if it was preparation for her own wedding as, in a way, it was. At such times, even Nur Banu’s rooms were hardly far enough away for my young mistress, and I think she was particularly grateful to Umm Kulthum when one day the Mufti’s widow invited my young lady to join her and her daughters for a picnic in the country.
* * *
Early on Friday morning, the party was ferried up to the end of the Horn where the Sweet Waters of Europe flow through a park to the Sea. The Turks are connoisseurs of waters as Italians are of wine. They know the various qualities of every major spring from Zem-Zem in Mecca northward and will often pay dearly for a flask of some famous source packed in by caravan. Bottled waters, however, are universally declared to be but pale compared to sampling the product on the spot. And within an easy journey of Constantinople, only one or two privately owned springs in the foothills are more desirable than the Sweet Waters of Europe.
At this time of year when the streams were swollen and ice-cold from the melting snow, it was doubted if even the springs could vie. The water, pure from any sediment, was delightfully tasteless in any season. But in spring, when one’s mouth was not too numbed by the cold, one could taste something more—the sweetness that gave the waters their name and their fame.
As if the waters were not sufficient in themselves, Umm Kulthum devoted one whole boatload to picnic dainties and sweets. Upon our arrival, the slaves spread these out in dizzy array on carpets on the sward. Sweetmeats and pistachios were unpacked. Dried figs and dates and apricots and raisins, olives and meatballs and balls of rice and ground chickpeas, stuffed pastries sweet and savory, all were heavily spiced and sprigged with fresh-cut mint. The eye could easily confuse the bright colors and intricate detail of the foods on their brass and china platters for the floral patterns on the rugs.
Umm Kulthum and some of her older, matronly friends were content to sit before these mounds and feed like browsing sheep. But eating was not that for which her daughters, their young slaves, and my Gul Ruh had come to the country. One could eat at home.
We had ferried those girls over in tight bundles, wrapped like roses cut in the bud when hardly a shadow peeking out from the green hull hints at the color within. Now, as if those roses had been brought into the heat and stuck in water, they burst into bloom as they played hide-and-seek and catch and danced to improvised music among the great old chestnut and plane trees.
The trees heaved the grass in their
