The pavilion was as carefully arranged for dramatic effect as had been any of the public entertainments. The crimson, pearl-seeded cap did much to drain every last bit of color from Muhammed’s face, pillowed against a great gold-tasseled bolster. Matching coverlets of cloth-of-gold and brocade covered him to the chin, the heavy fabric held away from the tender area by other bolsters.
Besides boxes of exotic dates, the Prince’s diversions included a group of musicians playing in the forecourt outside and a reader reading Persian tales of romance and adventure behind a locked screen closet. Several cages of live birds swung from the arches of the pavilion to muffle the boy’s moans with happy chirps and in a niche by his head sparkled a small cooling fountain. But no diversion brought quite the relief of an opium draught given just before our arrival.
At the door to the pavilion I stopped to fuss with Gul Ruh’s veil until she sighed wearily and stamped her foot as if to say: “Eunuchs! When they cut you, they turn you into neither more nor less than old biddy hens!” She had Nur Banu’s very tone—or perhaps Safiye’s—and that angered me. But I must confess that that was one time—there have been others—when I looked down at my hands and was both surprised and frustrated to find that they were the big, clumsy hands of a man instead of the small, gentle hands of a mother.
“Even with the musicians and the reader behind screens, you cannot be too careful in such a public place,” I chided her. “And I do not want your cousin to see too much, either...”
That did seem to subdue her somewhat and we went in together.
The afternoon grew hotter still. The pavilion seemed to work like glass, to magnify and trap the heat within. The deep-sleep breath of the boy seemed to pervade the heat with vapors of opium for everyone. Many of the women who had come to nurse decided that the drugs were doing the job for them and that their time could be better spent in the baths that afternoon.
I tried to suggest this to Gul Ruh. She parted her veil ever so slightly to let some fresh air in and I could see that what was rivulets of sweat on my face turned to steam inside there. But she insisted.
Even when Safiye herself gave up a mother’s place, Gul Ruh would not follow. Were it not for the fact that I was convinced the girl was trying to shake me with the longest endurance-of misery, I, too, might have succumbed. But at that point I would not leave her all alone in the steamy, fever- and drug-laced room.
Both of us nodded heavy heads. Gul Ruh propped hers up against the wall at the Prince’s simple, turbanless cap. I suppose the tiles there were somewhat cooled by the little fountain, for she was able thereby to maintain a watchfulness that had me think of stealing a few breaths of fresh air from outside. I must take such air if only to keep up with her level of alertness. So finally, that’s what I did.
I hadn’t been out very long before I was brought back in a hurry by a most fearful cry. I found Gul Ruh a limp heap on the floor by the door to the reader’s closet, rocking back and forth and keeping time with rhythmic moans of “No! No! Can’t! Can’t!”
The Prince joined her moans softly, but the drug was too powerful for him to do more, and though at close range it seemed that the agony of her grief could stir the dead, doubtless the fountain and chirping birds were doing their work, for no one else heard or came.
“What is it? What is it, dear heart’s oasis?” I asked.
I got no response but that “No! Can’t!” to which rhythm she clung as if it were breath itself. I could do no more than wrap her in my arms and rock and rock with her, giving a croon and a prayer for every moan of hers.
“Help me, Abdullah,” she mouthed, voiceless as if crying from the bottom of a very deep well. It wasn’t much, but for one moment, the horrible spell of her own agitation was broken.
“I will, Allah strengthen me, if you’ll but give me some word...”
She was back under the spell of her singsong now, but it seemed weaker and came in gasps.
“What is it? Is it the reader? Did he—what? Did he hurt you? Did he try and see more than he should or—?”
She didn’t reply, but my pronunciation of the word reader had a profound effect on her. I got up and went to try his closet door to see...
“No!” Gul Ruh cried, but it was a “No” totally different from any one she’d given before. “Abdullah, don’t. He’ll kill you.” That stopped the singsong short.
“I was...” She paused, swallowed, gasped for breath. “I was supposed to let him in.”
“To?”
“Kill”
“Prince Muhammed?”
“Yes. Oh, Allah, Allah, how could I ever think of such a thing?”
“But you didn’t think of it, did you?”
She looked up at me.
“Nur Banu put you up to it, didn’t she?”
“She said it would be easy. All I had to do was open the...”
“Easy for her, perhaps.”
“It was going to look as if just the infection...”
“Yes.” I nodded, gingerly stepping away from the closet door as if it were infection itself. “I suspect it would have worked, too.”
“But I couldn’t do it.”
“No. Of course you couldn’t.”
“He’s my cousin. We played together when we were little.”
“Praise Allah, He made you too good to forget.”
“But is it good? Am I not just weak? She killed my father and Brabi. I must take revenge.”
Gul Ruh made a half-hearted scramble towards the closet door again, but gave no struggle and actually fell into my arms with relief when I stopped her.
“Who killed
