“Aunt Safiye.”
“Did Nur Banu tell you that?”
“Yes.”
Of course, I thought. Certain things began to fall into place for me immediately, but I didn’t say so to my charge. Nor did I indulge in pursuing these things in my own mind right then. Instead I suggested, “Did you ever stop to think it could be a lie?”
“A lie?”
“No, of course not. You are too innocent to go around suspecting lies.”
“Do you think it was a lie?”
“I have little doubt.” I lied. “You know what bad blood there is between Nur Banu and your aunt. The Valide Sultan would stop at nothing to see that Safiye’s power is thwarted.”
“She would lie?”
“She would do worse than lie.” Even...
“Yes, even attempt murder at your guileless hands. Thank Allah we stopped that crime in time.”
“Thank Allah...”
“Come. If she were guilty of your sainted father’s death, do you think Safiye could sit there coolly day after day, looking your mother in the eye?”
Gul Ruh shook her head. What this meant was that she was certain she couldn’t do such a thing. She projected the outcome of her contemplated deed into the future with increasing horror.
“So this is what all this recent attention was? Just a ruse to gain the trust of those in Safiye’s camp. You haven’t really fallen madly in love with your cousin, have you?”
She shook her head in despair. “But what am I to do now?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll call soldiers to get rid of him,” I threw my head in the direction of the closet, “and we won’t say another word to anyone about it.”
But suddenly Gul Ruh made a lunge for the dagger on my waist and had it unsheathed and on the way to her ribs before I could stop her. Our hands strained, shook. Her lips quivered like those of the thirsty for water. It was the struggle of madness, for under normal conditions she would have been no contest for me. Sanity returned at last and returned her to more than natural weakness. I put my dagger out of reach this time, but then hurried back to her side. She disintegrated into tears in my arms.
“Angel, angel, you didn’t really want to die, did you?”
“No, no,” she sobbed. “But that should be my punishment for even thinking of such a horrible thing. I should live, marry Muhammed, and live forever among these schemers, never knowing peace or happiness or love again. I deserve it now. Death would be easy compared to that.”
It occurred to me that her “Can’ts” and “Nos” had been more shrinking from the possible futures she envisioned than from the murder. She could only ever think of murder in an abstract less real than the future—of that I was certain.
Then, without warning, I began to tell her of my first days as a eunuch. The presence of the newly circumcised brought the memory forcefully to mind. I told her how I’d struggled to accept my fate. At the time any sort of future at all seemed precluded.
“I remember saying T can’t, I can’t’,” I told her, “over and over again. But somehow, I was able to. Here I am, thanks be to Allah. And it has not been so bad. It has not been the end of the world as I imagined.”
She made an attempt to take comfort from my words, but there was still bitterness in her voice when she said, “Yes, to marry for a woman is what becoming a eunuch is for a man.” I didn’t tell her how closely her words echoed those of her mother shortly before Esmikhan had been given to Sokolli Pasha.
At that moment Safiye and some of her maids returned.
“By Allah, what’s happened?” she asked, looking hastily to make certain her son’s breath was still coming deeply and slowly in sleep.
Gul Ruh couldn’t answer so I did. “My lady had a scare. She...she saw, or thought she saw, someone, a woman...a woman in black who sought to...who sought to, Allah forbid, harm the Prince.”
The maids echoed my prayer that Allah should forbid such a thing. They never doubted my word, for such beings are well known to haunt the pavilions of the newly circumcised, seeking to steal their souls. They have names that are known and incantations by the bookful to which the women immediately fell lest the ghoul return.
Safiye was a bit more skeptical. She looked hard at Gul Ruh and asked, “And you, you stopped this...this woman—whatever?”
“She did, thanks be to Allah,” I replied, ‘but you can see it was clearly a trying experience for her.”
Then I quickly swept Gul Ruh out of the pavilion.
I was not quick enough, however, to catch the reader-murderer. Having overheard our conversation, he thought it wise to break through the lattice window at the rear of his closet and escape. Since no one I knew admitted to ever having seen his face, he was never apprehended.
Safiye appeared less skeptical of our story later, in spite of the broken lattice. She came up to report that her son’s fever seemed to have broken and all, Allah willing, would be well.
Then she said, “It’s curious. He woke from that sleep having dreamed a dream. It took a while to convince him it was a dream, it seemed so real. He dreamed that he had died and gone to Paradise where he was waited on by scores and scores of sparkling-eyed houris.
“‘Of all races and types in the world. Mother,’ he said. ‘Great black Africans like pleasure barges, Russians like pure banks of drifted snow, Circassians like armfuls of apricot blossom in spring. My member,’ he said, ‘grew from the cutting into a flaming sword with which I cut through their ranks, making them melt before me like butter, sweet, sweet springtime butter I ate and anointed myself with and swam in. It was wonderful. It was Paradise indeed. .And was it only a dream?
“‘Mother,’ he asked at last, ‘why would you marry me to my cousin? Marriages and cousins, they are supposed
