For my part, I had my faith restored in the possibility of a present-day princess living happily ever after.
LXI
It was probably in a mad attempt to revenge herself for the failure of her plot against Muhammed during his circumcision that Nur Banu infiltrated the ranks of the eunuchs with another product of the knife of Mu’awiya the Red. This fellow was caught and disposed of long before he got as far as the Persian, but word of it came to Murad, and the Sultan took steps to see that neither party took his honor so lightly again.
By imperial decree the whole household was reorganized. Instead of white and black eunuchs in charge of the women together, from now on it would be blacks only who, in the heart of Africa, are cut off right at the belly and hence can prove no threat at all. Or if they did, by accident or design, avoid this fate, it was assumed their race would render them less attractive even in desperate eyes.
Ghazanfer Agha, myself, and a few of the other more trusted white eunuchs were spared immediate shift to the outer household. It would take years to build up the necessary black population—only one in three or four survives the severity of that operation—and the change could happen but slowly. White khuddam glutted the market and suffered such a drop in price that, in spite of myself, it preyed heavily on my self-esteem.
Then, after a few months of dreadful uncertainty we were finally promised our positions for life.
“Which may not be long, under the circumstances,” Ghazanfer mused pessimistically.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Although as Esmikhan’s particular slave, the word would have to come directly from her before I faced transfer, nonetheless I had felt great relief at the announcement and did not want to be bothered with clouds that day.
“Just look,” Ghazanfer Agha told me, and called my attention to the fact that Safiye seemed, in but this short time, to have accumulated far more than her share of the black attendants. “She knew this decree was coming before the Sultan made it,” Ghazanfer explained. “She’d been buying up every black khadim the moment he hit Cairo for months. And if you don’t think there are the ambitious among them...but enough about us. I think it’s clear who has won the upper hand in this harem now.”
And indeed it was. Almost as if buying that second Mu’awiya eunuch were a final act of desperation, Nur Banu seemed to have signed her own death warrant with it. She retreated to the small private garden palace she owned in her own right near the Edirne Gate and was reported to be ill.
“Ill? The witch? Nonsense!” Safiye declared.
But when a fortnight brought no news of improvement, my lady began to worry, particularly when rumors of “poison” began to fly.
I found poison difficult to believe. “Nur Banu Kadin has always been too careful of such things,” I assured my lady. “She will eat nothing that has not sat upon her celadon plates, and that green ware wall turn black in warning at the first touch of anything unwholesome. She is always vigilant against mercury, monkshood, scorpions—all the usual methods.”
I thought, but not aloud, that Nur Banu would not be poisoned because she herself was mistress of the art and continued, “Besides, if it were poison, wouldn’t we have heard—Allah forbid—of her death by now? Safiye would not do such a job halfway.”
“Abdullah, you should not say so.”
“Or we should have heard of her recovery, now that she is in her own palace with only her own slaves about her.”
“I mean you should not suggest Safiye could have a hand in poison. It is some secret witch, some infidel enemy, not Safiye.”
I sighed. Esmikhan would never believe the worst of which I knew her friend was capable. My lady had known she could not befriend both sides of the conflict. She had come to live on Safiye’s side of the demarcation line only after a long struggle with her heart. The deciding factor had been the thought that Nur Banu was Valide Sultan, there-
fore Safiye was the weaker. Still she refused to credit more than a slight jarring of personalities to the fray: “It is the same with mothers- and daughters-in-law the world over.” I knew it was useless to try to shove a darker sin than simple liveliness and a strong desire for her own way upon my lady’s best friend.
Still, Nur Banu was my lady’s stepmother, as close a being to mother as she could remember, although nurse had the more tender connotations in her mind. When Nur Banu’s retreat had extended more than a month, Esmikhan knew she must make the effort to cross Constantinople to pay a call.
Safiye did not thwart her. “Yes. Please go and find out what the old scorpion is up to.”
“Safiye!” Esmikhan pleaded compassion.
Safiye was unrepentant. “I’ve no doubt it’s some sort of witchcraft of her own and we must be warned.”
Safiye even lent the new carriage she had as a lavish gift of friendship from England’s Queen Elizabeth. I’m not certain how the Fair One juggled this relationship at the same time as her continuing one with Catherine de’ Medici, who was more powerful in France than ever. I can only imagine that Catherine and Safiye shared secrets like Italian schoolgirls at the end of the garden when the nuns are elsewhere. And where was the room for a third in this? What fates were decided between the three women will never be known. But I am sure no life from the Sea of Marmara to La Manche was unaffected.
I would have thought close ties with France would preclude them across the Channel. But then, the unfogged eyes of power know no love of country, no boundaries. Safiye’s correspondence with England’s Elizabeth was a little more public if for no other reason than that it had to go through the
