“Once I took it to be true affection, but as I’ve watched my sons grow—the oldest is eleven now and already a comely young man, Allah bless him—I’ve come to know it is something else. I know it is the gleam of someone who has found something truly useful, complaisant to her will—and dispensable.”
I murmured some condolence or other which, under the circumstances, could be no more than an appeal to Allah’s mercy. Out of the corner of my eye, I was watching Ghazanfer. What was his reaction to this? Did he confirm with a glint of green, a shift of his shoulder, that all Mitra suspected was true? Could he offer some hope? Or would he report the woman’s faithlessness back to their mistress?
“I’m sorry. I cannot help you,” I said.
“No, but you can,” she exclaimed, suddenly animated. “You, khuddam, can help me escape. Help us escape, me and my boys. To Persia, that would be best. Persia, if it is Allah’s will. But somewhere, anywhere. It doesn’t matter to me if I spend the rest of my days in a fisherman’s hovel, so long as it is away from here.”
Ghazanfer Agha looked up—to the door. Did he merely check that we were not overheard? Or did he look towards her he would tell?
My heart raced at the threat. Though we were counted friends, Ghazanfer and I, I often felt friendship was on the surface. It was an adjunct of the fact that we were the only two white eunuchs left with the women from the days before the reorganization. Yes, something was wrong with the Sultan. I could read that in my fellow eunuch now. But I hadn’t before. And he hadn’t been the one to tell me.
And I still could not read that stoic khadim’s loyalties.
I knew no aid for this poor woman weeping before us. But stopping such betrayal as his eyes might be seeking at the door would have to be a first step. I couldn’t delude myself. There was no way, either physically or by suggestion of loyalty, that I could counter the monstrous Hungarian on my own.
Presently the kapu aghasi turned back to us—to my surprise but gratitude—with vague words of hope. “I will think on it,” he said.
Mitra was surprised, too. She was surprised enough, at least, to let us bring her out of that ill-omened room. And to cease—for another week or so at least—her terrifying plaint that Murad the Sultan was dead. When she did weep again, her voice joined that of all the palace, indeed, of the Empire from one end to the other.
LXVI
Muhammed returned from Magnesia a Stronger figure than any of us remembered him going. There were several hectic days of funeral and investiture and reception of obeisance from the outside world first. But when he did at last make his triumphant entry into the harem—”like a bridegroom into the bedroom”—he had only rested from the hard forced ride from the sandjak. He had not yet lost any of the burnished bronze of his skin to the pampering of gold-fringed canopies.
That bronze was set with rubies like a masterpiece of the jeweler’s art. A ruby the size of a quail’s egg dangled from one ear. On the pure white silk of his turban was fastened a second stone like a pool of blood caught in the palm of the hand and clotted there. That gem held heron plumes aloft and radiated three strings of diamonds to either side. His fingers were jeweled as if to cut off circulation, and the Sword of Oth-man, strapped at his waist, had received new gems to its hilt for the occasion.
Dazzled by the jewelry, few can have noticed the robe. It was cream silk of the highest grade with an unusually dainty floral pattern worked in a peach-colored velvet. Yet it, too, had effect. “Under this power and pomp,” that cream and peach seemed to say, “is a man of pure and gentle motives, whose love would be worth the price of twenty gems, if only it can be won.” It was womenfolk who heard this message most clearly. How it made the hearts of the harem sing!
Only a slight scar on Muhammed’s cheek seemed to mar the picture of a merciful new sovereign.
Throughout his residence at Magnesia, Safiye had seen to it that her son’s needs were satisfied by a single plain but very complaisant Greek. His eunuchs, over whom Safiye had complete control, were under strict orders to get nothing from the slave market on their own unless it was women of proven barrenness, and indeed, their allowance permitted nothing else.
But Muhammed was still young. At twenty-four, ardor comes hot and swiftly enough that one does not stop to consider the shortcomings of one’s partners. Nor does it occur that failing passion is the very shadow of death, to be beaten back with all means possible. The Greek was obedient and willing enough and had presented her master with two sons. If Muhammed ever thought more could be asked for, he thought it must only be an opium dream.
Now Safiye had once explained to the girl how one could keep pregnancies from occurring. The girl was complaisant. But those two sons indicated that she was too complaisant to try and thwart the will of Allah, too simple to practice even the rudiments of the apothecaries’ art.
Safiye had hoped to put off the day when there would be a new woman in the harem with solid claim to power in the world of men. This had made her harder on the Greek girl than she had need to be.
But now the unavoidable day had come. No more than let him appear on
