“It took no more than an indrawn breath for the audience to fall back and give the Fig room. The out-breath mouthed the name, ‘Yavrube, Yavrube!’ This, I knew, was the name of their demon goddess. And now—the name of their priestess as well.
“Before, the Fig had moved with confidence, as she always does. But how much more so now! She whirled, she twirled, she hopped, she dropped, she rolled, she heaved, she rippled, every space of flesh like small wavelets passing on a dark, moonlit water.
“Such energy! I have only seen children with such energy before, naughty children, and then the little ones soon drop with exhaustion. But on and on the possessed Fig went. The irises of her eyes had rolled out of sight, a twitch of her head as she passed rained me with sweat. Others crowded together to receive such rain, considering it a blessing. Constricting to the drums, you could hear her breath, nearing the point where mortality must burst, dragging in and out of fraying lungs like an anchor chain in and out of the hold.”
Can this have been as much like the dance of the dervishes as it sounds? I asked myself. Where every man accepts the divine, not just a leader. Ghazanfer had never been to a tekke or he might have made the connection. But I said nothing, letting him continue.
“And then—the strings were cut. The bones seemed to fly from the Fig as she melted to the ground, bitumen on a hot day. Some went to roll her gently over, but the eyes were still unflawed mother-of-pearl set in her ebony face, unseeing. Yavrube still animated her limbs. The people stepped back, in awe.
“And then, the voice came. I recognized the voice, but it was not the Fig’s. It was the Quince’s.”
“The dead Quince?”
“Syllable for syllable. As the words shuddered from her, Yavrube moved like a woman under her lover. It was obscene. But somehow, not so in that company, with those drums. And I could not look away.
“And the voice said: ‘Babies’.”
LXX
I couldn’t help but interrupt Ghazanfer at this point by repeating, “Babies?”
The great Hungarian nodded. “ ‘Babies. Their insides all bled out.’ “
“In the Quince’s voice?”
“Exactly. It gave me such a start to hear it coming out of those full black lips instead of the Quince’s thin, tart ones.”
“I, too, have heard the Quince say those precise words. When she saw my little lady. But what does it mean?”
“The voice went on to say this. At every lying in of Esmikhan, the Quince, under Safiye’s orders—because she loved Safiye beyond all reason—”
“She is not the first to have done so,” I murmured.
“At every lying in, the Quince was to see if the child was male or female.”
“So she did. So does every midwife.”
“And only then was she to cut the cord.”
“She ties the cord off and then cuts it. I was at the lying in when Gul Ruh was born. I know how such things are done.”
“Ah, but only if it were a girl child was she to tie the cord. If it was a male child, one who because of his mother’s blood and the high name of his father Sokolli Pasha might prove a threat to Safiye’s son’s throne, then the cord was to be left untied.”
A shiver crept up my back and spread across my shoulders. I remembered something Esmikhan had begun to say as she watched this business of the Quince’s hand, something she found odd, new, at the birth of her daughter after three tiny sons. But I had not listened. And Esmikhan had been too weak to find the words.
“Such a tiny little mistake,” Ghazanfer was continuing. “But in a matter of minutes, never more than an hour, the strongest child must succumb. ‘He was weak from birth,’ they say. ‘He was never meant to live.’ “
Now my mind went blank with the horror. There had been inklings, perhaps, but I had always blanked them out, too. Now could it be true? Our lives, all of our lives had revolved around a truth of a different nature. Much of my lady’s undying love for Ferhad was because he had given her the one thing Sokolli had been unable to. Sokolli had gone to his grave, thinking himself a lesser man, content to be a cuckold. Esmikhan’s crippling—she might have recovered had she not been so convinced her sins deserved a punishment. I had allowed that adultery because all the while I thought...and who could say but what Gul Ruh was the perfect sort of child she was for no other reason than that from her very first day she had sensed...?
“Can this be true? All of our lives...” I exclaimed aloud. “Are they nothing? Built on a horrible black deed like that, madness as great as that of the old Quince?”
“That’s what turned her mad in the end, not so much the drug to which she retreated for comfort when Safiye denied her love.”
“Allah, Allah,” I mourned. “Tiny, innocent babies.”
Ghazanfer did not understand all I had been thinking, but I had been silent long enough to make him guess he understood. He offered some word of sympathy which I was as yet too horror-stricken to accept with much grace.
“But Esmikhan was her best friend!” I protested.
“What does friendship mean to the Fair One before power?” he asked. “All her life she has confused the Sofia she was born to—that the Christians call wisdom—and Safiye—that the Muslims call fair. She has confused the virtues and in the confusion, perverted the power of each, supreme intelligence as well as supreme beauty.
“And ask yourself this: Why was Esmikhan Safiye’s best friend? Because she could be used. By Allah, don’t you see? She does the same thing to her own daughter.”
“Aysha?”
“Yes, Aysha. Aysha could not get a child from Ferhad Pasha when Esmikhan could?”
“By
