I realized Machiavelli was only putting into print what plenty of people practiced anyway, instinctively, in spite of religion’s best efforts, without his instruction. Safiye, for example, had been Machiavellian long before Catherine’s gift arrived in her hands. My life was clear evidence of that.
Now, as I watched the dual letter to the Queen Mother of France taking shape, phrases from Machiavelli’s book ran through my mind like the horrors of the little house beyond Pera where manhood had been tortured from me. “Because people are bad and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them.” I couldn’t shake such words, though a merciful God would have allowed me to, as He ought to have allowed me to forget Pera. Both memories had the same effect, a sickness in the bowels, a dampness in the palms, a tendency to lose touch with the present when, if anything, both such words and the scarred-over event should have taught me to keep my wits—to prevent further tragedy.
“Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot.”
Did Safiye consider I had been crushed beyond threat? Was that why she so nonchalantly taunted me with glimpses of what she was doing? I may have felt so crushed at one point in my life, but caring for my lady had changed that. At least it had once more given me something worth avenging—if attacked.
My thoughts were interrupted as I noticed that meanwhile, Belqis had progressed to Sultan Selim. For his pious honoring of Allah and His Prophet, her flowery language honored him in return as “Khan of the seven climes at this auspicious time, the Shah en-Shah in Baghdad, in Byzantine realms the Caesar, and in Egypt the Sultan. May he live long and attain what he desires.”
My lady Esmikhan sighed with wonder at the artistry the scribe displayed.
But Safiye’s letter was where my vigilance must stay. She was discussing French politics with a familiarity that made it difficult for me to follow. But, as well as I could make out, her words were, “How clever of you, my dear sister queen, to have maintained the interest of England’s Elizabeth in your son Alençon, albeit he is more than twenty years her junior. And in spite of the necessary unpleasantness of St. Bartholomew’s Day which might well make a Protestant queen think twice. I understand your son has grown taller and managed to produce a beard, which may do much to hide his youth and imperfections. As long as Elizabeth continues to call your son her ‘little froggy,’ I fully expect I may soon hear that you are the mother, not only of the king of France, the king of Poland, but of England as well. You are indeed the mother-in-law of Europe, and that is not the term of shrewish powerlessness we often imagine, but praise for the greatest of Machiavellians.”
Aloud, Belqis tried out her honorific formulas for Selim’s son Murad. “The straight-grown cypress in the garden of kingship.” Esmikhan particularly liked that description of her brother, who had begotten His Highness Muhammed, “possessor of the crown of twelve illustrious ancestors.”
Safiye’s letter continued in a different vein: “Further as to what you might do with these Huguenots is difficult for me to advise. I must tell you the reflex here in Turkey is to side with Protestantism, if for no other reason than that we both share Catholic countries as our nearest and most inimical neighbors. Protestants run about destroying Catholic shrines and holy pictures; Turks share the same attitude towards ‘idolatry.’ For this cause I find it most difficult to plead on your behalf against Protestant England here in the Divan.”
A look in Safiye’s almond eyes made me think she enjoyed taunting me with bits of this letter. If there was anything here I’d been able to thwart, certainly she would have put off the correspondence until later.
I read more: “Your refusal to ally against us at Lepanto was helpful. But you must know that news of the measures taken to quell your internal rebellion with the fierceness demanded to prevent a rekindling from the coals, your ‘St. Bartholomew’s Breakfast,’ was met here with nothing short of outrage. Nonetheless, if we assume you can forge a mixed alliance with England as successfully as you did with your daughter and Protestant Navarre, things may proceed much more in our favor.”
Women finally found their place in the official reality of Belqis’s words. His Royal Highness Muhammed’s mother, “Most favored of the veiled and modest heads, the most exalted fleshly cradle of princes” sent greetings to “the support of Christian womanhood...trailing skirts of glory and power, woman of Mary the mother of Jesus’s way.”
Safiye returned to the subject of mothers-in-law. “Mothers-in-law here in the East are given much greater power in the formation of marital alliances than I remember in the West. Mothers are, after all, the only ones in a position to know prospective brides, for such a veil of modesty hangs over womenfolk that men will never broach the subject among themselves without risking censure of the deepest kind for their rudeness. Nonetheless, it is not until I had your example that I realized just how powerful I might become in this next stage of my career.”
Safiye caught my eyes and smiled slightly. How much, I wondered, of this intimacy was also flattery? Machiavelli could
