And this was none too soon, for just at that moment, Nur Banu sailed unannounced into Safiye’s room, her dark eyes crackling with fury. She didn’t even stop to answer little Gul Ruh’s happy chirp of greeting out in the yard.
XIII
“What is the meaning of this?” Nur Banu’s black eyes flashed like two more jewels among the king’s ransom she wore about her person. I always found some pathos in the lavishness of her dress, as if she hoped to prove her life was satisfying by such things.
“The meaning of what, O most favored among the veiled heads?” Safiye’s quotation of the phrase of elaborate reverence so recently used in her own cover letter assured me she was playing innocent and had ulterior motives here as well.
“You are tempting the will of Allah and planning for Muhammed’s circumcision.”
“Yes, planning.”
There was much at stake between the two, for Prince Muhammed was the son of one woman and the grandson of the other. And how a boy takes this important step into manhood, or so the saying goes, will determine the path of the rest of his life. Though she might conceal them here in the East, I knew Safiye at least had just explained her motives to a European queen, or as nearly as I was ever going to learn them.
Safiye gestured Belqis to pack away the correspondence, but she otherwise gave no gesture of welcome to the woman who, as mother of her lover, deserved respect. I remembered, as the Fair One must have done, that her eunuch Ghazanfer was away running messages, else Nur Banu, no more than the widow Huma, would not have gained entry here.
Safiye continued: “My lord, the royal prince’s father, has given his permission and spoken to the necessary officials. It is all arranged.”
Esmikhan offered a polite greeting to her stepmother in an attempt to ease the tension. It didn’t work.
Nur Banu fumed: “I’ll wager you didn’t even consult the astrologers.”
“The astrologers have been consulted.” Safiye spoke as if to console, but nothing could be more calculated to aggravate than her words. “They have given a day a fortnight from now as the most auspicious.”
“A fortnight. That’s not enough time.”
“It pleases me well. The weather should be settled by then.”
“Not nearly enough time.”
“The astrologers say there will not come a better day for over a year.
“How can we prepare for a prince’s circumcision in two weeks?”
“Well, we certainly cannot if we must spend our time sitting around arguing.” Safiye gestured after the departing scribe. “Personally, I have seen to many important things today and if you’ll allow me—”
“The festivities that must come before, the foreign dignitaries to invite, the gifts to acquire? I don’t care who you think you are, you cannot work miracles. It will seem my grandson—Allah forbid-—is a merchant’s brat, a peasant, a wild Turk of the steppe, no Ottoman prince to be made a man with so little care.”
“Nevertheless, it is settled.” Safiye shrugged the wealth of her thick blond hair off both shoulders. “My man has made a decision, since your Selim is incapable. And Murad arranged that it pleases his father as well—may he reign forever—since I pleased him so well during his recent visit to Constantinople.”
Safiye smoothed her hand over the snug pearl buttons down the front of her yelek. She blushed with obvious pleasure—and unshakable beauty—obviously thinking of another fruit of the prince’s attention which as yet only she and I knew.
Nur Banu’s cheeks flushed, too, but with fury and an unbecoming clash against the redder splotches of rouge there, against her hennaed hair so orange and stiff it might have been forged of brass. “Yet you will not go where you belong, to my son’s side in Magnesia.”
“And why should I, when he is content to make the trip north often enough?”
“You have no shame that he may be neglecting his duties for the likes of you?”
“None. Besides, Murad knows he must have someone here in the capital to watch out for his interests.”
“Surely his own mother has nothing but his best interests at heart.” Nur Banu pressed the place in her chest where such concerns resided as if it pained her.
“Surely he is not convinced of that since he is content to fulfill my requests over yours. Such as speeding up this barbaric rite—if I cannot talk him out of it altogether.”
“Of course it must be done, you impious girl. But not so young, not so young. What shame and ill omen it would be—Allah forbid—if a son of Othman and heir to the throne should cry out when he was cut. By old tradition, the ceremony should be put off until the boy is twelve or fourteen.”
“But the vision of my sweet small son sobbing and clinging to his mother for comfort as he faces manhood appeals to me more,” Safiye said.
“His tears? I have never noticed that his tears do aught but irritate you up until now. Fine mother that you are, you are probably the last person he would turn to for comfort.”
“I have also heard that a few tears now are preferable to the serious threat of infection in an older boy.”
“Your only true concern is to hurry Muhammed into manhood so you can wield a man’s power through him ere he’s cut his eyeteeth.”
Safiye made no attempt to deny the accusation. “I am, after all, the only mother he has.”
“Consider how my son listens to the only mother he has
