But by now I was laughing so hard with relief that tears were streaming down the sweat dried on my face. Convulsed with sobs and chuckles, I could do nothing but hug the fellow, then leave him standing there, muttering, that he never could understand the sexless ones.
I found my lady in the same state, laughing and crying by turns as she washed the remains of the priceless dates off her little daughter’s face with the edge of her veil. She tried to scold, but she was too relieved to make much of it.
I remember Muhammed standing by, too, his sulky self again now that he was in public. He was crying, and that exaggerated the scar on his cheek, a reminder of a time when his mother in her ambition had had other things on her mind. Someone had told the Prince, in haste more than unkindness, that that was the end of it. He would have no circumcision now, for the fire had thrown everything into disarray and besides, it was an awful omen. They had forgotten to add that the ceremony would surely only be postponed a year or two. He was quite convinced this meant he should never be a man.
If he could not be a man, then he would have his nurse. At this they told him hush, no, he couldn’t have his nurse but they would run and get his mother instead, who would be greatly relieved to see him alive and well. Muhammed knew, as only a child can, that he would get no comfort from his mother. But what he didn’t know, and what they couldn’t find words to tell him, was that his nurse would never comfort him again either. Mad with worry, she had thrown herself back into the flames to try and find her charge. Some had gone after her and dragged her back by force, but the agony of her burns would not let her live the night.
It had been a common curse under the boy’s tyrant of a great-great-grandfather to say, “May you be Selim’s vizier.” Those officials lost favor so quickly and were so short-lived, it was said, that they never left the house without their last testaments on their persons. Some in the harem took to saying the same sort of thing with reference to Muhammed—”May you be chosen as the young Prince’s next nursemaid”—for he had lost two under very bitter circumstances in the eight short years of his life.
I could hardly help but pity the boy. Nor could I blame him when the next person he threw his much-agitated affections towards was neither nurse nor tutor. The one with whom he hoped to share his own immortality of childhood was my own little mistress Gul Ruh. I instantly wished to turn his affections otherwise.
XX
With the fire contained but by no means cold, and with what had been their home only ash and black, heat-cracked marble, the immediate problem became u-here to house the nearly eight hundred women of Selim’s harem. The janissaries and male attendants could sleep on the ground in the garden. Indeed, they were trained for nothing if not such hardship. But to have his women sleep exposed to a naked sky was a dishonor even—or especially—a sultan could never live down.
We took over a hundred women into our horn i night. Such a perturbation! Sokolli Pasha removed himself and went to sleep in the Divan so we had use of the selamlik as well.
By the end of the week, however, we had no more than one of my lady’s stepmothers and Safiye with their two suites. This came to less than fifty extra women, which we thought we could manage for a while. The others had moved to other places Constantinople, some as far away as the summer palace at Edirne.
During the summer, when there were all the gardens for this trebling of our household to disperse into, we managed quite well. The young prince and Gul Ruh, one might have thought, had indeed died in the fire and gone to Paradise, so blissful was their small existence together. We only had to watch they didn’t try bathing or sleeping together, as they would have loved to do.
And Safiye was pleased to have daily access to the grille overlooking Sokolli’s main guest room.
With these three happy, we were all pulled along to contentment, too.
As the cold weather descended, however, tensions which had been covered or at least tempered by sunshine and flowers erupted quite unbearably. My master grew wise and took to holding his most sensitive councils in the Divan. Denied access to the Eye of the Sultan altogether, Safiye was always irritable. I suppose we should have been glad that Nur Banu, the only one Safiye could justly accuse of malice against her—was in her private garden palace near the Edirne Gate—even further from the powers of government than she was.
Safiye herself was obliged to admit that she was at times unreasonable, like a caged animal who may strike at the hand that feeds it. Sometimes she even apologized. But that might just have been the child everyone at last knew to be growing within her. It is common wisdom that a woman is not herself when she’s pregnant.
And that was how Safiye’s third child, a second prince, came to be born in our harem. Cowardly, I sent one of my assistants to fetch the midwife. But the Quince, who had refused on some excuse or other to be watchful under our roof all summer, did not appear even for this. The Fig came instead, and so late there was little at all for her to do. Safiye did always get her woman’s business done in a hurry—although this time Allah willed not successfully.
The little prince died without a name.
“It was the fire,” some said. “It came at a very delicate time in the pregnancy—before she’d even
