So this road-worn party had come to knock on the empty seaside gate to the palace wall after midnight. My master had warned the gatekeepers to be on their guard and, on their lives, to admit no one without his express orders. These men took one look and then did not need to look or think more before following those orders—and shutting the little peep window again and firmly.
A winter storm was blowing in off the Black Sea. The winds were high and the waves left precious little shore—and that very exposed—for five men to stand on before the rise of the great walls. Perhaps Murad had seen through the peep window, past wind-whipped cypresses, to the blackened carcass of a palace he was to inherit; he had heard of the fire, of course, but not yet weighed the reality of it. Tired, hungry, cold, shut out from his own palace—a ruin—and now it was beginning to rain. The new Sultan must have been very discouraged indeed. Even stray cats had deserted that exposed spot that night.
Murad sent one of his men running at once to warn my master of the situation. But it took more than an hour for the man to make it around the point, over the great rocks slick with rain with the waves crashing on them, to the city gates where he could gain access.
Eventually my master Sokolli Pasha, with a few men (I was among them) and torches, opened the gate and let the wayfarers in. Yet we did not at once fall upon our faces and welcome our new sovereign. No, Sokolli Pasha had warned us as we hurried to the gate. One of Selim’s five younger sons might have somehow gotten word and was now set on usurpation. It had been at least two years since any of us had seen the heir. Murad’s next youngest brother, in spite of their different mothers, was very like him in features, and the journey had made this man both thinner and darker. We raised our torches against the wind and peered intently.
“Only if you would stake your life that he is Murad,” we were warned. None of us could go so far.
Sokolli Pasha coughed apologetically (for the man might very well be our next master) and said one more test would have to be passed. Although he had just traveled ten days almost without pause, fresh horses were brought and we rode to the palace on the outskirts of town which had been Nur Banu’s residence since the fire.
Many have called my master “Sultan Maker” as if there were some sort of blame to that. But let it be known that never was the harem more powerful than on that night. Nur Banu came from her chamber, still in crumpled clothes and bleary-eyed from sleep. She stood, stared, then threw open her arms with joy. “My lion,” she cried, the term of endearment all mothers of princes give their firstborn sons. With those words and those words alone, she made an emperor.
I suppose had I had a plot up my sleeve, I could have wielded my own power that night. As neither my master nor any of the other officials went into the room where Nur Banu was, nor would have known her from any other woman if they had, it all rested on the testimony of my two colleagues—Nur Banu’s Kislar Agha and Ghazanfer—and myself.
But the thought never occurred to me to counter the will of Allah in this matter. I gave the sign to my master as we reentered and we instantly all fell flat on the floor, declaring Murad to be our new master, the power of our lives and the Shadow of Allah.
A weary but happy smile crept over the face that wore the paprika beard. “By Allah, I’m famished,” he declared. “Have them bring us some food.”
As we got to our feet to fulfill this order, even the least suspicious among us could not help but exchange guarded glances. That his first words as Sultan should be these! That was an ill omen in anybody’s eyes.
XXII
My lady took these events—the death of her father and the succession of her half-brother—quite well. Considering that Murad’s success meant the death of all five of his brothers including Esmikhan’s own full-blood brother, Jehanghir, she took it amazingly well. She never held it against Murad; it was ancient Turkish law.
Murad had, in fact, wished to show mercy. But the Mufti soon convinced him that individual mercy was never so great as mercy shown to the people at large. The new Sultan’s vast subject populace would ever praise him that he had spared them any opportunity for civil war. So five little turbaned sarcophagi joined their father’s great one in the high-ceilinged and heavily tiled mausoleum on the grounds of Aya Sophia. There they rest as unashamedly as if the plague had merely touched them with the hand of Allah.
My lady’s stepmother’s sorrow was not so tempered by faith, and this grieved Esmikhan more than the actual murder. But her stepmother was soon moved along with the little Cypriot and any other woman or boy who had ever known the late Sultan to permanent retirement at Edirne.
Esmikhan wept at the separation as if at her stepmother’s death—she knew she would never be able to make such a long journey as that to visit—but in a few weeks distance made all those griefs bearable.
Selim’s death caused Safiye griefs, too. Though they were less permanent, they were no less hard to bear—at least for the fiery daughter of Baffo.
She, along with her son, daughter, and the rest of her suite, arrived in Constantinople after a more leisurely journey from Magnesia—though one not without discomfort as it was midwinter. Safiye then discovered that she, no less than Murad, should have made the trip in ten days if she wanted to be certain her position was consolidated. The way it was, Nur Banu had had two or
