There I now read, Why have you done this to yourself, lady? To yourself and your unborn child? It is my job to protect you and I do so—with my life. But how can I protect you if it’s your own hand you turn against yourself?
I also saw a slouch in the wide space between his shoulders, a slouch that spoke of a case of the sulks approaching childishness.
What I heard aloud, in the eunuch’s rising voce di testa, was this:
“Against Selim, yes. I hated Selim. You know I had cause and he was the ruination of the land. But Murad—Allah keep him—is not his father and I can’t continue to serve you against him and against innocents, to bring chaos to the lands of Islam!”
Safiye saw me in the doorway. Her eves shifted and Ghazanfer caught the message. He managed to suppress the storm inside to his usual glassy calm exterior. With the intake of a single breath, even his back fell silent.
“How fares the cradle of princes?” I covered the intermittent awkwardness with my most formal language.
“She and the child are out of danger,” the midwife declared with self-satisfaction.
“Allah be praised.”
Safiye smiled an addictive smile at me, which I resisted. Then she allowed her attention to be consumed with midwifery.
Ghazanfer took another breath and took the burden of my presence from his lady. “I am conscious, khadim/’he: said, “of the disruption all of this causes the peace of your harem.”
“Do not mention what is Allah’s will,” I replied with equal stiffness.
A glimmer moved through Ghazanfer’s eves, as if to say. It’s never Allah’s will in reference to her.
Before I could raise my own brows in surprise, he spoke aloud in a different vein. “I fear we must impose upon your hospitality yet further.”
“The guest is a gift from Allah.”
“His Highness the Sultan, hearing of the danger that has threatened his peace and majesty in this room, is very desirous to see the well-guarded one with his own eves.”
“His Highness’s wish is my command.”
“But as it is not thought wise to move the object of his concern in her present state—”
“We will not hear of it.”
“His majesty will come here.”
“We will be honored.”
“Now. This very afternoon.”
What could I say? “We will be honored.”
“I know it’s a great inconvenience.” Ghazanfer dropped his formal tone in an approximation of apology. “But what else can we do?”
For one moment I thought, Nur Banu must be beside herself with fury. Surely her new girl was condemned to failure from the start, if Safiye the Fair One remained so vital in Murad’s heart. For the only other being a sultan had ever gone to see—and did not send for to await his own pleasure— was Allah Himself in His mosque at Friday prayers.
What else could we do? the great eunuch had asked. I couldn’t spare thought for alternatives the rest of the day. I wasn’t the only one who noted parallels: Some of the same ceremonial could be applied here as at Friday prayers. But though this parallel lent the self-propulsion of centuries-old tradition, I could not trust to that. I personally had to see to every detail.
I ended up claiming part of the Hippodrome’s summer dust as I tried to find places for all the attendants that had to come along on this lovers’ tryst and the mounts of those who claimed the honor of riding the short distance. The viziers made a field of green, the muftis in white, the chamberlains scarlet, the sheikhs a block of blue. All these had to be made comfortable with refreshments and small guest gifts according to rank.
My master himself had to unpack his most formal robes of heavy green silk from among scented aloes, his conical turban ringed with gold. He saw to the highest dignitaries in the selamlik. The harem, of course, was mostly left in peace: Even a sultan could claim no access to any household’s inner sanctum. But my lady had to rise to the occasion and little Gul Ruh, too, had to wear her best to greet her royal uncle.
I take it all as heaven’s mercy that I had no time the rest of that day to consider the ramifications of this visit, either for Nur Banu or for anyone else in the empire. But I do recall thinking, on one hasty passage through the mabein, that this man from whom I so scrupulously averted my eyes as the Shadow of Allah had once tried to best me in a hand-to-hand fight. It had been when I’d first come to the harem and I’d stood my own again.st him until Safiye’s declaration that I was a eunuch had finally removed me from the young prince’s threat. I wondered if Murad remembered.
On that same quick passage on silent, watchful eunuch’s feet, I saw little out of the ordinary in the familiar faces: Gul Ruh’s straining to whiteness in her attempt to be a grown up lady, Esmikhan’s blooming to renewed health in her brother’s presence, Safiye’s calmly triumphant—this much was expected. That Ghazanfer’s flattened cheeks wore a brush of high color—of pleasure? or shame?—was more surprising. But I took no time to consider the curiosity then.
So it came as something quite unforeseen when at last I closed the harem doors and thought we had done with the world for a while that my master should call me back out to him in the selamlik.
Sokolli Pasha’s private rooms had less of the feminine about them than a soldier’s barracks, than a monk’s cell. A spartan divan of rumpled cushions, a worn rug
