I was feeling so miserable, lonely, and uncared for—this being a disease of such indignity, the very embodiment of our mutilated, less-than-human state—that I had begun to actually hope it might kill me. I would not be the first of my kind to die this way. Nor—and this added to my grey outlook—would I be the last.
Earlier I had hoped for a visit from my lady. Wouldn’t she be anxious that I was not at her side? Then I did not wish it, knowing only too well that getting her down the stairs and through the corridors to my room would be more trouble than it was worth. And though such a pilgrimage may not begin that way, in the end it would be my trouble she caused rather than the relief she hoped for, so basically lazy and helpless were my seconds. I wished Esmikhan happy—and quiet—where she was.
Perhaps, then, my young lady would come, having the run of the place as she did. For a while I hoped for that cheer, and regretted that her mother must have warned her “not to bother poor, sick Uncle Abdullah today.” Then I did not want to spend the energy it would take to meet Gul Ruh’s liveliness. I didn’t want to see the cloud of concern that would drift across the vivid whites of her eyes. And since nobody else in the world mattered, I wanted death before I’d let others see me in my shame, even one bringing me more juice or giving the embers in the brazier a stir on that cold, wet fall afternoon.
Presently, however, before a forgetting sleep could come, someone else did enter the room. It was the last person I wanted—or expected. It was Ghazanfer Agha.
I made a clumsy struggle to get to my feet; any man who drags Agha around after him should at least have his hem kissed.
“Pray, do not stir yourself, ustadh,” my guest insisted hastily. Don’t I know the agony of such things? Is that what his tone implied? It was impossible to tell.
Ghazanfer made his great bulk comfortable on my rug—the only place left in my small cell to sit, what with me taking up all the divan. I hoped this did not denote an extended stay.
Once settled, my inexpedient guest launched into a long and formalized speech. He thanked me and mine profusely and wished us “the eternal blessings of Paradise” for the “saint-like hospitality” we’d shown to him and his.
What does this man want? throbbed through my aching head. It occurred to me—I was not so fevered as all that—that high officials are removed from the normal rounds of sociability. They never make personal visits—unless they want something.
I tried to think of some belonging he or his women might have left behind. I tried to remember some unintentioned slight, some word I might be required to pass on to my master—in my condition! I worked my fever-papered tongue in dry desperation.
Ghazanfer suddenly stopped in midflattery and scowled like a demon at the low table set between us. Whatever I’ve failed to do, I thought, I will pay for it now. At least with those monster hands about my throat, it will not be the lingering death of the infection for which I’d been preparing.
The Agha could move quickly for one so large, and such movement was invariably frightening to us lesser mortals. In a moment, he snatched the pitcher up off the table. I flinched and covered my tender groin, expecting to be showered with broken crockery in an instant. Instead, Ghazanfer stormed out into the hall. I heard him collar the first maidservant he came to, shame her for neglecting “the khadim, your most careful protector” and ordered “more juice and more hot water, quickly, as you fear Allah.”
I heard the scurry of terrified slippers. What fear of Allah when Ghazanfer Agha was in the room? Then the awesome man returned and sat down quietly again as if half ashamed of his size—or his calling—and what it did to others.
He worked on the brazier a little but said nothing until I made an attempt: “How...how is the peace of your harem?”
The great, torture-hardened face cracked into something like a smile. I must be delirious. A kapu aghasi could hardly be burdened with a harem. Unless you called that greatest of all sanctuaries, Mecca and Medina, his preserve. But this man, at this time, did not set his sights quite so high.
“My lady Safiye,” he began chattily, almost amiably, “had just received news of a ‘weakness in the enemy lines,’ hence her haste to return to the palace of our imperial master.”
“Weaknesses? In enemy lines?” I was too sick for riddles.
“The little Hungarian—Nur Banu’s Hungarian—who wasted no time in captivating Murad’s heart, has also wasted no time in becoming pregnant.” Did I detect a little native pride in this fellow Hungarian? Against his own lady?
I decided I was seeing things and said, “So Safiye and her shortly-to-arrive little one have some competition then?”
Ghazanfer presented me with another quiet almost-smile. “But my lady has two new weapons in her own arsenal.”
“Weapons?” The fever worked on the image and made me shiver.
“And, like a soldier more foolhardy than courageous, she can hardly wait to try them out against the enemy.”
“More than the awaited child I read you to mean.”
“Yes. The first is the doctor.”
“Doctor?”
“You know, the Venetian you fetched for her when her life and that of the awaited child were despaired of.”
“She’s gotten people to believe that he was responsible for her sudden, miraculous recovery?”
“Even Murad—Allah extend his reign for eternity—even the Sultan was impressed enough that he has given his own personal permission to allow the man of medicine access to her anytime she felt
