“Poor Safiye,” Esmikhan would say when she heard of this, echoing the opinion of many other women. “My brother no longer loves her as he used to. To be so careless about whom she sees! Where has the old jealousy gone?”
But I remembered the fellow’s purported skills in the ways of women. At the time, I’d thought Safiye wanted them for herself. I should have known she was subtler than that. Now I saw, without words, that there were other wombs in Murad’s harem. The doctor would not have to enter the harem, just pass his knowledge and potions on to Safiye. Could Safiye blind a man who, by report, had endured untold other privations for the sake of his science? The man was old, the juices drying—Still I did not doubt it. In the shadow of her strength, he, too, could believe that all acts done in her name still had a virtuous objectivity, would still lead to knowledge that would still lead to truth that would still and ever be good.
God knows she’d blinded me. I suffered for it continuously.
While my thoughts waded through fever, Ghazanfer’s quick mind scampered on ahead. “‘Spare no trouble, no expense.’” He was reciting for me Safiye’s instructions to him concerning the acquisition of her second new weapon. He had not.
“Her name,” he said, “is Mitra.”
XXVI
“Mitra, the new slave girl, is a Persian and of a noble family,” Ghazanfer said. “Her father was posted to a border stronghold from which she was captured during a recent offensive when—mashallah—Allah punished the heretics.”
“This Mitra is beautiful, I suppose?”
My guest hardly required my encouragement for his tale. “Not stunning, not like the Hungarian, not like my lady. She is of light complexion, something which isn’t at all unheard of among Persians although it is the darker folk we see more often. Her hair is the color of amber in some lights, a fine setting for either emeralds or rubies, the bigger the better. But by itself, unremarkable.”
“You are a connoisseur of slave flesh, my friend?”
“I suppose I’ve learned the jargon during these last months of search.”
“So all your business was not for the pilgrimage?”
“No, it was not. Anyway, this Mitra was taken some four years ago as no more than a child. Few could have been able to see through her fear, awkwardness, and only slightly above average looks to find the pearl hidden there. But a woman of the nobility invested the hundred ghrush and the thousands of hours needed to complete all she lacked in Turkish taste—which you know, of course, favors the Persian where it can. Mitra sings like a lark and poetry—most of it in her native language—she recites in a fashion that others, even with years of training, might only aspire to. They can never achieve an inbred grace.”
“I perceive she has touched your heart, agha.”
“Indeed. I love the poets.” And it was not without some bitterness that he continued, “She was reading poetry when Murad first met her: An enterprising poet had rented her to present his latest creation before the throne.”
“I suppose it won a royal prize for him.”
“Beyond all imagining. But the man flattered himself. And even Murad the Sultan—may Allah favor him—even he did not realize for the glory of the reciter that the poem itself was really quite mediocre.”
I found lucidity enough to wonder, “Where is Nur Banu in all of this?”
“It was actually the crown of the veiled heads who first heard of the event, heard the poem on someone else’s less-inspired lips, and realized that it must have been the reciter that inflamed her son’s heart instead. A new route to her son’s ear, she realized, had just opened up. She sent to the noble woman and immediately offered equal what she had once paid for Safiye for the girl.”
“Then?”
“Then I got wind of the purchase. I brought word to Safiye. ‘Offer her half again so much,’ my lady said.
“The dealer was dumbfounded and came apologetically. ‘I must be honest with you, agha,’ she said, ‘or I may lose your favor and the honor of your future custom. The girl is not a virgin. The men who captured her—well, the heat of battle and all. And maybe they, being only rough soldiers, never guessed what a little careful training could do. Perhaps it would be better to let the Queen Mother have this one, less than whole as she is.’
“Safiye consulted with her doctor. Then she heard that Nur Banu was ready to offer five hundred, so she stuck to her original price and gave six.
“Nur Banu stepped down. ‘She’s not a virgin, after all,’ the Valide Sultan said. ‘I’ll save my money for others, better ones.’”
I asked, “Do I sense you did not mention the Venetian doctor in vain?”
“You sense correctly.” His words made me shiver again. “Now the doctor had only heard of the procedure for restoring virginity in some far land, never seen it or even its product for himself. But, in the interest of science, he relished the chance to experiment. And now—” The eunuch spread his great, flattened hands in a gesture indicating self-explanation.
I suppose the fever was still slowing me. I asked, “Now?”
“Now the Venetian has reason to congratulate himself.”
“And Safiye has won her six-hundred-ghrush gamble.”
“She has.”
I let my end of the dialogue drop for a moment while I forced my mind to consider the implications of what I’d just learned: Safiye buying slave flesh, creating Murad’s addictions on her own. As I paused thus, the maidservant scurried in with cold juice, warm water.
“This is well,” Ghazanfer said to her. “But see you do not neglect him in future.”
The girl bowed deeply the instant her hands were empty. “Agha, I am your slave.” She hurried from the room.
With hands that might have crushed porcelain had they been careless, Ghazanfer poured me the cooling juice. He was up on his knees; I fully suspect he would have tried to help me
