“No, no. Stay. Sit down.”
Sit down quickly, please, the kapu aghasi read the Sultan’s thought. From the level of the floor where he continued to bow his huge bulk with difficulty, Ghazanfer saw Safiye was as tall as their common master was. The young prince may have found the woman’s height enticing once. No doubt it unnerved him now.
“My companions seem to have gone, Safiye,” the Sultan said aloud. “We shall watch the Divan together for a while.”
Murad seemed to curse himself silently. Why did he grow so red? He ran his fingers around the stifle of the sable collar that lay like a wet noose about his neck. After all this time, that she should have such an effect on him, Ghazanfer thought with renewed admiration for his lady.
Murad had had a string of girls young enough to be his daughters, and still none of them could move him like this.
Murad scratched his beard distractedly, perhaps painfully aware that grey had begun to invade it like mealworms in the paprika. Could it be that her appearance had a stronger effect on him than it had had that first evening? Ghazanfer had not been present, of course, that Id al-Adha, festival of the sacrifice, when Nur Banu’s gift to her son had been this prize, served up to him like pastries on a tray. But he could guess.
And, he guessed, there were other emotions mixed with the desire now, indeed, quite overcoming it. The Sultan knew that Safiye knew of his amours. She knew how weak he was, while all the time she sat there—so he thought—in perfect constancy. If the mere glance of her eyes were not enough to tell him she was faithful still, then there was Ghazanfer, Ghazanfer Agha settled like a bell jar over her on which was engraved the word virtue.
Ghazanfer rose unobtrusively and watched how humble his mistress became before Murad, devoted to him still. Her actions proved it. It gave her awful power over him. The lord of three continents could not meet her in the eye. He was ashamed.
“Safiye, I...” he stammered to bring forth some sort of apology.
“Say nothing, my lord, if you do not wish to.”
The Sultan took the mantle of sovereignty she handed him with those words and flung it hastily over himself for protection. But still he realized, and realized that she realized: If he was Sultan, she was Sultan Maker.
“Please, please, be seated, my master.” Safiye gestured with a sweep of her graceful arm. “Your counselors are just coming to the important decisions now.”
Murad let her reverence and the formality of the situation give him the royal will he needed to sit as if it had been his own idea. Then Safiye curled up at his feet like some faithful dog. He tried to protest and invited her to sit beside him on the divan. But she would not. And there was such power in her humility, he could not resist! He didn’t stop to think that the seat on the rugs gave the best view and hearing of the affairs in the room below, and that a modicum of comfort was the only advantage he had on the divan.
The Agha of the Janissaries was in the midst of complaining before the viziers: “I swear by Allah that if something is not done, the entire corps will have turned over its supper kettles by the end of the week.”
“And the cavalry will join the rebellion,” added Ferhad, the handsome Master of the Horse.
“There’s ground stone in the flour.”
“Rotten vegetables.”
“No meat at all last week.”
“You cannot feed your army on that and expect them to be faithful.”
“I agree,” came the sober voice of Sokolli Pasha, sitting just beneath the Eye where they could see little more than the bubble of his gold-banded turban. “Something must be done and immediately. With the general populace also hungry and restive, discontent in the army is like a firebrand in the powder stores. You’ve had a chance to take our offer to your men. What is their answer?”
“‘A tax for wear and tear on our teeth and stomachs.’ That’s what they’re calling it.” The young Master of the Horse enjoyed a smile. There was no doubt of his charm.
The Grand Vizier gave the man a hard look which he had difficulty meeting. “They joke at it, then? They wall not accept our best offer, one that will break the empire in any case?”
“My colleague did not say that,” the Agha of the Janissaries spoke for Ferhad, who at the moment could say nothing. Ghazanfer wondered briefly what there was between the young cavalryman and the Grand Vizier. “They are willing to bargain over such a ‘tax.’ They will take a hundred akçe a man per year.”
“We only offered fifty.” Sokolli Pasha was grim.
“A hundred is what they want.”
“Very well. See if they’ll settle for seventy-five. And we in here—” He looked around at the other viziers seated with him on the Divan. “—we will see if it is possible to meet them there.”
The two commanders bowed their way out of the room.
“By Allah!” Sokolli Pasha exploded the minute the men had gone. “It is blackmail. They will destroy the empire. They will destroy Islam. Don’t they care?”
“I doubt they do,” said Lala Mustafa, the second vizier. He spoke quietly. “It is not their empire, after all.”
“Of course it is their empire.”
“They were taken from their homes as boys. Remember?”
“So was I, by Allah. So were you. I knew if we let them marry they would begin to get personal profit on the brain. Ah, but I forget. You are in favor of this scheme.” The Grand Vizier’s voice sharpened, like a knife, as he added, “You and whoever pays you.”
“I see no other way out, my lord Grand Vizier. Do you?”
Sokolli Pasha was desperate, but he had to admit he saw none. “‘The encroachments of the rich are more
