“Thank heaven they’re gone!” Gul Ruh exclaimed when I returned from seeing the ladies into their sedan chairs. My young mistress threw her arms about my waist and, in an unaccustomed display of affection, stroked my chest.
I looked down on that pretty young head—noticing it was not so far down any longer, for she had inherited her father’s height—and caressed it in return.
“Why do you say that, little garden flower?” I asked.
“Because—” she said, catching my eye with an intense stare. “Well, Abdullah, aren’t you glad as well?”
I had to admit I shared the exuberance. But our momentary relief did nothing about the live charge fusing in our mabein.
XXXVI
Before sunset that evening, the soldiers had come again, but this time they would not be put off by the mabein door.
“We must hear her voice,” the captain said. “To make certain it is indeed a female.”
“She may not speak,” the master stammered. “She is very shy.”
“Then you must make her speak or all Constantinople will suspect it is a man you hide in your harem. I leave you to wager how long you may remain Grand Vizier with that shame on your head.”
My master took a breath and went to the mabein door. He knocked very gently and had to clear his throat to get the words out.
“Fatima! Fatima!” he called. As if he’d called her Maria in Venice! That name was so common it probably arose suspicion in and of itself. My master was so transparently naive about women!
“Fatima, there are men here.” Best he warn his secretary at least, if he could do nothing else. “There are men from the palace and they would hear you speak. To make certain you are...what I say you are. It is a matter of honor. And of life and death. Fatima, can you come to the door and say something?”
There was no reply.
“She is modest,” my master protested, but the soldiers were not satisfied.
“Let me go in and encourage her with the gravity of the situation,” I offered.
“No,” the captain grabbed my arm. “You may be in on this hoax, khadim. It would be only too easy for you to open the harem door and let some slave girl in to speak for ‘her.’ No, either that person you say is in there speaks up by the count of ten or I shall be obliged to break down the door in the name of the Sultan.”
“Sir,” said my master. “I ask you to recall that this is not the mountains of Yugoslavia where a soldier may lose discipline with impunity. Violence against virtuous women of the Faith can be death.”
“And shielding a man wanted by the Sultan is also death. I think the odds are even. At least I am not afraid of the wager. Are you, Pasha? I am a great man of the gamble, by Allah. Men, prepare to force the door on the count of ten!”
And the captain began to count.
“Fatima, please. Won’t you come and speak? Spare both of us the shame of this violence.”
My master was pleading, and it was not an edifying sight in the person of the Grand Vizier. What he was pleading for I supposed to be the quick escape of Feridun Bey out through the mabein courtyard. But then where? Nothing else, short of a miracle, could be hoped for.
Perhaps it was the same blind hope for heaven’s intervention that kept me rooted to the spot. To bolt at that moment, to run around through the other doors and make an escape for the fugitive through the harem, though there might be time before the door was broken down, would be a clear expression of guilt. And somehow I continued to believe that right might still win heaven’s protection.
The door tore off its hinges and the soldiers burst in with drawn swords. My heart sank. The figure in the apricot veil had not even bothered to flee, but stood cowering in a corner. This took the soldiers aback for a moment, too. They had fully expected a man with a drawn sword to meet them. Still, they were convinced of their purpose. The captain, backed by his men, strode across the room and caught the apricot figure by one swathed arm.
As he pulled the veil tight, one could see the light swelling of young breasts beneath. Then a voice no one could doubt as a woman’s cried out, “Please, sir. For my sake and yours. Let me go.”
Had I still been the Christian I was born, I would never have believed it, even seeing it with my own eyes. Five armed men turned and fled for their lives from that cowering female figure as if from an army of thousands. My master made a sign. I was to have his bodyguard cut them off at the gateway. As I ran to carry out this scenario from a battlefield—excitement I thought Fate had deprived me of forever—I laughed aloud.
And I also saw, out of the corner of my eye, the master move clumsily to embrace that apricot-swathed figure. For both of us had recognized the voice at once when it spoke. It was Gul Ruh.
The violators were apprehended and the master assured of vengeance. The captain would be hanged to deprive Uweis of one of his most devoted cohorts and the others would be beaten soundly to teach them some proper Muslim manners.
I fully expected a beating myself—for being so careless of a princess of the blood-—but the master and his secretary were exulting too much over this narrow escape to bother with me. I passed them, laughing and clipping one another on the shoulder in the mabein courtyard where Feridun Bey, still absurd in women’s jacket and trousers, had hidden himself. I passed on into the harem, realizing that the punishment I expected from others I would mentally give myself over and over in the weeks and months to come.
For I
