After reciting, Gul Ruh had taken to keeping the vigil by playing on the floor with the Mufti’s grandchildren. Although condoning adults had smiled and said she was giving their mothers relief by minding them for a while, I had seen clearly that she set the pace for their wild frolic.
Now she suddenly froze and seemed to shrink. Suddenly she was grown up. Suddenly she could no longer laugh and shout or even speak out of turn to her elders. I could see she so wanted to call her hostess’s announcement into question—or to refuse it outright. But she was grown-up now and when Umm Kulthum came to pat her on the head and kiss her cheek, she grew white as if growing up had given her the plague.
“I am surprised,” Esmikhan finally found breath to confess. “Indeed, I had thought a match between Safiye’s Muhammed and my Gul Ruh would be made. Nothing has been said, of course. I just assumed...”
Gul Ruh got up off the floor, shaking herself of the children as she did of dust and went to stand beside her mother for support—whether hers or her mother’s it was not clear.
Yes, yes. It’s true. My cousin, Muhammed. It is he I should marry. We have been promised since we were children. But it was only Gul Ruh’s eyes that spoke. She said nothing at all aloud.
“Oh, but you know as well as I—Allah willing—Muhammed is to be Sultan. Sultans do not marry. Who is their equal in the world? Marriages should be made between equals. And Sultans cannot afford to let their matches become victims of all the-politics and bickering that normally go on. It will not go on between us, my dear, of course. But just the presence of some foreign father-in-law is enough to suggest against it.”
“But we thought it was time the dynasty freed itself from the machinations of slave girls and their particular interests. If Muhammed marries his cousin—and I think they are fond of each other—” Gul Ruh could not keep her head from affirming this with a quick nod. “—then the dynasty will be firm, Ottomans on both sides.”
“That is only Safiye’s wishful thinking,” Umm Kulthum said. “She doesn’t want her son ever to be lured from her influence as has happened to Murad and which is even now breaking poor Nur Banu’s heart. Actually, Esmikhan Sultan, if I may be frank, I should think you’d be glad to keep your daughter out of that brawl which is sure to break out—Allah forbid—when Muhammed comes of age.”
Such observations were too clear and too insightful for them to have originated with the Mufti’s wife herself. I think even my lady realized they, too, must have been gathered at this last visit to Nur Banu’s part of the Serai. Esmikhan had this advantage over her hostess: She had been raised in the palace where tact had more value than an orthodox adherence to truth. She reminded herself severely of the more sober purpose that brought them there and she smiled politely.
“I mean no insult, lady,” she said. “If I appear hesitant, it is only through disbelief. I am unable to believe that Allah should bless such a house as ours, tinged with politics and war and slavery as it is, with the blessed peace and wisdom of a great house such as yours.”
Umm Kulthum, without Nur Banu’s coaching, could never suspect duplicity. She sat on her cushions and smiled broadly and simply at my lady’s comment and comforted her forthcoming widowhood with thoughts of a wedding soon to follow.
Fortunately, there was no time for further discussion on the subject, for at that moment one of Umm Kulthum’s eunuchs brought a message from the men’s quarters. We had to leave at once. With all our concern for the old Mufti, we had ignored the earlier notice we had received that the Vizier of the Cupola, Piale Pasha, had failed to attend the previous day’s Divan for some indisposition. The indisposition, we now learned, was the plague and, as if it had the help of his younger, stronger body instead of its hindrance, it had done its work much faster than on the frail old Mufti. The Vizier lay now at death’s very door and it was only with the utmost haste that we could hope to arrive before the last Fatiha was said for him.
Selim had given Piale Pasha his second daughter, Esmikhan’s half-sister Gewherkhan Sultan, to wife. The union had not been blessed with children, but it was a union of hearts uncommon even when the marriage is for love. The passion, even after so many years, was so intense that many, including the Sultan, said it interfered with the Vizier’s duties and Esmikhan would be the first to admit that her relationship with her sister had not been the same since those sheets were first bloodied.
But if ever Gewherkhan needed her sister, it would be now. Some even chose to take a lesson from this: Let not your marriages grow too close, for Death and Allah are the portion of all. It was clear that Gewherkhan Sultan would not enjoy the easy, gossipy drift into widowhood Umm Kulthum did.
Sokolli Pasha was not without his emotion at this passing, either. Indeed, he left us to find the way to the Vizier’s house on our own and hurried on ahead, as if a brain for deployment of troops and political intrigue could do anything against the plague doctors had not already tried. Piale Pasha, although close friends with Uweis and his circle, was not below opposing them when his conscience told him so. He had the passion of a virtuous woman behind him and there were some things Gewherkhan Sultan would not let him stoop to. My master would find the Divan a very
