Red Magic (33 page)

There were two brown, curly headed boys
romping around Muazzez, so she must have been receiving a fair share of her
husband's attention. Caterina tried not to stare, but she was so exotic, such a
contrast to the well fleshed, ivory figures of the others that it was hard not
to. When the bathing and beauty treatments were done, Cat was taken as before
to the warm room and wrapped in a large soft sheet. With gestures, Zehra let
her know that she was to lie down, to relax. It was easy enough to do,
especially after having her muscles so heated by the steam and hot water.

Zehra began to message Cat, hands
lubricated with a clean, gingery smelling concoction, beginning at her scalp
and then working her way down her straight back, across her firm young buttocks
and down her long legs, all the way to the ends of her toes. All around the
other women were receiving similar attention from their slaves. Cups of
gardenia flavored sherbet, made from the snow of some nearby mountain, were offered.

Caterina had a notion of how dangerous was
this luxury. It was easy to understand how a simple peasant girl, sold by her
parents, would find this an improvement in her lot. After all, resistance
brought pain and death. Acquiescence brought luxuries and physical comfort to a
degree that even a noblewoman like herself had never known or even imagined.
Still, Caterina was an attentive listener to Ayhan's stories. There was the
poisoned sherbet delivered by a rival, the knife in the dark corridor, the silken
cord the smiling black eunuch would use as he slowly strangled a woman for some
imagined slight given while partnering the Pasha in his bed.

When her own moment of decision came, at
the rising of the next full moon, what would she do? She'd been practicing at
night, secure in the utter darkness after she extinguished the lamp, with Aunt
Teresina's blade, making the killing jab in the direction of her own neck. It
was beginning to seem that suicide was the only way out, the only way to retain
her self, her honor.

As the days passed, however, she felt her
strength, her sense of
who
she was, draining away. A
strange language rang in her ears all day. More and more Ayhan was speaking in
it, forcing her to use it. The mocking name "Red Mare" had stuck. That,
she was informed, was her name until the Lady Mother thought of a better one.

In the beginning, she'd spent the time when
Ayhan wasn't giving instruction, pacing in the little room, her athletic body
making her as restless as a caged bear. At these times Cat indulged an
imagining of being free, of galloping away on Star, across those familiar
flower strewn meadows that graced the rocky shoulders of Heldenberg, Christoph
beside her.

How he would catch her, pull her down from
Star's back! How they'd wrestle to a fiery conclusion among the bobbing gold
and white flowers. She could almost feel his muscular body hard against hers,
his mouth caressing, tasting, hear the whispers of his special teasing
lovemaking…

Observing her charge's restless pacing,
Ayhan had begun a new strategy, one that involved the kitchen. She had seen
Caterina's good appetite and decided to use it to tame her.

One day after the noon meal, Caterina found
herself not pacing, but lying on the couch, mind drifting. A languorous
afternoon passed, wandering in and out of dreams. Stretched out in silken
robes, unmoving, she heard with an odd intensity the liquid songs sung by the
caged birds in the courtyard below.

It happened the next day too, and the day
after that. As she lay there with her eyes half open, curious dreams, ones that
seemed to embroider themselves upon reality, appeared. She dreamed that
Christoph came through the locked door, that he had come to rescue her, that
she was safe at last, enclosed in his great arms. Her face pressed against his
broad chest, she felt his hands upon her hair, heard him speak in blessed words
of her mother tongue. Sometimes Wili sat beside her, cheerfully chatting. Goran
came, leaning on his cane, telling her sternly that she was late for a lesson
with the sword…

What tears she shed upon awakening and
finding herself still inside a cage!

After such an afternoon, the nights were
long and half sleepless, full of sorrow and apprehension. Cat, feeling muddy
minded, weary, but incapable of sleep, leaned against the latticed window and
listened as nightingales sang in the garden below. Sometimes sad songs rose
from the hall of the odalisques, accompanied by the minor key wail of a flute.

On the fourth such afternoon she'd had a
dream more disturbing, more real than any of the others. In it, Rossmann, now
dressed like a Turkish gentleman, had entered the room in company with a
heavily veiled woman. Rossmann stood by her couch, dark eyes shining with
admiration, while she, unable to move,
lay
there her
hair loose, wrapped in those splendid robes of blue green silk. Not wanting to
meet his eyes, she'd focused upon the tiny embroidered Pegasi, who continued
flying off her robes and away through the barred window.

Then this creature with Rossmann's face
approached, and had gathered up her limp hand and kissed it. Cat was furious,
wanting to strike him, but her limbs were too heavy, her throat clogged. She'd
felt her eyes widen, her body twitch, but otherwise she'd been unable to either
move or speak, while he slipped his hands his hands inside the gown and
caressed her breasts.

The anonymous woman's hand was gloved, and
now it reached to tug the flowing sleeve of Rossmann's robe.

"Stop!"
The hiss was unmistakably Ayhan.

With a grimace of regret, the man
retreated. A moment later he was gone. The door latch clicked.

The sound brought Caterina closer to
reality—at least that's what she thought it was. The Pegasi continued to fly,
to paper the walls of the room with hundreds of tiny, wing-beating,
galloping figures. She wrapped her arms around the neck of one, and flew away
through the window with its bars, straight into a bright blue sky.

* * *

The next morning when Ayhan came to
instruct her, she accused her of letting Rossmann in.

"I brought a German called 'Horseman'
here?" The woman's black eyes glittered with scorn.

"He's no German, as you well know! And
he was here. You were with him! Rossmann is the man who led me into the ambush.
He's a traitor Bogomil."

Ayhan clapped her hands and gave a shout of
laughter.

"Calm yourself, Red One! I brought a
man here?
Into Selim Pasha's harem?
Do you think I
desire close acquaintance with my Lord Pasha's torturer?"

"Stop lying, Ayhan! I know what
is a dream
and what's not."

"Do you? It's hard to tell sometimes,
especially after meals full of the finest white poppy."

"Poppy? Why? That is medicine for
pain." Aunt Teresina had told Caterina about the poppy plant and that it
should be used sparingly, for great pain only, for the drug "fastens
itself upon the user like a leech." All too soon, her Aunt had cautioned,
an unending desire for larger and larger doses would overwhelm the life of the
strongest willed person.

"Poppy is also for pleasure and for
the sake of interesting dreams. You will become most familiar with it in the
seraglio."

"Why are you giving me poppy? And why
are you lying? Tell me right now why that traitor was here."

"Still giving orders? Perhaps I shall
let Sulmah hurt you a little. He's been begging to for weeks. He promises he
won't leave any marks."

"I'll stop eating."

Ayhan stared at Cat for a long moment and
then heaved an exasperated sigh.

"You won't be able to starve yourself.
Life is too strong in you. And why do you object to such a treat anyway? It
makes time pass pleasantly."

"It enslaves."

"You are already enslaved. Foolish
one! Enjoy the pleasures of your new life. The poppy will help you forget the
past, the past you still weep for, that world you will never live in again.
Besides, you have too many muscles. They make you too restless to settle down here
properly. You need to sleep more, to gain weight. You are far too thin."

"I won't poison myself with
poppy." It was, Cat knew, not the cleverest thing to say, but she couldn't
stop herself.

"Such stubbornness!
Such pride! Too much of the carrot and not enough of the stick, I
think," Ayhan grumbled. "But I am ordered not to let the eunuchs
amuse themselves with you. Your new Lord says," she added with gleeful
menace, "he's looking forward to instructing you in submission himself."

"The Pasha?"

"The Pasha,
indeed!"
Ayhan sniffed. "No, skinny
barbarian, praise Allah, you won't trouble me much longer."

"What?"

"A friend of the Pasha wants you and
the Lady Mother fears ..."

"What? Someone else is to have me?
Who?"

"You shall be given to Ban Nijaz. Now,
are you any the wiser?" Ayhan had on a look which meant there was not
another word on that subject to be got from her. Pleased that she had
frightened Caterina, she turned on her heel and went out, locking the door.

The next afternoon, Ayhan unlocked the door
and said, "Prepare
yourself
, Red Mare. You are to
come with me and see what happens to women who do not please their men."

Ayhan's evil smirk did not bode well, and
Caterina set about veiling herself, feeling the sharp prick of fear. She put on
the yashmak, extinguishing the flame of her red hair beneath it and making
certain she had brought the fabric tightly against the bridge of her nose. When
Ayhan was giving instruction, she'd taught that if a woman showed her nose, it
was the advertisement of a prostitute.

After she was ready Sulmah appeared and he
and Ayhan accompanied her along corridors, unlocking doors that led in a
direction she'd never traveled before. As they approached the stairs, she found
herself walking among a crowd of veiled women of the seraglio. Most kept their
eyes down, and Caterina could sense the tension. Beneath the scented bodies,
she could also smell perspiration, and knew that the co-wives must have all
been summoned to see whatever horror was planned.

As a slave held aside a curtain, and they
entered into a latticed gallery overlooking a courtyard and began to settle
onto cushions, carefully attentive to rank. Some of the women, despite their
elaborate veiling, she thought she recognized from the baths. One pair, she'd
often thought, with large, expressive dark eyes and harmonious pale
foreheads,
might have been sisters. Like bright birds, they
all settled and sat unnaturally still, not a whisper to be heard among them. It
seemed that they were all equally anxious, even the tall black kadin, who was
seated first among them.

Finally, a door opened, a line of men
entered the courtyard below. They too settled quietly, ranks of what appeared
to Caterina to be gentlemen and house servants. Last of all came the Pasha, a
burly middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed beard. She thought that even if he
were stripped of all his attendants and all his silks and jewels, he could have
yet passed for a prosperous German knight. There was assurance and power in his
movements.

"Look upon the Master of this city and
tremble." Ayhan leaned close to whisper. "And there are the Pasha's
own eunuchs, who are men of great power." These men were white, and stood
proudly with swords in their belts. They looked far more muscular and dangerous
than the ordinary castrati. Ayhan had said that white eunuchs protected the
Pasha and his sons. One of the gentlemen who had entered earlier—older, with a
long lean presence, silver hair, sallow skin and a great hook nose—approached
the Pasha and swept him a low bow. Caterina noted that he too was followed by
eunuchs, and how his hands and turban glittered with jewels.

"Faik Pasha," Ayhan murmured.
"A close friend of our Lord."

Next, four more eunuchs emerged from the
corridors, black like Sulmah. Between each pair, pale arms tied with silken
cords, walked a veiled woman. The odalisque who sat beside Caterina gasped as
some formal proceeding conducted rapidly in their language began below.
Caterina could catch a stray word here and there but not enough to make any
sense of it.

At the end, one of the bound women was
brusquely unveiled and pushed to her knees before the Pasha. While Caterina
watched in horror, the largest black eunuch, the one who had examined her for
imperfections on her first day, stepped forward and placed a silken cord around
the woman's neck. Without any further preamble, he strangled her.

It seemed to take forever for the awful
struggling, the white hands clawing to disengage the cord, to finally cease.
When all movement stopped, her limp form was allowed to fall onto the colorful
mosaics.

From the odalisque nearby a single sob
escaped. When Cat turned to look at her, she saw a black teary streak running
from one kohl lined eye.

Caterina had never witnessed an
execution—not even a hanging in Passau.
The whole scene was perfectly horrible, most especially the supreme passivity
of the victim, whom she'd recognized as one of the gay beautiful strollers
she'd watched daily in the courtyard.