Reign of the Favored Women (22 page)

“Her name,” he said, “is Mitra.”

“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 to drink like an infant if I had not refused him.

While I drank—finding myself almost faint with the relief the shock of cold brought my parched throat—Ghazanfer turned to the hot water. The rising steam spun silver comfort up through the damp grey air, lightening the weight of those monstrous hands.

“The flax is here,” I said between swallows, gesturing towards the plump little jar.

But my guest—or was he now my host?—reached into his own bosom where I could not help but see how femininely the mutilation laid the fat on him. Ghazanfer pulled a kerchief out and opened it flat on the table. I saw and smelled a grey dried jumble of herbs.

“What is that?” I asked.

“A mixture. I have it of the Quince.”

He must have seen me stiffen at the name, even spill a little pomegranate juice on my coverlet.

“Yes, I know there is ill ease between your household and the old midwife.”

“I don’t know why,” I admitted. “I mean, besides the opium. It must be something besides just opium, to be so violent.”

“Do not mind it now,” Ghazanfer calmed me. “Her drug sends her no ill dreams against me, and this is what she makes for me—when I am afflicted like you. She does not even know I am here, and need never know. And it works wonders.”

“What is the concoction?” I asked, still uneasy.

“Certainly I will tell you, so you may make your own next time, and I will leave you the lot in the meanwhile. Dog’s grass mostly, six parts of that.”

Now that he gave it a name, I could smell the clean, meadow smell. “But dog’s grass?”

“‘Note where the dogs go when they are sick.’ That’s what the Quince told me.”

“That tough-rooted bane of farmers?” Perhaps it was a hopeful sign that I was considerate of somebody else’s bane besides my own. But I did not think it so, being still desirous of death myself.

“‘Personally, I’d rather have an acre of dog’s grass than of carrots for my herbery,’ the Quince once said to me.”

“Yes, that does sound like the tough, skilled woman I remember from—from before.”

“Three parts of ground root of butterbur, three of onion, two of rhubarb, two of horsetail.” Ghazanfer concluded the recipe. “I thought you might not be in a condition to remember it all, so I’ve written the directions here.” A slip of paper joined the kerchief on the table after a pinch of the mixture had gone into the water to steep.

“Thank you,” I said, dumbfounded beyond that.

I drank the tea, made palatable with honey.

Then, to divert the great khadim’s attention and already feeling somewhat revived, I said, “Thank Allah, the departure of the pilgrims went well for vou.”

The green in his squinty eyes brightened. “Yes, thank Allah.”

I couldn’t stifle my surprise at the true joy in his voice and tried to imagine what might cause it. “Took in a lot of baksheesh, did you?”

“Baksheesh? You speak that wav? It is an honor to serve as custodian of the sanctuaries. Do you take baksheesh from those who wish access to your harem?”

The idea shocked me. “No. No, of course not.”

“Then why should I accept it from those hoping for access to the greatest harem in the world? Our divine Master decides who may enter that sanctuary, whether we consider them worthy or not. True, some people did confuse the mundane with the spiritual and press a gift upon me. Such is the way of the world. But in each case, for the fear of Allah, I gave that gift away at once, as alms.”

“Of course.” But I wondered when the empire had known such a kapu aghasi before.

“It has been...” I saw him struggle to find words to express what, up until then, he had kept carefully locked in the harem of his heart. “It has been a great blessing to serve. As Allah wills, I hope I may always be found worthy of such service. I have particularly enjoyed my correspondence with the head agha over the shrine in Medina.”

“The head guardian is a eunuch?” I guess I had known that, but, especially in my present fevered state, it was difficult to fathom.

“Of course. Brotherhoods of our kind serve at all the greatest shrines—at al-Aksa in Jerusalem, the tomb of Ibrahim in Hebron, in Cairo, at the tomb of Ali, fallen for the moment into the hands of the Persian heretics. In Mecca. But the greatest of all—for us—is in Medina, al-Medinat an-Nebi, the very City of the Prophet.”

“I guess I see why it should be. Female pilgrims journey to all those sites in numbers equal to the male. There must be guardians who can deal with both sexes in honor.”

“But it is more than that,” Ghazanfer insisted. “In Medina particularly. You see, when the Angel of Death, in fear and trembling, came to ask the Messenger of Allah—blessings on him—if he might take his soul, Muhammed, with a perfect knowledge of the will of Allah, agreed. He died in the room of his favorite wife, Aysha.”

“I wonder if Safiye was aware of all this history when she named her little daughter.”

“Safiye was at a loss for feminine names,” Ghazanfer replied, forgiving my diversion. “I suggested Aysha myself, having always had particular reverence in my heart for the well-guarded one Muhammed likewise chose to honor.”

That a eunuch should name a princess of the blood seemed amazing to me. I even wondered, although everyone knew it was the great Suleiman who had given the heir apparent the ancient name, whether a suggestion hadn’t come, somehow, from Ghazanfer in the case of Prince Muhammed as well. Both Safiye’s children had been given names heavy with piety, lacking the flowery inspiration of more popular appellations. Simpler, more straightforward names were, of course, more appropriate for men, particularly men who would rule the realm of Islam. But such possibilities occupied my mind for a while so I let my guest speak uninterrupted.

“The Prophet, blessed be he, was buried right where he died, under the floor in Aysha’s room. And when his successors, the right-minded caliphs Abu Bakr and Omar, died, they likewise claimed the honor of burial next to the Messenger in whose great footsteps they had tried to lead Allah’s congregation. Aysha stayed until her dying day in the room next to her buried lord, and when she died, she likewise joined these great men in the ground—and in Paradise.

“The great mosque in Medina grew up on this spot, incorporating the form of the Prophet’s house: the rooms of all his wives and the rooms of the selamlik around a common yard. This is the form it maintains to this day.”

“So these are the rooms of women,” I proposed. “They need eunuch guardians. Even in death.”

“Yes. But it is more than even that. As you can imagine, the grave of the Prophet contains great divine power, great
baraka
.”

“Why else do people visit it?”

“Such power can be of benefit. But, poorly honored, it can also be dangerous. For example, while Aysha of blessed memory yet lived, a woman of Medina came to her, begging that she might pay her respects to the holy tomb. Aysha gave in and let the woman have a glimpse. So brilliant was the light within that the woman was turned to ash for her presumption and was buried where she fell, a warning to others.

“Still, being made only of the clay of this earth, the shrine needs mundane care. Earthquakes come by the will of Allah, and sandstorms. The stone and mortar crack, threatening destruction of the world by exposure to the divine power within. The black drapes with which the tombs are hung—like the Ka’ba in Mecca—these tear with time and must be replaced. But who may dare to step across the gulf between the worldly and the divine to undertake such duties?”

“Only the
khuddam
you mean to tell me?”

“It is so. And our power was discovered in the following manner. One day a great stench began to arise out of the tombs in place of the usual sweet smell. The stink grew so that even the most faithful of pilgrims could not bear to perform their devotions. Several men went to try to see what the matter might be, but none returned alive. Then a child was let in. He came out, but had been stricken deaf, dumb, and blind and could not say what he had seen. Still, the fact that he had lived pointed the right track. The task requires the innocence, the sexlessness of a child—but a man’s wisdom. So a khadim volunteered himself. For three days, he fasted, kept vigil day and night, and prayed. Then he went in—and returned carrying the carcass of one of the sanctuary’s pigeons that had died and rotted within.

“Ever since that day, it is eunuchs who have kept the hallowed place. Forty of them live, eat, and sleep within the precinct at this present time. All are men of greatest piety, known for their learning, their charity, their austerities.”

I rubbed my hairless chin thoughtfully. “But if I drive you back to your original analogy—”

“Yes?”

“That eunuchs must keep guard at the boundary between the mundane and the divine as they keep guard between male and female—”

“Just so.”

“Does that mean this miserable state of ours is half of this earth, half of paradise, as it is neither male nor female?”

“All is Allah’s will.”

“You wall not commit yourself to such blasphemy?”

Ghazanfer smiled his tight, half smile. “All is Allah’s will.”

“Would you go so far as to say that our failures to keep the boundaries between men and women may be visited by destruction similar to what you have described in Medina?”

“That, my friend, is my firm belief. In either case, the two worlds combine but poorly.”

“Like oil and vinegar.”

“Rather like fire and powder—one kiss and all consumed.”