Reign of the Favored Women (54 page)

At last the earth twitched itself like a dog come from copulating, turned on its tail one more time, and settled down to sleep without a further spasm of guilt for its rash deed. I lay and listened to the returned stillness with more amazement than to the earthquake itself. Then I heard some of my colleagues out in the court wondering in low whispers. I got up and joined them, nodding in agreement at their formulaic comments on the power and mercy of Allah which is about all one can really say at a time like that.

We did not think much about the women. There were eunuchs on duty in their quarters who could come and tell us if anything more serious than lost sleep and frazzled nerves had happened. One khadim began to tell us how in his village in the mountains they had suffered such an earthquake when he was a boy that the...It was as formulaic as praising Allah, but I moved nearer to lend a polite ear. As I did, I stepped on whatever bit of crockery it was that had fallen from the top floor.

“By Allah, that I should come through the quake alive and have this happen afterwards!” I exclaimed as the other khuddam laughed in relief more than mockery and hastened, some to help stop the bleeding, others to pick up the pieces.

In the midst of this, one of my lady’s maids came running in, white as milk spilled on anthracite. I was needed at once in our lady’s rooms, she said.

With my foot still bleeding onto the rags, I was in no condition to be chasing off through the harem, so I put her off for a while. Had she never been in an earthquake before? Thank Allah, we were all alive. Trying to get back to sleep again would be the best for all concerned.

So I stalled, I stalled so long and so unforgivably that I gave my mistress time to get herself to the eunuch’s quarters. Then I knew it was no common terror that stirred her. Never in all our years together had she come to see me. It was always the other way around.

I hobbled up on one and a half feet and gave my bed for her maids to ease her onto. There she sat, speechless with tears, wringing a handkerchief and looking at me with eyes like saucers filled to the brim by a host of lavish generosity. That look stirred me enough to wave the anxious girls and eunuchs from the room.

The instant they were gone, her grief exploded. “He is dead!”

“He? Who is he?” The Sultan, it occurred to me, but I banished the thought from my mind with an “Allah forbid.” Fratricide on ascension made for a rule free from pretenders, but it did nothing to protect the Empire from the upheavals the minority of a three-year-old boy would cause.

“
He
,” she said, her voice quavering on the syllable like that of a dervish on the Name of his Goal. But she mixed it with such anguish, I knew she could only mean Ferhad Pasha.

“It is just a dream the quake caused,” I said. “Ferhad Pasha is far from here. Perhaps where he is they didn’t even feel the shocks.” I comforted her with such things. “It is Allah’s will. You do not know but what this is only an evil spirit come to haunt you this dark night.”

But I could convince myself no more than I could convince her. The reverberations of that “He” had sent chills down my spine. By the eerie lamp light I saw my lady as if she were a corpse. I also saw the vein of a new crack in the plaster of the ceiling over the bed’s head that had not been there when I finally closed the book I was reading and blew out the flame that night. Allah only knew how close any of us was to death at any time. Perhaps one more shake would have sent the two upper stories down on me, on Esmikhan...

I shivered again, held her and prayed until she slept. Not long after that the muezzin called the dawn prayer with renewed vitality and meaning. He called people from the rubble of their houses in the poorer sections, called to people who had not ceased to pray since the earth had shaken them to their knees several hours earlier.

And word came in hushed, fatidic tones later that afternoon, ridden hard and fast from the troops on the border. Ferhad Pasha was dead. Some persons unknown had crept into his manor by night and murdered him. His head was cut off. Some said, afraid that the very words might set the earth shaking again, that men close to Ibrahim had tossed and kicked that head like a ball around their campfires.

I don’t think anyone ever gave my lady those details. She was feverish enough without when she woke from her sleep. Because she was spared such details, I hoped she might recover in a week or two.

But she never did again rise from her bed. The earthquake, some said. Running around that night and catching cold. They were people who had not heard her say that “He,” like a dervish calling on his God. “He,” It, which is neither a young man in spahis garb, nor a grand vizier, but something which encompasses all the earth and yet dwells in so little space as the heart of a gnat.

That same strength with which she brought forth her daughter against all odds of physical endurance stood with her again throughout that winter, but in the spring, when the army was making ready to march once more, I knew her time could be numbered in hours. Her daughter and grandchildren and those of us who loved her were already there, sleeping and taking our meals in the presence of Death to ease the way into Paradise and remind ourselves that our times too, would come. But when she began to fade back into a time when they were carefree girls together and called on the name of Safiye, I thought I should go and see if the daughter of Baffo would not come now. Surely, for this old, dear friend, she could not refuse.

I was told the Queen Mother had retired for the night. Because even sleep cannot forestall death, I pursued her further. I was surprised to find the doors to the Queen Mother’s apartment’s unguarded past the first courtyard. The door to her main chamber was even ajar. I took courage and let myself inside. The room was deserted. Lamps had never been lit there that evening, nor had the bolsters and cushions been unfolded.

So in this final wish I disappointed my lady: I returned to her side and held her hand until she died, peacefully in her sleep. Perhaps she was convinced her friend was with her all the time. But in my heart I hoped I was sufficient. I had had to be, time and time again in life.

I, at least, was not disappointed. There was no blessing of life my lady had not given me. And now she gave me the sorrow, the gift of her death.

After her mother’s death, Gul Ruh insisted that I come and live with her. It seemed the best plan, although she already had a full hierarchy of eunuchs and I would be living in the honor, yet the inactivity of semiretirement. I agreed to that, nonetheless—for what should I do in the palace?—and prepared to relinquish my cubicle to one of the black khuddam who now, except for Ghazanfer, were all the staff.

Ghazanfer came to say good-bye and, though I had vague recollections that he had taken time during our bereavement to offer comfort, my grief had been too deep to recall any but this interview in detail. For some reason I mentioned my nighttime search for his mistress and how distressed I was that I hadn’t been able to find her in time for her to sit at Esmikhan’s side.

“Safiye avoids deathbeds,” Ghazanfer said.

“Yes, I know. But you’d think for such a good old friend...”

“Friend? Does my mistress have friends, I wonder? Who do you suppose will be at her deathbed, eh?”

“Allah postpone the day.”

Ghazanfer did not amen me, but went on. “Your mistress was one of the sweetest and gentlest of Allah’s creatures, and yet Safiye saw that sweetness and gentleness as shortcomings, things to be exploited for her own use. That is her shortcoming. She feels herself immortal as if daily consumption of power and worldly wealth were an elixir for eternal youth. Others take time to die. Others die because through some personal failure they let the zenith of their powers pass, because they are not smart enough or strong enough to avoid poisoners, palace accidents, or merely the throes of daily life.”

I had never heard Ghazanfer speak so harshly, nor yet so truly against his mistress and I wondered at it. He was a changed man since his failure to rescue Mitra. But I wondered more at the words that followed.

“Safiye has passed her zenith now. Not that she isn’t as physically strong as ever, but time never waits and always brings up other generations in one’s stead. I see this. She sees it, too, though she is loath to admit it, even to herself. She will fight it—even the mere admission—to the end. She is the Queen Mother, yet she dare not sleep in the Queen Mother’s chambers. One night she sleeps here, another night there, taking only her most trusted maids with her, telling no one beforehand where to find her. Is that a woman at the zenith of her power?”

“So that is why I couldn’t find her that night?”

“Of course. I do happen to know she wasn’t sleeping anywhere that night—that night when your lady’s passing took the last of what was good and gentle from this place and left us all the weaker for it. That was when the Sultan had just announced he planned to go into battle in Hungary himself this year instead of trusting the army to Ibrahim Pasha alone. That front, as you know, was left a shambles by last year’s rebellion and neglect. Your late master, may he rest in peace, was wont to say, ‘Grand Viziers may turn and flee, but when the Padishah himself leads Allah’s armies, there is no turning back nor defeat.’

“The presence of a powerful head is, of course, what this Empire needs,” I suggested.

“Yes, needs, oh, so painfully. And yet Safiye is loath to let her son go. On the frontier, she thinks, too many hearts and hands can come between Muhammed and herself. She must stay behind in the harem, and too much policy may be decided without her.

“Our young Sultan, you may know, is much enamored of his position, both of its pomp and of its duties. He would not be swayed this time. And so she determined on a plot to make him see how much he was needed here at home. She sent troops devoted to her throughout the Empire with orders to massacre all Christians.”

“The Christians!” I exclaimed. “But she...”

“Yes, she herself was raised as one and has often taken their part in the past. But such devotions are merely the pawns of power to her. Even were she not a Christian born, is it not women’s place, in their own weakness, to protect other underlings? Fortunately for all of us, Muslims and Christians alike, the mother of the Crown Prince got wind of this plot. And she did not forget her Greek upbringing, much less her own humanity. Her pleas and tears, though outward signs of weakness, were strong enough to turn our Sultan’s heart against his mother. He thwarted Safiye by sending warning of his own to all the Christian communities, prohibiting Christians from entering places where the assassins were, until the threat should pass. He has also sent out a firmen that any man in his pay found guilty of such atrocities against a minority wall surely be put to death. Well, as you can see, the massacre never took place and Muhammed has marched north with the armies as planned.

“The upshot of all of this is that Safiye has realized that though she rules the harem as a general his army, there are some things terror and might have no strength over. She fears poison and the dagger and so she sleeps here and there like a gypsy within her own walls. But that is only because those are methods she uses. She has not yet learned even to put a name to the devices that in the end will be her defeat. They will defeat her because she thinks they are harmless. And I wonder who will be at her bedside when they come.”

The green eyes grew cloudy and looked away. “Somehow,” Ghazanfer said, “I fear I may be the only one.”

I saw Ghazanfer one more time. I had been living with Gul Ruh for several years and had endured the hospitality but uselessness as long as I could. I’d found ever more occupation for the long hours with the dervishes, but that year it occurred to me that rather than sitting and waiting for my friend Hajji to appear, I should go in search of him myself. I determined, with that Rajab’s march, to join the rest of the pilgrims on the road to Mecca. Ghazanfer Agha had heard of my plans and came to wish me Allah’s good favor.

“It is in my power as
kapu aghasi
,” he suggested, “to have you assigned to the brotherhood of khuddam guarding the holy places. That place of greatest honor in the world.”

“Thank you, but I am not certain yet I will want to stay in Mecca or Medina.”

A burst of childish laughter came from the harem. Ghazanfer turned his green eyes towards the sound. “Yes,” he said. “I can see there is much to draw you back again.”

“And I have never been what one could call a truly converted Muslim.”

“No. It is Allah’s will that you are a Seeker. But just in case...”

Without further word he drew a thick legal parchment from his bosom. Curious, I unfolded it. I discerned quickly the formal seals of Sultan and kapu aghasi, then read enough below them of praise connected with my own name to blur my eyes with tears. I folded the paper and placed it in my own bosom. It still held the warmth of Ghazanfer’s very feminine breasts.

I was speechless, dumb for words to express my gratitude. At length I stammered the most generous thing I could think of: “You...you could come with me. I would like it better if I wasn’t a total stranger.”

“Not this year. I can’t. I have—one more bit of business to do.”

“What is that?”

But he wouldn’t tell me right away.

Instead, he gave me a small purse of gold that I might carry, along with his name, to the House of Allah. There was such a sense of resolution and new beginning about him. This sense seemed so similar to what I myself had been feeling in recent days that this purse, this physical declaration that he would not be joining the caravan quite took me by surprise.

It was a day in early spring of glorious sun. The old bones seemed young again and thrilled as if it were several months later in the year. Ghazanfer and I sat in the doorway to the courtyard. We took more interest in the pattern of sunlight tossed through the swelling buds of the fig tree outside than in the sherbets and pistachios between us. The conversation, too, seemed to hold little interest although Ghazanfer pursued it—a tale of one further palace intrigue—because it was what little common ground lay between us now.