The Sultan's Daughter (27 page)

Plane leaves and ox-eyes also have their set meanings in the intricate melodies of romantic verse: the first, because it so resembles a hand, means touch or holding, and the flower is an emblem for the beloved’s face.

Now I suddenly saw clearly that there was no coincidence here at all. The odd assortment of plants had been chosen and arranged with exquisite care and the message read: plane leaf, ox-eye, cypress, “I will hold the image of my beloved’s face in my hand forever.”

So what did the rose and the narcissus mean—the reply that I was delivering like some furtive love letter? My mistress had sent message bouquets by me before—to other women: a bunch of rue or musk for remembrance because the scent staved in the hand long after the flowers were gone, or a pair of pomegranates, like breasts, to felicitate a friend upon the weaning of a child. Before I had always known the code. This would be a little more difficult.

The narcissus, I knew, usually had reference to the eve, but the rose had innumerable meanings: as a bud, it was a new baby; it could represent the cheek, the face, the bosom, the nose, the lips...

The possible images were infinite, but when I hit upon the right one, I knew it at once. It was one of my mistress’s favorite verses by the poet Manuchihri—

The scented breeze brings news to the narcissus

That the rose has come out of seclusion.

‘She promises a rendezvous with you in the garden,’ it says,

And the narcissus bows down in happiness at this promise.

How plainly, how perfectly the poem captured the situation, as if the poet had written with no other lovers in mind! And yet—how impossible! How eternally impossible!

“Lady,” I said, turning to face the grille where I knew she was watching. (And I noticed how perfectly placed the vase was before that grille so she could not miss the message.) “Lady, I cannot do this.”

There was only silence from the grille in reply. She knew I had guessed and she also knew that I could not go against what was my very reason for being—to stand as a guardian to her virtue. Yet the silence continued, and in it I read an awful thing: If I should betray her now, I might never have her confidence again as long as I lived, and that was a thought worse than death.

Please, please put them in the vase. Just this once
, her silence seemed to ring out through the selamlik.
Don’t you think I know our love is impossible? It is just the passing infatuation of a brokenhearted princess for a lonely, bored spahi. I expect nothing more. But just this one, brief exchange. Don’t you know how Manuchihri’s poem continues? It is not a happy ending, I know. But I still love it for its beauty. The lover is described as a cloud, the lady as a garden:

He returned from abroad,

His eyes brimming with tears,

And he awakened his mistress with those tears.

She reached out and tore her veil.

And emerged from hiding with her face like the full moon.

The lover gazed on his beloved from afar,

And shouted a shout heard by all ears.

With fire in his breast he tore his heart open

So that his mistress could see his hidden fire.

The water of life flowed from his eyes

To bring forth plants from his beloved,

But...her body was ruined by the heat...

His mistress would not bloom...

For all our tears, I know our love is as impossible as the love of a cloud for an enclosed garden: we can never embrace. Still, just this once, Abdullah—or I shall die...

I succumbed to the silence. I placed the two flowers in the vase, and even brought the leaves and the ox-eye up to my mistress so she could keep them always with her in the harem. But I determined most firmly that at this first serious trial of my duty since Chios, perhaps even since the brigands, I would not fail. I would confront our guest that very night, allowing him no more evasion, and find out just what he meant by disrupting the peace and honor of our home.

He was standing, strong and vibrant, in meditation before the vase, one finger gently circling the petals of the rose. A sudden panic filled my heart at how overwhelming the task of a eunuch was—to somehow be stronger than men who are real men—and I decided to ask Sokolli Pasha as soon as he got back if I couldn’t have two or three aides.

I’ll admit now that what I felt was more than the threat to my station. Jealousy. I begrudged the man every angle of his body, every battle-earned muscle. I begrudged him the way he made water. The jaundice of a Barbary pigeon crept up my back and neck and prickled under my turban like heat rash, like an infestation of lice.

Young Ferhad turned to me with a smile totally unguarded and without malice. Did he expect me to be carrying another very welcome message? I wouldn’t have given him anything at that moment. Apparently he expected nothing, for he was the one who spoke first, bursting with news of his own.

“Sultan Suleiman is dead,” he announced. “May Allah have mercy on his great soul.”

I repeated the blessing in a murmur. “When did this dread event happen?” I asked when my thoughts came clearly again.

“A week before I arrived here to take your hospitality.”

The metal of nerves that could keep such news a secret for so long shocked me more than the news itself.

“I feel I can tell you now,” Ferhad continued, “for Sultan Selim, who arrived from Kutahiya three nights ago, has successfully consolidated his power in the Serai.”

“Prince—I mean Sultan Selim—has arrived in Constantinople? That is curious. You may know the lady I serve is his daughter, yet she received no word from him.”

“This is not the time to be placing the womenfolk in jeopardy by giving them too much knowledge. But I feel it is safe for you to know now, because Selim left early yesterday morning with a small, fast-riding guard.”

“Selim come and gone and we knew nothing of it?”

“I knew your mistress is one of the Blood whom this must touch deeply, so I did feel obliged to say something as soon as possible. Still, it was best to wait ‘til the new Sultan had outdistanced any enemy who might want to send word to the army before he gets there. Even so, it must not become general knowledge yet. Keep it from the gossips among your staff if possible.”

I nodded.

“I hope you will convey to your mistress my profound sympathy upon the death of her grandfather, and my sincere wishes and prayers for the blessings of Allah to be on her illustrious family, now as her father rises to the throne.” His tone was stilted and formulaic as if there were much he would have said, but dared not.

I nodded again to assure him I would pass on the message, even though I was certain every word had already been heard through the lattice.

“But the Sultan, may Allah have mercy on him, is—was—in Hungary leading the armies of the Faith,” I protested. “Surely those men must know by now that their commander is dead. The secret cannot be kept from them.”

“Our master, Sokolli Pasha, is a very brave and careful man,” Ferhad replied. “The Angel of Death came quickly to Suleiman in his tent while the army was in siege around the small mountain fortress of Szigeth. The Grand Vizier, now the Bearer of the Burden, knew that if word got out, the soldiers would refuse to fight any longer, would break the siege, and all go back to their homes to wait and see if they liked the way succession came. The breaking of a siege and a retreat is not a good way to begin any man’s reign, especially for the man who must follow a leader as great as Suleiman was—may his Faith be found pure before Allah.

“But Sokolli Pasha was well prepared for such an event. At once he sent a single messenger with the news in an encoded message from the camp at Szigeth. That man and another brought the word to Sofija within the week. I had been posted in Sofija, never out of sight of my horse, for months, and I did my best to carry the word as quickly yet as silently as possible here, to Constantinople, which, Allah willing, I have accomplished. Another single man met me at the gate and took it on to Kutahiya. This ring I have of your lord allowed me to stay here, enjoying your hospitality, in a place where I would not be dogged constantly for news of the front, news which, if I was tempted to tell it, could be very dangerous indeed.

“Now, as to how Sokolli Pasha managed the plot there on the front, I will tell you what I know. He and the two physicians in attendance were the only souls who witnessed the death. I have been told the Grand Vizier himself strangled the physicians, but I personally do not think that possible. It is hard enough to keep one dead body a secret, but three?

“I think he simply refused to allow the doctors to leave the tent. He slept, guarding them, on the floor beside the dead Sultan’s bed. The physicians applied embalming salts, I believe, and the cold of approaching winter in the mountains was with Sokolli Pasha to slow the rotting of his master’s flesh. But for living flesh willingly to join in that chill is discipline indeed.

“To the men outside, the Grand Vizier announced, ‘Our master is ill. He is resting.’ When food was brought for the lord, Sokolli Pasha and the physicians partook of the small portions of a sick man so even the cooks would not suspect.

“And though all the army had to be kept at a distance for the ruse to work, Sokolli Pasha went out almost hourly with messages for the troops. These were messages he himself had penned, but which read like the words of the Sultan. They spoke encouragement and fire for the Faith. They contained orders for forays and astute maneuvers to weaken the enemy.

“Sometimes the dead body of the Sultan was painted with cinnabar to give it more life. It was propped up stiffly and, through a gauze curtain, seen by those outside to be watching the progress of the siege with interest and eternal determination.

“Well, I have since learned that within two days of the death, the fortress was taken and victory won. The dead Suleiman, through Sokolli Pasha, praised and thanked his men and handed out gifts to those who had been particularly valiant, as had always been his generous wont in life. Then the order was given that, to avoid the dangerous snows, retreat would be made from Europe until another year. Slowly, and with as much order and discipline as when they had set out with their Sultan alive, the army began following his carriage home, that carriage which, still unknown to them, had become his hearse. Every night, the Sultan’s tent was pitched and the physicians carried him into it on a stretcher to rest, and back to the carriage come daylight.

“Allah willing that all continues thus smoothly, Selim should meet the army in Belgrade. Only then will rumors be allowed to leak out and proofs given. Only then, when a new Sultan is there to take over command from the corpse of his father, and receive the oaths of loyalty from his men.”

“Allah willing, it will all come about as you say,” I amen-ed the remarkable young spahi before me.

“Amen indeed,” he said, breathing a sigh, “though it grieves me that I shall have to take leave of this lovely home tomorrow morning to ride north with further intelligence.”

“It is indeed a pity,” I said, able to speak now for myself as well as my mistress.

When I returned to her, “He reminds me so much of you,” Esmikhan confessed, trying to laugh at her tears.

“My lady is too kind,” I protested, for I had just been thinking that there were probably no two men more unalike than Ferhad, the spahi, and myself.

But the spahi’s recital had filled me with wonder for another man, and that was my master. I had thought many negative things about the constraints duty put on him during the past years because of what it was doing to my mistress. But now I knew that, though duty may indeed never get a son, it could save a nation. I had seen it happen: Sokolli Pasha had single-handedly carried the entire Islamic nation over the terrible morass of potential civil war and chaos for more than a fortnight. This he had done with no hope of praise or gain for himself; he would still be no more than Grand Vizier, the Sultan’s slave, when Selim got to Belgrade. No, he had done it armed with nothing but his duty. And it is one thing to be dutiful to one of the greatest, most powerful monarchs in the world; quite another when that man, like any other man, loses all force to the hands of Allah, and begins to stink.

As I sat there with my lady—she trying not to weep for her grandfather, her lover, or for both—I noticed that the chess set was still set up for play as we had left it nearly three weeks ago. Someone, perhaps one of Esmikhan’s pet canaries, which she liked to let loose in the room, had knocked over the
padishah
, the king. But the vizier had maintained his position, strong behind the lines. The king could be set up again, and play resume where we left off.

At last, with Ferhad out the door, we did this. Esmikhan sighed, and I looked at her across the board: a little too plump, a little too happy because inside she was a little too sad. At the sacrifice of her happiness, all of the Islamic Empire had been saved.

Suleiman’s death was not made known to the general public for another whole month, not until the month of Rabi’ al-Akhir and the winter season were both well underway. Only then did the great cannon boom from the Fortress in a death knell; only then did my lady remove the mirrors from her rooms, cover the walls with crepe, and dare to weep openly.

And Suleiman was laid to rest in the pillared mausoleum in the midst of the garden on the dawn-side of the mosque the great Sinan had built in his name. Finally, the Magnificent rested beside his own beloved Khurrem Sultan.

Every day for forty days, Aunt Mihrimah held a recital of the complete Koran to assist the great monarch’s soul to heaven. A similar public recitation happened during the same period around the tomb at the Suleimaniye mosque. But Aunt Mihrimah’s was private, for women.

And for forty days, we attended. In the courtyard through which the sedans passed, Mihrimah’s vast wealth fed the poor in a charity whose merit would rise to heaven with the dead man’s soul. The room upstairs drowsed with too-warm braziers and the old woman’s smell of fading chrysanthemums. Downstairs was bread and pilaf; upstairs, the dainty, sweet but chalky bricks of halva. And “Bishmillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim,” the chanted names of God, were punctuated by loud sips cooling the aniseed or ginger tea. Or small cups of an infusion of jasmine, black elder, and rose petals with which the Quince dosed the season’s first cold which, over the forty days, spread from one end of the company then back again. This concoction cloyed achingly just as it was, but required huge quantities of sugar to mask the true bitterness hidden beneath the outward smell.