While this final ordeal was going on, Zehra trotted away and then returned from somewhere carrying a cup.
"What is it?" Cat asked, as the girl knelt and raised it towards her.
"It is made of barley. Boza it is called," explained Ayhan. "It will strengthen you and quench your thirst."
With exquisite skill, Zehra fed Caterina sips of the faintly sweet, chilled drink. After the long fast and the enervating bath, it was heavenly. Boza proved to be cold, smooth, and thinly sweet-and-sour, with a delicate after taste of cinnamon.
When Caterina began to complain that the paste was hurting, Ayhan scraped it away with a mussel shell. Then she rinsed with very hot water.
"Ow! You're boiling me!" Cat tried to shield her already insulted private parts.
"We must get all the paste off, Red One. Either that or it will eat another hole in you," Ayhan said with a grim smile.
Cat could still feel the dreadful burning so she endured it, allowed the sponge to send scalding water over the tenderest places and down the inside of her thighs.
"The first time is the worst," said Ayhan. "Eventually you won't have to do it more than once every month or so. The hair becomes—discouraged."
She lifted Cat's arm and stroked the tender nakedness underneath. "Now, red barbarian, you begin to approach beauty. Ah, but what is this?" she suddenly asked, touching the spot that was always extra tender.
As she did, Cat felt a shock of terror strong enough to revive her. She could see Aunt Teresina leaning over her with a bit of ice wrapped in a towel, pressing it against the place where the spider had bitten, the place that had always afterward been marked with blue.
"It's a scar!" Fear surged to panic when abruptly the door opened, and a large, enormously fat black man came towards her, accompanied by the two eunuchs who'd escorted her from the small room.
Feeling dizzy sick, Cat crossed her arms over her breasts and clenched her knees together. She'd never been naked in the presence of so many people in her life.
"This is the Chief Eunuch in charge of the women," Ayhan announced. "He is a physician. He must see whether you are already bred and if you are healthy. Nothing else will happen. Now don't act crazy. Just lie still and it will soon be over."
Under the direction of this huge personage, apparently yet another of the black castrati that the palace seemed to be full of, the two men seized her arms and held her down upon the couch. The one whose nose she'd bloodied took a cruelly painful grip.
There was nothing else to do but submit. When the examination was finished, the huge man grunted to his feet. As soon as she was released, Caterina curled into a ball and hid her face. After saying a few quick words to Ayhan, the Chief Eunuch left the room. To her relief, he took the others away with him.
"It is all over now," said Ayhan, patting Caterina as she sat, trembling and rubbing her aching arms. "He says you are healthy and that you are not pregnant. You are to be kept and trained to be an odalisque."
Then she was led into a small antechamber with a dry floor, pegs on the walls and benches. Here stout Zehra had set out a complete set of new clothes.
First there were a pair of pants, very full, which reached to Cat's ankles, then a smock of a fine green silk gauze edged with embroidery. It had wide sleeves and was closed at the neck with a diamond button. Over this went a long flowing caftan which she recognized as the same sort of garment Christoph had had made for her. This one, however, was beautiful, of a greenish blue color and embroidered beautifully with winged horses.
"Do you like the Pegasi?" Ayhan asked. "It was thought to be most appropriate for you."
"Do you know about my mare? Where is she?"
"All I have heard is that the horse is wild and very valuable, more valuable than any barbarian would have the sense to know. She will be well cared for, just like you. And she is yours no longer, Red One. In the harem you own nothing, not even your freckled skin."
Cat swallowed the lump in her throat, stared down at the tiny winged horses, so skillfully rendered. For an instant she imagined herself on the back of one, soaring through the sky, back to Heldenberg, back to the arms of her husband…
Zehra was offering her the last piece of clothing, a waistcoat of a brilliant green, closed with jeweled buttons. Numbly, Cat put it on. Next she was told to sit so that her hair could be combed and braided.
"Ayhan..."
"What now, girl?"
"I thought Turks dressed their wives in black long tunics."
"What? Oh, the feradge is what you mean. Yes, that is how a woman, if she ever goes outside of the harem, must dress. If you ever see the outside of these walls again, you will wear the feradge and a yashmak, too."
"Yashmak?"
"Yes, a veil that covers your face and hair. I will show you how to wear it. In time I will teach you all you need to know in order not to sin."
"I will die if I cannot ride again," said Caterina softly.
"Then you will die."
Afterward, she was escorted back to the little room. She almost didn't recognize it, for in her absence a barred window had been unshuttered and a couch had been moved in, one covered with blankets and pillows. There was also a low table and a Turkey carpet. Upon the table sat a plate of something which smelled wonderful, a kind of stew poured over steamed grain. Beside that sat a basket of cherries and a pitcher that looked to be full of more of the delicious Boza.
"Go ahead, Red Mare Woman. Eat. Sleep. You will see no one until I come tomorrow to begin your training."
The door locked. As soon as she heard the soft scuffle of slippered feet departing, Cat hurled herself down on the carpet by the table and began to stuff the strangely spiced stuff into her mouth with her fingers. Later, lying on the comfortable divan, stomach full of strange but excellent food, body clean and warm blankets wrapped around her, Caterina wept long and bitterly.
How long could she survive inside a cage?
How could she sleep when such images of horror crowded her mind?
After she'd cried for a long time, a profound lassitude arose, from the food, the hot bath, the skillful massaging of her body by the slave. It wasn't long before she found release in sleep, the most profound since her capture.
* * *
The sun was well up the next day when the door unlocked. There stood Ayhan. Behind her stood plump Zehra carrying a tray of breakfast.
"You will wash, and then you will have a lesson on how to eat properly. And no nonsense!" She indicated the door, outside of which Cat caught sight of the skulking, ominous Sulmuh.
Obediently, Caterina washed her hands and face in a basin. Then she sat down upon the carpet by the table.
"Sit like this. Cross your legs." Ayhan folded herself gracefully down beside her. When Cat reached for food with both hands, the old woman dealt the left one a stinging slap.
"That hand is unclean. It is to be used only for the call of nature. You may never use it to eat."
Caterina, who was hungry, repressed the urge to hit back.
"Watch me. Use your fingertips, just the ends." Every move Ayhan made in bringing the food to her mouth was astonishingly elegant. "Only three fingers. Don't gobble."
* * *
In the courtyard below the birds sang so beautifully that, for fleeting moments, she felt almost happy. Open to the sky, the area was only partially paved. The remainder was filled by a garden of dwarf trees and bright flowers. There were two sparkling fountains.
For a few hours every day, Cat watched a crowd of gaily dressed women and romping children enjoying the sunlit garden.
"All you see here, kadins, concubines, odalisques, children, and slaves of the Pasha." Ayhan explained. "Kadins are wives. Islam allows a man to have four, but if he is rich he may also have four concubines, as well as any number of odalisques, who are, as I've said before, slaves of the kadins. A man may take any wife's handmaid he chooses to his couch." Caterina shook her head, utterly amazed.
"In the west there is a custom
of mistresses. All rich and powerful men have them. One way or another true male nature will express itself."
Every day Ayhan sat with her, teaching her the language and telling her stories about the ways of the harem. Caterina was an interested and often horrified listener, for the world Ayhan described was a web of conspiracy, betrayal and murder. The Pasha's mother was said to have poisoned a rival and to have done the same to the woman's small children in order to make inheritance safe for her own sons after their husband had died.
"We are a hard people, Red Mare, which is why we always triumph. Among our men it is brothers against their cousins, cousins against the world, but it is even harder for women. In the seraglio, a woman has no ally but her own wit. Remember what I tell you, for if you displease the Lady Mother you will be sent to the marketplace, where I'm sure they will receive a good price for your healthy body and red hair—even if you aren't a virgin."
It seemed that as an odalisque, Caterina would be a slave, but she would also be given a slave of her own, who would bathe her, carry her food and see to her wants. She would have to learn the same skills herself in order to care for her mistress, whichever among the kadins chose her. She also learned that many of the women in the seraglio were Circassians or Croats who had been bought as slaves, trained and converted. The household was modeled, as far as this Pasha's wealth allowed, upon that of the Great Turk in Istanbul.
* * *
At the end of the first week Caterina was taken again to the baths. This time, the steaming room was filled with the same women and children she'd daily watched in courtyard. "These are the kadins, their odalisques and the children. They will be seeing you for the first time. Some of them might even touch you, so behave with civility."
This time the bath was a much more amenable experience, especially because the miserable burning paste needed only a brief application. The careful Zehra soaped and scrubbed her until her fair skin was flushed and red.
During the last week she had tried talking to Zehra in German, but the girl had only smiled, patted Caterina's cheeks affectionately and shook her head. Ayhan had explained. "Zehra knows a little Turkish and when you know some too, then you can speak. She is a slave from the east somewhere. Maybe Armenian, but no one here speaks her native tongue, so we don't know. She isn't pretty, but she's a good slave."
All around Caterina, women of many colors were washing each other, bodies and hair. She was surprised to see how free they were in their nakedness, how some of them even put up a leg on the stools and allowed their half naked servants to examine them. Apparently this was a searching for renewed growth of the despised hair, because the paste pot made its appearance after several of these examinations.
Other beauty treatments were in progress as well. One woman appeared to be dying her hair, with the help of several slaves. With the quantities of burning depilatory and black dye that were flowing across the floor today, Caterina understood the purpose of the tall pattens—to keep one's feet above the mess!
All the wives were there, and Cat felt their eyes speculatively upon her. Ayhan had told her that the Pasha had four kadins and had sired children upon them all, as well as upon two concubines and several of the odalisques. The children were everywhere, more subdued than in the garden, perhaps because of the steamy heat. They ranged in color from olive brown to extremely fair. One of the kadins, Ayhan had told her, was an Egyptian.
Today, Caterina saw her up close. She was a beautiful coffee color, very dark, but with fine features and an astounding figure. It was rare, Ayhan said, for this pasha to take a dark skinned woman, but the woman's beauty and some political advantage which Ayhan alluded to had caused him to marry her. Muazzez, as she was called, was the daughter of a pasha, a noblewoman of sorts, if such a thing could be said to exist in this world of absolute male domination.
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.
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