And she and Fatima Sultan proceeded to feed their charge with tidbits until Safiye pleaded vehemently: “If I eat any more, I’ll burst!”
“There is so much to be done today,” Nur Banu hurried them. She betrayed her own nervousness by not eating at all. “Time cannot be taken for another meal. You must avoid meat, onions, leeks, and heavy spices in any case. Women who eat such things are bound to lose their attractiveness.”
Throughout the day, however, Safiye found that sweet-smelling fruits and pastries were never tar from her, and should she so much as look in the direction of the tray, there was always someone ready to pop another bit in her mouth.
So her attendants got her out of bed and, the whole harem following with more rose petals, laughter, and song, they led her to the citadel’s bath. Safiye had grown used to the ritual of steam and water. She had even grown to like it. Like any self-respecting Muslim woman, she, too, now felt the dirt if she failed to participate at least twice a week, particularly during the summer’s hottest days and after her bleeding time.
“A bride is bathed the day before her wedding, hennaed after.” While they progressed, Nur Banu explained this for Esmikhan and Fatima Sultan—girls who would be lawful brides—more for than Safiye. “But then a bride’s day is filled with the rites that make her consummation legal in the sight of the world. A slave’s purchase is the legality in this case. So we all bathe now for the feast to come while outside the men are busy with their prayers.
“First we had better see to those hands,” Nur Banu directed, interrupting the usual flow of the bath ritual when they had all undressed and reached the second room. “Should the stain remain too long, it will turn black and that would be a bad omen.”
So with great solemnity and flourish, Esmikhan unwound the bandages from first one hand and then the other. The gold coins dropped from Safiye’s palms into her lap.
“Keep them,” Nur Banu said. “They’re yours.”
The first that is really my own — in my life. Safiye pulled them as close as she could with neither hands nor feet to work for her. The first of so much more. If this is slavery, the institution has been greatly maligned.
Safiye forgot the good thoughts as she reacted at first with horror to what a quick flush of warm water discovered. The dried-on henna paste sloshed down the water channels about her pattened feet. Her hands were revealed, as veined and splotched as an old woman’s. Closer inspection, however, revealed the color was not brown but a brilliant, warm, rich orange, like sun-ripened fruit. The color formed a delicate pattern of tulips, dots, and tinted nails that Safiye joined all the others in admiring. When she moved her hands, Safiye noticed the butterfly-like flittings the design helped them to make. Her hands were the one part of her anatomy that might be exposed, even in a bazaar. But henna plunged those hands and all they touched into the perpetual mystery and allure of half-seen forms behind a lattice.
What might they so flittingly touch, come evening?
Her bathers made some attempt to avoid her hands and feet as they worked, but no matter what they did, the stain would remain vivid for a week or more. On every other part of her body, the scrubbing Safiye got was so vigorous that she feared she would be left quite raw. She discovered, however, that the skin she had left when they were finished was softer than a baby’s and glowed a delicate pink.
Then, from that tender skin, every vestige of hair had to be removed. A pair of women, expert at the task, cooked up the depilatory favored for brides because of its sweetness and because it tore the hair out below the skin. Made of two parts beet sugar to one of lemon, it was stirred constantly over a flame until a drop crystallized in water, then spread on the offending areas. When their experience judged the time was right, the women removed the hardened candy in quick, sharp yanks. Safiye’s underarms, legs, as well as her pubes were soon cleaner than a five-year-old child’s.
A beauty pack followed to ease the sore skin. It was made of oil and rice flour mixed with honey and various sweet-smelling spices. In the heat of the steamy baths Safiye began to feel herself to be a living pastry, baking for the festive day.
Another bath followed with more lathering and scrubbing to remove the pack save for the scent and smoothness it gave Safiye’s skin. As they scrubbed her down, Esmikhan and Fatima Sultan repeated the word Mashallah! over and over as a crooning song. It was an invocation to their God to keep the evil spirits that might covet such a beauty from casting a spell on her while she was naked and helpless.
The sun was now past its zenith and came in, in long beams made tangible by the steam, at the high west-side windows. Safiye’s hair was washed with water in which roses and heliotrope had been allowed to steep. Then, stretched out naked on a bed of snow-white cushions and towels, she submitted herself to the hands of the harem masseuse from the time the sun was dappling the water in the pool until it was reflected off the smooth tile wall at shoulder-height.
Now is the pastry kneaded, she thought, made light and full of puffs of air for the young master’s festival.
Remembering the fancy Easter breads of her Italian childhood rather than the thin-crusted pastries that were actually baking at that moment in the citadel ovens, Safiye sometimes daydreamed, sometimes dozed, sometimes drifted fully asleep and dreamed true dreams of delight throughout the long, hot afternoon. It would leave her fresh and wide awake for the exertions of the night.
***
As the masseuse’s firm hands caressed the soft, pink skin, Safiye began to work her hips in an ardent response to that kneading, unconscious of what she was doing. A climax came in a smart slap across her buttocks.
“Save that for my brother!” Esmikhan teased.
Having just come from bathing herself, Selim’s daughter found that the wet end of her towel was more useful as a whip for bare backsides than as a cover.
“Why, you little—! Safiye cried and, throwing aside the masseuse’s hands, she dashed off in hot pursuit, armed also with a towel she paused to dip in the bath as she passed. Safiye made up for a slow start with her long legs and limberness compared to the other girl’s plumper docility. Neither would cry halt and the battle raged on all about the pool.
The two girls’ screams of laughter and of pain echoed off the marble walls and brought Nur Banu in from the latticed corridor where she’d been watching for the men. Her anger and concern were infectious and immediately brought the two dripping, panting, naked girls to bay.
Nur Banu wasted little time in either scolding or apologies, for the marks of Esmikhan’s towel on Safiye’s skin needed instant attention with oil and aloe lest they turn to welts that would last until the morrow. Nonetheless, a quiet smile crept to Nur Banu’s lips to see her young charge in such lively spirits. Safiye could tell that if the older woman was cautious, it was only to make sure that those spirits would not all be spent before nightfall.
“The men are returning from the mosque,” Nur Banu announced when the emergency had passed. “You can hear and see them from out there in the corridor. Make haste, make haste!”
XXXIII
“Auntie, may we bring Safiye out there in the corridor so we can see, too?” Esmikhan begged. “Her hair will dry so much faster there in the sun.” Nur Banu gave her permission and now the toilet began with an earnestness that all but stifled any carefree chatter.
“The sheep are being led into the courtyard,” Nur Banu reported, her voice crosshatched against the carved wood of the grille.
Safiye raised herself off Esmikhan’s knee, where she had been resting while the other girl brushed and combed her hair. By shifting her head from side to side, first to one diamond-shaped opening, then the next, she found it possible to see most of the courtyard below.
“Hold still!” Esmikhan begged. “I shall mess your hair.”
But Safiye couldn’t resist. The large company in the yard were all men, of course. They were differentiated, however, into dusty peasants on the perimeter, dumbly watching the motions of their betters
under banners and poles dangling horsetails at the center. This might be a costume play at home, in the theater of the Foscaris. Safiye felt herself grow warm and was grateful no one else here remembered the occasion. Not just actors but all men dressed in such costumes in this land, these long robes that blinded with their richness when the sun hit them just right.
“Which is your brother?” she asked, surprised at her own breathlessness.
“There.” Esmikhan pointed with the end of the comb. “Standing next to my father. Murad is the one with the brown pheasant’s feathers in the ruby aigrette pinned to his blue-and-gold-striped turban.”
Safiye felt her heart race at the announcement, but the lanky young man had little to recommend him at this distance beyond a certain disinterest and lassitude in his stance. His father, Selim the Sultan’s heir, certainly upstaged him, as did a trio of shepherds who had their hands full trying to control the flock.
“Are the animals bleeding?” Safiye had quite forgotten where her attention ought to be.
“No.”
“Not yet,” Fatima added.
“They are marked for the holy sacrifice with splotches of red on their white wool,” Esmikhan explained.
I see.
There is nothing to fear out there, Safiye told herself as she leaned back to let Esmikhan anoint her hair with fragrant oil, then comb again. A few hot, impatient men and dirty sheep.
“Ah, your hair gleams as gold chains in a jeweler’s shop would under the same treatment,” the princess declared.
Meanwhile, other oils mixed with perfumes were applied to Safiye’s skin, along with a cream of henna to check perspiration.
“The pit for the sacrifice is now dug,” Nur Banu announced.
Safiye leaned forward and looked again. She saw Selim, assisted by a shepherd, struggling with the first of the sheep.
“One sheep for each member of the household,” Esmikhan explained. “Male sheep of a certain age.”
“Male sheep? Even for the females here?”
“Yes. Without blemish.”
Safiye forced herself to look at the pheasant’s feathers. It was difficult to imagine that through this unremarkable figure lay the path to everything of which she’d ever dreamed. Well, the unremarkable doors were always the easiest to turn. She remembered Andrea Barbarigo and young Veniero, but neither with regret. They were behind her; in time, so would this Murad be.
Actually Safiye found herself more interested in which sheep might be hers. Or did slaves not warrant one? Next year at this time I shall certainly have one of the finest, she was convinced.
Now Nur Banu’s personal slaves brought out the garments that she had chosen for her daughter-in-law-to-be. First, of course, came the great shalvar of finest crimson silk and the diaphanous undershirt that had a trimming of lace from faraway Flanders, as delicate as spiders’ webs. The yelek, or floor-length jacket, was the color of lilac blossom and worked all over the bodice with threads of a deeper purple and of gold into a pattern of full-blown roses, each with a cluster of three tiny pearls as stamens in the center.
The jacket buttoned to below the hip so the curve in from the bosom and out again could be followed without distraction. Then a girdle of crimson velvet was tied about Safiye’s hips in such a way that the golden fringe of its ends would bounce against her left knee when she walked. The girdle was set with five amethysts the size of almonds. Amethysts, too, were the stones in the earrings Nur Banu fastened in Safiye’s ears and let cascade down to her shoulders. But there was no such coordination in the other jewelry she put on, all of which was lent for the occasion by all the members of the harem, all deeply concerned in the evening’s outcome.
Because it was not hers to keep, Safiye soon lost interest in examining each piece. She leaned over the weight at her neck to look into the yard once more.
“Our master Selim strokes the sheep’s throat, oh, so gently,” she said. “He is speaking, too. What does he say to it?”
“He offers a prayer,” Esmikhan’s voice came from where she was struggling with a clasp behind her. “As it says in the Koran: ‘Mention Allah’s Name over them.’
Bracelets of every description were forced up to the elbow so there was hardly room for them to jangle against one another on either forearm. Necklaces, rings, and anklets, too, were added until Safiye exclaimed, “Please! I can hardly move.”
Nur Banu conceded after a moment’s thought and, while the older woman gave her next orders, Safiye escaped to the grille once more. This time she gasped in horror. Five sheep lay twitching in death and the sixth was jerking its life’s blood into the pit over the white of entrails.
“Why—why he is killing them!”
“Of course,” Esmikhan replied. “You have never eaten meat before?”
“How quickly he draws the knife!” Nur Banu leaned over Safiye’s shoulder to catch a glimpse. “The beasts hardly struggle.”
Safiye’s hair was sprinkled with gold dust. Like the baker dredges his pastries with sugar. But it was a desperate thought. The first thing that had come to her mind was the roast and its salt.
“The gold is redundant,” Esmikhan chatted happily.
Nur Banu kept the phial of gold dust carefully in her own possession and spoke with earnest precaution. “Nonetheless—”
The hair was formed into four thick plaits, but given enough freedom at the ends to show the willfulness of its curl.
“My son, Allah shield him, never looked more handsome.” Nur Banu said with pride looking out the window yet again.
Safiye looked and saw only how a shepherd thrust a tube up a dead sheep’s leg.
“A few good puffs of air and the retainer can remove the fleece all at once,” Nur Banu said.
Safiye saw nothing but white light and clung to the grille to keep her feet.
A small red cap studded with pearls served as an anchor for the great lengths of fine, transparent veil. Red embroidered calfskin slippers went upon her feet. Then finally her face was painted: her eyes into almonds, her brows into “Frankish bows,” her cheeks into peonies, and her mouth into a full-blown rose which, with its natural pearly teeth, rivaled the glory of those worked into the yelek.
“The meat is divided, as the holy Koran says: ‘when their flanks collapse...feed the beggar and the suppliant.’ How the poor praise the generosity of our master!
“But come,” Nur Banu said, breaking her own report. “Come, girls. The cook is taking his portion into the kitchen right now. There’s not a moment to lose!”
Now the harem scurried out of the bath and into the main part of the house, for there was hardly time for a proper evening prayer before the door to Murad’s apartment would be opened.
Away from the grille, and shown her own reflection, Safiye’s courage returned. The beauty that stared back at her from the mirror could not be crushed by any slavery, to fashion or otherwise. And it was clearly destined for only the greatest of things.
That evening at prayers, Safiye looked upon these foreign prostrations in much the same light as she looked upon the Turkish dances and songs she had learned. Though there was haste in the movements that evening and Safiye was weighted down with many ornaments, still she managed to include between the lines of Arabic a little prayer to Saint Catherine that her aunt had taught her. Just such a prayer would have been uttered on her wedding day, if she had married that lowly Corfiot. Rather too much favor with heaven, she thought, than too little.
In the confusion that followed as the menial slaves hurriedly rolled up the prayer rugs, Nur Banu called Safiye to her. Surveying her handiwork at arm’s length, she nodded with satisfaction.
“If my son will not have you,” she said, “may he never become Sultan at all—as Allah wills.”
Then she kissed Safiye fondly on both cheeks and, as she did, she pressed a pair of small silver cases into her hand. Safiye opened and examined one after the other. Each contained perhaps two dozen objects the shape and size of fingers—black in one
case, yellow in the other—that released a medicinal smell.
“What are they?”
Nur Banu replied with the word farazikh, which Safiye had never heard and wouldn’t have known in Italian either, had someone been around to give it to her. “Pessary” was not in the vocabulary of a convent girl.
“No, do not touch them,” Nur Banu warned, and Safiye obediently withdrew her curious fingers. “Body heat will make them melt. You are to place them inside yourself, the yellow one before the act, the black ones after.”
“What are they made of?”
Nur Banu raised the perfect crescents of her brows so her eyes could pierce deeper. Did this girl plan to make farazikh on her own? The idea was so startling—so unthinkable—that the older woman told her anyway.
“The yellow is the pulp taken from between the pips of a pomegranate mixed with alum, rue, myrrh, hellebore, and ox-gall, kneaded with the tail-fat of a sheep so it will melt. The black is colocynth pulp, bryony, sulfur, and cabbage seed in a base of tar.”
“Are these formulas of which the Quince approves?”
Nur Banu’s brows went higher still. “Yes,” she snapped.
Safiye laughed lightly, realizing she had, for the moment, pressed for too much control of her own enslaved body. “Then I know they’ll work.”
The lightness, the girlishness in her voice served as an apology, and the older woman’s brows settled down to their usual arcs.
“May you remain childless many blissful nights.”
XXXIV
The air was different in the mabein, that strange half-world between the world of men and that of women. It seemed darker, heavier. The dust of disuse a day of airing had been unable to remove lingered in this room of the young Murad, for he rarely cared to make contact with the world of shadows that stood always at his back while he went about in the male, sunshiny world of everyday. Here in this space between, opposites met. Things as unlike as oil and vinegar mingled either, like that dressing, quickly and bitterly to separate or, like the opposites of flame and powder, to mix and explode into one.
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